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Comment by alaxhn | Hacker News Reader

So you don't think being forced to include a statement on diversity in every single grant request reviewed by the NIH was "injecting dumb politics" but you do think that being forced to NOT include a statement on diversity in every single grant request is?

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There’s a very big difference there between “including a statement in diversity” and “your funding gets pulled because you previously included a statement about diversity”. The new administration is essentially pulling funding from everyone who got grants previously based on those criteria.

Who do you think benefits medium term from our best researchers getting less funding? The toll on our economy will only be visible in 15-20 years, and it will be massive.

Destroying the economy IS the goal it seems like.

These money shark guys that have got a hold of our government and economy since 2007 seem to have a long term plan that is specifically designed to destroy the US economy. Its counter intuitive, since their wealth is directly linked, but they have some kind of plan.

> forced to NOT include

== "not being allowed to include"

i.e. a restriction on free speech with more worrying implications than "injecting dumb politics"

Really? You see a narrow contextual restriction for irrelevant information in a grant/hiring packet to be worse than compelled speech?

Diversity statements were used to facilitate race-based grant approvals. They should never have been legal.

Never were legal.

This is false. The grants were not approved based on race. The grants were approved based on merit toward the goals of the field of science to which they were submitted. Showing how your work had broader impacts toward a more diverse, equitable and inclusive society was one part of a list of many criteria, recently updated here:

https://new.nsf.gov/funding/merit-review#our-merit-review-cr...

I think a link to archive.org might be better here, the criteria changed and so must have the website as well no?

Compelled speech is far, far, far worse than constricting speech by every conceivable dimension.

Even in day to day interaction, forcing someone to be silent, is far more of a gentler 'social action' than forcing someone to speak.

I don't think I agree. What's your reasoning?

I think people are more concerned about the economic fallout and the illegality of what is being done.

Including statements on diversity, and defunding projects because they have diversity are two very different things.

And yeah, as a white male who sees few women, and even fewer people from minorities other than Chinese and Indian, in the hard sciences (especially computer related), I definitely support efforts to try to include them more. It results in more diverse views of a problem, which often leads to better science.

You call it "injecting dumb politics," but I call it "explaining why I shouldn't believe you'll just hire your buddies." It's an attempt to prevent the grift everyone claims is in research, but it's been politicized by bad-faith non-participants.

Let's not sugarcoat it. DEI is the new N-word. Only people who are covert racists would be bothered by a mere statement about inclusion.

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