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PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

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Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#121

Post by coloneltcb »

paloblanco wrote: post #30
arusahni wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PSF and several other organizations that provide public package registries wrote an open letter [1] announcing a joint effort to make this situation more sustainable. I'll be interested to see where it goes. [1]: https://openssf.org/blog/2025/09/23/open-infrastructure-is-n...

Thanks! I want to bring this up as a discussion point when I get the chance at work. I can't find a date on this letter - is it recent?

Get your company to take the Pledge: https://opensourcepledge.com/

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#122

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #310

[stub for offtopicness / flamewarness / guideline-breakingness] (this is a rough cut - I know there are other posts left in the thread that arguably belong here, but this time I'm in a bit of a rush) (please, everyone, you can make substantive points thoughtfully but do so within the guardrails at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - avoid the generic-indignant-flamey-snarky-namecalley-hardcore-battley…

[deleted]

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#123

Post by dragonwriter »

rck wrote: post #72
djoldman wrote: post #26

> These terms included affirming the statement that we “do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws .” (Emphasis mine) I'm curious if any lawyer folks could weigh in as to whether this language means that the entire sentence requires the mentioned programs t…

Not a lawyer, but the NSF clause covering clawbacks is pretty specific: > NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this award, operate any program in violation of Federal antidiscriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott. A "prohibited boycott" is apparently a legal term aimed specifically at boycotting Israel/Israeli companies, so…

I don't think you are misunderstanding the surface requirements, but I think you are mistaking “would eventually, with unlimited resources for litigation, prevail in litigation over NSF cancelling funds, assuming that the US justice system always eventually produces a correct result” with “not at risk”.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#124

Post by 7jjjjjjj »

I think people are overlooking the most important part:

- Further, violation of this term gave the NSF the right to “claw back” previously approved and transferred funds. This would create a situation where money we’d already spent could be taken back, which would be an enormous, open-ended financial risk.

They're saying the terms give the Trump administration what's essentially a "kill the PSF" button. Which they may want to use for any number of arbitrary reasons. Maybe the PSF runs a conference with a trans speaker, or someone has to be ousted for being openly racist. If it gets the attention of right wing media that's the end.

The "just comply with the law" people are being extremely naive. There can be no assumption of good faith here.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#125

Post by XCabbage »

A point made deep in a comment thread by user "rck" below deserves to be a top-level comment - the clawback clause explicitly applies ONLY to violations of existing law:

> NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this award, operate any program in violation of Federal antidiscriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott.

So there's no plausible way that agreeing to these terms would have contractually bound PSF in any way that they were not already bound by statute. Completely silly ideological posturing to turn down the money.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#126

Post by japhyr »

qcnguy wrote: post #95
aspir wrote: post #29

This isn't good for the PSF, but if these "poison pill" terms are a pattern that applies to all NSF and (presumably) other government research funding, the entire state of modern scientific research is at risk. Regardless of how you, as an individual, might feel about "DEI," imposing onerous political terms on scientific grants harms everyone in the long term.

[flagged]

> DEI is an immoral, hate based and anti-truth ideology.

Much of the DEI work stems from people looking around a decade or so ago at tech conferences, and noticing that they were almost entirely comprised of men.

There's way too much to address in a single comment, so I'll share one specific thing the Python community has done over the past ten+ years that's made a world of difference: The talk proposal process has been standardized so identifying information is hidden in the first round of reviews.

That one change helped shift the dial from almost entirely male speaker lineups to a much more balanced speaker lineup. As a result, we get a much broader range of talks.

There is nothing "immoral, hate based, and anti-truth" about efforts like this.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#127

Post by takluyver »

qcnguy wrote: post #105
flufluflufluffy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do apply, also for NIH funded research. I work in healthcare research and all the investigators I know have had to go to great lengths to whitewash their grant proposals (you can’t use the word “gender” for example, you must say “difference” instead of “disparity”, etc etc…) It’s absolutely bonkers. However most of the researchers I work with are operating under a “appease the NIH to obtain the grant, but the ju…

[flagged]

The requirements the GP is describing are to avoid using certain words. It's not fraudulent to describe the same work without using the banned words.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#128

Post by pavon »

qcnguy wrote: post #105
flufluflufluffy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do apply, also for NIH funded research. I work in healthcare research and all the investigators I know have had to go to great lengths to whitewash their grant proposals (you can’t use the word “gender” for example, you must say “difference” instead of “disparity”, etc etc…) It’s absolutely bonkers. However most of the researchers I work with are operating under a “appease the NIH to obtain the grant, but the ju…

[flagged]

Its not fraud. The grant proposal accurately describes the research occurring, and people evaluating the grant will have no misconception about what they are funding. The problem is that political appointees have been applying dumb keyword searches which block research that has nothing to do with the issues they object to. Like using privilege in the computer security sense. Or bias in the statistical sense, unrelated to political leaning.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#129

Post by [deleted] »

ponow wrote: post #27
bilekas wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems very un-American. The government dictating how you run your business ? > “do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.” Is that even legal to add such an arbitrary and opinionated reason to a government grant? I applaud them for taking a stand, it…

Federal funding of research is un-American.

[deleted]

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#130

Post by politician »

takluyver wrote: post #101
politician wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The requirement that grantees not violate existing laws is common in Federal grants. Taking umbrage with the DEI coloration on this entirely reasonable and standard requirement is absurd. There could be a long laundry list of such clauses that all have equally zero weight ("don't promote illegal drug trafficking", "don't promote illegal insider trading", ...).

If it has zero weight, why would the grant agreement specifically highlight it? I would guess it's much easier to enforce a particular interpretation of the law via a grant agreement than having to argue it in court.

> Why would the grant agreement specifically highlight it?

I would humbly suggest that it mentions this particular example because the NSF administrator serves under the pleasure of the Executive and they have been tasked to demonstrate that they are following the orders of the Executive branch.

However, the inclusion of this specific example confers no higher priority than any other possible example. It has no weight; it is inoperative.

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