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PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program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Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#171

Post by davorak »

politician wrote: post #130
takluyver wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 weigh…

> It has no weight; it is inoperative.

You are claiming that if the PSF took the grant and the NSF, or the president, decided the PSF was promoting DEI they would not be able to claw back funds?

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#172

Post by charlescearl »

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]

On the ending of “DEI” (itself an eviscerated approach to addressing the minimal demands to address over two centuries of american slavery, indigenous genocide, patriarchal violence, anti-trans, anti-queer violence) as targeted death making. The list of the scientific establishment’s participation, complicity, neglect is long. Some programs called immediately to mind include:

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/543.html

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/the-shocking-hazards-of-lo...

https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/about/index.html

https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/education-and-awaren...

https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/infant-health-and-mortality-a...

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#173

Post by davorak »

phkahler wrote: post #153
japhyr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 b…

>> The talk proposal process has been standardized so identifying information is hidden in the first round of reviews Making the talk proposal process blind seems more like meritocracy than DEI. The people opposing DEI [claim to] want qualifications to matter and race/gender/whatever issues not to.

> Making the talk proposal process blind seems more like meritocracy than DEI. The people opposing DEI [claim to] want qualifications to matter and race/gender/whatever issues not to.

Making a process blind to the person applying is a common DEI tool. Orchestra auditions are the famous one that I know about off the top of my head. Some links I googled and skimmed for rough quality, not vetted for serious study and may only be a starting point:

2013: https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/...

https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impac...

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

#174

Post by ipaddr »

etchalon wrote: post #100
ipaddr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are for racism. Treat one group different from others based on race. We can debate whether doing this rights historical wrongs but we can't pretend it is not racist to treat different people of different skin colors differently.

We don't have to pretend it's not racist when it's factually not racist. And there's not really a debate about whether it rights historic wrong. There is a debate about whether righting historic wrongs is even possible. The debate is whether we can/should counterbalance existing wrongs in society. And I have hard time taking anyone seriously who says we shouldn't.

When you become what you are fighting against you become the problem.

If the issue is not using a person's race to make blanket judgements against them then using someone's race to to counterbalance historical is equally as wrong.

The message you are telling everyone is you should use someone's race to judge them. The people in power changes but the racism never goes away.

You end up with foolish ideas like reparations where the people demanding money are a product of a union between a slave and slave owner where half of you should pay the other half.

Or quota systems that exclude minorities because they aren't the right race.

The racism you want to keep needs to be let go. You can't say racism is bad but then use it to enrich yourself.

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

#175

Post by latexr »

philipallstar wrote: post #76
dangus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> I am going to add my own stronger language than yours: if you don’t feel positively about diversity, equity, and inclusion, then you are sending a message that you instead support homogeneity, inequity, and exclusion. This "if you're not for us you're against us" is a very broken way of thinking. It excludes the many, many more people just don't care about diversity and want the best people in a role regardless of…

> It excludes the many, many more people just don't care about diversity and want the best people in a role regardless of ethnicity or sex or anything else.

You often don’t know who the “best” person is for a role until they’re in it. Diversity is good because it allows for different perspectives and catching your own blind spots. Because we don’t understand different backgrounds as well as our own, we can fail to understand the unique strengths someone brings to the table simply by being different.

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

#176

Post by qcnguy »

japhyr wrote: post #126
qcnguy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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 b…

[flagged]

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

#177

Post by XCabbage »

takluyver wrote: post #134
XCabbage wrote: post #125

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…

And if someone at the NSF decides to terminate the grant & 'recover all funds', does the dispute over the contract involve the same burden of proof and rights to appeal as a federal discrimation case? Someone wrote it into the grant agreement. It's a fair bet that they think that has some effect beyond what the law already achieves.

The burden of proof is "on the balance of probabilities" in both cases as far as I know, and there's no limit in principle on how high a breach of contract case can be appealed.

Of course it has an effect, but that effect is giving the NSF the ability to sue over a grantee's alleged breaches of discrimination law, instead of that being limited to parties discriminated against and the EEOCs.

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

#178

Post by counters »

politician wrote: post #130
takluyver wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 weigh…

If it's inoperative then it shouldn't be in the language of the grant. Full stop.

The language itself also overly broad. The stipulation from the grant didn't just cover activities funded by the grant itself. In the very language quoted on the PSF blog, they needed to affirm that as an organization they "do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI." Read that again. The language expressly states that they cannot operate ANY programs that advance or promote DEI during the term of the award. So if a PSF member volunteers with PyLadies, would that count as "advanc[ing] or promot[ing] DEI?"

In the real world, no one would _ever_ sign a contract with this sort of poison pill on it. If something like this was found buried in a contract I was evaluating with my lawyer, we'd immediately redline it as overly broad and overbearing.

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

#179

Post by XCabbage »

burkaman wrote: post #161
XCabbage wrote: post #125

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…

Why was the clause included if it's completely redundant? PSF's decision is based on the government's demonstrated track record of what they consider to be "illegal DEI", not what the law actually says. Grant cancellations have been primarily based on a list of banned words ( https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/nsf-has-canceled-more-1500-... ), and of course nobody involved with any of the thousands of cancelled grants…

> Why was the clause included if it's completely redundant?

It's not and I didn't suggest it was. It gives the NSF itself the ability to litigate discrimination by grantees (in order to claw back its funds) instead of only the people discriminated against and the EEOC being able to do that. That's a real effect! But it doesn't impose any new obligations whatsoever on PSF - just changes the recourse mechanism if PSF violates legal obligations they already had.

> When the federal government cancels your grant and claws back money you've already spent because they claim something innocuous is illegal

As far as I know this has not happened in any of the cases you mention and _could_ not happen. Yes, grants have been cancelled for dumb reasons, but nothing has been clawed back. Right? What would the mechanism for clawing back the money without a lawsuit even be?

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

#180

Post by epistasis »

qcnguy wrote: post #167
pavon wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, unrelate…

[flagged]

> The entire point is to create misconceptions in the people evaluating the grant. That is grant fraud.

No and no. It was just explicitly and intricately explained to you how that's not true, and you didn't even engage with the explanation.

The censors are filtering words not on the meaning of the words but based on the existence of other meanings of words. It's blatantly horrific behavior, in violation of any basic code of ethics or morals.

No fraud is being described in these comments by the grant applicants. However, among those trying to perpetrate political correctness on the a non-political process, unethical behavior abounds.

> Undoubtably their searches have also been finding lots of research that is related to what they object to. You can't use the existence of mistakes to claim that deceiving the government therefore isn't fraud. That's not how the law works.

First, having political objections to some types of research and imposing that sort of political filter is highly unethical in these scientific positions. Second, because they sometimes execute this political censorship successfully does not justify the inaccurate political censorship.

Nobody supporting anything like this has a leg to stand on about laws or legality or anything relating to the rule of law. The Trump administration is acting completely lawlessly, ignores court orders, and has zero regard for the constitution.

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