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PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program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Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#351

Post by echelon »

sho_hn wrote: post #317
cls59 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I think the buried lede here is actually the clawback clause. With that in the contract, this isn't a $1.5 million dollar grant, it's a $1.5 million dollar liability. If you take the money and spend it on research and development and then get hit by a clawback, whether due to "DEI" or some other reason, that is a financially ruinous event to somehow come up with $1.5 million dollars that was already spent. A…

As treasurer of a similar FOSS org, this is the correct take. An important responsibility of the people running a FOSS community's backing non-profit is to keep the org safe and stable, as the community relies on it for vital services and legal representation. A risk like that is unacceptable, even more than in commercial business.

Could the foundation take the money and sit on it in bonds or some other safe instrument? Call it an "endowment"?

$1.5M at 4% is nice.

But I suppose the "proposal" means these funds come with a distribution plan attached?

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#352

Post by machomaster »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #160
philipallstar wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people in the present administration have been blowing white supremacist and pro-violence dog whistles for over a decade now. I think this is in itself a huge problem. You've been told this, repeatedly, for 10 years, which explains why so much of the political violence (and celebration thereof) is on the left in the US. Why do you still believe dogwhistles to be a bigger problem than actual violence?

"so much of the political violence (and celebration thereof) is on the left in the US" Biiiiiiiig citation needed. By every available metric, right-wing terror attacks dominate the political violence numbers in the US. I don't know what fantasy world you've been living in, but frankly it sounds pretty sweet to me. And mass violence is a worse problem than targeted violence. Whether or not you think they deserved it,…

You should check what constitutes the "right-wing terror attacks". You will be surprised to know that they include attacks made by Islamic radicals.

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

#353

Post by epistasis »

anonymars wrote: post #224
epistasis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> The censors are filtering words not on the meaning of the words but based on the existence of other meanings of words Heh. Remember when people fell all over themselves to rename source control branches to "main"?

I don't recall the government making hugely significant financial decisions about science funding on those grounds, any more than people "falling over themselves" to shave two characters off the default branch name. Nor do I remember DEI being quite as harmful to the humans as master/slave relations in the US. But, it is completely in line with these sorts of politicians and their supporters to criticize people for something, and then act 10x as bad.

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

#354

Post by dragonwriter »

bo1024 wrote: post #345
dragonwriter wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the one hand, the plain text of the language is not against DEI practices in general -- only DEI practices that are "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws." EO 14151—the policy of which the rewriting of the standard anti-discrimination clause in this way is a part of the implementation—characterizes DEI entirely as illegal discrimination (but the new backformation “discriminatory equity ideology” is n…

Sure, but the executive order is not a law.

The executive order is direction to executive branch officials, including the ones who are responsible for applying the cancellation and clawback terms in the agreement at issue, as to how they are to perform their duties.

It is certainly relevsant to evaluating whether or not it is worthwhile to apply for the grant. That sufficient litigation might reverse an application of the policy in the EO that the agreement text clearly highlights the intent to enforce as inconsistent with the underlying law isn’t worth much unless the cost of expected litigation would be dwarfed by the size of the contract award, and for a $1.5 million grant application, that’s...not very much litigation.

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

#355

Post by zuminator »

JPKab wrote: post #259
latexr wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 un…

It's funny how the quest for "unique strengths" entirely ignores people with pale skin who grew up in trailer parks in Appalachia or farms in the midwest, despite the fact that they are dramatically underrepresented in our industry and in elite universities. The DEI policies favor people with dark skin (as long as they're not Asian) and 1250 SATs from wealthy suburbs over pale skin 1450 SATs from rural backwaters. It…

Entirely ignores? There actually are DEI type initiatives specifically designed to benefit Appalachians, such as https://www.arc.gov/grants-and-opportunities/ or more locally, https://www.ovrdc.org/the-appalachian-community-grant-progra.... Of course, Appalachia isn't just poor white people, there are historically black and native populations within its vast expanse.

Also, certainly someone can have principled opposition to DEI without being called a Nazi. But frankly, having a wife or kids "of color" doesn't necessarily prove anything one way or another. Lots of plantation owners in the 19th century also had biracial kids while somehow maintaining their raging bigotry. We humans are quite skilled at compartmentalizing.

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

#356

Post by EbEsacAig »

cls59 wrote: post #288
elicash wrote: post #228

On the one hand, the plain text of the language is not against DEI practices in general -- only DEI practices that are "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws." On the other hand, the federal government has gone after law firms that are not actually in violation of law and forced settlements due to their DEI programs, so you can't actually trust that you won't be hassled. Additionally, that you won't at min…

Agreed. I think the buried lede here is actually the clawback clause. With that in the contract, this isn't a $1.5 million dollar grant, it's a $1.5 million dollar liability. If you take the money and spend it on research and development and then get hit by a clawback, whether due to "DEI" or some other reason, that is a financially ruinous event to somehow come up with $1.5 million dollars that was already spent. A…

> If you take the money and spend it on research and development and then get hit by a clawback, whether due to "DEI" or some other reason, that is a financially ruinous event to somehow come up with $1.5 million dollars that was already spent.

This is it. The conditions / circumstances of the clawback are irrelevant. If there's any possibility of a clawback, then the grant is a rope to hang your organization with.

I don't think an NSF grant should be a trade, wherein your org sells its mission / independence, and the NSF buys influence.

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

#357

Post by sho_hn »

echelon wrote: post #351
sho_hn wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As treasurer of a similar FOSS org, this is the correct take. An important responsibility of the people running a FOSS community's backing non-profit is to keep the org safe and stable, as the community relies on it for vital services and legal representation. A risk like that is unacceptable, even more than in commercial business.

Could the foundation take the money and sit on it in bonds or some other safe instrument? Call it an "endowment"? $1.5M at 4% is nice. But I suppose the "proposal" means these funds come with a distribution plan attached?

Typically in grant work you submit a complete proposal with milestones and roles defined, and receive payout over time to cover the costs in the plan, or some part of them. It's earmarked money.

In more established non-profit areas there's usually also quite some compliance overhead and audits to be passed, so this can be someone's fulltime job on the org side. FOSS backing orgs are typically smaller and less experienced, so donors have so far found ways to make things easier for them and give more leeway.

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

#358

Post by machomaster »

VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #210
hn_shill_202510 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you were to poll this very forum, you would find out that it is too almost entirely comprised of (biological) men. shall we apply the DEI principles here and give female posters +100 free karma on every comment/submission?

This is called a strawman argument and is functionally worthless for this discusson

This is called Reductio ad absurdum, which takes the claims to their logical point, proving without any doubt how absurd they truly are.

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

#359

Post by josefritzishere »

bo1024 wrote: post #345
dragonwriter wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the one hand, the plain text of the language is not against DEI practices in general -- only DEI practices that are "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws." EO 14151—the policy of which the rewriting of the standard anti-discrimination clause in this way is a part of the implementation—characterizes DEI entirely as illegal discrimination (but the new backformation “discriminatory equity ideology” is n…

Sure, but the executive order is not a law.

You say that confidently like that's an obstacle to executive power in 2025.

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

#360

Post by eirikbakke »

dragonwriter wrote: post #343
eirikbakke wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "rule against surplusage": Where one reading of a statute would make one or more parts of the statute redundant and another reading would avoid the redundancy, the other reading is preferred. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_interpretation

Grant agreements are not statutes but contracts, and canons of statutory interpretation do not apply to contracts.

Perhaps a better source (but IANAL):

"Judges frequently invoke anti-redundancy principles in the interpretation of legal language, whether it appears in classic private-law documents such as contracts or classic public law-documents such as constitutions and statutes."

Redundancy: When Law Repeats Itself, John M. Golden (2016)

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