Our scientific company in the United States is the desire for the world. The best scientists from around the world want to come and work here, especially because of the environment that we have favored for decades to support scientific innovation and intellectual freedom. Federal investment in research is one of the main foundations on which this extraordinarily successful system has been built.
It is not simply the dollar amount of federal funding that allows you to succeed in this system. This is also the way we allocate and distribute the funds. Long before “Dei” was common language, we have made solid efforts to distribute largely funds. For example, instead of concentrating financing only in the main research institutions, as do many other countries, we have created programs such as EPSCOR (1979) to direct funding to support research and development throughout the country, including rural areas. This has been made in recognition that excellence in research can be found everywhere that colleges and universities at the service of rural and poor communities deserve to benefit and contribute to the economic and scientific engine that the federal government can provide.
The National Science Foundation has also implemented Broader impacts In its subsidy examination process (originally from the 1960s and formalized in 1997). The objective of the NSF examination criteria for wider impacts was to ensure that each project funded by the federal government would have advantages for the company. These wider impacts could take a wide variety of forms, including, but without limiting themselves, new tools and innovations, as well as efforts to develop STEM labor by supporting people historically and economically excluded from becoming scientific.
The financing of diversity, actions and inclusion is one of the mechanisms we use to continue this inheritance of equity in federal funding of scientific research. This approach also contributed to reducing public distrust of science and scientists – a distrust attributable to the historical abuse of science – ensuring that the advantages of scientific progress are largely and equitably and by making the work of scientists more transparent and accessible.
Until recently in history, science was mainly an activity for the rich. Training as a scientist requires many years of delayed salary, due to in -depth education and the development of practical skills necessary to conduct independent research and start a laboratory. For those who cross this training, research jobs can be rare and wages are not high, given the highly specialized skills required and high job requirements. Many of the best and brightest minds have been excluded from the scientific process by this economic reality. Federal funding provides critical support for the development of scientific workforce, mainly through allowances and wages for undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral scholarship holders. These allowances facilitate (but do not erase) the economic burden of training as a scientist.
When you hear “Dei in science”, this is largely what we are talking about. A large part of the Federal Dei Funds in the Sciences will directly support the very talented and accomplished trainees who have postponed their personal economic progress for the opportunity to contribute to the sciences in the United States, this SAGE national investment helps to guarantee that our scientific staff can recruit the most meritorious trainees, whatever their economic history. Without these initiatives, our scientific workforce would be much smaller with a narrower set of perspectives. Our national investment in scientific training is not altruistic – this is the reason for which the United States is a world leader in science and technology. This leadership contributes to the security and the ability of our country to deal with the existential problems we are now confronted with.
The framework of DEI recognizes that systemic economic and social injustices are present in our society, due to historical and contemporary realities such as slavery, Jim Crow, the genocide of indigenous peoples, redness, a system of broken immigration, educational and health disparities and discriminatory practices in terms of housing and employment against non -white communities, LGBTQ +. These disparities resulted in a lack of wealth and intergenerational resources among many communities in the United States, leading to unequal access to training and scientific careers.
The complaint, now done Through our federal government, a meritocracy can be carried out by ignoring these injustices is simply false and illogical. Dei does not only concern diversity training and job practices. In science, it is essential and existential to the objective to develop the most robust, talented and highly qualified scientific workforce in the world.
With Executive command 14151Published by the Trump administration, this funding is attacked, canceling decades of progress that have favored some of the most talented and brilliant minds of our time. Rigorous training programs are be canceledGraduate students lose their funding and training of an entire generation of scientists is compromised. Science will lose an extraordinary quantity of talents, necessary for industrial and economic leadership of our country, due to this decree.
In addition, this abolition of funding is being executed on the basis of identity, effectively approving a form of Segregation of science imposed by the government. The progress of science is often determined by the demography of those who make science, and a diversity of perspectives and research issues is necessary for scientific innovation. For example, sickle cell disease is Chronic under-funding And undersea, despite the severity of the disease, probably because it affects the descendants of people from regions with high cases of malaria, including many African-Americans. Indeed, certain breakthroughs and scientific technologies may never materialize or be considerably delayed due to the exclusion of talented individuals on the basis of their identity. This is a fundamental threat to scientific progress and academic freedom.
The federal ban on Dei programs is a slap in front of each person who has struggled to become scientific in the face of systemic injustices. These trainees, past and present, lacked economic opportunities, postponed the construction of their families and have made many personal sacrifices so that they can create innovative solutions to the most urgent scientific and technological challenges in our country. The creation of these Dei programs came from the extraordinary efforts of thousands of people, many of whom have surmounted themselves, working tirelessly in many decades so that the most meritorious and talented individuals all have the opportunity to succeed as scientists.
Referring to these efforts as “shameful discrimination“, As the Trump administration did, is a cruel attempt to destabilize the emotional well-being of all those who have created and been supported by these essential programs. This is an example of blame the victims of past injustice and continues for their fate in society, rather than working to dismantle systems that perpetuate inequality and limit access to a sound
We believe that efforts to prohibit, decrease and distort Dei and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs should be immediately arrested and reversed to avoid the most serious negative impacts of these new policies. The abolition of Dei programs will demoralize and disincip a whole generation of training scientists. It will considerably reduce scientific workforce and remove the best talents from our training programs as the financing mechanisms are dismantled.
Our graduate students, undergraduate students, postdoctoral scholarship holders and other scientists at the start of their career are those most impacted by the abolition of this support. This will seriously compromise the status of the United States as a world leader in science, and catastrophic impacts will be felt for decades. We hold the most affected by the Dei Ban, in particular our trainees, and we require immediate reinstatement of the financing of the Dei.
We speak using the speech and the intellectual freedoms offered to us by the American academic system and the American Constitution. We call on our institutions to stand with us in Dei in science. Institutions and professional companies must reaffirm their own commitments to Dei. Some institutions have already made solid declarations to reaffirm these values, but others have started to remove their internal and external DEI initiatives. We understand the need for institutions to protect their employees and their students against harmful consequences, but we argue that the consequences of dismantling diversity programs are much more important for our communities, because these stages inaugurate a new era of segregation in science and academics.
We urge the public, our legislators and our politicians to stand with us. We believe that Dei is fundamental to science and an attack on Dei is an attack on the heart of science itself in the United States.