9 hours ago
https://thespectator.com/topic/cured-dei...ew-memoli/
EXCERPTS: For its entire history NIH funding decisions were made to reach scientific goals. DEI drove decisions to be made to reach political goals instead, requiring NIH scientists to write DEI statements [...] Scientific reviewers were chosen based on DEI criteria, and those making funding decisions received bonuses for promoting DEI.
At the end of every fiscal year, NIH program officers handed out “diversity supplements” to universities, directing money to training programs based partly on scientists’ race, rather than their scientific ability. In 2022, the NIH announced funding for universities to conduct “system-wide” DEI audits to address “shortcomings” in addressing “structural racism.”
Scientists learned that the best way to maximize their chance of a slice of NIH money was to promise that their work would help achieve racial nirvana, however remote from utopian ideological pursuits the proposed work actually was. Most scientists obsequiously complied to avoid the risk of career harm, whether they were true believers or not.
[...] In 2020, at Stanford University, radical students circulated a blacklist of professors they considered guilty of wrongthink and harassed them for their ideological impurity. The administration published an “elimination of harmful language” banned word list, creating a hostile work environment for those whose beliefs fell outside the bounds of orthodox DEI-ism. All of this occurred with the approval and even applause of university leaders. Stanford was not alone; top universities embraced similar policies.
None of this reorientation of the NIH and the universities toward DEI translated into improving the health status of Americans. Between 2011 and 2019, life expectancies of nearly every racial group in the US flatlined...
[...] At the NIH, we dismantled the DEI apparatus and refocused the NIH on its age-old mission. We oversaw a large-scale effort by all parts of NIH to eliminate DEI from its processes, including eliminating loyalty oaths and other DEI statements, removing DEI from performance reviews, hiring and promotion, and purging DEI from all facets of scientific review, notices of funding opportunity (NOFO) and grant decision making.
[...] activist courts have restricted our ability to excise many DEI-focused grants from our portfolio [...and...] because DEI was so deeply embedded in the NIH’s portfolio, it will take some time to complete the work, but by the end of this fiscal year, we will have restored merit and science-based research to their rightful place at the NIH.
We continue to enthusiastically support research that advances the health of all Americans, regardless of their age, race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, or other characteristics. We will unapologetically invest in rigorous science – research that genuinely improves the health of minority populations, rather than serving political ideologies that misuse taxpayer resources... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: For its entire history NIH funding decisions were made to reach scientific goals. DEI drove decisions to be made to reach political goals instead, requiring NIH scientists to write DEI statements [...] Scientific reviewers were chosen based on DEI criteria, and those making funding decisions received bonuses for promoting DEI.
At the end of every fiscal year, NIH program officers handed out “diversity supplements” to universities, directing money to training programs based partly on scientists’ race, rather than their scientific ability. In 2022, the NIH announced funding for universities to conduct “system-wide” DEI audits to address “shortcomings” in addressing “structural racism.”
Scientists learned that the best way to maximize their chance of a slice of NIH money was to promise that their work would help achieve racial nirvana, however remote from utopian ideological pursuits the proposed work actually was. Most scientists obsequiously complied to avoid the risk of career harm, whether they were true believers or not.
[...] In 2020, at Stanford University, radical students circulated a blacklist of professors they considered guilty of wrongthink and harassed them for their ideological impurity. The administration published an “elimination of harmful language” banned word list, creating a hostile work environment for those whose beliefs fell outside the bounds of orthodox DEI-ism. All of this occurred with the approval and even applause of university leaders. Stanford was not alone; top universities embraced similar policies.
None of this reorientation of the NIH and the universities toward DEI translated into improving the health status of Americans. Between 2011 and 2019, life expectancies of nearly every racial group in the US flatlined...
[...] At the NIH, we dismantled the DEI apparatus and refocused the NIH on its age-old mission. We oversaw a large-scale effort by all parts of NIH to eliminate DEI from its processes, including eliminating loyalty oaths and other DEI statements, removing DEI from performance reviews, hiring and promotion, and purging DEI from all facets of scientific review, notices of funding opportunity (NOFO) and grant decision making.
[...] activist courts have restricted our ability to excise many DEI-focused grants from our portfolio [...and...] because DEI was so deeply embedded in the NIH’s portfolio, it will take some time to complete the work, but by the end of this fiscal year, we will have restored merit and science-based research to their rightful place at the NIH.
We continue to enthusiastically support research that advances the health of all Americans, regardless of their age, race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, or other characteristics. We will unapologetically invest in rigorous science – research that genuinely improves the health of minority populations, rather than serving political ideologies that misuse taxpayer resources... (MORE - missing details)