Ashley Deyer’s dream of winning a National Science Foundation grant to pursue bird conservation discoveries began when she was an early career professor with a lab budget with toddlers and shoemarks on her arms.
The competition is fierce for NSF grants, the leading source of funding for scientific research at US universities. Three failed applications and a long-standing preliminary investigation were required before the agency awarded her.
Then came an email from Monday informing Deyer that President Donald Trump’s administration was cutting off funds. Clearly, this is because the project examining the role of bird feeders touched on themes of diversity, equity and inclusion.
“I was shocked and saddened,” said Deyer, a professor at the Virginia Tech Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation. “We were at the peak of being able to put together the findings and do all the analysis. There are a lot of feelings of sadness.”
Hundreds of other university researchers have abruptly cancelled the National Science Foundation funding on Friday to comply with Trump’s instructions to support research on diversity, equity, inclusion, and end misinformation research. It’s the latest aspect of Trump Anti-DEI Campaign There is also went University government, Medical research and the private sector.
Over 380 grant projects have been cut so far. This includes work fighting internet censorship in China and Iran, as well as project consulting with Indigenous communities to understand environmental changes in Alaska’s Arctic region. One computer scientist was studying how artificial intelligence tools can mitigate bias in medical information, while others were trying to help people detect deepfakes generated by AI. Many fired grants sought to expand the diversity of people studying science, technology and engineering.
Founded in 1950, NSF has a $9 billion budget and is a lifeline for young researchers recruited by resource-bound professors and teams. It changed priorities over time, but it’s very rare to end so many middle-class grants.
Some scientists saw the cuts come after Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz flagged thousands of NSF-funded projects that they say reflect “awakening” or Marxist agenda, including all the projects cut Friday.
Still, Deyer said she was “incredibly surprised” that her bird project had been x. Collaboration with other institutions, including Ornithology’s Cornell Lab, leveraged Project Feedwatch, a website and app for sharing bird watching.
Dayer’s team collected data from 20,000 Americans on bird watching habits, gaining insights into how outdoor feeders affect wildlife as well as insight into people’s mental well-being.
The only reference to the grant award’s “diversity” refers to populations of birds, not people. However, the project explicitly called for attracting people with more disabilities and people of color. This meets the long-standing requirements of the NSF that funded projects need to have a wide range of impact.
“I thought if there was, the widespread impact would be told not to do the work and that they would remove it from the project,” Deyer said. “We didn’t expect the entire grant to be out of supply.”
NSF and Doge say they were “wasteful day grants”
On the day Grants ended, NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan since 2020, said that while he still supports “participatory research” on the agency’s website, those efforts “should not prefer some groups at the expense of other groups or directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups.”
The NSF refused to share the total number of cancelled grants, but Trump’s government efficiency department run by billionaire Elon Musk posted that the NSF has cancelled its $233 million “402 Wasteful Dei Grants.” He didn’t say how much of that was already spent. Grants usually last for several years.
Karen Cooper, a professor of forestry and natural resources at North Carolina State University, said he expects his job to be a target after compiling Cruz’s list. Her grant project also sought to include people with disabilities and people with disabilities in participatory science projects, in collaboration with the Audubon Society and with the aim of attracting who. Historically excluded From the natural space and birdwatching group.
One doctoral student left her job, moved her family to North Carolina, working with Cooper on a grant-funded scholarship.
“We were trying to plan an emergency,” Cooper said. “Nottheless, it’s illegal. It violates the terms of the award. And it really harms our students.”
Reduce false reporting work
Along with eliminating research on DEI, the NSF stated that it would no longer support research with the goal of fighting ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’ and ‘malicious’.
Several researchers said they were not sure why their funding was terminated, except that their summary contained terms such as “censorship” and “misinformation.”
“The lack of transparency around this process is deeply concerned,” said Eric Wastlow, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, which aims to subsidize fighting internet censorship in countries such as China and Iran. “Did they just ignore the context and Ctrl+F for a particular word?”
Although NSF said on its website it should be avoided by saying “there is no list of words,” false information research is no longer consistent with NSF’s priorities.
Wustrow said his research supports freedom of speech and access to information around the world, and he plans to appeal the decision to terminate the funds. Meanwhile, he is considering working for free this summer without a grant to fund his salary.
Even those who were going to deal with the misinformation seemed to miss the point.
Casey Feesler of the University of Colorado at Boulder had a project focused on improving AI literacy, dispelling the misconceptions of AI. This is also a priority for Trump’s education department. Cornell University’s Drew Margolin said his job was set out to help people find ways to combat social media harassment, hate speech and misinformation without the help of content moderators and government regulators.
“Ironically, it’s like a free speech way to deal with speech,” Margolin said.
Are there more cuts coming?
The NSF refused to say if more cuts would come. The fired funding reflects previous cuts in medical research funding from the National Institutes of Health.
Scientists and Health Groups The group sued the NIH Earlier this month, they alleged that these cuts were illegal and threatened medical treatments.
The cuts at NSF to date are only a small portion of grants from all institutions, equivalent to 387 projects, says Scott Delaney, a research scientist at Harvard’s School of Public Health, helps researchers track the cuts to help them advocate for themselves. Some people received their firing letters, even though the project was already finished.
“It’s very confusing and very consistent with what’s going on at the NIH,” Delaney said. “And it’s really unclear whether this is everything that ends or just an opening salvo.”
Dayer is still thinking about what to do about the loss of funding for the Bird Feeder Project, which cuts off some of the summer funding for the three universities and four professors from each student team. She is particularly concerned about what it means for the next generation of American scientists, including those still deciding on their career paths.
“Now, this complete attack on science,” Deyer said. “It will have a lasting impact on the science and knowledge of Americans and our country, and I am worried that people will not enter the field of science.”
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Associated Press Writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.
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