The Democrats Will Use $5 Million of Your Tax Money to Hire a “Diversity Commissioner” at the National Science Foundation

When you think about science and what makes it better, do you think of a Red Army-style commissar focused on diversity? If so, you may be a Democrat. As Washington Free Beacon report, that’s just what they intend to use your tax dollars to pay for:

Buried in a Senate bill aimed at enhancing U.S. competition with China is a measure allocating $5 million in taxpayer dollars to a “director of diversity” at the National Science Foundation. .

This provision is part of USICA (American Competition and Innovation Act), color bill theoretically meant to boost American manufacturing and fortify supply lines as a way to boost competition with China.

Instead of centralizing its provisions to do just that, the Democrats chose to use it to fund sanity. Specifically, one piece of the bill awards $5 million annually to the National Science Foundation to a diversity director who will oversee directives such as “establishing a strategic plan for diversity engagement.” into federal science programs.

Also, officially, again according to the Washington Free Beacon, will:

collect and report demographic information, such as gender and race, to patent applicants and ensure that any state seeking science-related grants are all working on a plan to address “inequalities”. States can do that, the bill said, by providing subroutines to close the “fair gap” and boost enrollment in computer science education courses for students who encountered “systemic barriers”.

And what will diversity staff be in charge of? The Commissar will ensure that “traditionally underrepresented groups of the population,” including “history Black colleges and universities, Tribal colleges or universities, [and] organizations that serve minorities, ” Federal programs are accessible, by law.

Republican aides and officials are calling the provision absurd. One said “This is a thinly veiled attempt to push a radical awakening agenda in what Democrats say is a key national security bill.“And another said it was”disappointing that Republican legislators are helpingDemocrats push through a bill creating diversity for commissioners.

But USICA isn’t the only thing that has woken up the National Science Foundation. It’s been a while, like reported by CSPI in a report titled “Increasing politicization and homogeneity in scientific funding: An analysis of NSF grants, 1990-2020.”

According to that report, the NSF has long been affected by wakefulness. Here’s what it found:

• The frequency with which documents contain highly politicized terms has increased consistently over the past three decades. As of 2020, 30.4% of all grants have one of the following politicized terms: “fairness”, “diversity”, “inclusion”, “gender”, “marginalization”, “marginalization” ”, “not represented” or “disparity”. This is up from 2.9% in 1990. The most politicized sector is Education & Human Resources (53.8% in 2020, up from 4.3% in 1990). At least Math & Physical Science (22.6%, up from 0.9%) and Computer & Information Science & Engineering (24.9%, up from 1.5%), though they were even more politicized than any other field in 1990.
• At the same time, the summaries in most Directorates have become more and more similar over time. This is thought to suggest there is less diversity in the types of ideas being funded. This effect has been particularly strong in the last few years, but the trend has been clear over the past three decades when a technique based on word similarity, rather than the matching of exact terms, is used. .
• Taken together, the results suggest that there has been a politicization of science funding in the United States in recent years and a decline in the diversity of ideas supported, indicating a decline in the quality of science funding. research and the possibility of reducing trust in scientific institutions among the general public.

So the NSF pushed the science of waking up the nonsense that the left wanted. No wonder it was rewarded with $5 million for a single position. If the CSPI report is to be believed, the NSF has been completely sober and has continuously promoted sober concepts like “equity”.

Science, reportedly, has been politicized. The Democrats just added the Diversity Commissioner position to make sure there are no more Trotskyites.