NASA\u2019s acting administrator is moving swiftly to remove diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility\u2014or DEIA\u2014programs from the space agency.<\/p>\n
In an email sent to agency employees on Wednesday afternoon, acting administrator Janet Petro wrote, \u201cWe are taking steps to close all agency DEIA offices and end all DEIA-related contracts in accordance with President Trump\u2019s executive orders titled Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing and Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his run for a second term as president, Trump campaigned on ending programs in the federal government that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. He signed executive orders to that effect shortly after his inauguration on Monday.<\/p>\n
These programs had their roots in affirmative action but exploded in popularity half a decade ago amid Trump\u2019s first presidency and the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. DEI programs and officers became commonplace in academia and major US corporations. However, even before the election of Trump, the DEI movement appeared to have crested. For example, last year the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ended the use of diversity statements for faculty hiring.<\/p>\n
In explaining NASA\u2019s position, Petro said of the agency\u2019s existing DEIA activities, \u201cThese programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Petro\u2019s email is notable for its suggestion that some civil servants at NASA may have sought to shroud DEIA programs from the Trump administration since the presidential election in early November.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIf you are aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024 to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies, please report all facts and circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
Petro\u2019s message includes an email address to report such activities and asks NASA employees to do so within 10 days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information,\u201d Petro wrote. \u201cHowever, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n
NASA is not the only federal agency where this is happening. Several other agencies received similarly worded messages from their acting directors on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Due to the poor representation of minorities in science and engineering fields, both of the major federal funding agencies\u2014the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation\u2014have programs designed to encourage participation by underrepresented communities. These include educational programs, funding to enable research done by undergraduates, and support for students in graduate school all directed toward members of underrepresented groups. As of 5 pm ET, webpages for most of these programs are still available, though one entitled \u201cBroadening Participation in Training Programs\u201d at the NIH was no longer available.<\/p>\n
For the medical research community, however, the termination of these programs might be the least of its concerns. As of Tuesday, all external communication from agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the NIH, Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug Administration, were put on hold. This will include things like alerts regarding the spread of emerging diseases, such as the H5N1 bird flu that\u2019s currently widespread in agricultural animals.<\/p>\n
But today, it became clear that this policy extended well beyond external communications. One researcher said that an NIH workshop was canceled mid-presentation. Others have reported that all evaluations of grant proposals by the NIH are now on hold indefinitely. Should the hold last for any significant amount of time, it will have severe ripple effects, as arranging the peer review panels that evaluate grants involves complicated scheduling and travel, so the delays may persist for considerably longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NASA\u2019s acting administrator is moving swiftly to remove diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility\u2014or DEIA\u2014programs from the space agency. In an email sent to agency employees on Wednesday afternoon, acting administrator Janet Petro wrote, \u201cWe are taking steps to close all agency DEIA offices and end all DEIA-related contracts in accordance with President Trump\u2019s executive orders […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9623,190,21],"class_list":["post-44502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-dei","tag-nasa","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44502"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}