Waste of the Day: NIH Awards Grants Based On “Diversity Statements”
Topline: A National Institutes of Health program expected to cost $241 million over nine years prioritizes “diversity, equity and inclusion” over merit when awarding grants.
Key facts: The Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) promotes “inclusive excellence” in science by paying top universities to hire researchers from minority backgrounds.
FIRST has sent grants to 16 colleges since 2021, including four awards totaling $64 million in the latest round of funding.
All potential hires must submit a statement “describing their commitment to promoting diversity and inclusive excellence.”
Universities funded by FIRST have their own NIH-approved rubric for grading these statements, some of which the Wall Street Journal has obtained through open records requests.
Rubrics at the University of South Carolina and University of New Mexico penalize candidates who want to “treat everyone the same” regardless of their background and reward those who embrace DEI as a “core value,” according to the WSJ. The schools received $13 million and $15.6 million, respectively, from the NIH in late 2022.
Northwestern University’s rubric says that a candidate’s “commitment to diversity” is equally as important as their academic ability. The college received $16 million from the NIH.
At Florida State University, part of the initial wave of FIRST grants, 28% of the rubric is set aside for DEI.
Background: The Department of Health and Human Services pays out some of the highest government salaries in the nation. Eighteen employees made more than $400,000 each last year, according to records at OpenTheBooks.com.
The department has its own diversity office and an additional eight diversity offices for its subdivisions like the NIH and CDC.
Chief Diversity Officer Karen Comfort made $190,000 in 2023.
Critical quote: National Association of Scholars fellow John Sailer wrote in the WSJ that, “In medical research, lives depend on putting excellence first. The NIH distorts that value, subordinating it to political ideology and endangering those it’s supposed to serve.”
Summary: Debates over DEI don’t seem like they will stop anytime soon. Some state governments are banning the ideology, while the federal government is paying colleges millions to embrace it.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
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