Trump's science reform veers off course

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2 days ago

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Critics accuse President Trump of politicizing the National Science Foundation, warning that the administration poses a lethal threat to what one called 'American science expertise as we know it." At first, these assertions were overwrought and misleading: The administration was cleansing the NSF of left-wing politics. The administration's latest proposals, however, don't go far enough in some areas while jeopardizing progress in others.
Critics accuse President Trump of politicizing the National Science Foundation, warning that the administration poses a lethal threat to what one called 'American science expertise as we know it." At first, these assertions were overwrought and misleading: The administration was cleansing the NSF of left-wing politics. The administration's latest proposals, however, don't go far enough in some areas while jeopardizing progress in others.
From February through May, the NSF, which supports academic science, terminated more than 1,700 grants, totaling $1.4 billion. 'The American people deserve a scientific enterprise free from political interference," California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the House Science Committee's ranking Democrat, said in an April press release.
Jon Freeman, Columbia psychologist and NSF grant recipient, told the New York Times that the cuts will cede 'American leadership in science and technology to China and to other countries." Science magazine reported that 'NSF watchers" feared a proposed restructuring would leave the foundation 'more vulnerable to pressure from the White House to fund research that suits its ideological bent."
The claim about ideological bias was rich. The NSF has been supporting ideologically driven projects for years, much of it through its Directorate for STEM Education.
The foundation's education grant-making has focused on racial victimhood. 'Learning From Black Intellectualism: Broadening Epistemic Foundations in Engineering Education to Empower Black Students and Faculty," funded in 2023 at nearly $600,000, was typical.
According to the project's abstract, the prevailing 'narrative" around black underrepresentation 'preserves Whiteness by passively neglecting the culture of racism in engineering." 'Learning From Black Intellectualism" would 'advance educational justice by countering the epistemic violence within engineering and its sense-making practices." It would use 'fugitive pedagogy" to 'investigate engineering faculty epistemic norms." 'Black intellectualism" would be used to 're-politicize engineering pedagogy."
Projects like that obviously don't advance American leadership over China.
On May 9, the NSF announced that it was disbanding its most concentrated source of racial grant-making: the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM, housed within the Directorate for STEM Education. Predictably, the press played the race card, claiming the cuts 'reduced the diversity of NSF's pool of funded scientists," as the Science article put it.
Black grantees suffered the heaviest blow, it reported, with a cancellation rate four times as high as their representation among total NSF grantees. Such a disparity is hardly surprising, given that racism-themed grants serve as a vehicle for increasing black representation among NSF awardees.
The education directorate contains three other divisions: Graduate Education, Undergraduate Education, and Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings. All should be eliminated. Like the Division of Equity for Excellence, these divisions are mere extensions of education schools, whose effect on the transmission of knowledge has been disastrous.
The NSF's Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences is another source of grant-making premised on academic leftism. Consider Mr. Freeman, the Columbia psychologist. His terminated grant—from the directorate's Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences—focused on how 'social inequities such as gender and racial disparities" are shaped by facial and other 'learned stereotypes" about race and sex. It is doubtful that China is attempting to compete in this area.
Such was the state of play before the Trump administration's funding request for fiscal 2026: The science establishment was crying bloody murder because the NSF had started cutting some of its most blatantly politicized grants.
Enter the 2026 budget, released on May 30. It would reduce funding for research and related activities by 61%, or $5 billion. The NSF's total budget would be cut 55%, or $5.12 billion. But the Education and Social Sciences directorates wouldn't be eliminated. Worse, the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM within the Education Directorate would be exhumed.
True, the Equity Division's budget would be cut nearly 80%, from $214 million in 2024 to $43 million in 2026. But $43 million can support a lot of mischief.
On the bright side, the 2026 budget would almost zero out a category of grants known as 'Broadening Participation." These grants reflect Congress's decadeslong mania for imposing nonscientific goals onto the foundation.
In 2010 Congress forbade the NSF from evaluating grants solely on scientific merit. Instead, scientists have to justify their research according to its 'broader impacts," and vital scientific projects have been rejected for failure to state a sufficiently attractive 'broader impact."
Broadening Participation grants dealing with race and sex are mostly eliminated. But the budget preserves geographic Broadening Participation funding, which allows politicians in noncoastal areas to brag of bringing home the science bacon, regardless of whether their district's colleges are likely to make breakthrough discoveries.
While the cuts to the Education and Social Science directorates were too timid, cuts to the hard-science directorates were too sweeping. Biological Sciences is down 71.5%. Mathematical and Physical Sciences, which includes chemistry, physics and astronomy, is down 67%.
The May 30 budget request reads like a pitch for a tech startup. Its 'prioritized" activities are Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Information Science, and the Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships—the last akin to a tech incubator for small businesses.
Other favored areas are Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Wireless, and Microelectronics and Semiconductors, because those fields help 'harness the full power of American innovation by empowering entrepreneurs and unleashing private-sector creativity."
It is a mistake to reorient the NSF toward research perceived to be economically useful. The private sector is already charging ahead on high-tech research and applications. It has less incentive to fund curiosity-driven research into the laws of the universe.
Other battles are more worthy of attention. Congressional Republicans should provide the White House with an unambiguous charter for its reform efforts. Congress should strip all identity-politics language from NSF budgetary authorizations by rejecting the notion that researchers must justify their work on nonscientific grounds.
Lawmakers should also extricate the NSF from teacher training and education research. Congress and the administration could treat scientists like adults again by cutting red tape and restoring discretion to project managers and researchers.
The White House has started a long overdue overhaul of science and academia, unleashing end-of-times prophesying from those intertwined establishments. But federal science funding shouldn't go to social or economic goals, 'equity" or any other ideology. Rather, its aim should be to unleash human genius in its confrontation with natural mystery.
Ms. Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of 'When Race Trumps Merit." This is adapted from the Summer issue of City Journal. Topics You May Be Interested In