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‘Sloppy’: Some scholars say the list includes grants that aren’t DEI

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s investigation exposing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” grants from the National Science Foundation is coming under fire by some scholars, with one saying the research was “sloppy” and meant to “terrify a bunch of people.”

The database, which Cruz recently released, shows a full list of over 3,400 NSF grants, awarded under the Biden administration, that fund “questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda,” according to a news release.

The money allocated to these grants totals more than $2 billion. Cruz released an investigation on the grants last fall, but the full list was not included.

The Texas senator and other Republican lawmakers have cited the findings to support President Donald Trump’s recent executive order that terminated DEI spending by the federal government. Due to this executive order, the NSF announced that it would review the grants that it has been funding.

When contacted about the database, Cruz’s spokesperson Bethany Stevens pointed The College Fix to a grant about “White Supremacy” and “privilege” in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics classes.

“In 2023, NSF awarded Georgia Institute of Technology’s (Georgia Tech) Kelly Cross $99,791 to ‘disrupt racialized privilege in the STEM classroom’ by acknowledging ‘Whiteness and White Supremacy’ are ‘deeply ingrained in the past, present and future of U.S. Higher education,’” according to the information she provided to The Fix in a recent email.

“Cross sought to ‘subvert these toxic systems… to creat[e] a more equitable educational system’ and ‘initiate a national conversation about addressing racial inequity and White Supremacy in the STEM profession and classroom’ with the support of the grant,” according to the senator’s office.

Another grant identified in the database went to San Jose State University for a project to “[empower] teachers and students as climate justice action researchers and change agents.” The grant was for $401,744.

However, Augustín Fuentes, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University, told The Fix in a phone call that he believes that Cruz’s main goal behind his grant database is “to terrify a bunch of people.”

Fuentes said there is a multi-step process that goes into the approval of grants by the NSF. The grants are never without scrutiny, as “every five years there’s a review of the whole process, where a bunch of senior scholars and scientists do a meta-review for three days of all the grants,” he told The Fix.

“What drove me nuts about Cruz’s thing was that they weren’t trained,” Fuentes told The Fix. He said the research that Cruz’s team performed was “sloppy” because those analyzing the funding don’t appear to have been taught how to evaluate scientific grants.

Basically, he said, Cruz’s team ignored the complex approval processes and broader goals, and searched for buzzwords to compile the list.

Fuentes went on to say that the grants are misunderstood.

“You’re required to have ‘broader impacts,’ by the NSF in order to qualify for a grant,” he said. “Those components are there. What [Cruz’s team] did was, they just went through different words.”

The Fix asked Fuentes if he believes that the characterization of the grants as containing “neo-Marxist perspectives or DEI tenets” is accurate. He firmly denied it, saying, “No, I don’t. I don’t even know what that means.”

Another scholar, Ed Hagen, a biological anthropologist at Washington State University, pointed to one grant that he says Cruz’s office mislabeled as DEI.

“Anyone in evo anthro can see this project tests leading evo theories of cultural transmission,” Hagan wrote in a X post, sharing a copy of the abstract.

According to Ted Cruz this NSF grant (the DDIG of one of my students) “promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.”

Anyone in evo anthro can see this project tests leading evo theories of cultural transmission: pic.twitter.com/k32EwdboET

— Ed Hagen (@ed_hagen) February 13, 2025

“Most of the diversity stuff in grant proposals is in the ‘Broader Impacts’ section,” which is congressionally mandated grant criteria, he wrote.

Joseph Henrich, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, said in a recent post on X that Cruz “might just be using a ‘taboo term’ word search.”

Fuentes told The Fix that halting the grants will have far-reaching impacts.

“The NSF funds a lot of things like the grants, which enables [universities] to pay the salary or stipend [of their researchers and staff]. People whose jobs relied on these grants are out of work,” he said.

“Some universities are stepping up trying to fill the grant, [but that nullifies] the whole point of the federal funding,” Fuentes said.

The Fix asked Fuentes why he believes Cruz is pursuing this issue. “He has a particular agenda,” he answered. “He doesn’t like a certain type of research.”

Cruz’s office did not respond to a follow-up email from The Fix this week asking about the professors’ criticism of the grants, including if any revisions should be made to the database.

However, other scholars have spoken out in support of the findings, saying the list exposes “ideological indoctrination” masquerading as science.

“And this is only the tip of the iceberg!” University of Southern California chemist Anna Krylov told The Fix previously.

“In addition to these grants that are clearly dedicated to advancing the Critical Social Justice agenda (which commonly operates under the name of DEI), the ideological, non-scientific criteria are also applied to funding of technical projects…This is done either through the mandatory DEI statements or through the ‘Broader Impact’ criteria, or both,” Krylov said when the investigation came out last fall.

Meanwhile, Cruz recently cited the investigation to urge Congress to end “the politicization of NSF funding and restore integrity to scientific research.”

“DEI initiatives have poisoned research efforts, eroded confidence in the scientific community, and fueled division among Americans,” the senator wrote in a recent post on X.

Other grants identified in the investigation include a University of Colorado project to “identify learning experiences that enable engineering for social justice” and a project at UC Berkeley and the University of South Florida to combat anti-black racism in engineering curricula, as The Fix previously reported.

MORE: ‘Feminist mapping,’ LGBTQ cartoonists: NEH funded DEI grants days before Trump took office

IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: The National Science Foundation logo. National Science Foundation

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