As soon as President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2025, he signed an executive order titled " Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing ." This order called for the termination of all diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility - DEIA - mandates, policies and programs in the federal government.
Author
- Filomena Nunes
Professor of Physics, Michigan State University
These included "equity-related" grants or contracts, such as programs supporting underrepresented people in STEM, and all DEI or DEIA performance requirements for grant recipients - for example, requiring that grant recipients have a plan to address underrepresentation in their area of study.
Agencies were given 60 days to implement the order.
The following day, the president signed another executive order named " Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity ." This executive order expanded the language of the first to federal subcontrators and encouraged the private sector to follow suit.
To comply with these two executive orders, federal agencies took immediate action . References to DEI disappeared from web pages, and major federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation sent out press releases about the order.
Federally funded scientists received correspondence from funding agencies explaining that diversity components would no longer be required nor used as a metric in proposal evaluations. Some agencies suspended DEI-specific programs or terminated DEI-specific grants . All of this happened within days.
The stream of communications and agency actions in response to these orders has many scientists at universities worried, some of my colleagues included. As a scientist myself , I've experienced this confusion firsthand.
What do Trump's orders mean for science?
Even if the abrupt timeline may come as a surprise, the executive orders themselves do not. Conservatives have long been vocally against DEI measures , with a report last year calling for a ban on federal funding that supports such measures. Within academia, some scientists have questioned certain DEI initiatives . Unpopular DEI measures to some university professors are the creation of diversity offices at various levels of universities, diversity training and requiring DEI statements in hiring and review processes, created with the goal of engaging the academic community with the issues surrounding underrepresention and providing an open learning environment for all at universities.
In the days since the orders were signed, scientists have expressed grave concern about these developments . This state of affairs has left many early career folks confused and scared, particularly with respect to their job security and their work environment, a fear that is more pronounced for those in minority communities. These communities face a strong DEI stigma, the belief that they got where they got due to DEI preference rather than their own merit.
The implementation of these executive orders, which have been followed by many other executive orders aimed at reducing federal spending, will counteract progress toward better representation in the STEM field. While the DEI-related orders won't stop most research from continuing, the benefits of having the most competitive and diverse teams may be lost.
Science budgets at US universities
University budgets are complex . While a large portion of the budget is from tuition, significant funds come from the state government, the federal government through financial aid and grants, and the private sector through endowments and gifts.
Most of the federal grants for science at universities support specific areas of science, such as particle physics, organic chemistry, microbiology or others. Only a small fraction of science grants to universities are DEI-specific, although most agencies have not yet released an exact number for how many grants have been affected.
Examples of affected programs are summer schools that attract students from minority populations or statistical analyses of DEI-specific data in a particular domain of science.
Of the hundreds of thousands of scientists working at universities, the senior scientists who have not engaged in DEI work will not feel great direct effects of the DEI executive orders. It is those senior scientists who have gone beyond their domain-specific efforts and developed DEI-dedicated programs - or have their research intrinsically connected to DEI - who will likely see their research funding reduced .
Federal grants in science support primarily early career scientists - the graduate students and the postdoctoral fellows who do the benchwork. These individuals, who are trained by senior scientists at the universities, represent the future of American innovation and scientific competitiveness.
Understandably, these folks are nervous about their future. The small fraction of early career researchers who are currently supported on DEI-specific programs may end up having to pivot to new research directions. However, the vast majority of early career scientists are likely to continue to do their research undeterred.
Why does science have DEI programs?
The scientific community came up with DEI programs because science has a tremendous and persistent underrepresentation problem . The science workforce does not reflect the larger American population. In some areas of science, the community is drawing from a pool of less than half of the U.S. population.
This problem has been studied at length for well over a decade, focusing either on underrepresentation by race and ethnicity or on the underrepresentation of women in science .
A variety of barriers keeps large groups from the U.S. population from contributing to science. These obstacles are tied to the science field's long history of discrimination and harassment . Obstacles include repeated demeaning remarks based on social stereotypes, exclusion from social spaces, unwanted sexual attention, and organizational tolerance for harassment. Because of these obstacles and disparities, lots of bright students opt out of science careers.
The intent of DEI policies and programs across the country is to work against this long history. Consequently, in recent years some scientific fields have seen modest progress toward more representation of people from minority communities in STEM. The recent executive orders are likely to compromise this progress.
Creativity and innovation are important for coming up with research questions and solving them. There is a large body of evidence showing that creative teams need diversity to prosper , and a diversity of backgrounds and experiences leads to a diversity of ideas.
Similarly, equity and fairness are core values in the scientific enterprise. Scientists are trained to reduce biases in their experiments and their data analysis by averaging results from different datasets and by considering each source of error carefully. Reducing biases in hiring processes, performance reviews and mentoring is a scientific practice.
Today, inclusive collaboration is key for excellence in science. The complexity of the problems the science community is tackling requires people with different expertise and backgrounds working together. When there is toxicity in a collaboration , research drags, projects fail and federal funds are wasted. A competitive scientific enterprise is more likely to succeed when it fosters a welcoming space for all involved.
While policies and programs may change overnight, values do not. Research suggests that many generation Z scientists-to-be are committed to values of diversity, equity and inclusion. The backlash to many DEI programs provides an opportunity to rethink how to move forward while continuing to prioritize scientific excellence.
Filomena Nunes receives funding from NSF to conduct physics research, none of which supports DEI initiatives.
