On Feb. 11, U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Sen. Ted Cruz ’92 (R-TX) published a database flagging over 3,400 federal grants awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) during the Biden-Harris Administration for funding “woke DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion]” projects. These grants amount to over $2.05 billion in science funding nationwide, with grants to Princeton totaling over $2 million. This Cruz-led investigation follows President Trump’s federal funding freeze, which targets science research and mandates terminating “all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI” across federal agencies.
The NSF and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are currently conducting compliance audits of existing grants, abruptly halting grant review.
“DEI initiatives have poisoned research efforts, eroded confidence in the scientific community, and fueled division among Americans,” Cruz said in a press release. “I am proud to release our investigation’s database, which exposes how the Biden administration weaponized federal agencies to push a far-left ideology.”
Cruz’s investigation claimed that Princeton was awarded $2,411,259 in funding from the NSF over the last seven years for “DEI” and “neo-Marxist” research projects. Among the targeted grants, the $2.4 million had been allocated to nine principal members in Princeton academic departments such as computer science and engineering, with grants ranging between $25,000 and $599,338.
Four of these proposals amounting to $425,978 have already completed their funding cycle. However, the other five active grants are at risk of being frozen, with projects due to end as far in the future as 2027. All principal investigators affected by the grants either declined or did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
These projects were flagged by Cruz’s committee if they fell into one of four different categories: “Criminal Justice,” “Gender,” “Race,” and “Environmental Justice.” Each grant is designated under an Assistance Listing.
According to the United States Government, an Assistance Listing, falling under the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA), is “a collection of federal financial assistance programs that provides benefits to the American public. Every assistance award must be categorized under a CFDA program, and every CFDA program must be specifically authorized by congressional statute before an agency can begin to issue awards under it.”
The five grants awaiting completion of their funding cycle total to $1,985,281. Currently, the U.S. government has laid out $723,015 of this amount, leaving more than $1 million unpaid.
The largest single grant being awarded to the University is currently $599,338.00, listed as a project pertaining to “Criminal Justice” and “Race” under STEM Education. The goal of the grant is the “development of inclusive STEM curriculum using data science innovations of W.E.B. Du Bois to promote diversity in science.”
Other listed Princeton NSF grants focus on a variety of topics, from human-computer interaction to concrete manufacturing.
Four of the five grants began funding in 2022; the other began in 2023.
Cruz’s database comes after a series of Trump-led mandates on science research. These caused a temporary freeze on federal research funding and erased publicly available census and climate data — only some of which have come back online.
The University in recent weeks reaffirmed its commitment to DEI in its annual report, launched a new webpage and email for researchers addressing recent executive actions, and emphasized the significance of university-government collaboration in propelling American innovation.
In a Jan. 29 letter to the community, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 wrote, “We have established a process for systematically reviewing all orders and policy directives and assessing their impact on Princeton University. We are proceeding carefully to ensure that the steps we take are sensitive to the needs of our community, consistent across the University, and in compliance with applicable laws.”
As of Feb. 19, the federal grants that have appeared in Cruz’s database have not been cancelled, with many projects flagged merely because they contained keywords deemed to promote DEI or “advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.”
Professor of Politics and International Affairs Jacob N. Shapiro shared with the ‘Prince’ his belief that the database was “unfair and spurious,” citing research he and his team have been conducting. According to Shapiro’s research, which examined grants over $5 million, only nine out of 43 grants in Cruz’s database could be considered DEI by the cited keywords.
“We looked at all of the [grants] over 5 million, and of those, nine could — if you want to be generous to Senator Cruz’s staff — reasonably be described as primarily having a DEI goal,” Shapiro said.
Although Shapiro’s team has yet to examine the full database of research, he explained to the ‘Prince’ issues that this false propagation of data could have.
“It is profoundly unhelpful for figuring out how to best advance our scientific infrastructure, which is a crown jewel of our economy and a source of massive benefit for the entire world, to engage in this kind of careless activity that discredits in some populations, the scientific endeavor, and in other populations, the people behind,” Shapiro said.
“The report’s position on how we should approach addressing social goals with federal funding … it’s not helpful for helping us as a nation be better at this.”
Sena Chang is a senior News writer for the ‘Prince’ from Tokyo, Japan. She typically covers campus and community activism, the state of higher education, and alumni news.
Luke Grippo is a staff News writer for the ‘Prince.’ He is from South Jersey and usually covers administrative issues, including USG, the CPUC, and institutional legacy.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to remove a quote from a professor due to a reporting error.
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