NSF’s grant cuts fall heaviest on scientists from underrepresented groups

Projects to broaden participation were cut disproportionately—and were often led by Black scientists, women, and those with disabilities

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More than half of the 1500 research grants that the National Science Foundation (NSF) has terminated in the past month under orders from President Donald Trump’s administration aimed to bring groups historically underrepresented in science into the mainstream. Ending those grants reversed decades of efforts focused on what the agency calls the “missing millions”: women, racial and ethnic minorities, veterans, and low-income and rural students.

But that’s not the only impact. The terminations also reduced the diversity of NSF’s pool of funded scientists, as researchers from several of those groups have borne the brunt of the cuts.

According to demographic data NSF collects on all its principal investigators (PIs), 58% of the grants canceled to date were led by women, although only 34% of the total pool of active NSF grants have women as PIs. The percentage of Hispanic PIs and those with disabilities who lost grants was roughly twice their presence in the overall pool of active grants. And Black PIs, as a group, have suffered the heaviest blow: They held 17% of the canceled grants, although they only make up 4% of the total NSF pool of active grants.

Taken together, those statistics “are startling and very depressing,” says physicist Tabbetha Dobbins, dean of the graduate school at Rowan University and a member of an NSF advisory panel overseeing its efforts to broaden participation. “We’ve all heard [NSF officials] say that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. These grants are designed to nurture that talent and provide those opportunities, and these cuts will make it harder to achieve that goal.”

In contrast, according to the NSF data, men were PIs on just 35% of the terminated grants despite comprising 60% of the total pool of PIs with active grants. White scientists were also more likely to be spared: Although they are PIs on 60% of all active grants, they only led 52% of the terminated projects.

Biologist Jo Handelsman of the University of Wisconsin–Madison says she is not surprised that researchers from underrepresented groups were more likely to feel the ax than their white, men colleagues. “These scientists are more likely to do work on interventions intended to broaden participation in science,” she says.

Handelsman adds that the skewed demographics of the terminated grants sends a discouraging message to aspiring scientists from underrepresented groups. “We’ve been fighting for decades to increase participation by people from these groups,” says Handelsman, who has received a presidential medal for science mentoring and served in the White House under former President Barack Obama. “And now they’re seeing that there may not be a place at the table for them. It’s frightening.”

Last month NSF began to terminate grants for projects it says preferentially favored one demographic group or excluded participation by certain groups. The policy stems from directives Trump issued after taking office on 20 January that ban federally funded diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. The president has disparaged those efforts, calling them discriminatory and claiming they aren’t open to everyone, in particular, white men.

But several scientists told Science Trump is wrong about the audience being served by their terminated projects. “I get that Trump doesn’t like DEI, but we don’t exclude anybody,” says Tammie Visintainer, a science educator at San Jose State University (SJSU) who has lost NSF funding for two projects. One helps local secondary school teachers prepare units and guide student research on the health and environmental effects of urban heat islands, and the second aims to improve introductory undergraduate science courses at SJSU. Visintainer says the work benefits not just minority students at inner-city schools, but also suburban kids from wealthy families who have been turned off by boring lectures and prepackaged lab experiments that don’t reflect real scientific inquiry.

“Remember, white men are still a majority in science,” Handelsman says. “So when we improve how we teach science, the white male students learn more, too.”

One of the hardest hit programs is the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP). About two-thirds of the alliances in the program have lost their grants, and NSF plans to eliminate the division that funds them and fire the program’s managers. Named for a prominent Black congressman, LSAMP would seem to meet Trump’s definition of exclusionary.

Biologist Christopher Botanga of Chicago State University disagrees. He had three NSF LSAMP grants, now canceled, to run programs to attract undergraduates into science, technology, engineering, and math fields and prepare them to pursue advanced degrees. One grant, he says, supported an Illinois program that has operated for 3 decades and served 900 students. He says a sizable portion qualified because they are the first in their family to attend college.

For Visintainer, having her grant terminated essentially erases the past 4 years of her scientific life. “All the blood, sweat, and tears that I poured into the project, it’s all lost,” she says.

But she has no plans to stop. “There is no way that we shouldn’t be focused on making cities more livable,” she says, “or improving how we teach undergraduate science courses. I don’t exactly know what I’m going to do, but I’m not giving up.”

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