Assessing the Wokeness of Scientific Grants

From the Commerce Department:

U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas) released a database identifying over 3,400 grants, totaling more than $2.05 billion in federal funding awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) during the Biden-Harris administration. This funding was diverted toward questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.

I saw many scientists complain that the projects from their universities that made Cruz's list were unrelated to wokeness. This seemed like a surprising failure mode, so I decided to investigate. The Commerce Department provided a link to their database, so I downloaded it, chose a random 100 grants, read the abstracts, and rated them either woke, not woke, or borderline.

Of the hundred:

• 40% were woke
• 20% were borderline
• 40% weren't woke

This is obviously in some sense a subjective determination, but most cases weren't close - I think any good-faith examination would turn up similar numbers.

https://readscottalexander.com/posts/acx-only-about-40-of-the-cruz-woke-science