Trump’s NIH director embraces red state DEI

During my career, I served on NIH study sections and NSF grant review panels. What I personally witnessed was discussions over the scientific merits of various applications. There was no discussion of whether a proposal should be prioritized because the investigator worked at an elite institution on the east of west coast. Could the applicant institution have been an unspoken factor? Possibly, although I don’t know how to measure that. I should probably point out here that many reviewers at non-elite universities trained at elite universities. Does that constitute bias?

The outcome of federal grant reviews has historically favored investigators from elite universities. This is unsurprising, since (a) these institutions are magnets for research talent and (b) these institution have the resources for research infrastructure that lesser institutions don’t.

The Trump Administration has slashed NIH funding for “DEI” projects that investigate the causes and consequences of discrimination against minority groups. But now it looks like the NIH director supports DEI for red state research.

“Under Bhattacharya’s leadership, the NIH has said it will prioritize “geographic balance” in funding decisions, and Bhattacharya has said he wants the nation’s research infrastructure to extend to places that better reflect the country’s health problems, such as Alabama.”

I spent my entire research career in red state institutions. My stipends in grad school and my postdoc were funded by the NIH. My lab was funded by three NIH grants and three NSF grants over my career. Many of my colleagues had NIH funding. Would we have gotten more NIH dollars if we’d been in Boston? I don’t know. But if you’d asked my colleagues (and I did) whether the study sections they served on were fair on the merits of the proposals reviewed, they would all say yes. Why does the Trump Administration want affirmative action for red state science?

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/12/05/business/trump-science-research/

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