Reductions in force

The federal workforce was reduced by estimates of 375,000 to 425,000 employees during the 8 years of the Clinton administration. My recollection is that the reduction in force was conducted to increase efficiency and reduce the costs of government, relying on the agencies to construct the most effective plans while recognizing the value of our fellow federal workers. I do not remember any major disruptions of service, and by the end of the Clinton administration, the budget was running at a surplus. In contrast, the current efforts seem less about making the federal government more efficient than about the destruction of these agencies and the transfer of oversight authority to the states. Chaos and uncertainty are not the drivers of sustainable positive change.

With this backdrop, we have experienced mounting criticism and threats to our university systems and the federal agencies that oversee research. It seems to me that academic societies have played an outsized role in organizing the scientific community. For instance, the American Institute of Biological Sciences’ Public Policy Office has coordinated 52 science groups in urging Congress to protect US scientific research, whereas universities have mostly abdicated this larger responsibility. Much of the oxygen in this debate is not so much about the importance of our universities and the contributions of science to our economic growth as it is about scapegoating DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), a relatively small portion of any budget. What is particularly bothersome is that US universities show no fortitude in pushing back on these attacks on DEI initiatives; rather, they vociferously argue against the mandate to cap indirect costs for federal grants at 15%. DEI programs can be funded by a very small percentage of indirect costs and can be very effective and efficient, as described Susan Renoe in a recent Special Report published in BioScience (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf004). Although any policy can be improved and should be debated, it is befuddling to me why efforts to expand participation in STEM raise such extreme ire, especially since most DEI programs are focused on young people. Nearly all of the DEI programs that I have reviewed as part of the broader impact statements of National Science Foundation proposals focus on increasing STEM participation or increasing the understanding of the importance of STEM at the local, county, or state level, which aligns well with the core principals of land grant institutions. The inability of our universities to articulate an argument for DEI while focusing their effort on the recovery of indirect costs is disingenuous and suggests a lack of commitment to one of the mandates of public education: education for the people.