The University of Texas at El Paso’s top academic official sent an email Thursday morning to a faculty rattled by a series of executive orders and reports that could affect their research projects.
John Wiebe, provost and vice president for academic affairs, sent the email hours after an El Paso Matters story revealed that 17 UTEP grants from the National Science Foundation were on a list of research projects that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, labeled as “woke DEI grants.”
Wiebe mentioned the recent directive from the National Institutes of Health that called for a 15% cap on administrative costs that was quickly paused by several lawsuits brought on by multiple states and organizations, as well as a spreadsheet Cruz released this week of more than 3,400 NSF grants the senator said advanced liberal ideology. That list included 17 projects led by UTEP faculty.
“The methodology of that report used a very large number of search terms, which almost certainly resulted in inclusion of grants that are unlikely to be impacted by executive orders,” Wiebe said in the email, which multiple faculty members provided to El Paso Matters.
Wiebe’s email didn’t address criticisms of the quality of the research done by UTEP faculty, or offer words of support to the faculty members whose work was identified by Cruz as among “questionable projects that promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) tenets or pushed onto science neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle.”
Several UTEP faculty members, who asked not to be identified, said they have been frustrated by the lack of support from UTEP leadership to criticism of higher education research by Cruz and others.
A UTEP spokesperson declined to answer questions from El Paso Matters about Wiebe’s email. University leadership has repeatedly declined to comment about Cruz’s criticisms of its research faculty.
An El Paso Matters review of the 17 UTEP grants from NSF indicated that they were flagged by Cruz’s staff because they contained words and terms such as “Hispanic,” “under represented” and “diversity.”
A spokesperson for Cruz did not respond to El Paso Matters’ questions about the UTEP grants from NSF cited by the senator.
In testimony last week before a congressional committee – before Cruz made public the grant list that included UTEP – UTEP President Heather Wilson said most of the university’s grant applications include its federal status as a Hispanic serving institution, which would be flagged by the methodology used by Cruz’s staff to identify “woke” grants.
In his email to faculty, Wiebe acknowledged the uncertainty around government research funding.
“There is a lot we don’t know at this point,” he said.
Wiebe wrote that the university was aware that some funder representatives have contacted principal investigators on grant projects. He asked those who have been contacted by funding agencies in reference to whether their grant will be affected to alert their grant research administrator in the Office of Research & Innovation.
“It’s important to continue doing our work as a university unless directed to stop by a funder, and we will need to work together to solve problems that arise,” Wiebe said.
Keith Pannell, a professor emeritus of chemistry who retired last year but continues to do research on campus, said the upheaval is having a bad effect on his colleagues. Some senior faculty are thinking about retiring.
“They are just very disappointed, unhappy and thinking, where does (the uncertainty) leave me,” he said. “If I was there and I didn’t know whether my funding … was secure, I’d be very, very nervous.”
He said principal investigators carry a lot of responsibility, including hiring students, post-doctoral fellows, and staff. In the case of UTEP, many of the hires involve minorities, mainly Hispanics.
He said that many of the new scientists are coming from the populations that traditionally have not pursued research careers and that should be encouraged. Getting more people into science is just common sense, he said.
“Science isn’t woke,” he said. “Politicians playing with science is not a really good idea.”
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