UTEP researchers won a prestigious $1 million grant in 2022 to better understand the evolution of birds. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, says it’s one of thousands of National Science Foundation grants in recent years – including 17 to the University of Texas at El Paso – that are examples of “how the Biden administration weaponized federal agencies to push a far-left ideology.”
Cruz this week released a spreadsheet of more than 3,000 NSF grants that his office said exposed “questionable projects that promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) tenets or pushed onto science neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle.” It was unclear how many of the grants – such as UTEP’s bird research – fit into those categories.
UTEP President Heather Wilson declined to answer questions from El Paso Matters about the university’s NSF grants that Cruz called “woke.” A university spokesperson referred El Paso Matters to testimony Wilson gave last week to a congressional committee that addressed science and research efforts, but did not touch on Cruz’s allegations that UTEP and other universities were participating in grant-funded research to promote leftist ideology.
U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, criticized the lack of response from leaders at UTEP and other institutions targeted by Cruz’s allegations.
“Anyone in any leadership position needs to stand up for the institutions, organizations, and people that Republicans are hurting by removing this funding that these universities, that these faculty members competed for and won fair and square,” Escobar said during a Zoom news conference Wednesday.
The spreadsheet released by Cruz on Tuesday was used for a report he issued in October accusing the Biden administration of politicizing science.
Cruz’s office did not respond to requests Wednesday from El Paso Matters about the report and spreadsheet, including questions about two specific UTEP grants – a $15 million grant to improve defense and aerospace manufacturing capabilities in the region, and a $1 million grant to look at the biodiversity of suboscine passerines, which are birds in Central and South America and the Caribbean. El Paso Matters asked how those grants qualified as “woke DEI grants.”
Cruz’s October 2024 report outlined the methodology used to categorize grants as having a woke DEI agenda. It essentially involved multiple searches of grant applications for keywords, such as “diversity,” “under represented” or “Hispanic communities.”
The UTEP grant summary on bird research mentions diversity multiple times, but always in biological terms involving birds – never in the context of racial or ethnic diversity among humans. The grant summary also includes a passage saying it would involve “a concerted program for recruiting and retaining underrepresented students in biodiversity science in three underserved geographic areas: Appalachian Tennessee, Louisiana, and majority Hispanic communities in west Texas.”
Those phrases apparently were enough to land a grant for researching bird biodiversity onto a list of woke DEI grants.
The grant summary for the aerospace manufacturing grant – which was suspended last year by the National Science Foundation pending an investigation by the agency’s inspector general – mentions the percentage of Hispanic students at UTEP and the percentage of engineering students who are women.
Escobar said that Republicans essentially are trying to cast these words and phrases as bad things.
“There’s a lot that’s getting caught up in this attack on diversity, equity and inclusion,” she said. “I think these grants likely are an example of that. It is shameful. It will be harmful.”
One UTEP faculty researcher who asked not to be identified said that he could agree with some of Cruz’s concerns, but also thinks it misses the point.
The researcher said universities have unnecessarily bloated research administrations, which could be fixed with additional accountability. The researcher said grant priorities should be based on research needs and not on the elimination of “woke DEI,” which he called a divisive issue.
“We need to work together to prevent China (from) replacing us as the global technology leader,” the researcher said.
Antonio Ingram II, senior counsel at the New York City-based Legal Defense Fund, said Cruz’s report and spreadsheet were troubling because they could affect funds meant to remediate historical racial disparities and create more belonging for underrepresented communities.
“I would hope that we’ll be in a moment as a nation where we’re trying to create more belonging and more inclusion for historically excluded populations, versus attacking the tools and resources meant to effectuate a truly equal playing field,” Ingram said during a telephone interview.
As for the limited response from university leaders at UTEP and nationally to growing Republican criticism of university research programs, Ingram said he understood because they feel the pressure from external forces.
His advice was to follow the letter of the law and the mandates of their leaders, but do not over comply. He referenced some Texas institutions that went beyond what was required of Senate Bill 17, a 2023 state law that restricted DEI on campuses.
The post UTEP leaders silent as Ted Cruz accuses researchers of using ‘woke DEI grants’ appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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