It seems pretty appropriate and analogous to me—the administration wants to ensure 100% of science grants go to science, not 98%, and similarly they want to ensure that 0% of foreign students support Hamas, not 2%. Scott’s data suggests that have done a reasonably good job with the former at identifying 2%-woke grants, and likewise if they identify someone who spends 2% of their time supporting Hamas they would consider this a win.
I don’t think the issue here is actually about whether all science grants should go only to actual scientific work. Suppose that a small amount of the grant had been spent on getting children interested in science in a completely non-woke way that had nothing to do with race or gender. I highly doubt that either the administration or you regard that as automatically and obviously horrendously inappropriate. The objection is to stuff targeted at women and minorities in particular, not to a non-zero amount of science spending being used to get kids interested in science. Describing it as just being about spending science grants only on science is just a disingenuous way of making the admin’s position sound more commonsense and apolitical than it actually is.
It seems pretty appropriate and analogous to me—the administration wants to ensure 100% of science grants go to science, not 98%, and similarly they want to ensure that 0% of foreign students support Hamas, not 2%. Scott’s data suggests that have done a reasonably good job with the former at identifying 2%-woke grants, and likewise if they identify someone who spends 2% of their time supporting Hamas they would consider this a win.
I don’t think the issue here is actually about whether all science grants should go only to actual scientific work. Suppose that a small amount of the grant had been spent on getting children interested in science in a completely non-woke way that had nothing to do with race or gender. I highly doubt that either the administration or you regard that as automatically and obviously horrendously inappropriate. The objection is to stuff targeted at women and minorities in particular, not to a non-zero amount of science spending being used to get kids interested in science. Describing it as just being about spending science grants only on science is just a disingenuous way of making the admin’s position sound more commonsense and apolitical than it actually is.