Following Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-T.X.) release of a report detailing how the National Science Foundationfunding “flows to support left-wing ideological crusades masked as ‘academic research,’” Cornell researchers have reacted with both criticism and support.
Cruz, the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee chairman, released a database on Feb. 11 identifying over 3,400 National Science Foundation grants — including 22 awarded to Cornell — as “promot[ing] Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanc[ing] neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.”
How NSF Funding Is Awarded
The NSF — an independent executive agency — funds fundamental research in science and engineering, excluding medical sciences.
The 22 Cornell NSF grants scrutinized by U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz are backed by 14 different NSF offices, supporting a range of research areas including biology, engineering, social sciences and technology innovation. https://www.datawrapper.de/_/FgrFY/.
To secure an NSF grant, proposals are evaluated on two key criteria: intellectual merit and broader impact. The NSF defines intellectual merit as “encompasses the potential to advance knowledge.” Examples of desired broader impacts include inclusion, societal well-being, national security and infrastructure outcomes.
Inclusion refers to “increasing and including the participation of women, persons with disabilities and underrepresented minorities in STEM,” according to the NSF website. “Women,” “Underrepresented,” “Minorities” and “Disabilities” are all keywords used to flag research in the Cruz-led study.
‘Misused for Political Purposes’: Senior Lecturer Christine Leuenberger
Science and Technology Studies Senior Lecturer Christine Leuenberger is currently an Intergovernmental Personnel Act assignee for the NSF, where she serves as a program director in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. Leuenberger emphasized the importance of projects having a broader impact, saying, "The NSF prioritizes making STEM accessible to everyone across all states because, to remain competitive, the U.S. needs a diverse and well-prepared STEM workforce."
The America Competes Reauthorization Act of 2010 mandated the NSF to continue using broader impacts as a key criterion for evaluating its grants, which they began in 1997.
The Cruz-led investigation alleges that the 3,400 NSF grants under the Biden-Harris administration promote DEI initiatives that “have poisoned research efforts, eroded confidence in the scientific community, and fueled division among Americans.”
In response, Leuenberger said that the Biden-Harris administration, in comparison, had “reinforced scientific integrity across all federal agencies, ensuring that science is based on sound rationale and evidence rather than being misused for political purposes.”
‘Nothing Ideological About This Grant’: Prof. Bharath Hariharan
NSF grant recipient Prof. Bharath Hariharan, computer science, whose research grant was singled out by Cruz as prioritizing “gender,” “race” and “status,” dismissed the senator’s accusations as “hilariously naïve.”
Hariharan received an NSF grant totaling $305,032 from the Faculty Early Career Development Program, or CAREER, which began in March 2022.
The program provides NSF awards to early-career faculty who show potential to be role models in both research and education. The integration of research and teaching aims to develop future scientists that will advance their academic field and support their department’s mission.
His research focuses on advancing computer vision technology — systems that enable machines to interpret and understand visual data. A key aspect of his work is developing models that can learn from smaller datasets, reducing the reliance on large, meticulously labeled image collections, which are often expensive and time-consuming to create.
Reducing this dependence, Hariharan said, addresses both ethical and financial challenges. Annotated datasets are costly to compile, and labeling them requires specialized expertise. “To annotate the data, you need to be an expert — a scientist,” he said.
Hariharan was one of 22 Cornell researchers who's NSF funded work was identified by Sen. Ted Cruz as “promot[ing] Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanc[ing] neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.” (Benjamin Leynse/Sun News Editor)
Hariharan explained that even the Department of Defense faces this issue.
“The data [the Department of Defense] use[s] is classified, so they can’t just ask a random person on the street to be an annotator,” Hariharan said. “They have to hire someone, grant them clearance, and then have them label the data. So, annotations are difficult to get.”
Hariharan said he was “surprised” to learn that his grant had been targeted. He clarified that his entire budget was dedicated solely to his research plan, which had “nothing to do with any kind of diversity or racial bias. However, he believes that his grant was flagged because of his educational plan that was part of CAREER. CAREER grants must implement a community service program that uses educational outreach to help guide and inspire the next generation of scientists.
“I proposed a workshop targeting students from underrepresented communities,” he said. In the context of computer vision research, Hariharan defined underrepresented groups as “students who might never have had the opportunity to work with computer vision in the field.”
Reflecting on the controversy, Hariharan found the scrutiny absurd.
“This whole exercise seems absolutely hilarious, because there was nothing ideological about this grant,” Hariharan said. “It was a deeply technical research question that needed to be answered.”
‘Science is Supposed to Be Science’: Prof. Gennady Samorodnitsky
Prof. Gennady Samorodnitsky, engineering, received a $250,015 NSF grant to develop statistical tools for forecasting extreme events including climate, economic and financial crises. He expressed concern about the growing influence of left and right ideological bias in research.
"My personal opinion is that some of the research, at some point, becomes mixed with ideology — whether from the right or the left,” Samorodnitsky said. “These things get mixed one way or the other, and I don't think it's healthy because science is suppaosed to be science.”
He questioned whether some NSF-funded projects blur the line between science and ideology, particularly in areas such as climate change and green energy where “the science is unsettled.” He added that increased NSF funding for climate-related research risks reinforcing certain viewpoints.
“The NSF will put more money into [climate-related research], and so there’s more activity around it. Then people become even more convinced that it is real,” Samorodnitsky said.
Hariharan, however, remained firm in his stance that the scrutiny was misplaced.
“In the end, [this politicized scrutiny] doesn’t just undermine individual researchers — it weakens the very foundation of scientific progress and limits our ability to train the next generation of scientists,” he said.
When asked about Cornell’s stance and plans to address Cruz’s characterization of 22 of the University’s NSF grants, a University spokesperson wrote, “We are aware that some National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored projects awarded to Cornell faculty are included in a list of over 3,400 projects from universities across the nation released by the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee chair. We will assist impacted researchers if NSF requires changes to specific sponsored projects.”
Leuenberger advises all NSF grant recipients to focus on "doing the best science possible" while also staying informed by monitoring the NSF website, particularly the NSF Implementation of Recent Executive Orders section.
"Ultimately, just focus on producing high-quality research — NSF’s goal is to fund the best science, and that’s what matters," she said.
