The United States Senate Commerce Committee recently flagged over a dozen Penn research grants totaling nearly $11 million in funding, alleging that the initiatives promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The committee’s database — which contained nearly 3,500 initiatives from universities across the country — cited 15 grants awarded to Penn faculty by the National Science Foundation during the Biden-Harris administration. The programs were identified as “woke” and “questionable” for advancing DEI and “neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.”
A request for comment was left with a University spokesperson.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who chairs the committee, called for “significant scrutiny” into the awards as the NSF halts its process of reviewing new grants. According to a Commerce Committee press release, the flagged research amounted to more than $2.05 billion in federal funding.
The database follows the release of Cruz’s October 2024 investigative report, which aimed to reveal the increasing politicization of taxpayer dollars meant for scientific research.
Flagged grants were classified under five different categories, including social justice, race, gender, environmental justice, and “status” — which the committee’s report defined as “grants that described persons based on their membership in a population deemed underrepresented, underserved, socioeconomically disadvantaged, or excluded.”
A Penn project studying the impact of ocean warming on coral reefs was flagged under the status, race, and environmental justice categories. The award description detailed that the project includes an outreach program offering climate change activities for first-generation, low-income students and trains teachers to deploy these activities in classrooms within the Philadelphia Public School District, which predominantly serves a low-income Black and Latino student body.
Another Penn initiative devoted to interdisciplinary training in soft materials research and science policy was flagged under the status, social justice, and gender categories. The proposed certificate program targets the recruitment of women and members of underrepresented groups in STEM as “a major goal of building a diverse community.” The description also stated that the project team would “develop a network of minority-serving institutions” for research exchanges and student-focused services.
The database also flagged a Penn project studying gender differences in digital learning games under the status and gender categories. The research aimed to integrate features into math games to overcome gender stereotypes about math proficiency and reduce math-related anxiety in girls, encouraging them to pursue STEM careers. The grant description noted that the project would “advance knowledge on the multidimensionality of gender,” with the games presenting fictional situations designed to break gender typicality and provide different gender identity options to players who identify as neither male nor female or as both.
Wharton professor Nancy Zhang, whose grant application noted that her research has the potential to encourage the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in future STEM research, said she did not understand the criteria used for flagging grants.
“As with most [NSF] grant proposals that [are] submitted, we have [the] education of the next generation of researchers in our broader impact goals, and we try to foster inclusivity in our field,” Zhang said.
The release of the database comes amid concerns regarding federal research funding for Penn, including a recent National Institutes of Health policy that capped indirect cost funding for university research grants at 15%, a decision that would cost Penn $240 million.
In an announcement to the Penn community after the NIH policy change, Interim Penn President Larry Jameson said that Penn is working to “identify solutions to minimize the impact” of the policy. On Feb. 10, Penn and 12 other universities filed a lawsuit against the policy, which resulted in a judge temporarily halting the funding cut.
“Besides its devastating impact on medical research and training, the proposed actions run afoul of the longstanding regulatory frameworks governing federal grants and foundational principles of administrative law,” the Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and the American Council on Education wrote in a joint press release announcing the lawsuit. “This action is ill-conceived and self-defeating for both America’s patients and their families as well as the nation as a whole.”
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