jchrispires.bsky.social
Professor passionate about student success & team science #firstgen #Brassica enthusiast walking Dogs of the Plant World
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#Soil #Crop #Science ; opinions mine
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It's extremely unclear and I have not seen the original memo.
The lack of clarity is probably deliberate.
I'm making a best guess as to what is happening based on conversations with a number of sources.
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The cited passage makes it look like NSF will fund research solely on the five priority topics. An earlier passage made it seem that the 70 surviving rotators would cover the five topics, but that other science would also be supported (via permanent POs). I am so confused.
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đź‘‹ Permanent program directors and leadership are still here because we care deeply about the science, the scientific communities we serve, and our oath to the constitution.
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9. I spoke with several funders today about how the Republican. administration is targeting and destroying the education and training pipelines that develop scientific capital in this country.
This sabotage will leave a gaping wound—lost talent—that cannot be fixed by simply restoring funding.
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8. Now they are replacing this with a Soviet-style top-down bureaucracy staffed with political appointees serve at the whim of the executive branch and enforce its bizarre and often-unscientific dogmas and priorities.
It's the wholesale vandalism of a truly great American institution.
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5. This is of course directly in line with the Project 2025 vision of destroying expertise, institutional knowledge, and independent thought within the federal agencies so as turn the entire federal government into an extension of the President's agenda.
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6. At the same time we are seeing a massive reorganization within the NSF directorates. Senior Executive Service (SES) personnel who head the divisions are to be forced out (again, they represent expertise, independence, and institutional knowledge) and replaced with non-SES cluster heads.
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4. So, they are eliminating the positions for rotating program officers, except in five areas of technology: artificial intelligence, quantum information science, biotechnology, nuclear energy, and translational science.
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3. Here's what I believe is happening. The current administration recognizes that "rotating" program officers are loyal to their colleagues, not to the administration—and have little fear of being fired because they have jobs waiting and their time at NSF is basically pure service to the discipline.
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2. As many of you know, many of the program officers at NSF are university faculty members on leave from the home institutions and serving 2-4 year terms at NSF. This a vitally important mechanism because it provides a close bridge between the NSF and the research communities the agency nurtures.
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7. They are attempting to justify these changes with language around efficiency and cost-saving, but this is unmitigated bullshit.
For many decades the NSF has been a wildly successful model of supporting a domestic science and technology ecosystem while producing breakthrough science at scale.
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It is sad that even basic research needs to be defended with utility. For me, basic research is in the same category as art: civilized societies can't do without it, because we all want to know who we are and what our place in the natural world is -- questions that only science can answer.
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Final point here: this post is from an anonymous NIH employee, and it feels critical to raise these voices precisely because the Trump administration has silenced credible NIH officials and their leadership is not representing them.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nih-bu...