The University of Arizona was the first four-year public university in the state of Arizona to be federally recognized as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI).
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s effort to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion programs is squeezing research at Arizona universities on wildfire prevention, air pollution, public health, and in other areas with little or no connection to DEI.
Cronkite News identified $480 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health to public university researchers in Arizona that include at least one of the terms flagged by the Trump administration.
Overall, at least 720 grants could be at risk at Arizona’s public universities, including grants from NIH, the National Science Foundation, and NASA worth at least $812 million.
Many of those promise to expand the role of women and underrepresented communities in science, typically as a secondary goal – in keeping with NIH or NSF directives that explicitly encouraged this kind of language before Trump took office.
Research in biology, chemistry, engineering, sound, opioids, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and more face cuts.
These agencies haven’t publicly identified what grants would be frozen or deemed in violation of Trump’s DEI directives. They did not respond to requests for comment.
According to the Washington Post, each agency has issued internal lists of red flag keywords to identify such grants. Cronkite News used those terms to identify Arizona grants listed on the government’s usaspending.gov database.
The status of these grants is in flux.
Last Wednesday, a federal judge in Massachusetts issued an order temporarily preventing the administration from freezing NIH grants. Earlier last week, a federal judge in Maryland extended a pause on a provision of Trump’s DEI executive order that required federal agencies to terminate “equity-related grants or contracts.”
One Arizona PhD student who asked that his name be withheld because he’s worried about repercussions for his career and federal funding said he and his peers are experiencing “outright fear.”
“Instead of wanting to go make a difference in the world, it’s, ‘am I going to have to take my PhD and go flip burgers for a summer and figure out what I want to do for the rest of my life?’” he said.
The student’s work involves working with community health clinics, which typically target underserved populations.
“Social justice is not just a fancy word. There’s a reason for it,” he said.
Last month, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, chaired by Texas Republican Ted Cruz, released its own ”Woke DEI Grants at NSF” list. The committee said the list was intended to supplement the NSF’s efforts.
The committee identified 3,483 grants worth just over $2 billion – more than 10% of total NSF grants – that “went to questionable projects that promoted (DEI) tenets or pushed onto science neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle.”
Arizona recipients account for 88 of those grants, worth $68.6 million. All but 10 are at public universities.
The committee separated its list into five categories: status, social justice, gender, race and environmental justice.
“DEI initiatives have poisoned research efforts, eroded confidence in the scientific community, and fueled division among Americans,” Cruz said in a statement accompanying the analysis.
Among the Arizona grants on Cruz’s list:
- $15 million for the Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine, a multi-state partnership to improve water security, renewable energy, carbon emissions and high-paying jobs for the hot and dry states of the Southwest. Among its other stated goals, the proposal says the program will be “inclusive of underserved populations,” provide “inclusive access to high-wage STEM jobs” and “equitable water and energy futures,” have a “diverse and highly skilled” workforce and will drive job creation for “historically underserved and/or rural communities.”
- $1 million to expand digital access to homework and other educational material for low-income K-12 students. The grant says: “Students that could benefit the most from learning applications that require home access are disproportionately from lower-income, rural, and at-risk minority populations. While new broadband funding initiatives may make incremental improvements to the situation, millions of students in low-income and rural areas continue to be left behind.”
- $16,724 to study pottery shards in the American Southwest to learn about the region’s ancient cultures. According to the grant, the project was designed in collaboration with the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and Gila River Indian Community “to be responsive to and respectful of cultural concerns and preferences.”
- $181,499 to study microbial “diversity” in Antarctic glaciers. The grant, which ended during the Biden administration, also mentions a goal of expanding the scientific talent pool by connecting “students from under-represented minorities to polar research through participation in the university’s science, technology, engineering & mathematics Routes Uplift Research Program.”
Before Trump took office in January, the NSF encouraged inclusion and diversity efforts.
Grant proposals were required to include an explanation of “broader impacts” beyond discovery and innovation, including “the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes.”
One such desired outcome was “inclusion,” defined as “increasing and including the participation of women, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented minorities in STEM.”
Nationally, over 10,000 research grants have been flagged for review, according to the journal Nature.
On the Senate list, for instance, is $168,545 for the BRAIN Center at Arizona State University, part of a network of university and industry-based researchers who work together on neurotechnology.
The center’s main goal is to advance “rigorous testing of efficacy, safety and long-term reliability of neurotechnology.”
According to the grant proposal that established the center, it was created to address the need for “accessible technologies” as “millions of adults live with neurological disorders, brain injury, mental illness, limb loss or paralysis.”
The grant proposal cites two goals that would set off an alarm under the anti-DEI push: to “promote access for underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and math” and to address neurological problems “that disproportionately affect underrepresented groups.”
“I have no idea why my program ended up there,” said the ASU center’s co-director, Marco Santello, who said he was shocked to learn from Cronkite News that his program was on the list.
He said ongoing funding mostly comes from a consortium of industry and university researchers.
Avelino Arellano Jr., an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Arizona, said one of his grants is on hold – from NASA under a program called IPMSI, or Increasing Participation of Minority Serving Institutions.
Arellano’s research focuses on air pollution and its effects on “air quality, weather, and our environment.” He’s looked at mercury and other toxins.
At Northern Arizona University’s Center for Adaptable Western Landscapes – which researches ecological challenges in the Southwest – co-director Clare Aslan said two grants are at risk of being frozen based on a stated aim to “broaden participation in science.”
“A very large number of our projects deal with climate impacts and adaptation in one way or another. So we consider all of those to be vulnerable,” she said by email.
She didn’t specify the grants she’s worried about. But one of its NSF grants provides $3 million for “advancing Indigenous perspectives to address climate vulnerability in the Southwest” – that is, threats to “culturally significant ecosystems.”
CAWL has published pioneering research on wildfire preparedness and recovery in the Southwest. Aslan said such research has been frozen under a separate Trump effort to cut off funds under the Inflation Reduction Act, a Biden-era package to support a shift to renewable energy sources.
In 2023, Arizona had 1,659 wildfires, with 176,939 acres burned, according to the Department of Forestry and Fire Management.
“We need to hire our summer field crews now, but it’s hard to do so when we can’t feel certain the funding will be in hand in the summer,” Aslan said.
Universities have taken steps to scrub language that might imperil funding.
Timothy Long, a professor at ASU’s School of Molecular Sciences, said faculty were instructed to “remove all DEI content” from a pending NSF grant request.
Long is the director of the Biodesign Center for Sustainable Macromolecular Materials and Manufacturing. His research deals mainly with complex chemical materials and plastics for highly specialized uses.
The federal database shows a $119,084 NSF grant for the center to research synthetic materials.
“This project will provide an integrated research and educational experience for graduate students, undergraduate students, and high-school students, including members of underserved groups,” the grant description reads in part.
The term “underserved groups” is on the red flag list.
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