Senate Committee Targets $3 Million in Harvard NSF Research Grants for ‘Far-Left Ideology’

More than $3 million in federal grants to Harvard researchers were labeled as promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives or “neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda” in a Senate Commerce Committee report released last week.

The investigation, spearheaded by committee chair Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), identified more than 3,400 National Science Foundation-funded research grants awarded by the Biden administration, totaling more than $2.05 billion in federal funding.

The database offers the Trump administration a list of possible places to cut funding after the president issued an executive order last month ordering agencies to remove “illegal DEI” policies and race or gender-based diversity programs.

Grant review at both the NSF and the National Institutes of Health is currently frozen as the agency conducts an audit of its grants for compliance.

“Over the past few weeks, the Trump administration has been taking a sledgehammer to the radical left’s woke nonsense,” Cruz said in a press release. “DEI initiatives have poisoned research efforts, eroded confidence in the scientific community, and fueled division among Americans.”

Fourteen Harvard-based research projects, receiving between $25,000 and just more than $600,000 in NSF funding, were flagged in the investigation. The projects — spanning ecology, political science, physics, and computer science — include a program for developing educational robotics kits, research on gender differences in digital learning, and a summer environmental science research program for undergraduates at the Harvard Forest.

The NSF, an independent federal agency, funds research in science and engineering, awarding billions of dollars annually to universities and research institutions. While it operates independently, its budget is approved by Congress, and its grants are subject to government oversight.

Harvard received $56 million in NSF funding in fiscal year 2024, supporting projects across the natural and social sciences. That funding has become one of many targets of Republicans’ crackdown on “illegal DEI” policies at Harvard and other universities.

University spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment on the committee’s database release.

In January, Harvard Vice Provost for Research John H. Shaw notified faculty that the University would begin reviewing NSF grants in response to these new federal restrictions. His email followed an NSF directive instructing grant recipients to cease any activities that “use or promote the use of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) principles and frameworks.”

Harvard researchers whose projects appear in the database said the list reflects an arbitrary selection process rather than a substantive assessment of their work.

Archaeology Professor Christina G. Warinner, whose NSF grant funds research on Classic Maya social kinship networks, said she did not understand why her project was in the database.

“My project investigates the political structure and alliances of the Classic Maya so that we can better understand the ancient civilizations of the Americas,” Warinner wrote in a statement to The Crimson.

“On what grounds the current administration has classified this research as ‘woke ideology’ — or even more mysteriously, ‘neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda’— is utterly unclear,” Warinner added.

William L. Wilson, director of the Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard whose NSF-funded Quantum Noir conference connects underrepresented researchers with leaders in quantum sciences, said his project was misclassified as a DEI initiative.

“Quantum Noir is not a DEI initiative, it is a workforce development initiative,” Wilson wrote in an emailed statement. “The meeting’s focus is to expose and network young researchers in an important emerging technology space, a space important to the nation’s technology future.”

“Some filter was used to flag certain keywords or internal NSF designations to lead us where we are,” he wrote.

NSF grants require a public impact statement describing how the project will contribute to “desired societal outcomes,” with inclusion listed as one example. Many Harvard-associated research proposals mention diversity, equity, or similar language in their proposals, though researchers said this does not define the core of their work.

“Senator Cruz has made it clear that his knowledge of science is limited to sloppy keyword searches,” Warinner wrote.

“The only waste I see here is in the Senator’s office,” she added.

—Staff writer Saketh Sundar can be reached at saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @saketh_sundar.