By Marcelo Jauregui-Volpe
On March 20, the Department of Defense announced several cost-saving measures, including the termination of several contracts, grants, and programs that it asserted were “inconsistent with the priorities of the DoD.” The cuts are part of a broader trend across federal agencies following the Trump administration’s directives to cut costs and eliminate programs that it believes are connected to efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); climate change research; or initiatives that promote what the administration refers to as “gender ideology.”
In a memo, officials asserted that the cuts would save the department $580 million in total. While the memo didn’t specify precisely which grants would be cut, the department noted that more than $360 million of the cuts came from canceling grants that were not aligned with DoD’s mission because they supported research and activities “in areas of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and related social programs, climate change, social science, Covid-19 pandemic response and other areas.” In a video, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth mentioned the following grants that were included in the recent cuts:
- A $6 million grant to reduce carbon emissions from naval ships, which Hegseth called “part of the Obama-Biden Green agenda.”
- A $5.2 million grant “that would diversify and engage the Navy” through outreach with underrepresented BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) students.
- A $9 million grant to help a university develop “equitable AI [artificial intelligence] and machine learning models.” “I need lethal machine learning models, not equitable machine learning models,” said Hegseth.
These cancellations are in addition to cuts to DoD's social science portfolio that the Pentagon announced earlier this month.
Marcelo Jauregui-Volpe is editorial and communications assistant at AAU.