Beginning in fiscal year 2023, the Department of Energy will require applicants for research funding to explain how their research projects will incorporate the tenets of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
According to the Department of Energy website, applicants will be required to attach a “Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research (PIER) Plan” to their funding application in which they will “describe the activities and strategies” they’ll rely on “to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in their research projects.” The quality of a would-be grantee’s proposed PIER plan will factor into the “merit review process” and “be used to inform funding decisions.”
PIER plans will be expected to address “the research environment, the composition of the research team, the responsibilities among the research participants, and the distribution of leadership activities of the research personnel.”
Evaluators will determine whether a proposal’s PIER plan is an “integral component” of the project, as well as the extent to which it will lead to the participation of “individuals historically underrepresented in the research community,” and “contribute to the goal of creating and maintaining an equitable, inclusive, encouraging, and professional training and research environment.”
Applicants may include the costs of their PIER plans in their requested budget. In general, the quality of a proposal’s PIER plan will hold the least weight in the merit review process, but that may not be the case for all solicitations.
No proposal that does not include a PIER plan will be considered by the Department of Energy.
The department’s new requirement is part of a wider Biden administration focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Vice President Kamala Harris, who championed equity during the 2020 presidential campaign, argued last month that Democrats “need to fight for equity,” — which she has defined as meaning “that we all end up at the same place” — rather than just “equality.”
“If we want people to be in an equal place sometimes, we have to take into account those disparities and, and do that work,” said Harris.
On his first day in office, President Biden signed Executive Order 13985, which “directed the Federal Government to advance an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda that matches the scale of the challenges we face.”
In order to comply with the order, federal departments have developed “equity agency plans.” According to the White House, “delivering equity through grantmaking” is one of the “innovative new strategies” being implemented as part of those plans.
The new Department of Energy requirement raises questions about whether arbitrary determinations about the quality of PIER plans might lead the department to prioritize less valuable projects. It also could lead to discrimination against researchers who don’t share the Biden administration’s ideological preference for equity over equality. The Department of Energy has not responded to a request for comment on those concerns.
Roger Clegg, a member of the board of directors at the Center for Equal Opportunity, where he previously served as president and general counsel, told National Review that the initiative would also inexorably result in a “push toward racial preferences in the selection of individuals.” Were it to come to that, such an eventuality could lead to legal issues for the administration.
Peter Kirsanow, an attorney and member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has noted that public institutions like the Department of Energy would need to survive strict scrutiny under the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, and would not enjoy the same allowance given to public educational institutions who claim diversity as a pedagogical mission.
Representative Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas) expressed his disapproval for the PIER plan mandate in a statement to National Review.
“The Department of Energy should not be doling out grant funds based on uncontrollable characteristics like race and sex—it's discriminatory and wrong. Funding should always be based on merit,” argued Crenshaw. “Instead, maybe the DOE should focus on cracking down on the practice of funding our foreign competitors over American innovators.” An NPR investigation found that the Department of Energy handed taxpayer-funded technology over to a Chinese firm “first in 2017, as part of a sublicense, and later, in 2021, as part of a license transfer.”
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