Politically. Historical. Gender. Female. Women. Race and Ethnicity. Barriers. Cultural Differences. Equality. Inequality. Socio-Economic Status. LGBT.
These are words that appear regularly in sociological articles, books and classes. They are basic concepts that describe features of modern societies. Since sociology is the study of society, we cannot avoid these words and basic concepts.
They are also on the list of over 100 words and phrases that have been given to staff at the National Science Foundation (one of the US government agencies that awards research grants) to flag when reviewing grant proposals. The words have been published in many places, including a Washington Post article, and this initiative has been widely reported. This is part of President Trump’s initiative to scrub all diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from every government agency and non-government entities that receive government funds. These include schools, universities and non-profit organizations. However, these words and concepts go far beyond DEI initiatives. It makes it impossible for sociologists, other social scientists and humanities scholars to do our work. Even medical and public health researchers who study group differences in outcomes will be harmed.
Interestingly, white, male and heterosexual are still acceptable. This means we can still study white straight men. What a relief. (Sarcasm, just to be clear.)
There are also sweeping changes to data availability and data collection. The US Census website was down for a day or two last week. The Centers for Disease Control also disappeared. The US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Services, which, among its many tasks, collects and reports data on educational outcomes of Americans from preschool (actually birth) to Ph.D. graduates, information on teachers, school districts, disciplinary actions and every other facet of the educational experience, is being shut. I have spent my entire career studying young people and their educational outcomes and interactions by race, immigrant status, gender and class using the data sets produced by IES, so I feel this loss profoundly and personally.
Currently, many researchers are trying to download as many data sets as possible, but not everything is downloadable. We anticipate that even in the best-case scenario where data continues to be available, important measures such as race, gender, immigrant status and class backgrounds might disappear. In that case, if you want to know about how Korean Americans fare relative to whites, you won’t get to find out. If you want to gauge unemployment rates, income differences and health outcomes by race and gender, you may no longer receive grant money to do your research. It’s not just grant money, but we can’t write about these subjects anyway because the data might disappear. What about health outcomes -– do we care if minority groups are more likely to die of certain cancers than whites? After all, if we do not measure race, gender, and class, we can pretend these differences no longer exist.
They also want to shut down the Department of Education.
There is so much else going on under the Trump administration that it is overwhelming for me and my fellow colleagues to follow. Many of us in the social science and general scientific community are scared and angry. I have never felt as hopeless as I do right now about the fate of scientific research and reporting in the US. I’m terrified that our undergraduate students will be discouraged from learning about the society in which they live and inequalities by race, gender and class, among so many other subjects. I worry that our graduate students won’t be able to do their work or will be blacklisted from receiving grants, publishing articles and books or jobs despite their Ph.D.s. The “America first” attitude of this administration is also a grave threat to our international student community. I suspect that student visas will be on the chopping block.
While they seem to be actively suppressing intellectual and scientific activities, they (including Elon Musk) are promoting AI and bots as a way to replace federal workers. So, the American humans will become dumber while our machines will become smarter. I’m not sure who is going to operate the AI infrastructure -- likely Elon Musk thinks it’s him.
We can pretend everyone is fully employed if we don’t measure unemployment. If we don’t measure test scores, we can pretend that American children are the best in terms of math achievement. We can also pretend children are not going to die from measles or polio since we are going to discourage vaccinations if we don’t measure child mortality. Better yet, let’s just stop measuring mortality rates altogether and pretend that Americans are immortal. Problem solved.
I don’t know if President Trump has read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, but I know Elon Musk has. He once said the first of the series was one of his favorite books, and this may be the only thing he and I have in common. Asimov describes a time when the Galactic Empire eventually outlaws scientific thinking. However, Hari Seldon, a “psychohistorian,” uses models to predict the future of human response on a group level. Without his intervention, his models show that there will be a 30,000-year-long dark age, but with some intervention, he may be able to shorten that time period. It was already too late to prevent it altogether. I think of Hari Seldon as a sociologist since he modeled group-level behavior, so I hope we can move to at least minimize the damage that has already been done.
Grace Kao
Grace Kao is an IBM professor of sociology and professor of ethnicity, race and migration at Yale University. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. -- Ed.
