Executive Order Hinders Scientific Inquiry
By Adam Shapiro
A ban on diversity and inclusion training for government employees and contractors may have far-reaching effects.
October 30, 2020
Macroscope Ethics Sociology Social Science
When President Trump signed the September 22 Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping, which counterintuitively banned government employee and contractor trainings regarding racism and sexism, few expected that it would have much immediate impact. Similar to the White House conference on “patriotic history” held the previous week and the self-congratulatory Columbus Day proclamation a month later, this order was largely interpreted as election-year posturing, pandering to a political base that viewed efforts to include the perspectives of enslaved, dispossessed, or other oppressed people—and to reject the valorization of those who perpetrated atrocities—as un-American.
But within just a few weeks, hopes that the order was toothless, dog-whistle politics were dispelled by concrete effects. On October 2, the University of Iowa announced the suspension of all diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings for fear of losing federal funds. On October 5, actor William Jackson Harper tweeted that the executive order had affected his scheduled discussion of the film Malcolm X with members of the armed forces. And soon other universities and companies were following the University of Iowa’s lead in canceling programs that recognized or focused on diversity or antiracism.

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Although the effects of this executive order are likely to be felt in a variety of ways across many different sectors of society, it poses a unique and perhaps counterintuitive challenge to the teaching and practice of science and engineering in the United States, feeding into ongoing controversies about the nature of science and the role that science and technology play in both the federal research ecosystem and our society more generally.
In addition to prohibiting certain actions, the executive order makes specific claims that fall at least partly under the purview of scientific inquiry. The order labels as a “divisive concept” the idea that “the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist.” This idea may appear to be grounded in history, rather than science—the fact that “all men are created equal” was not a reality for many on the basis of race or gender, either legally or in practice, is hardly contentious. But the extent to which this statement is still true today can be empirically evaluated from a number of scientific disciplines. From sociology, to psychology, to economics, studies of racial- or gender-based disparities in this country are observable and often quantifiable. The effects of systemic racial or gender discrimination are also seen through research in the medical sciences, and in environmental studies. Racism exists. Sexism exists. That reality is etched into the American landscape, inscribed within the bodies of children, and its effects are felt generationally. It’s true that many historians have criticized the vision of American history epitomized by this order; but we cannot ignore the fact that there is also science denial involved in asserting this reality.
The order’s affect on scientific inquiry is especially important because two of the examples of training that the executive order admonishes took place at federal science facilities. The order specifically cites training materials that were used at Argonne National Laboratories in Illinois and Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico as presenting “divisive” information about racism and sexism. Addressing the need for greater diversity in the science and engineering enterprise remains a stated priority of the U.S. government. And in recent years, there has been wider recognition that initiatives intended to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields are essential to the growth and progress of science itself. There’s research demonstrating that more diverse teams improve the progress of scientific discovery, and the demographic trends of the United States suggest that if the American scientific community does not address systemic factors hindering equal participation in science, that the STEM workforce will be unable to sustain itself in future generations.
Though the order is certainly not limited to federal employees working in scientific facilities, it’s perhaps not surprising that training at those facilities has been singled out. As the election grows closer, several scientific publications and societies have taken unprecedented steps to speak out regarding this administration’s treatment of science and the scientific community. Singling out the country’s national labs for criticism is another example of this concern that the administration is deliberately interfering in science. Dozens of scientific societies have cosigned an open letter to the government’s Office of Management and Budget decrying this executive order and its impact on science.
If science is to live up to an ideal as a rigorous self-regulating system of knowledge production, then the real risk is that this order may sideline research whose conclusions debunk scientific racism.
The training at Sandia gained public attention in August after some materials from a 2019 workshop were shared with Christopher Rufo of the Discovery Institute (a Seattle-based conservative think tank,) who publicized them on his personal website. The organization that conducted that training, White Men as Full Diversity Partners (WMFDP), describes on its website their “provocative approach to engaging white male business leaders in inclusion efforts” acknowledging that the labor of promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace often falls disproportionately onto women and people of color. According to WMFDP’s website, their training encourages discussion of delicate issues, including stereotypes and biases among coworkers. In the materials republished by Rufo, WMFDP explicitly states that their materials and participant notes “taken out of context . . . might be misleading.” This misinterpretation of their program may include instances where discussion of commonly held stereotypes is represented as the takeaway of the training itself.
Increased attention to diversity and inclusion issues in the workforce has led to a booming industry in corporate and institutional training—including the government. It’s not unreasonable for an executive order to clarify the standards and procedures that federal agencies should use when soliciting vendors to provide a service, including workplace trainings. The question remains as to whether such guidance is informed by the best available evidence. The September 22 executive order gestures without citation to a claim that “research also suggests that blame-focused diversity training reinforces biases and decreases opportunities for minorities.” This statement appears to be an allusion to research that suggests that implicit bias training—which focuses on having participants discover and acknowledge manifestations of prejudice and stereotyping that they may not be aware of—can sometimes backfire. But this statement is a mischaracterization not just of implicit-bias as “blame-focused” but of the nature of racism itself.
As Tiffany L. Green (health economist at University of Wisconsin) and Nao Hagiwara (health psychologist at Virginia Commonwealth University) argued in a recent article, implicit bias trainings can fail in part because they tend to present racism and sexism as “an individual problem requiring an individual intervention.” This approach can appear to absolve organizations from acknowledging the ways race and gender biases occur at systemic levels within institutions and throughout society. More effective trainings raise awareness of these larger issues and demand that change occur at organizational levels as well as individual ones. (From the documents posted on Rufo’s website, it appears that the WMFDP training may take this wider-focused approach.)
Far from a systemic perspective, it is a reductionistic view of racism and sexism that pervades the executive order: from its characterization of “divisive” views of racism to its caricature of what anti-racism trainings are intended to accomplish. Increasingly, this view has also fueled new trends in scientific racism. In particular, efforts to define races as biologically distinct genetic populations in which traits such as intelligence or other aptitudes are inherited ignore the complex social factors that shape the meaning and historical use of such categories. Advocates of hereditarian research on race differences in intelligence have long claimed that their work is criticized or “canceled” because it runs counter to an antiracist narrative (a claim of sidelining that has recently been debunked by historian John P. Jackson, Jr., of Michigan State University, and Andrew Winston, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Guelph in Ontario).
Preventing scientific societies, laboratories and other organizations from continuing to provide information and training about systemic bias makes it harder for scientists to recognize and evaluate research and claims that concern race or sex differences. If science is to live up to an ideal as a rigorous self-regulating system of knowledge production, then the real risk is that this order may sideline research whose conclusions debunk scientific racism.
At its most charitable interpretation, this executive order could be seen as providing guidance to federal agencies concerning the solicitation of a product (trainings in diversity), but in reality organizations are risk-averse. When it’s easier and safer not to acknowledge a problem, that is what many organizations will do. It’s clearly easiest to avoid potential audit and loss of funding or contracts simply by not offering any diversity-related training at all. The administration’s approach towards discouraging discussion of systemic racism was seen in actions even before this specific executive order, such as the Department of Education’s investigation of Princeton University for civil rights violations in response to the school’s acknowledgment of its role in systemic racism. Considering the legal and punitive risks that are threatened, it’s not so surprising that the University of Iowa and others have responded the way that they did. Although systemic racism and sexism are questions that some fields of science address and analyze, and that many others are deeply affected by, one might not see this executive order as part of a specific attack on science. But this leaves open the question: Are there other topics of scientific inquiry that might also be seen as too divisive?
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