A grant to study Hebrew is 'woke DEI,' Ted Cruz says [View all]

A grant to study linguistic differences between Hebrew and English was flagged as an example of “woke DEI grants” in a new database released by Sen. Ted Cruz. The database is part of ongoing Republican efforts to justify significant cuts to federal research funding and diversity programs under President Donald Trump.

The $226,000 grant, given by the National Science Foundation to the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2022, was flagged by the Texas Republican senator’s team as having an inappropriate focus on “gender.”

But according to the description of the research in Cruz’s own database, the sole mention of gender in the grant’s description is in reference to the fact that the Hebrew language (like many) assigns gender to nouns.

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The public database of grants compiled by Cruz provides a window into how Trump and his allies are thinking about cuts to research funding. The flagged grants mentioning Israel were made to six universities including Brown, the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. They cover a range of scientific topics, from studying cognition to magnetic technologies to energy storage.

What they have in common is a stated intent to collaborate with an Israeli university. .. The second common thread among the Israel-related grant descriptions is the use of keywords flagged by the database as related to gender or DEI. Cruz’s team sorted the grants based on the presence of keywords related to the categories of “gender,” “status,” “social justice,” “race” and “environmental justice.”

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https://www.jta.org/2025/02/12/politics/a-grant-to-study-hebrew-is-woke-dei-ted-cruz-says