Thread by @trajan317

Tonight I found out that the NSF math postdoctoral fellowship I applied for is being deleted because it does not comply with Trump’s executive orders on DEI in the federal government. I’m going to answer some FAQs and share some thoughts about this ordeal in this thread 1/n

First, who am I? I am a 5th year PhD student in pure mathematics at Princeton. I have Bachelors and Masters degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and a masters degree from Princeton. I work in an area of math called number theory. 2/n

What is this fellowship? The NSF Mathematical and Physical Sciences Ascend Fellowship is a relatively new fellowship program designed “to support postdoctoral Fellows who will broaden the participation of members of groups that are historically excluded and currently… “ 3/n

… underrepresented in MPS fields in the U.S., defined in this solicitation as Blacks or African Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, Indigenous and Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and other Native Pacific Islanders, as future leaders in MPS fields.” 4/n

How does it work? Prospective fellows find a professor at a university willing to “sponsor” their application, and that person essentially becomes their postdoc mentor. The fellowship is 3 years, no teaching, and has a $70k/yr stipend + $30k/yr for expenses. 5/n

My proposed institution was MIT, where I found an awesome mentor who was enthusiastic about the prospect of working together. 6/n

Why didn’t I apply for the ‘normal’ math postdoc fellowship (MSPRF)? There are a number of reasons. (1) The primary reason is because the MPS-Ascend application specifically discourages you from doing this and I didn’t want to risk my application by going against this 7/n.

(2) It aligned with myself and the things that are important to me. For example, I’ve been working as an academic mentor at a math camp for high schoolers at MIT the past two summers, and will return again this summer. I was a student myself 10 years ago in its first year. 8/n

The camp is for students from underserved communities, broadly interpreted; you can be low-income, first generation, a girl, black/hispanic, from South Dakota, or from the Bronx, it doesn’t matter. If you stand to benefit from the camp we want you there. 9/n

(3) MIT runs a summer research program for minority college students (MSRP) and they source a lot of the students from HBCUs. Students pick faculty mentors from a list of faculty and postdocs who volunteer to mentor projects 10/n

But every year, the list of faculty members volunteering from the math department is empty. I’d know because I tried to apply when I was in college, but there were no math faculty available, and I’ve been keeping track ever since. So in my app, I offered to mentor projects. 11/n

This decision by the Trump administration will have devastating consequences. The most clear consequence is that there will be fewer people of color in MPS fields. 12/n

Indeed, if you make a new program aimed at minorities, incentivize them to apply with better pay and less teaching, and then discourage them from applying to other NSF fellowships... cutting that program will absolutely take a bunch of minorities right out of academia 13/n

But wait, if the only job you can get is a DEI aimed fellowship, then maybe you aren’t good enough to be in math? Not true. By getting rid of this program, you give many of the people that applied the unique property of .. 14/n

..being an American citizen that did not apply to any NSF fellowships. If an American student told their advisor they weren’t gonna apply for NSF, they would tell them that they are crazy and could very well not get any job. 15/n

I have actually never read a textbook on systemic racism, (i’ve only learned about it through lived experience), but this seems like the very definition of a systemically racist policy. The people most likely to apply to this are people of color 16/n

and this decision uniformly gives those applicants, who are largely black and brown, the unique disadvantage of traversing the job market without even the possibility of NSF, while their non-black, non-hispanic American counterparts experience no such disadvantage 17/n

Obviously, I can’t know if I would’ve gotten the normal fellowship, or even this one for that matter, but I’m certain I would have had a competitive application, and this decision essentially feels like I was removed from the running because I am Black. 18/n

This rampant idea that DEI is about handing jobs to unqualified people is so mind-numbingly wrong. Like, we’re talking about people with PhDs in math here; all the older Ascend fellows I know are super smart people who just happen to be minorities 19/n

So what’s next for me? At this point I have no idea. I might leave math. Go be a quant somewhere or try to "pivot" to AI. I might pursue opportunities in Europe. Who knows. But I couldn’t just let this happen to me and tons of others without sharing my story 20/20

Bonus: I should clarify the fellowship is open to anyone , of any race, who wants to improve outcomes and participation for minorities. So you could be a white guy that wants to start a mentoring program for low income kids and that would qualify

Everyone has equal opportunity to care about equity and inclusion, but I still imagine most people applying are themselves minorities.