I just read that the PSF withdraw a 1.5M grant application, because the terms of it included to not violate (or promote the violation) of federal anti-discrimination laws:
These terms included affirming the statement that we 'do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws'
I thought it was fake, but then I realized is confirmed in the main site:
I think this is heavily surprising for non US python users (and possibly for them as well) as the whole world would benefit from this kind of investment in python, Does the PSF plans to violate or promote the violation of US anti-discrimination laws? Iâm honestly very confused.
That language has nothing to do with laws on the books. That language is designed to stop grant recipients from from promoting DEI in any activities. While I canât directly speak for the PSF I think you can be assured that there is no plan by the PSF or its board or employees to violate any US law.
Accepting the grant, as was stated in the PSFâs blog post and reiterated in every article that I have seen on the topic, would have required the PSF to violate its core mission statement. You should also know that the PSF is not the only organization to withdraw a grant request after seeing that language, The Carpentries (if you were at PyCon US 2025 you might have seen their executive director Kari Jordan give a keynote) did the same, for the same reason in June 2025.
While the benefits to the entire open source ecosystem (not just Python since the goal was to develop systems to secure PyPI that could then be used by NPM, crates.io, and others) would have been immense, the cost to accepting the funding was too high as it would require the PSF to abandon their identity.
Setting aside the specific anti-diversity policy being advanced by the NSF, the threat to claw back already spent grant money if activity unrelated to the grant were determined to violate the clause would put the PSF in enormous financial jeopardy. It would be irresponsible to accept the money on those terms, even if you agree with eliminating diversity programs.
Note that this specific quote also plays a trick of words: DEI is normally defined as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The quote makes it seem like DEI stands for discriminatory equity ideology.
Promoting âDiversity, Equity, and Inclusionâ doesnât sound as bad, does it?
So⌠which one did the US government mean? The difficulty to get a clear answer on this question was AFAICT the reason the grant request was withdrawn.
To clarify the situation for folks fortunate enough to be able to ignore the current state of US politics, the current US executive administration is claiming that diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (what DEI actually refers to) are themselves discriminatory.
Doing so requires misrepresenting both what the US legal code actually says and the nature of DEI initiatives (including inventing their own, incorrect, interpretation of what the initialism stands for).
One of the primary vehicles the administration has been using to push that claim is the National Science Foundationâs grants program, by attaching coercive clauses like those the PSF and The Carpentries rejected as conditions on awarded grants. Those clauses effectively say âIf you accept this grant, youâre obliged to cease any and all initiatives aimed at increasing participation by underrepresented groups in the activities you supportâ, which neither the PSF nor The Carpentries considered acceptable.
(Like @pitrou, Iâm also a non-US core developer that fully supports the PSFâs action here)
Ok, to be honest I didnât read the text as many of you are reading it, which seems to be:
âdo not operate any program that advance or promote DEIâ
I did read it as:
âdo not operate any program that advance or promote DEI in violation of Federal anti-discrimination lawsâ.
I thought it was in this way, because assuming the first interpretation has the side effect of allowing lawful âdiscriminatory equity ideologyâ in the second part of the sentence.
[do not promote the] discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws (implicitly implying that is allowed to do so, as long is not in violation of the law)
Which looks like nonsense to me, so i though the letter is forbidding âunlawful DEIâ and not âany DEIâ as many of you suggest is doing.
I guess the sentence is inherently ambiguous, which does indeed create a risk on accepting the money, I still wonder if it was not possible to know for sure the intent of the regulator (by asking them) or requesting the sentence to be reformulated. But I would not be surprise if the NSF is totally passive to any question.
Given the value of the grant to the community and the PSF, we did our utmost to get clarity on the terms and to find a way to move forward in concert with our values.
The people currently in charge of the US government consider all DEI to be unlawful[1]. A lot of them are pretty explicitly segregationist.
Unfortunately, the current NSF leadership is actively hostile to academia and is trying to destroy and/or control it. Open-source projects are collateral damage.
or rather, they hate it and are using the power of the state against it. They donât care about legality âŠď¸
The people currently in charge of the US government consider all DEI to be unlawful[1]. A lot of them are pretty explicitly segregationist.
As someone living in the USA, I feel thatâs severely understating the present situation. A sufficient percentage of the voting citizenry (if you assume no tampering) voluntarily handed over control to a patriarchy of racist, misogynist, homophobic bigots who are overtly welcoming a return to slavery and indentured servitude, or just outright happy to kill off any part of the population they canât directly profit from.
I know this sounds like a wild conspiracy theory to anyone who isnât here; it would have sounded like that to me two years ago. Another large open source project I work on was recently pressured into dropping the term âdiversityâ from the name of its diversity and inclusion working group so as not to draw unwanted attention. Even simply using that word would have caused the USA-based employers of some contributors to prevent them from continuing their participation in the project for fear of losing lucrative government contracts.
Not accepting USA government funds under these circumstances is not only understandable, but commendably brave. Thank you PSF!
or rather, they hate it and are using the power of the state against it. They donât care about legality âŠď¸
To be clear, while Iâm not a lawyer, yet do believe the underlying issues are debatable among people of good faith:
I donât believe the PSF has been violating US laws, or that it intends to.
I do believe that the chances of the current US admin claiming that laws have been violated are too high ro risk accepting a grant under politicized âclawbackâ provisions.
So Iâm glad the PSF withdrew this grant proposal.
My question is why the PSF made such a public display of withdrawing it?
Thereâs nothing new about the major US political parties becoming increasingly uncivil and vindictive over time, and we seem to reach new lows with each new admin.
So why draw attention to the PSF? Whatâs to be gained from that? If the PSF wasnât on their âtarget radarâ before, it is now. Which can also have a chilling effect on organizations considering collaborating with the PSF. And may even, e.g., end up on some IRS bureaucratâs desk with instructions to âlook intoâ the PSFâs tax-exempt status.
Regardless of who runs what, the government always has comparatively infinite supplies of time, money, and lawyers to attack who they like, and a Federal court system biased in the governmentâs favor. It increasingly doesnât actually matter what âthe lawâ actually says.
Why volunteer for a fight that almost certainly canât be won? Ya, I do that myself, but Iâm old, and have nothing left to lose. I risk only myself.
It seems that Chrisâs post above was hidden because some people flagged it. I have a copy of the post by email and some good points were made and some others that I disagree with but I donât see why it should be hidden.
We should not have a big argument about EDI here but I donât think Chrisâs post should be censored.
I agree with other posters here that withdrawing the application was the right move. Any reference to âlawâ in the grant terms is just a smoke screen. Itâs quite clear that these kinds of clauses are just a trap to gain influence over all manner of organizations. The wisest move is not to play, and thatâs just what the PSF did.
As @Stefan2 showed, the phrase âdiscriminatory equity ideologyâ came from Executive Order 14190, issued in January. By July, it was already dead obvious that the NSF was playing along wholeheartedly:
So itâs hard to buy there was an element of surprise in play here. This adminâs hostility to DEI programs was obvious from day 1, and that the NSF was on board with that was obvious not all that long after, cancelling over a billion dollars in grants by the time July started.
Why didnât the PSF drop out of the game then?
Under the principle of charity, Iâll assume they didnât realize âno DEI!â would apply to the entire organization, not just to the progam(s) for which funding was sought.
