NASA may struggle to get astronauts to and from the International Space Station, but here on Earth it has gone all-in on its diversity, equity and inclusion mission, according to a new report Wednesday that details expansive efforts to promote the ideology.
The space agency paid to have “anti-racist” crusaders deliver talks to employees, encouraged managers to “practice allyship” with “underrepresented groups” and promote them for advancement within the ranks, according to Open the Books, the spending watchdog that produced the new study.
Its release is timed to this week’s rescue mission, where Elon Musk’s SpaceX will attempt to retrieve astronauts from the space station.
“NASA’s mission is too risky to get distracted by identity politics,” said John Hart, president of Open the Books. “Newtonian physics and atmospheric reentry do not care about antiracism talks and gender ‘affirmation’ policies. NASA has an opportunity to take one small step toward fiscal responsibility and one giant leap toward common sense.”
Among its spending this decade was paying to have Ibram X. Kendi give a talk on “cultivating an antiracist workplace” and a talk by Uju Asika, who was invited to the Johnson Space Center’s parenting affinity group to “open up the lines of communication on anti-racism.”
Open the Books also dinged the agency for its focus on transgender issues, including a 2022 memo that said NASA wanted workers to “bring their whole authentic selves to work.”
While asking employees to show some grace for colleagues not familiar with gender transition, NASA urged workers to report ongoing uses of “wrong” names and pronouns to their superiors.
NASA’s 2022 DEI strategic plan nudged managers to provide more training on “implicit bias,” and to “better reflect DEIA principles” in hiring decisions.
NASA also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on environmental justice grants, including one #99,997 grant to Colorado State University to “heighten awareness of environmental justice within the U.S. prison system.”
Open the Books called the DEI focus an “almost comically absurd” distraction from its mission.
NASA announced earlier this week that it was shuttering its DEI division, along with its chief scientist’s office and its policy office. News reports said 23 employees are being canned in the moves.
The space agency signaled a bigger reduction in force is still coming.
NASA is using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket this week to deliver four new crew members to the space station and to retrieve four of the crew already aloft.
Two astronauts were supposed to come back on a Boeing Starliner flight last summer, but it returned to earth unmanned after worrying technical problems.
