NASA forked over more than $20 million in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) grants and contracts during the Biden administration, shelling out for “implicit bias” trainings, talks with so-called “anti-racist” authors, “gender-affirming” workplace guidelines and an aggressive, left-wing media presence.
Prodded by executive action from former President Joe Biden, NASA officials also implemented a strategic plan to suffuse all agency operations with DEI, altering criteria for recruitment, performance evaluations and promotions.
The taxpayer-watchdog group Open The Books revealed the politicization of the space agency in a report published Wednesday, which shares a trove of documents obtained from various public records requests.
“NASA’s mission is too risky to get distracted by identity politics,” Open The Books CEO John Hart told The Post. “Newtonian physics and atmospheric re-entry 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.”
The $11.7 million in grants and $8.3 million in contracts represent just a fraction of the agency’s $25 billion annual budget, though former NASA Administrator Bill Nelson advanced Biden’s equity agenda far beyond the reach of those spending items.
NASA’s Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity kicked off their DEI agenda in earnest during the final months of President Trump’s first term.
Email records obtained by the watchdog group reveal that the office invited left-wing author and professor Ibram X. Kendi to give a talk to NASA employees in August 2020 titled “Mission to Inclusion: Cultivating an Antiracist Workplace.”
It’s unclear how much Kendi was paid for the lecture. Two years later, the star anti-racist guru got $5,000 for a similar discussion with hundreds of National Institutes of Health (NIH) employees, which was disclosed previously by Open The Books.
Trump’s NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, a former Republican congressman, also dipped his toe into DEI by adding “inclusion” to the agency’s list of core values in 2020. NASA in the past only touted “safety,” “integrity,” “teamwork” and “excellence” as vital principles.
But Biden kicked the costly DEI initiative into high gear with a Day One executive order on “advancing racial equity,” reversing action by Trump that had halted the identity-focused trainings and barred race- and sex-focused grants and contracts.
Some of the developmental sessions that came as a result were titled “Diversity All In” and the “The Power of Inclusion,” with the latter involving a three-hour-long course to help “engage men to advance women in leadership positions.”
Lefty authors were also invited back for talks, while books on “unconscious bias” and workplace diversity were made a part of professional development.
“In order to move toward a more inclusive society, the primary beneficiaries of privilege—namely European-American, heterosexual, Christian men—must recognize the advantages they are automatically granted,” states one of those agency-touted books, “Diversity Beyond Lip Service: A Coaching Guide for Challenging Bias.”
“While white men must recognize their privilege, the rest of us must recognize that for them, this new accountability will come with a sense of loss and discomfort,” writes author La’Wana Harris.
Another 2021 book discussion featured author Uju Asika speaking about her book “Bringing Up Race: How to Raise a Kind Child in a Prejudiced World,” to “positively open up the lines of communication on anti-racism,” an email obtained by Open The Books shows.
“As a woman of color in today’s Brexit and Trump climate, you have to stay woke,” Asika writes, while elsewhere calling out those who are “whitewashing America’s past.”
“This doesn’t mean you have to cancel Thanksgiving, but your child should understand why a Native American might not want to sit at your feast,” Asika goes on. “Explain that for many, Turkey Day is a day of mourning.”
Other facets of implementing Biden’s DEI prerogatives included “workplace gender” plans that placed “transitioning” NASA workers in “the restroom, locker room or other facility that they feel most comfortable using.”
“[T]he transitioning employee should not be asked or required to use an alternate facility in order to accommodate” employees who took issue, the guidelines declared.
Recruitment efforts also honed in on so-called “underserved communities” or potential employees with disabilities — while “the process of selecting top leaders” was slated for an update “to better reflect DEIA principles and practices.”
In performance evaluations, employees were graded on the degree to which they “emphasize[d] social justice and inclusion,” fostered “diversity dialogues,” affirmatively asked for, participated in and incorporated DEI trainings into their roles or promoted “the development and advancement of underrepresented groups through nominating and selecting diverse team members for professional development courses, speaking engagements, and training opportunities,” according to Open The Books’ report.
Not even tech workers were spared from the aggressive approach, with officials working “to harness existing data systems, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to analyze DEIA-relevant data.”
In 2023, NASA hosted a “Diversity Equity Inclusion and Accessibility [DEIA] Day” that contracted an array of DEI-obsessed businesses to coach their employees. The event took place at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, the site supporting the Apollo missions that first put men on the moon.
One of the event’s vendors, Decide Diversity, developed a “Table of Diversity” that labeld employees by their races, gender identities, sexual orientations and other markers to spark workplace conversations.
It appears NASA fully embraced the effort, with the creator of the table, Demetria Miles-McDonald, trumpeting her “partnership” with the agency last year.
The Post has reached out to NASA reps for comment.
