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One grant funded faculty training in ‘antiracist orientations’ via virtual reality
President Donald Trump’s administration recently pulled over $7.6 million in National Science Foundation grants from Arizona State University due to their ties to “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
The cuts targeted projects that included terms such as “equitable,” “underrepresented,” and “racial,” according to AZ Free News.
One of the five DEI grants that were pulled allocated nearly $2.5 million to a project called “Black Girls as Creators: an intersectional learning ecosystem toward gendered racial equity in Artificial Intelligence education.”
The program, which ran from October 2023 to April 2025, ended three years early. It offered after-school and summer camps for black girls aged 9-14 to work with AI creators, “focusing on intersectionality and racial equity,” the AZ Free News reported.
Another canceled grant allotted over $700,000 to an initiative called “Positioning Engineering Faculty to Support Black Engineering Graduate Students through Awareness, Knowledge, Capacity Building, and Community.”
The program, which was also terminated in April, was supposed to run through August 2029. It trained ASU faculty “in antiracist orientations using virtual reality simulations to address systemic barriers for black graduate students, prioritizing competency over technical skills,” according to AZ Free News.
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