The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has recently released the “Notice of Civil Rights Terms and Condition of Award” on 21 April 2025.
The notice warns new, renewal, supplement, and continuation awardees that they cannot operate any programs that advance or promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA), or “discriminatory equity ideology” in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.
“Discriminatory equity ideology” is defined in Section 2(b) of Executive Order 14190 of January 29, 2025 to be “ideology that treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability in favor of immoral generalizations”. This includes the acknowledgement of superiority, supremacy, and/or inferiority as it relates to race, gender, and/or nationality; the existence of privilege and/or oppression with respect to race, gender, and/or nationality; and more.
Interestingly, Executive Order 14190 is named “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling”; however, evidently, the NIH applies this order to all its funding recipients, regardless of the academic or institutional level.
Awardees are also prohibited from engaging in any “discriminatory prohibited boycotts” during the term of the award. The notice defines “discriminatory prohibited boycott” as “refusing to deal, cutting commercial relations, or otherwise limiting commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies or with companies doing business in or with Israel or authorized by, licensed by, or organized under the laws of Israel to do business”.
The NIH notice warns that the “NIH reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this award, operate any program in violation of Federal anti-discriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott”.
This latter warning in the NIH notice has already been executed against many awardees, as the NIH began terminating numerous award mechanisms upon the release of this notice. Some of the funding opportunities that were terminated include undergraduate-focused Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) programs, Post-Baccalaureate Research Education Programs (PREP), doctoral-student focused Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD) programs, postdoctoral-focused Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA) programs, and the junior-faculty focused Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers (MOSAIC) program. The termination of these award mechanisms will leave thousands of biomedical trainees without support nationwide.
It should be noted that the NIH notice cited “31 U.S.C. § 372(b)(4)” in association with the government’s payment decisions and federal anti-discrimination laws; however, the cited US code does not appear to exist.
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