[userbinator]

Finding the ones that aren't DEI-related is difficult. At first I found "CAREER: Understanding the Interdependence of the Microenvironment and Nuclear Organization in Stem Cell Aging" that looks neutral from its title, and the first part of its description was, but then there's this sentence in the middle that sticks out like a sore thumb: "The primary educational objective of this project is to develop a series of stories that focus on introducing concepts of stem cells and genomics to under-represented minority (URM) students in K-3." The rest of the details is neutral, however. It's so unusual that one wonders whether who wrote that was actually pro-DEI, or merely compelled to put in something to that effect in order to appease someone.

[Darmani]

Former academic here. That kind of stuff looks within the normal range of a Broader Impacts section. Since the 80s, if you do some obscure fundamental research, then you have to say how it's going to benefit people. Say you think there's a risk that it's not good enough to say "we will understand this natural process and there's a lot of ways that can be carried forward and then that will make it easier to figure out what to research in field X and then maybe that can be used to cure cancer or make guns." And there's always such a risk, with proposal acceptance rates being low. Then you add a sentence about how you'll also educate kids about that thing -- promising to spend a Wednesday afternoon visiting an elementary school sounds like a small price to pay for increasing the acceptance probability of a multi-year grant by 1%.

In the last few years, you had to say something about underrepresented minorities. If your university is in an urban environment where it so happens that the local elementary school is full of URMs, then you don't even need to change anything about your plan.

[ModernMech]

> The rest of the details is neutral, however. It's so unusual that one wonders whether who wrote that was actually pro-DEI, or merely compelled to put in something to that effect in order to appease someone.

This is how it usually works:

You want public money so you can research your pet interest. But the public wants to know how your research will benefit the public before they will give you public money to do your research. But for some (many) academics, they are loathe to think of anything aside from their direct special interest research topic that they can't even articulate how their research can benefit the public. So they go with the lowest effort idea "I will teach local kids about my subject in a creative way".

Frankly I'm concerned so many people here want to give money to researchers without them having to articulate how it will benefit society. That's what "broader impact" statements are all about.