A nationwide protest effort to restore tax-dollar funded scientific research and DEI programs planned for Friday, March 7, is bankrolled by a host of liberal organizations.
The campaign, named Stand Up For Science, describes itself on its website as a “grassroots operation” that is organized by university professors from different universities, but it is also “sponsored and supported” by seven different left-leaning organizations.
Stand Up For Science plans to host “nationwide nerd parties” in 32 different cities across the U.S. “to defend science as a public good and pillar of social, political, and economic progress,” to get the attention of lawmakers in a “uniquely impactful way.”
The upcoming protests are among the many recent efforts to contest President Donald Trump’s second administration. The Daily Caller News Foundation recently reported that a group of liberal academic elites also protested the admin’s cut to federal research funds.
The campaign listed three major policy goals on its website, including ending alleged “censorship and political interference in science,” securing and expanding “publicly funded science” and defending “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in science,” as they claim that “attacks on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility are attacks on science itself.”
The group also calls for the restoration of “all DEIA programming within federal agencies to pre-January 1, 2025 status” and to abolish “restrictions on the topics of scientific research that are eligible for federal funding.”
According to the group’s donation page, it is “fiscally sponsored” by the Coalition for the Advancement & Application of Psychological Science (CAAPS), a left-wing nonprofit committed to being “anti-racist” and pursuing “decision-making processes from a diversity, equity and inclusion framework.”
CAAPS is a gender ideology proponent and has written that it “encourages further research that leads to evidence-based clinical guidelines for gender-affirming care that support child and adolescent gender identity development.”
The Stand Up For Science campaign lists six other progressive backers under its “sponsored and supported” section, including Freedom Together Foundation, formerly known as the JPB Foundation, American Association of University Professors, Union of Concerned Scientists, American Psychological Association, Genetics Society of America and the United Auto Workers.
The JPB Foundation was founded in 2011 by leftist billionaire Barbara Picower, the widow of Jeffry Picower, one of the main beneficiaries of the infamous Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. JPB Foundation became one of the largest grant-making foundations in the country and was a major funder of Planned Parenthood in the past, providing three grants to the group, together totaling $6.9 million in 2017, according to Influence Watch.
In 2023, Deepak Bhargava became the foundation’s president. He told Inside Philanthropy the name change to Freedom Together Foundation also came with a priority shift, the Foundation now focusing on “organizing and social movements.” The organization also restated their mission to “help people” to “change unjust systems and create a more democratic, inclusive, and sustainable society.”
While Stand Up For Science’s website states that one of its major goals is to end “censorship and political interference in science” one organizer told Scientific American that “science and politics are really incredibly intertwined.”
“Politics defines who can be a scientist. Politics defines which grants get funded and what gets attention,” the organizer said. Scientific American confirmed that the group is planning to meet with elected officials in Washington, D.C. this week, before the rally.
“I think, a lot of times, people who don’t know a scientist kind of think it’s secretive work that goes on far away that they can’t really relate to,” another organizer told the popular science magazine. “But science is here for you and to serve you and to benefit your community.”
The Trump administration’s cuts to government agencies have been under fire, particularly from those on the left. Trump has taken a series of executive actions to deflate government agencies as part of his goal to reduce the waste of tax-payer dollars and to cut down on bureaucracy.
Similar protests erupted in 2017 during President Donald Trump’s first administration, called March for Science. Scientific American confirmed that Stand Up For Science is not organized by those associated with the former movement, though the groups have been in contact and March for Science organizers have been “generous with their advice and time and connections.”
Stand Up For Science did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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