This story was co-reported by Teresa Carr for Undark and Margaret Manto for NOTUS.
When he realized that Senate Republicans were characterizing his federally funded research project as one of many they considered ideological and of questionable scientific value, Darren Lipomi, chair of the chemical engineering department at the University of Rochester, was incensed. The work, he complained on social media, was aimed at helping “throat cancer patients recover from radiation therapy faster.” And yet, he noted on Bluesky, LinkedIn and X, his project was among nearly 3,500 National Science Foundation grants recently described by the likes of Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican and chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, as “woke DEI” research. These projects, Cruz argued, were driven by “neo-Marxist class-warfare propaganda” and “far-left ideologies.”
“Needless to say,” Lipomi wrote of his research, “this project is not espousing class warfare.”