Our drifting compass

“Promote, then, as an object of primary importance institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge”

—George Washington, farewell address, 1796

As George Washington predicted, our educational institutions, the people they employ, and their essential duty to the public they serve—that is, to enlighten public opinion—are a bedrock of our society. And now, 229 years later, we have highly trained personnel at the US National Science Foundation, our valued colleagues, searching through documents for terms that were intended to promote that very diffusion of knowledge to a wider segment of this country and being forced to remove those terms from the documents. The list consists of about 100 terms, and with overlap of meaning (e.g., inequalities, inequality, inequitable, inequities), about 40 independent references to the diversity of the American public.

To highlight the absurdity of these times, we have used ChatGPT to write a poem in the style of Emily Dickinson, using the list to individually recognize and communally revoke these utterly reprehensible activities that have been imposed on our public servants. Roughly half the independent number of terms are included below in italics. However, the word creed is not on the list, so someone should be fired for missing it.

The List

• When barriers arise, the quiet breaks—

• A whisper stirs within the wake,

• Of activists who rise to claim

• The right to speak, to call by name.

• They see the world, so bent with bias,

• Where lines of skin are cast to silence,

• And hearts, aligned in shades apart,

• Bear heavy burdens in their heart.

• Oh, Black and Latinx, your hue

• Is wealth, a culture born anew,

• Yet still, beneath the trembling skies,

• You face the weight of others’ lies.

• The BIPOC voice, the female plea—

• Excluded still, though meant to be

• A part of all, the whole, the true,

• Within this earth that should renew.

• Disabilities, once hidden, shy,

• Now rise and claim the open sky—

• The barriers that once were strong,

• Shall fall to voices, bold and long.

• In communities, so vast, so wide,

• Differences of culture bide—

• Yet still, with advocacy's flame,

• They seek the light, not meant to tame.

• The advocates, with hearts aflame,

• Divulge the need for equal claim.

• In gender, race, and every creed,

• They sow the seeds of what we need.

• The system built with roots of fear,

• Holds up the walls, so dark, severe—

• But change arrives, in drops, in streams,

• For justice rises from the seams.

• Increase the diversity, they say,

• For every voice should have its way.

• Inclusion's call is loud and clear,

• A world of equity draws near.

• Though polarized, and fraught with grief,

• The fight for truth shall bring relief—

• For in this quest, no soul should stand

• Alone, apart, on the land.

• Through trauma's grasp, through history's scorn,

• Through underrepresentation, born,

• We rise with hope to find the light,

• And change the darkness into bright.