AHA executive director Sarah Weicksel sat for an interview with WUSA9 News for its weekly program Federal Workforce Fallout to discuss the impact of the administration’s revocation of NEH grants last year. She discussed DOGE’s role in the process, highlighting the lack of expertise among DOGE employees reviewing grants compared to NEH staff, as well as their limited understanding of DEI. She also addressed DOGE employees’ use of ChatGPT to review and eliminate grants without further examination and emphasized the importance of telling a complete and honest history that reflects the experiences of diverse groups.
“I think what is so telling from these [deposition] videos is that the current administration has so distorted the meaning of DEI that historical topics that address the experiences of people of color, of women, of LGBTQ+ people, have all been labeled as DEI, when in fact, it’s just history,” Weicksel said. “I like to describe history as an evidence-based interpretive discipline. If you are not considering all the topics, you’re going to have a very boring history, to be honest, but you’re also going to have an unusable past. You have to be able to learn from the entirety of the past to shape your future.”