Follow the money: who pays for the ideas
Two streams of money carried the tracked ideas into universities: federal research grants, mostly from the National Institutes of Health, and private gifts to centers built around a few scholars. Both peaked after 2020, and both are now shrinking.
In NIH and NSF research grants that use the vocabulary, 2000 to 2026: NIH $1.23B in 882 projects, NSF $302M paid or committed in 527 awards.
Drop in that federal money from its 2023 peak ($370M) to 2026 ($68M).
In the largest documented private gifts and grants tied to these ideas, including pledges. About $60M went to two university centers that closed in 2025.
The biggest funder was health research
NIH paid four times what NSF did. Most of it went to health-disparities research framed around “structural racism” and “intersectional stigma,” plus large center and faculty-hiring grants that wrote the vocabulary into their goals.
NIH and NSF dollars using the vocabulary, by year
NIH: actual yearly awards from NIH RePORTER, pulled Nov. 2, 2026; fiscal 2026 ended Sept. 30. NSF: full planned value, booked in the award’s start year. NIH alone peaked in 2024 ($311M) and fell 78% by 2026. Hover a bar for values.
NIH projects using the vocabulary, by award type and idea
A record that uses two terms is split evenly between them.
Same terms as the NSF count below. We read every matching abstract and dropped 1,213 records that use the words in an unrelated sense, chiefly “intersectional” genetic methods in neuroscience and the “decolonization” of bacteria such as MRSA. Parent and subproject records for the same grant are counted once.
| Largest NIH projects | Recipient and contact investigator | Years | Institute | Term | Awarded |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conduits: Mount Sinai translational science hub | Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Rosalind J. Wright | 2022–2024 | NCATS | Antiracism | $28.0M |
| Institute for Translational Medicine | University of Chicago Julian Solway | 2022–2024 | NCATS | Systemic racism | $24.7M |
| UW/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research | University of Washington Connie Celum | 2023–2026 | NIAID | Antiracism, intersectionality | $17.3M |
| FLORIDA-FIRST faculty recruitment | Florida State University Frank Y. Wong | 2021–2026 | NCI | Antiracism | $14.5M |
| Catalyzing Systemic Change to Support Diverse Faculty (FIRST) | Drexel University Ana Diez Roux | 2021–2024 | NCI | Intersectionality | $14.2M |
| Young Black and Latinx sexual- and gender-minority men cohort | Children's Hospital Los Angeles Michele D. Kipke | 2020–2023 | NIDA | Intersectionality | $11.4M |
| Racial differences in late-life cognitive decline | Rush University Medical Center Lisa L. Barnes | 2021–2025 | NIA | Systemic racism | $11.4M |
| NURTURE faculty recruitment (FIRST) | Northwestern University Melissa A. Simon | 2022–2024 | NCI | Systemic racism | $10.8M |
The two largest are clinical-translational science hubs whose grant abstracts mention antiracism or systemic racism. Three are NCI “FIRST” faculty-recruitment grants, NIH’s counterpart to NSF’s ADVANCE program.
Science money came in through the side door
NSF’s $354M (planned) in 527 awards mostly did not come from programs that study these ideas. 85% came from programs to diversify science faculty and students, improve STEM teaching, or fund museum and public-science projects, and those programs wrote the vocabulary into their goals.
NSF awards using the vocabulary, by program type and idea
An award that uses two terms is split evenly between them. Hover a band for its value.
Source: NSF Awards API, pulled Nov. 1, 2026, with every abstract checked for the term. Terms and variants: intersectionality and intersectional, systemic and structural racism, microaggression(s), antiracist/anti-racist and antiracism/anti-racism, critical race (theory), white privilege, decolonize/decolonizing/decolonization, settler colonial(ism). Full estimated award value.
Award dollars by start year
Same data. ADVANCE faculty-equity grants are the largest share of the 2018 spike ($14.2M of $34.0M). Nearly all of the 2025 total is one $6.0M computing-diversity award. 178 of these awards were cut short on April 18, April 25 or May 2, 2025, when NSF ended grants in bulk under the administration’s directives; $49M of their planned funding was never paid. NSF had terminated 1,752 grants in all by late May (COSSA tally).
| Largest awards | Recipient and lead investigator | Start | Term | Planned | Paid or committed | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| INCLUDES alliance for students with disabilities | Auburn University Overtoun Jenda | 2021 | Intersectionality | $10.0M | $7.9M | Terminated 2025 |
| Diversity in computing (National Center for Women & IT) | University of Colorado Boulder Teresa Hogan | 2025 | Intersectionality | $6.0M | $0.7M | Terminated 2025 |
| AGEP national research conference series | Education Development Center Leslie Goodyear | 2023 | Intersectionality | $4.4M | $3.0M | Terminated 2025 |
| Pacific Northwest minority-student alliance (LSAMP) | University of Washington Tricia Serio | 2019 | Intersectionality | $4.0M | $4.0M | Completed |
| From Black Boys to Men: STEM intervention | Bowie State University Julius Davis | 2022 | Systemic racism | $4.0M | $3.2M | Terminated 2025 |
| Pathways to computer-science research careers | Computing Research Association Sandhya Dwarkadas | 2018 | Intersectionality | $3.7M | $4.0M | Completed |
| Racial Equity: STEM in Your Neighborhoods | Reuben H. Fleet Science Center Mwenda Kudumu | 2024 | Systemic racism | $3.7M | $0.4M | Terminated 2025 |
| Gender diversity in computing (NCWIT) | University of Colorado Boulder Lucinda Sanders | 2022 | Intersectionality | $3.6M | $3.6M | Terminated 2025 |
| ADVANCE institutional transformation | UMass Lowell Jacqueline Moloney | 2016 | Microaggressions | $3.5M | $3.7M | Completed |
| ADVANCE institutional transformation | University of New Mexico Julia Fulghum | 2016 | Intersectionality | $3.4M | $3.4M | Completed |
Lead investigators as listed on each public NSF award page. Three are senior administrators (a chancellor, a provost and an assistant provost); most are faculty or program staff. Six of the ten were cut short in April or May 2025. Planned and paid amounts from NSF award records, Nov. 1, 2026.
Beyond research grants
Other agencies’ public records carry shorter descriptions, so they undercount. Even so, $193M in 190 grants since 2012 use the same terms, led by environmental-justice and foreign HIV programs.
Award descriptions on USAspending.gov, excluding NSF and NIH, pulled Nov. 2, 2026. The largest single award is $52M from EPA to Fordham University to run a regional environmental-justice grantmaking program. Broader phrases reach much further: “racial equity” appears in $791M of other grants, mostly transit grants that cited the administration’s equity priority.
Private money followed personalities
Apart from Mellon’s three-year grants to 16 university projects, the largest gifts went to centers or programs built around one well-known scholar. Two of those centers closed in 2025 after their founding scholars left; the Howard journalism initiative is still open.
Largest documented private gifts and grants, 2020 to 2024
Includes pledges. “Unitemized remainder” is the gap between the named gifts and the Boston Globe’s reported total of nearly $55 million.
Sources: BU on the Dorsey gift · Boston Globe, Sept. 2023 (the $25M anonymous pledge and the TJX and Rockefeller gifts are reported, not confirmed by BU) · BU audit, Nov. 2023 · MacArthur on the Howard center · MacArthur grants to AAPF · Mellon grant to AAPF · Rockefeller Brothers Fund · Mellon Just Futures · UMN on the Blue Cross gift · KSTP on the closing · BU on the center’s closing
The Center for Antiracist Research raised “more than $50 million,” per BU (the Globe’s higher figure includes pledges). It laid off 19 people in 2023 and closed in June 2025. BU reported a roughly $30 million endowment plus about $20 million more, much of it restricted; we found no public statement on what happens to that money.
Harvard set aside $100 million of its own resources in 2022, partly as an endowment fund, for its Legacy of Slavery initiative (Radcliffe Institute, Diverse). Money held by the institution does not leave with a professor.
Fees paid by public institutions to Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, per a district statement, public records and a contract: Fairfax County schools $20,000 (Fox 5), Arizona State $30,000 plus a $5,000 travel buyout (Goldwater records), Ohio State $12,000 for a Zoom talk (contract).
What the money tells reformers
NIH and NSF money rose from $79M in 2020 to $370M in 2023 and fell 82% by 2026. Policy can switch it off. It cannot switch off what it already built.
Two centers built around one scholar closed in 2025 when the scholar left. Ask where their endowments and unspent gifts go next.
University-funded initiatives, endowed chairs and tenured faculty outlast grants. That is where reform has to reach.
Most federal money arrived through health-disparities research and through hiring, mentoring and student-pipeline programs. Watch those programs’ goals and training requirements.
Method and limits
NIH figures are actual yearly awards from NIH RePORTER for every project whose title or abstract uses one of the terms, with records that use the words in unrelated senses removed and parent and subproject records counted once; about 45% of NIH dollars ($554M) come from records that use a term in the title or more than once. Other-agency figures come from award descriptions on USAspending.gov and miss awards whose public description is short. NSF figures count every award whose title or abstract uses one of the terms, at full estimated value; we read each matching abstract to confirm the term is there. We dropped 32 awards that use the words in an unrelated sense, such as “intersectional” genetic methods in neuroscience, “intersectional teams” meaning interdisciplinary, and the historical decolonization of Africa and Asia. A passing mention still counts in full: about 40% of the dollars ($143M in 202 awards) come from awards that use a term in the title or more than once, and the rest mention it once. Treat dollars as a measure of how far the language spread into funded programs, not money spent on the idea. Estimated values include money not yet paid and grants later terminated; obligated (paid or committed) funds total $302M. “Lived experience” is excluded because it is mostly generic. Corporate training budgets are not included. Other agencies, including the Department of Education, are counted only where their public award descriptions use the terms. Private figures are the largest gifts we could document from funder and university announcements and major news reports; amounts that rest on a single news report are labeled as reported. Mellon’s Just Futures grants were up to $5 million each across 16 university teams. Corporate racial-equity pledges after 2020 (about $50–66 billion, mostly loans and investments) are left out because no reliable split shows how much reached universities.