When I taught research methods to undergraduates, I would start by asking whether anyone in the class had $20. Though harder to come by thanks to digital payment options, inevitably someone would produce a $20 bill. I would then ask whether they knew how the bill came to look the way it does. Students would take guesses – often rooted in history and counterfeiting concerns.
While valid, the larger font and picture designs that came about in the 1990s and early 2000s were also the result of research intended to make the bills more accessible for the 3.5 million Americans with low vision. One of those Americans with low vision was a researcher on the team designing the new bill, experimental psychologist Gordon Legge.
These changes made it easier for those low-vision Americans, their families and others around the world to read and use American dollars. In other countries, bills and coins come in different sizes that pertain to their value, making them much easier for people with low vision and the blind to use. Legge’s research saved Americans the cost of having to completely redesign the currency to come in different sizes.
My goal in talking about the currency redesign with my students was to show them how research has shaped their lives, often in ways they didn’t even realize.
Now, following President Donald Trump’s executive order on federal projects related to DEIA – diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility – many research initiatives similar to the bill redesign project will lose funding.
As a social psychologist, some of the studies I’ve worked on would be considered DEIA work. Social psychology as a field grew, in part, during World War II as researchers tried to understand bias-motivated atrocities such as the Holocaust.
DEIA initiatives are projects that seek to reduce discrimination and promote equal opportunities and equal access in multiple spaces such as school and workplaces, as well as in legal, housing and medical systems.
While frequently focused on those who have faced long-standing barriers to these resources – for example, racial and ethnic minorities and people with disabilities – the results of research related to DEIA are often applied to help all people achieve their potential.
The Trump administration’s list of DEIA-related terms is so broad that it’s flagging non-DEIA related work for potential termination. I’ve heard many scientists discuss how their programs of research have been wrongfully included in the anti-DEIA sweeps because they use terms such as “biodiversity.”
However, research that would be considered DEIA work has made influential contributions to society over the past few decades – it raises the question of whether any flagging is actually right. The backlash to anti-DEIA research seems to have started with criticism of DEI-related human resources training in workplaces. But the word list goes well beyond what would appear in HR training.
DEIA…
