SPARC Gives Up on “Equity”

Watching DEI being weaponized as an excuse to destroy major portions of the Federal government and threaten higher education generally made me wonder if some of the biggest proponents of “equity” in our information sphere were standing firm or yielding ground.

• The Nelson memo was rife with language now being targeted by the new radicals — words like “equity” and “equitable” appear 13 times in the economic analysis, 8 times in the statement, and 12 times in the policy guidance.
  • Comparatively, the term only occurred once in the 2013 OSTP memorandum, and in that case it was pro forma around a historical legal concept.
  • This is another reason to think the Nelson memo is toast.

Given SPARC’s history of coziness with OSTP, I wondered how SPARC was handling this moment, especially since SPARC received a grant in September 2024 from the Arcadia Fund — where SPARC’s Executive Director serves on the board in an obvious conflict of interest. This $6 million grant was touted in a press release sprinkled with words like “equity” and “equitable.”

Would SPARC use its asserted independence to stand on principle and defy pressures to abandon its overt stances on equity? Or would it compromise itself, abandoning key stances as needed? And if it did abandon key wording by which it defines itself, would it do it as part of its fiscal sponsor’s overall approach? Or on its own?

Apparently, in both cases, it’s the latter — SPARC has self-edited proactively, and its fiscal sponsor appears to have not led the charge.

Here is SPARC’s home page banner on December 20, 2024:

Notice that the word “equitable” is featured, third from the last.

Here is the same banner on January 22, 2025 — two days after the Inauguration:

The edits here appear to have occurred after the Inauguration — but other edits were preemptive, including to SPARC’s “Who We Are” page.

Here is the key “Who We Are” language as of December 19, 2024:

Notice the word “equitable” is featured, echoing their banner, while there is a strong end to the second paragraph decrying “racism, colonialism, and other legacies of injustice.”

Now, fast-forward to January 14, 2025 — or nearly a week before the Inauguration, and see how the language changed:

Gone is the word “equitable,” as well as the language about racism, colonialism, and legacies of injustice.

Given the fact that SPARC is independent within the New Venture Fund (NVF), where Joseph is an employee, there has always been a question of who is really steering SPARC. Everything points to NVF overall, so it’s tempting to think that the preemptive editing of the SPARC site was done at NVF’s behest.

Perhaps it was, but there is no matching purge of similar language from the NVF homepage, where both “equity” and “equitable” appear.

• Spotchecks on PLOS, CSE, and SSP showed no perceptible changes in their wording or DEI commitments.

SPARC has flinched in the face of political headwinds. Since I don’t think US government funding is at risk for SPARC, their purging of language seems a barefaced capitulation made to remain in the good graces of the Trump Administration.

It’s not a good look.