I do not know enough about these particular goings-on at NIH, but perhaps one should see this in the political context of the time: With the pandemic raging on, people refusing to vaccinate and furiously denouncing the recommendations to vaccinate and the enforcement, at shops for example, of the waring of masks as the product of yet another Deep State conspiracy, or whatever Trump and Co. were telling them at the time. While at NOAA, for example, scientists were being muzzled when it came to mentioning Global Warming as a real thing.
The origin of the pandemic was also (and still is) also something of political football, so for civil servants, at that time, to communicate their ideas in the way legally required of them, when these were contrary to that of the right-wingers in power at the time, was likely to be taking serious risks.
On the other topic put for consideration Grim with his comments, one may argue on the details of how affirmative action may be best applied depending on where it is, but the decision of the US Supreme Court with the favorable vote of the six right-wing members and the opposition of the three more liberal ones, is a disgraceful proof that this court, as a body, is not working necessarily in the public interest and that the six right-wing members that voted to end this decades old policy, meant to evening an historically tilted playing field, is diligently doing the job that successive Republican Presidents, with the approval of the then Republican majorities in the Senate, have put them in their current positions to do.
I do not know enough about these particular goings-on at NIH, but perhaps one should see this in the political context of the time: With the pandemic raging on, people refusing to vaccinate and furiously denouncing the recommendations to vaccinate and the enforcement, at shops for example, of the waring of masks as the product of yet another Deep State conspiracy, or whatever Trump and Co. were telling them at the time. While at NOAA, for example, scientists were being muzzled when it came to mentioning Global Warming as a real thing.
The origin of the pandemic was also (and still is) also something of political football, so for civil servants, at that time, to communicate their ideas in the way legally required of them, when these were contrary to that of the right-wingers in power at the time, was likely to be taking serious risks.
On the other topic put for consideration Grim with his comments, one may argue on the details of how affirmative action may be best applied depending on where it is, but the decision of the US Supreme Court with the favorable vote of the six right-wing members and the opposition of the three more liberal ones, is a disgraceful proof that this court, as a body, is not working necessarily in the public interest and that the six right-wing members that voted to end this decades old policy, meant to evening an historically tilted playing field, is diligently doing the job that successive Republican Presidents, with the approval of the then Republican majorities in the Senate, have put them in their current positions to do.