The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is gutting a landmark project designed to fund social science research with important implications for national security. Dozens of researchers with grants under the Minerva Research Initiative (MRI)—studying violent extremism, disinformation, and threats from climate change, for example—have had their grants terminated in recent days. Participants in the most recent round of applications received an email that the department was “no longer offering the Minerva University Research Competition.”
Pentagon guts national security program that harnessed social science