Biden s Dubious Pick for Energy Research | City Journal
President Joe Biden has now taken the push for diversity in STEM to a new level. His candidate to head the Department of Energy s Office of Science, the largest funder of the physical sciences in the U.S., is a soil geologist at the University of California, Merced. She has no background in physics, the science of energy, or the energy sector. She has never held a position as a scientific administrator. The typical head of DOE s Office of Science in the past has had managerial authority in the nation s major physics labs and has been a physicist himself, Science reports. The new nominee s only managerial experience consists of serving since 2020 as an interim associate dean of UC Merced s graduate division.
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is, however, a black female who has won accolades for her work to promote diversity in science, as Science puts it. Berhe would be the first black woman to head the $7 billion office, and that is reason enough, according to the diversity mantra, why she should oversee X-ray synchrotrons, the development of nuclear weapons, and ongoing research on nuclear fusion. Her nomination requires Senate confirmation; if Berhe will not commit to hiring and grantmaking on the basis of scientific expertise alone, irrespective of race and sex, senators should vote her appointment down.
Maybe the plan is to make the Chinese Communists laugh themselves to death.