Tag Archives: Trump cuts

Today the Pentagon announced that “The Office of the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) is scrapping its social science research portfolio as part of a broader effort to ensure fiscal responsibility and prioritize mission-critical activities.”

Pentagon Culls Social Science Research, Prioritizes Fiscal Responsibility and Technologies for Future Battlefield

Examples of cancelled research include:

• The Climate-Food-Urbanization Nexus and the Precursors of Instability in Africa
• Social and Institutional Determinants of Vulnerability and Resilience to Climate Hazards in the African Sahel
• Anticipating Costal Population Mobility: Path to Maladaptation or Sociopolitical Stability
• Comparing Underlying Drivers of South-North Migration in Central America and West Africa
• Democracy Quest (couldn’t find this project in minerva)
• The Language of Parasocial Influence and the Emergence of Extremism
• Weaponized Conspiracies
• Beyond the Clock: Understanding Cross-Cultural Temporal Orientation of Military Officers
• Food Fights: War Narratives and Identity Reproduction in Evolving Conflicts
• Future Fish Wars: Chasing Ocean Ecosystem Wealth

Luckily the End of Term Archive and the Wayback Machine have snapshots of the “Minerva Research Initiative”. Maybe it’s just me, but I would think that funding social science research on global migration patterns, climate change impacts, and social trends is extremely important for long-term planning for the “future battlefield.”