The former head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy resigned Tuesday from a body established by Congress to oversee the National Science Foundation, saying that the advisory commission had been “strategically neutralized” and “transformed into a ceremonial assemblage.”
Alondra Nelson, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey, announced her immediate departure from the 24-member National Science Board in an op-ed for Time magazine, in which she was critical of the Trump administration’s “creeping normalization of authoritarian approaches to knowledge management and academic freedom.”
As evidence, she pointed to a recent statement attributed to the NSB that she alleged was issued “without the participation or notice of all members of the Board” and said the private portion of its meeting last week had been monitored by Zachary Terrell, a Department of Government Efficiency staffer, who “showed more interest in his water bottle and his cuticles than in the discussion.”
Nelson was appointed by then-President Joe Biden to the NSB and the Library of Congress Scholars Council. She announced her exit from the Library of Congress advisory board in the same editorial. Nelson led the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under Biden. A sociologist by training, she was the first Black person to lead the office.
