A professor of physics and gender studies who has argued that "white empiricism" undermines Einstein’s theory of general relativity now sits on a top physics advisory panel within the Department of Energy, raising questions from fellow scientists about the panel’s integrity and providing a potential target for the Trump administration as it seeks to stamp out DEI within the federal government.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire who has suggested that string theory "failed to succeed" because the field has too many white men, was appointed to the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) under the Biden administration in 2024. The panel advises the Energy Department on research and funding priorities for particle physics, giving it significant say over which projects receive federal support.
Prescod-Weinstein will remain on HEPAP until 2027 unless the Trump administration takes action to remove her. Her role at the Energy Department has rankled some scientists, who say that an institution tasked with directing federal research should not be advised by a woman who, in one 2020 paper, wrote that "Black feminist theory intersectionality should change physics."
Prescod-Weinstein’s "scientific accomplishments seem modest and her racialist and sexist view of science, combined with her uniquely destructive activism, ought to be disqualifying," said Sergiu Klainerman, a mathematician at Princeton University who studies the theory of general relativity. "It seems to me incredible that she has a voice on important decisions concerning the DOE physics division."
Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago, declined to comment on Prescod-Weinstein specifically but said it was important for HEPAP to remain apolitical. "It is essential for political leadership to appoint panel and board members for federal scientific enterprises who are fully committed to promoting excellence and selecting grants and personnel based on merit, and to remove those who are not," Abbot told the Washington Free Beacon. Prescod-Weinstein did not respond to a request for comment.
President Donald Trump has vowed to eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs within the federal government. And while Prescod-Weinstein is not a DEI official, she has espoused some of the most extreme positions associated with DEI.
She first raised eyebrows in 2020 when she argued that a culture of "white empiricism"—in which "only white people" are deemed capable of objectivity—"undermines a significant theory of twentieth-century physics: General Relativity."
Einstein’s theory is rooted in the "idea that there is no single objective frame of reference that is more objective than any other," Prescod-Weinstein wrote in Signs, a gender studies journal published by the University of Chicago. "Yet the number of women in physics remains low, especially those of African descent … Given that Black women must, according to Einstein’s principle … have an equal claim to objectivity regardless of their simultaneously experiencing intersecting axes of oppression, we can dispense with any suggestion that the low number of Black women in science indicates any lack of validity on their part as observers."
Later in the paper, Prescod-Weinstein blamed racism and sexism for the slow pace of scientific discovery in physics. "String theory has failed to succeed in expected ways," she said, "because the community—which is almost entirely male and disproportionately white relative to other areas of physics—is too homogeneous."
The argument attracted widespread ridicule from other scientists, including New York University’s Alan Sokal, the physicist who famously conned an academic journal into publishing a paper arguing that quantum gravity was socially constructed.
Prescod-Weinstein "fails to note the most obvious explanation" for string theory’s morass, Sokal wrote: "String theory has failed to succeed in expected ways because the problems being studied are extraordinarily difficult."
The 2020 paper wouldn’t be the last time Prescod-Weinstein got out over her skis. Two years later, in a blog post written with three other scientists, she alleged that James Webb—the former head of NASA for whom the agency’s high-powered telescope is named—had overseen a purge of gay employees in the 1960s.
She continued making that claim even after it had been debunked in an 89-page report by NASA’s chief historian, Brian Odom. "[N]o available evidence directly links Webb to any actions or follow-up related to the firing of individuals for their sexual orientation," the report said.
After Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, Prescod-Weinstein, who describes herself as "#BlackandSTEM and all Jewish," became a vocal apologist for the anti-Israel protests that roiled American campuses and frequently bled into anti-Semitism.
"I am enormously proud of the students who have sacrificed to fight back against a genocide," she wrote in August. "Let the students protest, and don’t fucking snitch. Free Palestine!"
The post revealed an activist conception of Jewish identity that Prescod-Weinstein had discussed in a 2019 roundtable with the Forward.
"White Jews may not live at the center of the tent of whiteness, but they are still white," she told the Jewish magazine. "When white Jews refuse to acknowledge that they benefit from and participate in white supremacy, they are wasting time that could otherwise be spent upending that white supremacy."
The Energy Department declined to comment on Prescod-Weinstein’s remarks about race and gender, but said that she attended a HEPAP meeting in December where "she contributed to discussion of several topics, all of which were related to agenda items."
One of those topics was the security measures at Fermilab, a national particle physics laboratory overseen by the DOE. During the meeting, which is available online, Prescod-Weinstein expressed concern that the high level of security could exacerbate "anti-Asian" and "anti-Arabic" racism.
"I worry a little bit about the intersection of those kinds of social and structural biases with these kinds of security issues that are put into place," she said. "How is the committee thinking about ensuring that people’s Title VII rights are upheld?"