{"id":91888,"date":"2026-03-10T11:08:47","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/?p=91888"},"modified":"2026-03-10T11:08:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:08:47","slug":"lawsuit-says-doge-used-chatgpt-to-tag-jewish-themed-humanities-grants-as-dei-before-canceling-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/lawsuit-says-doge-used-chatgpt-to-tag-jewish-themed-humanities-grants-as-dei-before-canceling-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit says DOGE used ChatGPT to tag Jewish-themed humanities grants as \u2018DEI\u2019 before canceling them"},"content":{"rendered":"

By ANDREW LAPIN<\/p>\n

(JTA) \u2014 The Department of Government Efficiency tagged Jewish themes as \u201cDEI\u201d in ChatGPT when searching for federal humanities grants to cancel last year, according to a class-action lawsuit.<\/p>\n

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Rain falls on the National Endowment for the Humanities building (NEH) on April 11, 2025 in Washington, DC. The NEH has begun laying off staff after President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) February 11 executive order to reduce the federal workforce. (Kayla Bartkowski\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The methodology contributed to the cancellation of National Endowment for the Humanities grants to study violence against women during the Holocaust, postwar Soviet Jewish literature and hundreds of other topics, even as the NEH would soon bestow $10.4 million, its largest-ever grant, to the Tikvah Fund, a politically conservative Jewish cultural project.<\/p>\n

The suit brought by the Authors Guild; a member organization for several academic groups including the Association for Jewish Studies; and a number of individual scholars seeks to restore the canceled funding, which comprised around 80% of the NEH\u2019s grants and was cut amid the Elon Musk-led task force\u2019s broader slashing of federal spending last year.<\/p>\n

The suit names the NEH, its acting chair, and several DOGE staffers as defendants, including Justin Fox, who the suit alleges was behind the ChatGPT methodology.<\/p>\n

While DOGE\u2019s use of keywords to cancel research grants was already known, as was the sweep\u2019s effect on Jewish projects, the suit has revealed new details in its methodology, including staffers\u2019 use of ChatGPT and their contention that works dealing with Judaism are a form of DEI.<\/p>\n

In a filing on Friday, attorneys for the plaintiffs said Fox specified that he considered Jewish grants, including those focusing on the Holocaust, part of DEI.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a different grant about violence against women during the Holocaust, Fox testified that ChatGPT properly classified the grants as involving DEI, and thus slated it for termination, because it was \u2018specifically focused on Jewish cultures\u2019 (as in, it was about the Holocaust) and the \u2018voices of the females in that culture,\u2019\u201d reads the filing.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore generally, Fox stated that he identified as DEI any grant about a specific \u2018minority group,\u2019 meaning any particular \u2018ethnicity, culture . . . race or gender or religion,\u2019\u201d the filing went on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a Jewish \u2014 specifically focused on Jewish culture and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture,\u201d Fox stated about one canceled grant for a project about \u201cviolence against women during the Holocaust,\u201d as the latest court filing described it. Fox continued, \u201cIt\u2019s inherently related to DEI for that reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked in a deposition about the criteria for cancellation, the NEH\u2019s acting chair Michael McDonald said he hadn\u2019t known that DOGE used ChatGPT in its selection process, while also noting that he didn\u2019t agree with the assessment that the Holocaust constituted DEI. The final authority for canceling the grants rested with DOGE, not McDonald, depositions indicated.<\/p>\n

Fox, the suit alleges, had created his own \u201cDetection List\u201d of identity-based traits, with separate categories for \u201cCraziest Grants\u201d and \u201cOther Bad Grants,\u201d before running the databases through the generative AI software.<\/p>\n

His prompt, according to the lawsuit: \u201cDoes the following relate at all to DEI? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with \u2018Yes.\u2019 or \u2018No.\u2019 followed by a brief explanation. Do not use \u2018this initiative\u2019 or \u2018this description\u2019 in your response.\u201d The grants that turned up were all terminated, with only a few exceptions.<\/p>\n

Many Jewish-themed projects were among the NEH cancellations, including a grant for \u201cIn the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union,\u201d a translation project that was published in book form last month. The book was singled out during the lawsuit\u2019s discovery phase, which noted, \u201cChatGPT classified this grant as DEI because \u2018[t]his anthology explores Jewish writers\u2019 engagement with the Holocaust in the USSR.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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The book “In the Shadow of the Holocaust” showcases Jewish literature written in the Soviet Union; at right, Jewish women buy flour before Passover in Moscow in 1965. (Keystone-France\/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI find it annoyingly amusing that they weren\u2019t bothering to read the grants themselves \u2014 that they needed a machine to give them some sense,\u201d Sasha Senderovich, a University of Washington professor who co-translated the volume with University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign professor Harriet Murav, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Three-quarters of their NEH grant had already been paid out, Senderovich said. He believes the NEH\u2019s decision to cancel his grant was an example of \u201cauthoritarian logic.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Senderovich used similar language in a Forward story last year following the cuts, an NEH official called the accusation \u201ctendentious\u201d and accused \u201cwokeness and intersectionality\u201d of being the true authoritarians in a text to McDonald, according to the court filing.<\/p>\n

While the DEI justification has generated headlines, Senderovich said, \u201cI think it\u2019s also somewhat misleading to get hung up on what they typed into ChatGPT.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NEH\u2019s final grant cancellation list, he noted, included many projects that had not been flagged as DEI. One such cancellation noted by the plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys \u2014 which DOGE canceled over McDonald\u2019s objections \u2014 was \u201ca grant to advance the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton Hill [sic] University.\u201d Such actions, Senderovich says, show that the agency\u2019s goal was \u201cto destroy the existing projects that supported public humanities, and to wipe the slate clean for a revamped NEH more in line with the MAGA agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murav, for her part, told JTA, \u201cI am reeling from these cascading waves of hatred.\u201d She rejected the idea that Jews should be considered part of DEI: \u201cDEI initiatives seek to redress historic failures in American society. DEI efforts in the world of the university are not aimed at American Jews, because American Jews are over-represented in the professions and in the academy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also canceled by DOGE: a project on \u201cthe untold story of Jewish women\u2019s slave labor during the Holocaust,\u201d according to the suit. Documentary filmmaker Marisa Fox, whose own grant for a project matching that description was canceled, bemoaned the Trump administration\u2019s new priorities in the Hollywood Reporter last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen firsthand how meeting a Holocaust survivor, whether in person or through a project, can dispel the most deep-seated antisemitic beliefs,\u201d Fox \u2014 no apparent relation to the DOGE staffer \u2014 wrote then. \u201cBut if the NEH, NEA and local humanities councils are defunded, the platforms that can bridge divides will be severely limited. And so, too, will our chances of stemming hate\u2019s rising tide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even as staffers appeared to classify Jews as \u201cDEI,\u201d the NEH is moving forward with its support of Tikvah-aligned Jewish scholars. Ruth Wisse, a prominent Yiddish and Jewish cultural scholar, emeritus Harvard professor and senior fellow at Tikvah, is set to deliver the NEH\u2019s annual Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities later this month at what has been rechristened the \u201cTrump Kennedy Center.\u201d Wisse\u2019s lecture is titled \u201cA Message from the \u2018Blue and White\u2019 in the \u2018Red, White, and Blue,\u2019\u201d a reference to the colors of the Israeli and American flags.<\/p>\n

A request for comment to Tikvah CEO Eric Cohen was not returned as of press time. Tikvah had a previously unreported connection to NEH senior leadership, the deposition shows: Dorothea Wolfson, who has worked with Tikvah and directs a program established by a former Tikvah board chair, is married to Adam Wolfson, the NEH\u2019s assistant chair for programs. Adam Wolfson said in the deposition that he had made introductions but wasn\u2019t involved in the grant selection.<\/p>\n

As it shines a spotlight on DOGE\u2019s practices, the suit also brings a different long-simmering debate to the forefront: whether Jews are considered part of \u201cDEI,\u201d the broad suite of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at universities and other institutions that conservatives have railed against.<\/p>\n

Some prominent Jewish voices, including current CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, have argued that DEI practices are at least latently antisemitic because their practitioners do not consider Jews an underrepresented minority. The Trump administration\u2019s crackdown on campus antisemitism has frequently been paired with anti-DEI initiatives.<\/p>\n

Yet at the same time, a broader anti-DEI push on the right has also ensnared Jewish projects, or generated confusion among university administrators as to whether Jewish events should be canceled on campuses where DEI is outlawed.<\/p>\n

Fox, according to investigations of DOGE staffers last year, is a former investment banker whose DOGE tenure also included stints overseeing cuts at USAID and the General Services Administration. His NEH tenure coincided with a directive for that organization to eliminate $175 million in federal grant funding. The DOGE project largely wound down following its architect Musk\u2019s official exit from government a few months into its tenure, decimating numerous federal agencies and jeopardizing some initiatives to benefit Jews.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just ridiculous. You have these kids being told just go in and cut as much as you can,\u201d Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Author\u2019s Guild, told JTA about the DOGE maneuvers. \u201cThey were given no real instruction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The guild is one of several organizations that have co-signed onto the lawsuit, which is requesting the refunding of the grants. It is now awaiting a judge\u2019s ruling on a summary judgment that would avoid a trial.<\/p>\n

Among several individual authors represented by the guild in the suit is Jewish author and independent scholar William Goldstein, founding editor of the New York Times\u2019 Books website, whose NEH grant was meant to fund a biography of Jewish LGBTQ playwright and AIDS activist Larry Kramer.<\/p>\n

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