NASA Jet Propulsion Lab Parts Ways With Top DEI Officer In Wake of Free Beacon Report

Neela Rajendra stated that deadlines are an impediment to ‘inclusion’.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has stated goodbye to his high variety officer, Neela Rajendra, after the Washington Free Beacon Reported that the lab had modified its title in an try to preserve her.

“Neela Rajendra not contributes [the Jet Propulsion Laboratory]”Lab director Laurie Leshin stated on Thursday in an e-mail with all of the employees.” We’re extremely grateful for the lasting influence she had on our group. We want her the perfect. “

Leshin added that the newly fashioned Workplace of Group Excellence and the success of workers – meant to interchange the Dei staff that Rajendra had led – could be moved to the Workplace of Human Assets.

The workforce comes per week after the Free beacon Reported that Rajendra, who argued that deadlines undermined the inclusion, was not dismissed till the 900 workers who had been dismissed in 2024 because of cutbacks on the funds. Even after NASA had exhausted its central variety workplace in response to the manager orders of the Trump authorities, the Jet Propulsion Lab Rajendra held as head of the success of workers, scrubbing “variety” and “inclusion” from her title however lots of her duties preserve the identical. The brand new workplace would, for instance, supervise ‘affinity teams’, in response to an e -mail of 10 March from the lab, together with the Strategic staff of Black Excellence, or ‘greatest’

Information about Rajendra’s steady work got here after a couple of NASA astronauts have been stranded on the worldwide house station for 9 months. The debacle, involving a defect propulsion system, raised questions on whether or not the funds of the funds of thousands and thousands of {dollars} had translated into safer house or extra competent workers.

In a presentation of 2022, Rajendra criticized the “quick” tradition of SpaceX and “fail to advertise dei”, which linked these traits to the excessive course of the corporate. Three years later it was a SpaceX capsule that saved the stranded astronauts.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory didn’t reply to a request for remark.