NASA, DEI: The real point of space exploration is inclusion.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Employees at the federal agency recently received a directive from their headquarters to remove specific words from their websites, including “inclusion,” “diversity,” and “anything specifically targeting women,” among many others. The heart of why children fall so in love with astronauts is because they do amazing things and they do it while saying, “You can do this too, whoever you are, wherever you’re from, whatever you look like, whoever you love, whatever you believe—you can do this too.” Even as adults, we are free to imagine ourselves in these jobs, to follow along with the mundanities and wondrous moments alike of life in space. In practice, there are still “systemic barriers that keep the best and brightest from moving forward” when it comes to minority groups, says Jessie Christiansen, chief scientist of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute. The administration cannot take what makes NASA out of NASA by deleting websites or removing the words “women” or “diversity” or “people of color.” NASA is special because it takes all of us to do this work, to take it in, and to make meaning from it.