[rck]

Not a lawyer, but the NSF clause covering clawbacks is pretty specific:

> NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this award, operate any program in violation of Federal antidiscriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott.

A "prohibited boycott" is apparently a legal term aimed specifically at boycotting Israel/Israeli companies, so unless PSF intended to violate federal law or do an Israel boycott, they probably weren't at risk. They mention they talked to other nonprofits, but don't mention talking to their lawyers. I would hope they did consult counsel, because it would be a shame to turn down that much money solely on the basis of word of mouth from non-attorneys.

[dragonwriter]

I don't think you are misunderstanding the surface requirements, but I think you are mistaking “would eventually, with unlimited resources for litigation, prevail in litigation over NSF cancelling funds, assuming that the US justice system always eventually produces a correct result” with “not at risk”.

[rck]

I can imagine that a very risk averse lawyer would have pointed out the costs and uncertainties of litigation in cases like this. But if I were in their shoes and I really cared about the money, I would have pressed that lawyer to show examples where the clawback clause had been invoked since Jan 20. I'm not sure it's happened, which seems relevant to estimating the actual risk.

Interestingly, they may get more in donations than they would have from this grant, so maybe that needs to be including in the risk estimate as well...