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Optimistically, the academics leaving the USA are the ones most ideologically captured, such that their contributions to knowledge production is easily replaceable or even a net negative, as is the case for much of what is purportedly being cut by DOGE. Given how academia has been pushing for the model of uplifting people by putting them into these institutions versus the the model of putting people into these institutions based on their ability to contribute to knowledge production for a couple of generations now, it wouldn't surprise me if even a solid majority of academics could leave the USA and leave the USA's academia better off for it.
Pessimistically, there's enough damage to funding in even in the most productive portions of academia, such that plenty of the academics leaving the USA really do create a "brain drain." I'd guess that academics doing actual good knowledge production are most likely to have the resources and options to pick up their lives and move to another continent, after all.
It really speaks to the immense wealth and prosperity of the western world that academic institutions are able to support so many unproductive and anti-productive academics; is it worth it to get rid of many of those, even at the cost of some loss of the productive ones? Or do we accept those as the cost for maximizing the amount of actual productive academics? The shape of the data probably matters a lot for whatever conclusion one draws. If we're looking at a 10-90 proportion of productive-un/anti-productive academics, and we can cut 50% of the latter while cutting 1% of the former, that sounds like that'd be worth it, whereas if cutting 1% of the latter results in cutting 50% of the former, that probably isn't.
Which then takes us a step back to the fact that we no longer have any credible institutions to tell us what the data looks like. The past decade has seen mainstream journalism outlets constantly discrediting themselves, especially with respect to politics surrounding Trump and his allies, and non-mainstream ones don't have a great track record by my lights, either. So I guess we'll see.
In terms of scientific research of the sort that would make USA stronger relative to other countries, like rocketry or nuclear physics in the past, it seems to me that AI is the most relevant field, where I perceive USA as still being most attractive for AI researchers. At least in the private sector, where a lot of the developments seem to be taking place. The part about that that worries me the most is the actual hardware the AI runs on, which basically universally are produced elsewhere, which is a mostly separate issue from the brain drain.
How fast from "there is no such thing as a limited freedom of speech" to "just fire them"...
About one government.
Public servants are not free. They accept certain restrictions to their freedoms as part of their job. Including a duty of neutrality.
You don't see military men blab about their freedom of movement do you?
There's certainly different views on public service from some insulated neutral administration to politically loyal yes men who get purged every administration.
But as soon as the nominally neutral public servants started having an identifiable political agenda, they were doomed. That is not a defensible position. And certainly not one defensible through free speech.
Indeed the principle forbids compelled speech, and one is compelled to fund the government. The government having a political agenda that isn't determined by constitutionally appointed political processes is unacceptable and bordering on traitorous.
They're free to wage political campaigns on their own dime, in they free time even, not the taxpayer's.
I think I agree, it's just that it is not at all how those purges do happen. The people they are firing are working for legally funded agencies or programs, and they are targeted under the assumption that people working in those agencies or programs are mostly political adversaries
The law is not a substitute for politics.
You can't hide behind a piece of paper forever.
A law is not just a piece of paper, and I don't think you can call "bordering on traitorous" something mandated by law (and not just allowed).
I don't know what it means, given that the government always has a political agenda that isn't determined by any legally defined process. The people in charge are appointed by those processes, what they do with the power they get is up to them as long as they obey the Constitution
I happen to believe that constitutions are not paper but are written in the hearts of men, such that any subversion of their meaning or disbelief in them is more consequential than any formalism.
Betraying the spirit of how people see their nation function is what matters. Not what law is being broken strictly speaking. The Romans were right to see judicial and legislative proceedings as a religious process.
Hence how "He who saves his country breaks no law."
It did not end well for the roman law though
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