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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25679 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 18, 2025

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As someone in the sciences (doing my PhD at Hopkins) these cuts have hit us quite hard. The NSF has basically been dismantled, and the NIH funding system has become much more restrictive. To me, none of this makes a whole lot of sense. These grants were pennies on top of the giant stacks of dollars that the military, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security represent. Yes you get a bunch of duds, but a lot of the research funded has an extremely high ROI. I get that Trump wanted to shut down "woke" research, but he could have done that without cutting overall funding (just mandate that the NIH can't fund transgender research, shutdown the diversity grants, etc.).

This is also bad because it explicitly politicizes scientific research. Which I can't really blame the Trump administration for. It was the idiot professors and students who tried to make the department officially pro-Palestine, admit a bunch of diversity PhD students who aren't up to snuff, and antagonize the administration because they thought Trump was a fascist who started this whole thing.

So it seems to me once again a case of Trump punishing the people who tried to screw him over, rather than something that genuinely would be the best move for the country.

I get that Trump wanted to shut down "woke" research, but he could have done that without cutting overall funding (just mandate that the NIH can't fund transgender research, shutdown the diversity grants, etc.).

Could you? One of the morbid bits to this saga has been how often people have pointed to what they saw as clearly misaimed anti-DEI efforts that must have been motivated by an LLM or a bad grep, and then oops.

Yes, there are research areas with neither blatant political abuse or outright woke goals. But the people who want to do the woke research can, as warned, lie: there’s far less signal than anyone thinks to a research’s quality from how sober the grant application.

I get that Trump wanted to shut down "woke" research, but he could have done that without cutting overall funding (just mandate that the NIH can't fund transgender research, shutdown the diversity grants, etc.).

The problem is that there isn't only some single class of "diversity grants". Every grant has some sort of DEI stuff written into it, including the main IPAM grant. It's a Gordian knot tying research to DEI, and there's only one way to deal with those.

Most of the DEI requirements I am aware of are additional diversity statements tacked on to the ends of grant applications that could easily be eliminated by the funding agencies. That and getting rid of all the unncessary scholarships for women and minorities, which are easy enough to identify, would have achieved more or less the same results as far as fighting wokeness is concerned with minimal collateral damage.

How?

The diversity statements didn't appear there out of the ether, they are heing pushed forward by people with inatitutional power. Demanding that they merely stop requiring these statements, and change the names of "women's scholarships" to "totally not women's scholarships" will result in no substantial change other than the people who set up this system being marginally more quiet until the next Dem administration.

The cancelled grants can just as easily be reinstated by the next administration. The only permanent effects in that case would be years of lost work on those projects (perhaps majority useless, but some worthwhile) and some scientists leaving for Europe or China, while the net effects on DEI would be the same as in my proposal. If you know of some damage that has been done to academia that can't be undone 3 years from now, I'm curious to know what it is.

The fear that another Trump-esque administration will come to power and do the same thing again will surely remain.

I have a US mathematician friend who is entirely apolitical, but joined the DEI committee at his department (where he helped them implement DEI measures, screen applicants etc., not to mention the implicit lending of legitimacy) a few years ago out of the simple consideration that he was coming up for tenure review and it was a no-brainer to do this simple thing that would greatly improve his chances. There are, I figure, many cases like that. If it stops being a no-brainer career booster and starts being a gamble (will get favoured by the system, but might also get targeted for reprisal in the future if the wrong administration is in power), I imagine far fewer will go for it.

while the net effects on DEI would be the same as in my proposal.

Again, how?

If UCLA gets their funding cut for woke recruitment practices, but other universities bend the knee, you don't think that creates an incentive for UCLA to clean up house, or doesn't boost the relative position of universities that aren't insane?

Only temporarily. The next Democratic administration will simply praise all the universities that stood up against "the war on science" and move them to the top of the pecking order, while those that bent the knee will be shunned and see their funding cut in a mirror image of what's happening now.

Only temporarily.

That's already a few years of personell changes and shifting the balance of power within the university system. It can be rolled back, but can't be undone at the snap of the fingers, and is therefore superior the solution you are proposing, that doesn't change anything except for the packaging.

rather than something that genuinely would be the best move for the country

professors and students who tried to make the department officially pro-Palestine, admit a bunch of diversity PhD students who aren't up to snuff, and antagonize the administration

This is also bad because it explicitly politicizes scientific research.

So to avoid politicizing scientific research, we should water down the quality of the researchers and let a bunch of activists take over the institutions, and that would genuinely be the best move for the country?

Am I reading that right?

Sorry I think my response was a bit confusing because I don't want to pin the blame solely on Trump for this. Universities have played with fire for a long time and somehow seem surprised to be getting burnt. I just lament that the administration seems to be cutting down the tree rather than pruning some of the worst branches. We can punish woke without destroying the research apparatus.

Your problem is thinking there is a healthy tree at all. There are a tiny number of healthy branches. The roots and trunk are diseased and rotten.

The tree needs to go, dig up the dirt, salt the hole and burn anything still crawling.

There are no good branches. APAB.

You must be well aware that comments such as yours are clear examples of "waging the culture war", something the thread rules explicitly ask users to avoid.

This also falls under the rule against making "sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike."

You've been warned in the past for doing this, but it's been a while, so I'll leave it at this.

There's a colourable argument that trying to sort the good from the bad - particularly within the uni bureaucracy as it exists - is a poor cost-benefit.

There's not a colourable argument that there is no good. That's just pretending the debate is one-sided. A third of voters with postgrad degrees voted for Trump. Those people are probably not on-board with the SJ agenda. There will also be SJ-opponents among those who did not vote, and even among those who voted for Harris; if I were a US citizen, I would probably have voted for Harris simply because I think Trump is too old to lead the free world in a potential WWIII and because WWIII almost certainly implies the semi-permanent fall of SJ anyway.

The institutions are weaponised against you; that's true. Many, perhaps most, of the people there are your enemies; that's true. God knows I feel like I'm in enemy territory every time I pass a bulletin board in a university and it's plastered with SJ signs. But that's just it; I do pass bulletin boards in universities, and I despise those signs. Not literally everyone in academia is your enemy.

A third of voters with postgrad degrees voted for Trump. Those people are probably not on-board with the SJ agenda.

While JT may well be opposed to everyone that went through college, I'm guessing the percentage that works for universities is much, much lower than 1/3.

But that's just it; I do pass bulletin boards in universities, and I despise those signs.

I am glad to have gone to university in less fraught times, and that I do not have the daily temptation to just remove the signs.

While JT may well be opposed to everyone that went through college, I'm guessing the percentage that works for universities is much, much lower than 1/3.

That is fair, somewhat; I would anticipate the split among professors being somewhat more tilted (though not as much as you'd expect, at least among the STEM faculty).

However, I didn't say "college degree". I said "postgrad degree". As in, basic tertiary degree and then another degree on top (e.g. PhD, Masters, MD, and whatever law is).

Not literally everyone in academia is your enemy.

I'll be the judge of who my enemies are. Literally every single person in that status hierarchy is my enemy. They belong to a heretical cult of a now-dead social religion and nothing short of full destruction will slow their war on science, reason and western civ. In the same manner that a hostile military must be broken before peace terms can be decided, so must academia be levelled before the social contract can be redrawn.

My advice is not to go down with such a leaky, corrupt and evil ship. Academia declared war on society. Society has started to notice. And people like me are just waiting for the right time to hole this bitch below the waterline, sling the grappling hooks and raise the Jolly Roger.

This is not a war and no one is participating in some holy revolution. This is not what war looks like. Social institutions do not function like militaries, nor is it wise/necessary to 'break' or 'level' the ones you don't like or which have issues. This is the same fallacy that leftists who want to defund the police engage in.

The leftists who thought it was a war were routing their opposition right up until the right decided it was one as well. Perhaps they were correct that it was a war -- or perhaps if one side treats it as a war, it is one.

That's one way to interpret events, sure. I don't subscribe to it

Not literally everyone in academia is your enemy.

And?

I try to avoid enemy/friend distinctions for many reasons. I am not adopting or revealing any preference here. This is a specific point about the metaphor.

But if you are going to adopt/concede an 'enemy institution' paradigm in the first place, there's no particular relevance of 'not literally everyone is your enemy' beyond the utility of those not-enemies to help target the enemies. If they aren't, or can't, then even if they better qualify as collateral rather than collaborators, neither category is enough to merit any principle against targeting the enemy institution. If their presence is used to claim the institution cannot be targeted because of the damage to the non-enemies, this is merely the use of human shields. Human shields are not protection of legitimate military targets. This is especially true if they are willing human shields, voluntary or paid or otherwise.

If their presence is used to claim the institution cannot be targeted because of the damage to the non-enemies, this is merely the use of human shields. Human shields are not protection of legitimate military targets.

I believe I said that.

There's a colourable argument that trying to sort the good from the bad - particularly within the uni bureaucracy as it exists - is a poor cost-benefit.

But @JTarrou made a very specific claim that the others on team "burn it all down" have not made in this thread:

There are no good branches. APAB.

This is why I responded to him and not to the others on that team, because that claim is false; not all professors are, in fact, "bastards". I claim the right to, as politely as I can, correct those on this board who say false things (NB: I have no strong opinions about whether JTarrou is lying vs. hyperbolising vs. ignorant), even when those false things are not especially relevant.

All professors contribute to and derive their living from participating in a fundamentally hostile institution, and the financial indenture of the student body and taxpayers which fund it.

A lot of plumbers and housewives and kindergarten teachers died in Dresden. They were all the enemy. Those who can't grasp this basic concept have no business in war.

When you’re a marine in Iwo Jima, you light fires at every cave entrance after you’ve thrown 3-4 grenades in. Then you move onto the next one. And the next one.

There’s nothing worth saving in there that just won’t slow you down and get your people killed.

That’s just where we are in the culture war. How could anyone be surprised at this point?

Dude, chill

You aren't on Iwo Jima. You're on an Internet board with rules against waging the culture war.

Dial it back, please.

Huh. I rated that one Neutral, because I read it as an obvious metaphor for "raze the institution quickly, ignore the regrettable collateral damage, move on to the next head of the hydra", which is a solid - if bitter - policy prescription and doesn't go the "YOU WERE ALL GUILTY AND YOU WERE ALL LEGITIMATE TARGETS!" route of indiscriminately demonising whole groups.

On reflection, I can see that if one read it literally, or even as ambiguous, that puts a very different spin on things.

Don’t worry; I could tell that it was metaphor. Nobody wants to waste hand grenades in this economy.

But if you don’t think “there’s nothing worth saving in there” counts as indiscriminate demonization, what does?

Well, the actual sentence was:

There’s nothing worth saving in there that just won’t slow you down and get your people killed.

It's a bit broken, but I interpreted that as roughly

"There might be friendlies in there, but the time and (expected-value) expense in lives of going in there outweighs the value of saving them."

There's a saying that "the exception proves the rule", i.e. if you note that no X are not Y (contrapositive: all X are Y), then this implies the existence of X that are Y. This is not how formal logic defines things, but most people consider it implicit in common parlance (indeed, one of the most common exact-words tricks is to violate this convention). And certainly, even in formal logic, saying that all X are Y does not imply that there aren't X that are Y. Hence, it's not saying there's nothing... saveable? Good? ...in there, just nothing worth the cost of saving.

Nobody wants to waste hand grenades in this economy.

Well, I mean, not quite nobody.

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This is by no means super important but usually when you guys ban someone you put the length of the ban in the mod tag comment, didn't see one here but he does have the "user was banned for this comment" flag.

Not sure if in error or what but wanted to call attention.

Toa is correct. It's a one-day ban.

It shows up in the moderation log as a one-day ban.

If you were part of the Trump administration, how would you punish academics for their woke excesses without negatively impacting useful research? The federal government does not directly control how universities manage their own affairs and any penalties assessed on the universities as a whole can be cast as damaging research in some way.

The only thing that I can think of is some sort of rule like "any university that violates XYZ policy automatically becomes federal property", which would allow the federal government to directly fire and hire, but nationalizing the universities comes with a million other problems.

Cut federal grants for diversity, withhold federal grant money from universities that don't toe the line on controlling the woke issues on campus. This is the stance that the admin took with Harvard and has served to keep Hopkins from acting up too much.

Pair this with maintaining the levels of federal funding support and you get reallocation of funds to less woke universities and less woke academics at woke-er universities putting pressure on their departments to crack down on dissidents. This is what we had here at Hopkins where the pro-Palestinian protests were shut down by the President because he was scared that this would result in a Harvard-like situation.

Cut federal grants for diversity, withhold federal grant money from universities that don't toe the line on controlling the woke issues on campus. This is the stance that the admin took with Harvard and has served to keep Hopkins from acting up too much.

I'm confused. Is this not the exact thing that this whole deal with Tao and UCLA is about? The federal government revoking a DEI grant? It may have kept Hopkins from acting up, but it definitely hasn't stopped Tao from kicking up a storm.

I agree with you that this is a decent approach, but to me it seems that it is also more or less what the Trump administration is currently doing.

Yes this does seem to be the case with UCLA. I'm complaining about axing the NSF and reducing the NIH budget.

That makes sense. I think I lost track of the thread's context at some point.

I don't know much about changes to the NSF and NIH so I won't comment there.

That makes more sense. Thank you.

The problem is the whole ecosystem is corrupt and tries to launder political propaganda by citing to things like Tao's work and other stuff like it. This is what happens when good people operate within a bad system, they become part of the problem.

This is also bad because it explicitly politicizes scientific research.

If it's paid for by taxes it's political.

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