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TracingWoodgrains has a thread on the topic here: https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1957878299146993821
He also wrote a blog in 2016 entitled "It ought to be common knowledge that Donald Trump is not fit for the presidency of the United States of America". He might want to put forth the image of a politically neutral mathematician now that his funding is at risk, but that does not reflect his previous behavior.
https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2016/06/04/it-ought-to-be-common-knowledge-that-donald-trump-is-not-fit-for-the-presidency-of-the-united-states-of-america/
link to the letter https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/scientists-condemn-racist-violence these cut have to do with UCLA's complicity in failing to denounce antisemitism, not the letter ? Had he not signed the letter, presumably his funding would have still been cut?
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Are you saying the government should punish one of the greatest mathematicians alive because he expressed his political opinions on things and the current leader doesn't like it?
Man I thought woke cancel culture was insane in their assault on academic freedom and free speech on campuses but this seems to be going up a whole nother level.
Absolutely, you step into the ring you should expect to get hit back. Stay the fuck out of politics if you're not a political figure.
But had he not signed the letter, would his funding not been cut? The stated justification by the trump administration has to do with UCLA failing to adequately police antisemitism on its campus, not wokeness.
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So you explicitly agree with the woke leftists that professors and researchers with "bad opinions" should be punished even if it's not irrelevant to their work?
Define "bad opinions."
I don't think Tao should be defunded for this alone, but neither should he be defended as a neutral apolitical little guy.
Every academic that has used the word "whiteness" should be treated the same way the universities would treat, say, David Duke.
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Yes, until the other side commits in a way that means their violation of trolerance will cost them in power then absolutely. If one side pays no price for punishing those with "bad opinions" they're going to do more of it when they return to power.
So how do you feel about a situation like this? https://x.com/pjaicomo/status/1958124476001861948
Do you believe the left would be justified with removing Tom Macdonald for his "the devil is a democrat" speech because the right wing started with saying legal residents don't have protections?
I think no, but "the other side started it" being a valid reason to betray what you previously said seems like it would apply here too then.
Of course. I believe we need another 30 years war like cycle to remind everyone why the tech of liberal tolerance was developed in the first place.
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Have you heard of this little thing called freedom of speech?
He still has tenure. the funding can be terminated at will
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He's not being silenced or arrested. What is the old XKCD line, that's not your free speech rights being violated, that's just someone showing you the door.
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He's not being thrown in prison. As fond as I am of defending free speech, free speech is not the right to receive a check from the government to subsidize your tongue.
right, he still has tenure
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No, but it is the right to keep your non-political job whatever political opinions you espouse outside of that job. If Tao stopped midway through math lectures to rant to his students about his personal opinions, that'd be one thing. But if his political advocacy on his own time does not interfere with doing his job as an academic, then it is a violation of free speech to jeopardize his career on the basis of his political speech, no different from when left-wings cancel-mobs do it.
I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Open letters signed as part of UCLA faculty are "part of the job," and complaining about his funding is... job-adjacent, surely?
If he was being attacked and defunded for attending a protest off campus and explicitly not as a university representative, you'd have a stronger point.
No. His job is doing high-level math + teaching it. That is what he's paid for, and his career should only depend on how well and how conscientiously he does that. What he chooses to do with his reputation and credentials is up to him; as long as he is fulfilling those obligations, nothing about his non-math-related behavior should be able to dislodge him.
When you're using your credentials and writing as a representative of the university, you are representing the university. He didn't sign it as "Terry Tao, regular schmo" or "Terry Tao, Fields Medal Winner," he signed as "Terence Tao, UCLA professor along with 300ish other UCLA professors."
The university didn't complain because they supported the cause, but a professor doing that for something a university doesn't like will often get at least a slap on the wrist for misusing their connection to the university.
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Snarkly: As I've heard it described, it doesn't include freedom from consequences.
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Oppressing right wingers is OK, but the leftists can't be touched because they're more valuable human capital? Anti-egalitarian. I like it.
In all honesty, what would a government do to him? Cut his government funding? If he's that good, he can probably find alternate sponsors.
Edit: Also, holy hell, you got a lot of downvotes for that. Undeserved IMO; your point seemed entirely reasonable to make.
They've gone so far towards being egalitarian they've become anti-egalitarian.
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In what way is it a higher level? The other camp has actually gotten people fired for expressing political opinions that seem pretty commensurate with the pro-progressive noises Terry has made. He is not even getting fired or having his career seriously threatened, but is just being subjected to some inconvenience (much greater for his students). Even the fallout to students is not without mirror precedent: at the US university where I did my PhD, a grad student I knew was prevented from graduating even with a different nominal advisor purely to put pressure on his advisor who got #MeTooed (in an incredibly fishy case) but was fighting back.
It is understandable that Terry is complaining (and, indeed, he owes it to his students to make this effort), but he has made his bed.
So you explicitly agree with the woke leftists that professors and researchers with "bad opinions" should be punished even if it's not irrelevant to their work?
I don't understand why you are just ignoring the question - it wasn't intended as rhetorical.
Anyhow, my answer to this question is no, but as with many other things (e.g. war crimes, military invasions...) I would rather live in a world where 2+ competing parties do it than in one where only 1 party does it, even if having 0 parties do it is best.
To make it very explicit for the situation at hand: not punishing any researchers for opinions unrelated to their work is best, but punishing researchers of all teams for opinions unrelated to their work is second best. (Not even a distant second best - as a working scientist I honestly think the science community would be much improved if all scientists trying to play at being politicians or "public intellectuals" were summarily kicked out)
it's because he is concern trolling the lot of you.
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So how do you feel about a situation like this? https://x.com/pjaicomo/status/1958124476001861948
Do you believe the left would be justified with removing Tom Macdonald for his "the devil is a democrat" speech because the right wing started with saying legal residents don't have protections?
It seems to me that this line of logic would be just as valid.
Personally I think no, but "the other side started it" being a valid reason to betray claimed principles would justify the next Dem admin removing Tom from the country.
Yeah, I think that looks like a pretty good mirror image, and the US Left would be quite justified in deporting him.
(Whether it would be a good tactical move is another question. The visibly pro-Right immigrants in the US can probably be counted on one hand, so chances are the Right would just see that, take the implied deal and later expel pro-Left immigrants with far less restraint even if it means all the other three pro-Right immigrants get expelled too)
(Why do you even think I would have personal preferences in favour of one of the tribes here? I'm a European who previously spent time in the US on a student visa, and if I went again and my motteposting somehow came to the attention of the DHS it would almost certainly be the Right kicking me out for the anti-Israel component of it if nothing else)
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It would be nice if you answered his question before asking a follow-up. Particularly when it has nothing to do with the case we're discussing.
There's no point in explaining why it's another level of wrong for government to target scientists and researchers funding over wrongthink if they're perfectly fine with that level of government suppression over academic freedom to begin with.
But there is a point when:
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Not should. Must.
No peaceful government is possible if the power of censorship and control over truth is only available to one side.
When the left picked that sword up, they were warned endlessly that this would have consequences once they would inevitably lose power. There you go.
So you explicitly agree with the woke leftists that professors and researchers with "bad opinions" should be punished even if it's not irrelevant to their work?
Will you be upset if the left comes back into power and explicitly targets all conservatives with funding cuts after you've said it's now ok to do?
Progressives already do that, and have loudly proclaimed for years it is OK to do. So I will not be upset because it is expected behavior from them.
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What conservatives are there? Certainly none in academia. The left already uses its power to purge conservatives as much as they possibly can.
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I believe in free speech and other such natural rights, so it should not happen. I also think that
This isn't about moral rectitude, it's about what's possible. You can't start shooting kulaks and demand they not shoot back because God commanded that thou shalt not kill.
I'm simply informing you of what's possible in the political climate created by such acts. Which is exactly what I was warning everyone would happen ten years ago.
The left wing has thoroughly destroyed the classical liberal fort on its advance, and now that the advance has stopped, it can't hide behind its walls whilst retreating. Actions have consequences.
Well you say that and yet nothing in the following sentences expresses any idea that it is wrong to target researchers and scientists for their personal political beliefs. In fact all the effort seems dedicated to defending the idea of targeted wrongthink suppression.
Do you really want me to tell you that universities should not exist as such because they are State funded propaganda machines and thus undermine the very foundations of truth seeking by connecting it to power, and thus by their very structure can only be tools of modernist totalitarianism?
We can get into it. But it's off topic. And you don't seem to understand the difference between description and prescription anyways so it's a non starter.
"You can't understand the nature of politics and hold Liberal ideals" is a nonsense argument. Bertrand de Jouvenel exists. My commitment to liberty does not require me to hold any delusions about the necessity for the leader of a coalition to punish his enemies and reward his friends.
Recognizing the nature of the world is only supporting its tragedy in the mind of a child.
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Yeah, I'm thinking he should be punished. It's not his place as a mathematician to tell me how orange man bad. I'm not even inclined to care about his supposed groundbreaking work if he has martyr his supposed scientific reason on the altar of woke.
You agree with the woke leftists that professors and researchers with "bad opinions" should be punished even if it's not irrelevant to their work?
He's not a neutral party. I actually would also like whole divisions of X studies wiped off the universities, so my views aren't neutral either.
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Nah, I just don't appreciate his rhetorical approach here. It comes across as disingenuous. He's trying to pull the "wise man above the fray descends from his ivory tower to bestow wisdom upon the masses" when in reality he has been down here flinging shit along with the rest of us.
In terms of the actual issue, his funding was not specifically cut, and Tao making this all about him comes across as somewhat egotistical. UCLA's funding was cut for what appear to be fairly legitimate reasons. For example, they are still racially discriminating in college admissions, in flagrant violation of the recent SCOTUS decision. This comment goes into more detail: https://www.themotte.org/post/2732/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/357296?context=8#context
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Even if your portrayal of what he said was accurate, that is not "a whole nother level", it's "more of the same", and perhaps even "way more mild". But it's not accurate. He wasn't punished for his political views, his university was for their discriminatory practices. Tao was portraying himselfnas politically neutral, and the above comment was pointing out he's lying.
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Signing an open letter and writing an article that attacks Trump is pretty innocuous behavior, in my opinion. Is there any evidence that he tried to, for example, cancel anyone?
Surely the contents of the open letter would matter, wouldn't it? Would signing an open letter committing oneself to help the 4th Reich take over the United States also be pretty innocuous?
Of course, this letter isn't that. Rather, it's an open letter espousing an ideology that's specifically anti-logic, which I don't think is innocuous for a mathematician. The most innocuous and, IMHO quite likely, explanation for his behavior is that he unthinkingly followed sociopolitical pressure to sign that document. And caring so little about what he puts his signature on that he's willing to sign off on a belief system that rejects the very basis of what he's studying is at least as concerning as it is innocuous. If a bus driver was known to openly support an ideology that rejected the notion of left and right or red and green, the bus company would be justified in not considering that all that innocuous, even if the bus driver was merely doing it to look cool for his peers.
Yes, it would be. The United States is so far away from being taken over by either communists or by Nazis that an open letter in support of either of those groups would be innocuous.
You are fighting the hypothetical in a way that seems in bad faith. The ideology in question that refuses to be named does not share this characteristic of "anywhere near as far away from taking over US as Nazis or Communists;" it has already taken over the institution in question, i.e. academia, and if it hasn't, then it's certainly caused severe transformations to it, with plans to make even more. If signing off on Nazism or Communism is "innocuous" only or primarily due to circumstance of these ideologies being so weak as to be unworthy of consideration, that certainly doesn't apply to this real case.
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Attacking Trump on his private blog as a candidate for President is Tao's right as an American citizen. Putting a pseudo-mathematical spin on that (as he does) to try to back his political views with his mathematical expertise is a version of getting Eulered, but while it's bad epistemology that's all it is.
Signing an open letter like that one, on his authority as a professor of mathematics at a university -- a public university at that -- is politicizing the institution. When people with the opposite politics get in power, it is perfectly reasonable for them to decide that no, they do not want to provide government funding for institutions that are fighting them politically. The letter isn't innocuous at all.
I agree! And I agree that the open letter is pushing it, and I find the letter pretty obnoxious.
I think that Tao by signing the open letter was, deliberately or not, unfairly taking advantage of the fact that non-leftist academics who signed an open letter supporting different politics would possibly expose themselves to career-endangering consequences.
That said, I still think that @Sunshine's take goes overboard. Identifying your own political side with America as a whole and calling for the wholesale demolition of the other side is a bit much of a reaction to what amounts to an academic most people have never even heard of putting his name on a politicized open letter.
A few posts ago you said it was "pretty innocuous behavior".
Sunshine's post is way over the top. But it's a lot closer to the truth than "UCLA, Tao, and his colleagues did nothing wrong"
Just because I find it obnoxious doesn't mean that I don't find it innocuous. I observe obnoxious political activities all the time, coming from both the left and the right, without necessarily thinking that it is any sort of serious political threat.
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The "left" ran a profoundly successful multi-decade propaganda campaign to convince the entire country that racism is quite close to the worst possible sin. Obviously not everyone has bitten, but overwhelmingly the general population on the left AND right buy it. Now the left doesn't think what they are doing is racist, but a good chunk of the middle and the right do - and they've been trained to tear down people and institutions that support racism by the left.
This some combination of not accepting immoral behavior, being held to your own standards becoming a problem, and inevitable consequences of your decisions.
If someone believes that anyone who holds the belief that an ethic group is scum deserves what's coming to them and believes an ethnic group is scum....you are doing what they asked when you come for them.
Add in the meta game aspect of tanking trust for authority leading to bad outcomes in society? These people deserve what is happening to them, and more.
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I've heard of none. Why do you believe that should matter?
Most people here are familiar with the Herbert quote:
That is a reasonable approximation of my model of Blue Tribe. Over the past ten years, I've watched Progressivism attempt a full-fledged social revolution through methodical weaponization of our society's institutions and centers of value. The revolution they attempted was merciless and insane, caused incalculable harm, and cannot at this date truly be said to have failed. They are on the back foot, momentarily, but they very clearly have learned nothing and will go right back to their revolutionary march the instant they see an opportunity to do so. They must not be given that opportunity. Their political movement must be entombed, their centers of power torn down and destroyed, any possible route back to social dominance foreclosed.
It seems madness to me to pretend that, having seen what we have seen, we should go back to "the way things were before", turn our backs and let them have another swing at our necks. If forestalling that threat means a few years of reduced scientific output, so be it. That is a small price to pay compared to another Blue offensive. To the extent that "neutral" institutions wish to protect themselves from the depredations of unrestrained culture war, common knowledge is necessary that such a defense is achieved through rigorous neutrality, not unlimited Blue appeasement.
You appear to be approaching this from a frame of "how can we remove the worst outliers from the academic system, so that we can get back to the work at hand". I approach it from the angle of "Even ignoring the worst outliers, the Academy has become a vast system for converting taxpayer money into Progressive political power and social control". "Cancelation" is a single facet of that machine. The machine, as a whole, must go.
Whenever I hear cries of "help help I'm being repressed for my speech" from the left, I think about Masterpiece Cakeshop and the neverending litigation the owner has been put through, the mocking phrase "freeze peach," the national ACLU changing its guidelines for case selection to avoid representing right-wingers (that internal memo from way back in 2018), state chapters of the ACLU refusing to represent right-wing groups, and the infamous xkcd comic about being shown the door. They demonstrated their true principles when they had power and I have no reason to think anything has changed.
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Well, how is it not also a reasonable approximation of the Red Tribe also? The sad reality is that the quote really should go, "when I am weaker, I ask for freedom because that is according to the principles we all claim to have; when I am stronger, I take away freedom because that is according to the principles we actually all share".
The progressives, in their many years of relative weakness, had me bamboozled; I'm not inclined to repeat that mistake with the other camp now in the #resistance.
I don't think so, but I am exceedingly aware that I have no way to prove it to skeptical Blues or Greys. My perception of the Red side is that what we want is to not be ruled by Blues, rather than to rule Blues. I've been advocating for a national divorce for many years now, and I'm hopeful that this is the direction we're currently moving in. I don't want to fight Blues for control of social institutions. To the degree that institutions are shared and therefore must be fought over, I would rather deconstruct those institutions and allow the value that fed them to be diverted to new institutions that are not shared. That applies to Academia, the education system generally, the courts, the police, entertainment, everything.
I believe that the whole culture war, everything we're seeing, is because we can't get away from each other. And an unfortunate consequence is that much is shared, and must be fought over; there's only one presidency, only one congressional majority, only one Supreme Court. All of those have to go away, and it seems clear to me that the most straightforward way to make them go away is to capture them, contaminating them with Redness from the Blue perspective and thus mobilizing Blue Tribe to attack their legitimacy. More unfortunately, this is likely indistinguishable from seizure of power from anyone who doesn't already buy it, even without inherent human bias. If there were a way to avoid that, I'd be for it. It doesn't seem to me that there is, though.
For what it's worth, I try at least to be straightforward as I can in my own communication. I don't believe in "freedom" or "human rights", "free speech" or any of the old liberal touchstones. I don't recognize appeals to these ideas when others make them, and I try my best to avoid appealing to them for my own side as well. I believe they are fundamentally incoherent concepts outside an environment of values-coherence; they are never going to work across tribal lines. Both Reds and Blues want good things and not bad things. Expecting otherwise is foolishness.
Well, you could cut out the middleman and simply secede. Didn't work so well the first time, I'll grant you, but, like… if Trump announced some kind of federal split live on air tomorrow, do you really think that ends with a boots-on-the-grounds, millions-dead civil war? Somehow I can't picture that. If it gets anywhere, I'd expect something more like a messy, drawn-out, infrastructure-wrecking, but ultimately-bloodless Brexit-type scenario. Lawfare, not warfare. Who knows how it would end, but starting from your premises, it seems worth a shot.
Outright dissolution of the union seems like a bad idea for a lot of reasons. A better plan is to deconstruct federal authority and the institutions from which it springs, such that the states can each have their way within their own borders. "sanctuary city" and "sanctuary state" ideology is an obvious strong movement in this direction, and has been developing for decades now. Flowering defiance of Federal law is a welcome and flourishing development; it cements the norm that federal law is and should be toothless, and it incentivizes those on the other side to do likewise.
If this continues and we are fortunate, the culture war might well be defused as the tribes sort themselves into mutually-exclusive borders and then more or less leave each other alone. An actual de jure breakup of the nation seems to me neither necessary nor wise; who gets the nukes?
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To some extent you're right, and it's just human nature, but I also think that the Blues have some universalist drive that the Reds don't.
The most obvious case is Commies insisting that you can't just implement their system in one country, and show the world how obviously superior it is, because something something capitalism ia a global system. But even basic libs have the same instinct, everytime I saw someone propose "why don't you do your thing in your jurisdiction, we do ours in our, and we leave each other alone" someone would show up saying "this would be too cruel for people under your jurisdiction". I don't think all Blues believe this, but 100% of the time the person saying it would be Blue, and other Blues would never give them any pushback.
Eh, this seems very dependent on whom you include under "Reds". If the actual (historical) Commies count as Blue, then surely their Yankee rivals should count as Red - and the Cold War era was rife with missionary wars to bring Democracy and Capitalism to other countries. You can stretch the line into the past all the way to Matthew Perry forcing Japan open to international trade, and into the future at least to Iraq, which was sold by its Red cheerleaders as Operation Iraqi
LibertyFreedom. Now, you could argue that all the democracy-bombing was window dressing and each instance was actually motivated by hard geopolitical and economic interest, but then how do you disprove the same statement about the Commies? Isn't the best ideological window dressing one that the NPCs on your side fanatically subscribe to? Also, if you are fighting a civilisational battle, is ideological conversion even distinguishable from hard geopolitical interests?Partially I think I must have communicated very poorly, as most of this is way off track to what I was saying, and partially I disagree with some of the inferences you're making.
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You can't. But this is a realist argument so the out already baked in is that international and domestic politics are different beasts.
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Mentioning Perry reminds me that one of the biggest "missionary" American ideological uplifting projects - the post-war reconstruction of Japan - was overseen by Douglas MacArthur, one of the most red-tribe figures one could imagine from that era.
And it did absolutely wild stuff to the political landscape.
I swear I read a blog or comment about how that cashed out by the 70s, but all I could find was this video.
Edit: found it!
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