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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25589 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 18, 2025

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as it motivates normal academics to police their extremist colleagues, rather than acquiescing again

Ah, but in doing so you changes the very nature of the person in question. Serious academics like TT aren't interested in the prior step of acquire enough institutional power to be able to police their extremist colleagues as they have better things to do like discover new math. The person interested in university politics just isn't the same person.

Of course, you do see serious academics that have taken up the task of working university politics. Whether out of duty or necessity or simply inertia. And every single time I've seen it (and to be fair, I wasn't in academics that long, I bailed on it for private industry), it fundamentally changed how they related to the world.

TT doesn’t have to be personally interested or personally engaged in the politics. He simply needs to voice his opinion on new department heads in an email, or apply to a school without DEI, or ask about it in the interview, or ask a grad student to keep an eye out for DEI words. This is enough pressure to curb DEI.

The reason DEI was able to spiral is because the spiral did not affect the academics’ social status, but actually increased it. One way to lower the status of DEI is to make it associated with defunded and destroyed institutions. If it weren’t for the threat of China, I would say the deterrence should have been much stronger.

Wholeheartedly agree, but I think this is a lot harder than you imagine.

Without being interested or engaged in politics, he needs to select an avatar that understands it keenly. That's both a principle/agent problem and a

The reason DEI was able to spiral is because the spiral did not affect the academics’ social status, but actually increased it.

Which is downstream of the fact that DEI advocates were the kinds of people that were interested in things like department/university politics.

"But I'm not interested in politics."

Too bad. Politics is interested it you. Keep it at bay or perish.

Scientists lost the right to the world's indifference the day Francis Bacon published The New Atlantis.

I'm not really talking about national politics, I'm talking about the petty intradepartmental stuff. Or maybe it's just "all politics is local" again.

Moreover, they can't care about it because the people that do care have infinite time to devote to political games.

Moreover, they can't care about it because the people that do care have infinite time to devote to political games

That's just the Iron law of Oligarchy. You will be ruled by people who care about politics more than other things. That's a given. That's how human society works.

But scientists wanted to rule themselves and have influence over policy. So now they get to fight in the mud with the politicians.

You should have stayed benign if you wanted the protection of that status.

If the dude was able to write diversity statements, or whatever was the requirement for his old grants, without becoming a different person, why would they speaking up to say "this is retarded and needs to stop" suddenly change their core personality traits?

Writing some boilerplate doesn't require politics. It's indicative of someone whose political stance is to recite whatever those who care about politics care about in order to do esoteric math.

Do you think he'd endorse MAGA to get more funding? Because I don't.

Have you read DARPA grant applications? I remember (in 2005) PIs filing all kinds of "we will use micro-scale flux capacitors to create a mobile platform capable of detecting chemical and biological weapons so as to ensure American victory in the GWOT".

No, I mean do you think Terence Tao, personally, would endorse MAGA to get more funding?

It wouldn't, but saying "this is retarded and needs to stop" doesn't actually stop the commissar from doing his work. @anon_ is pointing out that reining in the DEI commissars requires actually controlling the university's internal levers of power (in particular, the admin section of the university).

Yeah, the kind of person whose opinion matters is only the kind of person with political stature.

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