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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9150 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 18, 2025

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Have you heard of this little thing called freedom of speech?

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.

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.

free speech is not the right to receive a check from the government to subsidize your tongue.

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.

it is the right to keep your non-political job whatever political opinions you espouse outside of that job

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.

Snarkly: As I've heard it described, it doesn't include freedom from consequences.

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