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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9151 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 18, 2025

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Terence Tao: I’m an award-winning mathematician. Trump just cut my funding.

In just six months, the United States has seen a wholesale assault on the scientific infrastructure that helped make it a world leader in innovation. Grants have been cancelled mid-project, fellowships for the next generation of researchers gutted, and federally funded institutes stripped of the resources they need to operate. These decisions are not the result of scientific review or Congressional debate, but of abrupt political directives that bypass long-standing norms, disrupt multi-year projects, and erode the independence of our research ecosystem.

In that time, I have seen first-hand how sustained federal investment—channeled through agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF)—powers the collaborations that link universities, government laboratories, and industry. At UCLA's Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), where I now serve as Director of Special Projects, those collaborations have laid the groundwork for both theoretical breakthroughs and practical technologies. My own research at IPAM, for instance, helped lead to the algorithms that now cut MRI scan times by a factor of up to 10. This is the America I chose as my adoptive home: a place where science is valued as a public good, and where researchers from around the world come to contribute their ideas and energy.

It is therefore stunning and devastating to discover that the new administration, in just its first six months, has deliberately attacked and weakened almost all the supporting pillars of this ecosystem. Executive actions have cancelled or suspended federal grants with unprecedented scale and speed, with billions of dollars worth of ongoing research projects and experiments disrupted. This is not because of a negative scientific assessment of the work, but instead by seemingly arbitrary justifications. Critical funding has been pulled for as insignificant a reason as the presence of a key word in the original proposal that is retroactively deemed unacceptable.

Federal support is, of course, a privilege, not a right; and Congress has the constitutional authority to set the budgets and rules for any expenditure of public funds and resources. But many of these executive actions have not waited for either explicit or implicit Congressional approval, and in some cases have even directly ignored past Congressional mandates for appropriations. Relative to the sheer size of the federal government as a whole, the amount allocated for supporting science is not massive. The NSF mathematics and physical sciences (MPS) directorate, for instance, is the largest of the subdivisions of the NSF, and has an annual budget of approximately $1.7 billion. This looks significant until one realizes that it amounts to about five dollars per US citizen per year, and less than a tenth of a percent of the federal budget as a whole.

He seems to be referring to how the admin took an axe to science funding by ctrl+F-ing for 'woke' dictionary terms: underrepresented, minority, diverse, etc. The problem is that the effects seem to be about indiscriminate regardless of whether you were a true believer or merely box checking. Will we see upgraded diversity science pledges in the next democrat admin? Researchers might have to carefully consider the political leanings of their funding proposals in election years.

The response to Tao's article pointing out times he's talked about politics before in the past is interesting to me, because nowhere at all (that I know of) has Trump or his administration stated that he is targeting funding over a professor's personal beliefs. And yet somehow it seems everyone just takes it for granted, of course it's targeted government punishment coming down over personal wrongthink they say, Tao's beliefs are definitely relevant to the cuts.

Very odd, I don't think I've seen this happen much before where even the main defenders are like "ok yeah we all think Trump is lying but the libs deserve it. It's obviously angry revenge first and foremost"

And yet somehow it seems everyone just takes it for granted, of course it's targeted government punishment coming down over personal wrongthink they say, Tao's beliefs are definitely relevant to the cuts.

No, this is not quite correct. Everyone is acknowledging that even if the government were punishing Tao in particular (and they are not, they are targeting the university in general), then Tao has already voided his right to principled protest. In terms of defense in depth, Tao's motte was already invested with demolition charges, by his own rotten hand.

So 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?

Making this comment once is fine.

Two or three times, maybe there's a use case.

Copying and pasting it to this many different people is obnoxious.

They're all making the same general point so how is it obnoxious? I'm wishing to clarify with different people their views on censorship.

You got thorough responses from multiple people here. You could have made one reply pinging the others (@[username]). Or even made all the replies you did, but link them back to this one: "see discussion here." I recognize it's kind of awkward either way.

The problem is that most people who copy-paste a response in 8 different spots are not interested in holding 8 nigh-identical conversations. Better to pull them back into one location.

Yeah no matter what way it is awkward and will still inevitably devolve into separate discussions regardless unless I make the assumption that everyone is a hive-mind and will continue to have similar responses to follow-up posts without divergence.

There is an "@" function to send alerts to people you're not replying to. For instance, you can summon me by saying "@magic9mushroom" (quotes not required).

Then they could all respond to the single post.

That will still inevitably devolve into separate discussions regardless unless I make the assumption that everyone is a hive-mind and will continue to have similar responses to follow-up posts without divergence would it not?

Sure but the chaos would be limited to a single subthread instead of being scattered everywhere

So 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?

No. I would be perfectly happy to live in a world where some woke professors and some conservative professors sniped at each other at conferences and from offices across the quad, but otherwise left each other alone. This, in theory, is what tenure and the notion of academic freedom are.*

The Left was not content to live in this world, and across the generations took over the universities, installed their own apparatchiks in administrations, systematically discriminated against disfavored demographics, anathematized and drummed out opposing voices, instituted political litmus tests in hiring and publishing, and created a climate of fear on campuses where the vast majority of students parrot political lines they do not believe in order to avoid social and personal blowback.

If we cannot have an academy run according to our preferred rules - academic freedom, properly understood - then at a minimum we will live according to the woke's rules applied evenhandedly. Perhaps with enough rounds of tit-for-tat, we will be able to reach a new harmonious equilibrium.

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 don't think so because I have principles about free speech that apply regardless of who started it, but if I understand you correctly revenge is a perfectly suitable argument for going against one's words.

So how do you feel about a situation like this?

Face tattoos, white guy dreds, mediocre taste in music... are there any examples that aren't quite so literal regarding the old maxim about defending scoundrels?

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?

"Legal resident" is an extremely broad category. It's not clear to me under what policy Macdonald resides in the US, but if there are Congressionally-approved restrictions on the speech of certain categories, then yes, this applies under "your rules, applied fairly."

I'm not a free speech absolutist, but I care about fairness and equality before the law. Unilateral disarmament of letting one side do whatever and the other side only gets to wag the finger and say tut-tut does not improve the status of the principle at hand.

I'm not a free speech absolutist, but I care about fairness and equality before the law. Unilateral disarmament of letting one side do whatever and the other side only gets to wag the finger and say tut-tut does not improve the status of the principle at hand.

Then don't go for unilateral disarmament, use your power to enact fair rules for government. Groups like FIRE, and in the past stuff like the Free Speech League, the First Amendment coalition and other groups protect our rights by fighting for them legally in all cases.

And they failed.

Principled free speech defenders strongly benefit from the shoe on the other foot.

This is advice for the last conflict - when the ACLU wanders around as a shambolic corpse that refuses to support the rights of "those people" you know the old institutions can no longer help.

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It appears nobody has attempted to deport Tom Macdonald for that video. As I understand the law, one may only be deported for First Amendment protected activity on the personal (that is, not delegated) determination of the Secretary of State that it compromises a compelling US foreign policy interest. This means that "The Devil is a Democrat" is not deportable -- Macdonald would in fact be on thinner ice if he criticized Canada, as that would implicate US foreign policy interests, though it is unlikely Rubio would make such a determination.

This has nothing to do, however, with the Tao situation. And that particular law seems like it's going inevitably to head to the Supreme Court.

It appears nobody has attempted to deport Tom Macdonald for that video.

Yes it's a hypothetical. Would it be ok if the future Dems declared him to not have first amendment rights as a legal residents in the US and deport him based off political speech they find insulting?

This is the culture war thread, not the random hypothetical thread.

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 don't think so because I have principles about free speech that apply regardless of who started it, but if I understand you correctly revenge is a perfectly suitable argument for going against one's words.

The Left already is doing such things while mouthing banal principled platitudes, and has been for decades. It has won them near-complete control of the knowledge-making and -legitimating institutions in the country, including academia, journalism, with significant inroads into corporations and the legal profession. It has enabled the Left to take its social program from radical fringe to state-enforced orthodoxy. They have hijacked bureaucracies, lied about their intentions, ignored or subverted laws they did not agree with, including court decisions, and more.

They did these things not even for such a good reason as revenge, but instead out of pure will-to-power.

Remove the beam from thine own eye before complaining about the mote in another's.

They did these things not even for such a good reason as revenge, but instead out of pure will-to-power.

Is revenge a good reason to do things you find immoral? I think a lot of us more principled folk would disagree.

If I am attacked, it is good to use force against my attacker to both defend myself but also to establish future deterrence. If I am cheated, it is good to sue not just for the value of what was denied me but also for punitive damages - to take the cheater's money. If I am stolen from, it is good not just to retrieve what was stolen, but also to incapacitate the thief to prevent their ability to do these things again.

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No. As I just said, the point is irrespective of if they should be punished. The point is that regardless of whether or not they should be punished, they have no right to object on principle.

If you willingly join an army that refuses to take prisoners, and just executes all surrendering enemy forces, then you don't get to cry when you get summarily executed instead of taken prisoner - regardless of the moral positions of the enemy forces.

This is pure "your rules, applied fairly".

If Tao objects to this, then perhaps dear Terry ought to evolve his moral universe beyond the level we expect from elementary schoolers. As far as complaints go, "He hit me just because I hit him first!" is the mark of a particularly dull and narcissistic child.

No. As I just said, the point is irrespective of if they should be punished. The point is that regardless of whether or not they should be punished, they have no right to object on principle.

Tao was part of the government and was cutting grants to wrongthinkers? I didn't know that. I guess he got what was coming to him then.

Feel free to reread my prior posts, and the other ones people are posting in response to you.

In a roundabout way, yes. He signed a letter that was used to support policies that funneled money and grants away from non-progressives to progressives.

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