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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9153 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.

Being a professor at a California university is like being a soldier of the new Red Army. Terence Tao signed the open letters, took the government money, parroted the party line, and made the libations. He should not act so shocked that the other team is treating him as an enemy soldier, because he is one.

Hasn't he ever heard the saying, "And them that take the sword shall perish by the sword"?

The academic establishment has sinned against America and America must administer its punishment. Burn it all! Fire and sword and no mercy! Let the funding be cut, let the tenured professors be thrown out to seek work in the private sector, let the student loans no longer be backed by the government, and let the hollowed-out ruins of the academic establishment of the 2020's stand forever as a warning to future scientists about the dangers of taking sides in politics. Taxpayer money is a privilege, not a right.

Whew boy, now this is really some waging of the culture war.

Has Terence Tao actually engaged in any political activism other than sharing his opinions, or are you purely criticizing him for having anti-right political opinions and working for a California university?

Saying that being a professor at a California university is like being a soldier of the new Red Army is hyperbole. It's the same kind of hyperbole that committed Soviets used against their own ideological enemies in the Soviet academic system.

Sure, I don't think that Terence Tao is entitled to taxpayer money. I don't think even he is trying to claim that he is entitled to taxpayer money. Surely there's some room for nuance in looking at this situation.

TracingWoodgrains has a thread on the topic here: https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1957878299146993821

Terence Tao, signing an open letter in 2020: "We are enraged at the everyday operations of a white supremacist society. ... Complicity with these systems of oppression is deeply rooted in the origins of this country."

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/

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.

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.

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)

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.

not punishing any legal residents for political opinions is best, but punishing legal residents of all teams for political opinions is second best.

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.

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.

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