When Nixon was getting ready for his recession it was pretty bad too.
Not directly, I admit that was just collateral damage.
About like these NSF grants are situated within the big picture.
FTFY.
I'm really not too concerned about being replaced in the next couple months at least.
That's not very accurate terminology every time either, more like "lack of NI" ;)
I've been worried about that for a while before AI came up on the radar :)
> Breaking: NSF is suspending roughly 300 grants with UCLA, following a DOJ finding on Tuesday that the university violated Title VI by "creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students."
https://bsky.app/profile/dangaristo.bsky.social/post/3lvc7ld...
And now we've largely closed the door to geniuses from wealthy countries. (Why take the risk of living in the USA right now?) We've even taken the first few steps towards deliberately driving out the geniuses we have. I didn't expect that even six months ago.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine/World-War-I-and-a...
The creation of a rogue Israel happened with decolonization, and while it might have been delayed, was inevitable.
Thing is, I do find myself missing the one I spent nearly a decade living in, because such networks are self-sorting and I didn't realise how rare it was until I failed to find it again after leaving.
(Still, Berlin is doing me good in almost all other aspects besides being able to accidentally find I've moved right around the corner from the same pub frequented by the author of PuTTY and a co-author of the proof that Magic The Gathering is Turing-complete and one of the Debian project leaders (seriously, all three went to the same pub, and I didn't know before I moved to Cambridge the first time back in 2007)).
Oxford and Imperial?
Town and gown, massive town. Diluted organisational opportunity, less room for serendipity in meeting fellow nerds of whatever topic of interest.
That said, I do not know the social organisational structures of much of the USA, so it's plausible that this reasoning doesn't work because the USA has the same spread-out-ness from all the cars, or perhaps everyone in both just knows how to find the nerdy and geeky Schelling points…
But (Old) Cambridge? Geeking opportunities are as densely packed in Cambridge as archeology is within 2km of the Parthenon in Athens. Oxford certainly looks similar to Cambridge in this regard. At least, when I visited, as a tourist, given I didn't live in Oxford at any point.
> but even then, is still third on the list of Oxbridge
Is this still true? Any ranking I’ve seen recently generally has it right up there. It feels like it’s a name recognition thing rather than quality meter at this point, like Caltech vs MIT.
Your points about geography are well taken though.
Really? Hm.
The listings I've seen, and the first I found, were UK-focused ones, which put Oxford and Cambridge in the top two, sometimes with others as joint-second, then after that Imperial, e.g. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universiti...
But to support your claim, I did just find an international ranking that is confusing me by giving rankings for 2026, and for 2025 and 2026 puts Imperial before (and previous years, behind) both of Oxbridge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QS_World_University_Rankings
Doesn't he work at UCLA?
I imagine a similar story applies to the UK and other places in the Anglosphere
UK salaries are atrociously bad. Not sure about funding, but it doesn't seem to be great.
So will the administration's push to use pro-Israel reasons to censure and penalise the universities steadily get out of touch with what the public want and sympathise with?
So "recognizing the Palestinian state" is all good and well, but unless anyone also gets off their butts and actually does something then the situation in Gaza won't actually change.
A BBC article from a couple of days ago lists about 150 countries that have recognized a Palestinian state, dating back to 1988 (which is, btw, when North Korea recognized it). I don't know what kind of action it implies.
It's crazy but that's how it works. Refusal to recognize Palestine is a form of dehumanization, one of the key stages of genocide.
It has nothing to do with helping the Palestinian and Israeli people or holding the Israeli government or Hamas to account.
Turns out, it's complicated.
we have invented universal translators, so all humans can talk to all humans. like in the myth of the Tower of Babel, this pisses of god Israel so they're throwing a huge tantrum
the self-perpetuating orphan state, where each orphan is a tragedy and more than that, it's a derelict form of parenting which made sense in the dessert more than 3k years ago
The Trump administration is punishing institutions that disagree with it, or that it dislikes for some reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
>While millions of American evangelical Christians have long been fervent supporters of the Jewish state because of End Times prophecies
Is that the main reason for this incredibly one-sided relationship?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore...
It’s all just words as magic spells to justify bad behavior. Semantic content and beliefs aren’t even part of the equation.
why do you think no major company care about it anymore? why diversity HR teams or Sustainability teams are getting disbanded? why do we have “sydney sweeney has good jeans” ads now while we had overweight models during biden Era? we are living through a different propaganda era that the market decided to follow like the previous one just to bank on it.
So I don't see what kind of precedent was set as far as use of executive power goes. You're saying because BLM happened (which was under Trump BTW), that gives Trump the right now to control speech at universities?
That's like saying Republicans control churches because churchgoers are more conservative on average.
Universities have gatekeepers.
Indeed, many Republican congresspeople were accepted into and graduated from prestigious ostensibly "Democrat controlled" institutions, despite their conservative beliefs.
This is because the gate universities keep is based on merit, not ideology.
This is widely documented:
https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/fire-statement-use-di...
I have read information about these mandatory statements on official web sites of universities themselves, so I know the issue isn't a fabrication.
Separately, SCOTUS found in both SFFA vs. Harvard and SFFA vs. UNC, that these universities did not admit students based solely on merit, but also discriminated against some individual students due to their race.
Amongst them frequently are conservatives and white men.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/cornell-university-discriminated...
That does not mean the Democrats control hiring decisions at universities. This would be like saying the Republican party controls CFO hiring decisions because corporations might filter for people who are fiscally conservative.
All organizations look for "culture fit" when making hiring decisions, and the culture of a university is one that is typically open and accepting of people from all walks of life. It's counterproductive to hire who think "empathy is a fundamental weakness" for example. They don't fit well with fostering a welcoming educational environment for young people, so typically we look for some degree of empathy in candidates, people who want to build community, foster individuals, and yes, who value diversity.
Notably, this filter is not very good at preventing conservatives from being hired and promoted and admitted to universities, because that happens every day.
> but also discriminated against some individual students due to their race.
This thread is about Democrats ostensibly controlling schools. That some schools were found by a court to racially discriminate in their admitting practices is unrelated, nor does not show affiliation to the Democratic party was used as a filter for hiring or admit decisions.
> a conservative white man filed a complaint against Cornell.
Well, no. From the link you provided:
I’m an evolutionary biologist, a liberal
There are many paths to college, and they require neither membership in nor adherence to ideals professed by the Democratic party.
I'm not saying that people have had to show adherence to (or loyalty to) the Democratic Party. But they have had to show support for positions and ideologies that are part of the Democratic Party's platform.
In your last paragraph, you dismiss Colin's complaint, without acknowledging the wrongness of the process that I outlined. Instead of seeking the best person for the job, the school made a list of people using race as one of the filtering criteria, and went down the last until someone accepted the job.
The fact you didn't engage with the major point I made here suggests you're more interested in winning an argument, than in furthering your or my understanding of the truth.
I am not interested in trying to win an argument. Your replies are not helping me to develop my thinking. So this will be my last reply.
Have a great day!
Even if we just agree that's what's happening here, the overlap of ideology doesn't imply control over the institution or process by the party, because you haven't shown any causality. What's to say university policy isn't influencing the Democratic party's platform?
Anyway, that's not what's happening. People qualified for these positions have no problem answering those questions and getting accepted to these institutions despite any conservative political leanings.
The evidence for this is that conservatives are well represented on campuses across America. They're not a ideological filter placed there by the Democratic party to keep conservatives out of college. They're a tool that colleges came up with on their own to help with culture fit.
> In your last paragraph, you dismiss Colin's complaint, without acknowledging the wrongness of the process that I outlined.
Because you're both misrepresented what's going on. He's doing it because he's upset they didn't hire him. Your opinion is on the basis of what he said, so I don't know what else to add except to wait for the verdict. Either way he's wasn't rejected on the basis of his conservative beliefs.
> Have a great day!
Same.
hence why Asian community sued multiple universities for discrimination.
it's well chosen because it's also one that requires no proof, since "anti-semitism" has long been the worst accusation one can make, and one that's very hard to refute without demonstrating unequivocal loyalty to Israel and its actions; it's basically a purity test
It's why they are so destructive.
A king who gets their power from God and can make rules whether or not the people consent is both a monarch and a dictator.
You can imagine the next Democrat administration defunding universities based on their collaboration with Israel, for example. Or defunding universities based on their punishment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, etc..
People should accept that Israel lost against Hamas and be prepared for the consequences of that going forward. It's pretty much the same as a Vietnam situation, with the war being won/lost based on public opinion.
And now honnest question: why is this support so strong in the US ? are the ties with the jewish/israely community so deep between these two peoples ?
Christian sects that believe the second coming of Jesus is not too far away believe that Israel's existence is critical to bring that to pass.
People with anti-muslim or anti-arabian feelings see Israel as a counterweight to muslim and arabian power in the middle east.
There's a lot of people who, consciously or not, equate anything other than total support for Israel with antisemitism.
And so many people who are rightfully proud of their Jewish ethnicity and cultural identification -- a rich and beautiful culture that has had absolutely outsized contributions to art, science, culture in the west, with a history of being persecuted and mistreated by said "west" -- have become defacto "citizens-abroad" and advocates for Israeli positions in all things.
That combined with a deep and historical distrust of Islam in western culture...
It's the same story here in Canada. How deep the bank account for this blank cheque is, I don't know.
I should say that as a left wing critic of what happens in the middle east under Israel's banner, I am also deeply uncomfortable with some of the anti-Semitic tinge some forms of the protest take. It's a conundrum.
It is absolutely important to make it clear the criticism is of the actions of Israel, and not "Jews"
The worst that serious Democrats might do is publicly compare Israel's current behavior to the US's lashing out at Afghanistan after the WTC attacks.
This is resulting in current Democratic elected officials being removed from power when their term expires, starting with the US Presidency last year, which was lost BECAUSE of their support for Israel. A YouGov poll earlier this year showed the primary reason Biden 2020 voters didn't vote for Harris was because of Israel: https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling
This is all happening quickly. You won't see any Democratic candidate that supports Israel run for President in 2028.
Supporting Israel, including acknowledging their right to respond militarily to terrorist attacks, is one thing. Falling deeply in love with Netanyahu's current policies is another. Freaking out and caring only about Hamas is ... a third thing.
There are lunatics in the US who seem to have completely forgotten the 1300-1400 Israelis killed by Hamas just last year, but who can see the human disaster in Gaza. I don't think those people are so politically engaged on that single issue that they deliberately stayed home from the polls and let Trump win ... in order to ... help people in Gaza? I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem to fit together.
EDIT: To be fair those same folks are notorious for shooting themselves in the foot. So who knows?
EDIT 2: Some of the lunatics above are probably anti-Semitic, despite Trump's claims that they are anti-Semitic. But again how does that drive them to help Trump right now?
More like the two things aren't even remotely in the same ballpark. Imagine if the US had surrounded Baghdad and intentionally starved the residents. And even that example still fails to account for some of the context.
For the record I don't doubt for a second that the same people who protest against Israel now would also have been among those campaigning against the US at the time.
Some people truly try to protest all the horrors of war on all sides, everywhere. Others try to make "Country X" sound worse than anybody else. I don't have your insight into who has what agenda.
2024: Trump 77,302,580
2020: Trump 74,223,975
It looks to me that the extremists in Hamas gave extremist Israelis the excuse to do what they always wanted to do. And everyone who isn't an extremist lost. Meanwhile, the Hamas leadership are living in 5 star luxury in Qatar.
To the point that you have people who have politics that derivates from a populist/nativist right wing historical current that was always virulently anti-Semitic, now being the staunchest backers of the current Israeli government.
In the post-9/11 era, hatred of Islam, putting an equals-sign between Jewish and Israeli, and smearing anybody on "the left" who criticizes the actions of the Israeli state as "anti-Semitic", and shoring up the Israeli state with massive financial support ... this is all an ideological bundle that is working extremely well for them.
And is allowing them to siphon off support from "moderate" American Democrat voters who share these biases but not the rest of their ideological bill of goods. It's actually allowed them to build a powerful base of support even when they're doing extremely controversial things.
The questions are very specific rather than general. For example you can disapprove of the military action and the president of a country, but that doesn't mean when asked "pick a winner" you'd pick the other guy.
I mean if the US went to war with North Korea and Pyongyang got flattened, I would certainly disapprove of the US military and the president, but I probably wouldn't consider the other party "winning".
So as always it depends on which question you ask. You can ask questions to get the answer you paid for (speaking as an ex-statistician who worked for a pollster)
Those two regimes won every battle easily, but what eventually did them in was sanctions. And, when the West sanctions you, you eventually collapse or stay economically irrelevant. Case in point: USSR, Maoist China, Rhodesia, South Africa, etc.
But, the Boomer, Christian Zionist generation is dying out, along with older Germans (and Europeans) who still struggle with some Teutonic guilt.
Irreligious, humanist youngsters across the Americas and Europe now see it's a clear good vs. bad struggle and the Zionists are not the good guys, so Israel likely believes they need to expel the Palestinians from Gaza & the West Bank within one generation or they'll be facing devastating sanctions within 10-20 years.
Given that Israel's economy depends heavily on technology service exports, diamonds, and agriculture, if they don't change posture and end up getting sanctioned, it'll cripple them without a doubt. Just cutting off their technology workers' foreign exchange salaries is enough to shrink the economy by half once that FX channel dries up.
See Russia->Ukraine, US->Iraq, soon China->Taiwan.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bertrand_Russell_Case
And we filled our gas tanks with leaded gas and people smoked in windowless restaurants.
While I'm not happy how the world is going right now, it's also important to take stock of where we've been.
Outcome: These grants are likely in a temporary holding pattern until ucla settles the issue.
Which is entirely par for the course with the administration and doesn’t seem particularly targeted at Tao. I’m shocked even more NSF grants haven’t been hit, this was a prime DOGE target. They want these headlines.
Of course suspending grants is probably the wrong way to go about it anyway, but since you brought this up... do you imply that it's false? I'm not in the US but I heard pretty interesting things about what was happening in universities following Oct 7.
Students have a first amendment right to express opinions, even anti-Zionist ones.
The administration is using baseless charges of antisemitism as a cudgel to extract fealty and concessions from universities, which they see as opponents of their party.
For a one-time payment it may be able to slide this time, didn't Columbia University have an offer they couldn't refuse?
Pray the Don doesn't alter the deal . . .
Hold on, didn't tenured professors get fired literally based on content of their speech a few years back under the other administration? I am confused
And this does not have to be about censoring speech. There are rules of a place. As I said, you start obstructing a lecture, you get thrown out in a good university
Creating a hostile environment for students based on their religion would violate the Civil Rights Act. However, there is a paucity of evidence that the universities did that. Allowing protests probably isn't sufficient, especially when prohibiting those same protests would be unconstitutional.
Even if the protesting students were spitting on Jewish students, that doesn't impact the legality of the protest. The spitting could be prosecuted as battery.
I recommend reading this [1] great article about the sometimes confusing rhetoric used in the media about American free speech.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220313175157/http://popehat.co...
If not, I think you could make a case that UCLA could kick protesters out, for example if they take over a building. In contrast to a private university, they probably couldn't act on what the protesters do outside of the university. But I do think that they must have some regulatory power on campus.
No. It means that the university cannot censor protests based on their content. They can certainly require protesters to get a permit, to stay within certain areas, to act within usual behavior parameters.
> If not, I think you could make a case that UCLA could kick protesters out, for example if they take over a building.
Of course. But that's not the claim made by the administration.
I am 100% sure your comment was downvoted for this sentence:
> I'm not in the US but I heard pretty interesting things about what was happening in universities following Oct 7.
People here don’t like propaganda-fueled speculation. The commenter also literally answered your question. You asked if it was meant to be implied as false and they said yes.
I don’t doubt this but it’s also easy to read the comment as though that’s where your thoughts originate.
> But it is answer to some other question that was more convenient to the "answerer"
I disagree on the question being unanswered, however; you did not ask for details but instead for confirmation.
I am saying this with the intention to be helpful; I am not intending to criticize your arguments. My point is simply that you did not communicate your thoughts as effectively as you seem to believe.
Tbh, this standard argument is itself anti-Jewish as it implies this behavior is inherent to being Jewish, which of course is grotesque and inaccurate.
* Jewish /= Zionist
* Zionist /= Imperialist
* Imperialist /= Genocidal
What we have really imo is an extreme colonist policy that is only superficially Jewish. That doesn’t absolve Jews in Israel supporting it, it rather absolves all those who don’t and makes genocidal colonists take responsibility for their own actions.
Also, genocide is bad.
Edit to reply: what I remember reading was not about saying "end genocide", it was about saying "you are a jew so go die" kind of stuff. It seemed pretty crazy but I didn't save any sources
If I make a sign that says "End the Zionist Genocide", and a Jewish person says "you can't say that about me", they don't feel uncomfortable because they're Jewish.
This thread and replies I got is wild!
Zionists are ideological people and "<Idological People> Genocide" reads like the ideologues own and are committing the genocide.
Whereas Ukrainian is a denonym and "<Denonym> Genocide" reads like a genocide done to the denonym. Nazi Genocide -> Nazis did it. Jewish Genocide -> Genocide happened to the Jews.
I'm not sure if that is technically how it would work in a formal linguistic sense, but that would be how I'd expect the terms to be read. Zionists can't really be genocided because Zionism isn't a race, so reading "Zionist Genocide" as happening to the Zionists is difficult. Not a reliable rule though, someone could use "genocide" that way I suppose.
What I see in dictionary is "rational or national group". I guess Zionism does not fall under "national group". I still think the usage is still wrong, unless you can find an example where it is used that way.
In any case this thread justification of how it is okay to attack jews or israelis (or tell me it didn't happen if you have better information than me) for being jews after oct 7 and israeli government response is crazy. Like I'm Russian and I don't support Ukrainian war (by the way not the only shitty thing russian government does, see criminalization of LGBT people etc) so what now, should I be targeted and shouted at by people with signs because of something I can't change? Should I hide my rusianness? At a place I live and study at? Sure it's probably wrong/illegal to take away grants for this but if I was a student at a uni would that be a hostile environment? I kind of think so.
I would say free speech must have some standard in civilized community, but since someone said that hate speech is protected on public uni campuses in US then I can say nothing.
Again tell me if I am wrong and Jews were not personally attacked for being Jews after oct 7. I have a vague understanding of what happened.
So... did the dean make a public Nazi salute or something? The double standard (if we can even call it a "standard") is getting rather tiring.
Translation: ULCA declined to violate the First Ammendment and allowed their students and faculty to criticize Israel.
The protesters were fine to criticize Israel, but then turning the rage to the actual American Jews on campus crossed the line.
Israeli Jews kill tens of thousands of Palestinian children and we are supposed to care that Zionists feel targeted by the protests on campus? Zionists are literally starving people right now. Do you not get that?
Jewish people are fine. The Israeli genocide of Gaza is not.
Lots of Jews don't seem to know that.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/29/ucla-lawsuit...
Private actors were preventing people from entering a public part of campus unless they signaled their "anti-Israel" bonafides. The school allowed this to continue, therefore they implicitly supported it.
Looks to me like they've got their sights on a lot more than one group, some are just more obvious than others.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trumpery
OTOH "Conservatism" is simply the desire to hold on to, or conserve what there currently is, rather than progress toward something different.
Whether the progress is for the better or worse or even if anybody knows for sure.
Truly the opposite of "progressive". Neither one inherently good or bad.
And as can be seen, an indication of the relative greatness of American leaders who can be judged by their ability to wisely balance the interests of all citizens. The US has a history of exceptional true leaders since the beginning, but not every single one. Some have been far from saintly, and some not even suitable for a free country.
Quite a lot of times neither conservative nor progressive seem like as much of a driving force unless their hallmarks are in decline to the point where some things that were perceived as precious to conserve or progress toward or beyond had already been lost to a certain extent, or otherwise under increased threat.
Edit: not my donvote btw
Letting them continue to think of themselves as conservative assuages their own cognitive dissonance as to what they're actually supporting. It's plainly dishonest to call all of our institutions corrupt, point to some imagined rosy snapshot of the past 70+ years ago, and then claim you're merely conservative. The conservative slogan would be Keep America Great. Theirs isn't.
Over the years I've come to accept the blind spot most people have where, despite all evidence, they assume that the government goals match their own. But it still isn't the case. The prudent approach is to set up institutions that are largely independent of government. Government funding is not an answer to long term problems. Governments are too fickle and the political bandwidth isn't high enough to handle complex arguments like whether researching structure in sequences of 0s and 1s is a good idea.
I know the fashion is to present Trump as some weird aberration but he's been a factor for about 10 years now and won his 3rd election pretty convincing margins. Nobody can say they are surprised that the US government is behaving erratically if it is an environment where Trump is a top contender for high office.
The current "fickleness" is from a single individual. The other branches of government are refusing to check out even criticize his actions. This is what would happen with any funding from individuals. The lesson we should be taking from this situation is either (1) controls on the government need to have more teeth and not rely solely on politicians, or (2) the US accepts authoritarianism right now and no Constitution would stop that.
Leading to the observation that it isn't a single individual. It is a large number of people agreeing on what the political priorities are.
> Government actions are supposed to be proposed publicly, accept and consider public comments, and then allow legal arguments about the process and motivations.
The Trump people have done all that on the way to where we are right now. It's been quite hard to escape the debate over the last decade or so. It was heated, public and quite interesting to follow. There were at least 3 elections involved (realistically a lot more, the internal mechanisms of the Republican party have been active), and his opponents have been comprehensive in their analysis of his flaws and the issues with his policies.
It has been said that government funding is the worst form of funding except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time
Really - I think that more or less confirms your bias.
How else do you propose to word it? As far as I'm concerned anyone reading it differently is suffering from very obvious bias.
An important aspect of intellectual discourse is interpreting any ambiguities in the most favorable manner for the other party. Or alternatively, if the matter is relevant to the central point then requesting clarification.
Funding from private sources who are usually more short-sighted and less transparent can't be the alternative. An alternative I can think of are international entities that have some semblance of independence from constituent nations. I think that for a democratic government, public funding is alright, as long as the government is, well, healthy. In this light the issue with funding is simply a symptom of a government that does not serve its citizens well, which is the root cause that must be cured.
Pray tell where are the examples from previous administrations of how billions of dollars in funding was yanked or suspended from multiple colleges until they paid "settlement fees" just to make it go away and get their funding restored, without even any due process.
Yes, the gov have always exercised some pressure on institutions or shifting funding towards their priorities. But no one but Trump has engaged in blatant mafia-style extortion.
You're right, Trump is not a weird aberration; he's a natural progression of the Republican Party since at least Barry Goldwater in the early 1960s. I never thought I would live to see the John Birch Society go from radical crazies to mainstream
pays an extortion fee; lets call it what it is
once Columbia capitulated, it was clear Trump would come after everyone else
Weird in that the main victims here actually pro-Palestinian students and the main attacker got a plea deal just a few days ago:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-30/ucla-mov...
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-07-28/ucla-pro...
Yes, I was just reading that in a DOJ press release authored by known prevaricator AG Pam Bondi.
It is extremely annoying how it is a natural fact of life that entities tend to agglomerate and acquire each other, when instead the best way to ensure freedom and openness is through federation.
I'm interpreting your comment in the context of scientific institutions being beholden to centralized institutions (i.e. the US federal gov't) via funding. Is that accurate? If so, what's the alternative? The explosion in scientific and technological research in the the 20th century was enabled by the fact that the governments recognized its value and consciously funded it. Prior to that, it was essentially only a small cohort of the aristocracy who saw the value in these pursuits, and was limited by their means and interests.
Those with power and money fund things. Anything else just a name-- "aristocracy", "government/democracy", "private companies".
The reality is, we are all fighting one way or another for the attention and benevolence of those more powerful and wealthy than us, and boy are they fickle. So, you might as well hope for a federation of hundreds of entities, rather than the world we currently have, which is realistically in the dozens at most.
It's absolutely bizarre to me that a convicted felon can run for president and apparently win. It's not surprising to then see that position be abused for personal profit and petty revenge.
Centralising research efforts can make a lot of sense if you want to gather the top people to work on related projects (e.g. CERN)
But since the USA is basically the world's richest and most powerful entity, the rest of the word begrudgingly tolerates the leader that has somehow come to power, simply because they need to keep the money flowing. There's no other spigot in town.
It is a real problem with countries declaring "democratic elections" which are mere shams of democracy.
I do not understand this griping about rolling over when over half the nation votes for a treasonous leader. At that point, the only option left is war.
is it really your sincere proposition that after an American presedential election, there should be no expectation of anyone to criticise the winner, no matter what they do? really?
>approximately everyone has rolled over
I did not say anything about not criticizing the winner. An "elite" can criticize all they want, but for day to day actions, when the opposing side has all 3 branches of government, willingly given to them by the majority of the population, I can't blame someone for not sacrificing themselves.
My point is this isn't some small group of radicals that weaseled their way in, this is more than half the "country" (if you can call it that), seeing the first term and really his whole life, and saying we want more of this chaos.
Edit: Yes, I know the nominal votes do not add up to half the voters, but practically, if you are to bet on the level of support you would get from opposing the winner, surely you are going to assume the non voters will be fine with however you are treated by the winner, especially this winner with his well known track record.
Effectively, I would expect support of far less than half of my fellow citizens. If you can't be bothered to vote, you're definitely not going to be bothered to do anything more.
2024 voting-eligible population: 244.6M
Voted for Trump: 77.3M
Voted for Harris: 75M
Voted for other candidates: 2.6M
Eligible to vote, but didn't vote: 90M
Unfortunately, the largest constituency continues to be the "can't be fucked to vote" party.
It's not that straight-forward as it's not a popular election. Why bother to vote if you live in a deep red or blue state? You can make some sort of abstract argument about civic duty or whatnot, but ... the end result is your vote doesn't matter except for "candidate X got more votes!" type internet arguments.
I wouldn't say it's terribly abstract. If we don't do anything, we probably shouldn't expect results.
By not voting, they are signaling they are fine with the situation, and will not stand with any opposition to the winner.
Edit to respond to below comment due to hitting posting limit:
>98M of the 185M total population of non-voters had the pretty rock solid excuse of not being eligible to vote, right? Almost a third of the country can’t vote (permanent residents, children, ex-cons in certain states, etc.)
Children seem irrelevant to consider, especially with voting trends of the youngest generations. Same with permanent residents and ex-cons, I don't see any reason these would have cast votes in different proportions. The most damning thing is this is after already seeing the evidence of 2017 to 2020 and the response to Jan 6, 2021.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte...
>55% of White naturalized citizens voted for Trump in 2024, compared with 41% in 2020.
>51% of Hispanic naturalized citizens voted for Trump, up from 39% in 2020.
>46% of Asian naturalized citizens voted for Trump, an increase from 35% in 2020.
>This is without needing to get into the very real voter suppression effort that took place (we’ll assume every one of those “stands” with the winner).
I am assuming the number of people whose votes were prevented were negligible in comparison to the number of people who were apathetic (or boycotting).
>They also probably skew more to your position given their demographics.
A valuable lesson I have learned from 2016 and 2024 elections is that this is not true. What is most important is that people's feelings about their status relative to others not be disturbed (i.e. man over woman and white over non white), and the candidate willing to preserve that, no matter how horrible, is likelier to win more votes.
>I am not sure why you insist on going out of your way to dramatically overrepresent the size of your opposition
Obviously, the measure of the size of the opposition is subjective, and people are free to make bets as they see fit. However, based on the aforementioned "rolling over", it seems others are making the same bet I am.
I am not sure why you insist on going out of your way to dramatically overrepresent the size of your opposition. If there’s some sort of underdog psychology you are trying to tap into, you should maybe also consider the possibility that staunchly presenting the current situation as “we’re outnumbered and most of our population stands with these abhorrent values” may actually be more demoralizing than invigorating as a battle cry, which is even more of a shame when it isn’t true.
Separately, I honestly don't even know what possible strategy could be inferred from my statement. That I think that ~70% of the population might be open to your message? That I think we should tell people that more people are on their side than they know? Does that sound like a turnout-based strategy?
But yeah, it's just people who are trying to maximize how much money they can get into their pockets. They don't care about the public. They don't care about anything. Democrat, Republican, it's all the same.
Any alleged incidents of anti-semitism should be litigated individually, based on specific facts thereof, and if proven, then appropriate sanctions imposed on the guilty parties, only.
Tao won the Fields Medal in 2006 and won the Royal Medal and Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics in 2014, and is a 2006 MacArthur Fellow. Tao has been the author or co-author of over three hundred research papers, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest living mathematicians.
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2347850&His...
Ask the Arabs who live in the country if their standard of living is the same as the rest.
But, if UCLA is indeed an institution that routinely violate civil rights law, would we still want our taxes to fund it?
For those objecting to any reduction in federal funding, is this because:
A) You believe UCLA complies with civil rights law (perhaps with small, isolated exceptions that are driven not by policy but by rogue employees), OR
B) You believe there should be enforcement of the law, but it should take a different form, OR
C) Something else?
I live in California, and have some interest in state agencies operating within the law, and for the benefit of all.
UCLA, where Terence Tao works, is part of the University of California system (a state school). Like other UC campuses, UCLA receives substantial federal funding.
There are good reasons to believe that UCLA has, for many years, engaged in racial discrimination in both hiring and admissions. But the issue is whether anyone with legal standing can actually take the school to court and win.
IANAL but my understanding is as follows. If an individual were to sue the school, they would need to be an individual student who had applied and been rejected. But any court case would take years. It is likely that, part way through that process, that individual student would have graduated from another college, and no longer be seeking undergraduate admissions. Thus they would lack standing and the case would be dismissed as moot.
That's why in SFFA vs. Harvard, the plaintiff was a membership organization. As Harvard was continuing to discriminate, there were always new members to join the organization who did individually have standing, even as some of the existing members lost standing.
In any civil suit over admissions policies, UCLA holds two major advantages over individual complainants:
- Vast resources: UCLA has deep pockets with which to pay lawyers.
- High stakes: UCLA has a lot to lose.
But the folks who are injured are recent high school graduates:
- Limited financial means: When you were 18yo, could you have scraped together money to pay lawyers? Most 18yo kids wouldn't even have the money to pay the court filing fee.
- Minimal personal upside: By the time any case progresses, these students have already enrolled elsewhere. Transferring to UCLA mid-degree, even if they win, would be disruptive and often undesirable.
UCLA is currently being sued by a membership organization. In a couple of weeks, they will file their response to this complaint: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.95...
One of the people who initiated the lawsuit is Richard Sander, a professor at UCLA: https://law.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/richard-h-sand...
Some folks don't like this: https://dailybruin.com/2025/04/21/ucla-law-students-lead-pro...
UCLA had even stricter rules about race in admissions coming from the state.
You can read the full report here: https://sard.law/static/sard/pdf/Mare%20Report%202012.pdf#pa...
If you don't want to read the full report, one of the most interesting things is on page 67. It says that North Asians receive lower holistic scores, and African Americans receive higher holistic scores, than similarly situated applicants from other ethnic groups. And this when comparing like with like because (i) it's during 'Final Review' and (ii) Mare's model compared students who were otherwise alike (including on socioeconomic and hardship indicators).
He did a follow up a couple of years later, with newer data, and his findings were the same (although the numbers shifted a bit).
How did UCLA respond to this report? By issuing a press release saying all was good:
The report confirms that the admissions process at UCLA honors academic achievement and prioritizes acceptance to applicants of exceptional academic accomplishment. Further, data suggest a full range of applicant academic and personal achievements are evaluated by the Comprehensive Review procedure. Professor Mare concludes that the Comprehensive Review ranking for UCLA freshman admissions functions in the manner intended by the faculty and the University. CUAS ...is satisfied with the quality, focus, and rigor of the study.
Also, DOGE just doing a blanket cut to NSF research grants was horrible.
These grants make up about 75-80% of all NSF grants
“We believe that Palestinian rights must be achieved without harm coming to any other group or people”
“My Judaism is not Zionism”
“F** Israel” (without the asterisks)
“Jews Say No To Genocide”
“UC you have blood on your hands”
“Filmmakers for a free Palestine”
“Fund our jobs and education not war and occupation”
“Never again means never again anywhere!”
“Free Palestine” with a drawing of a policeman, gun drawn, facing a soldier on fire; clearly evoking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation_of_Aaron_Bus...
“Israeli against genocide”
“UCLA funds war”
“Our liberations are tied”
“Life in everything yearns for the death of occupation” (had trouble parsing this one)
“From Palestine to Mexico border walls have got to go”
This one’s cut off but it ends with “…violation of international law not anti-Jewish bigotry”
A sequence of maps of Israeli/Palestinian borders in 1947, 1967, present day. The map legend labels are “Palestinian Land” and “Jewish/Israeli Land”. There is also a text-based “timeline” starting in 1948, focusing mainly on Palestinian deaths and displacements.
jahnu•6mo ago
oceansky•6mo ago
PartiallyTyped•6mo ago
consumer451•6mo ago
This term appears to have been redefined by podcast and twitter bros as something really, really bad. They can't define it, but it's bad. Similar to that four letter word that starts with "w."
slumberlust•6mo ago
consumer451•6mo ago
drstewart•6mo ago
hermitcrab•6mo ago
linotype•6mo ago
oceansky•6mo ago
fuzzfactor•6mo ago
I would say different US leaders over the decades have had varying degrees of financial acumen when it comes to being able to afford things like NATO, without contributing most strongly to pressure on poor & middle class.
Though no doubt a truly rich country has been able to afford it through thick & thin, as long as there is decision-making consistently at above-average levels, with no undercurrents or personal tendencies toward financial incompetence, malfeasance or outright criminality in sight.
When the fool who drops the ball is closer to the top though, expect it to take a whole lot longer to recover the same yardage that was lost, if at all.
Every now and then there are shameful milestones that just can not be recovered from.
Some things you just can't fix.
jahnu•6mo ago
It’s madness. I’m deadly serious when I call this a Cultural Revolution.
It makes Brexit look like a kindergarten game.
jahnu•6mo ago
This year was just the tipping point.
dist-epoch•6mo ago
It would be like us caring about some chimp wars from time forgotten.
buyucu•6mo ago