Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/114956840959338146

by dargscisyhp • 12 months ago

280 297 12 months ago

TrueTom• 12 months ago

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/29/ucla-lawsuit...

nosianu3• 12 months ago

Just for the record, not just on StackOverflow but everywhere it is good practice to not just post a link and nothing else. One should always include a TL;DR summary so that it is clear what the link is about without having to click. Especially on mobile, having to click to even know what some link is about is bad.

Linked article summary:

"UCLA agrees to $6.5m settlement with Jewish students over pro-Palestinian protests"

The University of California, Los Angeles, will pay nearly $6.5m to settle a lawsuit by Jewish students and a professor who said the university allowed antisemitic discrimination to take place on campus during last year’s pro-Palestinian protests.
The lawsuit alleged that with the “knowledge and acquiescence” of university officials, protesters prevented Jewish students from accessing parts of campus, and made antisemitic threats.

afroboy• 12 months ago

Holy shit, 6.5 millions because they got annoyed by people wanting to stop a genocide.

JumpCrisscross3• 12 months ago

Fuck it hurts me to say this as a former China hawk. But:

How does Chinese immigration work for STEM?

What does residency look like for someone making $500+ k in America?

What are the Y Combinators? (No CCP Tans.)

barry-cotter• 12 months ago

You get a job offer for very large amounts of money and their HR will handle you getting a work visa. If you’re making very large amounts of money and still feel like living in China after five years apply for a green card.

You would have to be insane to consider founding or investing in a Chinese startup when you could do so in Silicon Valley or even NYC or Austin.

HSO2• 12 months ago

You would have to be insane to consider founding or investing in a Chinese startup when you could do so in Silicon Valley or even NYC or Austin.

With all due respect, you´re not thinking long-term, or dare I say even medium-term.

Jasonwuyc• 12 months ago

can speak to the yc part. one's called https://www.miracleplus.com/, run by the former yc china head Lu Qi. similar investment terms and philosophy.

JumpCrisscross3• 12 months ago

Thank you.

ralph84• 12 months ago

Right, because in China universities can totally run afoul of the central government with no impact to their funding.

msy• 12 months ago

The point is if the problem is the same in both you need to re-examine the pros and cons. Given the other issues in America and other advantages in China it's no longer a simple equation.

ben_w5• 12 months ago

Why reach for China before Europe? Similar sized economies; much smaller language barrier for an immigrant from the USA; and with stories like this being what makes you ask the question, relatively more freedom.

JumpCrisscross3• 12 months ago

Why reach for China before Europe?

We’re allies. Barring a massive geopolitical realignment, D.C. will take Europe down with it.

ben_w5• 12 months ago

Follow up question, given your background: is TACO still true, or would you suggest retail investors divest away from US markets?

padjo3• 12 months ago

It’s pretty clear that the only numbers this administration are interested in are ones that support the narrative that the great leader is infallible.

exe347• 12 months ago

They just fired the commissioner of Labour Statistics. The great thing about autocrats is that they neuter their own country pretty quickly. When you make it risky for people to give you bad news, you end up with missiles that don't work and capital ships that sink.

padjo3• 12 months ago

Yep. It’s odd to see classic third world dictator antics in the most powerful country in the world, but not at all unexpected given who’s running it.

roenxi8• 12 months ago

The US BLS does seem to have a bit of a history [0] with their job reporting though. The process they've been using appears biased to over report initially and then get revised down over time. I'm sure there are a lot of political considerations, but from a raw statistical perspective there is a pretty easy path to getting better results. They could eliminate the optimistic bias and aim for accuracy.

If it were me I'd be sacking people until they started getting a mean adjustment somewhere around 0. I doubt that is what Trump is doing, but the managers left themselves vulnerable to technical criticism.

[0] https://mishtalk.com/economics/in-honor-of-labor-day-lets-re...

eterm• 12 months ago

That may be a comforting thought, but the reality is that it takes decades for these things to have an effect, and there's no guarantee that transitioning to a low trust and high corruption society will result in the removal of the autocrat.

See North Korea or Russia. People have been claiming they're on the verge of collapse for decades but the reality is that they just keep going.

mavhc• 12 months ago

Facts have a well known liberal bias, the only way the right wing gets enough votes is to have more people who don't do facts. Promoting science would just reduce the number of votes they get.

Same with global warming, it causes migration, loads of immigrants is great for the right wing, scares people into voting for them, they have no incentive to fix the problem that's causing them to get more votes.

Almondsetat• 12 months ago

It's really telling when an invaluable intellectual powerhouse specialized in a non politicized field gets its funds taken away because of politics

Edit:

This is a comment about the administration, not Tao.

ekianjo2• 12 months ago

thats why they should refrain from engaging in politics in the first place. the day the wind changes you lose.

kzrdude4• 12 months ago

Then it's maybe not a free country anymore if you have to think about how your actions are perceived by the president in power at every step.

saagarjha• 12 months ago

You still lose when you aren't political enough.

tetha• 12 months ago

As a band recently put it in a festival: They'd like their music to be non-political, but sometimes politics enter music and then you have no choice.

or_am_i• 12 months ago

“If you would escape moral and physical assassination, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing — court obscurity, for only in oblivion does safety lie.” E. Hubbard, ca. 1989

Thorrez• 12 months ago

Are you saying the 6 NSF-funded math institutes (IPAM being one) are engaging in politics?

tempodox• 12 months ago

Facts and knowledge are immensely political if the powers that be feel threatened by them.

lordofgibbons3• 12 months ago

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. - Pericles

ykonstant• 12 months ago

Or, to quote his lesser-known cousin:

"I thought I was safe in my hideout, but a kick to the groin proved me wrong." -Testicles

m1015• 12 months ago

UCLA has an endowment of 3.8bn$. Whilst I'm sympathetic to their desire to be further government financed for the work they do, I feel like government financing should be made available to those that actually need the money. The attitude that you have access to government funds even if you have the ability to pay yourself needs to change.

bigDinosaur• 12 months ago

Endowments are often earmarked for certain use cases. They aren't necessarily permitted to spend it as they like.

xdennis• 12 months ago

Maybe taxes should be the same. I don't mind being taxed as much as I hate my taxes going to the wrong thing.

padjo3• 12 months ago

UCLA gets about $800m a year in federal grants. $3.8bn wouldn’t last long if they were to self fund that.

davrosthedalek8• 12 months ago

Also: Even if they could, why would they? Grants are for research. Research only very indirectly affects their income. They could probably accept more students (so more tuition) if they would say to the faculty: no research, more teaching.

An uber driver who gets rich by other means will stop driving for uber, not drive for uber for free.

Erikun• 12 months ago

Source here https://efm.research.ucla.edu/#:~:text=Statistics%20for%20fi...

Hilift2• 12 months ago

California higher education in general does not need of federal funds. These are typically mutually beneficially projects that doesn't necessarily need to be partnered with the US government.

The bigger problem is the recipients of these cuts seem to think it is about an "issue", and are incapable of accepting they are having sand kicked in their face.

fundad2• 12 months ago

There is actually a stated issue that is the reason: anti-semitism. Isn’t it reasonable to want to understand more and gain the kind of influence to affect change of this magnitude?

noelwelsh• 12 months ago

Governments typically fund research because 1) it's seen as beneficial for the country, and hence falls under the remit of governments in democratic countries and 2) the uncertainty, time frame, or lack of direct commercialization of research typically means the private sector will not invest in it.

Your suggestion is saying that research should be privatised, and shows very little thought about how research works and who benefits from it.

aborsy• 12 months ago

Research 50 years ago, sure. Research now is very different. It’s short term, chasing money, trends, citations, prestige, hierarchy, academic power, and applications. Public should fund only the useful part of it.

jkhdigital3• 12 months ago

Your Panglossian description of the purpose of publicly-funded research shows very little understanding of reality.

m1015• 12 months ago

You make this statement as if it's fact. The actual reality of the matter is that neither you nor I know how research would progress were the government not stepping in and spending on our behalf. Your kind of argument is what is used to justify increasing amounts of government taxation and spending, over trusting the private sector to figure out ways of doing so, and the suggestion that government is the only way of incentivising the research you speak of is entirely lacking in imagination and faith in basic human ingenuity to solve problems.

Yes, there are coordination problems for projects at some scale, for which government involvement makes it possible, however these are far fewer than we are made to believe.

bryanrasmussen• 12 months ago

UCLA has an endowment of 3.8bn$

you say that like it's a lot of money? I mean sure, in comparison to the amount of money I make yes, but in comparison to value derived from research, amounts of money collected from California, amount of money given to California, and amount of money federal government spends on other things - is it a lot of money? I have a feeling it's not.

I feel like government financing should be made available to those that actually need the money.

yeah, if they actually needed the money they would shut down the programs using the money when they stopped getting the money.

fundad2• 12 months ago

Military contractors have even more money but the budget to pay them only grows larger every year.

tzs5• 12 months ago

Endowments are not piles of money that they just sit on. Universities typically spend 4-5% of their endowment every year. The endowment is invested and managed to try and make that 4-5% a year spending sustainable indefinitely.

If the policy was no government funding if you have an endowment the net result would be that endowments would be spent down, and then not only would they need government funding for the things the government now funds, they would also need government funding for the things that are currently funded from the endowment's earnings.

Also, money in endowments is often legally restricted. Donors put conditions on their donations which limit what they can be used for. For example a donor might donate several million dollars to create and pay the salary of a named professorship in a specific department. That money goes into the endowment, but it and its earnings can only be spent on paying whoever currently holds that professorship.

A typical endowments includes hundreds or thousands of such restricted donations.

m1015• 12 months ago

I don't think there's a problem with spending an endowment down, however university administrators do, and that's a emotional step they need to get over.

Agreed on restrictions and would be good to know how large the unrestricted part is.

ujkhsjkdhf234• 12 months ago

One thing I've learned is that people have no idea what an endowment is and how it works because it isn't a piggy bank you dip into. UCLA is also a public university that should get public money.

trhway2• 12 months ago

Among the impacts of suspension of such science grants is the impact on PhD students. The PhD students themselves would do fine - they would just leave science and go to programming, finance, etc. - and most will that way do financially even better than staying in science. The issue here is the future of the science - for the precedent one can look at the Russian science today as similar thing - leaving science for better pastures en masse - happened there in the 90ies.

China is producing 77K STEM PhDs in 2025 and that number is quickly growing year over year, US - 42K/year. (and just ponder for a moment that those 77K are the smartest out of 1.5B population of a country where STEM is all the rage - those 77K are really top line smart and driven ones with all the support from the state)

m_a_g• 12 months ago

UCLA was “failing to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias”

Is Trump using antisemitism as an excuse to crack down on liberal universities? Because this will make people only more critical of Israel.

pbiggar3• 12 months ago

Yes, this is part of Project Esther by the Heritage Foundation. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/us/project-esther-heritag...

US universities do a lot of research on Palestine and Israel's occupation and apartheid there. In addition, universities are naturally liberal and are targets of the right wing anti-education movement.

mlrtime• 12 months ago

You call it anti-education, they'd call it anti-indoctrination. In the end, its all political warfare. Illegal immigration being similar.

tzs5• 12 months ago

Probably yes, since antisemitism doesn't seem to be an impediment to getting jobs in his administration [1].

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/05/14/nx-s1-5387299/trump-white-hou...

pbiggar3• 12 months ago

Remember that these claims of antisemitism are all false. What they actually mean is "they had a student encampment calling out Israel's genocide in Gaza and occupation of Palestine, that the US supports with weapons, troops, UN vetos, and bad faith negotiation"

mikevm2• 12 months ago

There is no evidence of a genocide in Gaza, so ironically your claims are all false. Anti-semitism is the least of the problems of these Universities. They promote blatant racism and discrimination against certain groups while claiming to help others. Finally they are being punished, and there's nothing they can do in court because the evidence is literally against them.

wat100003• 12 months ago

And remember that this actually stokes antisemitism. Israel is demonstrably out there committing atrocities. If officials are conflating anti-Israel with anti-Jew then it prompts people opposed to those atrocities to oppose Jews.

jjgreen• 12 months ago

The cynic in me thinks this is deliberate.

jkhdigital3• 12 months ago

The current war was initiated via a sneak attack by Hamas militants from Gaza who committed rather unspeakable atrocities against Israeli civilians. Not justifying their actions but as an uninvolved third party I’m going to at least acknowledge the history of the situation before judging their actions.

HSO2• 12 months ago

all the best people are going to move to china anyway

stop rearranging chairs on the deck of a sinking ship and move on terence

spwa4• 12 months ago

Really? The situation in China (and Europe, for that matter) is far worse. Obviously Europe is much better than China for academics, but the US is still miles above that. So sorry, that won't happen. This will "just" disappear, with no replacement.

lars_francke• 12 months ago

In which way is the situation far worse in Europe?

SalmoShalazar• 12 months ago

What are you even talking about? Pure American exceptionalism. Take a look at this and think about what it means: https://www.nature.com/nature-index/research-leaders/2025/in...

francasso2• 12 months ago

Maybe it's time to move to Europe or China

numbers_guy• 12 months ago

There is nowhere to run and hide. Europe is worse than the US on this front. China also demands party loyalty. In a sense this is just the human condition. The ruling faction demands loyalty. Only a very advanced human civilization could move past that and allow criticism of the ruling class. Maybe the US had achieved that for a brief movement in the past or maybe it was just an illusion.

EDIT: For people wondering why I think it's worse in Europe, it's because in Europe the ruling class and the universities are on the same side. And when I say Europe, I mean UK, France and Germany.

delusional3• 12 months ago

What are you on about? I live in Europe. We don't terminate all contact to random universities because they said something the führer didn't like.

If you truly believe that the whole world is "just as bad" as this, then you are unimaginably far to the right.

tsm• 12 months ago

Europe is worse than the US on this front

Would you please expand on this?

jmcgough• 12 months ago

My PhD friends are moving to Canada and Hong Kong now. Neither are perfect, but they are better than America now in terms of academic freedom, and won't yank your funding in the middle of a 5 year research project just for petty revenge. Half of what you hear about China is propaganda - America is the bad place now.

A_D_E_P_T5• 12 months ago

I'm in Europe. It's not even close to being worse than the US on that front. Places like the Fraunhofer Institute and the Max Planck Institute are perpetually well-funded, and are largely unaffected by politics. Good places to do research.

diggan2• 12 months ago

Europe is worse than the US on this front.

On the front of funding research? Considering that one is constantly adding more funds for research, while the other one is removing funds, I'm not sure how accurate that is.

BDPW• 12 months ago

Like the German diplomats recently speaking out against their governments policy on Gaza and Israel?

Or Dutch professors openly criticizing the plans by the right-wing government (which just fell) as being damaging, unproductive amd sometimes unconstitutional?

The only examples I see are the opposite of what you say. Can you name any examples in Germany, Sweden, Norway or Holland? (Those are the countries that I'm confident talking about at least)

lawn• 12 months ago

why I think it's worse in Europe, it's because in Europe the ruling class and the universities are on the same side

Sounds like a feature, not a bug.

And when I say Europe, I mean UK, France and Germany.

Europe is much larger and more diverse than those three countries. Scandinavia for example consistently top the list in most well-being statistics.

Applejinx• 12 months ago

Yeah, it was called the United States and if it was an illusion it would not have been the weakness exploited in this way. America was real and can well be again: turns out allowing such diversity and multiculturalism gave rise to things like New York City, California etc etc. known for being giant piles of messy commerce and influence from all over the place.

It's never been any different, all the way back to when Germans or Irish or whoever were the 'demonized immigrants'. This is what made America great. Anytime we want it, those conditions can return. It was no illusion.

linguae2• 12 months ago

For someone at the level of Terence Tao, this may be a good idea if a university is willing to hire him, even if it were for a temporary position until 2029 when (hopefully) the regime changes and the destruction is over. I’m sure Terence Tao will have no problems finding such a university or institution.

It’s researchers who are not at the top of their fields who will have a much harder time leaving America to find research positions, since academic positions and funding haven’t been easy to obtain in places like Canada, Europe, Australia, and Japan for at least two decades.

What will most likely be the case is that scientific careers will be halted temporarily or permanently from these funding cuts. Graduate admissions are harder than ever now, it’s harder to find a research position, and I can’t imagine how much more difficult tenure will be to obtain if professors can’t fundraise and publish. Industry isn’t always an option, either. A lot of researcher’s careers will face major setbacks, some unrecoverable, all due to the capriciousness of our rulers.

francasso2• 12 months ago

Yes, I agree with you that it's going to be difficult for researcher that are not at the top of their field. But if some of the top researchers started the flow, and goverments in other countries woke up and took advantage of the situation, I believe things could change.

raincole2• 12 months ago

I have all my respect to Tao.

But I think it's very justified for the federal to do something (not necessarily this thing) against institutions that show racist behaviors. e.g. Little Rock Nine.

malcolmgreaves• 12 months ago

And no college being defunded right now has shown any racist behaviors whatsoever.

So are you in support of the current defunding?

raincole2• 12 months ago

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-07-29/ucla-set...

The lawsuit, filed more than a year ago, alleged that by not immediately ordering the encampment to be taken down, UCLA provided support to pro-Palestinian activists who “enforced” what it termed a “Jew Exclusion Zone,” prohibiting Jewish students and staff from passing through the camp’s makeshift barricades.

Personally I think this is a textbook racist behavior. Replace "Jewish" with "black" and "Palestinian' with "white" and see if you agree. I personally firmly believe if white activists try to enforce a "Non Black Zone" in the campus, the college administration has a responsibility to take it down and discipline said activists.

I'm not sure if this defunding is justified though, as it seems that UCLA has settled this case and the defunding sounds retrospective.

plemer• 12 months ago

Where do you see anything remotely comparable to the Little Rock 9 at UCLA?

Edit: Incidentally, Trump absolutely gutted the Department of Education, including the Office of Civil Rights, appointing loyalists who explicitly don’t believe it should exist. Are these the actions of a president concerned with civil rights?

Also, indulge us in a wild guess as to what Trump would’ve done to the Little Rock 9. Consider that he signed a full-page newspaper ad calling for the death of the Central Park 5, a wrongfully convicted group of Black and Latino teenagers.

Invoking our civil rights legacy here is perverse.

Terr_2• 12 months ago

Also, Republicans just torched the DOJ's division for for prosecuting Civil Rights violations, staffing down by 70%.

Their goal isn't to build legal cases against actual offenses, their goal is extortion.

mikevm2• 12 months ago

The only people to blame for this are the Universities who are blatantly violating civil rights law -- even after a Supreme Court ruling! Terence and other academics who have had nothing to do with promotion of this blatant discrimination should be angry at their University leadership and administrators for this outcome, not the Trump administration who is doing THE RIGHT THING.

The faculty should take this opportunity to make the Universities drastically reduce the dead weight of administrators who have grown much more than faculty and produce no value.

kashunstva• 12 months ago

blatantly violating civil rights law

That’s not at all clear. Regardless, there is no proportionality in the actions that this administration is taking against UCLA and other eminent universities. The tools for righting civil rights issues in education should be through consent decrees that permit the DOJ to set criteria and monitor for compliance. The destruction of a large part of the research enterprise for these claims, particularly when the claims are widely regarded as nonsense, is heavy-handed and gives the distinct impression of another agenda.

coderatlarge4• 12 months ago

i would personally like to see organizations of any scale self-publish metrics about their performance on their SLAs and at least trends on their unit efficiency (throughput latency and cost per main types of work items). for the state department time to issue a passport passports issued per unit time internal cost to issue a passport etc. for the irs corresponding metrics for processing a return or an audit. for id.me success in catching bad actors failures in incorrectly blocking legitimate users.

for university administrative departments , thoughtful corresponding things that capture what they do all day in understandable and defensible ways.

derbOac• 12 months ago

UCLA recently reached a settlement, which among other things included “opposing calls to boycott Israel". I'm not sure how boycotting a government engaged in what many legal organizations have identified as genocide counts as civil rights discrimination. If anything it seems to violate civil rights of Palestinian Americans and citizens in general.

Also, Tao points out maybe the most important criticism of the Trump administration, which is how is cutting off all federal research funding improving the ability of faculty to do their work, given that the reason for an antidiscrimination claim in that setting is that discrimination prevents faculty from doing their work?

mehulashah• 12 months ago

This is a tragedy. Our pre-eminence as a scientific and industrial powerhouse that really began post WWII is now disintegrating because of the actions of a few. The funding being pulled from Terence Tao and his institute without due process is not the start, it's merely one casualty among many that began at the start of this administration. This is like cutting one's nose to spite one's face.

watwut• 12 months ago

It is not actions of the few. This is action of many. There is whole party apparatus behind this, public support among conservative voters, support of tech leaders etc.

kergonath6• 12 months ago

This. It’s easy to rationalise what can be seen as completely counter-productive and irrational actions as random acts of deranged minds. But Trump and proto-fascist republicans have genuine popular support. For terrible reasons, but still. And we can argue about how the US political system plays in their favour by giving them more power than their raw numbers would suggest, but even then they are a significant part of the population. Even more so since they managed to capture the broligarchs.

To my worried eyes this looks too much like Russia circa 2000 for comfort. Or Turkey early in Erdogan’s reign. Whatever happens, it will be painful and damaging.

throw0101d• 12 months ago

It is not actions of the few. This is action of many.

The US House of Representatives has 219 GOPers that voted to pass certain legislation. The US Senate has 50 GOPers that voted to pass certain legislation and voted to confirm many appointments.

A large swath of the US public voted to put those 219+50 people into Congress and voted to put a convicted felon [1] and rapist [2] in the White House.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/trump-trial-deliberations-jury-te...

[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/30/appeals-court-upho...

austhrow743• 12 months ago

Punishing urban intellectuals for being urban intellectuals appears to be a common theme in a lot of right wing American messaging and the Republican Party won the popular vote.

You can’t put this on a few. It’s the genuine desire of the American voter.

tzs5• 12 months ago

A majority of the voters voted for people other than Trump.

Edit: come on people, read things in context. I was responding to someone who was implying that a majority of American voters support this. To support that assertion about any President's policies at a minimum you need that President to have received a majority of the popular vote.

When third parties get enough votes that a President gets a plurality but not a majority you can't really infer anything about what a majority of voters want.

Even if all the third parties were on the same side of the left/right spectrum as the President's party you can't infer much because if those voters agreed with most or all of the President's policies they would have voted for the President.

smt88• 12 months ago

Few Americans pay enough attention to politics to expect this, and less than a third of the country voted for this regime anyway.

wisty5• 12 months ago

They think urban intellectuals have a fair bit of power.

They also think they are not always correct, not always unbiased, and possibly not always honest; and the bias tends to be towards either things that benefit the urban elite, or "luxury beliefs" that have disproportionate costs on other people.

qcnguy8• 12 months ago

The administration's stated reason is bias and anti-semitism, are you claiming that this is the definition of urban intellectual? If so how do you defend it? If not, how do you define it?

EasyMark• 12 months ago

The long term goal is to dumb down the populace, in anticipation that AI and machines can replace them. Billionaires have the money and resources to play the long game in order to set up an authoritarian society with only two levels. The peasants and the billionaires. Democracy is their enemy, although it served them for a time. It's not really about MAGAs vs Progressives in the USA if you pull back the Wizard's curtain. The MAGAs are being used because they don't question their leaders.

teiferer7• 12 months ago

This sounds too much tinfoil hat to be taken seriously in a debate, thus the downvotes, but there is more truth to it than folks on HN would be comfortable with if they were honest with themselves.

whoknowsidont3• 12 months ago

because of the actions of a few.

What do you mean? Over half the country voted for this.

pragmatic• 12 months ago

Not half the country, not even a majority of voters.

However your punt stands.

I think a lot of those voted for the racism not the economic collapse.

jlnthws• 12 months ago

Come to Europe!

lordofgibbons3• 12 months ago

It's such a tragedy that we're deliberately destroying the very engine of our global science and tech research leadership. All for the sake of making the pro-Israeli lobby happy under the guise of protecting against "antisemitism".

The feds are forcing the universities to either protect the freedom of speech by banning peaceful protests against the genocide, or to have the universities research funding cut.

Given that so far we (U.S) have been unmatched in science and tech research, this is probably the biggest case of "self own" in recent memory.

lmpdev• 12 months ago

Come home Terry, we miss you

- Australia

Havoc• 12 months ago

on the grounds that UCLA was “failing to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias”

This really has very Germany 1930s vibes even if the direction of the anti is flipped.

kergonath6• 12 months ago

It is purely Orwellian. They gaslit everyone into thinking that opposing an intolerant theocracy in Israel, and by extension the burgeoning autocracy in the US, was antisemitism, while at the same time moaning about Jews controlling and ruining the US. This naked cynicism is disgusting.

jkhdigital3• 12 months ago

Intolerant theocracy? And you’re using this phrase to refer to Israel?

qcnguy8• 12 months ago

Flipping the direction isn't some minor detail. That "flip" was the reason for the Allies to fight the second world war! The universities implement Nazi-like policies in which they try to keep Jews out illegally, others fought against them. If you aren't sure which side are in the wrong here, you need to ask yourself if it's yours.

aledue• 12 months ago

Would you have said the same about universities illegally keeping out Nazis, if the Allies had supported their genocide of the Jews?

aaomidi6• 12 months ago

Where are they keeping out Jewish people? Extraordinary claims and all that

avoutos2• 12 months ago

What is more 1930s Germany were the checkpoints and human-chains set up around UCLA to limit the movement of Jews around campus.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-09/are-you-...

All UCLA has to do is strike up a deal with the gov't that presumably entails eliminating affirmative action and preventing pro-Hamas factions from taking hold of the university.

Columbia made a deal and they have their funding back now.

fxtentacle• 12 months ago

3 months ago, we were all wondering why the EU proudly launched their "Choose EU for Science" campaign, despite having much lower funding levels than in the US.

If they predicted this, then their actions would make a lot of sense. It is notoriously difficult for scientists to change careers after years in research. For people cut off from US funding like this, a EU-guaranteed middle-class income will appear much more attractive than hoping for this newly unpredictable US situation to turn out well.

kergonath6• 12 months ago

Both the EU and its large member-states need to significantly ramp up funding to exfiltrate scientists from the US. This could be a force multiplier as important as getting German scientists was after WWII, or Russian ones during the Cold War. It would also be a tremendous amount of progress for not that much money, all things considered.

And I say this with no joy whatsoever, because all these developments are damaging great collaborations and personal relationships with friends and colleagues in the US.

jltsiren• 12 months ago

As a fraction of GDP, the EU spends more on academic research than the US. And if you add the UK, the total is also higher in absolute terms. (The US spends more on R&D, but that's mostly business spending.)

From an individual perspective, the funding situation is (used to be?) better in the US than in Europe. Mostly because there is less competition, as the salary gap between the academia and the industry is wider in the US. Americans are less likely to do a PhD and pursue a career in the academia than Europeans.

n3storm• 12 months ago

"prediction" skills was not needed.

Intelligent, smart, critical citizens are a nuisance for absocapitalism goals.

bboygravity• 12 months ago

Scientists please come to the EU, we can't pay you much, you won't be able to find a place to live and we don't do air conditioning, but plz come.

oulipo2• 12 months ago

This easily beats being persecuted because of your research. Humanity and researchers use to live on more modest means, and you don't need 100k's to do math research. So sure, come to France we would love to welcome all of you!

kzrdude4• 12 months ago

It didn't need to be predicted, 3 months ago it was already clear what was happening. The list of banned words in applications, and so on, was already out by then.

AlecSchueler• 12 months ago

I was also surprised to read that. The EU were obviously acting in direct response to the US administration declaring it as their immediate intention to pivot away from science.

curseofcasandra• 12 months ago

if nothing else this unprecedented decision does not appear to have followed the usual standards of due process

On par for this administration.

niemandhier• 12 months ago

Every phd student of Terence Tao is probably welcome at the Max Planck Institute For Mathematics:

https://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/application

Usually you need 2 letters of recommendation, I’d strongly assume that in the case of Tao one is enough.

Generally please consider the new „ Max Planck Transatlantic Program“:

https://www.mpg.de/25034916/max-planck-transatlantic-program

ktallett2• 12 months ago

Whilst I would imagine that to be the case, you should at the start of a phd have more than one professor across the many you have come into contact with that is willing to vouch for both your mathematical ability and your personality and ability to fit in a team.

I don't think anyone should get in just on the relation to Tao, likewise it is also important that they move to a program that they have an interest in.

I do hope those students find an appropriate course for themselves as this must be extremely challenging for them both regarding their career and also mentally and socially.

NullCascade• 12 months ago

How is that going to help?

Germany has an even lower threshold for criticism of Israel and organized Judaism than the US.

Mainland Europe (excluding Germany) is generally way more pro-Palestinian than the US. However that doesn't extend to our institutions. Case in point: Dutch riot police brutally beating up University of Amsterdam students for setting up UCLA/Columbia-style tent blockades.

If you're an American academic or student you can come to Europe and continue both your work and pro-Palestinian activism within the Overton window of mainstream European consensus on the two-state solution. Anything that is more radical than that might get you in the same level of trouble or worse than the US.

Basically Europe is a non-solution for pro-Palestinian American academics and students.

smugma• 12 months ago

The problem Tao speaks of is his funding, not pro or anti Israel demonstrations.

The US is coupling student politics to academic research funding. Is that done in Germany or other parts of Europe or Australia?

tsoukase• 12 months ago

Yep, Germany takes back scientists she had lost two generations ago. And this over and due to a similar subject! O tempora, O mores.

belter• 12 months ago

Terence Tao work on the Prime Radiant predicts the third crisis. Trump is the Mule.

mastermage• 12 months ago

It is time for operation Büroklammer.

oulipo2• 12 months ago

We'd be VERY happy to welcome Terrence Tao or his graduate students in France! Please come!

oefrha• 12 months ago

Being a PhD student at UCLA (or over public universities) was arguably risky in the best of times. When I applied to grad school a decade ago, I got an offer from UCLA Math and it was notable that funding was not guaranteed beyond the first year, meaning you may need to look for your own funding. Same thing with the offer from Berkeley Physics. In contrast, the private universities like Princeton guaranteed funding throughout the normal duration of the PhD program (you’re welcome to bring your own grants, but if you don’t and can’t find an advisor/lab to provide for you, the department with fix you up with TA jobs and stuff). Now it seems the public institutions got 100x shittier still (not saying private ones aren’t in a bind).

mellosouls• 12 months ago

Suspension already being discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44755429

omnee• 12 months ago

One of the worst excesses of this admin has been the attack on science and mathematics, stemming from their deliberate ignorance of evidence. A setback for the researchers and a tragedy for the people that might benefit from their work, the nation and the world as a whole.

amai• 12 months ago

The Trump government probably thinks: Who needs mathematicans, if we already have the best AI in the world?

djkivi• 12 months ago

A-1, it's how math is done.

rossant• 12 months ago

Shameful. What a disgrace.

biggerbiggar• 12 months ago

No unspeakable crimes would cause Paul to open his eyes and think about what he's busy doing.

Henchman21• 12 months ago

Welp this is a total shit show.

bsy_at_play• 12 months ago

The cultural revolution only set China back by 50-60 years. Our grandchildren will be okay ...

avoutos2• 12 months ago

This is only a problem until UCLA makes a deal with the gov't, like Columbia, and gets its grant money restored.

dang• 12 months ago

Recent and related:

NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44755429 - Aug 2025 (332 comments)

Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

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