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NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant
- 7373737373 1y agoThis is the US not shooting itself in the foot or heart anymore, this one is going straight to the brain. Civilizational suicide.
- jahnu 1y agoThe consequences of this Cultural Revolution will be felt for decades.
- oceansky 1y agoI would say at least a century
- PartiallyTyped 1y agoWe can agree that decades of soft power are gone. So it’d take twice as much to ameliorate.
- consumer451 1y ago> soft power 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 1y agoA rose by any other name would smell as sweet. What do you want to call it? Then we can focus the discussion on the issue and not semantics.
- consumer451 1y agoFor soft power: non-violent projection of national interests and influence.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- drstewart 1y agoYou would say that based on what?
- hermitcrab 1y agoThe effects of the Chinese Cultural Revolution are still very keenly felt in China.
- linotype 1y agoIf an alliance decades in the making can be undone in six months it wasn’t much of an alliance in the first place. Just a bunch of countries subsidizing their defense budgets off the backs of the poor and middle class in the US (NATO).
- oceansky 1y agoDestroying is much easier than building something, including alliances, trust and deals.
- fuzzfactor 1y agoChildish destruction is really in its own category too. 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 1y agoLet’s not forget the party that does everything possible to help fool and cover for his behaviour and choices. It’s madness. I’m deadly serious when I call this a Cultural Revolution. It makes Brexit look like a kindergarten game.
- jahnu 1y agoIt wasn’t undone in 6 months. This started with the GWOT and ramped up in 2016. This year was just the tipping point.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dist-epoch 1y agoNo they wont, the AIs which will rule the world decades from now will not care. It would be like us caring about some chimp wars from time forgotten.
- buyucu 1y agoI think a comparison to China's Cultural Revolution is the best analogy for what is happening in the US right now. Ideological purity takes priority over everything else.
- epistasis 1y agoThe past year has been utter chaos, madness, and sadness for STEM in the US. I hope that Tao's grad students don't suffer from this too much in the immediate term. In the long term, all science is being harmed greatly, and we are causing a gigantic bubble in the pipeline of the production of scientists, most severely damaging those who are graduating soon.
- fuzzfactor 1y ago>most severely damaging those who are graduating soon. When Nixon was getting ready for his recession it was pretty bad too.
- nyeah 1y agoIt was not like this. Nixon was not dismantling science and engineering.
- fuzzfactor 1y ago>dismantling science and engineering. Not directly, I admit that was just collateral damage. About like these NSF grants are situated within the big picture.
- gddgb 1y ago[dead]
- insane_dreamer 1y agoNixon is starting to look like a saint these days
- SirFatty 1y agoIt's been 6 months....
- PartiallyTyped 1y agoIt has felt like years a few weeks in.
- willvarfar 1y agoPublic support for Israel is steadily falling; this poll was published just a couple of days ago https://news.gallup.com/poll/692948/u.s.-back-israel-military-action-gaza-new-low.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/692948/u.s.-back-israel-militar... and other G7 countries are moving to recognise Palestine. 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?
- Horffupolde 1y agoWhat does “recognizing Palestine” even mean?
- willvarfar 1y agoThis is breaking news over the last few days. Some of the coverage https://www.ft.com/content/2fe65dbf-65a5-41f3-aaab-5661c014628e https://www.ft.com/content/2fe65dbf-65a5-41f3-aaab-5661c0146...
- WJW 1y agoSure, but what kind of action does it imply? North Korea is recognized by (almost?) every country too, but that doesn't mean anyone is hurrying to provide aid to starving North Koreans. Similarly the international recognition of Azerbaijan and Armenia did nothing to prevent one from taking Nagorno-Karabach from the other earlier this year. 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.
- estomagordo 1y agoYes, recognizing Palestine should be a very simple and uncontroversial thing. And yet.
- brookst 1y agoIt’s noble of you to say that countries might as well not recognize Palestine because it will do no good, but by and large the Palestinians have a different view and see such recognition as a first step.
- anon-3988 1y agoCare to provide more context? Does Tao's grants never get rejected?
- epistasis 1y agoThis is not "rejection" this is cancelling an existing grant. > 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/3lvc7ldavhk2o https://bsky.app/profile/dangaristo.bsky.social/post/3lvc7ld...
- jostmey 1y agoRejected is not the same as suspended. Top scientist and mathematicians sometimes submit grants that are rejected. But suspended is another matter
- est31 1y agoIt is comparatively easy for a mathematician to relocate, given that, like most scientists, they already have world spanning international networks, and unlike other sciences there is no need for expensive lab equipment. Stuff like LIGO is hard to move around, but there is plenty of places in the world that have a good math library.
- willvarfar 1y agoI'm guessing that Terence really wants to be surrounded by thinkers of his calibre. So he gravitated to the ivy league. Perhaps in the future there will be a new gravity well where these minds congregate?
- tossandthrow 1y agoThat there should be only 8 places in the world where you can find elite thinkers, all located in the US, is such extreme American nationalism and straight up ignorant.
- gregjw 1y agoVery very funny.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoWe can thank Hitler for the exodus of academics to the US and for the creation of the Israel/Palestine issue (without the holocaust/ww2, the state would never had been made).
- nyeah 1y agoYeah. We've coasted for a long time on importation of geniuses and on being the only un-bombed industrial nation ... in 1946. 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.
- mi_lk 1y agomore like: UCLA grants are targeted by NSF and some of them are suspended including Tao's
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pklausler 1y agoThe country born out of the scientific enlightenment is eagerly devolving back into medieval mindlessness.
- littlestymaar 1y agoFor people despising the Muslim world, those people are working hard to reproduce their fate: going from the most enlightened place on earth to religious obscurantism.
- schaefer 1y agoAnother way to say that would be: the USA is finally doing to itself what it did to Iran. Toppling a liberal democracy in favor of an authoritarian cult of personality with the support of a fanatic religious sect.
- cmrdporcupine 1y agoI don't know why people keep painting this conjuncture as some sort of aberration in American history. Intolerance and domination of religion and conservative ideological positions over the state and public sphere is actually the norm, not the exception, if you look back on the 20th century history. From the 60s through the 90s is the exception, really. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bertrand_Russell_Case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bertrand_Russell_Case
- pklausler 1y agoOne of my earliest memories was staying up late on a Sunday night to see Neil and Buzz on the moon. Now, in the same country that could once put them there, I have to defend that it even happened. Basic health measures like pasteurization and vaccination are under direct attack. It's been a long shitty decline into madness, and it's just accelerating.
- cmrdporcupine 1y agoYou and I both grew up during times when it was acceptable to persecute homosexuals, hit your kids in public and private, and it was "controversial" for women to take jobs other than bank tellers or airline stewardesses. 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.
- camdroidw 1y ago[flagged]
- mensetmanusman 1y agoBackground: UCLA violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, "by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students." Outcome: These grants are likely in a temporary holding pattern until ucla settles the issue.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Den_VR 1y agoThe root bsky post says “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."” 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.
- throwaway290 1y ago> "creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students" 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.
- dcre 1y agoIt’s complete bullshit. Half the students protesting for Gaza were Jewish themselves.
- throwaway290 1y agoThis is the closest to the answer for now, thanks. I remember reading how it was pretty antisemitic with racial shaming and bordering on physical violence but can't remember what sources it was. If half of the protesters were jewish as you say then that's unlikely
- chickenzzzzu 1y agoHopefully people will now see the benefit of not centralizing basically all of the power and money on Earth in institutions. 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.
- hydrogen7800 1y ago>Hopefully people will now see the benefit of not centralizing basically all of the power and money on Earth in institutions. 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.
- chickenzzzzu 1y agoYes you are correct in your interpretation. Here's my further opinion: 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.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoI'd consider that the issue isn't centralisation so much as that can be very useful, but that rich/connected people are not penalised for breaking laws. 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)
- bananapub 1y agoI continue to find it fascinating that essentially none of the public American elite actually have any values at all. for all the whinging about "free speech" and "free markets" and "freedom from government", approximately everyone has rolled over and is publicly fine with the president ruling like a king - using laws and regulations to enrich and ennoble favoured courtiers, to punish his imaginary enemies and to destroy institutions and relationships with the world that annoy him. this is literally centuries of hard work by hundreds of millions of past Americans being blown up because one rich cunt doesn't like foreigners or loud students or science but does like getting massive bribes and praise.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoThe problem is even if they had values, American voters chose to elect someone without values. 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.
- bananapub 1y agothat's an insane pov. 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?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lotsofpulp 1y agoThe context of this discussion is a university doing what it needs to gain access to money from the federal government. >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.
- wslh 1y agoRelated to have a macro view: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44736458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44736458
- drumhead 1y agoHe should go to China, they'd set an entire research institute just for him.
- oldpersonintx2 1y ago[dead]
- nyeah 1y agoDamn slacker. Who does he think he is, defrauding the people by being an eminent mathematician who also does massive outreach to folks at the almost hobbyist level.
- PartiallyTyped 1y agoHe has a very magnetic personality tbh, on all videos he is cheerful, and enthusiastic at talking about math and science without coming across as a know-it-all.
- FilosofumRex 1y agoThis is a patently illegal case of collective punishment by ADL/AIPAC lobby. UCLA is a public institution and should be free of political pandering. 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.
- estomagordo 1y agoNot sure I've ever come across an entity that feels they have to explain why or how something is antisemitic.
- jackmottatx 1y ago[dead]
- narcissism987 1y ago[flagged]
- tyrrvk 1y agoSo much for freedom of speech in US Universities. Israel dictates what is forbidden/permitted on US campuses now?
- narcissism987 1y ago[flagged]
- padjo 1y agoNot everything is about taking sides.
- narcissism988 1y agoPrecisely! I really wonder why UCLA students need to take a side at all!
- Intermernet 1y agoThe people of Palestine aren't the perpetrators. If you believe they are, you've bought into a lie. It's a similar lie to blaming the actions of the Israeli government on "All Jews". Both Hamas and the Israeli government are responsible for recent atrocities. Factually, the Israeli government are responsible for many more deaths, especially of children, than Hamas. Stop defending or blaming sides when the sides aren't, in actuality, what you're defending or blaming.
- adhamsalama 1y agoLots of problems would have been avoided if Europeans didn't invade and colonize Palestine, and kill Palestinians and steal their land (which still happens as I'm writing this comment).
- oulipo 1y agoHopefully Terence will be able to continue his research in France, we would be more than happy to welcome him!
- narcissism987 1y ago[flagged]
- kakadu 1y agoWould something like this happen if the hostile educational environment was against - say - black people? Or any other ethnic group?
- raincole 1y agoProbably not, but definitely should have.
- peterfirefly 1y agoIt's usually favouring blacks heavily. The discrimination is against whites, Asians, natives, non-Socialists, men
- ModernMech 1y agoI'll give you natives, but men, whites, Asians, and non-socialists can be found in abundance, existing freely and flourishing on any college campus in America.
- xrayarx 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao 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.
- nyantaro1 1y agoWhy is this at the very bottom?
- KnuthIsGod 1y agoThe world's greatest living mathematician has fallen victim to the battle against Thoughtcrime.
- mellosouls 1y ago250K per year fwiw https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2347850&HistoricalAwards=false https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2347850&His...
- narcissism988 1y ago[dead]
- hdidydlssjsk 1y ago[flagged]
- plemer 1y ago3 day old account, four comments, all political.
- hdidydlssjsk 1y ago[flagged]
- narcissism889 1y ago[flagged]
- poulpy123 1y agoThis single out Tao but it's UCLA that is attacked. Let's see how US academia is going to react.
- rahimnathwani 1y agoI expect most people here are (like me) admirers of Terence Tao, and fans of his work. 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.956209/gov.uscourts.cacd.956209.26.0.pdf 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-sander 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-protest-against-professor-who-opposes-affirmative-action https://dailybruin.com/2025/04/21/ucla-law-students-lead-pro...
- narcissism889 1y ago[flagged]
- narcissism889 1y ago[flagged]
- hackyhacky 1y agoThis is not reddit. This type of comment is not valued here.
- Cyph0n 1y agoMaybe next time voice your opinion using an account you didn’t create 30 minutes ago?
- sijf9akk 1y ago[dead]
- narcissism889 1y ago[flagged]
- Strix97 1y agoIt's ok not to comment. These discussions are often times the opposite of useful.
- hackyhacky 1y ago> I know. Only thing valued here is Orange Man d3str0yed Am3rica, Israel is a terrorist state, and Tax the Rich > Losers If you have a substantive argument to make, you are welcome to state it and you will be treated with respect. What is not welcome here is juvenile insults, baseless accusations, cynical snark, self-pitying claims of bias, and unfair characterization of people with different opinions, all of which you have done in the space of four comments.
- tmaly 1y agoI think it would be better to tie the grant to the researcher and let them move around if they want. This does not better humanity if they are tied up with a place that is in the political crosshairs by the current administration. Also, DOGE just doing a blanket cut to NSF research grants was horrible.
- waterthrowaway 1y agosee also: https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-and-nih-suspend-grants-ucla https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-and-nih-suspend-... These grants make up about 75-80% of all NSF grants
- moralestapia 1y ago[flagged]
- dargscisyhp 1y agoYea, but most other immigrants are also far from being that productive.
- water9 1y agodid he reach his ultimate goal? Cause right now it sounds like he spent millions of dollars and didn’t achieve it
- lawlessone 1y agowhat if we just pretend he's an AI company and give him more shots at it?
- moralestapia 1y agoAny private AI companies funded with government money? (I know grants exist, but I mean, a significant chunk of their capital)
- moralestapia 1y agoI knew this comment was coming. You'd be surprised at how productive many of them are. Just as you've been trained to react to the academic stimulus, memorize all the emacs' shortcuts and whatnot; you can also be trained to acknowledge many of the things other immigrants do.
- kevinventullo 1y agoI personally visited the protest site at UCLA while this was happening. It was a huge fenced-off encampment on the main lawn in front of the library. The interior of the encampment was mostly tents, while the boundary of the encampment had signs facing outward for passers-by to read. There were no obstructions or barriers to any buildings, though it would take an extra minute or two to walk around the encampment if you were trying to get to a nearby building. Here are some of the signs I saw: “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_Bushnell 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.