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NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

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Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#101

Post by AdrianB1 »

sathackr wrote: post #42
AdrianB1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some hills not worth die on. There are moments when a retreat is better than a worthless fight, saving people in the process. I did the same mistake working for a company that went from morally sound to "almost-Enron". I thought it is a fight worth taking. The company went its way, I made no difference in the end, I just stressed myself for years for nothing. Life is too short for that.

If more people at the company had followed your example...would it have turned out differently? Seems like you had the right idea just nobody else cared enough to join you

In a company with 100,000 employees even a few hundred will not make a difference, even if they all work in the same department and make it critical for the company. This is my experience, it may be better in other situations and other companies, but when the bad things come from the very top, there is no solution.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#102

Post by square_usual »

jimbokun wrote: post #87
bananapub wrote: post #15

Pretty distressing at how there’s basically zero pushback from the American elites at the destruction of all strategic American advantages and only ineffective pushback from the public. There will be entire genres of books written about how America just said “eh” to being gutted by a bunch of rich psychopaths.

Two failed impeachment attempts, countless lawsuits, and now the Supreme Court has more or less inoculated Trump from any further prosecution attempts. The checks and balances have all been exhausted. There are no bullets left in the gun.

And the one remaining possible check - a literal Supreme Court order - has also been ignored.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#103

Post by justin66 »

ScoobleDoodle wrote: post #91
justin66 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Comply but leak the truth to the media. Doesn't apply, everybody knows what's going on already. > Comply in a maximally obstructive way. Doesn't apply, the whole point is that the executive wants to obstruct things, and that's what we're talking about fighting against. > Comply just enough to not get fired but not as much as someone who may be more inclined to please their boss. Doesn't apply, you can't half-fire t…

>> Comply in a maximally obstructive way. > Doesn't apply, the whole point is that the executive wants to obstruct things, and that's what we're talking about fighting against. "Obstructive" in this scenario results in the organization keeping functioning effectively. Obstructive of something destructive allows it to keep existing.

> Obstructive of something destructive allows it to keep existing.

Right, but with whose money?

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#104

Post by ricksunny »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #21
sathackr wrote: post #4

One thing I don't understand is people resigning on principles. If something bad is happening to an organization that I hold a significant amount of clout and power in, I'm not just going to leave and hand the reigns to someone on 'their side' -- I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can. So many people are just leaving...instead of fighting. Which seems like it's going to have the effect of j…

The options you have: A) disagree and commit B) disagree and wait to be fired C) appear to commit, but secretly subvert your (elected) boss's plans/intentions I use the word 'boss' here because the president has the right to hire and fire for this role: SEC. 5. 42 U.S.C. 1864 (a) The Director of the Foundation (referred to in this Act as the ‘‘Director’’) shall be appointed by the President by and with the advice and…

Fun fact: Exactly the stipulation behind this excerpt, whether the President can hire/fire the head of the NSF, is exactly why Truman had vetoed an earlier version of the NSF bill written under the close influence of Vannevar Bush that actively avoided providing for this extent of executive ‘weighing of the scales’ of science. Source: Bush, V. “Pieces of the Action”, 1970

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#105

Post by thinkcontext »

MSM wrote: post #81
sathackr wrote: post #4

One thing I don't understand is people resigning on principles. If something bad is happening to an organization that I hold a significant amount of clout and power in, I'm not just going to leave and hand the reigns to someone on 'their side' -- I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can. So many people are just leaving...instead of fighting. Which seems like it's going to have the effect of j…

I think the likely reason is they have signed a non disparagement agreement and have no avenue to publicly criticize. Additionally, quietly criticizing just means quietly getting fired, then likely still being unable to publicly criticize. The only way to say "hey, I don't think this is right and I don't agree with what's happening here" is to publicly resign and hope that alarm bells start going off in people's head…

> I think the likely reason is they have signed a non disparagement agreement and have no avenue to publicly criticize

That was litigated during Trump's first term and held to be not enforceable. That was the case brought by one of his reality show contestants that he appointed to something (the exact details are too trivial to care about).

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#106

Post by insane_dreamer »

sathackr wrote: post #4

One thing I don't understand is people resigning on principles. If something bad is happening to an organization that I hold a significant amount of clout and power in, I'm not just going to leave and hand the reigns to someone on 'their side' -- I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can. So many people are just leaving...instead of fighting. Which seems like it's going to have the effect of j…

> I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can.

Those people are being fired as fast as possible.

That's because what's happening is not just changes in policies within these agencies, but essentially a loyalty test / purge.

You can either be loyal and do what the new boss wants without disagreement, you can resign in protest, or you can be fired.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#107

Post by dylan604 »

inerte wrote: post #88
deeThrow94 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since Trump rarely changes his mind That's not true; he changes his mind all the time , particularly as media coverage changes. It's just not necessarily something you can persuade him to do without catering to his ego.

https://www.axios.com/2025/04/19/inside-trump-mindset-tariff... "We saw it in business with Trump," one adviser said. "He would have these meetings and everyone would agree, and then we would just pray that when he left the office and got on the elevator that the doorman wouldn't share his opinion, because there would be a 50/50 chance [Trump] would suddenly side with the doorman."

Trump is known to be that type where if you want him to go with your suggestion, you must be the last person in the room.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#108

Post by eli_gottlieb »

9283409232 wrote: post #84

> And NSF said pending proposals that appeared to violate any of Trump’s executive orders—in particular those banning efforts to increase diversity in the scientific workforce, foster environmental justice, and study the spread of misinformation on social media sites—would be returned for “mitigation.” Basically don't study how Elon's websites are destroying the fabric of society or how Trump's policies will destroy…

Oh, it's a good deal worse than that. The NSF actually has a statutory mandate to ask for those Broader Impact sections; Congress would have to pass a law to stop it. So now the people applying for grants need to include, by law, a section that, by policy, will get the grant application returned for editing and "mitigation", while the Administration is also ordering, again without Congressional authority, that one out of every two dollars spent at the NSF be cut.

The NSF doesn't even cost that much money to run. They're doing this counterproductively and, as far as I can tell, for no good reason at all.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#109

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sathackr wrote: post #4

One thing I don't understand is people resigning on principles. If something bad is happening to an organization that I hold a significant amount of clout and power in, I'm not just going to leave and hand the reigns to someone on 'their side' -- I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can. So many people are just leaving...instead of fighting. Which seems like it's going to have the effect of j…

You’re assuming the battle hasn’t been lost. These people didn’t resign at first fight. They resigned when they realised there isn’t a way to fight a President who wants to dismantle an agency underneath him like this.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#110

Post by dylan604 »

mandevil wrote: post #100
MSM wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the likely reason is they have signed a non disparagement agreement and have no avenue to publicly criticize. Additionally, quietly criticizing just means quietly getting fired, then likely still being unable to publicly criticize. The only way to say "hey, I don't think this is right and I don't agree with what's happening here" is to publicly resign and hope that alarm bells start going off in people's head…

US Government employees basically can't sign non-disparagement agreements, the Federal Government doesn't enter into agreements without a fixed time commitment to judge compliance, and there are incredibly strong whistleblower protection laws for Federal employees which would make any non-disparagement agreement very difficult if not impossible to enforce. A Federal judge held that the Trump 2016 campaign's non-dispa…

The fact that it is not an anonymous source lends much more weight than leaking to a reporter.

Based on your first graph though, how much longer before federal whistle blower laws get DOGE'd?

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