NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant

>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.

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)).

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...