Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants • Hacker News Board

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#21

Post by davrosthedalek » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 8:55 AM UTC

padjo wrote: post #19

m101 wrote: post #13

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.

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

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.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#22

Post by Erikun » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 8:56 AM UTC

padjo wrote: post #19

m101 wrote: post #13

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.

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

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

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#23

Post by trhway » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 8:57 AM UTC

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)

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#24

Post by m_a_g » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:03 AM UTC

> 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.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#25

Post by kzrdude » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:06 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #10

Almondsetat wrote: post #6

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.

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

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.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#26

Post by pbiggar » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:06 AM UTC

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"

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#27

Post by HSO » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:07 AM UTC

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

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#28

Post by mavhc » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:07 AM UTC

padjo wrote: post #5

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.

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.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#29

Post by saagarjha » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:08 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #10

Almondsetat wrote: post #6

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.

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

You still lose when you aren't political enough.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#30

Post by pbiggar » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:08 AM UTC

m_a_g wrote: post #24

> 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.

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.