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This is not reddit. This type of comment is not valued here.
NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant
211–220 of 373 posts
Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant
#212Background: 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.
Additional Background: US government provides funding, US government tries to use that leverage to decide how the show will be run. Over the years I've come to accept the blind spot most people have where, despite all evidence, they assume that the government goals match their own. But it still isn't the case. The prudent approach is to set up institutions that are largely independent of government. Government fundin…
>> won his 3rd election
Really - I think that more or less confirms your bias.
Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant
#213I 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 des…
The 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.
Over half the nation did not vote for Trump. 77M people of a total population of 340M did, which is around 23%. Trump didn’t even get over half of the total votes cast (49.8% vs. 48.3%). You are free to be dismayed by these numbers, but please stop supporting the notion that “more than one out of every two people you meet in the US voted for Trump”, it is wildly untrue and really misrepresents the strength of the movement.
Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant
#214[dead]
Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant
#215The country born out of the scientific enlightenment is eagerly devolving back into medieval mindlessness.
For 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.
I 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
Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant
#216[flagged]
Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 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.
Over half the nation did not vote for Trump. 77M people of a total population of 340M did, which is around 23%. Trump didn’t even get over half of the total votes cast (49.8% vs. 48.3%). You are free to be dismayed by these numbers, but please stop supporting the notion that “more than one out of every two people you meet in the US voted for Trump”, it is wildly untrue and really misrepresents the strength of the mov…
When the stakes are this high, not voting is voting for the winner.
By not voting, they are signaling they are fine with the situation, and will not stand with any opposition to the winner.
Edit to respond to below comment due to hitting posting limit:
>98M of the 185M total population of non-voters had the pretty rock solid excuse of not being eligible to vote, right? Almost a third of the country can’t vote (permanent residents, children, ex-cons in certain states, etc.)
Children seem irrelevant to consider, especially with voting trends of the youngest generations. Same with permanent residents and ex-cons, I don't see any reason these would have cast votes in different proportions. The most damning thing is this is after already seeing the evidence of 2017 to 2020 and the response to Jan 6, 2021.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte...
>55% of White naturalized citizens voted for Trump in 2024, compared with 41% in 2020.
>51% of Hispanic naturalized citizens voted for Trump, up from 39% in 2020.
>46% of Asian naturalized citizens voted for Trump, an increase from 35% in 2020.
>This is without needing to get into the very real voter suppression effort that took place (we’ll assume every one of those “stands” with the winner).
I am assuming the number of people whose votes were prevented were negligible in comparison to the number of people who were apathetic (or boycotting).
>They also probably skew more to your position given their demographics.
A valuable lesson I have learned from 2016 and 2024 elections is that this is not true. What is most important is that people's feelings about their status relative to others not be disturbed (i.e. man over woman and white over non white), and the candidate willing to preserve that, no matter how horrible, is likelier to win more votes.
>I am not sure why you insist on going out of your way to dramatically overrepresent the size of your opposition
Obviously, the measure of the size of the opposition is subjective, and people are free to make bets as they see fit. However, based on the aforementioned "rolling over", it seems others are making the same bet I am.
Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant
#218[flagged]
It's ok not to comment. These discussions are often times the opposite of useful.
Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
that'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?
The 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 someo…
> more than half the "country"
2024 voting-eligible population: 244.6M
Voted for Trump: 77.3M
Voted for Harris: 75M
Voted for other candidates: 2.6M
Eligible to vote, but didn't vote: 90M
Unfortunately, the largest constituency continues to be the "can't be fucked to vote" party.
Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant
#220I 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 emp…
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