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NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant

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Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant

#241

Post by ModernMech »

retinaros wrote: post #105
fabian2k wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antisemitism is just an excuse for these actions against universities, it's a pretext. Not a particularly believable one anyway, but that doesn't seem to matter. The Trump administration is punishing institutions that disagree with it, or that it dislikes for some reason.

it is not an excuse. They are a well represented community in USA and students felt not safe/had different political stance which was enough to push gov to act. How is it different from for instance BLM era with governments, media and democrats punishing some institutions and people that didnt want to say their slogan, were having opposing idea or even just didnt went to publicly bend the knee, ending whole careers a…

What precedent? When did the Biden administration pull funding from universities to control speech it didn't approve of?

Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant

#242

Post by ysofunny »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #21

Background: 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.

[flagged]

Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant

#243

Post by hackyhacky »

throwaway290 wrote: post #235
hackyhacky wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's false. Students have a first amendment right to express opinions, even anti-Zionist ones. The administration is using baseless charges of antisemitism as a cudgel to extract fealty and concessions from universities, which they see as opponents of their party.

This is a strawman. Of course there is free speech. It doesn't mean it's okay to talk on the phone in a cinema or recite the Bible aloud during a math lecture. It doesn't mean it's fair play to shout obscenities on the train and spit on people. Idk about US but there is a thing called "verbal abuse" and police is 100% callable for that. That out of the way so how about hostile environment for students again? I was do…

Shouting obscenities on the train, as well as hate speech broadly, are constitutionally protected under the first amendment.

Creating a hostile environment for students based on their religion would violate the Civil Rights Act. However, there is a paucity of evidence that the universities did that. Allowing protests probably isn't sufficient, especially when prohibiting those same protests would be unconstitutional.

Even if the protesting students were spitting on Jewish students, that doesn't impact the legality of the protest. The spitting could be prosecuted as battery.

I recommend reading this [1] great article about the sometimes confusing rhetoric used in the media about American free speech.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220313175157/http://popehat.co...

Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant

#244

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #220
rahimnathwani wrote: post #197

I 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…

[flagged]

The reason I downvoted the comment is that it's engaged in excuse-making for an authoritarian extortion campaign. I acknowledge and strongly oppose UCLA's racial discrimination in hiring, and if the Department of Education sent them a letter demanding they knock it off or face a lawfully justified penalty I'd have absolutely no concerns about that. Over here in the real world, an aspiring dictator has destroyed the Department of Education, and is directing his goons to be as disruptive as possible about an entirely separate issue.

Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant

#245

Post by peterfirefly »

kakadu wrote: post #85

Would something like this happen if the hostile educational environment was against - say - black people? Or any other ethnic group?

It's usually favouring blacks heavily. The discrimination is against whites, Asians, natives, non-Socialists, men

Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant

#246

Post by booleandilemma »

bananapub wrote: post #36

I 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…

I think for the past 20 years or so, possibly longer, American politics has been hijacked by people who are just interested in making money for themselves, full stop. Any benefit they provide to the public is incidental, anything they say is lip service. Maybe there are a couple exceptions, such as Bernie, but even he is a millionaire, not an ordinary person.

But yeah, it's just people who are trying to maximize how much money they can get into their pockets. They don't care about the public. They don't care about anything. Democrat, Republican, it's all the same.

Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant

#248

Post by Tadpole9181 »

throwaway290 wrote: post #233
plemer wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing people to speak out against overt genocide committed by a foreign government = anti-semitism. Isn’t that self-evident? /s Tbh, this standard argument is itself anti-Jewish as it implies this behavior is inherent to being Jewish, which of course is grotesque and inaccurate. * Jewish /= Zionist * Zionist /= Imperialist * Imperialist /= Genocidal What we have really imo is an extreme colonist policy that is onl…

Nice strawman. So how about the actual question which is hostile environment for students? I was downvoted for asking a question and this did not answer it. Edit to reply: what I remember reading was not about saying "end genocide", it was about saying "you are a jew so go die" kind of stuff. It seemed pretty crazy but I didn't save any sources

If I make a sign that says "Nazis are Evil", and a guy gets upset and says "you can't say that about me" - what do you call that guy? A Nazi.

If I make a sign that says "End the Zionist Genocide", and a Jewish person says "you can't say that about me", they don't feel uncomfortable because they're Jewish.

Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant

#249

Post by maleldil »

yadiyadiyadi wrote: post #221
dandanua wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ok, USA doesn't need mathematicians after the AGI is built. If you need to compute something just ask AGI. The subscription, of course, will cost you multiple lifetimes' worth of the minimum working wage (luckily you could take a credit that will be payed off by multiple generations of your descendants), but you know, the progress can't be stopped!

You know... yesterday, I asked Google if Arnold Schwarzenegger was the tallest Mr Olympia of all time at 6'2. Their AI assistant told me that, no, he was not the tallest as there were several Mr Olympias who were taller at 5'5, 5'6 and 5'7. Just now? "No, Arnold Schwarzenegger is not the tallest Mr. Olympia. While he is a well-known and successful bodybuilder, his height is 6'2" (1.88m), which is not the tallest amon…

Are you talking about Google Search's AI summary? I don't know what model they use for that, but I tested Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite (the smallest of Google's current models), and it got the answer right.

Re: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant

#250

Post by tolmasky »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #217
tolmasky wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (perman…

You’re aware that, just for starters, 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.) 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). These people may not be able to vote, but they’re still people, and able to participate in the political process in other ways, and thus not worth ignoring (for example, they can donate). They also probably skew more to your position given their demographics.

I am not sure why you insist on going out of your way to dramatically overrepresent the size of your opposition. If there’s some sort of underdog psychology you are trying to tap into, you should maybe also consider the possibility that staunchly presenting the current situation as “we’re outnumbered and most of our population stands with these abhorrent values” may actually be more demoralizing than invigorating as a battle cry, which is even more of a shame when it isn’t true.

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