Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

mathstodon.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 328 posts

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#261

Post by spencerflem »

coderatlarge wrote: post #172
spencerflem wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term was invented by the suers, not the protestors. It’s possible to criticize Israel’s actions without being antisemitic, holocaust scholars call what’s happening there a genocide

it is extremely hard to form a reasonable opinion of what is happening in gaza with the current level of vitriol online. i feel i’d have to do a substantial personal research project to see if i can believe the cumulative casualty numbers that are being bandied about. not to mention the numbers about deaths from starvation. i wish institutions would do the work to publish their sources in a way that is clear complete…

The guardian US does a good job IMO.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/02/gaza-famine-st...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/02/the-us...

idk what you want, there’s mountains of evidence.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#262

Post by Hilift »

fundad wrote: post #192
Hilift wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California higher education in general does not need of federal funds. These are typically mutually beneficially projects that doesn't necessarily need to be partnered with the US government. The bigger problem is the recipients of these cuts seem to think it is about an "issue", and are incapable of accepting they are having sand kicked in their face.

There is actually a stated issue that is the reason: anti-semitism. Isn’t it reasonable to want to understand more and gain the kind of influence to affect change of this magnitude?

Yes, however it is well documented that some of those issues exist, no one denies that. One of the civilian deaths early on in the Israel/Palestine protests was by a professor of a local college in LA. Perhaps a bigger problem for California is they have 20,000 Chinese students, 36% of international revenue. That will probably drop significantly.

UCLA does some pretty amazing work though. They recently published a study on the Los Angeles "mansion tax" that basically called it a failure. They did that for free, with no grants or funding. That is the kind of actual policy work and studies you would expect to see from a university, and it includes a master class on how modern urban property development works in mature urban areas such as Los Angeles.

Unfortunately work like that is overshadowed by the protesters that hijack other protests and bring in outsiders who cause property damage and violence.

https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/05/14/los-angeless-mansion-t...

https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/the-unintended-consequen...

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#263

Post by ujkhsjkdhf234 »

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.

One thing I've learned is that people have no idea what an endowment is and how it works because it isn't a piggy bank you dip into. UCLA is also a public university that should get public money.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#264

Post by francasso »

linguae wrote: post #201
francasso wrote: post #31

Maybe it's time to move to Europe or China

For someone at the level of Terence Tao, this may be a good idea if a university is willing to hire him, even if it were for a temporary position until 2029 when (hopefully) the regime changes and the destruction is over. I’m sure Terence Tao will have no problems finding such a university or institution. It’s researchers who are not at the top of their fields who will have a much harder time leaving America to find…

Yes, I agree with you that it's going to be difficult for researcher that are not at the top of their field. But if some of the top researchers started the flow, and goverments in other countries woke up and took advantage of the situation, I believe things could change.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#265

Post by nosianu »

aaomidi wrote: post #228
tempusalaria wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may not be acting in good faith but there is extremely clear evidence that UCLA has engaged in illegal racial hiring and admissions practices and has supported antisemitism on campus. UCLA chose to give them that ammunition.

> and has supported antisemitism on campus You mean there were protests against genocide? Oops did I do an antisemitism by calling it a genocide?

Here in Germany, in Berlin, these "protests" included wrecking a lecture hall and seriously injuring a Jewish student.

- https://www.rbb24.de/politik/beitrag/2025/04/berlin-humboldt... (April 2025)

- https://astafu.de/node/589 (February 2024)

(Both links are German language - that should not be a problem anymore these days I hope)

I don't see why you refuse to even consider that there is more than 1 and 0 absolutes.

The majority of protests does not create such headlines. We have had smaller and larger protests in many cities(here in Germany). People meet, walk, speak, and that is fine and nobody complains. But especially in 2024 that was not all that happened.

I read similar students about threatened Jewish students at US universities.

It is, as so often, caused by a violent and vocal minority. But if a hundred protesters are peaceful and only one hits you on the head you still have a very bad day as the victim.

- https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/five-jewish-coll... (Oct 2024)

- https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/06/04/antise... (June 2025)

Maybe it is getting better, this report says that in 2025 things have improved for both Muslim and Jewish students: "The biggest takeaways from Harvard’s task force reports on campus antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias" -- https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/29/us/harvard-reports-antise... (May 2025)

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#266

Post by LexiMax »

eterm wrote: post #62
exe34 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just fired the commissioner of Labour Statistics. The great thing about autocrats is that they neuter their own country pretty quickly. When you make it risky for people to give you bad news, you end up with missiles that don't work and capital ships that sink.

That may be a comforting thought, but the reality is that it takes decades for these things to have an effect, and there's no guarantee that transitioning to a low trust and high corruption society will result in the removal of the autocrat. See North Korea or Russia. People have been claiming they're on the verge of collapse for decades but the reality is that they just keep going.

You don't need to wait for a hypothetical collapse of the autocrat for it to inform your personal decision-making and long-term planning.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#267

Post by exe34 »

eterm wrote: post #62
exe34 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just fired the commissioner of Labour Statistics. The great thing about autocrats is that they neuter their own country pretty quickly. When you make it risky for people to give you bad news, you end up with missiles that don't work and capital ships that sink.

That may be a comforting thought, but the reality is that it takes decades for these things to have an effect, and there's no guarantee that transitioning to a low trust and high corruption society will result in the removal of the autocrat. See North Korea or Russia. People have been claiming they're on the verge of collapse for decades but the reality is that they just keep going.

Oh no, I don't expect Trump to leave the White House unless it's in a box. He' s about to splurge $100M of his own money on a ballroom, so clearly he's planning on being king for a while. No, the comfort is that the US won't be bossing the world around for very long. Russia says a lot of things, but the only people they can bully at this point is their next door neighbours. The US can currently glass pretty much anybody anywhere within 2 hours. Trump is just making sure their influence on the rest of the world becomes minimal within a decade or two.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#268

Post by ben_w »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #3

Fuck it hurts me to say this as a former China hawk. But: How does Chinese immigration work for STEM? What does residency look like for someone making $500+ k in America? What are the Y Combinators? (No CCP Tans.)

Follow up question, given your background: is TACO still true, or would you suggest retail investors divest away from US markets?

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#269

Post by LexiMax »

agentcoops wrote: post #161
diggan wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but not at all unexpected given who’s running it To be fair, this has felt like the natural consequence of the "maximize capitalism without regarding the downsides" maxim the US seems to have been operated under for a long time. Corporations have been (indirectly) running the country for some decades at this point, it's just way more obvious and in the face now when a "businessman" sits as president.

While I would agree with you generally, in this case we’re talking about decisions that are precisely not desired by either business or investors. Which is to say, I think the American people and institutions are in a much worse place than at the whims of business alone: caught between an evangelical cultural coup and unrestrained capitalism. It’s actually surprising to me that the evangelicals appear to be dominatin…

Business leaders might have had a distaste for the evangelical wing of the GOP, but they have been, are, and always will be terrified of populist left-wing movements. There was a fair amount of that kind of sentiment floating around in the Obama years with movements like Occupy Wall Street and the popularity of Bernie Sanders, so they decided to hitch their fortunes to the GOP.

And it's easy to understand why they made that choice. I don't think they are dim-witted, ignorant of history, or unaware of how this gamble could turn out badly for them. Instead, it's because for all of the problems that they are having with the current administration, they still have their wealth, they still have some of their influence, and they also have the option to jump ship for greener pastures if worst came to worst.

You'll notice that nowhere in that equation is concern for the average working-class American.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#270

Post by exe34 »

roenxi wrote: post #102
blackbear_ wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "history" you cite only goes back three years. Meanwhile, the BLS publishes the monthly corrections since 1979, and the average correction since 2003 is +9k between first and third estimates [1]. Moreover, do note that all published numbers come with standard errors [2] and 90% confidence intervals, which did include the corrections of -133k and -120k that were made for May and June. The current interval for July…

McEntarfer [0] had only been commissioner for around 18 months. The performance of the BLS in 1979 probably isn't reflective of her skills and talents. And I'm not going to bother digging through the manuals to figure out how the BLS is calculating their standard errors, but there is a pretty decent chance they've been calculated assuming that the error mean is 0 when in fact it appears to be biased. [0] https://en.w…

> but there is a pretty decent chance they've been calculated assuming that the error mean is 0 when in fact it appears to be biased.

Could you explain a bit how you arrive at this conclusion?

Post reply on HN