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What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#881

Post by myvoiceismypass »

mjfl wrote: post #172
freshpots wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barring all of the hyperbole of your comment, I find it astounding how you're unaware of this with such a "thumb on the pulse" of world news: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/feb/04/benjamin-... Trump said Palestinians have “no alternative” but to “permanently” leave Gaza due to the devastation left by Israel’s war on Hamas. He described Gaza as a “pure demolition site” and claimed Palestinians would “love…

The consensus ruling of the International Court of Justice is not hyperbole, it's a fact. Are you going to call the UN antisemitic like Benjamin Netanyahu did? And actually, you in fact can argue that Trump has been better on the issue than Biden. Multiple news outlets have reported that it was Trump that forced the ceasefire: - https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-forced-netanyahu-to-make-a... - https://www.information…

Kinda amazing that Trump had been acting as de facto president all year even before the election - telling Congress what to do, meeting with Netanyahu, Putin, tons of other heads of state, and he now suggests that Israel just get handed Gaza. Just like Bibby wanted.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#882

Post by Gabriel54 »

jccalhoun wrote: post #719
Gabriel54 wrote: post #141

Despite all the hyperbole in this thread I will try to speak plainly. It has become tiring to see how DEI has affected all aspects of academia. Hiring people based on race, awarding grants to work exclusively with members of a particular set of minorities, etc. I'm sure most people choose to close their eyes to such things and move on and focus on the actual important work but there must be unimaginable waste going o…

"It has become tiring to see how DEI has affected all aspects of academia. Hiring people based on race, awarding grants to work exclusively with members of a particular set of minorities, etc." You mention in another comment diversity in admissions but that is not hiring or grants. Do you have any examples of hiring people based on race in academia?

There are not countless examples. Instead of "hiring of people on the basis of race" I may more accurately say "using race as a decisive factor in the consideration of an application resulting in its acceptance or rejection" which also happens to be illegal.

From the journalism department at CU [1]:

> Our commitment, should we be successful with this application, is to hire someone from the BIPOC community

From the geography department at CU [1]:

> Our aim is specifically to hire a Black, Indigenous, or Latinx faculty member

From ethnic studies at UC [1]:

> We have an urgent and qualified need for BIPOC femme/women of color faculty in an Africana Studies focus who will contribute to the social science division thematic cluster hire in racism and racial inequality.

From psychology dept. at U Washington [2]:

> I advise deleting the statement below as it shows that URM [underrepresented minority] applications were singled out and evaluated differently than non-URM applications (which is not allowed as [redacted] noted)

> At a faculty meeting, someone whose name is redacted “informed faculty that the Hiring Committee had three outstanding candidates and so they used DEI to distinguish and select a first offer"

[1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-dei-conquered-the-university...

[2] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/diversity...

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#883

Post by Gareth321 »

benzible wrote: post #773
Gareth321 wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can call a democratically elected president doing what he promised to do a coup.

We don't have a monarchy (yet). The Constitution does not say "anything in here is void at the whim of the President". An electoral win does not allow him to unleash a gang of thugs through all of the agencies, to shut down Congressionally mandated agencies, to violate civil service protections, etc. Presidents swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. Not to mention, he ran on the opposite of what he's doing. He cla…

You could make arguments of overreach but they don't come even close to "coup."

> coup: a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics and especially the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.

> Not to mention, he ran on the opposite of what he's doing. He claimed he was going to end wars and immediately threatened war on multiple allies, with the latest being a threat of mass ethnic cleansing in Gaza. And on and on.

Voters appear to disagree with you. [His approval rating has never been higher while in office.](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/dona...)

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#886

Post by Xelynega »

AlexandrB wrote: post #823
chasing wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unethical race-based preferences is what those policies have been trying to fix. Not sure you’re aware of this, but academia used to be basically off-limits to anyone not white and male.

> academia used to be basically off-limits to anyone not white and male. How long ago was that? In Canada 60% of college grads are women[1]. In the US the story is similar and the gap is widening[2]. Part of the reason that some left wing ideas seem so out of touch is because they are . People are still parroting social problems from the 1960s as justification for policy in 2024. [1] https://heqco.ca/pub/understandin…

How many of these women are graduating from programs that people wanting to eliminate DEI see as "unimportant"?

It's also interesting to see statistics brought up about women and not races, since the percentage that identifies as "Black or African American" is still underrepresented: https://pnpi.org/factsheets/black-students/

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#887

Post by callc »

cbracketdash wrote: post #458
einrealist wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The process is the problem. There is no oversight and accountability for Musk and his "DOGE". That's pure poison to Democracy and to a functioning society. Musk is neither competent nor efficient. He looks at line items and makes stuff up. He destroys a hundred useful things to destroy a bad one. Details don't matter to him. Its the same con man mentality that feeds off the works of his workforce. People who think he…

It's easy to dismiss eccentric people as conmen. But you have to consider, he has been at least partially instrumental in at least 2 impossible companies: electric cars and rockets. Regardless of what you think of his intellectual capacity, he has a proven track record of organizing people to produce exceptional outcomes ! An inevitable characteristic of his algorithm is chaos: delete as many constraints and parts as…

> Regardless of what you think of his intellectual capacity, he has a proven track record of organizing people to produce exceptional outcomes !

And? Getting people whipped up into a frenzy through fear, us vs them mentality, narcissism, to do good work is toxic. Musk is toxic.

We should stop elevating leaders as extra-ordinarily capable. Especially leaders who employ a negative leadership style instead of one founded on empathy, trust, respect, and importance of the group over leader.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#888

Post by Fomite »

refurb wrote: post #465
bawolff wrote: post #4

Seems like a good opportunity for other countries to recruit scientists. I think its underappreciated how much of America's modern success comes down to attracting scientists and intellectuals from war torn europe in the 30s-50s.

I think this comment confused a few things. First off, there is no evidence the US will never fund science again. Second, top scientific positions in the US are at academic labs, not at NIH (bare a few top people spending some time there). The top academic labs in the US get some funding from NIH, but the top ones get it from a ton of sources with NIH not being the bulk of it.

"The top academic labs in the US get some funding from NIH, but the top ones get it from a ton of sources with NIH not being the bulk of it."

This is wildly field specific.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#889

Post by myvoiceismypass »

mrbombastic wrote: post #784
ReptileMan wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things become a bit more murky when you free speech while on somebody's payroll and representing them. Commercial speech has somewhat less protections than regular speech. And anyway the first amendment is about the congress. It doesn't limit the capacity of the executive branch to do ideological purges as the McArthysm period showed. Although it did got limited by the courts - from the reading of case law it had to…

Not sure I have ever seen anyone actually defend McCarthyism…wow.

The McCarthy era seems to be the time period when some people think America was "Great" and that we should return to it. I mean look how easy it is to label any policy as socialist/communist/marxist these days!

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#890

Post by Gareth321 »

Xelynega wrote: post #874
Gareth321 wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is simply a delusion detached from reality. I am a white man in STEM academia. I've never been discriminated against once. This is demonstrably false. Harvard and many other universities recently lost a Supreme Court case due to persistent racial discrimination over decades ( https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/jun/29/us-supreme-court... ). Whites and especially Asians were methodically discriminated against…

Why are so many people saying "Asians and whites were discriminated against" and pointing to this case? The judges ruled that the program was unconstitutional and had to be changed, not that Harvard had been illegally discriminatory in their admission practices(as was attempted years prior by the same conservative funded activism group) Just because you personally see racism, doesn't mean it's actually happening(aka,…

> The judges ruled that the program was unconstitutional and had to be changed, not that Harvard had been illegally discriminatory in their admission practices(as was attempted years prior by the same conservative funded activism group)

What on Earth are you talking about? Here are the 237 pages of the Supreme Justices exploring centuries of American law and hundreds of relevant cases regarding racial discrimination: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf

Specifically, the Justices found Harvard's race-based admissions practices violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court found that these practices resulted in racial discrimination against Asian American applicants.

Did you just make that up and hope no one would call you out?

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