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.
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)
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"
But I think it's very justified for the federal to do something (not necessarily this thing) against institutions that show racist behaviors. e.g. Little Rock Nine.
The only people to blame for this are the Universities who are blatantly violating civil rights law -- even after a Supreme Court ruling!
Terence and other academics who have had nothing to do with promotion of this blatant discrimination should be angry at their University leadership and administrators for this outcome, not the Trump administration who is doing THE RIGHT THING.
The faculty should take this opportunity to make the Universities drastically reduce the dead weight of administrators who have grown much more than faculty and produce no value.
This is a tragedy. Our pre-eminence as a scientific and industrial powerhouse that really began post WWII is now disintegrating because of the actions of a few. The funding being pulled from Terence Tao and his institute without due process is not the start, it's merely one casualty among many that began at the start of this administration. This is like cutting one's nose to spite one's face.
It's such a tragedy that we're deliberately destroying the very engine of our global science and tech research leadership. All for the sake of making the pro-Israeli lobby happy under the guise of protecting against "antisemitism".
The feds are forcing the universities to either protect the freedom of speech by banning peaceful protests against the genocide, or to have the universities research funding cut.
Given that so far we (U.S) have been unmatched in science and tech research, this is probably the biggest case of "self own" in recent memory.
3 months ago, we were all wondering why the EU proudly launched their "Choose EU for Science" campaign, despite having much lower funding levels than in the US.
If they predicted this, then their actions would make a lot of sense. It is notoriously difficult for scientists to change careers after years in research. For people cut off from US funding like this, a EU-guaranteed middle-class income will appear much more attractive than hoping for this newly unpredictable US situation to turn out well.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 56.6 ms ] threadHow 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.)
Edit:
This is a comment about the administration, not Tao.
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)
Is Trump using antisemitism as an excuse to crack down on liberal universities? Because this will make people only more critical of Israel.
stop rearranging chairs on the deck of a sinking ship and move on terence
But I think it's very justified for the federal to do something (not necessarily this thing) against institutions that show racist behaviors. e.g. Little Rock Nine.
The faculty should take this opportunity to make the Universities drastically reduce the dead weight of administrators who have grown much more than faculty and produce no value.
The feds are forcing the universities to either protect the freedom of speech by banning peaceful protests against the genocide, or to have the universities research funding cut.
Given that so far we (U.S) have been unmatched in science and tech research, this is probably the biggest case of "self own" in recent memory.
This really has very Germany 1930s vibes even if the direction of the anti is flipped.
- Australia
If they predicted this, then their actions would make a lot of sense. It is notoriously difficult for scientists to change careers after years in research. For people cut off from US funding like this, a EU-guaranteed middle-class income will appear much more attractive than hoping for this newly unpredictable US situation to turn out well.
On par for this administration.
https://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/application
Usually you need 2 letters of recommendation, I’d strongly assume that in the case of Tao one is enough.
Generally please consider the new „ Max Planck Transatlantic Program“:
https://www.mpg.de/25034916/max-planck-transatlantic-program