The US House of Representatives has 219 GOPers that voted to pass certain legislation. The US Senate has 50 GOPers that voted to pass certain legislation and voted to confirm many appointments.
A large swath of the US public voted to put those 219+50 people into Congress and voted to put a convicted felon [1] and rapist [2] in the White House.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/trump-trial-deliberations-jury-te...
[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/30/appeals-court-upho...
To my worried eyes this looks too much like Russia circa 2000 for comfort. Or Turkey early in Erdogan’s reign. Whatever happens, it will be painful and damaging.
You can’t put this on a few. It’s the genuine desire of the American voter.
They also think they are not always correct, not always unbiased, and possibly not always honest; and the bias tends to be towards either things that benefit the urban elite, or "luxury beliefs" that have disproportionate costs on other people.
Edit: come on people, read things in context. I was responding to someone who was implying that a majority of American voters support this. To support that assertion about any President's policies at a minimum you need that President to have received a majority of the popular vote.
When third parties get enough votes that a President gets a plurality but not a majority you can't really infer anything about what a majority of voters want.
Even if all the third parties were on the same side of the left/right spectrum as the President's party you can't infer much because if those voters agreed with most or all of the President's policies they would have voted for the President.
What do you mean? Over half the country voted for this.
However your punt stands.
I think a lot of those voted for the racism not the economic collapse.
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
I don't think anyone should get in just on the relation to Tao, likewise it is also important that they move to a program that they have an interest in.
I do hope those students find an appropriate course for themselves as this must be extremely challenging for them both regarding their career and also mentally and socially.
Germany has an even lower threshold for criticism of Israel and organized Judaism than the US.
Mainland Europe (excluding Germany) is generally way more pro-Palestinian than the US. However that doesn't extend to our institutions. Case in point: Dutch riot police brutally beating up University of Amsterdam students for setting up UCLA/Columbia-style tent blockades.
If you're an American academic or student you can come to Europe and continue both your work and pro-Palestinian activism within the Overton window of mainstream European consensus on the two-state solution. Anything that is more radical than that might get you in the same level of trouble or worse than the US.
Basically Europe is a non-solution for pro-Palestinian American academics and students.
The US is coupling student politics to academic research funding. Is that done in Germany or other parts of Europe or 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.
From an individual perspective, the funding situation is (used to be?) better in the US than in Europe. Mostly because there is less competition, as the salary gap between the academia and the industry is wider in the US. Americans are less likely to do a PhD and pursue a career in the academia than Europeans.
And I say this with no joy whatsoever, because all these developments are damaging great collaborations and personal relationships with friends and colleagues in the US.
Intelligent, smart, critical citizens are a nuisance for absocapitalism goals.
/s
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.
If it were me I'd be sacking people until they started getting a mean adjustment somewhere around 0. I doubt that is what Trump is doing, but the managers left themselves vulnerable to technical criticism.
[0] https://mishtalk.com/economics/in-honor-of-labor-day-lets-re...
Same with global warming, it causes migration, loads of immigrants is great for the right wing, scares people into voting for them, they have no incentive to fix the problem that's causing them to get more votes.
Edit:
This is a comment about the administration, not Tao.
"I thought I was safe in my hideout, but a kick to the groin proved me wrong." -Testicles
This really has very Germany 1930s vibes even if the direction of the anti is flipped.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-09/are-you-...
All UCLA has to do is strike up a deal with the gov't that presumably entails eliminating affirmative action and preventing pro-Hamas factions from taking hold of the university.
Columbia made a deal and they have their funding back now.
- Australia
Linked article summary:
"UCLA agrees to $6.5m settlement with Jewish students over pro-Palestinian protests"
> The University of California, Los Angeles, will pay nearly $6.5m to settle a lawsuit by Jewish students and a professor who said the university allowed antisemitic discrimination to take place on campus during last year’s pro-Palestinian protests.
> The lawsuit alleged that with the “knowledge and acquiescence” of university officials, protesters prevented Jewish students from accessing parts of campus, and made antisemitic threats.
It’s researchers who are not at the top of their fields who will have a much harder time leaving America to find research positions, since academic positions and funding haven’t been easy to obtain in places like Canada, Europe, Australia, and Japan for at least two decades.
What will most likely be the case is that scientific careers will be halted temporarily or permanently from these funding cuts. Graduate admissions are harder than ever now, it’s harder to find a research position, and I can’t imagine how much more difficult tenure will be to obtain if professors can’t fundraise and publish. Industry isn’t always an option, either. A lot of researcher’s careers will face major setbacks, some unrecoverable, all due to the capriciousness of our rulers.
EDIT: For people wondering why I think it's worse in Europe, it's because in Europe the ruling class and the universities are on the same side. And when I say Europe, I mean UK, France and Germany.
Sounds like a feature, not a bug.
> And when I say Europe, I mean UK, France and Germany.
Europe is much larger and more diverse than those three countries. Scandinavia for example consistently top the list in most well-being statistics.
It's never been any different, all the way back to when Germans or Irish or whoever were the 'demonized immigrants'. This is what made America great. Anytime we want it, those conditions can return. It was no illusion.
On the front of funding research? Considering that one is constantly adding more funds for research, while the other one is removing funds, I'm not sure how accurate that is.
If you truly believe that the whole world is "just as bad" as this, then you are unimaginably far to the right.
Would you please expand on this?
Or Dutch professors openly criticizing the plans by the right-wing government (which just fell) as being damaging, unproductive amd sometimes unconstitutional?
The only examples I see are the opposite of what you say. Can you name any examples in Germany, Sweden, Norway or Holland? (Those are the countries that I'm confident talking about at least)
On par for this administration.
NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44755429 - Aug 2025 (332 comments)
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.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/05/14/nx-s1-5387299/trump-white-hou...
US universities do a lot of research on Palestine and Israel's occupation and apartheid there. In addition, universities are naturally liberal and are targets of the right wing anti-education movement.
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.
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.
for university administrative departments , thoughtful corresponding things that capture what they do all day in understandable and defensible ways.
That’s not at all clear. Regardless, there is no proportionality in the actions that this administration is taking against UCLA and other eminent universities. The tools for righting civil rights issues in education should be through consent decrees that permit the DOJ to set criteria and monitor for compliance. The destruction of a large part of the research enterprise for these claims, particularly when the claims are widely regarded as nonsense, is heavy-handed and gives the distinct impression of another agenda.
Also, Tao points out maybe the most important criticism of the Trump administration, which is how is cutting off all federal research funding improving the ability of faculty to do their work, given that the reason for an antidiscrimination claim in that setting is that discrimination prevents faculty from doing their work?
stop rearranging chairs on the deck of a sinking ship and move on terence
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.)
We’re allies. Barring a massive geopolitical realignment, D.C. will take Europe down with it.
You would have to be insane to consider founding or investing in a Chinese startup when you could do so in Silicon Valley or even NYC or Austin.
With all due respect, you´re not thinking long-term, or dare I say even medium-term.
Your suggestion is saying that research should be privatised, and shows very little thought about how research works and who benefits from it.
Yes, there are coordination problems for projects at some scale, for which government involvement makes it possible, however these are far fewer than we are made to believe.
you say that like it's a lot of money? I mean sure, in comparison to the amount of money I make yes, but in comparison to value derived from research, amounts of money collected from California, amount of money given to California, and amount of money federal government spends on other things - is it a lot of money? I have a feeling it's not.
>I feel like government financing should be made available to those that actually need the money.
yeah, if they actually needed the money they would shut down the programs using the money when they stopped getting the money.
An uber driver who gets rich by other means will stop driving for uber, not drive for uber for free.
If the policy was no government funding if you have an endowment the net result would be that endowments would be spent down, and then not only would they need government funding for the things the government now funds, they would also need government funding for the things that are currently funded from the endowment's earnings.
Also, money in endowments is often legally restricted. Donors put conditions on their donations which limit what they can be used for. For example a donor might donate several million dollars to create and pay the salary of a named professorship in a specific department. That money goes into the endowment, but it and its earnings can only be spent on paying whoever currently holds that professorship.
A typical endowments includes hundreds or thousands of such restricted donations.
Agreed on restrictions and would be good to know how large the unrestricted part is.
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.
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.
Edit: Incidentally, Trump absolutely gutted the Department of Education, including the Office of Civil Rights, appointing loyalists who explicitly don’t believe it should exist. Are these the actions of a president concerned with civil rights?
Also, indulge us in a wild guess as to what Trump would’ve done to the Little Rock 9. Consider that he signed a full-page newspaper ad calling for the death of the Central Park 5, a wrongfully convicted group of Black and Latino teenagers.
Invoking our civil rights legacy here is perverse.
Their goal isn't to build legal cases against actual offenses, their goal is extortion.
So are you in support of the current defunding?
> The lawsuit, filed more than a year ago, alleged that by not immediately ordering the encampment to be taken down, UCLA provided support to pro-Palestinian activists who “enforced” what it termed a “Jew Exclusion Zone,” prohibiting Jewish students and staff from passing through the camp’s makeshift barricades.
Personally I think this is a textbook racist behavior. Replace "Jewish" with "black" and "Palestinian' with "white" and see if you agree. I personally firmly believe if white activists try to enforce a "Non Black Zone" in the campus, the college administration has a responsibility to take it down and discipline said activists.
I'm not sure if this defunding is justified though, as it seems that UCLA has settled this case and the defunding sounds retrospective.
