Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants
247 comments
·August 2, 2025mehulashah
austhrow743
Punishing urban intellectuals for being urban intellectuals appears to be a common theme in a lot of right wing American messaging and the Republican Party won the popular vote.
You can’t put this on a few. It’s the genuine desire of the American voter.
frogperson
There is a great deal of evidence that the 2024 election was stolen, so it very well could be that this is not on the voters. This is most likely on the fascist minority.
Please check out the Election Truth Sllisnce.
ktallett
Please provide the proof to back this up. Like I wasn't willing to believe Trump without proof when he stated the previous election was stolen, I won't become a hypocrite and just believe it on Trump's win.
wisty
They think urban intellectuals have a fair bit of power.
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.
eptcyka
Are you talking about math PhDs? What power do they have, politically?
Eisenstein
No one is always correct or always unbiased or always honest, and everyone's bias benefits themselves, and every person in the United States lives in a way that has disproportionate costs to other people. None of those reasons explain any of the antipathy. What does?
smt88
Few Americans pay enough attention to politics to expect this, and less than a third of the country voted for this regime anyway.
tzs
A majority of the voters voted for people other than Trump.
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.
ghosty141
49,8% popular vote, 50,2 is a majority but at that point I would say it’s clearly half the American population that wanted him in power.
qcnguy
The administration's stated reason is bias and anti-semitism, are you claiming that this is the definition of urban intellectual? If so how do you defend it? If not, how do you define it?
Eisenstein
Why do we assume that the administration is acting in good faith when all evidence has shown otherwise?
sjsdaiuasgdia
The administration's stated reasons are bullshit.
watwut
It is not actions of the few. This is action of many. There is whole party apparatus behind this, public support among conservative voters, support of tech leaders etc.
throw0101d
> It is not actions of the few. This is action of many.
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...
kergonath
This. It’s easy to rationalise what can be seen as completely counter-productive and irrational actions as random acts of deranged minds. But Trump and proto-fascist republicans have genuine popular support. For terrible reasons, but still. And we can argue about how the US political system plays in their favour by giving them more power than their raw numbers would suggest, but even then they are a significant part of the population. Even more so since they managed to capture the broligarchs.
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.
niemandhier
Every phd student of Terence Tao is probably welcome at the Max Planck Institute For Mathematics:
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
ktallett
Whilst I would imagine that to be the case, you should at the start of a phd have more than one professor across the many you have come into contact with that is willing to vouch for both your mathematical ability and your personality and ability to fit in a team.
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.
fxtentacle
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.
jltsiren
As a fraction of GDP, the EU spends more on academic research than the US. And if you add the UK, the total is also higher in absolute terms. (The US spends more on R&D, but that's mostly business spending.)
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.
kergonath
Both the EU and its large member-states need to significantly ramp up funding to exfiltrate scientists from the US. This could be a force multiplier as important as getting German scientists was after WWII, or Russian ones during the Cold War. It would also be a tremendous amount of progress for not that much money, all things considered.
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.
kzrdude
It didn't need to be predicted, 3 months ago it was already clear what was happening. The list of banned words in applications, and so on, was already out by then.
AlecSchueler
I was also surprised to read that. The EU were obviously acting in direct response to the US administration declaring it as their immediate intention to pivot away from science.
n3storm
"prediction" skills was not needed.
Intelligent, smart, critical citizens are a nuisance for absocapitalism goals.
bboygravity
Scientists please come to the EU, we can't pay you much, you won't be able to find a place to live and we don't do air conditioning, but plz come.
/s
oulipo
This easily beats being persecuted because of your research. Humanity and researchers use to live on more modest means, and you don't need 100k's to do math research. So sure, come to France we would love to welcome all of you!
qcnguy
The government not funding something isn't persecution. If it were the vast majority of people on this forum would be persecuted, which clearly wouldn't be a right use of the term.
null
padjo
It’s pretty clear that the only numbers this administration are interested in are ones that support the narrative that the great leader is infallible.
exe34
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.
eterm
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.
kzrdude
There's already been a decade of trumpism (Trump in the republican party, and in american politics). In that time, people (politicians) who are not interested in trumpism have by and large adapted (pretend that they do) or left. This partly explains why this presidency is different from his last one.
rvba
It does not take decades to ruin something. In the example here: scientists can go somewhere else and never come back. Even if the next administration vhanges course you will never know if there wont be constant flip-flopping. That's bad for business, science and life. People want predictability.
padjo
Yep. It’s odd to see classic third world dictator antics in the most powerful country in the world, but not at all unexpected given who’s running it.
noir_lord
> the most powerful country in the world.
For now, I live in the former most powerful country in the world prior to the rise of the US.
diggan
> 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.
roenxi
The US BLS does seem to have a bit of a history [0] with their job reporting though. The process they've been using appears biased to over report initially and then get revised down over time. I'm sure there are a lot of political considerations, but from a raw statistical perspective there is a pretty easy path to getting better results. They could eliminate the optimistic bias and aim for accuracy.
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...
blackbear_
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 is -63k to +209k [3]. Anybody who understood high school stats knows the meaning and implications of this.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesnaicsrev.htm#Summary
hcknwscommenter
The source you cite is written by a man with literally zero training in economics or econometrics. He lost his job in 911 and started a blog in the GFC that gained an audience (https://mishtalk.com/economics/uk-high-school-student-asks-m...). Good for him. You assert with absolutely no basis in fact or any supporting citation that "there is a pretty easy path to getting better results." The BLS is run by the world's experts in how to measure what they are measuring. The private payroll company ADP reports their own numbers and has never demonstrated better accuracy despite the huge profit motive they have there. If it's so easy, then why don't you just write out a detailed explanation of how this supposed bias happens and how to fix it. You can't because it's not true that there is this sort of bias or that there is an easy fix (revisions are sometimes up and sometimes down, early data is not as reliable as later data). The BLS is constantly at work developing and testing new ways of doing their job better faster and cheaper. It's a difficult job done by thoughtful people. Bloomberg had a very contentious interview today with Peter Navarro and basically called him and Trump a liar over this made up allegation of political bias and/or incompetence at the BLS ("we just don't have evidence to support those instances here at Bloomberg"). This was the biggest miss in 50 years, yes. However, that's ignoring the fact that the economy is very much larger now and looking at the miss in terms of absolute job numbers revised is dumb, and the tariff uncertainty/TACO trade/Fed bullying/debt ceiling/and big beautiful bill drama is making this a particularly difficult time for this type of forecast.
delusional
> If it were me I'd be sacking people
Why sack them? It's not like they refused to mean adjust or failed to do so. The numbers came out, and before anybody has even had a chance to question them. Before any coherent criticism as had time to root, the person responsible is fired.
Firing people is not how you get more accurate numbers. It's how you get yes-men.
shakna
> 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.
When the jobs market is currently being impacted by a leader throwing around unprecedented tariffs, and upending decades of economic practice by throwing away national deals that he himself negotiated, you are not going to be able to accurately predict things - because they are unprecedented.
mavhc
Facts have a well known liberal bias, the only way the right wing gets enough votes is to have more people who don't do facts. Promoting science would just reduce the number of votes they get.
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.
Havoc
>on the grounds that UCLA was “failing to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias”
This really has very Germany 1930s vibes even if the direction of the anti is flipped.
qcnguy
Flipping the direction isn't some minor detail. That "flip" was the reason for the Allies to fight the second world war! The universities implement Nazi-like policies in which they try to keep Jews out illegally, others fought against them. If you aren't sure which side are in the wrong here, you need to ask yourself if it's yours.
aaomidi
Where are they keeping out Jewish people? Extraordinary claims and all that
aledue
Would you have said the same about universities illegally keeping out Nazis, if the Allies had supported their genocide of the Jews?
kergonath
It is purely Orwellian. They gaslit everyone into thinking that opposing an intolerant theocracy in Israel, and by extension the burgeoning autocracy in the US, was antisemitism, while at the same time moaning about Jews controlling and ruining the US. This naked cynicism is disgusting.
jkhdigital
Intolerant theocracy? And you’re using this phrase to refer to Israel?
aaomidi
State sponsor of genocide might be a more apt term, I agree. Intolerant is way too weak of a term.
Almondsetat
It's really telling when an invaluable intellectual powerhouse specialized in a non politicized field gets its funds taken away because of politics
Edit:
This is a comment about the administration, not Tao.
lordofgibbons
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. - Pericles
ykonstant
Or, to quote his lesser-known cousin:
"I thought I was safe in my hideout, but a kick to the groin proved me wrong." -Testicles
tempodox
Facts and knowledge are immensely political if the powers that be feel threatened by them.
ekianjo
thats why they should refrain from engaging in politics in the first place. the day the wind changes you lose.
kzrdude
Then it's maybe not a free country anymore if you have to think about how your actions are perceived by the president in power at every step.
luckylion
You don't though, unless your funding depends on him. If you're a contractor for Oracle, you'll probably get in trouble if you loudly proclaim different values than them - but that doesn't make it a non-free country.
ekianjo
I hate to state the obvious but if your livelihood depends on federal grants then by all means you need to take in account the fact that oresidents can change after a few years.
bsaul
i agree with you, but i think it's been the case in the US for the past 15 years already. The only difference is trump pushing toward different issues than biden.
tetha
As a band recently put it in a festival: They'd like their music to be non-political, but sometimes politics enter music and then you have no choice.
Thorrez
Are you saying the 6 NSF-funded math institutes (IPAM being one) are engaging in politics?
saagarjha
You still lose when you aren't political enough.
or_am_i
“If you would escape moral and physical assassination, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing — court obscurity, for only in oblivion does safety lie.” E. Hubbard, ca. 1989
oefrha
Being a PhD student at UCLA (or over public universities) was arguably risky in the best of times. When I applied to grad school a decade ago, I got an offer from UCLA Math and it was notable that funding was not guaranteed beyond the first year, meaning you may need to look for your own funding. Same thing with the offer from Berkeley Physics. In contrast, the private universities like Princeton guaranteed funding throughout the normal duration of the PhD program (you’re welcome to bring your own grants, but if you don’t and can’t find an advisor/lab to provide for you, the department with fix you up with TA jobs and stuff). Now it seems the public institutions got 100x shittier still (not saying private ones aren’t in a bind).
m101
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.
noelwelsh
Governments typically fund research because 1) it's seen as beneficial for the country, and hence falls under the remit of governments in democratic countries and 2) the uncertainty, time frame, or lack of direct commercialization of research typically means the private sector will not invest in it.
Your suggestion is saying that research should be privatised, and shows very little thought about how research works and who benefits from it.
m101
You make this statement as if it's fact. The actual reality of the matter is that neither you nor I know how research would progress were the government not stepping in and spending on our behalf. Your kind of argument is what is used to justify increasing amounts of government taxation and spending, over trusting the private sector to figure out ways of doing so, and the suggestion that government is the only way of incentivising the research you speak of is entirely lacking in imagination and faith in basic human ingenuity to solve problems.
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.
aborsy
Research 50 years ago, sure. Research now is very different. It’s short term, chasing money, trends, citations, prestige, hierarchy, academic power, and applications. Public should fund only the useful part of it.
margalabargala
Nothing has changed. What you describe today existed 50 years ago, and what you describe as being research 50 years ago, exists today.
The actions of the administration serve to force all academics not behaving as you describe research to start doing so, though. The criticism you have, is manufactured.
hcknwscommenter
You clearly didn't read the article. Dr. Tao provides a concrete example of the type of funding that very recently lead to an order of magnitude speedup of MRI imaging and likely has many military uses he is not allowed to speak about (my speculation but I'd bet on it). Your statement is false.
jkhdigital
Your Panglossian description of the purpose of publicly-funded research shows very little understanding of reality.
bryanrasmussen
>UCLA has an endowment of 3.8bn$
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.
bigDinosaur
Endowments are often earmarked for certain use cases. They aren't necessarily permitted to spend it as they like.
xdennis
Maybe taxes should be the same. I don't mind being taxed as much as I hate my taxes going to the wrong thing.
klooney
In California, your taxes are mostly earmarked for k-14 education, and the legislature can't change that.
kergonath
Now, find out if you agree with 10 random people about what is the right or the wrong thing.
m101
This is unfairly downvoted but strikes at the core of the matter. Democracy is fundamentally oppressive of a minority (and often majority). A vote in favour of a government to fund "basic research" (as it is generously described) is fundamentally not a vote to fund basic research, but rather a vote to expropriate wealth from a group that doesn't want it to be financed in order to finance it.
padjo
UCLA gets about $800m a year in federal grants. $3.8bn wouldn’t last long if they were to self fund that.
davrosthedalek
Also: Even if they could, why would they? Grants are for research. Research only very indirectly affects their income. They could probably accept more students (so more tuition) if they would say to the faculty: no research, more teaching.
An uber driver who gets rich by other means will stop driving for uber, not drive for uber for free.
m101
If the faculty itself is not willing to ask to spend the endowment on the research (and they know it most intimately), then why should the faculty ask the rest of us to pay?
tzs
Endowments are not piles of money that they just sit on. Universities typically spend 4-5% of their endowment every year. The endowment is invested and managed to try and make that 4-5% a year spending sustainable indefinitely.
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.
m101
I don't think there's a problem with spending an endowment down, however university administrators do, and that's a emotional step they need to get over.
Agreed on restrictions and would be good to know how large the unrestricted part is.
Hilift
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.
fundad
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?
fundad
Military contractors have even more money but the budget to pay them only grows larger every year.
francasso
Maybe it's time to move to Europe or China
linguae
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 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.
numbers_guy
There is nowhere to run and hide. Europe is worse than the US on this front. China also demands party loyalty. In a sense this is just the human condition. The ruling faction demands loyalty. Only a very advanced human civilization could move past that and allow criticism of the ruling class. Maybe the US had achieved that for a brief movement in the past or maybe it was just an illusion.
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.
jmcgough
My PhD friends are moving to Canada and Hong Kong now. Neither are perfect, but they are better than America now in terms of academic freedom, and won't yank your funding in the middle of a 5 year research project just for petty revenge. Half of what you hear about China is propaganda - America is the bad place now.
A_D_E_P_T
I'm in Europe. It's not even close to being worse than the US on that front. Places like the Fraunhofer Institute and the Max Planck Institute are perpetually well-funded, and are largely unaffected by politics. Good places to do research.
FirmwareBurner
>Fraunhofer Institute and the Max Planck Institute are perpetually well-funded, and are largely unaffected by politics
Oh, so I can freely go up against the German government's policies and have my career in academia unaffected and keep my government funding?
I lived in Germany and don't remember people or organisations ever being able to break government rules with no consequences (unless they had high friends in politics).
Something smells here.
breppp
Wouldn't get to this because in Germany such a demonstration would be dispersed far earlier, not to mention the nazi symbolism displayed in UCLA
diggan
> Europe is worse than the US on this front.
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.
tsm
>Europe is worse than the US on this front
Would you please expand on this?
lawn
> why I think it's worse in Europe, it's because in Europe the ruling class and the universities are on the same side
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.
ben_w
> Sounds like a feature, not a bug.
In fairness, it can be either, and which it is depends if in the specific case it's more accurate to phrase it as "the ruling classes are on the side of the universities" (good) or as "the universities are on the side of the ruling class" (bad).
Applejinx
Yeah, it was called the United States and if it was an illusion it would not have been the weakness exploited in this way. America was real and can well be again: turns out allowing such diversity and multiculturalism gave rise to things like New York City, California etc etc. known for being giant piles of messy commerce and influence from all over the place.
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.
BDPW
Like the German diplomats recently speaking out against their governments policy on Gaza and Israel?
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)
delusional
What are you on about? I live in Europe. We don't terminate all contact to random universities because they said something the führer didn't like.
If you truly believe that the whole world is "just as bad" as this, then you are unimaginably far to the right.
null
amelius
I agree with you, but that choice of word doesn't make much sense here.
luckylion
I wouldn't say it's "just as bad", but I also couldn't imagine a big university publicly and strongly going against the federal government in Germany on "culture war" issues.
If you're fully aligned, there's no telling what would happen if you weren't, and you can't use "nothing happens" as evidence that nothing would happen - you're always allowed to share the opinions of whoever funds you.
If Germany got a right-wing government on the federal level, I expect to see either funding being slashed or universities adjusting their positions.
abc123abc123
[flagged]
omnee
One of the worst excesses of this admin has been the attack on science and mathematics, stemming from their deliberate ignorance of evidence. A setback for the researchers and a tragedy for the people that might benefit from their work, the nation and the world as a whole.
TrueTom
nosianu
Just for the record, not just on StackOverflow but everywhere it is good practice to not just post a link and nothing else. One should always include a TL;DR summary so that it is clear what the link is about without having to click. Especially on mobile, having to click to even know what some link is about is bad.
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.
lmpdev
Come home Terry, we miss you
- Australia
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.