Only briefly touched on here, but just as important as what's happening in the US, is why it's happening. This does not get enough attention.
The stated reasons, such as to "coerce universities to change their internal policies to align with the administration's priorities," understate things.
The real objective is to strip independent scientific institutions of their authority and to subordinate knowledge production to political and religious ideology.
Yes, religious ideology. If this sounds crazy; if you do not think this is happening; or if this sounds scary to you -- then you should go read up on Russell Vought and what his publicly stated objectives are. He is behind all of this. I doubt that Donald Trump knows or cares about any of it.
What is happening is absolute, complete insanity. And it has nothing to do with wokeness, antisemitism, DEI, waste, fraud, and abuse, or any of the other pretexts the Administration is using today.
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
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44765264
The author of the article is a bit more than an “award-winning mathematician.” If it can happen to him, no one is safe.
The general idea is not new in American society, dating back (at least) decades:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism_in_Americ...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism#In_the_Un...
What is new is that the inmates have taken over the asylum. (Every society has 'oddballs' of course.)
Only briefly touched on here, but just as important as what's happening in the US, is why it's happening. This does not get enough attention.
The stated reasons, such as to "coerce universities to change their internal policies to align with the administration's priorities," understate things.
The real objective is to strip independent scientific institutions of their authority and to subordinate knowledge production to political and religious ideology.
Yes, religious ideology. If this sounds crazy; if you do not think this is happening; or if this sounds scary to you -- then you should go read up on Russell Vought and what his publicly stated objectives are. He is behind all of this. I doubt that Donald Trump knows or cares about any of it.
What is happening is absolute, complete insanity. And it has nothing to do with wokeness, antisemitism, DEI, waste, fraud, and abuse, or any of the other pretexts the Administration is using today.
UCLA, where Tao works, has a 10B USD endowment. He will do just fine.