Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

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.

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.

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.

Are you talking about math PhDs? What power do they have, politically?

Why suggest math PhDs unless it's in bad faith?

Wouldn't economics and sociology PhDs have both more room for bias in their work, and tend to have power over the economy and society?

"Experts" have a lot of sway over the public sector and legal system.

The public sector has increased to take up a huge percentage of GDP, and the legal sector has also arguably expanded a lot in power.

The perception is that a huge amount of public spending is controlled by the public service, and they tend to defer to academics if the executive keeps them in line.

> Why suggest math PhDs unless it's in bad faith?

Maybe because this thread is about a math PhD (Terrence Tao)?

I’m also surprised you believe academic economists have much power. These days, most politicians from both parties in the US proudly reject more or less all of mainstream economics. Sometimes, the work of academic economists can have some small influence on decisions at the Fed, so I guess that is something.

Sociologists don’t even have that. They’re more or less just talking to themselves.

If only politicians mattered why doesn't Trump sack virtually everyone in DC?

The government is a large organisation and its middle management is both vast and powerful.

And this huge middle management is obliged (arguably) to listen to academia unless otherwise instructed by politicians (who are too few in number and mostly not talented in steering large organisations so much as they are used to just going with the flow and taking the credit).