Terence Tao focused on fundraising after federal funding to UCLA was suspended

UCLA has a $10B endowment. I find it bollocks that they and these other academic institutions can't just dip into that for their researchers to (hopefully) ride out the current funding situation at a minimum.

It's not bollocks, the endowments are contributions that have constraints on their spending. They cannot legally redirect much of the endowment towards these researchers in the way you want. Instead, they use the endowment as an investment that produces interest which is spent on operating expenses.

The way you describe it as if a widow is reaching out to interest from a nest egg to get by and I got a little tear.

But since I do know better:

- some of these endowments grow over time to infinity.

- that's tax-free gain/interest and any hedge fund would kill to get that special treatment.

As long as they have such special tax treatment, it is only fair they should stay in line with a framework that taxpayers provide.

No endowment grows over time to infinity; that's hyperbole (and impossible).

The tax-free status - that's definitely something that could be changed by updating the laws (legislative). That sounds a lot better than the executive division starving UCLA of funds.