Trump is targeting universities for embracing racist & woke ideologies, but the aim is off. The disciplines leading the woke charge—English, history, sociology—don’t get much govt funding. So the admin is going after science funding...this will backfire.
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I’m somewhat suspicious of the value of the research performed at universities. And I say this as someone who is a big fan of the notion of the university system. But in practice, I’m not sure. I suspect Bell Labs and PARC have had more of an impact on our world than all of the
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It will change the internal balance of power in Uni Senates, administration, etc. The ideal is to get the STEM people to dethrone and defund the Humanities, who colonized administration.
Might going after science funding force universities to fix their insanely woke departments?
Cutting science funding is unlikely to raise the status of science within the university.
It's not even the humanities disciplines that push this. It's student/resident life and administration that do it. Humanities departments largely cycled through this stuff 25 years ago.
Science is the enemy for them. It’s a form of grounded truth — which is unacceptable. That’s why honorable people clearly opposed him before the election.
A giant percentage of science funding got redirected to DEI in the Biden administration. See our lawsuit, for example.
The 56+% overheads absolutely do go towards dei. It doesn't stay in a "science" box. And eng etc depts have plenty of dei positions (fac & other)
Cutting overheads < 20% means there is more money avail to directly fund research. Unis that are too inefficient=too bad.
If the sciences are in control of university funding, why are history English and sociology depts in charge of the ideology? If it’s administration and not academics who set ideology, isn’t that funded by science overhead indirects? Genuine questions from an outsider
It will not necessarily backfire. It will and already has caused lots of damage.
I imagine if the universities want to save their science funding, they’ll get their other departments in line then. Money talks.
Why must this funding come from the federal level?
Why can't state and local governments step up, as well as foundations?
If the research is important enough, I suspect the dollars will follow—and they'll be better targeted than helicopter money from the feds.
You attack the funding, wherever it goes. That will get the attention of the administration to do something about the problem.
STEM gets more funding than liberal arts programs.
Actually, punishing universities for teaching ideologies that go against the revolution is what communist dictatorships do, and not that it matters but most people who study English, history, or sociology end up with normal corporate jobs. They aren't more lefty than STEM grads.
It's probably harder to surgically address the bloat in humanities and admin, but maybe their approach works. If someone is spending most money on drugs and a bit on food, and you remove the food subsidies, won't they spend less on drugs and buy the food with that money?
Science may not be as bad but it's far more dangerous - add to that the plagiarism crisis, replication crisis, 'equity' science and many other things - Science Inc. has thoroughly and completely discredited itself
What do you expect to happen after the medical school professors decided that COVID isn't a real risk as long as they are protesting racism?
Academic science is 1) not in great shape and 2) being used as a hostage puppy. The massive administration fees assigned to science grants get siphoned off to support woke administrators. Money is fungible.
No, the science "funding" is just a means to bloat the administrations, which in turn make the universities woke hell holes. If the labs want to keep going, the good ones can go independent of the Unis easily.
How can you say science faculty aren't a problem after their abysmal performance on Covid? 
The first cancellation was arguably of Charles Murray, and it arguably ushered in the era of polite fiction over truth in science. Where were the STEM folks then?
The first cancellation was arguably of Charles Murray, and it arguably ushered in the era of polite fiction over truth in science. Where were the STEM folks then?
So science hasn’t been political? I heard a lot of follow the political science from scientists the past several years.
In order to get the funding, the STEM field went along with the BS by injected DEI into every single research project they did. Either by excluding white applicants or nonsense such as researching "equity in treatment of multiple myeloma".
Not really. It is all the humanities and related fields, but most importantly it is administrative and professors (college senates) who spread the virus completely and into the STEM fields as well via hiring and many other practices.
He is using funding as a leverage. And unfortunately it’s mainly in the STEM fields. But if he doesn’t use it as a leverage, he has no other tools. You think university bureaucrats will follow his EO’s? Not a chance.
The “wokeness” that really matters to science students is from the gatekeepers in the admissions office.
The sciences are also woke, it’s just more like 70-80% instead of 98%.
Agreed on the end result, but...
Hi Alex, DEI was a requirement in every NIH grant. It was all over math grants and departments too. Count up the scholarship money in Math departments that excluded white men. This is just inaccurate. You guys should have stood up.
It's also a low and effective blow, because STEM scientists/researchers are the least likely to vocally protest these actions in public.
For those of us who work in academia (science field or not), just remember not to take ourselves too seriously. We need to earn our keep just like everyone else.
I was under the impression that around ~40% of the science funding was tainted in some way by DEI/woke sorta things? So while cutting it may be bad, it's not as crazy as it sounds.
Alex, "going after science funding" will ensure that Universities fall in line and halt spending on frivolous DEI sinecures. It will force a prioritization of resources and will streamline bureaucratic process, DEI sinecures will be the first go.
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University leadership is the primary problem, not the immature rant of a tenured English professor.
DEI doctors, nurses, lab techs, civil engineers, and pilots may not make for a safer and healthier society. The schools use DEI to choose candidates for admissions to the schools, the administration and programs.
Basically, zero merit base.
There is a lot of "woke" in universities. Academics believe in Climate Science. Supply-side tax cuts do not trickle down or reduce deficits. Vaccines work & combat inequality.
Anti-"woke" = gov't controlling the weather, vaccines cause autism, supply-side tax cut 
deficits.
deficits.
I thought you were free market guy. Why support these subsidies? If there is roi market will do better job. If there is no roi then that’s a hobby people should pay for themselves.
The funds are essentially fungible. If a massive grant is pulled, it pressures the overall budget. Humanities are a fiscal drain in these institutions and should bear the brunt of the budget impacts, since it's those departments that were responsible for the grant cuts.
That’s because the focus on “woke” was a misdirection to dupe fools like you
Agreed it’s bad, but wokeness has fully infiltrated the sciences. Astronomy is among the worst.
Honestly the sciences need to be punished for capitulating to those ideologies. Universities have been seriously undermining the legitimacy of science since Floyd.
It's delicate, but the real problem is fraud, waste & systematic elimination of top talent, not "woke" as such. And fraud is becoming much too rampant for comfort, also in science, where it matters the most to stop it.
Tamping down on these ideologies in STEM is way way more important than in the social sciences. Actually, having it in social sciences is relatively harmless
For over a decade the academy has been warned that its politicization would be blunt and indiscriminate. But it refused to police itself. FAFO.
Leopard that spent a decade saying how universities and higher education were terrible is eating your face now? Shocked.
Not if the funding is going to science that is focused on ridiculous unscientific id.pol.
Colleges of Education and Educational Psychology are among the worst because they prepare K-12 teachers.
50% of cancer research is irreproducible that’s 25 billion in waste in govt funded cancer research alone per year. Science has no checks and balances to prevent irreproducible cancer. Science is not self correcting, it never was and who ever claimed such a thing was gaslighting.