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Comment by mensetmanusman | Hacker News Reader

Background: UCLA violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, "by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students."

Outcome: These grants are likely in a temporary holding pattern until ucla settles the issue.

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The root bsky post says “NSF is suspending roughly 300 grants with UCLA, following a DOJ finding on Tuesday that the university violated Title VI by "creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students."”

Which is entirely par for the course with the administration and doesn’t seem particularly targeted at Tao. I’m shocked even more NSF grants haven’t been hit, this was a prime DOGE target. They want these headlines.

> "creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students"

Of course suspending grants is probably the wrong way to go about it anyway, but since you brought this up... do you imply that it's false? I'm not in the US but I heard pretty interesting things about what was happening in universities following Oct 7.

It’s complete bullshit. Half the students protesting for Gaza were Jewish themselves.

This is the closest to the answer for now, thanks. I remember reading how it was pretty antisemitic with racial shaming and bordering on physical violence but can't remember what sources it was. If half of the protesters were jewish as you say then that's unlikely

Propaganda directed straight from netanyahu. He ordered America to censor the students in public sperches and within days America inexplicably did it.

Yes, it's false.

Students have a first amendment right to express opinions, even anti-Zionist ones.

The administration is using baseless charges of antisemitism as a cudgel to extract fealty and concessions from universities, which they see as opponents of their party.

The accusation from DOJ isn't about student speech, though. It's about the university's actions or inactions, which are not protected and are governed by obligations to Title VI discrimination law.

You're right, but the university is not allowed to censor student speech based on content. The "actions" that the administration claims the university should have taken would have violated the constitution.

Furthermore, the redresses the administration has proposed in similar cases (like the university reporting students who protest to federal authorities) suggest this is more about federal power / censorship than furthering universal free speech.

Free speech just got a price put on its head, capisce?

For a one-time payment it may be able to slide this time, didn't Columbia University have an offer they couldn't refuse?

Pray the Don doesn't alter the deal . . .

> the university is not allowed to censor student speech based on content

Hold on, didn't tenured professors get fired literally based on content of their speech a few years back under the other administration? I am confused

And this does not have to be about censoring speech. There are rules of a place. As I said, you start obstructing a lecture, you get thrown out in a good university

I don't think this is quite correct, at least for private universities. They absolutely have the right to disallow protests on their property. The first amendment protects you from the government -- the government cannot force the university to take these action, but the university could totally do it on their own. It's a little bit murkier with state universities, because you could argue they are a part of the government.

This is a strawman. Of course there is free speech. It doesn't mean it's okay to talk on the phone in a cinema or recite the Bible aloud during a math lecture. It doesn't mean it's fair play to shout obscenities on the train and spit on people. Idk about US but there is a thing called "verbal abuse" and police is 100% callable for that. That out of the way so how about hostile environment for students again? I was downvoted for asking a question and this did not answer it.

Shouting obscenities on the train, as well as hate speech broadly, are constitutionally protected under the first amendment.

Creating a hostile environment for students based on their religion would violate the Civil Rights Act. However, there is a paucity of evidence that the universities did that. Allowing protests probably isn't sufficient, especially when prohibiting those same protests would be unconstitutional.

Even if the protesting students were spitting on Jewish students, that doesn't impact the legality of the protest. The spitting could be prosecuted as battery.

I recommend reading this [1] great article about the sometimes confusing rhetoric used in the media about American free speech.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220313175157/http://popehat.co...

Okay so if I get it correctly they could be kicked out like in the cinema or not, because like I assume regardless of free speech there are rules, but this "cinema" cannot be prosecuted by US gov for NOT kicking a noisy jerk out of it because then it becomes a free speech thing. If taking away grants counts as prosecution? I guess that makes sense.

State schools like UCLA cannot restrict speech in the same way that private organizations could, because they are part of the government. The cinema analogy is therefore spurious.

Oh right. I forgot not all unis are private in the US. Then it makes more sende...

Honest question on this: It is clear that first amendment protects the rights of protesters from persecution by the government. But does that mean that the government would need to endure protests in any federal building at any time?

If not, I think you could make a case that UCLA could kick protesters out, for example if they take over a building. In contrast to a private university, they probably couldn't act on what the protesters do outside of the university. But I do think that they must have some regulatory power on campus.

> But does that mean that the government would need to endure protests in any federal building at any time?

No. It means that the university cannot censor protests based on their content. They can certainly require protesters to get a permit, to stay within certain areas, to act within usual behavior parameters.

> If not, I think you could make a case that UCLA could kick protesters out, for example if they take over a building.

Of course. But that's not the claim made by the administration.

> I was downvoted for asking a question and this did not answer it.

I am 100% sure your comment was downvoted for this sentence:

> I'm not in the US but I heard pretty interesting things about what was happening in universities following Oct 7.

People here don’t like propaganda-fueled speculation. The commenter also literally answered your question. You asked if it was meant to be implied as false and they said yes.

I was not reading propaganda and he did not answer the question. I will make it shorter to make it very clear. The question: "hostile environment for students?" the answer: "free speech, cudgel, fealty". I get it and I agree wit all of that. But it is answer to some other question that was more convenient to the "answerer"

> I was not reading propaganda

I don’t doubt this but it’s also easy to read the comment as though that’s where your thoughts originate.

> But it is answer to some other question that was more convenient to the "answerer"

I disagree on the question being unanswered, however; you did not ask for details but instead for confirmation.

I am saying this with the intention to be helpful; I am not intending to criticize your arguments. My point is simply that you did not communicate your thoughts as effectively as you seem to believe.

Allowing people to speak out against overt genocide committed by a foreign government = anti-semitism. Isn’t that self-evident? /s

Tbh, this standard argument is itself anti-Jewish as it implies this behavior is inherent to being Jewish, which of course is grotesque and inaccurate.

* Jewish /= Zionist

* Zionist /= Imperialist

* Imperialist /= Genocidal

What we have really imo is an extreme colonist policy that is only superficially Jewish. That doesn’t absolve Jews in Israel supporting it, it rather absolves all those who don’t and makes genocidal colonists take responsibility for their own actions.

Also, genocide is bad.

Nice strawman. So how about the actual question which is hostile environment for students? I was downvoted for asking a question and this did not answer it.

Edit to reply: what I remember reading was not about saying "end genocide", it was about saying "you are a jew so go die" kind of stuff. It seemed pretty crazy but I didn't save any sources

If I make a sign that says "Nazis are Evil", and a guy gets upset and says "you can't say that about me" - what do you call that guy? A Nazi.

If I make a sign that says "End the Zionist Genocide", and a Jewish person says "you can't say that about me", they don't feel uncomfortable because they're Jewish.

"Zionist genocide" means a genocide of zionist people. Last time I heard it happened was WWII.

This thread and replies I got is wild!

Do you really imagine anyone here is convinced by your petty deceptions? We know what words mean.

I'm not native English but even I know. For example when we say Ukrainian genocide we mean genocide that kills Ukrainian people. This guy said "Zionist genocide" so what does that mean? That genocide ended decades ago. Who is decepting who and how? Go ahead and unpack for us

Ah right. Well if your not a native speaker - this isn't exactly a formal rule as far as I know, but as a native speaker...

Zionists are ideological people and "<Idological People> Genocide" reads like the ideologues own and are committing the genocide.

Whereas Ukrainian is a denonym and "<Denonym> Genocide" reads like a genocide done to the denonym. Nazi Genocide -> Nazis did it. Jewish Genocide -> Genocide happened to the Jews.

I'm not sure if that is technically how it would work in a formal linguistic sense, but that would be how I'd expect the terms to be read. Zionists can't really be genocided because Zionism isn't a race, so reading "Zionist Genocide" as happening to the Zionists is difficult. Not a reliable rule though, someone could use "genocide" that way I suppose.

> Zionists can't really be genocided

What I see in dictionary is "rational or national group". I guess Zionism does not fall under "national group". I still think the usage is still wrong, unless you can find an example where it is used that way.

In any case this thread justification of how it is okay to attack jews or israelis (or tell me it didn't happen if you have better information than me) for being jews after oct 7 and israeli government response is crazy. Like I'm Russian and I don't support Ukrainian war (by the way not the only shitty thing russian government does, see criminalization of LGBT people etc) so what now, should I be targeted and shouted at by people with signs because of something I can't change? Should I hide my rusianness? At a place I live and study at? Sure it's probably wrong/illegal to take away grants for this but if I was a student at a uni would that be a hostile environment? I kind of think so.

I would say free speech must have some standard in civilized community, but since someone said that hate speech is protected on public uni campuses in US then I can say nothing.

Again tell me if I am wrong and Jews were not personally attacked for being Jews after oct 7. I have a vague understanding of what happened.

What about the hostile environment to the students who protested?

What about it? You tell me, I was not there. I literally posted requesting info...

If you’re genuinely interested in truth, I can tell you that I personally visited the protest site at UCLA in order to get an unfiltered view or what was happening. The signage I saw was largely of the form “End Genocide” or “Divest”. There were also signs criticizing e.g. the border wall with Mexico. A lot of it was critical of Israel, as well as the United States and even the University of California, but none of it was anti-Jewish. In fact there were a few signs of the form “Jews Against Genocide”.

Thanks for data point. So if this is what they take away grants for then yeah it's not a good look...

> "creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students."

So... did the dean make a public Nazi salute or something? The double standard (if we can even call it a "standard") is getting rather tiring.

> Background: UCLA violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, "by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students."

Translation: ULCA declined to violate the First Ammendment and allowed their students and faculty to criticize Israel.

It’s more akin to the civil rights movement/counter movement when some universities ignored various assaults on black students (saying it wasn’t their job to police behavior).

The protesters were fine to criticize Israel, but then turning the rage to the actual American Jews on campus crossed the line.

Provide evidence from reputable sources.

Israeli Jews kill tens of thousands of Palestinian children and we are supposed to care that Zionists feel targeted by the protests on campus? Zionists are literally starving people right now. Do you not get that?

There's a distinction to make between Jewish people and Israel.

Jewish people are fine. The Israeli genocide of Gaza is not.

> There's a distinction to make between Jewish people and Israel.

Lots of Jews don't seem to know that.

I said Israeli Jews. I didn’t say Jews.

Give me a MSM source that claims that student protesters on a UC campus targeted American Jews on campus with their "rage". For this, I do not regard instances where American Jews feel unsafe or threatened to fall under this where they felt that way due to having conflated anti-Israel sentiment with antisemitism, or because of having their own identity enmeshed with modern Israel. (I do not consider identifying with modern Israel part of being an American Jew.)

Preventing Jews from entering the campus and threatening them are not protected by the 1st Amendment — that’s why UCLA settled the lawsuit for millions, because they had a duty to stop those acts.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/29/ucla-lawsuit...

AFAIK the protestors blocked everybody and did not discriminate. And they occupied only individual buildings or sections of campus, entry into campus as a whole was not restricted.

https://x.com/SiaKordestani/status/1785397163662745610

Private actors were preventing people from entering a public part of campus unless they signaled their "anti-Israel" bonafides. The school allowed this to continue, therefore they implicitly supported it.

Nah, the school was just taking the typical "corporate laissez faire" non-position position. It got worse later on when they started expelling the protestors by force. Very disappointing to see a school fighting it's own student body like this.

Which isn't even true, UCLA came down hard on protesters and they did violate the students 1st amendment rights.

> UCLA violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, "by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students."

Weird in that the main victims here actually pro-Palestinian students and the main attacker got a plea deal just a few days ago:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-30/ucla-mov...

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-07-28/ucla-pro...

> UCLA violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act

Yes, I was just reading that in a DOJ press release authored by known prevaricator AG Pam Bondi.

why does US law have articles to specifically protect one ethnic group instead of being generic and protecting them all?

They do to my knowledge, the quote is the specific violation of the civil rights act.

They do. The law is literally that you must equally protect all groups

Correct. However, the current administration is interested in enforcing the law about discrimination only against one group.

That's a misguided political party for you.

Looks to me like they've got their sights on a lot more than one group, some are just more obvious than others.

And they aren't even doing that. The administration doesn't give a shit about jewish people. It cares about hurting lefties and has decided that "pro-palestine efforts are anti-semitic" is a cudgel they can use to do that.

I wonder how many jewish researchers lost their funding here and in the other cases. Seems like a misguided approach if this is what they really care about.

Thw law is very obviously being abused here by Trump and his administration to punish unfavored speech and unfavored groups. They dont care about equal protection one bit. They want to punish academics and universities so that Trump et al can controll their speech.

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

Nope, that's more like trumpery. Well-recognized for centuries before the current crop of Trumps was even born:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trumpery

OTOH "Conservatism" is simply the desire to hold on to, or conserve what there currently is, rather than progress toward something different.

Whether the progress is for the better or worse or even if anybody knows for sure.

Truly the opposite of "progressive". Neither one inherently good or bad.

And as can be seen, an indication of the relative greatness of American leaders who can be judged by their ability to wisely balance the interests of all citizens. The US has a history of exceptional true leaders since the beginning, but not every single one. Some have been far from saintly, and some not even suitable for a free country.

Quite a lot of times neither conservative nor progressive seem like as much of a driving force unless their hallmarks are in decline to the point where some things that were perceived as precious to conserve or progress toward or beyond had already been lost to a certain extent, or otherwise under increased threat.

Edit: not my donvote btw

Thank you. We really need to stop letting the fascists/reactionaries cloak themselves in this label of conservative. They're a radical reactionary movement with the main goal of tearing down our societal institutions and effectively destroying America's standing in the world - the polar opposite of conservatism.

Letting them continue to think of themselves as conservative assuages their own cognitive dissonance as to what they're actually supporting. It's plainly dishonest to call all of our institutions corrupt, point to some imagined rosy snapshot of the past 70+ years ago, and then claim you're merely conservative. The conservative slogan would be Keep America Great. Theirs isn't.

One of the things parties around the world have been successful at (as opposed to creating favorable law) is distorting and watering down other parties from within. Labor is anti laborer. Democrats are anti democrat, republicans hate the free market, conservatives want to change everything etc

You state politicians' accusations without due process as fact.

The Trump administration alleges they violated the Equal protection clause, they haven't proven their case (and will try with all their might to avoid going to court over this). This is just more goon tactics by Trump, it should not get any more legitimacy than that.

Did Terence Tao or the other researchers whose grants have been suspended violate Title VI? This just seems like dishonest excusemaking for extortion. UCLA would dispute that they violated Title VI, so the Trump regime is pulling out a bat and breaking their researchers' kneecaps until they agree to give in.

uh, no, the president has just claimed that the uni was not horrible enough to pro-palestine protestors and so he'll be randomly withholding federal money until they bend to his pathetic will and permanently destroy the independence of the university by letting his cronies rule it.

> settles the issue

pays an extortion fee; lets call it what it is

once Columbia capitulated, it was clear Trump would come after everyone else

Additional Background: US government provides funding, US government tries to use that leverage to decide how the show will be run.

Over the years I've come to accept the blind spot most people have where, despite all evidence, they assume that the government goals match their own. But it still isn't the case. The prudent approach is to set up institutions that are largely independent of government. Government funding is not an answer to long term problems. Governments are too fickle and the political bandwidth isn't high enough to handle complex arguments like whether researching structure in sequences of 0s and 1s is a good idea.

I know the fashion is to present Trump as some weird aberration but he's been a factor for about 10 years now and won his 3rd election pretty convincing margins. Nobody can say they are surprised that the US government is behaving erratically if it is an environment where Trump is a top contender for high office.

But government funding was set up in a way meant to counteract fickleness. Government actions are supposed to be proposed publicly, accept and consider public comments, and then allow legal arguments about the process and motivations. And funding is assigned by Congress, two legislative bodies with hundreds of members that follow extensive rules and procedures to do anything.

The current "fickleness" is from a single individual. The other branches of government are refusing to check out even criticize his actions. This is what would happen with any funding from individuals. The lesson we should be taking from this situation is either (1) controls on the government need to have more teeth and not rely solely on politicians, or (2) the US accepts authoritarianism right now and no Constitution would stop that.

> The current "fickleness" is from a single individual. The other branches of government are refusing to check out even criticize his actions.

Leading to the observation that it isn't a single individual. It is a large number of people agreeing on what the political priorities are.

> Government actions are supposed to be proposed publicly, accept and consider public comments, and then allow legal arguments about the process and motivations.

The Trump people have done all that on the way to where we are right now. It's been quite hard to escape the debate over the last decade or so. It was heated, public and quite interesting to follow. There were at least 3 elections involved (realistically a lot more, the internal mechanisms of the Republican party have been active), and his opponents have been comprehensive in their analysis of his flaws and the issues with his policies.

> Government funding is not an answer to long term problems

It has been said that government funding is the worst form of funding except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time

>> won his 3rd election

Really - I think that more or less confirms your bias.

Reads as "won the 3rd election in which he has participated". Your assumptions betray your own.

no, it does not read as that

He lost his 2nd election but won his 3rd election.

How else do you propose to word it? As far as I'm concerned anyone reading it differently is suffering from very obvious bias.

An important aspect of intellectual discourse is interpreting any ambiguities in the most favorable manner for the other party. Or alternatively, if the matter is relevant to the central point then requesting clarification.

> Government funding is not an answer to long term problems.

Funding from private sources who are usually more short-sighted and less transparent can't be the alternative. An alternative I can think of are international entities that have some semblance of independence from constituent nations. I think that for a democratic government, public funding is alright, as long as the government is, well, healthy. In this light the issue with funding is simply a symptom of a government that does not serve its citizens well, which is the root cause that must be cured.

> US government provides funding, US government tries to use that leverage to decide how the show will be run.

Pray tell where are the examples from previous administrations of how billions of dollars in funding was yanked or suspended from multiple colleges until they paid "settlement fees" just to make it go away and get their funding restored, without even any due process.

Yes, the gov have always exercised some pressure on institutions or shifting funding towards their priorities. But no one but Trump has engaged in blatant mafia-style extortion.

He has only won two elections. In the first one, he lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote. In the second one, he did win the popular vote by 1.5%, which is hardly a convincing margin.

You're right, Trump is not a weird aberration; he's a natural progression of the Republican Party since at least Barry Goldwater in the early 1960s. I never thought I would live to see the John Birch Society go from radical crazies to mainstream

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