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Yes, grants were given and revoked for political purposes in the past.
But what percentage of grant proposals were reviewed by an appointed political officer whose sole job was to screen out wrongthink? It did happen, but it was ad hoc and amateur. Today’s administration is formalizing Soviet-style political reviews of science.
It’s scary, and it’s a mistake to hold up occasional (but serious!) mistakes from the past to justify systematic evil today.
He who kills the dragon becomes one.
Small consolation for those excluded. It wasn't "occasional (but serious!) mistakes" it was systematic ideological control.
I'd say explicit is better than implicit. Less hypocrisy, and more transparency. And at least now that this shit is officially set as word to paper, and is out in the open, the other side, when in power, can dismantle it and make into law guarantees that such wrongthink persecution wont happen again.
But they wont. They'll use the same mechanism of "appointed political officer whose sole job was to screen out wrongthink".
Because it was never about the principle. It was about doing it convertly as long as they politically/ideologically controlled those establishments. Controlling them through government power will suit them too, as much as it suits the other side.
Are you talking about not getting the grant in the first place, or are you talking about grants being cancelled after they had been approved and you had taken the money and started doing the funded work?
Those two situations are different.
[1] https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-change...
Do you even know how grants work?
You’re speaking about scoring designed to ensure that all Americans (any sex, poverty level, ability, creed) benefit from the use of tax payer money. This was a metric that was well understood AND EXPLICITLY EXPLAINED.
There was NO relationship between that and canceling grants.
Edit: less incendiary. I am just very upset with how confident people are saying things that are absolutely wrong for internet points.
And I didn't say it was (though, such scoring has been also a powerful weapon against certain grants being granted, the scoring criteria not always interpreted and used in a politically neutral way - that was just the marketing pitch).
I spoke about how grants were already being connected to ideological pressure, both government and organisational, private sector grands: "You mispoke on that issue? No grant. You were of the wrong political perssuassion? No grant. Hurt the feelings of X group? No grant."
That pressure was on even after they were handed. That's the same kind ideological gate-keeping, just not from an official appointee, but spread out in ideologically motivated peer review, academic acceptance mechanisms, (and going into the private grants, sponsors), etc.
Research funding has never been insulated from politics. The difference is now a part of the overall approval becomes openly and transparently political.
> And I didn't say it was (though, such scoring has been also a powerful weapon against certain grants being granted, the scoring criteria not always interpreted and used in a politically neutral way - that was just the marketing pitch).
Your own words, not mine:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48340780
> That pressure was on even after they were handed
There is a scoring matrix that simply requires grantees not to ignore huge portions of the nation in their research. You didn't even need to score highly here if you scored highly elsewhere. Just not pretend that people with disabilities or other non-majority groups are deserving of attention in taxpayer-funded research.
> Research funding has never been insulated from politics. The difference is now a part of the overall approval becomes openly and transparently political.
It was always open and towards the goal of supporting America.
If you cannot understand what is different, I think there is little hope in writing to you.
I respond for the benefit of those who may not already understand how this process works and who aren't carrying water for a political party.
This is the real test. If these changes are so bad, will someone campaign bare on overturning these? Will the “other side” change it?
If they don’t, you know that they also agreed with it - this handwringing now is just for show.
No, the left should use the things right broke to abuse the right—just like the right is breaking everything to abuse the left. Otherwise the right will never learn why breaking things is a bad idea, and they’ll just keep on breaking everything like they have been for my entire life and before.
Previously, it was a more libertarian and constitutional argument: progressive causes since the new deal have assumed powers not granted.
More recently this has completely flipped to a populist culture war argument that the left, in excesses seen in the DEI hayday before COVID, has lost its mind and began attacking and punishing people.
My point isn't to argue "no you" but to instead invalidate your point about lessons and outcomes. The centers of these two tribes exist in separate realities and experiences. Escalating is unlikely to have the effect of bringing those perspectives together.
That’s all the more reason to do it. The right believes lots of things that aren’t so, so learning what abuse actually is might stop them from crying wolf in the future.
The reactionary Supreme Court has changed the character of the executive. That court will live for many years. The executive branch exists to represent the will of the chief executive. We’ve normalized criminal behavior with the abuse of pardons and crushed the institution of DOJ.
These guys opened a very stupid Pandora’s box. The long game is brutal. When we need to start dismantling the military, that’s going to impact some places pretty severely, for example. The science and tech edge will be gone in a decade.
As the other poster mentioned, the post-Vietnam Church committee was a democratic party-led, bipartisan committee that effectively heeled the CIA and exposed many of the pretty dark abuses committed in that era.
All tactics, no strategy is the way of things currently - on the right especially, but on the left to some extent too. It’s maddening.
This is the worst part. The Democrats have nothing but outrage and protest. They don’t have a written Democrat Project 2029. Their action plan is as thin as a Reddit post.
The right spent decades working on their strategy, who to target/convert, how to do it, what they would do once in power, and how quickly: and they wrote it down. What the fuck are the Democrats doing? Holding little signs up in protest in Congress and having little press conferences where they make meek outrage noises. This is a very unserious party in the face of a very serious political problem.