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>Imagine that your people had the land you'd been living on for countless generations invaded, taken from them after a bloody campaign, where the survivors were forced into poverty in concentration camps, where they could not leave, where many women had their fallopian tubes tied without even their knowledge, where children were beaten for speaking their language, where they were intentionally and deliberately kept in structural poverty for generations, and other horrors.

Yes, it's terrible what the English did in Ireland.

I think you can easily turn this around: scientists who are only willing to do science if it involves preferential treatment, DEI statements, and other practices that half of the country despises are saying that it's better to do no science at all than to set those divisive practices aside and just do science.

Proponents of these policies want to have it both ways; they're at one moment just this small thing that nobody should be bothered by, but in the next moment a nonnegotiable bedrock principle that they are unwilling to stop doing, even under threat of losing funding.

This group of people you're describing ("scientists who are only willing to do science if it involves preferential treatment") is simply not real. The idea that academics would cling to DEI statements or refuse funding is beyond laughable, and could only be dreamt up by someone who has never experienced academia.

It happened directly at least once: https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-college-first-de...

It happens indirectly all the time. As of 2025, despite all the funding cuts, the AAAS is still publishing its yearly DEI report, now rebranded as an "Inclusivity for Excellence Report", but containing all of the same stuff: an effort to collect and publish as much demographic data as possible, and a stated goal of getting all the numbers to go in the "right" direction. These practices are too ingrained and sacrosanct at this point to let a mere funding crisis throw them off course.

Williams College wasn't content to blindly follow a vague directive restricting their speech. They already received very few grants as the article said. You better bet most scientists at big institutions were tripping over themselves to police their own speech to ensure they aren't uttering any of the new forbidden words like "engender."

> These practices are too ingrained and sacrosanct at this point to let a mere funding crisis throw them off course.

Yes, some people have egalitarian principles. As much as you think there is a conspiracy against your group to keep you down it's just not true.

The French, who have "égalité" in their national motto, prohibit the kind of demographic tracking and reporting that US Progressives consider core to their project. Do you think the French don't care about egalitarianism? No, they just have a different concept of what that means. Just like many Americans.

Academics could broaden their horizons and consider the possibility that there are multiple perspectives on egalitarianism, and that the public that funds them is quite split on the issue. If Science is really the priority, it should be easy to stay neutral on unrelated contentious social issues. But I guess it's more fun to preach and condescend to people who disagree, and then complain when those people don't want to fund your enterprise anymore.

Your motte-and-bailey argumentation here is extremely tiring, and I'd encourage you to take a step back and look at what's being discussed here.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/cost...

US science is in chaos not because of pushback against this evil "demographic tracking and reporting", but rather an extremely capricious attitude towards any research from the administration. This isn't about the practices of the universities choosing who gets a grant. The administration is terminating random grants based on keywords that they find in the abstracts even if the keyword has nothing to do with evil DEI.

> If Science is really the priority, it should be easy to stay neutral on unrelated contentious social issues.

Science is being used to study these contentious social issues. That's the kind of science that's getting suppressed, _but that's not even the issue here_

No I don’t support any kind of assistance for the descendants of Holocaust victims. Yes, of course the Holocaust was a vile disgrace, but it was almost a century ago. At some point you have to draw a line under it and allow the descendants — who in many cases never knew the relevant ancestors — to live their own lives.

Up until Trump2, Ivy League schools were gaming the system to limit Asian students… but how could they, the Japanese-American internment camps weren’t that long ago.