This is at Columbia:
We are dismantling crucial American research because of a foreign conflict. This isn’t how a nation-state works. And yes, I would say exactly the same if these were pro-Russian protesters.
Dismantling Research
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Clarissa's Blog 
Is this because we’re cancelling everything, or is this because we now have sane standards about how much of the money goes to admin?
It’s one thing if we canceled a project because of a political hissyfit. But it’s another thing if it got canceled because the institution couldn’t account for the money, and they’re holding up a thing with a nice title and pretending to be martyrs about it.
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It’s because Columbia had massive pro-Palestinian protests. I don’t support those protests but why are we punishing ourselves for them?
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Ah, Columbia.
I have mixed feelings about that one. Are unis *supposed* to provide a giant safe space for legal adults to do stupid playacting in support of terrorism?
Like, I get it, free speech, but, you know… didn’t they also take over buildings, threaten people, and vandalize things without anybody being arrested? Is it a uni, or just a training ground for future leftie terrorists in the seventies mold? Why not give the research funding to a serious school?
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The schools that don’t have protests don’t have the intellect to do the research. Spaces of intellect have been captured by the left. It’s tragic but it can’t be changed by force.
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How do we get out of the institutional capture problem?
It seems like there aren’t any good solutions, and any way around we are going to lose a lot. But that was baked in when the progressives took over all the institutions. They ensured that those institutions would either cease to perform useful functions for society and have to be dismantled. The fact that there were still people doing important research somewhere in there… it’s the puppy-hostage thing. 90% of the institution is actively working against the interests of the country, but they’re using the 10% of serious medical researchers to say: look, we’ve got this cute puppy that will die if you don’t keep funding us!
Why do we have to use public money to give sinecures to old leftie terrorists and train the next generation of anti-civilization operatives, in order to have musculoskeletal research? When we give to charity, we look at the ratio of admin costs and we don’t give to Red Cross anymore because their numbers are so bad. We find organizations that use the money to do the thing they say they’re using the money for. This should also apply to research funding.
At some point, for the good of the country, we need to just take the hit. It’ll hurt research in the short term, but may finally allow higher education to shed the gross parasitic accretions of admin and ideological capture. In the long run, we can’t afford to keep funding it, but if it can be pared down to the actually-functional bits now, it might survive the coming economic catastrophe. Yes, we risk losing the functional bits. But the economy is headed for the crapper regardless, and if we do nothing, we lose all of it. Guaranteed.
Yeah, that’s a bummer. But also: most of medical research these days is bogus because the funding is so screwy, and drug companies are so heavily involved. Undisclosed conflicts of interest, etc. Is there anything in there that can be extricated from the corruption and saved? Or is the puppy dead already?
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(blushing at the incomplete *either* phrase– oh for an edit feature!)
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