[Jesus_Jones]

Are you being oblivious on purpose? It strains credibility to think that Schmidt and Google didn't like a blog post by a think tank they funded generously to criticize them. I'm pretty confident they acted to get it taken down and wanted him gone. Suppose that wasn't the case, what conceivable reason would there before for kicking them out? The tank says: "it was a shared decision to kick them out". The other side: "they kicked us out because of this".

[matt4077]

I'm not actually disagreeing with you. I just consider it somewhat possible that Schmidt simply complained, and the administrators got cold feet and made that decision. The people being fired are unlikely to know what Schmidt may or may not have discussed with the administration.

Anyway, that's not the point. The question is: why should someone not be allowed to change their funding decisions when the organisations they're funding go down a path they disagree with? Why should anybody be forced to continue to finance people after they've become the opposition.

Note also that Schmidt used to be the Chairman at this think tank, meaning that he is not just providing funding, but part of the academic community in its orbit, with a legitimate stake to disagree on the merits of the science.