[lern_too_spel]

> There are many different perspectives on how societal problems should be fixed. The preferred solution of social democrats, of racially discriminating in favor of some groups

This is not being proposed by the universities. You're attacking a straw man.

> The job of science is to present the facts, not decide on social policy

The job of a public university is not science but to serve society, just as with all other organs of the state. Doing science is just one of the ways that it does so.

[ETH_start]

I don't want to quibble on the specifics, but the rubric being encouraged by Berkeley is an example of the kind of analytical framework that is being favored in academia, or had been until very recently. It acts as an ideological filter. And yes, affirmative action manifested as racial preferences in hiring absolutely happened and was implicitly encouraged through the so-called equity lens.

As for the job of a public university, the job is to serve society through only one mechanism, and that is through the pursuit and transmission of scientific knowledge and truth.

It is not just another organ of the state that is free to serve society through political activism.

[lern_too_spel]

> As for the job of a public university, the job is to serve society through only one mechanism, and that is through the pursuit and transmission of scientific knowledge and truth.

The role of educational institutions is to educate. In the case of universities, part of that is educating how to do science. The state chooses how to educate to get the most impact for the educational dollar, and Californian voters, despite their many failings, are smart enough to understand that educating more people successfully yields better outcomes than educating fewer because each field gets to draw the top people from a wider population and more pockets of society developing talent earlier as a result of knowing it won't be wasted later. This is validated by the scientific method (with many studies showing that the intuitive result actually holds). The ideological filter being applied is to find those who are willing to do their jobs as required by the employers who have a mandate from the voters.

If the University of California system were only interested in further preparing the best prepared students, it would only accept students from mainland China. Why that is not in the best interest of California I leave as an exercise to the reader.

[ETH_start]

Having a mandate to educate people in California is not the same thing as having a mandate to politicize science or have racial discrimination in hiring. Also, having a mandate to educate more people is not the same thing as having racial preferences in hiring or advancing ideologies through scholarship.

Finally, I want to make the point that this is about federal spending. The whole article is complaining about the federal government cutting its spending for various activist fields and studies. If the people of California have a right to decide how their education spending is allocated, so do the people of the United States when they elect their federal government.

[lern_too_spel]

> having a mandate to politicize science or have racial discrimination in hiring

Once again, there is no politicized science or racial discrimination hiring alleged in the linked articles. You are arguing against a straw man.

> If the people of California have a right to decide how their education spending is allocated, so do the people of the United States when they elect their federal government.

And scientists have a right to accurately explain why the spending rules are broken for voters to make better decisions, just as you have a right to criticize any policies you don't like to try to convince voters. The linked article succeeds because it is accurately addressing cited parts of the statute and not straw men.