[Draiken]

> What did they expect would happen? Trump to just continue funding these people that hate him?

So you believe it's expected that a president will de-fund everything that supports their opposing party? I'm sure that's a totally great idea that won't cause any issues whatsoever.

American politics are so absurd.

[godsinhisheaven]

Honestly, yes. I would expect that, or at least whichever party controls Congress to defund efforts that would seek to hurt them. The real abberation is that university funding has gone unscathed for so long. It's said too much and honestly I hate it, but consider the hypothetical: what if 80% of professors expounded right wing ideologies for about, 60 years? Would you not expect some kind of backlash?

[alchemism]

I’m sure the same justification was trotted out in Hungary when they purged the intellectuals there, too.

[Windchaser]

Eh, I think there's a bit of a logical jump between "professors hate Trump" and "professors are expounding left-wing ideologies".

Yes, most professors are opposed to Trump. But when you're talking to a professor of, say, metallurgy, he's not using his classroom to rant against Trump. He's using his classroom to teach students about metallurgy, which is a pretty dang useful service to a modern industrial economy. Professor's personal political views aren't interfering with the economic and scientific value he's providing to the country.

Which is why the universities and research centers have largely been untouched until now. Until Trump, both sides could recognize that even if there was political disagreement between the professors and the politicians, the professors were still doing important work.

Trump took it personally, and on that personal basis he's now eroding our scientific and technological future. We're eating our seed corn, here.