Worth drawing a distinction between governmental support for science and for the humanities.

The first does a lot of relative low mark-up contract work requested by governmental agencies. Governments and all of us would like to see cancer and Alzheimer disease cured.

The request for “bids” (aka grant applications) from NIH, DoD (now DoW) and NSF is what has greatly expanded research-focused universities and msde the USA the greatest source if cutting-edge science since WW2 (now relative success is shifting rapidly to China).

The recipients of these small but numerous contract to big medical schools usually are totally agnostic about politics—at least at work.

Turns out even autocratic-leaning politicians and the public are almost universally interested in learning how to live a long healthy life.

In contrast, the humanities are not a bread winners for universities. These faculty are ultimately paid by tuition or red or blue state support. These much more socially saavy and interested faculty mainly teach, and if they are lucky, have some modest time to think, read, and write. They are not beholding to government funds. They can speak truth to power.

So if a university like Columbia is brought to heel by the administration it is mainly due to the addiction of university administrators for the relative modest overhead they receive for NIH compared to that any corporation would accept for the same work.

And the ultimate source and cause of that addiction of administrators now willing to bend the knee to retain their federal funding overheads is the hard and intense work of their research scientists.

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skybrian 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s my understanding that the humanities doesn’t get much in government grants to begin with, but when the sciences have a finance problem, they cut the humanities for some reason.

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epistasis 11 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not aware of humanities getting get to fund the sciences, at least in the UC system. But in many places with highly complicated accounting, the sciences can sometimes indirectly fund humanities through the overhead rate that universities charge. These are highly negotiated rates between the government and the universities, so there has to be a bit of confusion on what money keeps which buildings going.

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skybrian 11 hours ago | parent [-]

The problems at the University of Chicago seem especially bad and I don’t entirely trust this article, but for what it’s worth:

> The reason today’s Dean of Humanities wants to send students to other universities to learn subjects that she would like to cancel, or use ChatGPT to teach subjects tomorrow that humans teach today, is to drive the “marginal cost” of teaching students from 20 percent of their tuition down to 10 percent. Future applicants should know that the University plans a further expansion from around 7,400 students to 9,000 ... and has simultaneously announced an intent to hold the number of research faculty constant. Perhaps we can drive the cost of educating students below 10 percent? Perhaps that is what the president and provost and dean of humanities mean when they say that we need to position ourselves as leaders in the field.

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-crisis-of-the-univers...

It would be nice to read something more in-depth about university finances. Can humanities courses be funded by tuition alone or not?

	▲	epistasis 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		By "UC" I was referring to the University of California system, which is massive, and generally what UC means in the scientific world is travel in. The University of Chicago is a very prestigious institution due to its historical reputation, but the administration in recent years seems to have both ruined its future with terrible financial decisions, even before the pressures of Trump.

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throwawaymaths 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Governments and all of us would like to see cancer and Alzheimer disease cured.

i think an important question is "who is this "all of us" you speak of and who made you god to pronounce it"

you are making an arbitrary distinction because vibes, because it's a cause you care about. it's irrelevant. if you take money for Alzheimer's research, you owe the government one (because that money is extracted from the people in a way you could never have done yourself). if you take money from, say a 501c3, it's a completed transaction of services.

	▲	robwwilliams 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not sure I understand your point. Add a qualifier if you want. It is not taking money as much as responding to a request for proposals.

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8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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