> Avoiding too much repetition is a core principle of this place

This principle is applied very selectively though: The homepage has been full of insignificant iterations of overly hyped tech products for years now.

It is very hard to imagine all these submissions of announcements of products with monthly release cycles gratifying anyone's intellectual curiosity. Yet it apparently does because they can stay in the homepage for 24 hours.

But for some reason, something as unprecedented as the United States government threatening Harvard with a xenophobic ban is deemed "repetitive"?

"... a huge frontpage discussion about this topic just a few days ago"

The previous discussion was about an April 11, 2025 joint letter to Harvard President Alan Garber from the Commissioner of the Federal Aquisition Service, General Services Administration, the Acting General Counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Acting General Counsel of the Department of Education.

https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...

Discussion of the April 11th letter occurred in stories submitted at 2025-04-14T18:40:22 and 2025-04-14T18:13:07

This discussion is about an April 16, 2025 letter to Maureen Martin at Harvard's International Office from the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/60233385...

This story was submitted 2025-04-17T10:42:01. Discussion of this letter on April 14th would have been impossible. It was not sent until April 16th.

As one might guess, the letters make different requests. The threatened consequences for not complying are also different. Different letters, different senders, different recipients, different sets of requests, different types of potential consequences for noncompliance, e.g., cancelling funding versus refusing to grant student visas. Are these truly the same topic. Let the reader decide.

Is it possible the reason for these stories getting flagged is because HN users with flagging privileges do not want to them discussed. Not because of repetition but because the discussions are often low quality or offensive to them in some way.

One could argue HN routinely keeps having the same discussions about the same topics, even going so far as to allow HN users to resubmit stories for discussion. Hence, comments frequently note "past discussion".

For example, an HN Poll last year showed most HN readers who vote in polls thought "AI" was mostly hype. Comments have also suggested readers are tired of the hype. Yet they are still being forced to see/hide stories about "AI" every day on HN. Sometimes it feels like HN commenters are literally being forcefed the same tired, old topics and coaxed to repeat their same old opinions, or worse, their favourite memes, over and over again.

I am not suggesting there is anything HN can do about this problem. But I am inclined to agree with the GP comment; the current flagging behaviour mirrors the worst of HN commenting behaviour. It is a low quality, cowardly attempt at moderation that does not even seem to work. We are now consistently seeing flagged stories remain on page 1.

Woah! I’m genuinely shocked. It has changed what I think of this website.

It wouldn't matter if it were flagged or not. It would be removed from the front page because HN downranks posts with a lot of comments.

HN is designed to hide political discussions. If it weren't, the front page would be nothing but political discussions.

There's no "non-political rule", as you'll see if you look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and in fact HN hosted a huge frontpage thread about this issue just a few days ago:

Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43684536 - April 2025 (1399 comments)

You guys should familiarize yourselves with how this site is operated, because it has been explained endlessly (to the limit of my patience, in fact) over many years, and the assumptions you're making do not match reality. If you want to do that, you'll find entrypoints into thousands of past explanations in my comment upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43724590.

> This site is owned by ycombinator, who have a motivation to "not rock the boat"…

I’d argue that leadership of ycombinator is glad where this boat is sailing. Just look who are they inviting to advertised AI startup school at the bottom of this site.

"we don't talk about politics"

translation: "we have a vested stake in the status quo."

active silencing on political issues is in and of itself a political stance.

They did not. Very specifically, only flagged articles are the ones that paint current president or current republican leadership very badly while going into details.

That is only flagged kind of article. Other political articles are fine.

Decision to be non political would lead to different selection of articles to be banned.

If things like these happen, staying silent is — guess what — political.

If your neighbours are being taken away by state police there is no non-political move you can make. Helping the police is political, ducking away and pretending it is not helping is political and hiding them is political as well.

While I understand that this site tries to not drown in the flaming garbage site that online political discourse can be, if I — the exact demographic who startups would like to have working for them would list precisely this as my main concern stopping me from moving into the US it is a bit odd that it is verboten to discuss it.

Hackers historically were (and are) extremely critical of authority and for the freedom of knowledge, and now we can't discuss an direct attack at those very values on a site that calls itself Hackernews? Come on.

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That’s what I do too.

> I flag American politics because it's boring and irrelevant to me.

Where on earth could you live that American politics are irrelevant to you? Boring sure, but irrelevant? Unless you live, well, on Jupiter these days, there's not an inch of the globe that's untouched by the effects of American politics.

> boring and irrelevant to me.

come on, probably 75% of all the posts on HN are boring and irrelevant to me; that doesn't mean I go downvoting them all

I look for the stuff I'm interested in, and ignore the rest.

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Speak for yourself. From a hiring standpoint, having gone to Harvard is a massive red flag.

Good quote put pretty ironic coming from the guy that ruined France economically and demographically for the next 100 years, and left it to lag behind the UK and the other Empires of the 19th century.

That's probably exactly what the other "side" is thinking.

For example:

They think that allowing people with penises to to change in women's locker rooms just because they identify as women is wicked, so they aren't being silent about it.

> the locker room situation with Thomas, who although she has transitioned to being female hormonally and identified as a woman, still has male body parts https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/lia-thomas-teamma...

The pendulum eventually swings to the other side.

(I'm somewhere in the middle with I suspect a majority of people - it's the extremists that are the loudest.)

Have you seen the meadia landscape lately? It's filled with absolute garbage and generative AI is going to make to so much worse. They've also done everything they can to delegitimize every reliable source of truth. So I'd say they've done a great job destroying the media industry.

It certainly depends on what you optimize for. For example, about 1/3 of the 320 American Nobel Prizes in science have gone to immigrants.

Currently, US universities license around 3,000 patents, 3,200 copyrights and 1,600 other licenses to startups and companies. They spin out over 1,100 science-based startups yearly, creating countless products and tens of thousands of jobs.

This university/government partnership became the model other countries try to copy post WWII, though the current administration has walked away from it.

The genius of the US system was indirect cost reimbursement. The government not only paid researchers' salaries but also funded their facilities and administration costs. This was the secret sauce that built world-class university labs that attracted scientists globally, causing other countries to worry about "brain drain" to the decentralized, collaborative US ecosystem combining massive government funding for university research with private industry scaling the solutions.

Meanwhile, Britain tried a centralized approach with government labs, achieving breakthroughs but lacking the scale, integration and capital to compete in the post-war world.

As the partner of someone who works at Harvard, I have a slight insight into what's happening there. Disclaimer: I may have misunderstood my partner when she described Harvard admissions.

As a rule, foreign students usually pay the full cost of attending Harvard. Then there are legacy students. Many domestic students, primarily low-income or socioeconomically disadvantaged ones, get significant aid, including a full ride.

Typically, empires attracted the top 10% of the peripheral/vassal nations. Look at Rome, for example. It is a sign of global standing that premier educational institutions of country X are flooded with the top performers of the other nations. Most importantly (and this is the reason this has been practiced by world powers throughout history) having the elite of a nation be educated in one's institutions guarantees a sizable cadre of influential men and women who go back home and create an 'Atlanticist' front.

Reasonable question.

It depends, at top level, what the intention is. What the US government thinks it is buying. Is it buying global improvement in research? If so, surely you just hire smartest people out there. In fact it will probably be mostly non-Americans, because even if they come from a much-better-than-average educational system, still, they are something like 4% of global population.

Ok, so let's say not this. Perhaps US govt is strictly buying (indirect) improvement to US economy. Well, a lot of these students will stay in the US, find startups, or simply become good taxpayers. Most developed countries struggle to grow or keep their societies steady, US has this funnel of highly skilled workforce - universities. Even better, since these immigrants, if they stay, won't have generated primary education costs, and if they eventually leave, also will cost less in adult life than people who stay in the US all their life.

This is about undergrads, really. Postgraduate students are more like hard, underpaid jobs. People come and go, and perform the service of churning out research for an American University.

Finally, not sure how much the US govt is paying for these foreign undergrads. Rich undergrads will have to lay a good chunk of their own fees - perhaps all, either via cash or loans they have to repay.

I'm not in any way endorsing this kerfuffle, but it's always good to be clear why you are paying for things, as sooner or later someone will challenge it.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but at one time it was believed that there was a foreign policy angle: The people who come here end up liking our country and bringing that good will back home with them. They also learn the reality of what it's like here, which is often contrary to the propaganda that they've received at home.

They also spread the prestige of Harvard. If Harvard were to adopt US-only admissions, their reputation would go down, and the degree would be less valuable for the remaining American students.

What's the proper ratio? If you want the best and brightest, statistically the vast majority will be from outside the US. Doesn't it benefit us to capture those people into our economy?

It’s because Harvard profits from selling fast-track access to american immigration.

> Why should mostly wealthy foreign students benefit from US taxpayers funding?

Because it gets elites from across the globe to send their children to the US, including lots of money.

Harvard is looking for the best and americans make up less than 5% of the world. Why would all the best applicants be from the US/why should harvard give domestic students an admissions benefit?

Part of it is money but also part of it is, in my opinion, a view that nationalism is evil and leads to Nazism.

> Here's maybe a dumb question

serious question, why did you think your question might be dumb?

You can be confidently wrong. It seems like you just don't like the thinking/reasons they did.

The thinking was, "international students pay the most, contribute the most in tuition payments to the university budget, and therefore by cutting them off we hurt our enemies' budgets."

Well, I'll be darned—that's... quite something. I can understand why the university felt it had to take that step—perhaps even a wise move, all things considered - but I must say, it certainly doesn't look good.

Harvard is one of eleven American universities that practice need-blind admissions even for international students, meaning that students are admitted without regard for their financial status (i.e., no explicit preference toward richer students who can pay more tuition), and that financial aid covers full demonstrated need for all admitted students.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission

If we elect somebody who then completely flaunts the law to harm people he hates, what's the difference?

Should the lawfully elected president have the right to just order somebody to shoot me in the head apropos of nothing?

The Constitution protects us from the whims of the majority.

Your first link involves laws passed by Congress. But there is no relevant law that requires "viewpoint diversity" (whatever that means) or most of the other demands in the government letter, this is simply an executive diktat.

Your second link involves a change in IRS policy. But there was no such change, instead again we have an executive diktat, despite the fact that the law explicitly forbids the President or his office from targeting specific institutions for audits or investigations: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/7217

> Harvard had various racially segregated graduation parties last year: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/harvard-university-to-of.... If you can’t have a “White Celebration” then you can’t have a “Black Celebration” either.

The affinity celebrations were open to all graduates according to the article's sources. The segregation claim originated seemingly from 1 student they interviewed whose comments about other aspects seemed speculative.

The celebrations were organized by students and hosted by alumni and community groups according to the university. The article did not contest this. Is there evidence students applied for and were denied recognition of a white celebration?

> extensive programs of race consciousness

Programs which were largely created by both academics employed in educational institutions and by the paying students who wanted to learn about more than Western history and culture.

Where's the outrage when history classes center almost entirely on Western, white narratives? Or when English classes focus overwhelmingly on white authors? Why does concern about "race consciousness" only seem to surface in the face of efforts to include perspectives outside of white culture?

All this assumes that “white” is a single “race.” In reality, it is a broad umbrella covering a variety of ethnic groups. What would I — a first-generation Russian immigrant — have to celebrate in common with descendants of Spanish, Belgian, or South African immigrants? Our cultures and histories have little overlap. Frequently, we don’t even have the same skin tone! The only thing we unambiguously share is a racially dominant position in society, which is not something I want to revel in.

An interesting tidbit from Wikipedia:

> Description of populations as "White" in reference to their skin color is occasionally found in Greco-Roman ethnography and other ancient or medieval sources, but these societies did not have any notion of a White race or pan-European identity. The term "White race" or "White people", defined by their light skin among other physical characteristics, entered the major European languages in the later seventeenth century, when the concept of a "unified White" achieved greater acceptance in Europe, in the context of racialized slavery and social status in the European colonies. Scholarship on race distinguishes the modern concept from pre-modern descriptions, which focused on physical complexion rather than the idea of race. Prior to the modern era, no European peoples regarded themselves as "White"; instead they defined their identity in terms of their religion, ancestry, ethnicity, or nationality. Contemporary anthropologists and other scientists, while recognizing the reality of biological variation between different human populations, regard the concept of a unified, distinguishable "White race" as a social construct with no scientific basis.

Yes, but how is this relevant now that Harvard basically said "Screw you, we're going to do what we want even if it means going without your money." ?

How can they prevent students from attending, it's not like they are going to specifically target and refuse or void the visa of anyone known to be an Harvard student ?!? (Or I guess, yeah, this kind of arbitrary rule is the exact thing that can happen under fascism...)

These are conservative values:

  * The rule of law
  * Moral integrity
  * Respect for traditions and institutions

There's a tension between those values and other values such as a sense of fairness. People could overlook a politician who fell short of these conservative values when there was a perception that these values were holding us back from getting to a more just society.

Today we have a president who openly defies the court orders, engages in blatant corruption, and undermines American institutions. The Trump administration's vehement rejection of all of these values highlights just how critical they really are.

It's time for American conservatives to vote Democrat.

Uncharted for the US. Well known in other regimes.

Not entirely uncharted.

I'm not sure how it was done legally, but when the Supreme Court ruled that Biden administration's student loan forgiveness was unconstitutional, Biden (or rather, his team) found another way to forgive loans.

I expect Trump's administration to similarly find legal workarounds.

> it's more of a demonstration of the problem with governments that are designed to have a very strong executive

The system WASN'T design to have a very strong executive, quite literally the opposite. The other branches have simply bowed down and let him bulldoze them. And yes, this has been building up for decades, but these cases are and above any overreach of previous presidents.

> But from my point of view, it's more of a demonstration of the problem with governments that are designed to have a very strong executive. Eventually you get an executive that really sucks, and when that happens they can do a lot of damage.

The presidential system, widespread in Latin America, has an inherent tendency to produce caudillos. The US had the good fortune of escaping that fate for decade after decade, but maybe with Trump its luck has finally run out.

The parliamentary system, as used in the rest of the Anglosphere and most of Western Europe – it doesn't require a monarchy, see parliamentary republics such as Germany and Ireland – avoids this problem by putting greater limits on executive power – Prime Ministers derive their authority from the legislature and can be removed by it with a simple majority; while the US cabinet is essentially an advisory body to the President, Westminster cabinets are collegial bodies in which the Prime Minister is just one vote among many and can be outvoted by their colleagues.

> One of the biggest influences on my thinking from listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is a point he made about hereditary monarchy, that among its problems is that sometimes the next ruler in line is just a total dud, and you're just stuck with them.

"Great Britain is a republic with a hereditary president, while the United States is a monarchy with an elective king" (The Knoxville Journal, 9 February 1896)

Except the legislative branch could keep him in check, they are simply choosing to go along with it.

To be fair to W, some part of the world followed america into iraq. it wasn't like he did it all by himself. i think if these countries had not supported this war, there would have been a reckoning for the usa much sooner than trump. in much the same way that people now question, what could we have done differently with how we treated russia prior to 2014 when they started a war with ukraine, the world should ask itself how it should have responded differently to joining america in a war in iraq in 2003. but so far, i don't hear anyone having these conversations about how did the world allow america to arrive to now.

Don't just blame the reds here. The blues let their primaries get rigged 3 presidential elections in a row, and they still don't talk about it. I think most haven't even noticed, probably because their chosen information sources (social media and late-night comedians?) haven't told them.

Yeah I thought W 2.0 was bad. But this is even worse (at least for Americans).

30+ different countries waging information war? Nah, it was Fox News.

> the day the global tech community stops posting on Hacker News, stops building with U.S origin technologies, and stops looking to Silicon Valley as a benchmark, that's the day we can seriously start talking about America's fall from global leadership.

I guess that's the correct answer to the question as posed. But it does raise another question: if it happens, something undermined the foundations of America's prosperity long before the fall. What was it?

This post to HN describes what lead to the US becoming a science superpower: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692360 I found it convincing. The post also speculated if those conditions were removed, it America's superpowers will wither.

My take on the post is science has exponential return on investment over the very long term. But the return is random in that most scientific investigations fail to yield a return, and the time span so long that the usual capitalist incentives don't work. Or to put it another way, firms making investing in basic science get out-competed in the short term by others that don't make the investment. So you have to find a way to make societies at large pay for basic science, and give way what works to the capitalist engine. The USA found a way to do that. It's beginning to look like China has too. Now the USA is winding back the investment.

On the positive side, I suspect it will take a long time to kill the institutions that drive the USA's prosperity, I suspect many more than 4 years of madness. Putin pulled the same thing off, but it took him decades.

  > It’s fundamentally identity politics, not some material conditions thing.

  > deep deep hatred for the coastal elites. They feel belittled and marginalized, not monetarily but culturally.

i would argue that is still 'material conditions' because marginalized also implies economic disparity, also a lot of the 'angry internet' is rural people with not much material futures

  > Republicans gained power in the last few years because of the economy

material conditions then

  > This isn’t going away by “solving” the wealth gap.

'material conditions' is much more than just wealth gap/money in my understanding; our media and economic incentives (rage baiting, grifting) for it are a large part of it for example

You're exacly describing material forces. The various positions individuals adopted toward identity politics did not grow out of a vacuum. Their place of birth, the environments they were raised in, their socio-economic classes... Everything shaped them to make the choice they made last november. The profund discontent that was exploited by the GOP last election stems from ever-increasing socio-economical disparities among the population. This can and has been measured.

On a side note, funny that this group that supposedly defines themselves by their opposition to coastal elites rallied themselves behind... Trump, a prime representative of the east coast elite.

> But they feel anyone who is an educated, coastal liberal is out to destroy them.

The reverse of this was the prevailing attitude among many democrats. The approach of lots of people was "we won the culture war, everyone who doesn't agree with us will get cancelled and suffer, deal with it". When you hung out in online circles, and more importantly in offices of famous American companies, the general vibe was "if your friend doesn't have left political views, you shouldn't be friends with them". So it's not like the idea was born in republican circles, the only new thing is democrats finding themselves on the losing side of the culture war.

AFAIK, there are no "enlightened centrists". Most of those so-called centrists (Lex Fridman, Joe Rogan, you name them) are now neutral to friendly with Trump. This state of affairs is not grassroots, it was deliberately manufactured by convservative media like Fox News or right-wing influencers, funded by a massive influx of cash from the top billionaires who are now the only ones currently profiting from the administration.

Also familiar with the UK system. I actually only just now realised that's not the official name for the IRS - it's almost never used expanded.

thanks, figured it was something like that.

They're making strong moves on putting in political officers into the army

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/head-of-greenland-base-van...

https://www.newsweek.com/air-force-special-ops-fired-militar...

The purge is progressing faster than anyone expected