Amid cuts to basic research, New Zealand scraps all support for social sciences

If you want to look at this as an optimist: scrapping all support for social sciences across an entire country is a great social science experiment. Now we get to learn how important social sciences are!

1. survive covid like fucking champs
2. fire Jacinda
3. do stupid cruel shit <--- you are here, aka the "fuck around" stage

Well, kids, that's where the betting pool opens.

I had actually been planning a proposal for this fund for next year (social science). I'd sat through seminars on how to write a good proposal, and no one mentioned funding getting cut was even a possibility. The universities were completely blindsided.

It's a decision that seems to be driven purely by ideology, and mostly comes from one of the junior coalition partners (Act). I know for a fact that their leader has been expressing discontent about some of the research being done that has been criticising him (I.e. showing how his party spreads misinformation).

I'm actually getting scared now. Project 2025 seems to be global. Every country on Earth is moving in stride with the fascists and seemingly happily so. This planet is about to get very ugly.