Comment on FR Doc # 2026-12725 from John Simms
AnonymousOpposeIndividual
Summary: A mathematician with over 50 years of experience opposes the proposal, arguing that it restricts academic freedom and will lead to a "brain drain" of American scientists. The commenter suggests that such restrictions will cause experts to leave the United States, reversing the historical trend of gaining expertise from fleeing scholars.
The NSF has been an important source of support for mathematics during my over 50 years in the field. The main purpose of this proposal is to restrict academic freedom. This didn't work out well in the cases of Bruno, Galileo, and Lysenko, and it's already having a bad effect on American science. American scientists are already leaving the United States, many others are preparing to do so. The United States gained enormously from the expertise of academics who fled repressive regimes in the twentieth century; now the United States is losing expertise. This proposal seeks to increase that loss.