It is no secret that America’s leadership in science and technology was not born by accident—it was built through public investment, public partnerships with academia, and government sanction of private sector monopoly. From the Apollo program to the Human Genome Project, from the internet to the transistor, the United States once treated research and development (R&D) as a cornerstone of national security and economic strength. For some time the facade has been quietly crumbling away, but last week’s FY2026 Discretionary Budget Request rocked the foundations of that legacy hard enough to bring down its edifice.
At the Kill the Cuts rally on April 8th, I gave the following speech to Caltech and USC contingents in front of the 300 North Los Angeles Federal Building. I hope its words resonate with the current scientific/political/cultural moment. They represent my truest feelings, the joyous and the vitriolic, as best as I can compress and verbalize them.
Here are some classes I found fun, even if they’re not everyone’s idea of a “good class.” While most of the Core and other courses are designed just to introduce the fundamentals of a subject, the ones below stood out for being especially engaging.
Caltech claims to strive to “expand human knowledge and benefit society.” A necessary requisite to accomplish this mission is a community that values intellectual diversity. One where peers challenge the preconceived notions of others, and where all can speak freely. We, thus, have a vested interest in protecting free speech.
I have discovered that, deep down, each of us secretly cultivates the desire to be elsewhere. It’s as if, despite all the sacrifices made to get to one of the most prestigious universities in the world, we suddenly discover that complete satisfaction is an illusion.
The CGPU-UAW Bargaining Team is a group of eleven Graduate Student Workers and five Postdocs democratically elected to represent their peers in collective bargaining with the Caltech administration.
I have gathered union petition signatures, organized vote parties for union authorization, sent mass emails in support of the union, and spoken in person to most grad students and postdocs in Schlinger, Church, and Crellin for Caltech Grad Researchers and Postdocs United (CGPU). I’m about as pro-union as they come. But right now, CGPU is at best misleading and at worst outright lying about compensation gains in the recent tentative agreement (TA).
We must confess that artificial intelligence has changed the planet. Once upon a time, the man was surprised by the discovery of fire, then metal, cultivation techniques. Then we arrived at more scientific realities such as during the Middle Ages when extraordinary cathedrals were built using heavy tools, pulleys, a form of engineering, right? With the Enlightenment, the greatest scientific discoveries were made such as light with Edison or more specific analyses at an anatomical level.
