“USC already stands for academic excellence, and we do it without ideological loyalty oaths.” Professors @profmpastor.bsky.social & @jodyav.bsky.social grade the Compact (F) and urge leaders “to stand up for academic freedom, fiscal responsibility and just plain common sense.”

Immigrants make up only 4% of the world’s population but they are more than 30% of this century’s science Nobel prize winners. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

What is the liberalizing potential of higher education? In this @bjsociology.bsky.social research, we show substantial variation in the association between field of study and anti-immigrant sentiment — a pattern most pronounced among those with tertiary degrees doi.org/10.1111/1468...

Apply for a 2026-27 academic year CASBS residential fellowship. Deadline: Oct 31, 2025 Much more info & link to application portal: casbs.stanford.edu/apply-casbs-... Watch former fellows talk about it in their own words in a suite of 17 short, awesome videos: casbs.stanford.edu/apply-casbs-...

Immigrants help keep California’s $4T economy running. Trump’s mass raids and stripping people of legal status risk tearing it apart — gutting our workforce and raising costs for everyone while separating American families. End these senseless policies now, Donald Trump.

NEW PAPER! We look at immigrant criminality from the perspective of victims. Criminals tend to victimize the people in their community. If immigrants are setting off a crime wave, immigrants would be their 1st victims. Do we see that... no! Just the opposite... 🧵 www.cato.org/policy-analy...

I debated writing this. It can feel tempting, upon encountering yet another instance of this administration’s racism, to let it be. How many ways can you say the same thing over and over again? And yet we have to write it down, if for nothing else, so those who come after us know we were against it.

Two recently published studies show that individuals who studied humanities or art subjects are more socially liberal than those with degrees in other fields. 1) @maureeneger.bsky.social, @heypaolo.bsky.social &Mikael Hjerm (2025) in @bjsociology.bsky.social: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Does higher ed liberalize sentiments about immigrants? Using survey data across 32 countries, CASBS fellow @maureeneger.bsky.social & coauthors reveal substantial variation in the assoc b/w field of study & anti-immigrant prejudice 👉 @bjsociology.bsky.social: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

California, 17 other states challenge 'suspicionless' stops by masked ICE agents in L.A.

Me & @joanalker1.bsky.social on @npr.org's "It's Been a Minute" talking about the erroneous stereotypes that drive Medicaid cuts & the fundamental connections between all of us. When we harm those whom government deems "underserving," we ultimately harm everyone. www.npr.org/2025/07/04/1...

@selcanmutgan.bsky.social et al. find that ethnic school segregation in Sweden is largely a downstream consequence of “the ethnic segregation of the housing market and the geographic distribution of schools.” @europeansocreview.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

Europe’s neo-nationalist turn www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/w...

I love when the radical right research robot @kai-arzheimer.com shares my brilliant Umeå University colleague’s work

7. Bottom line: tactics matter but so do our own biases when observing and reacting to resistance. Worth approaching coverage with skepticism and holding media accountable. www.latimes.com/california/s...

An important piece from the @apsrjournal.bsky.social (by @devorahmanekin.bsky.social and @tmitts.bsky.social) to make sense of ongoing events: it matters not only which tactics are adopted by protesters but also who they are.

"...university leaders have to explain to a larger public how Trumpists, in an unprecedented spree of national self-destruction, are busy preventing cancer cures, damaging American soft power, and killing one of the country’s major exports, namely higher education."

The Trump administration is engaging on an all-out assault on the institutions, workers and standards that make learning and knowledge production possible, in the hopes of securing political dominance forever. (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

So your research area has been politicized and your federal funding cancelled, what now? I try to give some answers in this opinion piece for @nature.com 1/ www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Cato has published my comprehensive review of the ~240 Venezuelans the US government renditioned 2 months ago to Salvador’s notorious prison. We identified FIFTY who came legally, never violated any immigration law, but are imprisoned at the US government’s request and at US taxpayer expense.

“…branding marginalized communities and their political opponents ‘terrorists’ is a surefire way to delegitimize them and diminish their capacity to dissent—and even to exist” warns @ssinnar.bsky.social slate.com/news-and-pol...

Separately, migration & climate change are among the most politically polarized issues. But they interrelate across a variety of contexts. This enabled @maureeneger.bsky.social to widen the scope of inquiry in her CASBS fellows seminar, including reappraising mechanisms underlying existing theories

Is this what he meant by “protecting women”? NIH guts its first and largest study centered on women | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

So true. US universities are top notch, and magnets for talent that strengthen the US economy, *because* the US made a policy decision to invest in research. What the gov’t really does is run a competition to let university scientists compete for grant funding to do research that helps society.

Beautiful visualization of social media data and trends largely comport with international migration scholarship www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Today the NY Times posted an interview with Chris Rufo that anyone associated with universities — or anyone who benefits from advances in health care or any other aspect of the research taking place there — should listen to or read in transcript. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/p...?

More on the Harvard AAUP & Nat'l AAUP lawsuit filed last night to block the Trump admin's unlawful threats to use funding cuts as a cudgel to coerce Harvard University to restrict speech and allow government control over teaching and learning. 🧵 Lawsuit Here:

Adolf Hitler's “Mein Kampf” is still on U.S. Naval Academy shelves. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and “Memorializing the Holocaust” are not. An order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office led to a purge of books that are critical of racism — but preserved volumes defending white power.

A “chilling effect” is the discouragement of exercising a right or participation in an activity because of a fear of retaliatory or negative consequences

A reminder that if the government can send migrants to a prison camp without any due process, it can send U.S. citizens there, too. I know because this happened to me and my family in 1942.

It is nice to see the AGs in these states fighting back. #HigherEd abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/1...

What is the ideology of Musk and other tech elite (which is distinct from Trump’s MAGA neo-nationalism)? Listen to @gilduran.com’s NPR interview www.kqed.org/forum/201010... And Jill Lepore’s NYT piece on the Musk family’s long history of support for technocracy www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/o...

Groups across the country have received letters notifying them that their grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities have been canceled, raising alarms about serious harm to museums, historical sites, and a wide range of community projects.

Almost all NOAA Research websites that rely on cloud services - including Amazon, Google and WordPress - are poised to disappear at midnight ET Saturday after a contract was targeted for "early termination." Labs may also feel the effects. Story for @bloomberg.com (free link):

Western Europe supports retaliatory tax rates against the US. May this be the end of the US as the globe's super power? Even in academia I've been hearing how people are not going to the US on conferences and may reduce submitting to US journals.

“Sociologists study society and group behavior. Consequently, we recognize that race and racial inequality are areas that warrant scientific analysis,” said American Sociological Association President Adia Harvey Wingfield. democracyforward.org/updates/dcl-...

Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century." snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-les...

Very interesting data, but who cares about facts? #immigrants

ASA has joined with two dozen other organizations in a letter stating that the dismantling of the Department of Education will have catastrophic implications for students, faculty, communities, and the nation.

Designating neighborhoods with a large share of poor, “non-Western” residents as “hard ghetto areas” constitutes direct discrimination based on ethnic origin and hence a violation of the EU's Race Equality Directive. Seems a fair assessment to me.

"On October 8, 1931, a law went into effect requiring every Italian university professor to sign an oath pledging their loyalty to the government of Benito Mussolini. Out of over 1,200 professors in the country, only 12 refused. All of them were immediately fired." www.chronicle.com/article/what...

Share with any family and friends living in a red state

Congratulations to @breznaunate.bsky.social and collaborators for this excellent metascience! I learned a lot from participating in this project and I’m very happy to see this published @royalsocietypublishing.org

“Every citizen and officeholder who cares about the strength of our country must also care about free speech, self-governing thought, and the untrammeled quest for knowledge.” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The Johns Hopkins University said it will slash over 2,000 jobs in the US and abroad after the administration of President Donald Trump terminated $800 million in grants to the renowned academic institution reut.rs/4iOAlGf

Anyone have guidance on IES restricted data contracts now that NCES is gone? Is disclosure review just not happening anymore? Is this a license agreement violation? Devastating blow for education research, and for early career folks whose research relies on these data #edusky #socsky

This should be read as a regime commitment to systematic First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and Fifth Amendment violations.

The Fulbright program started in the aftermath of WWII to help facilitate peace through academic and intercultural exchange. As an alum, I am especially sad to see the funding “paused” by the Trump administration www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/u...

My op-ed: "Colleges and universities ... seem to be hoping that their muted responses — and affirmative acquiescence — will spare them. ...This sort of acquiescence will not only fail to protect institutions, but will expose all of us to further repression." stanforddaily.com/2025/01/28/f...