UPDATE: After loud backlash, @KnoxSchools has put ‘ROOTS’, a Pulitzer-prize winning state book, back in schools. tennesseelookout.com/2026/05/26/k...

Lol, the Silicon Valley bros will come out in hives at this - as.ft.com/r/b42ee322-5...

I'm taking a news and social media break for about two weeks. I've done this each year around this time since 2020, and it's been good for my mental health. If anything especially big happens, someone will tell me, but otherwise, I'm checking out for a bit. All the best, and see you when I get back.

Wouldn't it be amazing to see this headline about UniversitiesUK? This is Austria's official uni association striking against government cuts. Via @wonkhe.bsky.social

Yesterday, they offered free coffee and sweets after the attack. Today, it was my turn. I bought coffee and cheesecake for them. We have to support each other. Shoulder to shoulder.

the FT has two pieces on the slow-motion collapse of UK higher ed. 4/5ths of unis are doing voluntary layoffs; 38% are doing compulsory. Meanwhile Britain and its flatlined productivity growth sleepwalks through its unprecedented loss of advanced capabilities www.ft.com/content/8097...

The loudest redemption ever is happening right now in the neighborhood “https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/may/24/arsenal-premier-league-title-symbol-of-the-metropolitan-swagger-and-metropolitan-angst-london?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

If I’m not evolved enough to understand it, then why did they have to steal my writing to train it?

Today’s the anniversary of the passing into law of Section 28 in 1988, the first homophobic legislation in a century. Politicians and media said it was our own fault, told us to shut up and give up. We didn’t. Dont you dare give up now on trans people.

The week @nationalobserver.com broke news about a Trump-linked US company hosting Albertans' electoral data, our site started suffering from massive outages. Our provider tells us their servers are under attack. We don't know if we're the target, but the timing is weird. Thanks for bearing with us!

🧪👩‍🔬

🚨 🚨 🚨 NEW: A shocking @USCIS memo seems to declare that hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in this country and applying for green cards must instead apply for visas abroad; which could MASSIVELY disrupt lives. 🧵 on what we know, and what we don’t.

Counterpoint: No I will not

At ISRF, we're doing a series called 'Dispatches from British Academics." Actual profs are absent from public discussion of universities, and we mean this to be a partial corrective. The first four are here including Lorna Finlayson's Scabology. enjoy-and circulate! isrf.org/search?q=&ta...

North Carolina board rejects Gender Studies outside hire with no explanation whatsoever. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

"The secrecy & force of the changes are akin to the massive disappearances of immigrants that are happening in our streets & to the history of forced disappearances of people around the world who are hunted & targeted for their knowledge & beliefs." — Mariela Nuñez-Janes, VP, UNT AAUP

I had one moment of mild incivility from the 200 or so students I taught this year

The Colorado Democratic Party has formally condemned and censured Governor Jared Polis for granting clemency to Tina Peters. Polis is hereby banned from speaking or being honored at party events. 90% of CDP central committee members voted to reprimand Polis.

absurdly, the McKinsey et al cookie-cutter of staff pooling has moved from desperate places like UC Santa Barbara @2009 to Harvard University in 2026. At UCSB support for hum faculty activities--teaching, research--never recovered. And those cuts only invited further cuts, including more this year.

Coming to a UK institution near you: drastic job losses for professional services staff brought to you by McKinsey www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

The changes to S&P and other indexes are being covered only by financial press, who treats the story as Wall Street clambering aboard the AI rocket ship. What’s actually happening is that private fund managers are looking for ways to offload garbage onto passive investors with low risk tolerance.

In a nutshell:

Consider what you're saying when YOU say, "they won't do anything about Trump's Terrorist Slush fund," in context with them dodging it now. The question is not what THEY will do. It is what YOU will do to hang this on them. The easiest messaging vehicle ever, taxing you to pay off terrorists.

1. Number of stories about Trump buying and selling hundreds of millions of dollars in stocks in the first three months of 2026: CBS: 0 CNN: 0 Fox News: 0 NPR: 0 PBS: 0 Politico: 0 Semafor: 0 Business Insider: 0

Plans to reduce staff numbers in chemistry department that has produced four Nobel prizewinners will harm University of Sheffield’s research reputation, warns union https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/sheffields-renowned-chemistry-department-risk-latest-cuts

Please sign and share this petition - c.org/Wh2NJg5dpc. Prevent mass course closures at yet another apparently financially stable university. Solidarity and strength to @uhertfordshireucu.bsky.social! @ucu.org.uk

If you never read the book or saw the movie, you missed one of the greatest Pulitzer Prize winning sagas ever written. To dishonor Alex Haley like this is disgraceful.

Earlier this week, Oklahoma passed a bill raising the minimum age to marry to 18 and closing dangerous religious loopholes that enabled abusive and exploitative child marriages. We're proud to be helping lead the fight to end child marriage in all 50 states. Here's our statement.

“Nearly 50,000 Lake Tahoe residents are being told to find a new power provider because the grid is being re-routed to A.I. data centers.”

“the intelligentsia—salaried, educated professionals—had little by way of material investment in the economy and could express themselves in far more radical anti-colonial terms.” www.e-flux.com/journal/163/...

BREAKING: SB 2471 has been signed into law! It’s the first of its kind in the nation and renders the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision irrelevant in Hawaii. This is a win for the movement to get big money, especially dark money, out of politics.

Elon Musk cut aid that researchers estimate will kill 14 million people, mostly children, mostly Black and brown. Then he found time to complain about a Black woman in a movie. The existence of non-white people seems to be his problem.

The maker of jets that crashed and killed everyone onboard and the carmaker fined tens of millions for mishandled recalls have suddenly decided to sponsor their top regulator's reality show purely for the love of the open road www.wsj.com/business/boe...

The work of Vivian Maier (1920-2009), prolific US street photographer whose work was unknown in her lifetime #WomensArt

The most accurate portrayal of the pro-Jim Crow, white nationalist Roberts Supreme Court I've seen yet.

Penile implant specialist with history of far-right comments led hantavirus presser

Is no one is asking - what went wrong at Kent? why did Cranfield need to find a senior partner? then there's a huge hole were policy needs to be and democratic debate ought to be occurring. Every one seems concerned about the brand "going forward" - and covering arses.

The Alliance for Higher Education is seeking comments by 11:59pm tonight on the US DOE's consideration of a new "intellectual diversity" criterion for accreditation. They are esp. interested in faculty, student, or uni. administration experiences with such criteria. docs.google.com/forms/d/1B5B...

🚨 The NYT appears to have taken a great feature story written by my colleague at Bolts about a west Tennessee county & the VRA, & essentially rewritten it. (Same frame, similar hed, overlapping sources.) Without a single mention, credit, let alone the a hyperlink buried somewhere.

great investigation into Opus Dei's network of front operations on colleges campuses. www.ft.com/content/6175...

What is it about the ultra wealthy and their claims to be working 100 hours/week? Remember when Musk boasted about this too, and then it turns out that a good chunk of that alleged "work" amounts to shitposting, gaming, or displays of malevolent incompetence, as he displayed with DOGE.

that is the question about Starmer: does "defeating Reform mattered more than protecting his own position?" Apparently not. So "Why should a leader unequal to the political moment continue leading through it?" See previous. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Happy Mother’s Day to all the caretakers out there. And to those who have lost their children—including my own mother—may you find moments of peace in their memory. 🙏🏾

Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr

Wouldn't the deck chairs look nicer over there?

🟢 @hollybruce.bsky.social elected to represent Glasgow Southside! Holly is the second Scottish Green MSP to be elected today, and the second Scottish Green constituency MSP to be elected ever!

My mother taught the 1st and 2nd grades in Los Angeles in the 1950’s, and after the Salk vaccine this cartoon was literally the case. No shot, no school. And No polio, mom explained

This amazing image really captures the Tennessee fight and it's all over the internet. I am reposting it to encourage people to credit photographer Nicole Hester and the Tennessean.