Some public school teachers are courageously protecting kids rights to access all material, despite threats and retaliation. Thank you to @palan57.bsky.social at @forbes.com for shining a light on their remarkable stories. More than ever, we need heroes to be visible.

This Tuesday in Ann Arbor. A reading about attempts to intimidate and silence academics.

University of Michigan faculty and staff speak up about what we want in our new president. (post-Ono) @michigandaily.bsky.social @silkyweineck.bsky.social @sbagen.bsky.social @basit-zafar.bsky.social @yiliw.bsky.social @drgigiawad.bsky.social

Ohio State University has banned land acknowledgements. But there's no ban on ceding the land and the institution to indigenous people. Even the Heritage Foundation recommends this. Buckeyes, this is your moment. www.heritage.org/progressivis... @ohiostatelaw.bsky.social @osuhistory.bsky.social

A lakh is 100,000, so ~300,000 (331,602 to be exact in 2024) students from #India study in US every year, paying $8 billion to US economy. There were ~1300 #Indian students at UMich alone. I met one recently, and he's counting days to finish degree and leave US Our campus will lose millions of $

Why we need DEI

Guidepost Solutions' chairman is monitoring the extortion of Columbia by Trump. U. of Michigan regents, all on their own, hired "consultants" from Guidepost last year to comb through video tapes to harass and attempt to expel students who protested the war on Gaza.

Regent Bernstein makes a mockery of First Amendment rights. According to the state charter, regents have no authority to meddle in hiring decisions, let alone to subject members of our campus to their petty whims and biases. Donating $$ to the Dems shouldn’t protect him.

U-Mich's Regent Bernstein overrides the assessment of UM administrators and tells the General Counsel to immediately terminate Rachel Dawson, our director of multicultural initiatives. Our regents have turned U-M's campus into a theater where they act on their biases and pettiness.

I love the Michigan Daily. “the relative silence from the regents surrounding their efforts to commit acts of espionage against their own student body is alarming. Their response …shows that even despite the accusations, the regents have no interest in taking responsibility for their actions.”

Bravo to the Mississippi educators seeking a restraining order to the law prohibiting educators from teaching students about issues "related to race, sex, color, gender identity, sexual orientation or national origin.” @insurgentprof.bsky.social

@cantb.bsky.social on the federal government forcing UVA's president to resign. (Inside Higher Ed)

Here's the problem: Universities' recent embrace of "institutional neutrality" policies are at odds with their goals to help students develop as thoughtful, moral citizens. Gift link.

“Accordingly, the Trump administration has engaged in selective outrage about discrimination, focusing disproportionately on a supposed rampant anti-White racism problem in this country that is not supported by data, while remaining silent about prevalent discrimination against racial minorities.”

"At a moment when higher education is in the political crosshairs, Ono appeared to some like he was more interested in joining the snipers than fighting back alongside his academic brethren." www.chronicle.com/article/he-w...

“Leadership requires moral clarity, not strategic evasion. Students were followed, harassed, and criminalized under your watch. History will remember.” @professorjvh.bsky.social May U-M Faculty report to regents re: excessive surveillance: regents.umich.edu/files/meetin...

How did Santa Ono lose a one-man race? Professor @silkyweineck.bsky.social writes: “Perhaps it was the instinctive bipartisan contempt most of us feel for blatant pandering: Ono’s assurances that he would follow orders had .. an eagerness to humiliate himself that does not signal leadership.”

The Chronicle is tracking higher ed’s dismantling of DEI efforts.

“In his opening remarks, Ono spent much of his time on the political defensive. He forswore DEI, pledged to combat antisemitism, beat back charges that he’s a climate-change fanatic, and assured the board that he’s no longer issuing land-acknowledgement statements to honor Indigenous people.”

“By giving in, the capitulating firms and universities will learn a lesson from the streets that Mr. Trump knows better than they do: Borrowing money from a loan shark isn’t simply adding a new monthly expense; making that kind of deal is a way of life.” www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/o...

My colleagues @scottlgreer.bsky.social and Julie Boland write that Ono “created a polarized mess that hurt the university, and his intransigence led to staff being fired with no warning just weeks ago. A new president should accept that Michigan is a socially engaged and active university.”

Santa Ono, in 2023, was asked (not under duress) about his commitment to DEI. m.youtube.com/watch?v=pXKo...

In 2023, Santa Ono 1.0 explains why DEI is personally important to him. Ono 2.0 is now telling U-F that DEI is “about ideology.”

Ono cut ODEI at UM to prove himself to UF: "Some of the things I hear is not everyone is included in the support that's provided," Ono said. "To me, it's an American thing to support all students as opposed to just some of the students.”

In honor of Santa Ono leaving U-M for the University of Florida, it seems only fit that our U-M Graduate Student Employees organization should issue his final report card.

My artworks recreate dubious brand messaging to explicitly state the implicit. So when U-M launched the Ono presidency in 2022 (after a series of devastating sex abuse scandals) with a choreographed video of “university pres as mascot” in the spirit of Glee and Bye Bye Birdie, I assembled a team.

Ono goes to Florida to continue playing dead.

This disregard for democratic or parademocratic norms is unacceptable, and it does not bode well for the future when regents can publicly decry “authoritarian regimes” while themselves acting without regard for the consent of the governed.” 2/2

“To date, neither the regents nor our administration have publicly acknowledged the fact that more than 3,000 senate members asked them to defend academic freedom … and restore, within legal parameters, the DEI initiatives they abandoned. 1/2 @silkyweineck.bsky.social

Ohio University announced that it is shuttering its diversity, equity and inclusion offices, including the Multicultural Center, Pride Center and Women’s Center. nbc4i.co/3SgzRNO?utm_...

If you’re craving serious examples of bad-ass women, I just published a single-essay book about Arijana Lekić-Fridrih, who has literally been standing up to confront the men praying for “male authority” en masse in public squares in Croatia. disobediencepress.com/arijana-leki... #womensrights

The University of Michigan Faculty Senate approves a mandate to protect our core values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our vote is a “binding action of the University faculties.” In response, U-M Provost McCauley directs deans to remove the term DEI from websites.

"We need a wartime president." @umich.edu @silkyweineck.bsky.social archive.ph/aIjEA

In discovery, @umich.edu attorneys learned that (1) faculty colluded to sabotage a promotion and (2) one professor signed their name to a review that was actually written by their conspirator, another professor. 1/2

In addition to not having the facts (such as the 87% increase in Black student enrollment since 220, Acker joins the growing group of U-M administrators who can’t seem to use the words “Black students” anymore.

“U-M alumni should stop donating until DEI programs are reinstated as a core mission of the University.”

This could be a great statement except that two of these regents threatened to defund DEI in the press even before Trump took office and this op-Ed doesn’t answer: Are you reinstating the staff who were fired? Are you signing the Mutual Defense Compact? Are you dropping charges against students?

U-M mass rally for DEI. Hundreds show up to say WE ARE THE UNIVERSITY! WE ARE DEI!! @umich.edu

UM faculty: let’s be the leaders and best! UM administration: let’s not ‘“We value faculty engagement and recognize non-binding resolutions as an important way for the faculty senate to weigh in on issues impacting our community,” said …university spokesman’ record.umich.edu/articles/fac...

@jordanackermi.bsky.social UM President Ono is AWOL at this moment of national crisis. This is embarrassing. What are the Regents doing?

The University of Michigan just slapped its faculty in the face. Unbelievable. Shameful non-response by the Regents or the central administration to a vote by thousands of senate members.

Signed by an impressive list of presidents of colleges and universities across the US … but missing U Michigan’s president 🧐

ALL FOUR U-MICHIGAN FACULTY SENATE MOTIONS PASS BY LANDSLIDE MARGINS! @umich.edu faculty push back on Trump’s assaults on higher education and affirm commitment to DEI.

University of Michigan faculty approve Motion 1 — the Rutgers mutual defense compact!

Psychology professor Kevin Cokley spoke in favor of the resolution. “Without DEI, I fear that we will regress to a time where individuals from underrepresented communities, faculty, students and staff will never feel that they truly belong here at the University of Michigan,” he said.