Buttigieg on Indiana: "The big part of how Trumpism works is to make you feel totally disempowered. To make him feel inevitable. And yet the clear takeaway from this is he is not unstoppable and you are not without power."

This is officially one of the strangest pictures in American history, and I do not doubt that it will be considered iconic a hundred years from now. 100% serious here.

Hey, look at this great book! I bet smart people worked on this one.

Happy Texas Chainsaw Massacre Day to all those who celebrate 🍖

New research from MIT found that those who used ChatGPT can’t remember any of the content of their essays. Key takeaway: the product doesn’t suffer, but the process does. And when it comes to essays, the process *is* how they learn. arxiv.org/pdf/2506.088...

"Thank goodness we’re simultaneously experimenting on millions of students. This is a very good way to generate reliable data. A large language model would have a hard time detecting the sarcasm in that previous sentence, but I hope it’s clear to my human readers."

So let me get this straight: masks are bad and un-American if worn to fight a pandemic, but good if worn by people claiming to be government agents when they kidnap people off the street

Wrote a thing because I want to yell at writers and anyone who works sitting down to take care of themselves. Thanks for reading! gabinoiglesias.substack.com/p/basic-fitn...

A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope

So excited about this book! I just heard @kashana.bsky.social describe student loans as a way to punish the working class for trying to better themselves. Which is, obviously, why we need to do heists to get rid of student debt!

History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

"Federal agencies would be instructed to take steps to train students in using AI...The agencies would also be asked to partner with the private sector...All educators should undergo professional development to integrate AI into all subject areas, the draft order says."

GOP court decision overturning Democratic victory in North Carolina Supreme Court race is 5 alarm fire for democracy. It’s January 6 without the insurrection. Make no mistake, if GOP succeeds in stealing election in NC, they’ll use that playbook everywhere www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Education is under attack. All who stand for the freedom and flourishing of the US postsecondary education system can sign on to a statement affirming and committing to core values that shape education. Read: bit.ly/DemocracyAnd... #AcademicSky #HigherEd #DisabilityStudies #DisabledInAcademia

Schumer a few weeks down the road, probably: “Okay, so he defied the Supreme Court. Big deal.”

every college, corporate, and nonprofit president right now

Which is why they want to destroy it.

Good time to remember that an executive order is not a law and that multiple other EOs of this corrupt regime have already been blocked by the courts.

“The ecosystem of research and the creation of new knowledge in universities has been so powerful for American prosperity, American freedom, American ingenuity. To have that disrupted by government overreach is a disaster for this country.” —Wesleyan University President Michael Roth on @msnbc.com

“Because what we are witnessing is not just an attack on academia or a set of fiscal reforms or a painful political rebalancing. It is an attack on the conditions that allow free thought to exist. We may not yet know its full cost, but we will feel its consequences for decades.”

After I literally just said I wasn’t giving a dime to the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future, this text arrives. The nerve to ask for money after 10 Dem senators voted yes on cloture today.

We want Democrats to play hardball and use their leverage to stop the Trump-Musk coup.

The Department of Education is (was?) responsible for: ✅Distributing & monitoring spending for special-ed & low-income students; ✅Facilitating postsecondary financial aid; & ✅Civil rights enforcement Impossible to see how dismantling it will do anything but hurt kids & students.

tesla car vehicles will have more legal protections than trans people

It’s amazing to find out at this late date how much the rule of law depended on people simply deciding, on a voluntary, daily basis, not to break the law.

“Unusual governing arrangement” is an interesting way to characterize illegal pillaging of the federal government and the American people.

The Regime just cut off $400 million worth of federal funding for Columbia University in NYC because of the Gaza protests that took place there in 2023. This is an incredibly sinister attack on first amendment rights. MAGA despises universities as much as anything else. This is an egregious attack.

It's good to see some institutions standing up.

Trump tonight: “I brought back free speech in America. It’s back.” Trump this morning:

I'm glad to see that the National Council of Teachers of English has signed onto a letter urging that Congress immediately reverse the DOE's cancellation of teacher preparation and development grants. ncte.org/blog/2025/03... #4C25 Read the letter here: aacte.org/.../02/Grant...

BREAKING: We're sending an open letter to universities across the country, offering support and urging them to reject pressure to punish international students and faculty for exercising their First Amendment rights. Schools must hold firm against the Trump administration's censorship attempts.

Cowards

A perfect little case study of the cowardice and complicity that, aggregated across universities and associations, is covering the academic industry in shame. www.archpaper.com/2025/02/acsa...

Such a great cover.

One of my most reliable heuristics is that anyone who mentions IQ on the internet in anything but an ironic context is almost certainly a creep.

This has been my sense for the past couple of days as well, and I'm glad to see someone who literally wrote the book on this agrees with what I thought might just be my own tiny little hope.

Last night, my wife and I went to see MJ: The Musical. Spending a couple of hours with Michael Jackson’s music was a lot of fun. The dancing and the stagecraft were both especially impressive.

For decades, the US government has painstakingly kept American science #1 globally—and every facet of American life has improved because of it. The internet? Flu shot? Ozempic? All grew out of federally-funded research. Now all that's being dismantled. 1/ www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/21/1...

Yes this is exactly the correct way to behave in bookstores

Helpful explainer about why university endowments aren’t a substitute for indirect costs ⬇️☀️

Join us in welcoming our new FEN Blog co-editors, Emily Brier and Daniel Libertz!🎉 And with this new leadership comes a fresh #CFP! Any proposals about #composition, from #PublicRhetoric, #CollaborativeWriting, #Assessment, and more, are encouraged. Read more at bit.ly/3QleGcv. Please share widely❣️

This is true. A pal of mine who is a policeman went to a Scottish island recently to investigate a missing person and when the locals found out he was a Christian they stuck him in a giant human-shaped willow branch construction and burned him alive.

"[For the Right], D.E.I...is the mere presence of a woman or nonwhite person or disabled or transgender person in any high-skilled, high-status position. And their alternative isn’t some heretofore unknown standard of merit; it is the reintroduction of something like segregation." (gift link)

Johns Hopkins joins lawsuit against NIH cuts to universities

Someone at the American Bar Association ate their Wheaties this morning.

One of the many reasons MAGA hates Universities is that moms and dads send their christofascist indoctrinated kids to Unis and they... wake up. Not because of profs, but because they are surrounded by diverse students who push them to see the horrors of their upbringing.

I wanted to re-up my Valentine's Day invitation. Less than a week away, and probably a million new complicating events between now and then. Come watch me try to make any sense of things. #teamrhetoric

Keeping this in mind for the next time I teach grant writing. @drbethany.bsky.social you may want to look at this piece since I think you’re teaching that course next.