What an amazing essay from the former chair of Africana Studies at Bowdoin. I'll share a few sections in the reply but seriously, read the whole thing. It's all insightful and beautifully written. lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

"Basic scientists consistently enhance scientific output quality, yet research and newly joining researchers have shifted toward applied orientations." Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2509.01530 #PhilSci #MetaSci #AcademicSky 🧪

I hinted at some possible answers near the end of the story, but I think the jury is very much still out. Anyways, if you're curious, here's the story:

The neat thing about writing about foundations of quantum mechanics is that it makes everyone mad, often for completely different reasons.

Judge rules Education Department messages blaming Democrats for the shutdown unconstitutional www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...

also this would clearly be a field where the expertise of faculty from historically excluded groups would be a huge benefit, given the bias that has been consistently demonstrated in AI because of its source materials, killing two birds with one stone But YOU KNOW that will not happen 🙄

We're hiring 2 Assistant Professors of Sociology: Gender and Sexuality and Environmental Sociology. At @tcdsociology.bsky.social, we aspire to be a method-agnostic group of solution-oriented sociologists. Join our welcoming community at @tcdschoolssp.bsky.social. Deadline 1 Dec. Link in the comment.

Two years in the making and we’re finally here! Official trailer for our forthcoming documentary film “Things We Imagined,” premiering next week at #ASHE25 youtu.be/GxYvJGMlhO0?...

So, NIH seems to have opened some high-level, director-of-institute type positions today, with a window of only two weeks. During a shutdown. Hm.

my best friend's dad was a sociologist who was snitched on by a colleague in his small private college and had to work as a lumberjack for 2 years before he could get another academic job; this was in the 50s I think

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Among items included in this agreement are an extortion payment of $30M & the requirement of admissions data restricted to race, GPAs, test scores, & school/college of students for what will likely be misconstrued analyses of admissions processes & student academic capabilities & achievement.

Sigh...

“The fact of this case shows that the federal government is using the threat of legal and financial sanctions in order to coerce the University of California and to commandeer the University of California in imposing its own ideological and political agenda,” www.courthousenews.com/uc-faculty-s...

⚡️Coming soon: a special symposium on Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction at 90 organized by @alimeghji.bsky.social & Jose Itzigsohn! Early look at my piece here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

NEW: On the shadow docket, the Supreme Court lets Trump resume misgendering trans Americans on their passports, claiming "the government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment." All three liberals dissent. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

Fall colors @umichlaw.bsky.social never get old. 🍂🍁

Friends— here it is. Updated & expanded thanks to the space afforded to me in the @therumpus.net & the guidance of the brilliant @roxanegay.bsky.social’s edits. The win centers Muslims humanity — but what does that mean in a country that rejects that? therumpus.net/2025/11/05/z...

Not good. www.edweek.org/teaching-lea...

“It is the harmless oath that hooks. It hooks before it has undergone those changes that, bit by bit, render it less harmless.”

Disturbing news out of Auburn University, where the admin is pressuring professors to sign a statement saying they're complying with an "anti-DEI" law and TPUSA is holding a rally and trying to record classes. I hear faculty are terrified to sign, worried this is a pretense for mass firings.

So setting off a cherry bomb in a med school building counts as good Halloween fun these days… 😒 ‘witnesses said the men were visiting Wentworth College for Halloween activities, including parties at area schools…[&] chose the [Harvard med school] building because it looked abandoned’

Good gracious Third Way www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/m...

Happy to receive a copy of Esther Chan’s fascinating new book The Limits of Diversity!

I am so upset. Last week Time Magazine solicited a piece from me on Zohran Mamdani & anti-Muslim hate. I pitched a framing re the dehumanization of Muslims & how Mamdani’s inclusive, socialist campaign in its content resists that. They agreed. I wrote the piece. 1/

With higher education facing great uncertainty, have a webinar scheduled for Wednesday about how public research universities can finance their missions. Register today: msu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

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Attempting to upend research funding structures, processes, & policies will hurt all academic research, not simply harm ‘top research universities.’ Their aims are to undercut research legitimacy while saying they’re ‘spreading the wealth’ for those who won’t sign onto flawed ideological policies.

"Why don't people support welfare programs?" Racism. More specifically, anti-Blackness. White folks asked about who welfare serves overestimate the number of Black people on welfare. Not only that, but just the mere THOUGHT of who welfare supports led less white people to support it. #blacksky

When the suspects appear to be white guys, it’s not a bombing — it’s an intentional explosion.

interesting paper on difference between synthetic contol method and historical counterfactual method www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

their plainly stated goal is to starve forty million people until they get what they want, which is to rip health care away from millions more that this is too monstrous for most news organizations to tell the truth about does not change the facts

u shaped AND inverse u shaped!!!!! holy regional heterogeneity batman

It would likely take a generation to rebuild the Department of Education's capacity, as potential employees and contractors are going to be very hesitant to join on after the terminations. This is at the same time that ED has ambitious plans for expanding the federal role in higher education.

There isn’t really a gap between Fuentes and MAGA. It’s like the Klan and the White Citizen’s Councils. They are part of the same white supremacist movement and largely disagree over tactics.

ANES Data Release! electionstudies.org/data-center/... The 3-wave ANES panel is now available. It merges data from 3 election studies (2016-2020-2024), the first time the ANES has collected interviews of the same respondents across 3 presidential elections.

An apparently “intentional” explosion at a Harvard University medical building is under investigation, authorities said

Talladega College will sell four of its six Hale Woodruff murals, which commemorate the Underground Railroad and the mutiny of the Amistad www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a...

A broad-based coalition called America’s History SOS is presenting over 70,000 signatures to members of Congress who serve on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to save artifacts at the NMAAHC, which opened in September 2016. sdvoice.info/the-clash-mu...

The start for every first of the month.

“They were careless people … they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

🎓 Two PhD positions at the Institute of Sociology, University of Bern! Join our team (Chair of Social Change and Inequality, Ass. Prof. Dr. Benita Combet) to research career development inequalities by gender, ethnicity & social background. Apply by Nov 21. More: ohws.prospective.ch/public/v1/jo...

This billionaire is trolling hardworking educators—and making jokes about gutting supports for special needs kids.

Happy Halloween

UNCC's Philosophy Department is hiring a Distinguished Professor of Healthcare Ethics (Associate or Full rank). Specialization in bioethics, broadly construed, w/ interests in areas not limited to the ethics of: medicine/healthcare, public health, disability, reproduction, the environment, & so on…

NEWS: The Trump admin's decision to suspend SNAP benefits due to the shutdown has been blocked. In two cases, both judges found the government action is likely illegal. Although a judge in Mass gave the admin until Monday to reverse course, a judge in Rhode Island issued a TRO from the bench today.

🚨We’re hiring! The Max Weber Institute in beautiful Heidelberg seeks a W3 Professor of Sociology (focus: sociological theory) who connects well with the department’s focus on comparative sociology adb.zuv.uni-heidelberg.de/info/INFO_FD... Happy to answer any questions! #Sociology #socsky

Where I grew up, before Wal-Mart supercenters, the only places to buy food were small grocers. These stores are important beyond food & jobs as people ask how your family is doing & sustain community. The loss of a store means more families go hungry, but also community supports wither a bit more.

From the stalled grant reviews & award dispersal, to FAFSA & financial aid issues, & SNAP running dry, this article provides a good overview of how the shutdown is squeezing higher ed institutions’ finances that can impact everyone on campus.