Hope many people can make it to @joelabriola.bsky.social’s talk. He’s a stellar researcher & does a great job of walking people through all the intertwined complexities of the housing & tax systems.

i know we're all busy but i just overheard a plumber say "parlez-vous français ? non ? you motherfuckers don't even speak french, do you" to a pair of french bulldogs

I spoke to Prof. Anna O. Law (@unlawfulentries.bsky.social) about her upcoming book on birthright citizenship and why the attack on the 14th Amendment is an attack on multi-racial democracy. www.theredoubt.net/birthright-c...

This is what an actual politicized campus look like, where activists gin up social media outrage that targets professors, political appointees strip faculty of professional autonomy, and students are not allowed to learn about what it is to live in America now.

‘If the goal is genuine academic renewal, it should begin with renewing our understanding of what numbers can—& cannot—tell us. Merit cannot be mandated by publishing the wrong metrics, & justice is not served by statistical arguments that collapse under careful inspection.’ ~ @chadtopaz.bsky.social

It’s no accident that this announcement came right after the FDA said it will not regulate AI-assisted medical devices.

Today was an entire day of WTFs. But I had my first class of the semester, & students were eager to learn & talk about all the things. I’ll take that little bit of light shining through all this darkness on this day.

We’re excited to welcome @adamhsays.com back to The Atlantic’s staff to host a new weekly video podcast. More here: www.theatlantic.com/press-releas...

It’s great that the champions and defenders of Western Culture are censoring Plato. The moral panic over accurately teaching about American racism was always about disciplining professors in general. We’re a check on propaganda, which propagandists hate.

Useful corrective to a paper that suffers from some... confirmation bias

This is a good summary of the two issues dominating yesterday's negotiated rulemaking session: (1) Should any programs lose Pell eligibility, or are only loans at risk? (2) Should earnings be the only metric, or should debt also be considered (as grad student lending gets cut)?

I'll never forget that day. Christian nationalism on display. @profsamperry.bsky.social & I were asked to submit written testimony to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol. Read & download it for free from @socarxiv.bsky.social. osf.io/preprints/so...

NEW: Court of Appeals blocks Trump effort to cap NIH research grants' indirect costs to 15%. This upholds a district court's ruling last year. Universities typically get double that amount for overhead costs in running labs. For University of California, losing this would be ~$500m annually.

Contrary to fears of indoctrination www.aeaweb.org/conference/2...

Expect there to be efforts to pull or restrict funding to Minnesota public colleges. Diane Jones served in the first Trump administration and has the ear of ED officials.

We're hiring! Senior position in the learning sciences. "We seek a scholar whose research has focused on the development & application of learning technologies to achieve just & equitable educational learning opportunities, teaching practices, policies, & systems." careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

Wearing SAT scores like varsity letter jackets from high school.

So many of these ideas for "merit-based" reforms to higher ed come from humanities PhDs who didn't get jobs in academia and are still bitter about it two decades later. Rather than blame root causes of the drop in the number of TT jobs, esp in the humanities, they blame the few people who got them.

Oh, this would go over well… The admin burden of the proposed data collection & simplistic use of test scores are absurd enough. But also, the emphasis that test scores are equivalent to merit is laughable. 😑

@victorerikray.bsky.social and @jpygold.bsky.social: "To succeed, this revisionist project required a cultural common sense that expects inequality and a corresponding legal regime that protects white male over-representation. Trump is delivering."

Cover reveal. It's about how & why colonies/states controlled international & domestic migration until 1888, why in the late 19th c the feds took over, & what it was like for politically disfavored groups to live under that arrangement of power. You can't understand voluntary migration history 1/

Here are some key takeaways from the negotiated rulemaking dataset that was released yesterday. --Only 3.5% of programs will likely fail the earnings metric, but it's disproportionately for-profits and certificates. --Nearly 30% of grad/professional programs are over the new annual lending limits.

I was on a panel with someone from Heritage or Cato early in my career. At Educause maybe? He wouldn’t look at me. Anyway he used the same analogy. I replied that if HE is like a car then every car should have the same affordances by price and class. Which he found objectionable.

I looked how many programs are estimated to be over the new annual loan limits ($20,500 per year for "graduate," $50,000 per year for professional). 4,429 of 17,297 graduate programs and 331 of 1,120 professional programs have per-student averages above the new limits. This is cause for alarm.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... New article with the wonderful @jonathancoley.bsky.social on cisgendered organizations: Christian Universities as Cisgendered Organizations: Discriminatory Policies Toward Transgender and Nonbinary Students in Christian Higher Education

On the last NYTimes bestseller list of the year, arguably the most competitive, THE GALES OF NOVEMBER: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald hit #3 (six weeks in a row, eight total) -- ahead of famous folks who have no idea who I am. THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT! www.nytimes.com/books/best-s...

In which Rogers Brubaker, Marion Fourcade & @kjhealy.co comment and Greta Krippner and I reply. Read if you like getting into the theoretical and technical weeds of the relationship between categorization, quantification, and different imaginaries of the relationship between variables and persons.

I'll write a blog post on this at some point over the next few days, but a much larger share of programs at for-profit colleges are estimated to fail the new federal earnings test using newly released data. The level of program also matters, with undergraduate certificates being the main culprit.

Nostalgia is a key ingredient of authoritarian movements (see segregation, patriarchy, high birth rates).

“You are not entitled to a response from us, or anyone, ever." - Dept. of Education to ProPublica's @megomatz.bsky.social "Our journalists reach out to people they’re writing about to ensure fairness. But ... their efforts to do so are more likely to be vilified than appreciated."

“I’ve been targeted by them for years for being on that list and also for writing about them. [This resulted in] a few bad emails over the years, but certainly nothing like some female and Black colleagues around the nation.”

The National Science Foundation starts 2026 with a new management structure that affects every scientist with--or applying for--NSF funding. Here's what you need to know. www.science.org/content/arti...

This !@#$% year in review: the wrecking ball that was February 2025 brought the abrupt end to many Institute of Education Sciences contracts for data collection, evaluation and research. www.brookings.edu/articles/cut... 🧵

“It's not the kind of grant review you're thinking of, and I don't know if it's good or not” Another Josh Fessel banger trying to sort out the continuing changes in the rules of the game at NIH substack.com/home/post/p-... Cc @jeremymberg.bsky.social

New, from me: The NYT reporter who specializes in profiles of beleaguered right-wingers on campus went to New College...and found out that things were going ok! So let me explain some pretty massive errors of omission: 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nyt-re...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stated that the 1918 flu pandemic was caused by a lab virus from vaccine research, a defective influenza vaccine. Let’s analyze what a lie this is. First, in 1918, 107 years ago, virology was in its infancy

Old enough to remember the when people started going through Richwine’s Harvard dissertation where he argues for racial hierarchy in intelligence & using IQ scores for immigration selection. Horrendously flawed research & white supremacist arguments. (Recap linked.)

"UATX—not to be confused with the University of Texas at Austin, which is actually accredited"

LeMonde said, not on our watch

Make a Bond movie academic: The Researcher with the Golden Identification Strategy

Make a Bond movie academic: Dr. No (starring Reviewer 2)

This is related to the idea that if white people don't have 100% of high-prestige jobs, awards, recognition etc it's evidence of discrimination against whiteness. It's where "great replacement" logic leads you. bsky.app/profile/donm...

We talked about running these numbers at UM soc when it became so obvious that women TAs got more complaints for the same classes. Glad someone tested it formally.

They’re not perfect, but golly, public universities are one of the best engines of economic mobility we have

As you celebrate the holidays, here are 10 things to know about the dramatic changes to how NSF does business. This story looks at merit review. The second part will explain the significance of NSF's new structure. www.science.org/content/arti...

It remains wild to me that during the first trump administration there was a long debate over terminology after AOC (correctly) called border internment "concentration camps" and now having concentration camps is a core domestic policy. The purpose of that stupid debate was to normalize the idea.

Being on the EdUp Experience podcast was a blast! If you’re interested in college majors, early careers, and how AI is impacting entry-level hiring/work, check it out! www.edupexperience.com/coreymossper...

Coming to a campus near you: goldengatexpress.org/114511/campu...