"This is extortion, plain and simple.... The only solution is solidarity and collective action against this effort at federal control over higher education." A sobering analysis of the illegality of the administration's "compact" and its stakes for higher ed. 🎁🔗 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

Some problems have simple solutions. This new “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” is one. The answer is simply saying no. Simple does not mean easy. But Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, Vanderbilt, Univ of AZ, UPenn, USC, UT Austin & UVA must understand what they’ll lose if they sign on.

As always, @edyong209.bsky.social is on point!! I wish the University admin understood this point better. PS. If you don't know Ed, he is currently my most favorite author. Highly recommend his books and articles. His COVID coverage was impeccable.

So, at the very least, we all need to be joining or starting an AAUP chapter: www.aaup.org/chapters/fin...

YES! THIS on GenAI! Please read this absolutely splendid piece of writing that had me cheering, a little bit weepy, and writing in the margins: "An extraordinary amount of money is spent by the AI industry to ensure that acquiescence is the only plausible response. But marketing is not destiny."

Any academic folks on H1B visas (even with stamps in passports) please get legal advice from your University attorneys before leaving the US.

From @benjaminhjohns1.bsky.social: If you want to understand the increasingly authoritarian grip that the Republican establishment has on this state, and the increasingly destructive ends to which it is using its power, no figure from our past is better suited than Homer Price Rainey.

Johns Hopkins, University of Maryland to feel brunt of Trump’s new $100K visa fee

Comment period ends on Monday for a proposed rule change that would terminate student visas after 4 years. It also puts limits on exchange visitors and reps of foreign media, and shortens the length of time at the end of the visa from 60 days to 30 days. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

🗣️🗣️What is happening at Texas Tech is part of a national campaign to erase the existence of trans people. Faculty and academic leaders across the country must stand up now: this suppression of #FreeSpeech and #AcademicFreedom will not be confined to Texas! www.texastribune.org/2025/09/26/t...

Good news to your end your week ✊ Dr. Thomas Alter is set to be reinstated at Texas State University after an initial court victory. Statement from @texasaaup.bsky.social President Dr. Brian Evans and Texas AFT President @zephcapo.bsky.social 👇 www.texasaft.org/membership/h...

NSF GRFP solicitation out. App deadlines now in November. As others noted, eligibility rules for current graduate students now exclude 2nd year grad students. See the solicitation - they’ve emphasized “first year” and “less than one academic year” in grad program. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

On top of this, no hiring of PhDs with H1B visas means a huge shortage of qualified instructors and researchers, and all the revenue from international students will all but disappear. Universities are not taking any of this seriously enough. We are conducting business like perfect boiling frogs.

📢📢Rally for Dr. Tom Alter and #FreeSpeech TODAY 11am! Details below! 👇

"you are the ones with the most to lose. My colleagues & I may have to leave this cherished institution & that would be a great loss for us. But we have already lived lives of consequence and can find other pursuits. You, however, would lose the education you deserve." 🔥 thebatt.com/news/anonymo...

We're delighted to announce that Ankur Gupta has been selected as the recipient of the 2025 Soft Matter Lectureship! This award honours an early-career researcher for their contributions to the soft matter field. Learn more about Ankur and his research on our blog 👉 blogs.rsc.org/sm/2025/09/1...

Student-led demonstration for #academicfreedom TOMORROW at Texas A&M 6pm! 👏✊👇

I have to keep this deliberately vague, but this is a total disaster for academic research. And imposing it so suddenly is just cruel. I’ve got friends scrambling to get back to the US before midnight tonight. Do you know how hard that is to do on 36 hours of notice?

This one presents information with the help of tables, which may work for some people’s brains infosecforactivists.org

Another useful guide in the form of a checklist activistchecklist.org

Lots of good information about digital operational and information security here www.turnoffyourphone.org

No more postdocs on H1B visas, that would seem to be an obvious outcome. Probably not at the professor level either. m.economictimes.com/nri/work/tru...

How do you prevent cacio e pepe sauce from congealing? A thoroughly researched answer earned its authors a prize!

The @aaup.org just shared guidance for academic workers on how to protect themselves online www.aaup.org/news/advisor...

Our NIH ESTEEMED grant may have been reinstated this year, but that doesn't mean the impacts to our students have disappeared. Nor does it come with any guarantees... Thanks @rhodeislandcurrent.com for the follow up coverage and focus on the students bearing the brunt of these decisions.

@aaup.org has prepared materials for faculty who face these threats and harassment. 6/ www.aaup.org/issues-highe...

Another professor in Texas is fired, this time after a selectively edited video of a talk he gave was posted on X, with the bogus claim that he was inciting violence www.texastribune.org/2025/09/10/t...

The 2024 Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List (run by Arvind Ganesan and Todd N. Whittaker) has 14 research/teaching positions and 5 teaching-only positions: docs.google.com/spreadsheets... #facultychemEjobs

Related If your dept head or dean can remove your colleague for teaching in their area of expertise, claiming tenure and academic freedom is contextual and only if you are "good for" the university, you also don't work at a university...

More women have nearly bled to death during miscarriage under Texas’ abortion ban. Experts say the trend paints a troubling picture of the harms of unnecessary delays in care. “This is striking,” one doctor said. “The trend is very clear.” (Published July)

Love this for blue states but please remember that there are many people in red states who also deserve vaccine access and scientific guidance. This is a stop-gap but we can't stop with this as it leaves many of us still out in the cold. We need a functional federal system. Kennedy has to go.

New Opinion out today in @chicagotribune.com "The Bio10 is an academic powerhouse." "The health of our society depends on generations of young students equipped to embrace, and succeed in the face of, uncertainty." www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/02/o...

“You don’t want to cut out all the talented people in geosciences and life sciences and psychology and sociology in favor of giving everyone who’s doing AI a fellowship.” -said @susanelise.bsky.social, former NSF program officer for the Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

Absolute madness. The administrative bloat, coupled with the disconnect between our higher administration and the people executing the mission of a university, is really stark right now on many campuses

Nearly all PhDs take 5 years--with finishing in 4 a rare outcome. This is deliberately designed to eliminate the international powerhouse that is US postgraduate training.

This will have a devastating effect on both the economy and higher education.

DSOFT invites students and recent graduates to participate in our Students’ Virtual Conference, on November 6th (10 a.m.-4 p.m. ET). The conference aims to discuss the latest advancements in soft matter physics by students. If you wish to present your work, please find details in the post below!

Very few PhD students finish within 4 years. But international students will need to do that if US proposed visa rules change go through. Sound reasonable to you? Fed register is accepting comments for next month. Details at the link & comment button www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

I know there's a lot happening today, but this is sneaking in under the radar. This proposed new rule would absolutely crush foreign PhD students, potentially making it impossible for them to enroll with any certainty of their ability to finish www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

Academics: you may wish to check for yourself here (using variants of your name — I found separate listings for Jacinta Conrad, Jacinta C. Conrad, J. C. Conrad) if you wish to participate in the Anthropic class action suit.

The Future of #Rheology seminar series continues Thursday with two great speakers Barrett Smith (#Alginate #Gelation in #Microfluidic Flow) and Chenxian Xu (Surface Forces Sculpt Nanoscopic Mesas in #Micellar #Foam Films). Join us on zoom at 1pm EST.

NYT released a new tool showing how blue states thanks to the housing shortage will lose their congressional seats to red states and eliminate whats left of "the blue wall." Therefore, Im making this post free. The issue is too important not to understand, especially as SB 79 comes up to vote soon.

New York Times story with profiles of researchers whose grants were terminated. [Gift Link] www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/o...

Check out the @kitp-ucsb.bsky.social conference we're (Vashan Wright, Sujit Datta, Nathalie Vriend) organizing: www.kitp.ucsb.edu/activities/s... for THIS JANUARY 6-9! Geoscientists, physicists and engineers: are you intellectually adventurous and been wondering "is this all there is?" 🧪

From a colleague: NSF proposal received FOUR "excellent" ratings (the highest possible...that almost never happens). Rated "highly competitive" in panel summary. 👎 ...but still rejected. Likely reason: It studied a topic disfavored by this admin.

Having a 5 percentile R01 grant not being funded sucks so much. And having it falling through the cracks because of delays in council meetings and other administrative shenanigans even more.

The American Chemical Society announced that the ACS Board of Directors has approved $2.5 million to be granted to graduate students who have been impacted by the termination or cancellation of their adviser’s research grant(s) cen.acs.org/acs-news/acs... #chemsky