Contacts and sources: Stand Together for Higher Ed @standhighered.bsky.social The National Council of Faculty Senates @kgrotke.bsky.social @charlieeaton.bsky.social @debtcollective.bsky.social Peter Ecker Stephen Silvia Raquel Rall Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities

This is a great piece on policy failure, as he illustrates with the example of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, summed up with the remark: "The horror of that day was not that the system failed. It was that it was functioning exactly as designed."

1/ I recently wrote about Frances Perkins—FDR’s Labor Secretary and first woman cabinet member. She is best known as the architect of the New Deal but she had a lesser-known achievement: She dismantled her era’s version of ICE.🧵

Perennial reminder of this excellent paper about how secret police forces are swamped with underachievers “We don’t want clever people. We want mediocrities.” (Ungated summary here ajps.org/2019/10/08/w...)

Synthetic Risk Transfer is a financial innovation you probably haven’t heard of, the specific variety of securitization which is beginning to look like the Credit Default Swap of the next financial crisis.

Listening to this for the first time since it came out, partially to review my own research on Vista Equity, now a seeming target of kleptocratic antitrust suit. But, omg, @ajdouglas.bsky.social, Jared Loggins, @kgrotke.bsky.social Crystal Sanders, Jelani Favors, & @bakerdphd.bsky.social are 🔥🔥🔥.

“It’s not that traditional liberal arts is out of step with student demand. Instead, it’s out of step with the priorities values desires of a powerful board of trustees with no apparent commitment to liberal education, an administrative class.” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...

See also @kgrotke.bsky.social lpeproject.org/blog/reckoni...

PRE-EXISTING CONDITION 1: ENDOWMENTS AND FINANCIALIZATION or as we say $$ Follow the Money $$ PRE-EXISTING CONDITION 2: STEM VS THE LIBERAL ARTS AND HUMANITIES Thanks @kgrotke.bsky.social

Yassin al-Haj Saleh on returning to Syria, translated by Yasmine Seale buff.ly/4dIQndz

We’d advocate for Mahmoud Khalil even if he was a witless jerk, but his letter from ICE detention will be, when we get through the fascist weather, a canonical document not of that which he calls “democracy of convenience” but the real democracy yet to be made. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

We've got Grotke @kgrotke.bsky.social and Baldwin @davarianbaldwin.bsky.social

Great essay by @adamtooze.bsky.social that explores why Palestine is so central to US campus politics. This section is worth highlighting, as it articulates the shortcomings of framing anti-Palestine repression primarily through discourses of free speech or Democracy v Authoritarianism (link below)

Colleges issue billions of dollars in debt!