“Harvard officials, already anxious about the prospect of backlash to any settlement with a president many on campus see as autocratic, are sensitive to the details of any agreement.” What most people don’t realize is that Harvard’s admin wanted to settle months ago www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/u...

What could go wrong?

BREAKING: The Trump administration is suing D.C. over its ban on semi-automatic (AR-15) weapons. DOJ's Civil Rights Division under Harmeet Dhillon is seeking a court ruling that D.C.'s law "prohibiting registration of the AR-15 by law-abiding citizens violates the Second Amendment."

My contribution to the discourse is that I’m not sure we want to open up the Pandora’s box of “illegal things people said to me when I was on the job market” Because boy, there are some STORIES

“Investigators believe the man is responsible for both the shooting at Brown and the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who was fatally shot in his Brookline home Monday” apnews.com/article/brow...

Oh my god www.cnn.com/us/live-news...

as always, a joy to work with @allipatter.bsky.social! we find defendants sentenced to former public defenders are less likely to be incarcerated and, when incarcerated, are sentenced less frequently to extremely long, highly punitive sentences

Officially out with @mayasen.bsky.social! We find defendants assigned to former public defenders are less likely to be incarcerated, providing insight into the relationship between criminal legal disparities and judicial characteristics. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

The Kennedy Center name is established by federal statute, and therefore may be repealed only by federal statute. www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/...

The orders would prohibit doctors and hospitals from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursement for care provided to transgender patients younger than age 18 and block all Medicaid and Medicare funding for services at hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care. www.npr.org/sections/sho...

Massachusetts is a two-party consent state, so you generally can’t secretly record your professors and fellow students (unlike other in states)

Genuinely unsure of what the vision is with this appointment -- just remain afloat until Trump is no longer president?

Predicting that some universities will soon pledge to provide AI-free instruction, and that this will be an advantage in recruiting and training top students

Extremely cool job alert: Deputy Director of LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute www.naacpldf.org/about-us/car...

Quick reminder that Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government is conducting an open (non-targeted) faculty search in American politics at the rank of full professor I encourage any interested scholars to submit their application ASAP! academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15418

Quick reminder that Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government is conducting an open (non-targeted) faculty search in American politics at the rank of full professor I encourage any interested scholars to submit their application ASAP! academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15418

Seems like a lot of voters might be interested in Trump's position on birthright citizenship, stated here, which would logically extend retroactively to strip millions of people of their US citizenship

1. presidential immunity even for criminal actions + 2. unitary executive + 3. VRA sec 2 voided + 4. partisan gerrymandering OK'd + 5. 2030 reapportionment ==> we are so cooked

It's largely lost today because we've allowed constitutional law to become the exclusive preserve of lawyers, but the original idea of written constitutionalism was partly one of public education, publicity, & (proto-)democracy—people should be able to read & come to know the law which binds them

What’s funny about this piece is that it treats the major questions doctrine as the Court’s apparent attempt to revive Congress versus what it really is, which is a convenient tool to limit the size and scope of the administrative state ???? www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/o...

Not sure what the NYT means about Trump’s approval “holding steady” here Look at this plot: After a fast initial drop, there’s been a clear and fairly consistent downward trend since around May or so

This is the right counterfactual ->

Supreme Court at any time may issue 2 orders on its emergency docket that will greatly affect how Americans live over the next few years: one on legality of national guard troops in American cities and one on whether States like Texas can re-redistrict and get away with it on timing grounds for 2026

“A cultural challenge”

This is what the Trump administration should be investigating This right here -> www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

This is a five-alarm fire: The NIH is abandoning the transparency of deciding grantees based on peer-review scores ("paylines") in favor of a more opaque process in which those scores are just one factor. This gives the gov't room to punish specific disfavored institutions, researchers, or topics.

Regret to report that these reporters are back on their "will they, won't they" schtick No, thank you! www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/u...

Don't sleep on this. A Republican-led Congress pushing back against the administration is 100% necessary, and this is how it starts

Permanently kneecapping an entire co-equal branch of government

If the executive can unilaterally shift all functioning out of an congressionally established agency, then what is left of Congress’ lawmaking? Why should Congress authorize executive agencies to do anything at all, ever? www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/u...

Insightful piece by Larry Lessig on the need for more transparency in Harvard faculty members’ ties to Epstein The 2020 Harvard Epstein report now looks like a big joke www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

A big trend in higher ed and I absolutely hate it

As I was saying…

Feeling vindicated in this take - Democrats should get Mamdani out on the cable news circuit! Stop ignoring him!

“Had UChicago simply matched the market, its endowment would be $6.45 billion larger today—more than enough to repay its entire debt.” Don’t understand why these people aren’t simply fired

My guys at the Harvard Management Company absolutely never miss

Imagine being Sotomayor & Jackson reading all these headlines, and thinking back to this exchange

That John Roberts was more concerned with nuisance lawsuits against the president than he was with whatever this is will haunt this country for a long time

Seeing this take from people on the right, and it misunderstands the role of a professor in today’s academy - which is to do research AND to teach & mentor Cannot be a successful faculty member without both If you hold Claudine Gay to high standards on the 1st, you need to hold Summers on the 2nd

Step 2 in the dominguez saga. Immediate leave. Retirement is 3, termination without emeritus status is 4, banned from campus and fired is 5

I spoke with the Boston Globe about the Summers situation TLDR: other professors like myself can no longer trust Summers to perform a key duty of a university professor, which is to advise & mentor students www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/18/m...

People may not like it, but it was wise of John Roberts to give Trump the power to do the same thing without fear of criminal liability.

We know the standard for stripping someone of tenure owing to the Francesca Gino litigation - the standard is "only" "grave misconduct or neglect of duty" (3rd Harvard Statute) provost.harvard.edu/appointments...

1/2 FWIW, Gay is still a professor at Harvard. It is, and must be, a lot easier to remove a professor from an administrative role than it is to fire them as a tenured faculty member.

Agree with this @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social crimson.bsky.social editorial on these points: www.thecrimson.com/article/2025... Harvard needs a full reckoning over its connections with Epstein and Summers' role - it can either do it voluntarily & transparently, or Trump will do it for them

I have loathed Larry Summers for 25 years and yet this is still more awful and grotesque than I expected. Great reporting and write-up by the student reporters of @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social