I guess I was mistaken about which birthday we're celebrating this year.

“Today, the people of Merrimack and all of New Hampshire proved that organized, local voices are more powerful than a federal agency’s ruthless expansion,” she said. “This is a victory for us and all of New England but it is not the end of the fight.” www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/24/m...

Is the president mocking the U.S. women’s hockey team on a celebratory call with the men’s team going to attract even an iota of the sustained handwringing that the idea of trans athletes disadvantaging women’s sports has gotten

UT-Austin is hiring a free speech czar. Among the "preferred qualifications" is experience in law enforcement. What could possibly go wrong?

When I wrote Section 230 I did so knowing it would be critical for protecting free speech online. 30 years later and it’s one of the last things standing in the way of Republican censorship of the internet. Here’s to many more years of defending this vital safeguard of free speech.

A thoughtful perspective: "We need to help students grow into the difficulty of reading. The best way to do that is not to 'meet them where they are,' a bromide that has become doctrine for higher education. We have to do as Whitman says instead: Stop somewhere ahead and wait for them to catch up."

It’s the “season of love and giving”…but this year, doesn’t it seem more like a “season of fear and taking”? Like many of you, I’ve been saddened by the human impact of draconian government budget cuts and how angry many housed Americans are at unhoused Americans. 🧵 1 of 9

Highlighting this article in light of today's Supreme Court argument in Cox v. Sony: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Jim Ryan's letter is not just surreal and troubling; it provides a series of deeply sobering lessons—about the perils facing public universities today; about what it means to "work with" this Department of Justice; & about what leadership does (and doesn't) entail at this especially fraught moment.

No notes.

Tomorrow. Let’s win this, Virginia. abigailspanberger.com/vote

Really excellent piece by @sivav.bsky.social. Anyone who cares about higher education (or free expression or democracy) should read this essay.

Essential reading. Universities must stand together on this.

Seems like a governmental pyramid scheme -- the early joiners are promised untold riches and expected to recruit others, and everyone but the one at the top loses in the end.

A letter to Alan Garber & John Manning

All this built-in generative AI is starting to feel like a technological snowplow parent -- popping up at the first opportunity to offer to clear the path and ease the difficulties that actually foster cognitive development, leaving a thin sheet of ice in its wake.

You can never bend the knee enough to appease an authoritarian bully. This is a devastating blow to academic freedom & freedom of speech at Columbia. Never in the history of this nation has there been an administration so intent on the utter destruction of higher education as we know it.

Talk about The Wire, Sopranos, Game of Thrones all you want, but the greatest US television program ever made is Sesame Street. It's not even close. 50+ years of treating kids across class, ethnicity, religion not as mini-consumers...but as citizens with a stake in this world.

"Alligator Alcatraz" is wrong and media should not use it. It's propaganda. Alcatraz held people convicted of crimes, particularly violent crimes. The Florida camp holds people *not* convicted of any crime. If they had been, they'd be in prison elsewhere. The site is a textbook concentration camp.

💯 Modeling this is one way: "That's a great question. I'm not sure of the answer myself. Let's talk through how we might get there, and then I'll think about it some more and get back to you."

Last month there were allegations that some of my students may have used generative AI on my final exam. The incident led me to give some serious thought to how we are dealing with these tools in the professional education context. Here’s what I wrote to my students: jeremysheff.com/2025/06/02/g...

Definitely no. Apart from the homogeneity this is likely to encourage, it will almost certainly have disparate impacts. Yet another part of the application that applicants with resources will learn how to strategize around.

Defending our civil liberties isn’t new to us, it’s true to us. Support our work and join the fight.

Steve Kerr: "I believe in academic freedom. I think it's crucial for all of our institutions to be able to handle their own business the way they want to. And they should not be shaken down and told what to teach, what to say, by our government. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions - rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking steps to make sure students can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect. Let’s hope others follow suit.

Along with @prmalone.bsky.social, @heidikitrosser.bsky.social, and several colleagues at Stanford, I filed this amicus brief on behalf of 363 law professors in support of Perkins Coie and the rule of law. We will file similar briefs for Jenner and Wilmer Hale law.stanford.edu/publications...

Fantastic essay, and a model for how to thoughtfully respond to feedback. The key quote: "Although these are unprecedented times, a news headline should not quietly aid the erosion of our social consensus about the law, even if we ourselves are struggling to do our jobs because of that erosion."

Very much agree. One of the great benefits of the Internet age is that it can bring before the public eye things that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. That is also one of its great challenges.

One columnist, a professional pundit, is living in a paranoid delusion. The other, a sociologist, is living in America.

As the Trump administration & many state governments appear poised to accelerate attacks on higher education as a public good, the AAUP urges colleges & universities to resist the coming onslaught of political interference & defend the core values of higher education. 🧵 www.aaup.org/news/against...

Last year, dozens of universities adopted "institutional neutrality" statements on the principle that they did not want to chill faculty or student speech. Institutional silence in the face of this is chilling faculty and student speech far more than any statement ever could.

Here is an open letter signed from UChicago AAUP signed by over 200 faculty to our administration on what we believe this moment requires: uchicagoaaup.wordpress.com

BREAKING: We're sending an open letter to universities across the country, offering support and urging them to reject pressure to punish international students and faculty for exercising their First Amendment rights. Schools must hold firm against the Trump administration's censorship attempts.

‘Move fast and break things’ only works for people who have never had to clean up after themselves.

This trademark application was filed at the USPTO earlier this week for a long list of services, including: 1/3

This is a must-read for leadership in higher education. ⬇️

Reporters, please use some Socratic Method: (1) listen to and reflect on what the interviewee actually says (2) ask follow-up questions (3) so that the interviewee and those watching the exchange understand when problematic reasoning is being used.

It’s time for universities to speak up - together, now, with strength in numbers. Many of us warned that universities can never be “neutral” because we have a mission. And if we dont defend it, who will ? slate.com/life/2025/02...

Just renewed my drivers license for RealID. I advise every transgender person, just as I did with passports, to not wait to renew your ID. Get that done now - many states let you do it online, schedule appointments, etc. Don't get caught flat footed if/when Trump turns RealID against us.

My op-ed: "Colleges and universities ... seem to be hoping that their muted responses — and affirmative acquiescence — will spare them. ...This sort of acquiescence will not only fail to protect institutions, but will expose all of us to further repression." stanforddaily.com/2025/01/28/f...

A lot of folks have great resources circulating—adding ours to the mix. Here's ACLU of Virginia's Know Your Rights / What To Do If Stopped By Police or ICE, translated in English, Spanish, French, Dari & Pashto, plus Va. immigration legal services orgs & contact info: www.acluva.org/en/know-your...

The federal hiring freeze that went into effect earlier this week has resulted in several of our law students losing summer internships and post-graduate jobs with federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, the IRS, the PBGC, and more. /1