“We solemnly vow to dismantle systemic barriers to inclusion—such as shared governance, apolitical job searches, and the discriminatory practice of vetting ideas—and to ensure that all viewpoints, however dubious, enjoy equal footing in the academy.”

“No educator would require students to smoke cigarettes to learn about nicotine’s ill effects on their health…If the medium is the message, then using generative AI in a course on climate change or sustainability might end up teaching the wrong lesson.” —Debra J. Rosenthal

"By leveling the intellectual playing field, we seek to achieve a more democratic university to bring about a less democratic world."

"For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to the underrepresentation of discredited viewpoints in elite higher education." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wer...

If you at the Cultural Evolution Society meeting this week - come check out Dunstan Matungwa presenting on Tanzania’s extraordinary contributions to anthropology and the priorities of Tanzanian scholars for the future of cross-national collaboration. 🇹🇿 🌍 🌎 🌏

New review and meta-analysis of animal impacts on ecosystem function🖥️ 🌳 🌍 👇️ buff.ly/RTz1S0m

FWIW, I don’t think the major problem in my field, or related ones, is that people need to move faster & produce more. I read a lot of papers as part of the job, and I’m increasingly convinced we’d benefit from fewer papers and better ones, not more mediocre work produced ever more “efficiently.”

One side is like “can we disenfranchise all the Black voters by this weekend” and the other is like gotta follow the rules that govern the rules that control the rulebook

"to our campus community" emails be like "canvas is down; we are monitoring the situation" "scary legislation is getting passed; we are monitoring the situation" "ppl are getting kidnapped; we are monitoring the situation" "ppl are getting shot; we are monitoring the situation"

What happened in US science & higher ed. 🧪 May 7,2026 - Canvas hack - delays to J1 visa program - major win in lawsuit over DOGE-terminated NEH grants & more buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

But when will he launch his OnlyFans? www.npr.org/2026/05/08/n...

I think the fact that Iran apparently blew the shit out of our expensively defended Gulf bases and the regime that refused to embed journos for the first time in our history covered that up should be a much bigger story.

They hacked Canvas during finals week. This is why the faculty need a secure ballroom.

Over/under on how long until faculty somewhere get an admin email blaming them for grades not being submitted because they didn't preemptively download student work from Canvas in case of a global hacker attack

Not finals week in NZ, but can confirm our Canvas-based course management system is down. Building global single points of failure into dozens of countries' education systems via huge edtech providers is such a great idea /sarcasm.

Kind of surprised that this hasn't been bigger news. It's finals week for a whole lot of universities, and yet, Canvas (a learning/grading platform used by ~9,000 schools globally) is currently inaccessible because of a pay-or-have-your-data-leaked hack. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

We are all watching the same movie today

A tale in two acts... SO FAR. #CanvasDown #Instructure #HackAttack

This is terrible.

How to NOT rescue a stranded whale. jfc. #2026MMM

#scicomm 🧪📣

Weaponized Opossums #2026MMM www.tampabay.com/news/environ...

hacked and hewn canvas courses into AI slop is the educational equivalent of snorting sugar packets for nutrition.

No food here, only sticks. 🎥Bart Coppens

hacked and hewn canvas courses into AI slop is the educational equivalent of snorting sugar packets for nutrition.

Say what you will about agentic AI replacing lots of jobs, but I want to hear about how industry is going to handle when human managers of agentic AI start sexually & romantically harassing their AI staff creating a bizarro hostile work environment for human peer bystanders... is HR ready?

The best time to speak out on all of this was a year and a half ago. The tenth best time is now:

I escaped poverty because I am a scientist. And I am a scientist because of the National Science Foundation. A 🧵:

All those books about the declines and falls of empires that I never read.... do they cover how dumb things were? I was unprepared for how dumb things were going to get.

it is important to emphasize that this was *the point*. this was *intentional*. elon musk is a vicious white supremacist who thinks poor african children ought to die, so that the world can be whiter

What better time than #FossilFriday to read The Cambrian Tales, an illustrated story about an adventuring party of Cambrian weirdos, loosely inspired by Chaucer? You'll find it in #InverteFestAnthology, which dropped today! Art by @poodlewool.bsky.social, words by me saimihanma.com/wp-content/u...

RFK Jr has been attacking Medicaid-funded caregiving all week. For @motherjones.com, I spoke to a parent on how these payments helps her family keep her disabled son at home. Her son is one of 155 kids in Oregon who has a parent who is a paid caregiver. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

I know SO many parents of kids with my son’s seizure disorder who can’t keep jobs because of the high and unpredictable demands of a child with a Dravet, and no childcare system can handle it either. Paid caregiving for parents is CRITICAL. Fuck this shitbag.

"If you have too much data it's all gonna run together, you're gonna lose your audience." Also, data you use must be meaningful, not just stuck in for the sake of having a number. @tarahaelle.bsky.social @asjahq.bsky.social session in using data in your stories #journalism

More people need to learn about Lysenkoism and the effectively permanent downfall of Russian genetics research (and also their food supply) due to ideological capture of science Because history might not repeat but it rhymes.

"I've made a huge tiny mistake"

"Well, it's all right Even if you're old and grey Well, it's all right You still got somethin' to say Well, it's all right... Ridin' around in the breeze Well, it's all right If you live the life you please" #2026MMM www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Nightwell Beast merch! Coming soon!

Nothing has killed more soldiers in the history of humanity than disease. While worst is a more complicated question Hegseth is absolutely the dumbest secretary of defense the United States has ever had. bsky.app/profile/ones...

My institution relentlessly going whole hog on AI has the one benefit of inspiring colleagues to be completely hilarious- www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/fre...

There's actually a fun story behind this: the guy who was NYC superintendent of school buildings from 1891 to 1923 was an architect who believed in holistic learning, and wanted to inspire kids to rise out of poverty by giving them a sense of the possibility of granduer through construction.

Media people think I'm funny and/or crazy when I start every conversation about Murthy, the CenSorShIp InduStrial ComPlex, CISA, etc with "So some election deniers did a thing..." But it has been the whole game the whole time and this article explains it: www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Please join us on Thursday, April 16 at noon (AZ time!) for our next CEMinar with Dr. Krystal Tsosie @kstsosie.bsky.social #EvMed asuevents.asu.edu/event/cemina...

Always good news to see these little rapscallions doing well

It's such a low-key resistance move but talking about not using AI, especially in a professional context, is so important in working against "inevitability" narratives and so powerful in identifying who your people are — and in ensuring there are more of us all the time.

A powerful man sexually pursuing a young woman who works for him is oppressive. It immediately limits and reshapes her future to her detriment, whether she is physically forced into it or not. It’s coercion either way, and that is why it’s so wrong. It’s an abuse of power.