News from UMass Boston today... Feels great to be here in light of all the "enrollment cliff" hand wringing. UMass Boston has welcomed its largest in-state first-year class ever, with 1,994 admitted students drawn from a record pool of more than 22,000 applicants. www.umb.edu/news/recent-...

On September 30 at 12pm EST, the Learning & Teaching in Educational Leadership SIG is hosting a special panel discussion on AI in educational leadership programs. Please consider attending. Link: fau-edu.zoom.us/j/8764448197...

Leadership for social justice folks! Please check this posting out. And feel free to DM me. I just started with UMass this fall but I have a good feel for the vibes and the expectations, esp. in contrast to previous experiences. My short take: I am so so happy and lucky to be here!

Calling all leadership for social justice scholars... Take a look at this posting. We are SERIOUS about social justice here and this would be a great landing point if you are too!!! employmentopportunities.umb.edu/boston/en-us...

This is so interesting!!! Bluesky to me has felt like a very different experience vs Twitter. Honestly, it feels a bit like a waste of time. My posts feel less visible. I've been thinking about quitting and honestly that feels very freeing, to exit academic social media.

New publication! And I realized today that I currently have **four** in review. Hoping more to follow soon! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

When professors experience racism (sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc) at work, that’s part of their service load. It takes work to deal with that and still come back and do your job. That’s service to the department. It’s deeply unfair service. But it is service.

I am excited to officially announce that this fall I am beginning a new role as an Assistant Professor in the Leadership in Education department at @umassboston.bsky.social I am joining some fabulous colleagues doing important social justice work. And I can't wait to be back in my home state! 🎉🎉

Positive news this AM. Got an R&R, yay, and I am at the final stage of writing another MS where I just have to input all my references from Zotero (I do that at the end so the fields don't slow down my doc). Plugging away at it all as the world burns around me.

Today I was looking at schools for my daughter, was curious about charter options. One I looked at stated it is is only open for a half day every Wednesday. I wondered to myself, is this one of the subtle ways charters shape their student body? Getting into school age is going to be a journey!

The Trans+ Virtual Centre of Excellence invites you to apply to present at our first annual Symposium on 8th July: www.gsmd.ac.uk/whats-on/tra... Deadline for submissions 28th April #AcademicSky 🌈🎓 #Conference #OpenCall #Symposium #Opportunity #Queer #LGBTQIA2S+ #LGBT

Do I know anyone on here who has some expertise in Interrupted Time Series designs? I have a few quick questions on it.

I feel as an academic that we need leadership. In our institutions and more broadly. I don't have the safety to make a stand alone (at the end of the day I need to feed my kid) so I need someone in leadership to lead. I feel rudderless and helpless. And everyone around me is business as usual. 🙁

How are we just continuing to operate as normal in this environment? Projects cut include efforts to “care for mothers and infants, fight disease, provide clean drinking water and advance countless other critical, lifesaving efforts around the world.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/u...

Excellent host and guest. Worth a watch. @marclamonthill.bsky.social @aljazeeraenglish.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ih7...

It's that time of year to circulate this list of orgs for those seeking ed policy jobs/internships. Please let me know if there are opportunities/orgs I should add. Good luck out there! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Is it ethical to use AI to grade student papers? IMO not at all, but I know some have gone that route. What do you think?

Upcoming special event via the LTEL SIG re: AI. Link: fau-edu.zoom.us/j/8162895231...

Colleagues--Please consider filling out this one-question Google Form on self-care during this time. This is to inform a feature Div A (not yet on Bluesky) is going to do for their next newsletter. Responses are anonymous. Please share widely. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Snowday #3 here in Norfolk. While I haven't been able to get much work done with my now four-year-old at home, I did make this quasi-igloo today! And now I'm super sore and think I might have a sunburn in my eyes from the snow 😂. But this still feels like an accomplishment!

Here, I explain how the February 14 "Dear Colleague" letter is a widely expansive distortion of the court’s ruling in SFFA. Institutional responses should remain focused on areas that the Supreme Court addressed and not expand to those clearly outside its purview. www.chronicle.com/article/hitt...

New piece! JCEL case exploring an instance of white fragility within one preparation program classroom. Would be great as a jumping-off point in a beginning session of a course that discusses issues of race and injustice more broadly. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I guess I am a masochist for service because I somehow agreed to do *three* dissertation award committees this year........ The good thing is that these excellent dissertations are giving me lots of hope for the future of our field!!

I have talked with several folks today and late last week who missed this EO. I want to elevate this. Yes, it is an EO and we are unsure of the teeth behind it. But this is a glimpse of what is to come, and this begins to delve into higher ed.

Also see here www.commerce.senate.gov/services/fil...

States & local districts, not the fed, set curriculum & other policy. That is core to our federal system. See federal code here. EO fiat cannot change that.

How would you feel if you heard someone who leads accessibility work in schools say "we want to make sure people aren't working the system?" Bc I felt shocked....

"The growing body of rigorous research demonstrates that well-designed education-freedom programs improve student achievement and cause nearby public schools to improve their performance." Citations would be helpful. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

well in good life news, we have a hermit crab who went down in his/her sand to molt in late November and has been down since then... it's this crab's first molt, which is usually the most precarious. well, crab came up yesterday and is totally okay with fresh exoskeleton!

Posted on r/law today.

Now extrapolate that to a time when: You don’t know if you should evacuate for that hurricane because NOAA is underfunded. You’re missing an important piece of mail because you didn’t upgrade to the premium subscription of the private letter company. Everyone’s sick because what’s a CDC?

Yes. We need to wait and see and look to legal guidance.

Huge executive order relevant to all of us in educator preparation. This will effectively ban the discussion of teaching justice topics in educator preparation classrooms. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

"You frighten people"--Sen Whitehouse to Kennedy Yep.

Okay re: this "resignation" buyout--Fed employees who agree to resign are exempted from RTW and will WFH until September. So they are still working. The lack of clarity on this has been frustrating. Also "Fork in the Road" subject line is exactly what Elon did at Twitter. www.opm.gov/fork

NEW: My staff has confirmed reports that Medicaid portals are down in all 50 states following last night's federal funding freeze. This is a blatant attempt to rip away health care from millions of Americans overnight and will get people killed.

Here is the list of grants being analyzed. www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

Okay so Karoline Leavitt just said that THIS EO was the advanced notice on last night's memo...

Please call your elected officials to advocate against this "pause" on grants. www.usa.gov/elected-offi...

@bobbyscott.house.gov Please follow suit in working against this... Our local universities, non-profits, and other important projects are all at risk.

Yes and add to this that the people reviewing our grants are all political appointees, not career folks. This is textbook authoritarianism.

Need this in VA. My students have said they've gotten zero guidance from their districts on what to do.

#Trump #Musk #MAGA #ItsACult #Dominionism #TheFourthReich #Project2025 #Nationalism #AmericaFirstPolicyInstitute #Plutocracy #Kakistocracy #Populism #IDU #StandUp Trump’s neofascism is here now. Here are 10 things you can do to resist. ⏬ Bluesky article thread (8 min) with extra links 📖 🍿 🔊

This will continue as universities are strong-armed into complying with the executive order I posted yesterday.

Okay so adding onto my previous panic... So any grants given by federal government can only be given to parties that certify they do not operate any programs promoting DEI. This is going to destroy DEI work in any university that seeks federally-funded grants... www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Is anyone else doing social justice research and teaching terrified of what's coming down the pike for us? www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/u...

Hi academic friends! I am teaching a dissertation proposal seminar this semester and seeking examples of proposals in educational research. If you are willing to share yous, please let me know/DM me!

Educ researchers, LPI is hiring! Come work with me 😀 learningpolicyinstitute.org/about/career...

For my social justice class my students wrote cultural/identity autobiographies for their finals. Reading them now. It is both a privilege to have this glance into students' backgrounds and experiences, and also devastating to hear some of their stories, particularly from my white positionality.

From a student's journal in my social justice class this semester. These are all educators who have little training in justice issues and the class is meant to build their critical consciousness as a foundation for SJ leadership action. Teaching educators about SJ is so meaningful to me.