Former counselor to RFK Jr’s predecessor:

The new reality that is emerging in Texas is that certain topics or ideas are simply off the table in the classroom. The censorship of academic speech and entire fields of knowledge in service to an ideology poses an unprecedented danger to the future of higher education. #AcademicFreedom

“‘Solidarity’ sounds grand and heroic. In reality, it means holding hands not just with admirable men and women, but with people you don’t like. People whose preferences, miens, and prior judgments are foolish, or priggish, or worse.” open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

“What started with lawmakers weaponizing their platforms against civil servants has morphed into a statewide directive to hunt down and fire educators for opinions shared on their personal social media accounts,” said Zeph Capo, president of Texas AFT.

“What’s so striking here...is that this is allegedly all about antisemitism, & almost nothing in the demand letter is actually about addressing antisemitism nor does it even reference or discuss all the things that universities have done to address alleged antisemitism.”

Andrew Ryder’s The Challenge to Academic Freedom in Hungary “illustrates how reactionary campaigns against higher education are not only a response to the rise of academic capitalism but also in some ways a fulfillment of that program,” writes @hankreichman.bsky.social in a review for #Academe.

"Right now, Beijing is offering cheap, clean power, employment, trade and a route to prosperity. Washington is offering tariffs, policy chaos, White nationalist memes and South Korean workers in shackles after a raid on an EV battery factory." www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

“What we in academia cannot look away from & what surely needs more attention, however, are Kirk’s actions, rarely dwelt upon by commentators who seem to buy the line that his main activity involved debating opponents on campus.” — @hankreichman.bsky.social

I have some thoughts. #Academia academeblog.org/2025/09/19/t...

My mom called me last night about the Kimmel firing, saying "This is how Hitler got started!" I quickly responded, "By firing the late night tv hosts?" Turns out, mom was right.

So, a university president fired a professor because they taught a course that discussed there being more than two genders, and now the university president is being fired for not having fired the professor quickly enough, is where we're at. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/u...

The last political column I was allowed to write in the @washingtonpost.com was a criticism of Obama. His people took issue with my piece, but we were respectful. Now he is tweeting in support of me. This is how free political speech and respect for debate *actually works*. Or used to work.

"let’s be frank: Practicing politics in the face of angry people on the internet, or the idiotic spokesmen of a failing presidency, as frightening or annoying as it can be, requires somewhat less courage." www.unpopularfront.news/p/this-is-it

Not really an overstatement to say that the test of a free society is whether or not comedians can make fun of the country's leader on TV without repurcussions.

Meanwhile, Brian Kilmeade, who advocated killing all homeless people, still has a cushy Fox job.

The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians has released a statement on protecting academic freedom and due process. You can read the full statement on our blog, linked here: berksconference.org/2025/be...

The remarks weren’t “about Charlie Kirk,” they were about how this administration is using Kirk’s death as an excuse to shut down critics … and they responded by proving him completely correct.

A free and democratic society cannot silence comedians because the President doesn’t like what they say. This is an attack on free speech and cannot be allowed to stand. All elected officials need to speak up and push back on this undemocratic act.

This is what infuriates me with the Right's attacks on higher ed: they are profoundly anti-student. They hold young people in contempt. They assume students mindlessly swallow anything they're told, that they cannot think for themselves. They couldn't be more wrong about what we and our students do.

“What Texas State is doing seems to me to be so obviously unlawful — and so likely to lead to a successful lawsuit — that they must be more afraid of something else, like running afoul of the political priorities of state or federal officials”

if Jimmy Kimmel's political humor is too hot for you to handle, I'm not sure "snowflake" even cuts it as a term of derision for the level of fragility you've achieved

“A.A.U.P. & a coalition of labor [unions] sued the Trump administration, [to stop] the govt from “continuing to use the unlawful threat of fed funding cuts…to illegally coerce the U.C. into suppressing free speech and academic freedom rights.” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/u...

Me: “What’s so striking here…is that this is allegedly all about antisemitism, & almost nothing in the demand letter is actually about addressing antisemitism..Nor does it even reference or discuss all the things that universities have done to address alleged antisemitism.” wapo.st/4ns7UQI

“On Tuesday afternoon, a coalition of UC unions and faculty organizations will hold a protest at UC San Francisco before the kickoff of a two-day board of regents meeting, the trustees’ first public convening since the UCLA crisis unfolded.”✊ www.latimes.com/california/s...

NEW: Recently we reported on L.A. honor student and track star Nory Sontay Ramos and her mom Estela, deported after a routine immigration check-in. Weeks after we met them in Guatemala, where they were in hiding, Estela died suddenly. www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/d...

The University of California receives $17 billion annually in federal funds. Its president is warning of a possible Trump push across the system, making current federal cuts at UCLA and elsewhere seem “minor in comparison to the threat that looms” www.latimes.com/california/s...

With added support. Be there, UC faculty! #Academia.

UC Faculty! Time to take a stand.

Must read www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-g...

Finally an acknowledgment in the NYT that Kirk was responsible for the vile Professor Watchlist by the great @jamellebouie.net. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/o...

I am not on Kirk’s professor “watch-list,” But I have been pursued several times by student “journalists” affiliated with his organization who have demanded that I comment my blog posts and harassed me when I refused to respond to their emails or return their calls.

in the interest of being totally fair and balanced about charlie kirk, sally has opted to using her platform as a staff writer for the atlantic and its attendant assumption of good faith (waning though it might be) to pretend this clip never happened

"many liberals seem to be trying to mollify the right-wing crackpots. Maybe the worst thing I’ve seen today is Ezra Klein’s smarmy “Charlie Kirk practiced politics exactly the right way"..moral vacuuity with a heavy dose of clueless white privilege

Polish Foreign Minister responds to Trump’s latest weak dipshittery.

An important detail of today's shooting is that Utah is one of only two states in the country that allow campus carry. I hope that this decision is revisited.

So, tomorrow every republican is going to show up to work with this pin and tell the American people that it's "not the time" to discuss sensible gun laws, right?

No elected official Democratic party will be as cruel about Kirk's death as Mike Lee was about the death of Melissa Hortman. wisconsinexaminer.com/2025/06/17/s...

To be clear, no one should bail out Kirk’s killer. But political violence was wrong both when he found it funny and when it found him. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

I'm deep in writing about the DLC right now and stuff like this is just such profoundly powerful subversion. The bad guys KNOW this works, and that it proves their perennial claims about "centrism" as the way to win election to be total bullshit. So they're melting. youtu.be/x__Cu2MLxEU?...

So glad ICE is in Chicago. The city is a lawless hell-scape. Blues musicians wrecking hundreds of police cars. High schoolers doing weird scientific sex experiments. Kids home alone during the holidays. Women killing their husbands and lovers and then SINGING about it sassily. This has to stop.

When even Rand Paul thinks you’re despicable.

In April, the AAUP & our Harvard chapter sued the Trump admin for demanding that Harvard censor speech & restructure core operations or else face $8.7 billion in funding cuts. We hope this decision clarifies to Harvard’s administration that bargaining w/ tyrannical authoritarians is unacceptable.

One key point this article makes is that—though the attack on the Humanities at Oregon may not necessarily be against Jewish Studies—eliminating faculty in a number of Humanities programs also means the de-facto elimination of Jewish Studies. Don’t cut Humanities, period. www.jta.org/2025/09/03/u...

Students being progressive is not a bigger problem than a sustained assault by an authoritarian president, please get a grip www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Perfect tRump obituary🤣😂

Stakhanovites for Trump!

And yet again kolkhoz harvest set records! The Great Leader is all-knowing. (And food prices skyrocket.)