San Jose State professor Sang Hea Kil was suspended over allegations related to a Palestine protest, and now the university plans to fire her. Omar Zahzah speaks with Kil about the precedent set by her case and the implications for academic freedom. mondoweiss.net/2026/01/san-...

J’ai perdu mon français et j’essaie de le retrouver. J’ai vraiment besoin d’échanger avec d’autres francophones pour progresser, mais je suis SUPER timide/anxieuse. Envoyez-moi un message si vous voulez être penpal en 2026???

Joyeuses fêtes à tous et à toutes depuis le Québec… SAUF aux recteurs et admins universitaires, may you step in a million sidewalk dog shits in the new year.

Post-doc positions: "Academic freedom is under pressure today. This requires rescue havens of free research. ... [we] invite early career researchers, whose work is restricted due to political pressure in the USA..." uni-freiburg.de/frias/call-f...

»Doctoral students are worried that they will have trouble putting together a viable committee to defend their Ph.D. theses, if their advisers and subject matter experts leave.« These developments are also being noticed @goetheuni.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/n...

How DeSantis destroyed a school - part deux:

Towers, who is not a social scientist, does not have a PhD, and has never been involved in “doctoral education”, wants to remake a storied center of graduate social research into a Silicon Valley Ideology trade school staffed with adjuncts and devoid of research or researchers

New School “administrators have started to implement a plan to close, overhaul or merge about 30 academic programs or majors; pause nearly all admissions to doctoral programs; and offer buyouts or early retirement to what professors say is about 40 percent of the full-time faculty.”

“I think students are really committed to their professors, professors to their students,” said Danielle Twiss, a doctoral student studying Marxist political economy who spoke to the crowd. “We’re able to fight for each other and actually protect each other.” in the @nytimes.com ❤️🖤

The New School is a beacon of higher education thanks to the labor of its faculty & staff.  I strongly urge @thenewschool.bsky.social to extend the deadline for faculty to consider separation packages, engage in good faith & protect the programs that make New School a globally renowned institution.

If you’re hanging your program-elimination decisions on financial analyses, you should really know better than to target the stats department. They will come for your spreadsheets and tables! (although of course that also makes them dangerous if you want to hide funny math)

Since I’m getting replies that seem to treat this as an merely prospective idea, I’ll point out that it was inspired by this excellent work

Is infrastructure sabotage always a destructive act led by seditious individuals? no my new article in Human Geography studies Colombian public sector workers ‘breaking’ infrastructure to oppose privatization in 1992, and argues sabotage can reshape policies, politicize society & more

one of the great, pernicious myths perpetrated about higher ed—which media, higher ed administrators, politicians, and a number of faculty are complicit in spreading—is that humanities departments close due to some combination of cratering student demand and unjustifiable cost. It’s not true

University admin should have to demonstrate understanding of “AI” actually works before they can: -buy licensing contracts -promote AI tools and especially, -use them

At my university we found that an obscure accounting decision was leading to overprojected deficits that justified austerity while channeling money into capital projects at the same time as admin was laying off teaching and research support staff. The uproar shifted $5 million back into operating.

This remains one of the most important articles to understand what is happening to higher ed. Open access! academic.oup.com/ser/article/...

Scandalous self-dealing by New School trustees

+1 but also use in-house expertise as much as possible! Smart folks exist in the university and as much as capacity allowed this can be done internally! (I’ve long been a proponent of building internal capacity)

🧵 This sounds like a pretty clear cut case of self-dealing which 501c3’s like the New School are barred from doing but it’s rarely enforced.

Yes. More of this. All of this. Do it now and don’t wait for manufactured crisis.

People should take a page out of New School faculty's book and start doing forensic accounting for their own institutions using public documents

There is an absolute fucking scandal going down at The New School, wherein at appears that the university is funnelling to a MEMBER OF THE SCHOOL’S BOARD while purging faculty and staff. This should be headline news. x.com/uaw7902/stat...

AAUP-TNS explains how the New School is vanguard in its approach to cuts, but its a model that will be rolled out elsewhere. Our fight is your fight! Solidarity is the only way forward, and no data or consultant can control or manipulate it. Join our struggle today: linktr.ee/aauptns

Update: morbid symptoms can't hold us back - we're doubling down on what we do best. Please consider supporting @unhappinesspod.bsky.social's Higher Ed Death Spiral Membership Drive! 20% off annual memberships; use code 9E144. Note: the spiral is ongoing but the drive ends on 12/31.

It seems to me The New School's 'leadership' created a budget hole then went 'oh no, a budget hole! we must attack the faculty!' That's gross but not unfamiliar as an administrator play. What's surprising from this document is that they seem to be doing so while paying many millions to a trustee?!

Logical endpoint of the financialization of the university is taking over the board so you can strip it for parts...

Last week, the New School issued voluntary separation & early retirement offers to 40% of the full-time faculty & the majority of non-union staff. These cuts to the bone are an ideological attempt to decimate historic spaces of critical inquiry & social justice. Share our statement tr.ee/qQBIDCpIuj

I just wrote a letter to the leadership of The New School via actionnetwork.org/letters/stop... Do so too, now! The attacks on TNS’ staff and students are deeply troubling and should be opposed by everyone within and outside #HigherEd #AcademicChatter #OneOfUsAllOfUs

Higher ed workers at The New School are rejecting the admin's strategies of divide and conquer to mount a unified challenge to austerity. In this AAUP TV episode, Laura Liu of AAUP-TNS talks about how faculty, students & staff come together despite weaponized employment contracts that divide them.

In 2015 I stayed as a Fulbright scholar at The New School for Social Research, as part of my PhD project on prefigurative politics. It was a formative experience to be surrounded by so many radical scholars and critical thinkers. This unique institution is of great significance, now more than ever!

We need to flood them with letters now. Write today!

"Faculty and staff—who have given decades of their lives to the university—have been given less than two weeks to accept insulting “offers” and pack up as early as January 2, 2026." Please support our colleagues at @newschoolaaup.bsky.social actionnetwork.org/letters/stop...

In solidarity with the workers at Ursinus College who are facing inhumane cuts, I am happy to do some rogue/guerrilla accounting to show how capital expenditures and executive compensation are the real culprits. Please get in touch by email if you have info to share! 💕

Newest memo demonstrating the claims of financial exigency can‘t be taken seriously drive.google.com/file/u/1/d/1...

The New School may surpass Cooper Union as the Fatcat Crime of the Century against higher learning. Every day a new WTF. Here's today's: drive.google.com/file/d/1tImd...

This is basically EVERY university in the Anglophone world.

A new outrage seems to leak out every day. This is the one that set me off. It really looks like a self-dealing fraud drive.google.com/file/d/1tImd...

When higher ed is under attack by the twin forces of authoritarianism & austerity, institutions like the New School that have historically been bulwarks of critical education & anti-fascism should be strengthened rather than destroyed. What an utter failure of leadership & imagination

So grateful for the amazing graduate students who wrote this 'Open Letter on The New School’s “Restructuring” Plans', published on @eflux.bsky.social (including link with petition to condemn admin!) @newschoolaaup.bsky.social www.e-flux.com/notes/678343...

In 2009 as today, the leadership of The New School fails to live up to its founding values

What is happening at Ursinus right now appears to be directly out of the higher ed consultant playbook. Gut the institution of those who deliver on the core academic mission to ‘cut costs’ — without acknowledging the costs of those cuts. More people should be talking about this.

I don't see any reporting about these layoffs at Ursinus when I search Google News but this is the top result that shows up - "Wall Street Comes to Ursinus" indeed

... why did the New School president last month turn down $4mill+ from trustees & donors to fund PhDs and stop the 'pause' if this is just about money? admin has made clear, they want to reshape The New School and kill its progressive, critical thought legacy

Thx friends @adamtooze.bsky.social, @astra.bsky.social, @mollycrabapple.bsky.social, @alybatt.bsky.social, @stefeich.bsky.social, @danielloick.bsky.social & others who signed condemning malicious cuts at The New School @newschoolaaup.bsky.social @aaup.org Join them! docs.google.com/document/d/1...

The extreme, ideologically-driven, fast, furious, economically reckless decisions being made by New School president & provost are NOT the simple consequence of economic need. they're a malicious disaster and must be stopped... an assault on critical thought.

The New School has long protected dissenting thought and critical scholarship. It is painful to watch an institution with such an intellectual lineage treated as a budgetary problem. At a moment defined by democratic erosion, we need the New School’s founding vision more than ever! #AcademicSky

Man, what is this horse shit. Whacking the entire GPIA but also launching some bullshit new "Center for Vibing with this Rancid Moment?"

The founding of The New School was fundamentally antagonistic to this kind of program.

a sure sign that your bold new restructuring plan is all above board is how frequently and instantly highly secretive documents get leaked. apropos nothing in particular: here’s some planning documents for, idk, “UATX at The New School”(??) what we *do* have time, energy, and money for is…wild.