At least three Virginia colleges have received bomb threats today: Bridgewater College, George Mason University and the University of Virginia. Evacuations are currently ongoing at the schools as officials are investigating.

BREAKING: Court orders the Trump-Vance admin’s Interior Dept to restore $14M in grant funding to groups advancing critical conservation work. This win reverses a politically motivated attack against orgs perceived to promote DEI and protects our clients' First Amendment rights.

Texas A&M is censoring "race and gender ideology" from the classroom. Our podcast w/ @jasperjsmith.bsky.social digs in. pod.link/1766357400/e...

In rural America, a teacher pipeline from abroad starts to dry up

"Conservatives are likely never going to be able to create universities they approve of that are anywhere near the level of the universities some of them would like to destroy." Via Nick Lemann / @newyorker.com www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

“A mountain of research proves that immigrants do not increase crime rates,” says Cato’s David Bier, testifying before a Senate Budget Committee hearing on sanctuary cities.

Many pundits, journalists, and some professors helped legitimate the basic canard here—that DEI is reverse leftist discrimination. Arbitrary, purely ideological censorship was the inevitable result. In my view, they should engage in serious reflection on professional ethics and accountability.

UNC spent $1.2 million, over 6 months, to investigate its School of Civic Life. It won’t release findings. 🤔 @ncaaup.bsky.social

Many pundits, journalists, and some professors helped legitimate the basic canard here—that DEI is reverse leftist discrimination. Arbitrary, purely ideological censorship was the inevitable result. In my view, they should engage in serious reflection on professional ethics and accountability.

Want to know more about the sweeping trend of state mandated taxpayer financed and hyper empowered civics centers, and the political project they embody, as in Ohio? See this excellent @theguardian.com article @osuaaup.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

FL deems intro textbooks in my discipline illegal. It's bc Sociology analyzes systems...it gives people the practical thinking tools to dismantle the master's house. As a fmr English Lit major, Sociology is the most powerful thing I've ever learned. I see why the Temu Savonarolas are scared of it.

New in our Reconstructing Free Expression series, from @ksabeelrahman.bsky.social: A look at the civic and informational infrastructure that underpins free expression and the reforms needed to secure it. knightcolumbia.org/blog/the-inf...

Boards of Trustees (usually unelected, not faculty), hold the power in universities. Find out what corporations your trustees also board, find out what their spouses own,+ you've found why universities enter into contracts for tech, security, R&D. FIND OUT! academeblog.org/2026/03/03/a...

My understanding is that AI companies want universities to embrace this tech so that profs and students help “train” it. Seems reasonable to ask university leaders whether their embrace of AI will use education to simultaneously refine this tech for all kinds of horrific applications.

“My friend brought all of her documents to class, just in case.” Scenes from Columbia after an ICE arrest. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

No surprises here: Texas A&M's restrictions on DEI-related teaching led to widespread censorship (including pre-compliance/self-censorship) www.chronicle.com/article/insi...

My understanding is that AI companies want universities to embrace this tech so that profs and students help “train” it. Seems reasonable to ask university leaders whether their embrace of AI will use education to simultaneously refine this tech for all kinds of horrific applications.

That's right. Worse than Pointless www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...

ICYMI | Here are some headlines from last week: 📊 Most Conservative Students Don’t Feel Persecuted on Campus 🏛️ ED’s DEI Guidance Is Dead, but Trump’s Crackdown Isn’t 📖 UNC Board OKs Definition of What Academic Freedom Is, and Isn’t Read the full weekly news update: https://bit.ly/4baSDAB

Congrats to @ncaaup.bsky.social & all who fought against this surveillance policy that would've allowed admin to hijack microphones in the classroom for secret recordings. This move would've chilled classroom discussion & suppressed students' willingness to ask questions & take intellectual risks.

Texas is on the front lines of the fight against government suppression of academic inquiry. We must continue to hold the line against those who wish to control the range of topics that can be taught in the classroom. Keep fighting. Our democracy depends on it. @texasaaup.bsky.social @texasaft.org

You can’t offer a full-throated defense of universities *and* endorse key elements of misinformation campaigns that have been used to weaken them. www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

You can’t offer a full-throated defense of universities *and* endorse key elements of misinformation campaigns that have been used to weaken them. www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

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NYT: Near the White House, hundreds of high school students protest ICE. By Campbell Robertson and Callie Holtermann Hundreds of students walked out of high schools across Washington on Friday for a rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

“The damage being done to the research enterprise across our top US universities stands in marked contrast to the systematic efforts in China to support major scientific initiatives” www.ft.com/content/845e...

Columbia President with NEW details: 5 DHS agents entered a residency with no warrant. They said they were police looking for a missing kid. Security camera even captures them showing pictures of the "kid." A campus officer asked for a warrant & their boss. They ignored him & took the student.

When it comes to autorotation higher education governance, states like Texas and Florida are using direct censorship and curricular control whereas Indiana and Iowa prefer a veneer of neoliberal rationality and create enrollment market metrics to suppress academic freedom.

Huh. Imagine that.

Huh. Imagine that.

The War On Student Speech Following disruptive pro-Palestinian protests in spring 2024, the federal government, state lawmakers and college officials have imposed sweeping restrictions on student speech, resulting in a wave of arrests and expulsions. https://bit.ly/4qXaPCq #EDUSky #HigherEd

North Carolina’s Lawrence Academy has never reported Black enrollment higher than 3% in a county whose population hovers around 60% Black. It received $518,240 in vouchers in the 2023-2024 school year to fund 86 of its over 200 students. (Published Nov. 2024)

'In the UT system nearly 46% of the population is Latino. And where Latino students are the majority in public schools, calling the histories, literatures, and political realities of these communities “controversial” is not about neutrality. It is about deciding whose knowledge is expendable.'

IMO one of the great challenges but also opportunities today is to make clear the breadth and scale of govt/tech censorship we’re facing: universities, K-12, federal grants, journalism, free assembly, online intimidation, election interference, etc. A massive censorship industrial/political complex.

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IMO one of the great challenges but also opportunities today is to make clear the breadth and scale of govt/tech censorship we’re facing: universities, K-12, federal grants, journalism, free assembly, online intimidation, election interference, etc. A massive censorship industrial/political complex.

INBOX: the police chief of Quakertown, Pa., led a group of plainclothes officers to disrupt a peaceful high school student sidewalk protest yesterday. They threw an underage girl to the ground, choked her, and disconnected all calls to the detention center where she and others are currently held.

Reminder: “the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science.” 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

💯 Lazy, populist understandings of, and attitudes toward, reading are the problem. From Jenae Cohn’s great book, Skim, Dive, Surface: “In fact, neuroscientist Stanislaus Dehaene (2009) explains that we cannot separate cultural uptake of reading knowledge from brain science of reading at all.”

Also: the entire conceit is deeply neuro-normative.

Reminder: “the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science.” 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Brandi Carlile’s “Be Human: A Concert For Minneapolis” Audio And Video Livestream Confirmed For This Saturday zurl.co/7ORWd

Ever wondered how your grant got cancelled? No we know. Some college dropout asked ChatGPT "is it DEI/woke"? www.techdirt.com/202...

So scared of knowledge. So scared of learning. So sad. Never forget. Knowledge is power. This….this.

Yesterday, those who teach Intro to Sociology at Florida colleges (as opposed to universities) received a ready-made curriculum from the state and were ordered to teach it. Yes, you read that correctly. The *state* is enforcing a curriculum on college profs, complete w/ the following restrictions:

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Informing lawmakers about how universities actually operate and why they benefit society at large remains a crucial way to defend higher ed amid the new McCarthyism.

The University of Texas System’s Board of Regents unanimously approved a rule requiring its universities to ensure students can graduate without studying “unnecessary controversial subjects,” despite warnings it could leave them less prepared for the real world.

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right. Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement. This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.