NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya has struggled to convince observers he has the agency’s best interests in mind—and is truly in charge. https://scim.ag/3MMXDSh

LSU is paying its previous football coach over $50 million NOT to coach there while likely guaranteeing Kiffin something approaching double that, all while having an academic hiring freeze and budget cuts across the board. What is the purpose of a university (rhetorical)?

Important essay by @stanfordaaup.bsky.social colleague Jessica Riskin. The three lessons that universities must learn: 1. Solidarity 2. Integrity, not Neutrality 3. Student Speech stanforddaily.com/2025/11/16/a...

🔑 3 key lessons Stanford must learn, from the co-president of @stanfordaaup.bsky.social 1️⃣ Solidify solidarity 🤝 2️⃣ Prioritize integrity ❤️‍🔥 3️⃣ Let students speak! 📣 stanforddaily.com/2025/11/16/a...

"The Stanford Daily et al. suit comes on the heels of a major First Amendment victory; The American Association of University Professors sued Rubio, and the court held that the Trump administration unconstitutionally targeted noncitizens for deportation based on pro-Palestinian speech."

It’s a shame BBC hasn’t yet learned that caving to bullies won’t prevent them from coming after you.

📢📢The AAUP chapter at the University of Houston has sent the following letter to admin: “We are deeply concerned that the directives outlined in Chancellor Khator's email present significant risks to academic freedom, to the integrity of our teaching mission + to the University’s legal obligations.”

“I think this initiative has as much to do with scientific research as the early [antisemitism] initiative had to do with protecting Jews. This is an extortionist move to try to hold institutions that are heavily dependent on federal funding, as research institutions are, to have leverage over them.

Again, this is an existential crisis for the entire financial & academic model of 🇺🇸 public universities, but the public doesn’t understand this, in part because our leaders have been <totally absent from the public square> on this issue. It’s maddening: bsky.app/profile/mcop...

this moment calls for deep solidarity — a kind of collective politics faculty haven't been used to practicing. proud to stand with colleagues across stanford and across the country today.

Spotted at our @stanfordaaup.bsky.social teach-in today!

Stanford Teach-In: A thread... 👇🏼🧵 #DefendHigherEd

Thread from one of our members on what federal funding changes have done to science—this was a sobering part of our teach-in today

We’ve started our Teach-In as part of the @aaup National Day of Action with @palumboliu.bsky.social talking about the implications of institutional neutrality in this moment. If we don’t engage with topics such as immigration, freedom of speech, etc, we are letting our whole community down.

Reminder! This is happening today! Hope to see you there

💥💥💥 DEFEND HIGHER ED STARTER PACK! We are building a movement to defend US higher education & have created a starter pack of AAUP chapter & ally accounts to follow. Please Share! (This list is not exhaustive. If you have suggestions, please shoot us a DM!) #DefendHighEd ⬇️⬇️⬇️ go.bsky.app/3YidJ7k

@stanfordaaup.bsky.social @stanfordpress.bsky.social @stanforddaily.com.web.brid.gy @aaup.org #SaveHigherEd

Hope the folks in our Stanford community can join us for a teach-in this coming Friday as part of the @aaup.org National Day of Action for Higher Ed! 12-1pm at White Plaza. Please share!

My wife teaches at a CSU and got her first papers this week for her Native American history class. Paper based on a widely-available online source. About half the papers had the exact same argument. Prose was different, but argument was the exact same. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/t...

Perhaps a new phase in anti-academia actions

The research that led to these is the sort of basic research that the Trump administration is cutting, robbing future generations of scientific, technological, and health innovations. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Important thread by former Science EiC, Jeremy Berg.

As we’ve said before, no university should sign on to this compact, certainly not our own. @gjmartin.bsky.social and other Stanford AAUP colleagues explain why in this editorial👇

This @stanfordaaup.bsky.social is so necessary in this moment of attack on higher ed: "This compact is better understood as an attempt to subordinate some of the country’s most important civil society institutions to the executive branch of the federal government." stanforddaily.com/2025/10/12/f...

Agree 100% @stanfordaaup.bsky.social! “When it inevitably comes time for Stanford to choose, we must remember that we owe our loyalty not to any executive branch official but to our own foundational principles. We must be ready, when it’s our turn, to walk away.” stanforddaily.com/2025/10/12/f...

“When it inevitably comes time for Stanford to choose, we must remember that we owe our loyalty not to any executive branch official but to our own foundational principles. We must be ready, when it’s our turn, to walk away.”

From @gjmartin.bsky.social (writing for @stanfordaaup.bsky.social) laying out why no university should sign Tr*mp’s “Compact” stanforddaily.com/2025/10/12/f...

It will take a generation to rebuild the United States federal government after this demolition ends, supposing that good faith elections happen again and normal humans are elected.

Calling for solidarity against "the compact for academic excellence in higher education" ‼️ @stanfordaaup.bsky.social @stanforddaily.com.web.brid.gy @aaup.org #SaveHigherEd stanforddaily.com/2025/10/12/f...

Most of this laundry list of "overwhelming evidence" is tendentious. Let's go through them. 1) A big driver of high costs at public universities has been a decrease in state appropriations. Many public schools have been forced to act on a public/private model as a result..../1

I talked to Bill Nye — yes, former “science guy” — about President Trump’s proposed cuts to NASA funding and what they would mean.

No university should sign on to this compact

The erasure of due process harms all of us. It doesn’t matter if you’re here legally or are a citizen if you have no opportunity to prove it. In addition, *no one* should be assaulted for a civil violation.

Election Day is just four weeks away, on November 4. Our Know Your Rights guide to voting in California, available in English and Spanish, has key information including WHO can vote, HOW to register to vote, WHEN and WHERE you can cast your ballot, and tips on being an informed voter.

Huge win for free speech, thanks to @aaup.org for fighting the fight!

So, at the very least, we all need to be joining or starting an AAUP chapter: www.aaup.org/chapters/fin...

OMG this William G. Young opinion that just dropped (12:30pm) in AAUP v. Rubio. It begins with a postcard sent to Chambers and Young's reply card: "Trump has pardons and tanks, what do you have?" WGY: "We the People of the United States — you and me — have our magnificent Constitution"

"Talent and grit matter, but so do structure, transparency, and care." #ScienceWorkingLife https://scim.ag/4nCiPYg

Professors should not be fired for speaking the truth. In this case, not only was the professor fired by the department head and school dean were also both demoted, followed by the resignation of the university president…all because the professor dared to teach about gender.

The plan for NSF is to demote its director to an advisory role to what a former senior figure compared to a Soviet political commissar. Also, greatly reduce the role of rotators from academic departments to consolidate administration power. This is a disaster for science and innovation.

So much for international post-docs at American universities. I guess US Science will slip even further behind. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/u...

We are at the point in the honoring-Charlie-Kirk's-memory cycle when faculty are being fired for posting, without comment, Charlie Kirk's words. At the behest of politicians sworn to uphold the first amendment, and in public institutions covered by first amendment protections.

Working with so many friends and strangers to build a durable sense of what is happening across—so far—eight zones of American life bc of the administration’s demolition of democratic governance at @unbreaking.org. unbreaking.org

another day and another professor in Texas is fired. This time it is a historian from Texas State fired for comments he made at a conference. If you are a faculty member protect yourself. Join @texasaaup.bsky.social in Texas and @aaup.org nationwide www.president.txst.edu/communicatio...

"Work from home is bad for everyone Only a few people retain productivity Intangible office connections are gone Young people r further isolated and lonely City centers decay" -Vinay Prasad, the FDA Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, who barely comes into the office.

In a new #ScienceExpertVoices article, Seth Berkley unravels the arc of vaccine progress. https://scim.ag/3VrCDBx

This should be viewed as part of the assault on science and higher education because that’s what it is.

A reminder that PhD students are also teachers. It'll be much harder to run undergraduate programs too with this change.

🧪 And House appropriators say: no cuts to NIH budget! House subcommittee version just came out (link below). Holds NIH flat at $48 billion. To be clear: this is far from over. But a good sign that science still matters across both sides of aisle. YOUR VOICE MATTERS!!