Given the clear parallels between the new Vanderbilt "First Principles" and the text of the letter, I would be shocked if Vanderbilt didn't play a large role in the discussions www.vanderbilt.edu/declaration/ Reminder that faculty played no role in drafting or approving the first principles

Declaration

The University and Its Purpose: A Declaration of First Principles was adopted by the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust in June 2026. The declaration is organized around three core purposes: Pathbre...

vanderbilt.edu

Dominique Baker@bakerdphd.bsky.social · 2h ago

A) If everyone loved this letter, I feel like we might hear something different from the interview subjects in this article B) I don't think I will be invited to the AAU holiday party www.chronicle.com/article/coll...

Please share widely: We're hiring!📣 The Departments of Psychological Science and Neuroscience at @pomonacollege.bsky.social are seeking candidates for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Psychological Science and Neuroscience. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/32248

Extreme parenting fail last night: Me: goodnight C! 4yo, out of nowhere: mom, what happened to the dinosaurs Me (knowing he’s heard this before in preschool): remember, the meteor came and they went away? 4yo: They got dead? (Sobs) I MISS THEM

A friend just recounted getting a nice compliment from a colleague & it LIT UP her face. Then someone to whom I sent a syllabus in May wrote to tell me very things about it, which made my day. The point of this post is that people want recognition and giving it takes nothing & makes things better.

Scientist friends, please read the thread & share your thoughts (Doesn’t have to be public, you know how to reach me!) re:blast radius question, we have a survey out right now trying to get a handle on overall impacts, how close labs are to funding cliff & coping strategies

Nicole Rust@nicolecrust.bsky.social · 14h ago

US scientists: Going into fall 26, how are you thinking about things? Following Fall 24 events and a tumultuous spring 25, I remember a convo with a colleague in which we agreed we just needed to wait things out until fall 25 and we'd have some clarity about the landscape (eg for funding). /1

If any of my online only friends were wondering about the vibe I bring to events - here's a random selection of photos of me from the wonderful Storymakers adventure. I swear my mouth does sometimes close 🤣

I was inspired by this story of a PhD student who retracted her paper because she found a critical coding error. This is the right thing to do, but it takes courage. She won the Ctrl Z Award celebrating scientists who discover errors and correct the record. www.science.org/content/arti...

ScienceAdviser Exclusive: Meet the inaugural winners of the Ctrl Z Award

Today in Science and science: Ice age hunters’ penchant for female mammoths, a detailed vagal map, and more

science.org

Listen, it should be illegal. Full stop. Cars minus focus are dangerous. Nothing should compete with that focus. But the premise of data economics is ads = free or discounted goods. Put another way: you pay a premium to be exempted from ads. How do you justify an ad in a $100k car?

In very-related news, our team discovered the limit today on just how many comments & track changes one document can withstand before it crumbles. Not in a “this thing is glitchy” way, think more of a pop-up window says, “Nope, you’re done. No more” Proud of us? Yes. A little scared? Also yes.

Erin Kissane@kissane.myatproto.social · yesterday

The artifacts we knit together and publish are a tiny slice of what we come to know inside our teams and circles, and, you know, we hope they're useful! But we're also continuously practicing the work of collectively and meticulously figuring shit out. It's bigger on the inside than the outside.

Cozy time

Today, I attended Bhattacharya's "Scientific Freedom" lecture with Carole Hooven on the "reality" of human sex differences. Knowing the premise of the lecture series & Carole Hooven's prior writing, I had low expectations for the scientific quality of the lecture. It was worse than I expected. 🧵

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story about the recent NIH grant terminations. www.post-gazette.com/news/educati... 1/3

So far, terminated NIH grants have cost University of Pittsburgh $40 million

The federal government has unexpectedly ended two more research grants at the University of Pittsburgh, which in one case, upends 16 years of research...

post-gazette.com

Our department is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology. Ad below! psychology.northwestern.edu/people/facul...

Job Opportunities: Department of Psychology - Northwestern University

psychology.northwestern.edu

Classic collective action problem. "The universities are mostly quiet or spending more time competing with each other for the spotlight rather than banding together to strengthen the academic ecosystem."

Stanford AAUP@stanfordaaup.bsky.social · yesterday

Universities need to stop half-assing their response to the all-out assault on science (and higher education more broadly) if we are to have a hope of surviving. We should know that a concept of a plan is not going to work. Universities need to coordinate and take bold action or we're cooked.

Face of a little guy who JUST DISCOVERED blackberries grow on the side of the road and can be plucked by careful, neckering little lips.

New from me: More than a trillion dollars flow through the federal government in grants. We have more and more evidence that the Trump administration has been directing those grants on purely partisan grounds, denying them to blue states. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/governing-...

Governing without Accountability

Trump only wants to be President of some of America, not all of America

donmoynihan.substack.com

My friend is a co-lead on this project (my wife is a collaborator). Let me tell you what it was about and why Battacharya’s decision simply amplifies the consequences of structural racism that the project was attempting to understand. A 🧵 1/12

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · 2d ago

Fresh grant terminations at NIH 🤬 www.science.org/content/arti... 1/7

I say this as somebody who, on balance, thinks there is a place for institutional neutrality. When American civil society is facing an unprecedented authoritarian attack, if your response is to signal neutrality, that is simply an act of moral cowardice. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Harvard Must Take a Stand for Democracy | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson

To silence ourselves in the name of neutrality would not only violate our own policy but also abdicate our broader civil responsibility.

thecrimson.com

Erin J. Wamsley 🧠📈😴@wamsleylab.bsky.social · 2d ago

This is an unprompted assault on academic freedom & free speech from a prestigious PRIVATE university: "the university will implement a policy of institutional neutrality that requires university leaders at all levels to abstain from actions or speech relating to political and social matters” 4/x

OMB, HHS, and NIH_Leadership™ seem to think this is all a big game. They don't give a flying fuck about the taxpayers, research study participants, researchers, or anything else related to science in their quest to further their unrelated political agenda. 7/7

Inside Out 2: Wow, Those Guys Are Jerks

ALT: Inside Out 2: Wow, Those Guys Are Jerks

static.klipy.com

Trump is astonishingly good at dominating attention. We find that he consistently dominates media coverage and what (crucially) he dominates what people in open-ended survey responses can remember about political news. He shows how someone with media skills can use the attention economy.

A scientist who just lost her grant cuts straight to the heart of it: “Requiring that NIH only fund work leading directly to a drug or other biomedical intervention… would rule out much basic research funded by the agency.” It’s pathetic & harmful to limit our understanding of health like this

Jenna Norton@jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 2d ago

More terminations out of NIH. www.science.org/content/arti...

This is such a good piece by @jaseokundaye.bsky.social. Excuse the long extract in the screenshot, but these points are really important.

Naaz Rashid@naazrashid.bsky.social · 2d ago

"If we let only our opponents tell the story, then it becomes a parable about the hazards of striving for progress and equality, rather than about the institutions that reduced equality to a mere PR exercise." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

BlueSky: I give you the very grown up and highly professional Astronomer Royal for Scotland, as quoted in the Times. 🤣 #solareclipse 🔭 www.thetimes.com/uk/science/a...

Newsletter delivery scheduled for 11am Eastern tomorrow morning -- if you sign up now, you'll receive it then! 👉 mackkatie.activehosted.com/f/1 👈

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 2d ago

🎉 I'm bringing back my e-mail newsletter! 🎉 You can sign up here: mackkatie.activehosted.com/f/1 If you do, you'll receive a special edition (tomorrow, probably) with more info about my NEW BOOK (being published in March), including all the pre-order links, a Q&A about the content, and the cover!

I can’t stop watching this. It makes me so happy.

MLB Daily News@insidemlbnews.bsky.social · 2d ago

Jefry Yan celebrates his first MLB strikeout

My colleagues LOVE my feedback on NIH grants

just sang "I'm not a trad wife I just cook a lot" in a Big Pun voice while pickling onions if you want to narrow in on my exact demographic

A new survey from @knightfoundation.org and @ssrsresearch.bsky.social reveals a disquieting decline in how free Americans feel to use the freedoms protected by the #FirstAmendment without government interference or punishment. 🧵

Knight Foundation-SSRS Poll: Americans Feel Free Expression is Eroding - Knight Foundation

For more than two decades, Knight Foundation has commissioned research to better understand Americans’ lived experience with the First Amendment and free expression. As the country marks its 250th ann...

knightfoundation.org

i know votes are still being counted but the more i look at this michigan senate map the more it becomes clear that it kind of looks like a mitten

Here’s a PDF. Worth a few minutes of your time. users.wpi.edu/~zrbutzke/Do...

Adam Rawnsley@arawnsley.bsky.social · 4d ago

Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.