Stanford AAUP
@stanfordaaup.bsky.social
The Stanford Chapter of the @aaup.bsky.social. Fighting to preserve academic freedom for all. All Stanford academic staff are eligible to join. Opinions our own. Find out more and join here: https://aaupstanford.org
The Department of Defense has signed an unusual financial agreement with the National Institutes of Health, sparking outrage among Democrats and prompting skepticism from some in the biomedical community. https://scim.ag/4qTiMtW
Outrage greets NIH pact that could funnel biodefense research funds to Pentagon
NIH director defends interagency plan as “100% aligned with our public health mission”
scim.ag
In #ScienceUnderSiege, my co-author @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social & I emphasize that legacy outlets like the @nytimes.com are a big part of the problem. Actual statement by editorial board in today's paper: www.nytimes.com/interactive/... could have been written by a fossil fuel industry PR flack:
Hundreds of millions of dollars to be redirected from NIAID to DOD. “The Department of Defense is just not set up to deliver the scientific innovations we have come to expect and rely on from NIH” www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Revealed: inside the US military's plan to tap huge sums from the NIH
An agreement paves the way for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of projects to be transferred from the NIH’s institute for infectious diseases to the Department of Defense.
nature.com
The NIH Director confirms they are giving away biomedical research money used to develop treatments and cures for infectious diseases such as influenza, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, Ebola, and other dangerous pathogens, to the Department of Defense. Outrageous.
No faculty input. No mechanism for feedback of any kind. “The new Western civilization requirement is a direct response to what right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation & the Manhattan Institute have been calling for in terms of transformation of higher education." #academicsky
AAUP chapter @UT Austin@utaustinaaup.bsky.social · 2mo ago
I've been thinking a lot lately about criticisms of anthropology coming from various quarters. While there is plenty to criticize, I think that the received wisdom about the discipline's problems are generally off base. In this blog post, I work through some thoughts I have on the subject.
The Misunderstanding of the Anthropology Culture Wars – Monkey’s Uncle
eehh-stanford.github.io
I just noticed that if you look over cardboard Jay’s right shoulder in this shameful tableau, you can see on the video monitor that there is a memorial service for Officer David Rose going on the same day. Officer Rose tried to protect CDC employees from the man shooting at them and was killed.
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.
University science in the US needs a coherent plan
The Trump administration continues to degrade America’s scientific establishment, causing widespread harm to the country’s broader interests and well-being. Last week, the Association of American Univ...
science.org
Most-recent common ancestor of the bacterium that causes Lyme disease was about 60,000 years ago, well before there were people in the Americas. I don't think the chipmunks were doing gain-of-function experiments. Figure 3 from Walter et al. (2017): doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social · 2mo agoRFK told Dana Bash that Lyme disease “almost certainly” came from gain of function research. Which is utterly false. www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdi...
THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE POWER ACCOMPLISHES! Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who wrote comments, contacted Congress, and yelled! This is OUR WIN! @standupforscience.net www.politico.com/news/2026/08...
Senate finalizes funding patch that would block Trump’s grant overhaul
Language is included to delay the president’s move to put political appointees in charge of grant approval.
politico.com
Do you study human ecology, human behavior, or human institutions? Is your work relevant to climate change, adaptation, or sustainability? Join us at Stanford! 🌲🤓🌲 My department will be running a junior search in Environmental Behavioral Sciences this year. Happy to answer any questions.
Assistant Professor in Environmental Social Sciences, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability (Environmental Behavioral Sciences) - Stanford University, California, United States
Stanford University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the field of Environmental Behavioral Sciences within the Department of Environmental Social Sciences. The scope of t...
facultypositions.stanford.edu
www.propublica.org/article/fede...
How Trump’s “America First” Administration Could Shut U.S. Scientists Out of the Next Nobel-Worthy Discovery
A proposed White House rule would give political appointees unprecedented control over scientific funding. One physicist, who helped discover the Higgs boson, explains how the rule would’ve stifled th...
propublica.org
My letter to Yale President McInnis about Yale reportedly in talks to 'bend the knee'. Text in the Alt.
It's part of a major federal court case over those cancelations. Here's what the government admitted as part of a process meant to avoid discovery (and perhaps spare it from sharing more damaging records):
Shocking revelation in court documents that the Trump administration canceled billions of dollars of grants for energy projects based solely on whether states voted for Trump. ... and this is the sanitized version they presented to avoid discovery! www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/b...
Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him (Gift Article)
Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.
nytimes.com
11. I don't think I have to help anyone read between the lines here. AI: good. Universities: bad. Trades: good. Academics: bad. It's a straightforward continuation of the Vought/Vance "the universities are the enemy" program.
"The National Institutes of Health admitted to using an internal search tool to flag UC grants that mentioned 'health equity,' 'work force diversity,' 'structural racism,' and 'sexual orientation.' " apnews.com/article/cali... 1/3
White House admits it used keywords to kill billions worth of California research grants
Federal agencies that terminated more than a thousand research grants at the University of California last year admitted that they used keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and COV...
apnews.com
A quick word on Taco Bell: That's where we found the suspected lettuce, and it's not bc Taco Bell is gross. It's bc Taco Bell is REALLY GOOD at tracing product! Keeping track of exactly where they got their ingredients, & exactly what restaurants each shipment of ingredients went to!
Bhattacharya tries to take credit for HIV advances while his policies undermine the field.
27 UNIHTED@27unihted.bsky.social · 3mo agoIn response to Representative Dean noting that HIV is not isolated to any single continent Bhattacharya said: “I don’t know if that’s true actually... open.substack.com/pub/27unihte...
“Practitioners of analytic philosophy will be aware that the charge of absurdity or incoherence is not an uncommon or even an unjust criticism of many claims made within their own discipline.” @ramoran.bsky.social on the Boghossian report on the humanities:
The Wrong Way to Criticize the Humanities
A recent report, commissioned by the chancellors of Vanderbilt and Washington University, invites further intrusions on scholarly self-governance.
bostonreview.net
The American Diabetes Association appears not to have learned their lesson the first time around (below). Now they've blocked publication of an editorial about this event that was slated for publication in the same journal, Diabetes Care, this week. But here it is. You know what to do.
Community Voices: On the Events of the American Diabetes Association 86th Scientific Sessions
The editorial and the seven opinion articles posted here were scheduled for publication on July 13, 2026, in the journal, Diabetes Care. All articles were provided, in advance of the scheduled publica...
zenodo.org
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 4mo agoFrom 500 views in the first two months to over 100,000 views in the last few days. The ADA opinion piece that was too scary to be distributed at the ADA meeting has gone full Streisand. Y'all are doing the Lord's work.
The U.S. is just a few dozen measles cases away from exceeding the number of cases recorded in 2025.
U.S. Measles Cases Reach Over 2,200—Nearly Totaling All Measles Cases Recorded In 2025
The U.S. is just a few dozen measles cases away from exceeding the number of cases recorded in 2025.
forbes.com
CDC stopped monitoring parasite now causing explosive diarrhea across the country
CDC Stopped Monitoring Parasite Now Causing Explosive Diarrhea Across The Country
MAHA.
huffpost.com
New NSF policy essential bans all collaboration with Chinese scientists. This is another disaster for science. www.science.org/content/arti...
New NSF policy would ban almost all collaborations with Chinese scientists
Agency drops attempt to mitigate risk in favor of outright prohibition on working with most Chinese research institutions
science.org
Nothing says "intellectual diversity" quite like a mandatory law dictating forced enrollment in a bureaucratic safe space for policed thought. Ohio lawmakers want you to think freely, or else. 👀
A bill mandates Ohio university students take a required course at 'intellectual diversity centers'
That requirement: Ohio university students must complete a three-credit hour course in American civic literacy to graduate.
woub.org
This is a horrifying story about the growing dangers of ubiquitous surveillance and a good reason for Stanford residents to continue to pressure the admin to get rid of the Flock cameras on campus. www.thedrive.com/news/how-flo...
How Flock Cameras Wrongly Tracked Me for Days Over ‘Stolen’ Plates and Sent Police After Me
A simple error got magnified by Flock's nationwide surveillance camera network and ended with four cop cars boxing me in.
thedrive.com
