"We never imagined [the Kalven Report] would be adopted by other institutions." Lots of insights (and opinions) here on free speech and academic freedom, especially with respect to college faculty, at this new Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression event at UChicago. news.uchicago.edu/story/uchica...

UChicago convenes leaders from across country to explore free expression, academic freedom

Participants at Academic Freedom Institute debate ideas and share experiences from their campuses

news.uchicago.edu

Evergreen insight: “We realized that the obstacle to these fixes is not always resources. It’s faculty culture and the absence of structured opportunities to surface and work through disagreement… and that requires a sustained investment in faculty development that most programs have yet to make.”

American Council of Learned Societies@acls1919.bsky.social · last mo.

What is the PhD for? What are we actually preparing these students to do? Asking faculty to articulate the purpose of each program requirement opens up debates about program purpose that we have too long avoided. Read 5 insights from our Doctoral Futures town halls: https://bit.ly/4w41FXJ

💃"Let's. Do. The Time. Warp. Again!!!"💃🍞👄 @nytimes.com 2001 --> @chronicle.com 2026

Best film adaption of The Odyssey, wrong answers only.

Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account)@thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Best film adaptation of The Odyssey, wrong answers only

Another quality use of metaphor in explaining the illogics for Alito’s opinion eviscerating the Voting Rights Act.

Jake Grumbach@jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Wrote a piece for @slate.com on how our theories of partisan polarization gave the SCOTUS majority more intellectual cover to kill the VRA slate.com/news-and-pol...

From the brilliant @alvintilleryjr.bsky.social, the analogy we’ve been looking for Alito’s argument re: Louisiana v. Callais. “like arguing that a homeowner must tear down their fence because the fence discriminates against a burglar’s right of access.“ open.substack.com/pub/alvintil...

Is a university board’s duty to protect the institution or its mission? Per AGB, it’s the mission. The “duty of obedience” requires boards ensure their institution operates to further its stated purposes—and to amend the mission itself when necessary. Mission is the North Star. 1/2

I'm looking for Hanover Research's 2023 report, "Higher Education Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Survey." Anybody have it? No longer on their website. "Insights Blog" post disappeared. LinkedIn posts about it deleted. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine: web.archive.org/web/20240812...

An Ivy+ Mellon Leadership Fellows gets Duke’s award for those who reject the false choice between being a great scholar and being a great teacher. #facultyadvancementnetwork

Lauren Donovan Ginsberg@laurenginsberg.bsky.social · 4mo ago

The world is on fire & this has also been an awful year personally, BUT last night I was awarded a Bass Professorship at Duke, an endowed chair in recognition of research, undergrad teaching, & leadership. I had no idea I’d been nominated & am very, very moved by this honor. Esp the teaching part.

Never not shouting that this is DOUBLE wage theft, from the staffer who should be doing the work, and from the reimbursee forced to do it, purely for the purpose of channeling often public university funds into private app developer coffers and it sucks.

Kevin M. Kruse@kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Once upon a time, you'd go to give a talk at another university and a nice administrator would hand you a W-9 to sign and they'd send you a check in the mail for the honorarium. Now you have to spend a half hour entering data on a Special Contractor Website that was designed in a lab by sadists.

For the FAN Fellows engaging this year’s Institute on Faculty Voice & Collaborative Leadership, file this under “faculty rights and responsibilities“. #academicfreedom

Jacob T. Levy@jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Now posted ahead of print: "Conceptualizing Academic Freedom," forthcoming, Annual Review of Political Science. (Uncorrected proofs, so a few minor edits different from the version that will be published in June.) doi.org/10.1146/annu...

This analysis of how ideas spread in the early scientific revolution, from person to person and place to place, lines up so nicely with @alliemorgan.bsky.social's 2018 paper on the diffusion of scientific ideas via modern faculty hiring networks epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10....

Prestige drives epistemic inequality in the diffusion of scientific ideas - EPJ Data Science

The spread of ideas in the scientific community is often viewed as a competition, in which good ideas spread further because of greater intrinsic fitness, and publication venue and citation counts cor...

epjdatascience.springeropen.com

Pseudoerasmus@pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 12mo ago

There are several recent papers which could fall under the heading ‘Economic History of the Scientific Revolution’ but this network analysis tracing how scientific ideas diffused amongst scholars in the period 1084-1793 is a real milestone, an ‘epidemiological’ model of how ideas spread like disease

“There is just one way to save yourself, and that’s to get together and work and fight for everybody.” – Woody [Text: Woody quoted in “Woody Guthrie: A Life,” Joe Klein, 1980, Alfred A. Knopf.]

"All of you workers everywhere, you will see, you will know, who’s on your side, who’s working and fighting for you." – Woody [Text: Quoted in “Woody Guthrie: A Life,” Joe Klein, 1980, Alfred A. Knopf.]

Building a playlist for music to meet the moment, I’ve only just discovered this sweet 2m40s from early in The Mountain Goats’ discography: themountaingoats.bandcamp.com/track/color-... “They came in by the dozens, walking or crawling / Some were bright-eyed, some were dead on their feet…”

Color in Your Cheeks, by the Mountain Goats

from the album All Hail West Texas (Remastered)

themountaingoats.bandcamp.com

This is a high-quality take on trustees in @insidehighered.com, incl. Toor's comparison of boards + profs: "As with faculty development, those who are eager to get better at their jobs attend learning sessions and those who most need training rarely show up." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

A Few Words About Trustees (opinion)

Most faculty and staff know very little about the president-trustee relationship, Rachel Toor writes.

insidehighered.com

"The world disappoints, but the universe never does." - Priyamvada Natarajan, Professor of Astronomy at @yale.edu

“Yet [Mordecai] firmly said that he would sooner shut down his university than allow anyone to dictate what its STUDENTS COULD OR COULD NOT LEARN.” Is there a more crisp defense of academic freedom? This framing by @jelaniya.bsky.social seems unassailable. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

A Tumultuous Spring Semester Finally Comes to a Close

The biggest mistake that some universities have made is to presume that the White House is operating in good faith. It is not.

newyorker.com

It has been loads of fun and is super popular (full auditoriums). It also happens to be very little work to organize. If you'd like to offer Guess Lectures at your institution, I wrote up a set of instructions to make it easier for you. Reach out with questions! docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Guess Lectures Instructions

Guess Lectures Notes and instructionsJulia Strand, Carleton College The Premise: In Guess Lectures, faculty give 7-minute talks using someone else’s slides from an unrelated discipline, sight unseen...

docs.google.com

Recently recommended because the transcripts of confidential search committee meetings "will occupy real estate in your brain forever": When Two Bodies Are (Not) a Problem: Gender & Relationship Status Discrimination in Academic Hiring, by @larivera.bsky.social advance.charlotte.edu/wp-content/u...

“Brown Professor Avoids Defunding by Adding ‘For Bombs’ to Research Abstract” by Ray Theon “At press time, Norman was encouraging a colleague in the Africana Studies Department to add ‘for white people too’ to the title of her upcoming talk.” thenoser.com/article/Brow...

A statement from @bigtenacademic.bsky.social: That "mutual defense compact"? It's still not going to happen. btaa.org/big-ten-acad...

Kiernan Mathews@faculty.bsky.social · last yr.

This by @guttergeek.bsky.social is required reading for anyone who thought a "NATO-like" defense compact at @bigtenacademic.bsky.social was viable. (TL;DR: It's not.) campus-novel.ghost.io/the-big10-mu...

Perhaps there are proportionally fewer white men on Harvard's faculty because the 👏old 👏ways👏were👏 discriminatory--white men were OVERrepresented. Now (thanks to DEI?) processes are 👏less 👏discriminatory. (❤️ @emmajanepettit.bsky.social for White-Lewis insight, too.) www.chronicle.com/article/facu...

Faculty Hiring Is Under Federal Scrutiny at Harvard

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has pointed to the university’s data showing a declining proportion of white, male professors.

chronicle.com

A truly wonderful experience for me, thanks to @dartmouthartsci.bsky.social & the inimitable @faculty.bsky.social & his team (I miss Dustin already!)

Kiernan Mathews@faculty.bsky.social · last yr.

I'm inspired by these faculty who, many times over the course of a difficult year, found time away from the constant pressures of their work/lives to rethink + reinvent the "Ivy Plus" norms (+ other powers/privileges) they've inherited. #selfpromotion facultyadvancement.duke.edu/news/strengt...

I'm inspired by these faculty who, many times over the course of a difficult year, found time away from the constant pressures of their work/lives to rethink + reinvent the "Ivy Plus" norms (+ other powers/privileges) they've inherited. #selfpromotion facultyadvancement.duke.edu/news/strengt...

Strengthening Academic Leadership in an Uncertain Time | Office for Faculty Advancement

This year’s cohort of Duke Ivy+ Provost Leadership Fellows included Lisa Huettel, Jacquelyn McMillian-Bohler, Jian Pei, Jen’nan Read, Charlotte Sussman and Jennifer Clare

facultyadvancement.duke.edu

This by @guttergeek.bsky.social is required reading for anyone who thought a "NATO-like" defense compact at @bigtenacademic.bsky.social was viable. (TL;DR: It's not.) campus-novel.ghost.io/the-big10-mu...

The Big10 Mutual Defense Compact Resolution

Minority Report In taking on my current role as secretary of the university senate, I gave up my vote as a senator. While it has taken some time, given my constitutional fondness for debate and co...

campus-novel.ghost.io

Also by @garceslm.bsky.social + @jackiepedota.bsky.social: Universities must collectively invest in faculty capacity to navigate legal pressures + disrupt suppression. Include a history lesson on academic freedom because minoritized scholars are less protected. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A Call to Build Coalitions to Disrupt a Climate of Suppression

Published in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning (Vol. 57, No. 2, 2025)

tandfonline.com

In "We're on Our Own Out Here," @jackiepedota.bsky.social + @garceslm.bsky.social show how silence from university leaders—not bills per se—pushed faculty to self-censor race teaching + research. But not if president, provost, dean, chair, sr. faculty speak out. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

“We’re on Our Own Out Here”: Faculty Member Responses to Legislative Threats to Academic Freedom and Scholarship on Race

Colleges and universities nationwide are contending with a well-coordinated, well-funded legislative campaign that seeks to reverse decades of racial progress. Using sociolegal frameworks and conce...

tandfonline.com

Another banger by @aaronclauset.bsky.social + @jenniebrand.bsky.social: When early-career researchers work in diverse teams, they're more likely to build their own diverse teams in the future — helping to break the usual pattern where people mostly work with others who are similar to themselves.

Nature Computational Science@natcomputsci.nature.com · last yr.

📢Out now! Weihua Li, @jenniebrand.bsky.social, @aaronclauset.bsky.social, and colleagues show that researchers’ early training in diverse environments is strongly correlated with nurturing diverse groups in the established period. www.nature.com/articles/s43... #cssky #NetSci

🧪 Reports from inside NSF - staff were informed another huge set of grants were terminated today, that NSF will have at least a 50% total RIF, & no Acting Director has been appointed. So, who is leading NSF? #SciSky @science.org @scinews.bsky.social @aaas.org @aeraedresearch.bsky.social