Man, we've lost a real one. What an absolute icon and beacon to the world.

Gloria Steinem, fierce feminist trailblazer, dies

A pioneering activist and journalist, Steinem was one of the women’s liberation movement’s most outspoken advocates.

nbcnews.com

“what we are seeing today sets an extraordinary precedent, one that has the potential of undermining the entire premise of genocide as a crime punishable under post-World War II international law.

Opinion | The Grim Lessons of Israel’s War in Gaza

Israel has not been held accountable for its actions in Gaza. The nation and the individuals and countries enabling it to escape punishment may only benefit.

nytimes.com

I was born and raised in Northern Ontario and I am absolutely boiling with rage at the ways in which people elsewhere are talking about the forest fires there as though this is a common occurrence. The air thick with smoke for kilometers, entire communities wiped out - this shit is not normal.

A magisterial takedown of "viewpoint diversity". No notes. Full article here: www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wer...

"course work in the social sciences and the humanities actually pays for, or cross-subsidizes, STEM courses" www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/0...

Government officials and boards don't always recognize the complexities of public university budgets (opinion)

Administrators must manage a complex set of internal subsidies and cross-subsidies, yet dictates from on high run counter to this reality, argues Michael Martin.

insidehighered.com

White students make up 12.5% of NYC public school students with IEPs, but they are 71% of students receiving public school funding to attend private schools. These inequalities were anecdotally clear before - now we have this staggering data. Excellent reporting by @alexzimmerman.bsky.social.

NYC spent $723 million on private tuition for students with disabilities. White students benefited most.

NYC paid $723 million in private tuition for students with disabilities last year. 71% were white.

chalkbeat.org

“Terms such as ‘profound autism,’ ‘high functioning,’ or ‘levels of autism’ […] maintain systems of categorisation and segregation that prioritise some needs over others, without addressing the structural changes required to support all Autistic people.”

Autistic Realms (Helen Edgar)@autisticrealms.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Delighted to write this for @neurohubcomjournal.bsky.social " Functioning labels don’t describe us; they gatekeep access to support, autonomy, and opportunity." Read more: news.neurohubcommunity.org/p/words-that...

www.scientificamerican.com/article/covi...

COVID probably killed 150,000 more people in its first two years than official U.S. tolls show

We have severely undercounted the number of COVID deaths, scientists say

scientificamerican.com

I'm looking for advice for a friend writing a tenure statement, please. What are best practices for addressing disruptions to research from Covid, attacks on higher education, etc?

So, any other news yesterday? Anything important?

Trump Education Department outsources more responsibilities, continuing proposed wind-down arkansasadvocate.com/2026/02/23/r...

Trump Education Department outsources more responsibilities, continuing proposed wind-down | Arkansas Advocate

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration took more steps Monday to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, announcing two additional interagency agreements with other departments that ...

arkansasadvocate.com

Friends from Minneapolis reporting to me that things are at the point where folks are being hidden in other people's houses and we are in the "again" part of "never again" which the "never" was supposed to preclude

@lauramauldin.bsky.social ‘s book arrived! I am so excited to read this important work illuminating the politics of caregiving in an ableist society.

ICYMI: The US is currently holding three times as many people in immigrant detention as were detained in the Nazi concentration camp system in spring 1939 — six years into the Third Reich, and just before the start of World War II.

Call. Your. Senators. Right. Fucking. Now. It’s ok if your voice shakes while you leave the voice mail. If you cry. If you cuss. If you’re inarticulate. Just get the message across. bsky.app/profile/jaso...

Jason Heppler@jasonheppler.org · 7mo ago

I called yesterday and will call again today. If you’re new to it, 5calls.org has got your back.

All of the insults that employ intelligence as an insult (stupid, idiot, dumb, r*tarded etc) also have baggage like m*ron because they’re all rooted in the concept that mentally disabled people either shouldn’t exist or are a drain on society and not capable of being productive or useful.

Amid all that is happening, I urge you to pre-order my new book. As our systems further collapse and the state chooses to spend its funds terrorizing communities rather than investing in our collective care, we need to bear witness 1/5 www.harpercollins.com/products/in-...

In Sickness and in Health

An urgent and deeply affecting account of America's failure to provide meaningful support to its chronically ill and disabled citizens and our resulting...

harpercollins.com

"The sweeping study... found that using AI in education can 'undermine children's foundational development' and that 'the damages it has already caused are daunting.'" They include limiting kids' cognitive, social, and emotional developmen, and increasing inequity. www.npr.org/2026/01/14/n...

The risks of AI in schools outweigh the benefits, report says

A new report warns that AI poses a serious threat to children's cognitive development and emotional well-being.

npr.org

I really want ppl w/o Minneapolis connections to understand You might've heard that Mpls public schools went hybrid bc so many families are in hiding. Well, a coworker just told me that today, during his kid's hybrid class, a kid's apt building was raided onscreen *Everyone has stories like this*

It would appear I am now a columnist at Inside Higher Ed. My first piece focuses on McCarthyism, censorship, and our current moment in higher education. This is an essay I started nearly 6 months ago so I'm glad to finally share it with y'all. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Censorship Arrives on Campus

In her debut column, “Echoes in the Quad,” higher education policy scholar Dominique J. Baker explores how the political oppression of the McCarthy era reverberates in the stifling of academic freedom...

insidehighered.com

I also received one of these emails - my paper has been fed into an LLM without consent, and now they want me to evaluate the "ideas" the LLM generated for next projects... "If you find these ideas valuable, you are welcome to pursue them with no obligations — they are our gift to you." Gee, thanks!

samuel mehr@mehr.nz · 8mo ago

somebody at UChicago is feeding preprints to LLMs without authors' consent, in a research study they have the gall to suggest to authors they've opted-in that they volunteer to evaluate the LLMs' suggestions regarding their own work. lol, lmao even. here is the invite and my reply

Lest anyone for a single moment thinks this latest coup is a somehow a dramatic breach of long-term US foreign policy.

The other thing about normalizing gAI use in higher ed is that we are teaching our students that they cannot trust their own creativity, their own thoughts and brains, their own skills without having it reshaped/shellacked/transmogrified by LLMs. We’re setting them up for failure and dependence.

Ive been blocked by some pro-gAI academics on here who think Im "ableist" for refusing to allow gAI in my classrooms, but the thing is I do fundamentally believe that we make a moral statement when we decide to teach students that they must rely on this kind of theft to read, write and think.

Stephanie Rodgers 🍉@bootstheory.bsky.social · 8mo ago

This is a great example of how genAI steals from us all on multiple levels. It's stolen a promotional spot for real books and authors, it's stolen a job from an actual journalist who could have compiled this, it's stolen an opportunity for parents to be recommended good NZ books for their kids

Behold: the first-ever list of news outlets that have banned generative AI in their reporting. As of today, this is literally information that you cannot find on Google. My goal is to fill the starter pack, so please send over suggestions with supporting evidence! go.bsky.app/8cn1XfT

Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things

Most daycares and private preschools won’t enroll children with disabilities. Especially for low income families, Head Start is their *only option*.

David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Head Start is a 60-year-old US Department of Health and Human Services program that, among other things, creates inclusive and accessible classrooms for children with disabilities. But those applying for funding were told by the Trump regime to avoid the words "inclusion" and "disability." 🤡

It’s good to see papers start to address LLMs as structural plagiarism — provenance, more hidden than the original words or training data. www.nature.com/articles/s42...

LLM use in scholarly writing poses a provenance problem

Nature Machine Intelligence - LLM use in scholarly writing poses a provenance problem

nature.com

so far tonight msnbc has interviewed two students from brown university that are also survivors of separate high school shootings. insanity.

That and the attempts to force AI despite few people wanting it and LOTS of people trying to figure out how to get rid of it. This isn't a desired technology. This isn't like when people lined up in excitement for iphones; it's like when the phones all came loaded with unwanted U2 albums.