Does she sound like Michiganders? Sure, she sounds like some Michiganders (nb: El-Sayed also sounds like a Michigander, just of a younger generation). Is she "the voice of Michigan", as her response ads say? That's up to voters.

Haley Stevens's accent has people talking. Is it really a Michigan accent? (spoiler: yes. It really is - tho see the note below) I had fun talking with the New York Times about one of my very specific niches of expertise (Michigan English). www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/u...

How Haley Stevens’s Accent Became a Flashpoint in Michigan’s Senate Race (Gift Article)

How the politics of raised a’s and disappearing g’s briefly came to dominate the Michigan Senate race.

nytimes.com

So, while right wing critiques might be a start for this engagement, I would say that we need to look at the conservative impulse in academia to treat fields that have an interest in improving conditions for marginalized groups as activism.

Let’s pause here. “Activist” has been a charge leveled at any field that decenters majority interests including gender studies, Asian studies, queer studies, and disability studies, and this isn’t a problem unique to the right.

Kyla Wazana Tompkins@kwazana.bsky.social · 2w ago

Like a conversation that doesn’t use X (formerly twitter) as evidence but cites the actual work of minoritarian and other kinds of criticism as they really exist. Imagine calling Black studies and African American literary studies “an activist sub field.” (Gutkin) 3/5

A reminder that UC _faculty_ and Faculty Associations — not the universities themselves nor their administrators — are waging this battle in court, demonstrating great bravery and moral clarity.

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

Friends at #CogSci2026! @mattgoldrick.bsky.social received this year's Elman prize (BEYOND well-deserved) and now he and I are giving joint talks as part of the Elman Symposium at this year's meeting! Friday 2-3:30pm in Gavea A! Multilingualism, cognitive science, and society! Come see us!

Scientists--if your funding was cut over the last year (for research on climate, global health, DEI, LGBTQ or womens health, etc) but you managed to keep the research going, I want to talk to you for an upcoming article! Plz contact me: gewin at me dot com. Re-posts appreciated!

This can help you get started if it all seems intimidating.

Sarah Gollust@sarahgollust.bsky.social · 4w ago

Did you write your comment yet on the OMB rules on federally funded science yet? No? Don’t worry, you can do it this weekend. Here are some resources that can help you get started.

Not like us.

It's well enough known in the food world to make a good heuristic. If you want to know if a repeat outbreak-causer is doing it through accident & incompetence, or if they actually know what they're doing & are taking steps to avoid getting caught, Check & see if they sell in Minnesota.

You know what's crazy? This guy sells almost everywhere in the US EXCEPT MINNESOTA. Minnesota's public health dept is famous in the food safety world for being #1 at tracking down the source of outbreaks- way faster than any other state. What an interesting coincidence!

Annie Waldman@anniewaldman.bsky.social · 2mo ago

NEW: In February, I visited Raw Farm. You may have heard of it. RFK Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow are customers. It supplies raw dairy products to 500 stores nationwide. And regulators have linked it to over a dozen recalls and outbreaks that have made hundreds sick. 🧵👇

So, if there are shenanigans we can fight for people as a group rather than people fighting for their individual comments. We have full records and are monitoring it nearly hourly at this point. Here is our public comment portal: fight2win.standupforscience.net/campaign/163...

Stand up for Science

Stand up for Science

fight2win.standupforscience.net

She emphasizes the value of individual comments that address specific provisions rather than form letters, and gives you the details you will need to write and submit an effective comment. She offers examples for people at all career stages and for concerned members of the public. 4/n

Proposed regulations from Office of the Management of the Budget will be devastating for science. Fight back by getting informed and writing personalized comments in the Federal Register comment period. Excellent resources from @standupforscience.net fight2win.standupforscience.net

Stand up for Science

Stand up for Science

fight2win.standupforscience.net

Vought is trying to destroy American science as we know it. Here's what you can do to stop him: 👉 Visit our action center: zurl.co/NXVak 👉 Donate to Fuel the Fight for Science: zurl.co/PHtGH

"address technical challenges and bottlenecks that university and industry labs cannot easily solve through traditional methods." that's a lot of words for "ethics reviews are hampering my freedoms"

Jacquelyn Gill@jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Cool, so NSF is now going to be used to essentially launder money to tech bros because universities are just too cumbersome and disciplinary oversight and regulations and accountability are all just too stifling for innovation. $1.5B for “X-Labs.”

NSF wouldn’t have to do this if only we had institutions where the best researchers from different disciplines were all in a complex of buildings so it would be easy to work together, and also they did that while training the next generation of researchers, and also they liked Trump more

Jacquelyn Gill@jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Cool, so NSF is now going to be used to essentially launder money to tech bros because universities are just too cumbersome and disciplinary oversight and regulations and accountability are all just too stifling for innovation. $1.5B for “X-Labs.”

Legacy linguistic data can take on new lives when returned to source communities. In this talk, Nicté Fuller Medina explores restitution, stewardship, and the afterlives of archived Belizean Spanish recordings. Thursday, May 14 • 12–1 PM ET. Register today! www.lsadc.org/ev_calendar_...

Obama recently urged Democrats to “talk like normal people” instead of sounding like they’re in a “college seminar.” I explore the language ideologies that undergird his advice and how they align with the rightwing assault on higher education. educationallinguist.substack.com/p/obama-norm...

Obama, “Normal People,” and the Politics of Academic Language

In a recent interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, former President Barack Obama argued that Democrats need to do a better job “talking like normal people talk” instead of sounding like they...

educationallinguist.substack.com

📣 CALL FOR INTERVIEWS! If you know a recently retired sociolinguist who had a major influence on the field, consider interviewing them and publishing the transcript with the Journal of Sociolinguistics! To propose an interview, just email the EICs with your idea - contact details below 👇

I can’t wake up to this shit every single day. Btw, it’s the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.

University Claims Withholding Water From Nuclear Weapons Data Center Is 'Unlawfully Discriminatory' to Data Centers

The University promised “to pursue all rights and claims for necessary relief” if a small Michigan community won’t pump water into a data center.

404media.co

2016: Black students complaining that dehumanizing language on campus and in the media is dangerous 2016-2026: cancel culture hysteria, these students are whining about nothing 2026: Black people losing the right to vote on a state-by-state basis ANYONE WANT TO REVISE THEIR ASSESSMENT?

This semester I taught a course on the History of the Far Right in the US. We were lucky to have one of the Pacific Northwest's best contemporary chroniclers and interpreters of the far right, @leahsottile.bsky.social, visit the class. This piece by Leah was inspired by what she heard students say.

Leah Sottile@leahsottile.bsky.social · 3mo ago

As extreme politics have normalized, young people have grown up not knowing any other way. For months, I've spent time getting to know 10 college students who literally do not recall a time in America without Trump. My latest for @thewesternedge.bsky.social www.thewesternedge.media/p/the-age-of...

As extreme politics have normalized, young people have grown up not knowing any other way. For months, I've spent time getting to know 10 college students who literally do not recall a time in America without Trump. My latest for @thewesternedge.bsky.social www.thewesternedge.media/p/the-age-of...

The Age of No Innocence

What if all you knew was extremist politics? Welcome to being young in America.

thewesternedge.media

I'm seeing a lot of Indian and global analysis of what happened in West Bengal as a watershed moment for Narendra Modi. The narrative is that the BJP won in the shadow of voter suppression, but Bengali voters were tired of the TMC. And while that is true, this is not the real story.

More evidence of how fucking chock-full of eugenics silicon valley iss, has been, and will continue to be if steps aren't taken to name, acknowledge, and dismantle those connections. '“All my fundees have blue eyes.” [Jeffrey] Epstein and the tech world’s dark ideology'

"All my fundees have blue eyes." Epstein and the tech world's dark ideology - Coda Story

The Epstein files reveal beliefs about race, eugenics, and engineering humans that run to the heart of Silicon Valley.

codastory.com

TBF I don’t think this is a small point, just maybe not THE major point. We should also probably keep this in mind in the obsession with ending WGS and Ethnic Studies programs at colleges and universities.

Victor Ray@victorerikray.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Small point but today illustrates pretty clearly why they were so obsessed with banning critical race theory. Derrick Bell’s work predicts this type of regression on rights.

Really proud to have been a part of this paper, with Rob, Martin, Alicia, Alex, Anna and @kirbyconrod.bsky.social Check it out for how to conceptualize "race" and "ethnicity" in linguistic research. Spoiler alert: it's not something that can be addressed with word choice at the very end.

I wouldn't mind hosting a postdoc doing work in Construction Grammar and/or Scandinavian Linguistics: www.forschung.uni-kiel.de/en/research-...

breaking: 80-student encampment up at Occidental College in California, demanding the Board of Trustees commit to divest from Lockheed Martin, Palantir, Maersk, and Caterpillar amid the war on Iran, Lebanon and Palestine at an upcoming meeting on Monday.