Amy Werbel

Censorship campaigns can have a way of backfiring – look no further than the fate of America’s most prolific censor Anthony Comstock’s decades-long censorship campaign ended up turning him into a laughingstock.

My latest Anthony Comstock-inspired cautionary tale. theconversation.com/censorship-c...
#censorship #Kimmel #freespeech

What keeps local reporters going? ‘We live here and we want a better society.’ One in 3 U.S. counties no longer has a single full-time reporter, depriving communities of a reliable mirror. Meet Margaret Coker and the other journalists fighting to keep local news alive.

“As traditional sources of news crumble, there is Coker and hundreds of others like her who are keeping journalism alive.”
www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/...

New round of #grants! This is an “initiative to help historic preservation-related not-for-profit organizations and similar institutions identify and maintain their archival resources related to stories of historic preservation.”
www.nypap.org/shelby-white...

Public art is all about process and collaboration. The conservation of Exodus and Dance exemplifies this fact. I hope it inspires young residents to become interested in art and its history, and in the incredible work of conservators, in this instance, EverGreene and Jablonski. Thanks to all.

It has been a long and dispiriting year at Columbia, yet today's PhD graduation reminded me of what is best about academia: bright people consumed with new ideas and novel ways of thinking about the world.

Highly recommend following the work of the Southern Environmental Law Center who have tracking this and other polluting data center projects in the South

www.selc.org/topic/data-c...

New Mayor, New Media: A Democratic Mayoral Candidate Forum Hell Gate is teaming up with New York Focus to present a forum at The Public Theater with the leading Democratic candidates for mayor.

Next Thursday, May 15th, Hell Gate is teaming up with @nysfocus.bsky.social for a one-of-a-kind mayoral forum. A livestream for the event will be available on 👇this page👇, where you can also find a 😎 Google Cal invite 😎 to set a reminder for your future self 👍 hellgatenyc.com/mayoralforum/

Pritzker: If you're not out there protesting in front of a Republican congressman's office, or out in the street making your voice heard, or calling your friends in another state to have them do it.. then you're not doing what's necessary to put pressure on them to vote the right way.

Funding Cuts to Deaf Education Impact Disabled Students & Families Across the country, from rural Utah to Florida, students who are deaf or hard of hearing will face dwindling access to critical support services

Team Trump is cutting money for deaf kids.

“Pediatric deafness is a neurodevelopmental emergency. Without support, deaf and hard of hearing children do not learn to communicate, which has cascading effects on brain, language, social & occupational development.”

www.tc.columbia.edu/articles/202...

Jake Tapper: "One 60 Minutes source tells me, 'The lawsuit was baseless. Bill Owens wouldn't apologize. He wouldn't bend. He fought for the broadcast and for independent journalism and that cost him his job. It's shameful.'"

The corollary to the statement "Anti-Zionism is always antisemitism" that the Trump administration has asked so many American institutions to adopt is the statement, "My Zionism prima facie protects me from possibly being antisemitic." And fewer people want to talk about that second part.

Small colleges have taken the lead -- but they are now joined by 6 of 8 Ivies: Cornell, Penn, Princeton, Yale, Brown, and -- yes -- Harvard.

And, finally, by a handful of big publics: U. of Washington, Wisconsin, Rutgers, SUNY Buffalo and Stony Brook, UC Riverside, UVa, UMD.

Something like 90% of the grad students in my department are federally funded (research grants covering both their stipends and their tuition). There is no way to plug the hole if that money disappears. The number of grad students would shrink by an order of magnitude if not more.

Fun fact: before pasteurization became widespread (1920s in the US), milk was a regular carrier of tuberculosis, diphtheria, and typhoid. Before FDA food inspection standards, inferior milk was regularly adulterated with chalk, lead, alum, plaster, and even arsenic to improve its color and texture.

😬

Wangechi Mutu’s The Seated III on display in The Modern in Fort Worth

Detail of the head of the sculpture

Side view of the sculpture on Ando’s building

Detail of the hands, lap, and garment of the sculpture

Wangechi Mutu, The Seated III (2019), bronze

Yes, and if the history of military conflict teaches us anything, it's that shooting the people in your own trenches is definitely a winning strategy

“The problem is,” Sinek writes, “for many of the overpaid leaders, we know they took the money and perks and didn’t offer protection.”

I think that’s part of what bothers us about higher ed leaders today.

The turnout in small towns across the country has been incredible drawing crowds of thousands. We’re already seeing over one million in attendance nationwide, and events are still underway. Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Ohio all had especially surprising showings.

A stone etched with the words “That does not excuse everyday cruelty or paucity of care, as an invitation for invention.”

Stone etched with the words “We are also capable of acts of great beauty when no other system exists to provide them.”

Chloë Bass at the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington.

Bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia Home Kilmar is not alone. He is one of over 250 immigrants deported without due process, as part of Trump’s $6 million deal with Bukele’s government—a plan to funnel immigrants, often with no criminal…

Trump’s illegal abduction of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is fascism. Full stop.

Sign to demand his return:

Student Journalists Wrestle with Censoring Their Own Work Navigating a surge in requests to take down previously published material.

Svrl “media rights grps issued new guidance that urged student newspapers to consider being more flexible abt requests to remove content or ID’ing material from their stories.” “Offering anonymity [is not] just protecting sources from losing their jobs, but… more existential upending of their lives”

Opinion | The king we overthrew — and the king some now want Americans need to reconnect with their innate dislike of arbitrary rule.

The 250th anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War is this weekend, a moment when a leader’s arbitrary exercise of power sparked a rebellion.

Not the headline I want to post. But for everyone trying to understand what’s happening at UMass Chan, why things are so difficult, this is what’s happening. We are a service institution. We educate; we care; we give; we serve rural MA. We dont make money. Our own govt is crushing us. Link below

Pooling public records resources for journalists Lisa Pickoff-White and the California Reporting Project help journalists hold power to account

We are publishing a series of profiles to spotlight local journalists using public records to hold power to account.

Our first one features @pickoffwhite.bsky.social, director of the California Reporting Project, which helps reporters pool public records resources.

Congress’ investigative powers face existential threat FOIA office firings thwart congressional oversight

Congress’ investigative and oversight powers are in danger.

Protecting FOIA offices, which serve as hubs for all kinds of information requests, could help ensure the legislative branch has the information it needs to do its job.

Biden actually spent a ton of time talking up infrastructure grants and IRA tax credits. Just because it didn't make it into your algorithmic feed doesn't mean it didn't happen.

it's hard to find a motivation for DOGE other than 'hatred of the good.' these are bad people fundamentally envious or un-understanding of the idea that you might work or give for others, and attempting to punish it.

Drawing of a banana on an ornate sofa or chaise longue

For World Banana Day: "Nude Banana on Sheraton Style Sofa," a work on paper by little-known gay artist Dudley Huppler, who in the 1950s was close to Andy Warhol (on at least one occasion Huppler referred to Andy uncharitably as "Warthole") collections.artsmia.org/art/128356/n...