Dave J

West Point Philosophy Professor Resigns After Trump’s Incursions on Academic Freedom (updated) - Daily Nous "I will be resigning after this semester from my tenured position at West Point after 13 years on the faculty. I cannot tolerate these changes, which prevent me from doing my job responsibly. I am ash...

“A philosophy professor resigns in protest of the Trump administration's "brazen demands to indoctrinate, not educate."” #philsky #philosophy #academicfreedom #highered #academia #freespeech #insoctri

Think of all the money we will save now that we don't need judges any more.

80% of the caucus voted against cloture. If you and Schumer couldn’t convince them, how do you expect to convince us? Unity talk from you and him is bogus. Tough choices, but unified you could have made GOP own shutdown.

My first job at grad school was to catalog a collection of offprints. They included some from the 1950's by a great Roman historian, who I assumed had long ago died. Imagine my surprise when I saw he was an emeritus working down the hall. And had known an emeritus who fought in the Civil War.

Other countries have agency & domestic politics, too 🇨🇦

DEI doesn't address teaching at my campus (or any other I know). DEI does play some role in campus hiring. And it should.

Our rush into fascism demonstrates why we need more DEI rather than less.

At out institution, it is usually wise to assume incompetence rather than something worse. Usually. Consider following up with the union, eh?

What Felt Impossible Became Possible | dansinker.com

A powerful account of a man who risked everything to oppose the KKK in the 1920s, suffered much, and ended up winning.

dansinker.com/posts/2025-0...

Tyranny requires your fear, your silence, and your compliance.

Democracy requires your courage.

Proud to have you as governor.

Labor for Higher Education

Check out what national unions representing higher ed workers and researchers are cooking up for next Wednesday! @higheredlabor.bsky.social @debtcollective.bsky.social @aaup.bsky.social @highered-cb.bsky.social @sfndhe.bsky.social

www.labor4highered.org

Words and terms matter. Fort Bragg (a lousy general by any standard) and the "Gulf of America" are actually of a piece with 19th century plans to expand the US southwards in order to provide a common foe and avoid civil war.

www.ap.org/the-definiti...

Research Universities Are Poised to Lose Billions Under Trump’s Sudden Cut The NIH’s decision late Friday to drastically shrink its reimbursement of indirect costs, which help pay for facilities, equipment, and staff to support grants, will have an immediate impact on higher...

Money quote for schools like mine: “If you’re a school that is R2 or just creeping into R1, ... this could be a very difficult cut when you’re just starting to make progress in research the way you want to. Those are schools that I worry about a lot in this.”

www.chronicle.com/article/rese...

Democracy is Crumbling. Is Anybody Doing Anything? Yes. And You Can Too.

A good account of what people are doing to resist and how one can help.
open.substack.com/pub/sherrily...

An important announcement from the Governor of Illinois.

. . . In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

The US produced rather more than cuckoo clocks during the Good Times. But some good and even great things are still possible during bad times.

This cynical line from Orson Welles' ev il character in the Third Man has been strangely comforting of late. “In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance . . . .

Can We Still Govern? | Don Moynihan | Substack improving the quality of government, public policy, reducing administrative burdens. Click to read "Can We Still Govern?", by Don Moynihan, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers...

There's a very clear summary of the current shock & awe campaign here.

donmoynihan.substack.com?utm_source=n...

Trump Brazenly Defies Laws in Escalating Executive Power Grab (Gift Article) In the radical opening weeks of his second term, President Trump has appeared to feel little constraint by any need to show respect for the rule of law.

NYT catches plenty of flak for not being clear enough about the current crisis. This is plenty clear. (Free link.)

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/u...

God bless the Onion. It is America’s finest news source.

A policy too nuts even for Bibi. He wasn’t dumb enough to have the IDF run Gaza. And he has zealots in his coalition who think Gaza is their God-given land. Our boy just wants to make a buck.

So the guy who couldn’t even make it in Atlantic City is going to do Gaza. I guess he figures genocide is good for business. (Disbursing Palestinians so as to destroy their identity counts under standard definitions.)

It sure seems like Musk ought to be separable from Trump. That’s how things tend to work in autocracies: the leader is not touchable, but his henchmen are. Musk of course isn’t an average henchman; but he didn’t get any votes. So go after him, eh?

As the Trump administration & many state governments appear poised to accelerate attacks on higher education as a public good, the AAUP urges colleges & universities to resist the coming onslaught of political interference & defend the core values of higher education.
🧵
www.aaup.org/news/against...

This one does rather say it all.

Awful. I don’t think even Orwell predicted they’d outlaw ‘justice’ and ‘equality.’

I don't think journalists would even have asked any previous president to speculate on who was to blame for a crash the night before. But they knew Trump would toss out some ignorant nonsense that will harm people who had no responsibility at all for the crash.

No words.

I'm not claiming we need a new democratic Thrasybulus to bring back a band of fighters from Thebes, to be clear. Historical patterns don't work that way. But I'll take one hopeful lesson: Thrasybulus came back with just a few; his cause seemed futile. They won, and Athenian democracy recovered.

You will recall how Germany recovered, after killing many millions of innocents and suffering millions of German deaths. And there aren't any Allies to conquer and restore us.

Athens provides a more hopeful case, but it will take brave, homegrown democratic resistance . . .