W. Carson Byrd

So campus speech. Much viewpoint diversity. Very marketplace of ideas.

Hats off to these fantastic scholars for publishing their first book—excited to celebrate with them at the ASA annual meeting!

In honor of the event, @harvardpress.bsky.social will be offering 20% off Inherited Inequality thru 9/30.

Just use code ASA20 here: www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

Where Is Columbia’s $200-Million Settlement Going, Exactly? Precedents offer few clues about an unprecedented playbook.

I want to see a lot more pieces asking this exact same question: how is the federal government using the funds that it is getting in settlement payments from colleges?

Article On the Stability of Racial Capitalism Abstract What is the connection between capitalism and racial hierarchy? In line with the tradition known as ‘the theory of racial capitalism’ we show that the latter can functionally support the former. As a social construction, race has just those features which allow it to facilitate the sort of stable, inequitable distributions of resources that tend to emerge in capitalist systems. We support this claim using techniques from evolutionary game theory and cultural evolutionary theory, and end by discussing the normative political consequences of this relationship. How to Cite: Kofi Bright, L., Gabriel, N., O'Connor, C. & Táíwò, O. O., (2025) “On the Stability of Racial Capitalism”, Ergo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy 12: 42. doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.7965

Hey look its now properly out and available

journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article...

Update on unlawful federal grant to cancellations from the UCLA chancellor. Total is much higher than reported: $584 million.

2025 AAUP Faculty in the South Survey The Georgia conference of the American Association of University Professors [AAUP] and its partners in states across the South have been at the forefront of fighting attacks on higher education. To as...

The 2025 @aaup.org Faculty in the South Survey is live. If you are a professor in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, or Texas it's for you. Ends 8/29 at 5pm Eastern forms.gle/v7T3BH2w9LXs...

Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.

For reference, the NSF letter for UCLA's suspensions is on the left, while the letter for Harvard's terminations is on the right.

W.E.B. Du Bois did not only emphasize a psychological wage.

He said white people also got a “public wage” and noted access to spaces, services, and status, and leniency from the criminal justice system. For some reason, this point, also made in Black Reconstruction, doesn’t get as much attention.

Overarching Q: what magic number(s) will indicate the supposed discriminatory admissions practices are occurring?

Have to watch the fine print & arguments about group memberships, levels of representation (state/region/nation/etc) & years used to benchmark (likely a mythical era of meritocracy).

Department of Health and Human Services—National Institutes of Health—Application of Impoundment Control Act to Availability of Funds for Grants Congress appropriated amounts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to carry out various research objectives for fiscal year 2025. In accordance...

BREAKING: Watchdog government agency finds the NIH and the Trump administration have illegally withheld funds in violation of the Impoundment Control Act, and rips into HHS for failing to justify its slow-walking of funds.

www.gao.gov/products/b-3...

A memo from Michelle Bulls to NIH Extramural Staff indicating that Notices of Special Interest will no longer be issues except in emergencies.

This delightful news is slowly filtering down to program staff inside NIH.

Notices of Special Interest are going to be a thing of the past...

Thanks for sharing! Also, I really appreciate all the work you’re doing as a publicly engaged scholar.

Trump’s Deal-Making With Other Elite Schools Scrambles Harvard Negotiations

It is not “deal-making.” It is extortion built on Christopher Rufo’s idea of “taking down” one or more elite university.
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/u...

For anyone following me today esp. related to issued at the intersection of data, justice, and education... check out the work of @wcbyrdphd.bsky.social!

When the Legislature Kills Your Department Republican lawmakers have a new obsession: academic-program review.

An overview of academic program review laws across the country. Lots to be concerned with in addition to cancelled majors & departments closing/merging as academic freedom & student aspirations are truncated in the name of ‘efficiency.’ Great comments from @feleciaelana.bsky.social in the article.

🧵🚨Same-race teachers boost academic outcomes—esp. for racially minoritized students. That’s well established. But who actually has a same-race teacher? Until now, we haven’t known at scale. Our new work examines 8,000+ Texas schools serving 5+ million students. Read on! #EduSky #AcademicSky #EconSky

Behind the Diversity Numbers Behind the Diversity Numbers uncovers how frequently used approaches to examine and understand race-related issues on college campuses can reinforce racism a...

Their op-ed also echos some of my own work in Behind the Diversity Numbers & other writings. There’s more we need to do to improve these practices & increase their use, & we’re also in a moment when data & access to it is being obstructed to prevent clearly capturing what is happening in society.

Ideas for more inclusive data collection/analysis (opinion) Chad M. Topaz and Tyrone Bass suggest five steps researchers can take to make more inclusive choices when collecting and analyzing data.

A nicely written piece by @chadtopaz.bsky.social & Tyrone Bass about the need for more inclusive data collections & analyses, & also for higher ed to better facilitate these practices, both in their own decisions & in the classroom, as they continue to embrace advances in computational sciences.

Almost like there’s a long-inning precedent for this outcome; like this is predictable in a white supremacist society.

August 4th & there’s still some lightning bugs hanging out.

Bryan Brayboy to Present 2026 AERA Distinguished Lecture at Annual Meeting Bryan Brayboy to Present 2026 AERA Distinguished Lecture at Annual Meeting

We're thrilled to announce that Bryan Brayboy will deliver the AERA Distinguished Lecture at #AERA2026. Learn more here: www.aera.net/Newsroom/AER...

Launching an interactive digital map and database of Detroit’s historic Black-owned businesses. Check it out at freedomenterprise.org

Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars) Poet Nikki Giovanni reminds us that we can learn from the past to imagine how we might construct our shared destiny on this planet—and on others.

Duffy’s comments about prioritizing a nuclear reactor on the moon reminds me of the insights from Nikki Giovanni’s Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea in so many ways.

Purdue student detained by ICE and taken to troubled Louisiana holding facility Yeonsoo Go, 20, was detained after her immigration hearing in Manhattan and taken away by ICE agents.

Go, a college student, has a dependent visa (her mother, an Episcopal minister, is here on a religious worker visa), which doesn't expire until Dec. But when she tried to renew it early, ICE nabbed her and sent her halfway across the US to a detention center.
www.wthr.com/article/news...

Nothing good comes of this. Cutting NASA budgets & relying on private companies whose rockets explode 6 inches off the ground sounds like a great start. We might as well have Dr. Evil out here with his Alan Parsons Project.

How a public library's summer game took over a Michigan city Summer in Ann Arbor, Mich., means thousands of people hunting for hidden codes around the city and reading books to earn points. It's part of a popular game organized by the public library.

We have a pretty cool library ( @aadl.org) in town & Summer Game is always fun (~16k participants this year)!

Trump Went to War With the Ivies. Community Colleges Are Being Hit.

Excellent story in on the collateral damage taken by community colleges in Trump’s war on higher education. None of what the administration is doing helps workforce development or vocational education. 🎁🔗 www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/m...

Trump Went to War With the Ivies. Community Colleges Are Being Hit.

the trump administration is selling its war on higher education as a strike against the elites who have disadvantaged ordinary americans. in actuality, the administration is destroying advanced education for *everyone* in pursuit of its effort to deskill the american public