W. Carson Byrd

Note that it was the @aaup.org and faculty standing up for themselves, not UCLA as an institution, that successfully went to court to arrest Trump’s overreach here.

NSF reorganization is, frankly, a bit odd, and we haven't run a story on it partly because it's hard to know what to make of it. The impetus for reorg, as I understood it, was to limit the siloing that occurs because NSF has so many (35ish) divisions. Now there will be 50+ sections.

Screenshot of the New York Times Opinion podcast INTERESTING TIMES The headline reads: Is Anything Holding MAGA Together?

Racism.

The answer is racism.

Sometimes you really have to have those tough conversations with kids. Why drugs are bad. Don’t drink & drive. How those 37 pencils are what stand between us & the most prosperous economy ever imagined.

There's an astounding amount of data in this. I'm using it to help update my understanding of the global higher ed landscape.

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

I have a new article in Educational Policy showing that tuition controls at public universities reduce student debt burdens.

Article: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Pre-publication version: kelchenoneducation.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...

ivory background the words Data Empire, a crown made of a graph in green, The Power of Information to Organize, Control, and Dominate, Roopika Risam

My final manuscript in! And now I give you..... COVER REVEAL (US cover, UK is sooooo different but it's not public yet)

This effectively puts more onus on victims of discrimination to prove it occurred. It also relies on proving intent, allowing organizations the opportunity to ignore how policies & processes, not just individual actions, can discriminate & perpetuate unequal circumstances & outcomes. 2/2

Justice Department Will No Longer Investigate Claims of Systemic Racism, Sexism The change could dramatically alter the way college leaders define and address discrimination.

‘Officials said they would eliminate disparate-impact liability from its Title VI rules, a decades-old legal concept that allows individuals to claim that race- and sex-neutral policies are discriminatory if they disproportionately harm certain groups or result in significant disparities.’ 1/2

What proposed legislation like the Martin Center’s does is create more gray areas to redraw lines of what education/history/research/knowledge/valued & allow for unilateral decision making that undercuts governance & academic freedom. It’s authoritarian at its core & in its desired outcomes.

Maybe, but since Nazi eugenics & South African apartheid were modeled off of American research, policy, & culture, I would be fine since it would arguably qualify as ‘Americanism’ based on the Martin Center’s criteria. So, give me tenure under their policy.

Every. Class. Discussion.

&

Every. Implications. Section.

Data Portraits in Paris Deux - 2026 Stitchalong Before completing your purchase, please triple check that you are entering your email address correctly.Data Portraits in Paris Deux (DPIP2) is the sequel/companion/continuation of my 2022 release, Da...

One of my favorite cross stitch designers is doing a stitchalong based on W.E.B. DuBois's data visualizations from the 1900 Paris Exhibition in February! I made her first piece based on the visualizations and thought it was a great project. 🧶

FAFSA Reveals Earnings Data for Colleges and Graduates The Department of Education's new FAFSA changes highlight the alarming number of for-profit institutions where graduates earn less than high school completers.

The Department of Education shared data today on IHEs where, 4 years after earning a credential, graduates earned less than peers with only a high school diploma.

What ED didn't shout out was just how many of those institutions are for-profits. So I got the data. jamessmurphy.com/2025/12/09/w...

A New Blueprint for Conservative Lawmakers Aims to Curb ‘Unserious’ Research The latest model legislation from a trio of right-wing groups targets faculty in non-STEM fields and would also increase teaching loads.

New cut-&-paste legislation for lawmakers to propose across the US targets non-STEM faculty research & teaching for additional scrutiny & higher teaching loads, unless they teach courses in Western Civ & ‘Amercanism,’ which then they could go up for tenure without having research reviewed.

Cover art of the book "The Overseer Class: A Manifesto" by Steven W. Thrasher. The cover is a black and white woodcut, with the title appearing over the images of three African American faces. To the left, is a face without eyes, in profile. To the right, is a man in a suit with no eyes looking forward. In the center is a police officer with eyes. Inside of him is a Black man on his knees, appearing to have been whipped. They all tower over raised fists.

Coming May 19, 2026 from Amistad Books and HarperCollins

THE OVERSEER CLASS:
A Manifesto

by Steven W. Thrasher

cover art by Jamaal Barber

Available for pre-order now www.harpercollins.com/products/the...

NIH shut out hundreds of young scientists from funding to start their own labs Special Report: The NIH has shut out hundreds of young scientists from funding to start their own labs.

www.statnews.com/2025/12/08/t...

The university-surveillance component of this piece is !!! I had missed the Qualtrics shift and acquisition and wow.
We really need an ed-tech key players power-map, does anyone know if this exists?

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (STEP) Associate Professor About the Job We seek applications for a tenured faculty position at the associate professor level in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (STEP). The faculty member will join a vibrant community of interdisciplinary scholars at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, maintain a research affiliation with the Center for Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (CSTEP), and support graduate students in the M.S. in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (MS-STEP) professional degree program, the Ph.D. in Public Affairs program, and the certificate program in Sustainable Environmental, Social and Governance Leadership.

Very last minute post, but my school is hiring a tenured associate professor in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (STEP)! Review of apps will begin on Monday.

hr.myu.umn.edu/psc/hrprd/EM...

State Department to deny visas to fact checkers and others, citing 'censorship' The order is focused on applicants for H-1B visas, which are frequently used by tech companies and is part of a campaign by the Trump administration against online content moderation.

Apparently fact-checking is now considered a threat to national security.

www.npr.org/2025/12/04/n...

Very true. Also, can we talk about how the naming of these capital campaigns can be used to call out admin decisions that are antithetical to universities’ missions?

For Sparta: cause we support funding students like expendable gladiators, not to be participants in an informed democracy.

Yeah, can’t announce a (athletic) capital campaign that large without having a substantial donation already committed.

The first school to market itself as AI free is going to corner the market on people interested in actually learning. And I would not be surprised if rich families and the children of people creating this tech were the first movers.

Please come for all the gory details on the new ACTS survey component:
>3.5 times the administrative burden!
>Millions of dollars in unbudgeted costs!
>12 columns of data on every single applicant since 2020!
>29 columns of data on every enrolled student!
>7 years of data to be reported by April!

Social scientists spent the last 50 years arguing that racism is still prevalent in US even if it's covert (racism w/ a veneer), unconscious (racism w/out intent), or systemic (racism w/out racists).

Along comes MAGA, which embraces gutter racism while claiming that teaching about racism is racist.

Nadine ( @davidzinn.bsky.social’s adventurous friend) enjoying the decorations in the arcade outside her window.

How Trump 2.0 upended education research and statistics in one year Decades of carefully built infrastructure aimed at improving and tracking how American children learn vanished in an ideological attack

Important overview of how much of the federal research infrastructure to produce & maintain high-quality educational research & statistics was demolished this year by the Trump administration.

Larry Summers banned from the American Economics Association conferences and journals. Can't referee or be an editor for AEA journals.

National Bureau of Economic Research, your turn.

A light layer of fresh powder this morning on the @umichlaw.bsky.social quad ❄️☃️

Flow chart from TX Tech memo showing that most class materials must be reviewed by chair, dean, and provost, and that all curricular material must be disclosed

TX Tech has a flow chat for guidance on what can be taught in the university system. Two things:
1. Very little content seems to be permitted. This is partisan control of the curriculum.
2. I would not enjoy teaching under these conditions, but I really would not want to be a Chair or Dean.