David M. Luebke

[PS: My wife is a high school teacher, so I have a pretty good idea of what I would be up against]

I've been teaching at colleges or universities for more than thirty years and I can assure you: I would not survive a single semester as a high school teacher.

American Teachers in Red States Are Walking Away for Good The predictable consequences of the right wing’s war on public schools are being felt as educators leave their communities—and their profession.

Who can blame them? They are both expected to solve every social problem and are regarded as the root of all evil. Never mind that more often than not, their students love them.

#WarOnEducation
#Edusky

newrepublic.com/article/1967...

The landmark Supreme Court case that saved the press – and why the Trump admin wants it gone President Donald Trump is again attacking the American press – this time not with fiery rally speeches or by calling the media “the enemy of the people,” but through the courts.Since the heat of the N...

Will John Roberts and his merry band of genteel white supremacists deliver to Tr•mp what he wants?

#IsThePopeCatholic

www.alternet.org/sullivan-sup...

Needless to say: the people who will be affected most by this are those whom Tr•mp regards as his natural constituency.

How Trump’s War on Higher Education Is Hitting Community Colleges

Trump's War on Knowledge isn't just targeting the elite private research universities, like Harvard and Brown and Columbia. It also threatens to push the nation's 1,100 community colleges over the edge.

#TYRANNY
#waroneducation
#Edusky

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/m...

Done! 💙💙💙

Just noticed this! Done! 💙

A former student and friend insists that his master's degree in History gave him the best possible training for subsequent career as a brewery and restauranteur.

FY 2026 R&D Appropriations: Federal R&D Estimates | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

A snapshot of American decline: federal funding for basic research and development will drop fully 22 percent in fiscal year 2026.

#Barbarians
#Idiocracy
#WarOnEducation

www.aaas.org/news/fy-2026...

"The rapidly changing nature of work, especially with increasing use of artificial intelligence, demands adaptability, creativity, and the ability to think critically. These are precisely the qualities and skills the humanities instill in students."

Why do we think that the humanities are expensive luxuries that weigh down university finances when, as often as not, the opposite is true?

[Another pro tip: humanities profs cost less and earn less, on average, than their colleagues in the natural sciences]

What does it say about our society and culture and politics that even university administrators propound such nonsense as if it were true?

[Pro tip: they know that it is false]

Isn't it paradoxical that another rationalist stereotype -- i.e., "if you want a job after college, get a degree in business or science" -- is itself irrational and grounded in demonstrable untruths?

This is not shade those other paths of study; far from it. But it does beg the question: why do we accept false stereotypes as self-evident truths -- i.e., "all English majors wind up as baristas" -- when the data prove their opposite?

Every couple of years, someone in the business world or education science or (like this report) philanthropy points out the verifiable, factual truth that students with a bachelor's degree do as well in landing a job as students with degrees in the natural or social sciences.

"Further, the earnings of terminal bachelor’s degree holders in the humanities are comparable to those of their counterparts in the behavioral/social sciences and the life sciences, while the job satisfaction levels among humanities graduates are in line with those of degree holders in all fields."

"[...] the American Academy of Arts and Sciences reports that, at latest count, 96.3 percent of terminal humanities bachelor’s degree holders between the ages of 23 and 32 were fully employed, a share that is on par with that for degree holders in the same age range across all fields."

"Indeed, while students, their families, and their academic advisors alike tend to labor under the widespread misconception that humanities majors are ill-prepared for post-college employment—and that they in fact are generally unsuccessful in securing jobs after graduation— [...]

#vocationalsim

Mellon Foundation The Mellon Foundation makes grants to actively unlock the power in the arts and humanities that helps connect us all.

If you think that humanities degrees are useless, you've adopted a falsehood:

"It is a well-kept secret of US higher education that undergraduate students who have earned a degree in the humanities fare quite well on the job market."

#Edusky
#HigherEducation

www.mellon.org/voices/human...

The only definition that seems to carry any weight these days.

Laura Loomer Claims Two More Trump Heads in Just 24 Hours The MAGA acolyte is having a startling amount of influence on the Trump administration.

Kakistocracy, the tyranny of the sh•ttiest

newrepublic.com/post/198626/...

"Deals like Columbia’s enhance the power of presidents and their allies within targeted universities; sideline Congress, the courts, and most faculty; and sow fear and uncertainty throughout civil society."

#ColumbiaUniversity

Tr•mp has a feral ability to seek out any relationship built on trust in order to destroy it:

"Basic research, on the other hand, thrives under stable institutional frameworks, reliable funding commitments, and a climate of free inquiry."

"The spread of regulation by deal would be worrisome in any period, but it is especially worrisome at this time and in this domain. Authoritarianism feeds on manufactured emergencies and hardball tactics that give the executive leverage to attack political opponents and compel obedience."

Under Tr•mp, "regulation by deal" by-passes all of the democratic systems of policy enactment, review, and implementation. It is fundamentally authoritarian and aims to undermine and destroy democratically enacted laws.

#Tyranny

True, there are precedents: Obama relied more heavily on the informal pressure of "Dear Colleague" letters than his predecessors had done. Conservatives howled. But at least they were meant to uphold democratically enacted laws.

Each "deal" begets the next: "The Trump administration has made clear that while Columbia is first in line, it intends to reach comparable agreements with other schools—to scale the Columbia shakedown into a broader model of managing universities deemed too woke." It is a kind of terrorism.

#Tyrant

The Columbia "deal" allows a far deeper governmental intrusion on colleges and universities than anything we've seen since the McCarthy Purges. They are also blatantly illegal and unconstitutional -- not that anyone seems to care about that.

#MafiaRule

An important essay on the Tr•mp regime's strategy for subduing and dismantling higher education in the U.S. by means of "regulation by deal."

#Edusky
#WarOnEducation
#Extortion

balkin.blogspot.com/2025/07/regu...