Jason Munshi-South

Yesterday I was fired by Columbia University after eight months as executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. This was the first time in a 25-year career that I've ever been subjected to discipline in a job — much less terminated from one.

De-extinction is Mars colonization for biology nerds. Sorry but it is.

Promoting urban biodiversity for the benefit of people and nature - Nature Reviews Biodiversity Urban biodiversity underpins ecosystem services in cities, but faces multiple pressures from human activities, declining engagement of urban residents with nature, and inadequate governance systems. T...

Promoting urban biodiversity for the benefit of people and nature
Kowarik+
doi.org/10.1038/s443...

"urban biodiversity is people’s primary contact with nature"

"Biodiversity-sensitive and socially inclusive urban governance and urban planning are key to developing biodiverse, green cities"

Because Republicans are so evil, it's easy to lose sight of how bad Democrats are on public higher education. They tend to have a deeply condescending, classist view of public education as job training. Intellectual curiosity is to be reserved for those who get into private institutions.

I think some in the Senate have convinced themselves that the backlash to folding will be limited to “the left” and therefore ignorable.

Those people are deeply and profoundly misreading the moment and the stakes.

Virtually every swing district House Dem walked the plank to vote NO for a reason.

Anybody else annoyed at how universities act like their endowments are fake money? Even if only 15-20% of the funds are unrestricted, that is a lot of $$ for wealthy universities. They need to stop acting like they are Berkshire-Hathaway and protect their people and academic mission.

Columbia U. has an endowment of $14 billion. They should be fighting with all they have rather than capitulating to a dictatorial regime. The federal government is trying to set up an exception to the First Amendment to benefit a single foreign country, Israel. It won't stop there.

Spring peepers but only a few-not the entire chorus yet and no wood frogs

Favorite part of Star Wars was when Luke Skywalker took off his jacket and defeated Palpatine with his T-Shirt that said “Resist”

It often starts with criminalizing the speech of dissidents, journalists, and academics. Recently, professors in Turkey have been jailed for not being sufficiently pro-dictatorship. We're on a speedrun to a general crisis (economic, social, etc)

That was always annoying to me about the lab leak / wet market "controversy". We don't have good data supporting either scenario, but the wet market origin would not be better! That's how the first SARS emerged and China should have better regulations. Risk is risk, lab or market.

Opinion | Recent Virus Research Should Raise Alarm Research with pandemic potential needs the utmost precautions.

Sensible Op-Ed about safety issues involved in pathogen research. The public needs to have faith that scientific institutions are not putting them at unnecessary risk: www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/o...

Is this true? Do it anyway. Academic freedom exists for this reason. As long as you aren't claiming to be a spokesperson for the university then it is fine.

If you have ever dealt with a narcissistic sociopath then you understand Trump's and Vance's hysterical reactions to moderate pushback from Velensky. I still wonder a bit if Vance is acting to keep his benefactor happy but now kind of doubt it.

Been buying these like greedy hoarders since they appeared at TJ. Remarkable

My spouse pointed out that we are literally losing money at the local level as people lose jobs and grants (my spouse was working on a DOE grant for 5 years that was canceled and I'm an academic...many like us!). They had no response and the Dems are doing nothing.

My state legislators are Republicans because we're in a gerrymandered district that lumps us with ultra-wealthy towns on either side. Last night they had a town hall and a bunch of Democrats came to yell at them about everything. The Repubs acted like they didn't know what is happening at fed level!

Red-winged blackbird males are back today! Over the last 7 years this about the latest they have arrived. Chipmunks are already active and have had a robin already. Usually robins show up in larger numbers later. Wood frogs and spring peepers calling should not be far behind.

Employment | New York Botanical Garden Find out what employment opportunities are available at The New York Botanical Garden.

Come work with us! The New York Botanical Garden is hiring a Curator at the Assist. or Associate level. Profile: a productive and FUN Mycologist or Cryptogamic Botanist. Happy to talk to candidates about how wonderful one of the best botanical research centers is, easy.
www.nybg.org/about/work-w...

Hopefully this would also limit the cultural hyper-focus on Top 20 Ivies and adjacent that warp peoples' views about academia. Most universities are not elite reproduction machines. They play an important role in social mobility!

Open to idea of taxing huge university endowments. Non-profit universities should not be hedge funds, health care systems, and real estate portfolios that run an education side hustle. But make it productive! Taxes go down as you serve more students, cut administrative bloat, and rein in tuition

We finally have some well-powered whole-genome heritability estimates, including a quasi-behavioral trait (BMI). For height, ~89% of the heritability estimated to reside in common variants. For BMI and WHR, ~100% estimated in common variants.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

They also don't seem to understand that the "massive fraud" DOGE is supposedly uncovering puts all of their government benefits at risk. But of course they deserve their benefits while everyone else can go to hell.

Baby boomers on local Nextdoor are arguing they shouldn't have to pay property taxes after age 65. The main argument is that more than half of the city budget is for the school system. They didn't like it when I pointed out younger people are already paying for their medicare and social security

Interesting comment in here about converting to a "direct admit" strategy for those Profs with the funds to bring in graduate students. I think we will be seeing a lot more of this, albeit not necessarily publicly announced or revealed.

Nothing better today than a message from our colleague Sergey Gaschack on FB about the recovery of several of his camera traps that were left in #Chornobyl for years, inaccessible due to war.

Incredible #ChornobylWildlife footage amid the sound of war.

Have a look:
www.facebook.com/gaschak/vide...

They even did a Superbowl halftime and then just disappeared!

It may not be cool or hip in some circles, but we legitimately do need a massive amount of people to run for office.

Flood the school boards, councils, county seats, state legislatures, Congress, etc.

Big changes at the top happen when the ground shifts at the bottom. And that can start now.