Stephanie DeGooyer

Here Are the Finalists for the 2025 National Book Awards

Wonderful to see my colleague (and occasional bus stop companion) as a finalist for the poetry section of National Book Award!!!

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/b...

Ha!

Universities teaching literature students how to cope with long novels Critics blame GCSE English for deterring teenagers from the subject, describing the literature syllabus as boring and repetitive

Saw that thing about how much critics read and how they can do it upside down, anywhere and then saw this, which is really truly where our game is heading:

www.thetimes.com/uk/education...

Trump Administration Is Said to Plan to Cut Refugee Admissions to a Record Low

And just like that we return the word "refugee" to its original meaning: White European Protestant www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/u...

This is correct. Klein is wrong. Liberal & left parties in the US & Europe have not been reacted by defending immigration. This is an area they are willing to let go. The leader of the social democrat party in Denmark, for ex, has called on European leaders to veer right on immigration for years…

My institution had 43 faculty H-1B visas approved in 2024.

"To maintain the current level of hiring of foreign talent under new Trump administration policies, the institution must pay an H-1B fee equivalent to 2.85% of its annual federally funded research and development expenditures."

3 people critically wounded at Dallas ICE facility, 1 shooter found dead as police search for possible sniper, sources say Three people were critically wounded at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Dallas, sources say.

Awful news: someone appears to have shot up the Dallas ICE Field Office. The shooter is dead of a self-inflicted gunshot and three other people are "critically wounded."

www.wfaa.com/article/news...

Jamaican Citizen Deported to African Prison by U.S. Returns Home

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/w...

Rapid Response 47 @RapidResponse47 X.com Corporate lawyers and others with agendas are creating a lot of FAKE NEWS around President Trump's H-1B Proclamation, but these are FACTS: 1. The Proclamation does not apply to anyone who has a current visa. 2. The Proclamation only applies to future applicants in the February lottery who are currently outside the U.S. It does not apply to anyone who participated in the 2025 lottery. 3. The Proclamation does not impact the ability of any current visa holder to travel to/from the U.S.

Oh my GOD. This is the first official confirmation that the new H-1B entry ban does not apply to people with current visas (despite the text not containing ANY exception for people with current visas), and it’s not even something on an official website, it’s a passive aggressive tweet!

To recap, Trump signed a proclamation saying that after midnight tonight, no one with an H-1B visa may enter the US unless they have paid $100,000. However, anonymous White House officials are saying it doesn't apply to people with current H-1B visas — yet there is NO official guidance! None!

AILA: Trump Administration H-1B Crackdown and “Gold Card” Visa Imperil Jobs, Innovation, and Rural Healthcare AILA President Jeff Joseph and ED Ben Johnson responded to the Trump Administration attempting to apply a new $100,000 fee to H-1Bs and supplant existing visa programs with a “Gold Card” visa, noting ...

The Trump Administration has announced measures to gut longstanding pathways based on exceptional ability, national interest, & merit in favor of pay-to-play immigration. @urbanviewradio.bsky.social

This sends a signal to the world’s top talent that the U.S. is closing its doors. bit.ly/4nz1XBE

I have started just outright blocking people who respond to “that’s illegal” with nihilism.

It is not helpful, it is not useful, it is not productive.

Why is this horrible for Universities?

Just about everyone who isn't a citizen or green card holder already who's hired for a tenure track faculty position is hired through an H1B and then, after 3-5 years, applies for a green card.

This is literally "No more foreign professors can be hired"

@nickmark.bsky.social

apnews.com/article/h1b-...

Critical part of the President's new $100,000 charge for H1-B visas: The Administration can also offer a $100,000 discount to any person, company, or industry that it wants. Replacing rules with arbitrary discretion.

Want visas? You know who to call and who to flatter.

Microsoft is apparently commenting - bsky.app/profile/rive...

i don’t think people on bluesky understand the severity of this situation.

i woke up to literally hundreds of texts from friends and family thinking about either moving back home to india or applying to other countries for jobs. this includes me.

* I cannot express enough how serious this is. We are looking at a potential Travel Ban 1.0 in 2017 situation, where people with legal status were detained at airports. Trump has written a ban so broad that on its face it blocks the entry of people with current, valid visas. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmel... • 3h If you are an H-1B visa holder and you are currently outside the country on vacation or visiting family or whatever, if you don't get back here in the next 24 hours, you may not be allowed back in until this is blocked in court or you or your employer come up with $100,000. Seriously.

Tyler Pager @tylerpager X.com The Trump administration's new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas only applies to new applicants, a White House official said. w/ @Haleaziz More details on the new policy here:

Deleted the below posts out of an abundance of caution. Despite the words of the Proclamation, an unnamed White House official told New York Times that they intend to apply the $100,000 only to new applicants only.

If that is correct, the implications are not as urgent.

(and a plea to Canadian universities like UofT to avoid “rescuing” highly paid Yale faculty from the US when they can be helping Canadian and other nationals):

Trump Says the U.S. Will Institute $100,000 Fee for Skilled Worker Visas

We are still learning what this means, but it is massive. I was hired at my 1st position on an H1B visa. There is no way my university could have paid 100k & I seriously doubt other universities can. So research is going to be severely impacted by this move. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/u...

Is this the only kind of justice we can now expect?

I can’t be the only one who is deeply, deeply unsettled about the rise of internet crowd sharing to expose and shame bad actors caught on camera, whether they be wife cheaters, hat grabbers, or ball-wanters? The internet is cheating us…

How did you check?

Many thanks, Audie!

5) Does anybody know the legal basis and ideas behind these pleas from university presses?

4) If I opt out, I must sign:
"Author acknowledges that Author will not receive an AI Royalty with respect to the Work and further acknowledges and agrees that the sales and reach of the Work may suffer as a result & will not exercise AI Rights with respect to the Work . . .

3) "We believe that these companies should pay for the use of your work. Our acceptance of their payments demonstrates that licensing is required. We are concerned that the window may be closing for such deals, especially for university press publishers like us, and so we need to move quickly."

2) "While we hope that publishers, authors, and other content creators will prevail in upholding copyright as it pertains to use on LLMs, recent court decisions and other environmental factors point to heightened risk of decisions that may weaken our rights.... "