Gregory T. Donovan

We are hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Media Policy and Platform Governance at Fordham.

Deadline for apps is Monday Nov 3rd and the position starts Sep 2026.

I’ll be chairing this search so feel free to DM with any questions

apply.interfolio.com/174378

How Instacart Spent Its Summer Vacation: Fighting a Fair Wage Law and Throwing a Third Eye Blind Concert As the City Council prepares to override Mayor Eric Adams's veto and close the "Instacart loophole," the company is waging a PR blitz.

"If you have enough money to book Third Eye Blind and give us free drinks, you can afford to pay your workers."

Unfortunately, the ICEBlock app is activism theater Coder, journalist, and author of Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations Micah Lee writes about Joshua Aaron's HOPE conference talk on ICEBlock, his iPhone app that allows users to anonymously report ICE...

The technosolutionism doesn't work story is on again.

www.metafilter.com/210189/Unfor...

Trump’s Big Beautiful Gift to Anduril The One Big Beautiful Bill Act requires all new border surveillance towers to be certified "autonomous." Only Anduril's fit the bill.

NEW: Buried inside the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is $6 billion for border security tech, including surveillance towers. CBP just confirmed to me that this surveillance tower money can *only* go to Anduril, the Trump-friendly military contractor. theintercept.com/2025/07/09/t...

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.

This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.

It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

There really is something special about what Zohran and Brad are showing the rest of the world what it still means to be a New Yorker and an American.

A Jew and a Muslim modeling a politics of mutual respect, rejecting cynicism. Human decency has been taking a beating but she's not out just yet!

Cuomo concedes to Mamdani, even as NYC mayoral primary heads to ranked-choice count https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-primary-results-2025-election

New York City Mayoral Poll: Mamdani Catches Cuomo In Rank Choice Voting - Emerson Polling The final Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill survey of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary…Full Release & Results

Let’s go Mamdani! #dontrankcuomo

How to become a right-wing star? Harass people A Brown student used crummy AI to label university staff as worthless; now he has a Times profile and is testifying to Congress

New, from me: A Brown student built an AI-powered harassment machine of university staff. When the university investigated (and cleared) him, he was presented as a free speech victim. He became a right-wing celebrity, which was his goal all along. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/how-to-bec...

Amazon is reportedly training humanoid robots to deliver packages The robots are leaving Amazon’s warehouses.

Amazon’s merger with the carceral state means the same robot that delivers your package will come back later to kick in your door and detain you.

How ICE Is Seeking to Ramp Up Deportations Through Courthouse Arrests Officials had largely steered clear of arrests at immigration courts out of concern that they would deter people from showing up for hearings.

The Trump administration is arresting immigrants who follow the rules and show up at court in good faith. Weaponizing compliance like this could cause (might be intended to cause) a collapse of faith in the immigration courts.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/u...

MTA scores court win as fight over NYC congestion pricing heats up MTA Chair Janno Lieber (center) celebrated a small legal victory outside Manhattan federal court on Tuesday. A federal judge’s order stops the DOT from cutting funds over the MTA’s toll fight. [ more › ]

MTA scores court win as fight over NYC congestion pricing heats up https://gothamist.com/news/mta-scores-court-win-as-fight-over-nyc-congestion-pricing-heats-up

DHS Is Reportedly Considering “Reality” Show Competition for Immigrants to Win Citizenship DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has frequently been criticized for “photo ops and costume changes” since taking on the role.

The DHS is reportedly in the beginning stages of teaming up with a famed reality television producer to create a show in which immigrants would compete for the chance to become a U.S. citizen. People on social media are comparing the proposal to the “Hunger Games.”

New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo was fined $600,000 Monday for breaking campaign finance rules by improperly coordinating with a super PAC dubbed Fix the City: bit.ly/4maRwV2

Among my responsibilities was setting up the Grantee UX Lab to help orgs make the most of their sub-grants. The plan was to establish qualitative feedback loops for identifying emerging research & comm needs & then develop workshops, educational programming, & support systems to address them. (4/6)

The remaining $12M was to go directly to Fordham to build up the infrastructure necessary to distribute all this money and support grantees in project implementation. Having first been part of the faculty writing team, I then joined the funded program’s 4-person faculty leadership team. (3/6)

The 2 grants amounting to $60M were for a grantmaker program where $48M would be re-granted to hundreds of community-based orgs in NY, NJ, PR, & Virgin Islands. This was designed to give local groups & small communities the opportunity to receive federal funding they normally have no shot at. (2/6)

I have spent a lot of my career talking to service providers about data security and am personally devastated by the lack of infrastructure and training for data management in social services. It’s something that really needs investment immediately.

Brooklyn Food Pantry Loses Federal Migrant Aid Grants — for Feeding Migrants The Federal Emergency Management Agency yanked $1.3 million in funds from the Campaign Against Hunger, accusing the group of aiding “illegal aliens.”

FEMA: Here's money to feed migrants.

Also FEMA: Actually, we're taking those away because you fed migrants and they could be "illegal" so maybe you're breaking the law.

In the meantime, a food pantry scrambles to meet the needs of hungry New Yorkers.

www.thecity.nyc/2025/04/17/t...

How Geo Group’s Surveillance Tech Is Aiding Trump’s Immigration Agenda Geo Group, a private prison firm that makes digital tools to track immigrants, becomes one of the Trump administration’s big business winners as its tech is increasingly used in deportations.

Geo Group has built “a lucrative side business of digital tools — including ankle monitors, smart watches and tracking apps — to surveil immigrants on behalf of the federal government.”

NYPD Stop-and-Frisks Surged Again in 2024 Under Adams The vast majority of stops, which surged by 50% last year, targeted Black or Latino New Yorkers.

The number of stop-and-frisks performed by NYPD officers sharply increased last year, public data analyzed by @NYSFocus and @THECITYNY reveals.

Say Goodbye to Small-Town Libraries and Museums, Thanks to Trump’s Latest Cuts The NEH budget is tiny. The loss is huge.

My Slate piece on the widespread NEH grant cancellations is live. So much gratitude to everyone who took the time to talk with me these past few days while fighting fires on every side.

#humanities #highered #neh

slate.com/news-and-pol...

#handsoff march at Bryant Park

“The Basic Liberal Narrative Is Gone”: Immigrant Rights and Abolition with Silky Shah “A singular focus on conditions, rather than the violence of immigration detention itself, just lent itself to expansion.”

Both Republicans & Democrats oversaw the merger of the criminal legal & immigration systems, leading to more people being deported & detained.

Read @amnaakbar.bsky.social’s interview w/ abolitionist immigration justice organizer @silkys13.bsky.social, new @ PB:

I am proud of my former Dean (at both Fordham and Georgetown Law), who is standing up for the values of those Jesuit institutions. The anti-DEI dictates are unconstitutional and just plain ridiculous in their sweep. I hope every university leader has the guts to stand up to this bullying.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu looks on before a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on sanctuary cities' policies at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. A quote on the card from Wu reads: “This federal administration is making hard-working, tax-paying, God-fearing people afraid to live their lives. A city that’s scared is not a city that’s safe. A land ruled by fear is not the land of the free.” Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu struck a defiant tone in her prepared remarks for a House hearing on immigration enforcement, defending the city’s approach and criticizing the Trump administration’s push to deport undocumented immigrants.

Follow live updates: trib.al/3dfcDru

18F was doing exactly the type of work that DOGE claims to want – yet we were eliminated shortly after midnight. Read our letter to the American people:
18f.org