Liz Neeley

this is already a huge problem, and it’s about to get much worse as the economy goes into recession

Week 37 Sept 27-Oct 2, 2025 - hold the door

Each Friday, I summarize what is happening to American science & higher ed. 🧪
This was Week 37:
- 9 universities face loyalty oath (“compact”)
- government shutdown - impact on services & fear of further RIFs
- four NIH directors officially fired

& so much more buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

Biomedical or everything?

Setting aside the philosophical questions about the relationship between higher ed and democracy, accepting this compact is to accept lies about the history of higher education. I wrote a whole book about it. adamhsays.substack.com/p/a-raw-new-...

Concise summary of the Trump admin’s proposed “compact” with universities: “In other words, this is the most sweeping pile of unconstitutional conditions that any American constitutional lawyer has ever seen in the wild.”

Screenshot of a widget in my running app. It says my status is “fatigued”, and has a little illustrated person looking like they’re trying to catch their breath. Recovery is estimated at 35%, and it says I’ll be fully recovered in a mere 58 hours Huzzah.

Seems about right

One month later and as far as I can tell, there's been no follow-up on this (thankfully).

www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

Suggest pairing lizbucar.substack.com/p/ezra-klein... with this

~“Mindfulness commodified for American consumption is about managing your stress, not addressing systemic oppression. Optimizing performance, not transforming unjust conditions. Finding inner peace, instead of collective liberation.”

Week 37 Sept 27-Oct 2, 2025 - hold the door

Each Friday, I summarize what is happening to American science & higher ed. 🧪
This was Week 37:
- 9 universities face loyalty oath (“compact”)
- government shutdown - impact on services & fear of further RIFs
- four NIH directors officially fired

& so much more buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

I didn’t include this in last night’s newsletter b/c I remembered that Dartmouth was the only Ivy that did not sign the last open letter.

This seems good but doesn’t actually say no.

I hope Beilock’s next statement is also this short & says “We will not sign. We will not negotiate to sign. No.”

The landscape of this country would be entirely different if the Reconstruction Era electoral wins secured by newly freed Black folks had never been stifled by lynchings and pogroms.

The violence now, after decades of wins for queer, trans, Black, Brown, disabled, and migrant folks, same energy.

A Raw New Deal The administration’s proposed compact would seek to remake higher education in its own image

The Trump administration compact with higher education turns a manifesto of conservative grievances into policy, sprinkled with cost-cutting measures, and violates the very principles it claims to protect. I wrote about it here. It's free: adamhsays.substack.com/p/a-raw-new-...

Just writing about this for tonight's newsletter. Here's the published version - facultysenate.virginia.edu/resolution-o...

‘We called ourselves the lifeboat crew’: how fired USAID workers launched a rescue project ‘to save as many babies as we can’ After the Trump administration closed the organisation down, a group of former staff secured new funding for almost 80 programmes, benefiting an estimated 40 million people

These people are heroes. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Newsom threatens to cut state funding to universities that sign Trump’s political compact The White House is asking nine major universities, including USC, to commit to President Trump’s political priorities in exchange for more favorable access to federal money.

The press release is really something www.latimes.com/california/s...

Yesterday I was thinking about universities that did or didn't sign on to court cases and how that affected where I'd recommend to younger people go to college. "Will the school defend your rights?" is now an essential question on a college tour.

If a school signs on to this, you know the answer.

The workers of Kickstarter United, one of the tech industry’s first unions, are on STRIKE.

They‘re not calling for a boycott yet; if you want to support them, they’ve got specific asks outlined below.

Exclusive: ex-CDC director talks about why she was fired “I would never do that, as a scientist,” Susan Monarez says of being asked to approve changes to vaccine recommendations without knowing the details.

EXCLUSIVE: In her first interview all year, Susan Monarez, CDC director for only 29 days, tells me why Trump/RFK fired her and where this is all headed.

The CDC director is an “inherently political position, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be politically compromised”, she tells @nature.com.

Some problems have simple solutions. This new “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” is one. The answer is simply saying no.

Simple does not mean easy. But Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, Vanderbilt, Univ of AZ, UPenn, USC, UT Austin & UVA must understand what they’ll lose if they sign on.

FAA has issued MASSIVE temporary flight restriction which prohibits drones (i.e., photography) over Chicago.

They did similar around federal buildings in Los Angeles since June protests, but really no comparison...

Chicago's TFR covers 900x more area than ones in LA! 🧵👇
tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=d...

Some problems have simple solutions. This new “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” is one. The answer is simply saying no.

Simple does not mean easy. But Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, Vanderbilt, Univ of AZ, UPenn, USC, UT Austin & UVA must understand what they’ll lose if they sign on.

Week 36 Sept 20-26 - curing compost

Sorry for that broken link! Should be: buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

That is weird, thank you for telling me!

White House fires much of the National Council on the Humanities The White House appeared to fire all but four members of the National Council on the Humanities, an advisory board to the head of the government’s grantmaking agency.

NEWS: White House fires much of the National Council on the Humanities www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

Meeting the Moment Hi! I’m Liz Neeley and I’m glad you’re here. Each Friday evening, I write a summary of the week’s events in science and higher education. I pull together roughly three bulleted paragraphs about what ...

Each Friday, I summarize what is happening to American science & higher ed. 🧪 (Failed to post here this weekend)

Week 36:
- Reinstatement of UCLA funding
- analysis of H1B visa impacts
- pocket rescissions, "domestic terrorism" & so much more
buttondown.email/liminalcreat...

US government enters shutdown as Congress fails to reach funding deal.

The shutdown will stop work at multiple federal departments and agencies, affecting hundreds of thousands of government workers
u.afp.com/SWHb

Where Did the Fairyland Dandelions Go? For more than 45 years, three huge steel and bronze dandelion puffs reached for the sky outside Children’s Fairyland only to disappear without a trace. COYOTE went on a quest to find them.

This is my first story for @coyotemedia.org and I'm pretty proud of it! I think it will surprise and delight you, even if you don't live in the Bay Area. Plus, it includes a recipe for pie. www.coyotemedia.org/where-did-th...

A leading Democrat in the Senate just released an important report documenting how NASA has been working to implement the president's proposed budget, not Congressionally approved funds, in slashing missions. Read more ⬇️

Data manipulation within the US Federal Government A US Department of Veterans Affairs dataset compiling veteran health-care use in 2021 was quietly amended on March 5, 2025. A column titled gender was renamed sex, and the words were also switched in ...

"Data manipulation by the US Gov...makes crucial datasets untrustworthy and unusable. If the US Government secretly changes datasets for political reasons, researchers relying on the data might erroneously recommend ineffective or counterproductive interventions."
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

New research from Pew shows that kindness is ranked pretty highly
among qualities Americans value in the people they get their news from. Thanks to @kirstenaeddy.bsky.social for this fascinating slide.