Bradford Vivian

WSJ Feb. 28, 2026 at 8:21pm ET U.S. Strikes in Middle East Use Anthropic, Hours After Trump Ban By Marcus Weisgerber, Amrith Ramkumar and Shelby Holliday.

My understanding is that AI companies want universities to embrace this tech so that profs and students help “train” it. Seems reasonable to ask university leaders whether their embrace of AI will use education to simultaneously refine this tech for all kinds of horrific applications.

The Latest Columbia Student Detained by ICE Elmina (Ellie) Aghayeva was taken from her university apartment on Thursday, almost one year after Mahmoud Khalil. How is the community coping?

“My friend brought all of her documents to class, just in case.” Scenes from Columbia after an ICE arrest. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Inside Texas A&M’s Scramble to Censor Its Curriculum Documents reveal widespread uncertainty, even among administrators, over what professors could teach.

No surprises here: Texas A&M's restrictions on DEI-related teaching led to widespread censorship (including pre-compliance/self-censorship)

www.chronicle.com/article/insi...

WSJ Feb. 28, 2026 at 8:21pm ET U.S. Strikes in Middle East Use Anthropic, Hours After Trump Ban By Marcus Weisgerber, Amrith Ramkumar and Shelby Holliday.

My understanding is that AI companies want universities to embrace this tech so that profs and students help “train” it. Seems reasonable to ask university leaders whether their embrace of AI will use education to simultaneously refine this tech for all kinds of horrific applications.

NY Times columnists love to feature academic philosophers; those features typically reveal that NY Times columnists have only a faint understanding of what academic philosophy entails.

That's right. Worse than Pointless
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...

ICYMI | Here are some headlines from last week:

📊 Most Conservative Students Don’t Feel Persecuted on Campus
🏛️ ED’s DEI Guidance Is Dead, but Trump’s Crackdown Isn’t
📖 UNC Board OKs Definition of What Academic Freedom Is, and Isn’t

Read the full weekly news update: https://bit.ly/4baSDAB

UNC-CH Will ‘Scrap’ New Recording Policy, Chancellor Says The move comes less than three weeks after the controversial rules were enacted.

Congrats to @ncaaup.bsky.social & all who fought against this surveillance policy that would've allowed admin to hijack microphones in the classroom for secret recordings.

This move would've chilled classroom discussion & suppressed students' willingness to ask questions & take intellectual risks.

••00000-000 chronicle.com Professors Lean Left. But How Far?

How far? It’s become so bad that I routinely see other professors falling over on their left sides across campus—they’re leaning that far.

Texas is on the front lines of the fight against government suppression of academic inquiry. We must continue to hold the line against those who wish to control the range of topics that can be taught in the classroom.

Keep fighting. Our democracy depends on it.
@texasaaup.bsky.social
@texasaft.org

THE Inside Higher Ed Q Register Login "Free speech is under threat," Mitchell argued. "It's under threat from the right, and it's under threat from the left. We need to improve tolerance and viewpoint diversity on our campuses. Let me just say—cancel culture is wrong, whether it comes from the left or the right."

You can’t offer a full-throated defense of universities *and* endorse key elements of misinformation campaigns that have been used to weaken them.
www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

THE Inside Higher Ed Q Register Login "Free speech is under threat," Mitchell argued. "It's under threat from the right, and it's under threat from the left. We need to improve tolerance and viewpoint diversity on our campuses. Let me just say—cancel culture is wrong, whether it comes from the left or the right."

You can’t offer a full-throated defense of universities *and* endorse key elements of misinformation campaigns that have been used to weaken them.
www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

👇👇

Near the White House, Hundreds of High School Students Protest ICE

NYT: Near the White House, hundreds of high school students protest ICE.

By Campbell Robertson and Callie Holtermann

Hundreds of students walked out of high schools across Washington on Friday for a rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

How China’s universities joined the global elite Investment by Beijing has transformed the country’s institutions despite lingering questions about research quality and intellectual freedom

“The damage being done to the research enterprise across our top US universities stands in marked contrast to the systematic efforts in China to support major scientific initiatives”
www.ft.com/content/845e...

Columbia President with NEW details:

5 DHS agents entered a residency with no warrant.

They said they were police looking for a missing kid.
Security camera even captures them showing pictures of the "kid."

A campus officer asked for a warrant & their boss.

They ignored him & took the student.

If @chronicle.com is interested in how the funding of university research raises issues of ideological control AND holding “both sides” accountable, then it’s noteworthy that current levels of unprecedented state/federal ideological censorship of universities are generously funded… 1/2

by an obvious network of partisan think tanks and corporations, through a combination of misinformation campaigns, political lobbying, draft legislation, and, yes, ideological litmus tests for funded research. 2/2

If @chronicle.com is interested in how the funding of university research raises issues of ideological control AND holding “both sides” accountable, then it’s noteworthy that current levels of unprecedented state/federal ideological censorship of universities are generously funded… 1/2

When it comes to autorotation higher education governance, states like Texas and Florida are using direct censorship and curricular control whereas Indiana and Iowa prefer a veneer of neoliberal rationality and create enrollment market metrics to suppress academic freedom.

Huh. Imagine that.

Huh. Imagine that.

Three students stand together. Over their mouths are hands silencing them, with more hands coming from above.

The War On Student Speech

Following disruptive pro-Palestinian protests in spring 2024, the federal government, state lawmakers and college officials have imposed sweeping restrictions on student speech, resulting in a wave of arrests and expulsions. https://bit.ly/4qXaPCq

#EDUSky #HigherEd

Segregation Academies Across the South Are Getting Millions in Taxpayer Dollars North Carolina offers an especially telling window into what is happening across this once legally segregated region where legislatures are now rapidly expanding and adopting controversial voucher-sty...

North Carolina’s Lawrence Academy has never reported Black enrollment higher than 3% in a county whose population hovers around 60% Black.

It received $518,240 in vouchers in the 2023-2024 school year to fund 86 of its over 200 students.

(Published Nov. 2024)

The UT System's New 'Controversial Topics' Policy Is About Policing Knowledge When politically appointed regents and administrators determine which topics are “germane,” academic freedom quietly shifts into political compliance.

'In the UT system nearly 46% of the population is Latino. And where Latino students are the majority in public schools, calling the histories, literatures, and political realities of these communities “controversial” is not about neutrality. It is about deciding whose knowledge is expendable.'

IMO one of the great challenges but also opportunities today is to make clear the breadth and scale of govt/tech censorship we’re facing: universities, K-12, federal grants, journalism, free assembly, online intimidation, election interference, etc. A massive censorship industrial/political complex.

👇

IMO one of the great challenges but also opportunities today is to make clear the breadth and scale of govt/tech censorship we’re facing: universities, K-12, federal grants, journalism, free assembly, online intimidation, election interference, etc. A massive censorship industrial/political complex.

Quakertown parents, groups demand release of students in police clash Civil rights groups and parents gathered in front of the Quakertown Police Department Saturday demanding answers for the violent confrontation Friday.

INBOX: the police chief of Quakertown, Pa., led a group of plainclothes officers to disrupt a peaceful high school student sidewalk protest yesterday.

They threw an underage girl to the ground, choked her, and disconnected all calls to the detention center where she and others are currently held.

The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness? The evidence is equivocal on whether screen time is to blame for rising levels of teen depression and anxiety — and rising hysteria could distract us from tackling the real causes.

Reminder:

“the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science.” 1/2

www.nature.com/articles/d41...