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abigail dym

@abigailrd.bsky.social
657 followers 720 following 35 posts

educator + political scientist of education. assistant professor @bowdoin. mama to ona and arlo. local politics + sourdough bread enthusiast. www.abigaildym.com.

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Reposted by abigail dym
NPR @npr.org · 24/09/2026
Education staff are being scattered across several other federal agencies. Despite the Trump administration's claims, employees say it's adding bureaucracy and making it harder to serve students. n.pr/3TS9SAR
n.pr
The Education Dept. hasn't been dismantled. It's become more inefficient, staff say
Education staff are being scattered across several other federal agencies. Despite the Trump administration's claims, employees say it's adding bureaucracy and making it harder to serve students.
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abigail dym @abigailrd.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
This is so important, especially for folks working with youth data and trying to navigate journal requirements to submit the data. It just isn’t safe a lot of the time, and we all need to be so cautious to protect our participants.
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
"ultimate danger remains that, when institutions comply with authoritarian wishes, the govt will just ask for greater and greater concessions. After all, if you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk." The anatomy of a coup d’université www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...
insidehighered.com
That Same Ol’ Authoritarian Playbook
Throughout history, autocrats have gone after higher ed finances to control institutions’ culture.
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Jon Ossoff @ossoff.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
This corruption is why nothing works for ordinary people.
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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Uhhhhhhhh
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abigail dym @abigailrd.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
first day of classes with this fabulous Department of Education @bowdoincollege.bsky.social
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abigail dym @abigailrd.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Fabulous TT position in Education & AI at Bowdoin College! Looking for folks with backgrounds in learning science, mathematics, and AI. Happy to answer questions. Come to Maine! careers.bowdoin.edu/postings/18087
careers.bowdoin.edu
Assistant or Associate Professor of Education
Bowdoin College’s Department of Education invites applications for a full-time tenure-track faculty appointment in Education beginning July 1, 2027. Applicants at the Assistant and Associate level are...
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 21/06/2026
When we invest in systems that give people choices (eg, market capitalism) but not systems that teach people critical thinking (eg, education), we end up with too many of the former and not enough of the latter.
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Stanford Social Innovation Review @ssir.org · 14/05/2026
What is education for? What kind of citizen should education aim to cultivate? In a moment when curricula are contested and civic life is shot through with conflict, @dsallentess.bsky.social calls for a rethinking of the role education plays in our democracy:
ssir.org
Education and Its Public Purposes (SSIR)
How schools can support both individual and collective thriving in our democracy.
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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Making tenure count, for MSNOW I wrote about my employer, The University of Iowa, creating a center for intellectual freedom. It's a reactionary project built on decades of conservative propaganda about higher ed.
ms.now
Opinion | Beware conservatives promoting “intellectual freedom”
Victor Ray: This conservative lie about schools like mine is furthering authoritarianism
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abigail dym @abigailrd.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
en route to the annual @aeraedresearch.bsky.social conference, and I am wildly excited to share that I will be joining @bowdoincollege.bsky.social this summer as an assistant professor of education politics + policy!
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
This @bostonreview.bsky.social piece by @adambonica.bsky.social and @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social is an absolute must-read, as are many of the responses to it. Spread this one far and wide.
bostonreview.net
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism
Moderation used to help Democrats win, but its advantages now have been greatly exaggerated.
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Elizabeth (Bit) Meehan, PhD @elizabethbitmeehan.com · 20/01/2026
omg the original post, not as the printout version (for ease of reading)
Paul Musgrave twitter post on January 12, 2017

Around the department:
Americanists: how bad can it be really?
Comparativists: dictatorship, purges
International relations: nuclear war

Follow up post

Americanists: haha but seriously
IR and comparative: who is joking
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abigail dym @abigailrd.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
incredible opportunity in the politics of education!
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Emily Pitts Donahoe @empittsdonahoe.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
If you are working on course design this week, and you teach a lot of students, let me recommend this guest post on my blog from three fantastic instructors who are pursuing innovative grading methods in their large lectures. It's a lot of work, but alternative grading can be done in big classes!
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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
The Virginia Senate just told UVA it’s not getting state funding if it accepts the compact since UVA exists to serve Virginia, its residents, & their interests—not be a tool of the federal govt. Scoop from our student newspaper, who’ve been doing vital reporting www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025...
cavalierdaily.com
Virginia Senate leaders express “unequivocal opposition” to Compact
The letter calls upon the University to immediately cease consideration of the Compact, and if not, the state will work to negatively impact the University’s funding.
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Astra Taylor @astra.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
“One way to fight a profit-driven system that treats people as disposable is to instead treat people as redeemable. Solidarity means not writing anyone off completely, not throwing anyone away. It holds out hope that systems & individuals can change." Officially out in paperback as of yesterday.
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Lightning Jay @lightningjay.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
Should Project 2025 be required reading for high schoolers? In our new article, @abigailrd.bsky.social and I explore two ways for teachers to bring challenging texts into the classroom. www.socialstudies.org/social-educa...
socialstudies.org
Social Education September 2025
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Joshua Weishart @joshuaweishart.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
Blue states should make democracy the prevailing theme of the upcoming school year. Not just civics/social studies classes, but democracy-reinforcing lessons & experiences integrated throughout the curriculum. Boldly educate through the crisis, don't leave children in despair, teach a better way.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
This is a must-read: The Trump administration's use of anti-semitism to attack immigrants and higher education mirrors plans by a group of Christian nationalists in the Heritage Foundation (which produced Project 2025). 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/u...
nytimes.com
The Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement
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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
The trope that universities are "dependent" on the federal government fundamentally misunderstands how vital this partnership has been for the US. The private sector can't replace it. If we kill it, we're all worse off. From @donmoyn.bsky.social and me: donmoynihan.substack.com/p/are-univer...
Moreover, these funds serve the public interest. Universities do things private companies with research capacities cannot: train research talent, conduct basic research with uncertain payoffs, and distribute knowledge as a public good. And the rewards have been enormous. Everything from the internet to pharmaceutical and health care innovations evolved from such investments. We are richer and healthier for the investment.
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Robert de Neufville @deneufville.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
Fight fiercely, America
open.substack.com
Harvard Against the Authoritarian
My Remarks on the Hands off Higher Education Rally
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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Really smart approach that I will adopt as well.
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Barbara Biasi @barbarabiasi.com · 07/04/2025
🚨🆕 In a new NBER working paper out today (tinyurl.com/2vv3vnhf), with @wsandholtz.bsky.social we ask a 🔥question: Can controversial public policies end up being political successes even when they cause lots of backlash? And if the answer is yes, what drives pol success? A thread 👇
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abigail dym @abigailrd.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
“The withholding of federal funds and the threat of withholding funds, without relevant and proper investigation into alleged violations or protections of due process, is a dangerous strategy used to discipline institutions of higher education for perceived political noncompliance."
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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century." snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-les...
snyder.substack.com
Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow
Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing and sharing
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David Houston @dmhouston.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
Paul Peterson on the importance of USED's data collection operation
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
Most members of the public have little reason to be aware of 18F, or will understand what its loss signifies. So this post tries to capture that, by including the voices of those who worked there. First, from @waldo.net
Once, I was part of a team of four people at 18F that saved the Department of Defense $500 million with a single, three-day project. 18F projects saved many millions of dollars as a matter of course, while delivering better results for Americans. Another time I was part of a two-person team (our billing worked out to about half an FTE, as I recall) that partnered with a court for 18 months to help them build, from scratch, an open source case management system to drive the operations of the entire court. The whole thing cost them just a few million bucks, vastly less than they’d been spending on their old system, and today their cost of operating it is a rounding error compared to their old infrastructure costs. All the work 18F did for all their agency partners was open source. Public money should produce public software, for public inspection.

In short, 18F works just how Musk and team pretend that they want government to work. But when his team found it, they destroyed it. 18F’s work is evidence that government works well, which undermines their message that it doesn’t. 18F’s parent agency, the U.S. General Services Administration, turns a profit as an agency. So it has to be destroyed too.
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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
House Rs just passed the budget resolution, the first step in their process to enact a bill that'd kick millions off Medicaid & cut SNAP down to just $1.60 per person per meal on avg while cutting taxes for the top 0.1% by $278k - all while increasing the debt 🧵on what's to come and WHERE TO FIGHT
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Dominik Stecuła @stecula.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
There are no words that can adequately describe what losing ANES would mean
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Governor Tim Walz @governorwalz.mn.gov · 06/02/2025
We’re focused on feeding our kids. Investing in our schools. Making sure child care is affordable. Regardless of the chaos unfolding in Washington, we’re making Minnesota the best state for kids to grow up.
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 06/02/2025
This article--on the systematic dismantling of the NIH, NSF, and CDC--is a must-read not only for researchers and clinicians but for anyone who has ever gotten a vaccine, taken medication, read the results of a research study, or gotten tested for Covid, flu, or STIs. www.science.org/content/blog...
science.org
Revised and Extended: What's Happening Inside the NIH and NSF
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Federica Genovese @fgenovese.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
List includes “political”, “socioeconomic” and “historical”.
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Dr. Devon Cantwell-Chavez @devoncantwell.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
High-key, some of the street-level bureaucrats that I see being the bravest and putting up the most resistance to this administration right now are teachers. They are on the frontlines, working with some of our most vulnerable folks in society, and are not batting an eye at noncompliance.
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abigail dym @abigailrd.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
a truly dystopian vision of teaching and learning in a pluralist nation www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...
whitehouse.gov
Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling – The White House
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose and
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abigail dym @abigailrd.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
0.1% of our reps have had a baby while serving - so strange we have wildly inadequate pro-family policies
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
I am begging the national media to start taking this seriously. Stop buying the claims that the framing of "temporary" or "pause." They are altering the review processes of federally funded scientific research from merit-based peer review processes to political screening by ideologues.
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abigail dym @abigailrd.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
stripping the public purposes of education from public education comes at you fast
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abigail dym @abigailrd.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
excellent piece calling for us to shift our concerns about the negative impacts of social media away from the individual and - more appropriately - on the collective. our deep problem is “degraded democratic publics” more than misinformed and biased individuals.
programmablemutter.com
We're getting the social media crisis wrong
The bigger problem isn't disinformation. It's degraded democratic publics
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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 05/01/2025
A deep pathology of American folk constitutionalism is the belief that our system is the best because it was a huge innovation *in 1787* & was an inspiration to Europeans chafing under absolute monarchies for years after. But they've long surpassed us & we've learned nothing from their experiences
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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 19/12/2024
Spent the day talking to Europeans, and nobody can think of any precedent for what Musk just did to the US Congress. There is no businessman with that much power, the power to stop a routine spending bill, anywhere else in the democratic world.
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The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 12/12/2024
As we race toward an authoritarian iceberg clearly aimed at crushing vital government programs and agencies, Biden has a choice: He can act swiftly to save lives or wring his hands and abandon the people he pledged to serve. newrepublic.com/article/1891...
newrepublic.com
Biden’s Got One Last Chance to Cancel Student Debt
We won’t be talking student loan relief once Trump takes office. We’ll be talking about the abolition of the Department of Education.
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Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
NEW: Where the teens are YouTube 90% TikTok 63% Instagram 61% Snapchat 55% Facebook 32% (down from 71%) WhatsApp 23% X 17% (down from 33%) Reddit 14% Threads 6% report: www.pewresearch.org/internet/202...
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Kate Wright @newsprof1.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
THREAD: How easy would it be to turn Voice of America into state controlled media? I wrote a book about this with @martinscott2010.bsky.social @melbunce.bsky.social, focusing on what happened to #VOA during the last #Trump administration.
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abigail dym @abigailrd.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
important reminder that young people don’t consider political info as ‘news’ and have wildly different consumption habits than even a generation before them
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abigail dym @abigailrd.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
I joined Generation Citizen’s New England Advisory Board because I support community-based civics, which we need now more than ever. Please donate to increase access to civics! secure.givelively.org/donate/gener... @givingtuesday.bsky.social #YouthLeadership #FutureInFocus #GenerationCitizen
secure.givelively.org
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abigail dym @abigailrd.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
bringing this monday-after-break snack/nap-before-8am energy with me to campus today
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