iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Kate Manne @katemanne.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I wrote for @thecut.com about the Cornell case and what it says that, at my institution and many others like it, protesters are often punished more harshly than sexual assailants www.thecut.com/article/what...

thecut.com

What It Feels Like at Cornell Right Now

As a professor at the Ivy League school, Kate Manne has known many, many victims. There’s a palpable feeling on campus, she writes, that this is big.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

When they get back in power, Democrats need to go all-in on higher education. We need a campaign of reinvestment in public universities across the country that makes the Morrill Land-Grant Act look like nothing by comparison *and* a GI Bill of Rights-style program of tuition grants.

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dr. thrasher, an american writer in ex(archia)(xile) @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The ACLU and Amnesty International have published an exhaustive, 322 page repoter about student (and faculty) speech being under attack around the world. www.aclu.org/publications...

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AAUP-Ohio State @osuaaup.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

On Friday, several students with @climatestrikeoh organized a protest on campus challenging Ohio State’s contract with the defense contractor Anduril, and calling for an end to the university’s association with militarism and genocide.

Students protesting OSU’s contract with Anduril wrote slogans in chalk around the Thompson statue at Ohio State. The slogans say things like: no blood money, no war, divest, etc. the slogans go around the entire statue in dramatic fashion

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SeaTea @tierno158.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

If NFL owners want to censor who performs in stadiums, they shouldn't ask taxpayers to help build them. You can't take public subsidies for stadiums then use them as your personal editorial board. Pay for it all out of your own pocket and hold as many Kid Rock concerts as you want to.

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Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD @arghavansallesmd.medsky.social · 16/09/2026

I am suing the NIH. As part of a class action with the ACLU and 16 other plaintiffs, we are challenging the thousands of unlawful grant terminations in an effort to get them all reinstated. Whatever happens, at the very least, no one can say I sat back and watched while they destroyed science.

aclu.org

Researchers Challenge NIH Screening of Grants for Disfavored Viewpoints | American Civil Liberties Union

Class action lawsuit seeks to stop censorship and termination of federally funded scientific research

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League of Women Voters of Ohio @lwvohio.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Public Education, Democracy, & the First Amendment | What's at Stake? Weds., Sept. 16 at 7pm Join us for an important conversation about why public education is essential to our democracy. Presented by Honesty for Ohio Education and the League of Women Voters of Ohio. zoom.us/webinar/regi...

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Josh Eyler @josheyler.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Have you ever wanted to hear @cjdenial.bsky.social, @thetattooedprof.bsky.social, @liznorell.bsky.social, and me talk about the need for resisting AI in education? If so, you're in luck! On October 13th, we're doing a reprise of a session on this topic, and we're hosting it on Zoom FREE OF CHARGE.

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

It's like a parody, but it's deadly serious; the Commerce Department (which includes Census, NOAA, and others) has outright deleted "don't alter or suppress scientific findings for political reasons" from its scientific integrity rules. Seriously.

Protecting against "inappropriate influence" is no longer a "hallmark" of scientific integrity

The Commerce Department updated its policy for promoting a "culture of scientific integrity" in January 2025, days before Trump's second inauguration.

A new Trump administration order bans the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis from using statistical “noise,” or data for fuzzing survey results, to protect people’s privacy in their statistics.

The 2025 version included bans on attempts to shape or interfere in data collection, statistical analysis and other scientific activities "against well-accepted scientific methods and theories or without scientific justification."

The department's policy, the 2025 version said, involves ensuring scientific findings at its agencies "are not suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes and are not subjected to inappropriate influence," as well as making sure there's "independent review of facilities, methodologies, and other scientific activities as appropriate to ensure scientific integrity."

That language is missing, however, in the Trump administration's revision of the policy, according to an NPR analysis of text posted on the Commerce Department's website.

And while the revision adopts a definition for "scientific integrity" that is similar to the previous version, it no longer says that "protection from inappropriate influence" is among the "hallmarks of scientific integrity."

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Professa Murray @kalimurray.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

When Texas Tech and University of Texas say to a student—you can’t read James Baldwin, or study Black Studies, or Judith Butler—but you can read Nathan Cofnas—what does it say?

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Ali Watts @aliwatts13.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

My class starts in 30 min. Do I have time to re-design the whole slide deck to make it Dolly themed? No… but we’re gonna try! Soundtrack also in the works

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Alex Zalben @azalben.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Dolly Parton, among a thousand other amazing things she did in her life, gifted over 330 million books to kids through her Imagination Library program. Her passing is a tremendous loss to the world, but you can support the program today to keep it going imaginationlibrary.com

imaginationlibrary.com

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library | USA, UK, IE, CA, AU

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free books to children from birth until they begin school in participating areas.

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Lisa L. Moore @lisalmoore.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

You know what takes the sting out of removing “Dept. Chair, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies” from all my signatures? (My uni closed our department starting tomorrow.) Replacing it with “New Book Available for Pre-Order”! Turn my frown upside down by clicking on the link in comments.

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The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 08/08/2026

The Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure early Saturday to fund the government through Dec. 11 and temporarily block the White House from giving political appointees more control over federal grants.

washingtonpost.com

Senate passes bill to avert government shutdown before midterm elections

The bill, which now heads to the House, would prevent a shutdown starting Oct. 1 and fund the federal government through Dec. 11.

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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

It’s out!! The free link is here and can be used up to 50 times. After that, just email or text me, and I’ll send!! www.tandfonline.com/eprint/7PG9D...

ABSTRACT
Academia teaches us to hate our bodies, to acknowledge the fleshy organ encased behind bone and swimming in blood, while demonizing the skin that protects. We apologize for its existence: designing studies that minimize the presence of being, generating data but hiding the body that collects, writing research in a way that attempts to atone for using hands to create. Thus, the focus of this article is a consideration of how we might reject body shame in academia, and instead, embrace a stance that demands the acknowledgement and upliftment of bodies. To do so, I consider Sonya Renee Taylor's The Body Is Not an Apology as an ontoepistemological frame for understanding how embodied research practices generate new forms of academic storytelling that refuse the traditional narrative of disembodied objectivity.

Introduction

This is my body unfolding. Arms and legs moving to the rhythm of a band that plays in the backyard of my mother's house. It's her birthday, and the dance floor is full of her friends, my aunties, my cousins, all of us somewhere on the long road of learning to inhabit our flesh without apology. And today, for once, I am on the floor with them. I'm not watching from the sidelines, present in body but absent in mind.
I'm not editing every movement before I make it, shrinking before anyone asks me to. Today I move to the center and stop watching myself from the inside. My hips find the rhythm before my mind can second-guess them, and I laugh, not at myself, but with myself, with this body that knows how to do this, that has always known. And I think: isn't it something, to move a body, to be in a body and know it as a place of joy?

I write from this place; the music is pumping through my veins as I make alphabetic symbols on this page. And I am still, honestly, a little amazed that I let myself dance, that I chose to let this body move on freely rather than wiggling in my seat on the margins.

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Jonathan Feingold @jpygold.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

New #RaceClass Podcast is out. We dive into Texas GOP's assault on its own universities. Lots of tactics, strategies & people(!) plucked straight from DeSantis' own effort to resegregate & undermine Florida's once heralded institutions. soundcloud.com/user-8088721...

soundcloud.com

Ep. 66 | Why Education Scares Texas' GOP

Why is Texas' GOP so scared to educate their own students? Jon & Arnie discuss the rising repression across Texas' public universities. The Texas state legislature, with help from handpicked rightwing

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Bradford Vivian @bradvivian.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Thank you to @chronicle.com for publishing my letter to the editor—“Scholarly ‘Activism’ Is Free Expression”—in response to several recent commentaries which claim that many professors have become “activists” rather than scholars. #EduSky www.chronicle.com/blogs/letter...

chronicle.com

Letter | Scholarly ‘Activism’ Is Free Expression

Recent debates have failed to define a key term, writes Bradford Vivian.

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Phil Plait @philplait.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Whoa, over a quarter million people (so far!) have left a comment on the egrgious openly fascist takeover attempt of the OMB. You can too! @standupforscience.net has instructions and everything you need. It's not hard, and it's critically important to science. fight2win.standupforscience.net

fight2win.standupforscience.net

Stand up for Science

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AAUP @aaup.org · 09/07/2026

Ohio’s #SB461 forces state universities to fund partisan "civic centers" at record levels—even if students aren't taking the classes. Instead of fixing soaring tuition, lawmakers are wasting tax dollars to force an agenda. Ohio families deserve affordable education, not mandated indoctrination. 🎓❌

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Lauren Merry Vale (they/she) @pixielauren.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

So many examples of Democratic candidates embracing transphobia and losing -- or supporting trans people and winning! -- but yet the f*cking party can't seem to figure it out? 🙄 As an Ohio voter, this is beyond disappointing.

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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Grant: "Though the government has plenty of ways to promote its own viewpoint, puppeteering every university professor in the state is not one of them."

More credibly, the State explains that it also seeks to protect
its “most cherished ideals.” But that justification fails, too. Though
the government has plenty of ways to promote its own viewpoint,
puppeteering every university professor in the state is not one of
them. Forcing an official government line—in a college classroom
of all places—is exactly the “pall of orthodoxy” that the First
Amendment will not tolerate. Keyishian, 385 U.S. at 603.

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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

BREAKING: Eleventh Circuit, on a 2-1 vote, upholds injunction blocking Florida from enforcing its 2022 Stop WOKE Act in the university context. The majority opinion is from Judge Britt Grant, a Trump appointee: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Before GRANT, LAGOA, and WILSON, Circuit Judges.
GRANT, Circuit Judge:
"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." U.S. Const. amend I. The First Amendment, incorporated against the States in 1868, is this country's written commitment to the idea that freedom of speech is essential to freedom of thought, and that both are essential to maintaining our liberty. The Supreme Court has long been clear that teaching and scholarship are due some measure of protection under the Amendment. But how much? And in what contexts? That Court has not had to say, but this one is now put to the test. The State of Florida legislated a broad set of speech restrictions banning certain viewpoints relating to race, color, sex, and national origin in various settings. The provision at issue here bars Florida's educators from promoting or endorsing those distavored ideas when instructing students. Its prohibition applies not only in primary and secondary education, where states traditionally exercise a great deal of control, but also in public colleges and universities, where the state government's role has been far more limited.
When several groups of professors challenged Florida's new restrictions, the State cast about for an existing case or doctrine that could support its speech ban in the university setting. Finding none, it tried to marry public-employee speech cases with government speech doctrine, resulting in a new rule: if the

government pays a professor's salary, it has total control over her classroom speech.
That is not a blessed union. Florida's salary-for-speech rule is a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the State's own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry-classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth. This new rule also runs headlong into the Supreme Court's repeated, if imprecise, endorsements of academic freedom. If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it.
Nor does this Court's leading academic speech precedent,
Bishop v. Aronov, demand the outcome Florida seeks. 926 F.2d 1066 (11th Cir. 1991). In fact, it counsels the opposite. The restriction in that case was imposed by one university, against one professor, relating to speech about one thing— personal religious views that got in the way of the course's well-understood parameters.

That precedent makes clear that universities and even other government entities have crucial authority to shape curricular content, discipline teachers, and take other steps to guide and govern postsecondary education. But the speech ban Florida's political leaders seek to impose here is different in both nature and degree from these ordinary concerns. The rule Florida developed for this case does not withstand scrutiny.
11 Case: 22-13992
Document: 156-1 Date Filed: 07/07/2026 Page:
22-13992
Opinion of the Court
5
The ideas Florida targets may well be noxious. Or maybe
not.
Either way, in this context the First Amendment trusts students to figure it out for themselves. We affirm the district court's preliminary injunction.

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Rebecca Colesworthy @rcolesworthy.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

PLEASE SIGN to support Prof Tiffany Willoughby-Herard! 2 yrs ago Prof W-H stood up to protect students, rightly declaring “we cannot have a genocidal foreign policy in a democracy” while being violently arrested. Tell UCI to DROP all disciplinary charges against her! sites.google.com/view/withdra...

sites.google.com

Home

On May 15, 2024, several hundred heavily armed police were called in to break up a peaceful encampment at UC Irvine in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Among those arrested that day was UC Irvine G...

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 03/07/2026

Absolutely this. Right-wing capitalism wants to reinforce the idea that the only meaningful 'returns' on education or intellectual endeavor are economic. They've successfully restricted the meaning of 'return' to mean $, salary, ignoring or dismissing the non-economic returns of thinking.

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Cape Verde defeats Argentina via a 2-3 loss in extra time

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Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union @ruaaup-ptl.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

📣 BREAKING (GOOD) NEWS!‼️ The 2024 lawsuit against Rutgers AAUP-AFT, Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, AAUP-BHSNJ, AFTNJ, and AFT over the 2023 faculty strike was dismissed with prejudice—affirming public sector unions’ rights to free speech & collective action. Press release: loom.ly/xVmkrVA

BREAKING NEWS:
Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Filed Against Rutgers Faculty Unions Alleging Damages
From 2023 Strike

Yesterday marked a meaningful and victorious end to the lawsuit against our three faculty locals (Rutgers AAUP-AFT, Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, and AAUP-BHSNJ), our state federation (AFTNJ), and national union (AFT), over the 2023 Rutgers faculty strike. The lawsuit, filed in March 2024 by former Rutgers student Jeremy Li, was dismissed with prejudice, with the court upholding the rights of public sector unions and their members to engage in free speech and collective action.
The suit was filed in March 2024 by Rutgers student Jeremy Li and alleged that the unions deprived Rutgers students of a week of education in Spring 2023 as a result of our strike. Our unions filed two motions to dismiss this complaint on the basis of free speech, noting that free speech and conduct “were a matter of public concern.”
Li is one of many students who have filed such lawsuits in an attempt to curtail the right of collective bargaining units to strike.
Li’s attorneys, Patrick Hugues and Daniel Suhr, have filed similar lawsuits against teachers’ unions in Massachusetts and Kentucky for financial and emotional damages stemming from strikes there– and they’ve lost each one.

“This ruling is a bright spot in a difficult year, affirming the critically important right of public higher education workers to take collective action in order to win stronger and better contracts through collective bargaining,” says Rebecca Givan, president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT.
“Our students' learning conditions can only be as good as the working conditions of the faculty and staff who support their education,” says Heather Pierce, president of the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union.“Our fight is not only for ourselves, but for our students too. This is not only a win for labor rights—it is a win for the future of public higher education.”

“This ruling affirms our longstanding position that we are fighting for all of Rutgers—and we have the right to do so,” says Cathy Monteleone, president of AAUP-BHSNJ.

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Ali Watts @aliwatts13.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

May be losing my mind just a smidge

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Matt Hodler @mhodler.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

so vital for graduate employees to have unions

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Kevin Carey @kevincarey1.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

1/ Important new investigative report from my colleague @jbeowulf.bsky.social about "Maestro," advertised as "the AI University" on TikTok, that turns out to be a chatbot bolted onto a failing for-profit business school in order to illegally harvest Pell grants. www.newamerica.org/insights/the...

newamerica.org

The AI College: How One For-Profit School Substituted Instructors With a Chatbot

An inside look at AI-powered Maestro University exposes a pattern of policy failures, potential legal violations, and widespread frustration among students—acting as a warning sign for higher educatio...

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AAUP @aaup.org · 02/07/2026

“SB 461 requires Ohio’s universities to fund the five new civic centers before anything else — even if they aren’t offering courses that help students graduate or don’t have students enrolled in their programs or courses." —Jennifer Price, Ohio Conference of the AAUP Executive Director

ohiocapitaljournal.com

Bill would give more independence to Ohio's civic centers one year after Senate Bill 1 took effect • Ohio Capital Journal

An Ohio state senator recently introduced a bill that would give the five Ohio "civics centers" created last year by Republican lawmakers more autonomy at their various universities.

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ElieNYC @elienyc.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Christ, Kavanaugh joined the judgement but dissented on the Constitutional question... meaning that the vote is only 5-4 that the 14th Amendment exists.

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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

I do not think there is sufficient appreciation for how catastrophic yesterday’s decision in Slaughter is for this country. As Justice Sotomayor said in her dissent and she intoned from the bench yesterday, “today the majority reshapes our Govt.”

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Shannon McGregor, PhD @shannimcg.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

My UNC colleague @toriekstrand.bsky.social has a powerful op-ed today in the N&O on the insidious nature of so-called "institutional neutrality" - and how in practice it means anything but. www.newsobserver.com/opinion/arti...

newsobserver.com

Professor: Here’s an alternative to UNC’s charade of ‘institutional neutrality’ | Opinion

The author is a professor at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

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Julia Métraux @juliametraux.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

In bad news, with disability education oversight being moved to the Department of Health and Human Services from the Department of Education, that means Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will have power over disability policy positions. New from me at @motherjones.com www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

motherjones.com

RFK Jr. will oversee disability education policy

The dismantling of the Department of Education continues apace.

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Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

BREAKING MS NOW: FBI agents on Thursday raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative — a pro-democracy organization that helps register voters in that state, according to three people briefed on the search.

ms.now

FBI raids Ohio voting-rights organization

“Just straight up intimidation tactics”: Sources tell MS NOW agents also fanned across the state, showing up at staff members’ homes.

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Texas Conference of the AAUP @texasaaup.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

⭐️Please join with AAUP, AFT, and Stand Up for Science to stop OMB’s proposed “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance” rule by adding your feedback and comments to the Federal Register during the public comment period, open until July 13, 2026.⭐️ fight2win.standupforscience.net/campaign/164...

fight2win.standupforscience.net

Stand up for Science

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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Wrote a little about the work the U.S. put into helping academics escape fascism during WWII and why we can't rely on that for our future www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

insidehighered.com

No One Is Coming to Save Us

The realization can either break you or liberate you.

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Imani Gandy @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 02/06/2026

The New York Times—during Pride—published an essay about the joys of being heterosexual. So in the spirit of not doing that, here's my conversation with @chescaleigh.bsky.social about coming out late, finding your queer self on your own timeline, and why it's never too late to be gay.

youtube.com

It’s Never Too Late To Be Gay, Featuring Franchesca Ramsey

YouTube video by Rewire News Group

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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

As we wrote, turning NIH and NSF program officers into political appointees, combined with the proposed rule to weaken peer review, will fundamentally shift the agency from science driven by knowledge and expertise to science driven by politics. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

What might this mean for scientific agencies?
Agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes for Health (NIH) cannot meet their statutorily mandated scientific missions if politics, rather than scientific expertise, drive decision-mak-ing. Federally supported science has been so successful, in no small part, because agency staff are typically expert scientists beholden to ensuring that the agencies deliver world-class science. Now, many could be turned into political appointees. The proposed policy defines grantmaking positions as "policy-mak-ing," which includes "drafting of funding opportunity announcements, evaluation of grant applications, or recommending or selecting grant recipients." This definition, which neatly matches agencies' own definitions for certain career staff, would include most NIH program officers and NSF program directors.

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Ali Watts @aliwatts13.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Absolutely pumped to be part of the incoming cohort of Free Speech and Civic Engagement Fellows! See below for more about the Center and Fellows projects

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 29/05/2026

It’s truly astonishing to see how comprehensively the US government is tearing down every part of the system that has made it up until now a world-leading power in science, research, and technological development. The entire world will suffer from this wanton destruction.

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Alliance For Higher Education @alliancehighered.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

The AIM Committee and Education Department are considering proposals to limit the freedom to teach, learn, and research. We asked experts about the potential impact. Spoiler alert: long-term prosperity, intellectual diversity, democracy, and access to knowledge are at risk.

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Bradford Vivian @bradvivian.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

I finally got a chance to study the Yale Report on Trust in Higher Education. A quick thread about the trope of "trust" in this context: Who/what does the conceit that universities have "lost the public trust" and must atone for it really serve? The Yale report (inadvertently) has answers. 1/5

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Benjamin McKean @blmckean.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

“HB 698 would create a system where Ohioans who were doing perfectly legal jobs in good faith would be placed on a watch list and monitored by the government in perpetuity,” said Mockabee. “This raises serious constitutional questions.”

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