iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 3h

Working on a thing about higher education and the midterms, so I'm looking at some candidate platforms. @abdulelsayed.bsky.social is a jumbled to point of being nonsense. If you win Abdul, I'm right here. Send your people to talk.

America's colleges and universities are among its most critical research institutions. They deserve more funding, not less. That funding should focus on high-risk, high-impact science that has the potential to change the world. Sadly, too few have access to our colleges and universities. That's why I believe that every student deserves a debt-free and tuition-free pathway toward the skills they need to thrive, be that a two-year apprenticeship or a four-year college education and beyond. To cap the runaway inflation in higher education, I believe we must cap th administrative overhead costs for institutions receiving federal funding. We need more research and teaching rather than rec centers and flavors of frozen yogurt. I will also champion non-traditional tenure pathways for educators whose work
advances the teaching mission of higher education institutions.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 23h

Google feels confident that it will survive the revolution

Q: Google, when we eat the rich what will happen to you?
A: As an artificial intelligence, I do not have a physical body to consume food or participate in class conflict, meaning I would continue operating as a digital system.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Sometimes I do this look where the mustache is bushy but the beard is stubble and my wife hates it. So I showed her this pic to see if it changed her mind. It did not. Rejecting me is one thing, but Zohran?

Screen shot of Mamdani talking g about healthcare with an apple and a trimmed beard

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

On campus in my building by classrooms … I’ve never seen this before

Vote for Abdul add on mini-campus billboard on MSU campus. Does include a disclaimer about not being an endorsement

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

The scammers use real organizations for legitimate sounding events, hijack the identities of real people, and sometimes present real links.

Dear Barrett and Brendan,
Our selection committee at the Perkins Library recently reviewed The Postliberal University: Governance, Leadership, and Partisanship in Higher Education, and we loved the urgent analysis, original research, and practical strategies you created to help leaders and scholars navigate the evolving landscape of higher education.
We work to connect readers who are blind, visually impaired, or print-disabled with accessible literature, and we are always looking for high-quality, entertaining mysteries and compelling educational resources to highlight within our community.
We noticed that a published copy/eBook version of The Postliberal University: Governance, Leadership, and Partisanship in Higher Education is available! As we prepare for our upcoming educational event showcase scheduled for October 29, 2026, we would love to explore ways to feature your work for our readers.
Additionally, we are always eager to connect with generous authors who might be open to collaborating with Perkins, whether through sharing accessible formats, donating copies, supporting our Halloween Scholarship initiative, or participating in a virtual author connection for our community.
Please let us know if you would be open to a brief discussion on how we might highlight your book during our showcase and Halloween event. We would be absolutely delighted to connect with you!
Warm regards,

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Obviously, there’s nothing strange about this distribution. It’s just that they’re amazing at teaching math at Duke.

Chart showing math at Duke is a major housefire among math program

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

You don’t need to go to Harvard. Everyone should just major in math at Duke, easy peasy.

And the place to get the single most lucrative degree in America wasn't in the Ivy League, and it wasn't in a computer science program. It was in the mathematics department at Duke, where the median income among graduates was $297,029.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Faculty in Alabama AAUP Chapter note that this law set a clear president for further partisan control of academic freedom and what can be taught, studied, and expressed.

Academic Freedom Concerns
Davis-Sramek said she has worries about the law that don't specifically relate to the body of water.
"If they can say, by legislative mandate, 'We're going to force employees to reference Gulf of America,' then what else might they force us to say
—or restrict us from saying—in terms of our teaching and research?" she said. "This, in particular, seems silly on the surface. But I think it begs a bigger question: If they can do this, what else can and might they do?"

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Several states have statutes or constitutional provisions that give universities more autonomy than other state agencies. This is the case for Alabama, but the universities have indicated they will comply without legal challenges.

The Alabama Constitution gives the University of Auburn system and University of Alabama system, which includes UAB, greater autonomy than other public higher ed institutions, meaning they might be able legally to refuse to follow the law if they desired to. The Gulf of America Act doesn't say they're exempt. The systems didn't respond to requests for comment this week.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

A year ago we got a dog in an attempt to cope [gestures broadly]. It turned out to be an expensive proposition because this dog is so high strung she needs at least 3 hours of exercise a day, so we pay for her to get out a few times a week. Anyway, she’s the dirty dog pictured flying over the pack.

Blurry black and white dog, caked in mud, jumping over a tangled cluster of poochies

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

A few thoughts to get people mad. 1. Maybe high tuition/high aid is kinda working? (Check out this Chalkbeat story) www.chalkbeat.org/2026/10/01/w...

Graph showing that while public tuition has risen from 2008 two present from around $7000 dollars the actual average tuition that students pay has fallen from around $4000 to around $3000

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Over the last 20 years, the market for new tenure-track (untenured) professors has been much more volitile than the market for more experienced tenured faculty members

Figure showing something like 7-10x as many untenured tenure track faculty hired each year compared with tenured faculty but much more volatility with tenure track hiring.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

If you walk into an astronomy department and present a geocentric model of the universe, you will get shut down before you complete your sentence.

Screen shot of a Chronicle essay: If you want to send a group of sociologists into an uproar, tell them a group disparity is the result of individual choice. Take your pick of groups and issues. Try telling a room full of sociologists that women are underrepresented in STEM because they prefer people to ideas, or that
intergenerational poverty persists because the poor make bad decisions with money.
You will likely be shut down before you

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Which ethics experts argue the opposite? www.nytimes.com/2026/09/27/u...

The spot is the latest in a series of pro-Trump ads funded by public money. Some ethics experts have argued that the Trump administration is violating federal laws banning the use of taxpayer dollars for propaganda, and the ads have drawn criticism from both parties.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Starlink: “enoineered” by SpaceX, so you can trust its good

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

When a complaint surfaced that some students and faculty were insufficiently sad about Kirk's assassination at the Tech Law school, a brand new professor and former Republican legislator was appointed to investigate.

By then, Nowlin had appointed Bill Keffer, an energy-law professor and a former Republican state legislator, to oversee a formal investigation of Fisher for violating the school's honor code. She was charged with failing to uphold "professional obligations" in "performance related to clinical programs." On the same day that
Metze signed his resignation letter, Keffer e-mailed Fisher to request an interview.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

My coauthor Barrett Tylor, who is not on here, was interviewed by The New Yorker about the partisan takeover of Texas Tech and our "postliberal university" concept is used to explain what's going on in US higher education! www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

During Donald rump's second term, state legislatures across the country hav deemed "woke ideology." More than half of American college students, in twenty- three states, are currently attending a school that has been forced to ban certain topics from the classroom, eliminate academic departments, or drastically weaken tenure protections for professors. Barrett Taylor, a scholar of higher education at the University of North Texas, described such measures as the first phase of a wider
movement to establish what he calls the "post-liberal university." The second phase involves installing political appointees to run universities. In 2022, only three per cent of college presidents came from the public sector. But in Florida a quarter of state schools are now led by former Republican politicians, and many other states, including Ohio, Virginia, and Texas, have increasingly turned to conservative lawmakers to run public colleges and universities in the past two years. As a former trustee at a Florida public college put it, "We are now over the walls and ready to
transform higher education from within."

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

We have an old stinky chair and it’s for Poppy who simply adores old stinky tho things

A black-and-white doodle dog sleeping on an old chair covered with a throw that is gold

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I hope you have a weekend with 20% the joy experienced by Poppy (center, airborne) does running through the woods.

Dogs running through the the woods. With a black and white doodle dog jumping over a log

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Show me when the country started to get poorer JD?

World bank graph showing real per capita GDP more or less constantly increasing from 1960 to 2025

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I asked because LinkedIn fed me up this post in which she calls for creating a “spiritual book club” where people read what they want, which is great except the universities that employ her put ideological restrictions on what people read.

Celebrating Dolly has me thinking about the joy of reading books and how often I squander that real pleasure by putting myself under pressure to consume pages.
We are all craving deep reading, deep thinking, and deep connection —which all require deep time.
I went back this morning and re-read the interview we did with Maya Payne Smart, anc was drawn to her phrase the "privilege of focus."
Let's start a spiritual book club where we reac what we want, when we want, no meetings or deadlines - just a shared reframe of deep time as subversive in a world of shallow distraction, addictive scrolling, and unrelenting attention grabbing.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Their plan for public universities is to starve them of 25% of revenue!

17. Public College Compact: A public college education is one of the surest paths to
economic mobility. But we ask working families to bear all the financial risk from day one-when dropout odds are steepest and the payoff is least proven. That's backwards and unfair. A new Public College
Compact will drive down costs, dramatically simplify the financial aid process, and redirect the risk. Public colleges should make a four-year tuition guarantee. Then,
the federal government, states, colleges, and students should each take turns as the lead
investor. Freshman year, America invests in your potential. Sophomore year, your state invests in your persistence. Junior year, your college invests in your success. Senior year, you invest in your future.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I got on the airport bus and then these showed up at the house

Copies of a book - The Postliberal University- in a box

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I’m flying to Sicily this evening for a conference. Don’t cry for me too much but holy smokes it’s gonna be hot when I arrive.

screenshot of the Weather app showing that it will be 99°F today and 102 tomorrow

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

www.chronicle.com/article/vand...

Vanderbilt is of course free to choose its policies and priorities, and its wealth, academic excellence, and strong reputation guarantee that it will continue to thrive. But its leaders clearly aspire to create a template for the sector writ large — the preamble to the declaration is not about Vanderbilt in
particular but about American universities in general — so it seems fair to ask whether it is a template others should adopt. Given the benefits of a non-adversarial relationship with the current administration, I anticipate that some will. Given the version of higher education envisioned in "The University and Its Purpose," I hope that most will not.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Here’s a suggestion from my university…. WTF?

Example: "You are given a 5-page essay produced by ChatGPT on La given topic in your discipline; e.g., Greek mythology, human rights, sustainable energy, sorting algorithms]. You have 7 days to analyze the essay and edit it yourself to improve its quality, making clear references to the original text where applicable." (p. 378)

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

This is how most colleges and universities are responding - trainings about how to use LLM’s effectively, sometimes with a nod to “ethics” - but virtually no systematic shared governance approach to thinking it through. I think senior admins may be AI pilled but most are just terrified.

“I’m not getting any guidance on how to dissuade their use,” said Carol Sewell, who teaches in the California State University system, which has eagerly embraced A.I. “I’m getting opportunities to learn more about using it.”

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

The University of Michigan by contrast is not Flocked at all

Photo of a map showing no blue dots indicating a Flock camera

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

It is not possible to enter Michigan State University’s campus by car without passing a Flock camera.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

At MSU, one of Kevin Guskiewicz’s gripes with the board is that they dissent in public post-decision. Here’s an example of a UM regent doing the same. It’s unavoidable that universities are invited in “political” issues and it might be near impossible these days to keep boards of all stripes quiet

"I oppose the University's decision to site the super computer facility on the banks of the Huron River. I recognize and support University developments that create positive health, education, economic and social impacts, but as a public entity, these developments must be undertaken in close collaboration with the local community. When our developments affect communities, we have a responsibility to involve the people who live there. Here, the University has failed to engage in an adequate conversation with those most affected, and ! cannot stand by and support this project being shoved down their throats, in a way that looks like environmental racism. My opposition is driven by the fact that this site is currently in its natural state, is on the Huron river, and most importantly, is opposed by the local residents."
"I've personally spoken with community leaders and residents and have had the opportunity to hear their concerns. What's clear is that the University has not adequately engaged with the community, and it should not move forward until it does."

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

If you ask me, and in this case someone did, small c conservative lawyerly risk management, the kind of dominates General Council offices, is leading us right into authoritarian control. See the lawyer’s advice versus mine.

"I don't want my clients to become a test case" for the Trump administration's agenda to crack down on higher ed, Crosby Ferise said. If a president or college board asks whether they should answer McMahon's questions, "I will say, 'It's not a bad

"I don't think colleges should ignore the questions.
But I do think that they should be forthright about them,
," he said. "They should say, 'We believe ... that this is an attempt to coerce us, to say that science funding, and other federal resources are contingent upon signing onto the ideological agenda of the administration and breaking the traditions of American higher education, not reinforcing them. And for those reasons, we are taking an informed risk to push back on this and say that this is unacceptable."

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

My one quibble with this sort of accounting is when you include scholarships as a cost - scholarships are only really a cost when there are tuition paying students who you forgot to enroll the no (or low) pay athletes. In fact in some cases not having athletes would result in less tuition revenue.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Wanna guess where Gemini recommended

My son has a 1250 on the SAT, a 3.25 GPA, wants to major in business, and would like to be on the East Coast at a private college. He hopes to work in sports marketing. Our family income is $200,000 a year and we believe that we can pay up to $20,000 in tuition. Where do you recommend?

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

It was magical, for 3/4 of a season

Adley ruchman and Felix Bautista embracing in their uniforms

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

A squirrel and a groundhog are both vying for seeds below our backyard bird feeder. The squirrel is absolutely kicking the groundhog’s ass whenever it gets close to the good stuff. Here’s a shot of the groundhog, licking its wounds while the squirrel munch is away.

Backyard with birdfeeder. Squirrel and groundhog below the birdfeeder. Teddy ferns in the background.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

This is an absolutely stupid comparison because nurses have pensions, healthcare and other benefits, as well as a strong presumption of continued employment over a career. It also highlights white point in time ROI measures get things wrong.

The average influencer earns $91,991 per year, according to Indeed. For perspective, the average registered nurse earns $93,600 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Does this look like a shampoo-less do to you?

Close-up picture of a white man with a flat top haircut

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