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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The most obvious @marypeltola.com campaign pitch ever: This is only even on the table because our campaign is winning. Has the virtue of being 100% true.

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Antigone @antigoneinthebes.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

People don’t realize how serious the situation is.

A graph showing number of Germanies over time. Losing one on October 3rd 1990 means by projection we are only decades before reaching -1 Germany in 2072

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 03/10/2026

Killed. NSF’s SBE was killed, in violation of law. The President does not have the power to choose to kill programs at a whim by defunding them. The imperial presidency was a mistake and we are in a separation of powers constitutional crisis.

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Ben Eidelson @beidelson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

1/ The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights just released its report on campus antisemitism and Title VI. I testified at the hearing. The report is unanimous, bipartisan, & debunks the main legal theories behind recent attacks on universities for allegedly tolerating antisemitism. 🧵

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It doesn't have to be useless--it can even be transformative--and it can still be a bubble that has the potential for a very painful burst as supply greatly overbuilds compared to demand & many companies convince investors they're likely the winner--until they're not. See, e.g., railroads, Internet

talkingpointsmemo.com

Losing Money But Making It Up in Volume? More News from the AI Front

Here’s our text for the day on the LLM/AI “boom”, which is...

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Danielle Kurtzleben @titonka.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The masculinity politics beat continues to be very necessary. goodauthority.substack.com/p/republican...

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Are you kidding me? The idea was a brief symbolic protest and then a shrug?

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Susan Collins is always horrified by the predictable results of her own vote, which means Mainers who genuinely care about Susan Collins should elect Troy Jackson as he won’t vote for things that wind up upsetting Susan Collins, unlike Susan Collins

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Incredible. First Secretary Mullin claimed that DHS had identified 15,903 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter roll. Then DHS officials told a skeptical Nevada, no no no, that’s just people we flagged. Here are the names of 185 people we KNOW aren’t citizens. All 185 were citizens. DHS got 100% wrong.

When the Department of Homeland Security sent Nevada a list of 185 names last month that it claimed identified noncitizens who had been improperly allowed to register to vote, state election officials got to work.
On Tuesday, the state sent a strongly worded rebuke to the federal government: Every single person on the list was a lawful citizen.
"As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens," Greg D. Ott, a deputy attorney general in Nevada, wrote, according to a copy of a letter sent to Department of Homeland Security officials obtained through open records requests.
"You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise."

Following the meeting, Ms. Vogt sent a clarifying email to Nevada officials. "I also wanted to be sure I clarified that we did not reduce the 15,903 to 185," she wrote. "We've manually reviewed some of the 15,903 and confirmed 185 are not U.S. Citizens."
Now, Nevada officials are saying even that 185 number is wrong. They also took issue with a letter D.H.S. sent them in early September, in which the agency reiterated its initial claims about nearly 16,000 noncitizens on the rolls and pressured state officials to review each case in a letter to Nevada officials in early September.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The media assignment is very straightforward and clear: Can you find, in the coming months, some of these 750,000 people and interview them? According to Vance, they're probably all "fake" because anyone who buys a health plan and then doesn't file claims is obviously not someone who really exists.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This is some great reporting by ProPublica. SCOTUS has so narrowed our definition of corruption that most corruption isn’t even illegal… but this? Yeah no. This appears to fall squarely within what’s still actually illegal. If the reporting is correct. And they have the actual physical check…!

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Providing future generations of students across the arts and humanities with an object lesson on the relationship between authoritarianism and art. A lot of iconoclastic removal will be needed after this ends, but this one piece should genuinely go in a museum. (Probably not an ART museum…)

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Trump has such a gift for making subtext text.

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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 18/09/2026

i'm not over Alito saying we shouldn't count ballots that are mailed on or before Election Day but arrive shortly afterwards bc they can “radically flip” the “apparent outcome” cannot stress enough that, until all ballots are counted, there's no outcome to flip! ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/alito...

ballsandstrikes.org

A Brief History of Sam Alito’s Delusional Obsession With Voter Fraud

His conduct in several recent cases suggests that Alito is deep in the right-wing conspiracy theory weeds.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Really interesting point. And that _might_ suggest that the Chancellor was responding more to a small internal constituency than a large external one (although I'm sure it was both).

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Although I can't prove it, I strongly suspect that university leaders are more likely to have that sense of principle, and maybe also spine, if they have spent a lot of time actually doing the work of the university, on the faculty, teaching and researching. That would be a good foundation anyway.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Ha. That literally lasted eight days. But in a real illustration of what happens when you get your news online, I've had mutliple people tell me earnestly—outraged—that UCLA let the students keep it up for months or even years (becuase that's what they heard / saw on social media).

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

But there's a tension between the monumental importance of academic freedom and the incentive structures within which university leaders now operate. You have to have some sense of principle—and spine—to avoid throwing your faculty & students under the bus when some controversy blows up.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Academic freedom (for faculty) remains strong. You can see that in the fact that this is my second Bluesky thread in a week criticizing the chancellor of my university. This is to be celebrated! I don't take it for granted at all. It is part of how and why universities are so successsful.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

It's partly the two-facedness. It's partly something even simpler: Where are you, Chancellor Frenk? Do you ever visit us over here at UCLA? There is a chasm between those of us doing the work of the university and those like Frenk who are out there in media- land, reading about it secondhand.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

But then he wants to tell his own faculty, what do you mean, I wasn't ENDORSING anything, pay no attention to the clear implications of my statement; I carefully worded it to give myself a fig leaf of semi-plausible deniability. I LOVE academic freedom. Understandably, faculty are pretty unmoved.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

So here's the problem at the bottom of it all: Frenk is engaged in a kind of politics-of-recognition charade, where he wants to tell certain constituents that he really hears them, really sees them, wants to lift them up, and his way of doing that is to endorse their false view of this symposium.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

His message to UCLA is: I am totally in favor of academic freedom. I intended no rebuke of the law school or its symposium at all. All I meant to say was: We should respect the "dignity and humanity" of... the people who THINK a symposium like this is somehow either antisemitic or pro-terrorism.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

"Academic freedom does not require us to be neutral about antisemitism or terrorism." So to the UCLA Faculty Senate, his message is: I am shocked, shocked that you all totally misread me to be suggesting in some way that a speaker at this symposium might have been pro-antisemitism or terrorism.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Actually the Senate's statement must have gone to Frenk yesterday. Today he responded, in a letter that doubles down on the original statement and denies that it implicated academic freedom at all! "I chose the words of my statement carefully and deliberately," Frenk says. Let's unpack that.

dms.senate.ucla.edu

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

So today, the UCLA Faculty Senate, in its understated and careful way, issued a rare rebuke to Frenk, expressing "concerns and reservations" about the obvious lack of respect for academic freedom that his statement conveyed by amplifying these false charges of support for terrorism and antisemitism.

dms.senate.ucla.edu

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I wrote elsewhere about how pernicious it is to suggest that a lawyer who represented a terrorist is pro-"terrorism." It is similarly pernicious to blithely suggest speakers are antisemitic based on whatever are the most left-wing (not even antisemitic!) quotes dug up by the Washington Free Beacon.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I am sure Frenk is getting plenty of incoming emails, calls, texts, from alumni and donors and others outside UCLA who get their news from right-wing sources (whether they know it or not), and he felt compelled to respond. He responded by joining in—participating in the false attack on UCLA.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Why did Frenk want to speak to that audience, with this inflammatory message attacking his own law school? It's right in the headline on top of his statement. He's responding to a bunch of right-wing "media coverage"—by writers who, like Frenk himself, have no interest in the actual symposium.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

As I explained in an earlier thread, Chancellor Frenk's statement about the 9/11 event squarely suggested (while not directly saying) that speaker(s?) at this event expressed a viewpoint in support of terrorism and/or antisemitism. That was for an audience primarily outside of UCLA.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I also signed this letter. It's dismaying but I'll just put it plainly: Chancellor Frenk, the leader of my university, is pretty obviously speaking out of both sides of his mouth, aiming to send two very different messages to two very different audiences. And neither one of the messages is true.

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Blake Emerson @blakeprof.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I join over 50 my of UCLA Law colleagues in expressing our dismay at Chancellor Frenk’s public response to a disinformation campaign against a Law School symposium on the legacy of 9/11. We call for a retraction and the opportunity to meet with the Chancellor. sites.google.com/view/ucla-la...

sites.google.com

Home

We write to express our grave disappointment at Chancellor Frenk’s September 11, 2026 statement, which he has reaffirmed, that appears to condemn a symposium hosted by several law school centers on th...

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Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

When I read a story that uses "working class" to refer to the entire mass of U.S. adults without four-year degrees, I assume the writer is engaged in a political project, not analysis. The project is to ignore the perspectives of economically-insecure college grads. newrepublic.com/article/2155...

newrepublic.com

The Term Working Class Is Useless

Too many political analysts and pollsters are relying on education to define the working class, and it’s leading us to the wrong conclusions.

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Ronan Farrow @ronanfarrow.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

(1/5) Pentagon leadership has said that by the end of this month, Palantir's Maven artificial intelligence system will become a line item with stable, long-term funding in the defense budget (a "program of record"). #News #Palantir #AI

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

This is truly a great proposal, and also a great illustration of the fact that there is so much we can learn from the successful economic policy interventions from a strange foreign land apparently only dimly known to American policymakers: the United States during the pandemic.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I genuinely think this is not an unwelcome result for Donald Trump, who would prefer (A) something to blame falsely for a 2026 electoral loss + maybe a chance to interfere with 2028 Over (B) total chaos right now for which the Trump team is to blame and they lose anyway.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It's possible the ambiguity is deliberate on Frenk's part. The statement reads to me as if it was lawyered—as in, someone thought: "if we don't explicitly accuse any specific speaker of supporting terrorism or antisemitism, nobody can accuse us of libel." So it's all implication, no speaker named.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Update: Here is a statement from the symposium organizers.

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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 14/09/2026

Your regular reminder: If the Russians stop fighting, the war ends. If the Ukrainians stop fighting, their land will be occupied, their leaders will be killed, their history and language will be erased, their children will be kidnapped to serve Russia.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

So don't take my word for it—the chancellor's office itself is telling us: Frenk is living in a world of hostile media coverage of UCLA (probably emailed to him constantly by alumni, donors etc). He should step out of the bubble sometime & spend time in this amazing university he apparently leads.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

One last little tell I just noticed after writing the rest of this thread: the headline on Frenk's statement. Does it say, here's my comment on the law school's 9/11 symposium? Oddly, and revealingly, no. Instead it says: "Chancellor Julio Frenk comment REGARDING MEDIA COVERAGE on Sept. 10"

Chancellor Julio Frenk comment regarding media coverage on Sept. 10

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The rest of us will go on with the work of the university: listening to others with different forms of expertise & viewpoints, learning and trying to improve human knowledge. It would be really nice to have a chancellor who understood this and defended it instead of aiding the university's enemies.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

That is why I say Frenk has misunderstood the nature of his job. He's not a pundit. He's running a university. The university only succeeds because—and if—its thousands of faculty and students learn to successfully resist the urge to go off half cocked with uninformed, ignorant outrage as Frenk did.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The reason I put it so starkly is that I do not think he could have put out this statement if he had given any thought to how it would sound to his own faculty _other than_ Professor Pearl. The statement is primarily focused on Pearl. What about UCLA law school? Are we in the picture at all here?

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Thus, I think I understand why Frenk threw his own law school under the bus the way he did. It's because he is living in a different reality than the people actually doing the work of the university. He's not here. He doesn't see us. Except for a few of us, apparently including Judea Pearl.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It is as if Frenk is not even here, at this university, but instead is living in a different place, where reality is constructed by right-wing news sources that grossly mischaracterize UCLA _all the time_ and wrote several wildly misleading stories about this event. And by donors, who contact Frenk.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Did he attend any of the symposium and hear a single word that was said? No. Did he contact any of the organizers or anyone who was there? No. Before issuing the statement did he pause and think about how he might want to avoid completely mischaracterizing his own school's speaker? Apparently no.

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