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Kevin Meuwissen

@kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social
893 followers 246 following 132 posts

Associate Professor of Social Studies Education, Warner School @ the University of Rochester. Teacher education. Youth political thinking and development. Perpetual learner of things. Enjoyment enthusiast.

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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
“Polarization is the country’s immune response to an antidemocratic, intentionally divisive faction grabbing for disproportionate power to the detriment of national success, reputation, and democratic self-government. Tamping down that response only allows this minority faction greater control.”
journalofdemocracy.org
Polarization Is Not the Problem | Journal of Democracy
Americans have never been angrier with one another. But polarization is not the disease—it is the response to a revanchist movement seeking to roll back sixty years of social progress.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
A powerful synthesis of the public problems of educational inequity, school (de)segregation, and choice - and associated Matthew Effects - as experienced by a Black family in a racist system, pressing to strengthen public goods while also meeting their child’s educational needs and aspirations.
nytimes.com
In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? (Gift Article)
A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
First, publicly funded research has allowed these people to build their private tech empires. Second, this is something rich, powerful people start saying only when they believe that “slowing down and returning power to the people” might temper future popular uprisings against them.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
I used to teach about memorialization, asking students to study monuments from three POVs: (1) the memorialized figure/event; (2) the context in which the artifact was constructed; (3) the present view of both (1) and (2). Now add (4): the nature and aims of fascistic modification of the artifact.
nytimes.com
Trump Orders Warnings Placed at ‘Inaccurate’ Smithsonian History Museum (Gift Article)
President Trump said the signage at the National Museum of American History would correct what a disputed White House report described as “extreme political activism.”
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
When I taught middle school, students discussed what metaphor best conceptualizes immigration in the US: melting pot, tile mosaic, tossed salad, or something else they proposed. They neither confused a melting pot with a soup pot nor imagined a tossed salad as “nice and composed.” Middle-schoolers.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
This is, all at once, a strong empirical and normative argument; a clear and powerful representation of a persistent political problem space; and a fantastic example for new scholars of how to communicate an idea simply and concisely, using language that resonates across audiences.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Time capsule: June 16, 2026 - a case of how one group of Dartmouth undergrads and their professor feel about AI in higher education at the end of their creative writing course. Wonder how the narratives look comparatively when I dig up this post five years from now. (Or five months from now.)
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Incredibly useful guidance, here, on how to address OMB’s disastrous rule that would replace peer review of grant proposals with arbitrary decisions by political appointees and constrain international collaborations; but also great advice on writing public comments, in general.
elizabethginexi.substack.com
What We Need to do NEXT: OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule (OMB-2026-0034)
What OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule Means in Practice
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
The 2026 Social Studies Teacher’s Challenge: honestly and accurately address Trump’s corruption and criminality with teenagers while meeting school districts’ expectations of “balance” and partisan impartiality.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Thoughtful thread that addresses nostalgia for slow, cautious, evidentiary truth; collapsing trust in knowledge-making institutions; and the need to learn (and teach) new ways to evaluate and curate credible, accurate sources in an increasingly information-disordered civil society.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Do frequent baseless indictments motivated by political vengeance erode trust in the legal system, more broadly? And if so, are indictments like these cultivating a narrative of legal bias and failure that will thwart future efforts to prosecute actual present-day corruption and criminality?
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
SCOTUS is a super-legislature made up of a few lifetime presidential appointees who fundamentally remake or negate laws and executive actions via secretly arbitrated, one-page decisions for which they are entirely unaccountable to the public. America’s most anti-democratic institution.
nytimes.com
The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Great thread. Ironically, those in higher ed who recognize and have encouraged leaders to fight back against exogenous political attacks that erode trust - rather than ignore, exclusively look inward, and/or self-flagellate - may find the Yale report and NYT story at least somewhat untrustworthy.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
In 2006, US Senate candidate George Allen’s (R-VA) campaign effectively ended when he flippantly referred to an Indian man named SR Sidarth, who volunteered for his opponent’s campaign, as “Macaca” - and then tried to blow it off with various excuses and a fake diversity rally.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Social studies educators, today would be a good day for an impromptu department meeting to share ideas about, set up systems of communication for, and seek administrative support in addressing this with your students in real time, tomorrow and beyond. 1/4
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
Source material for an inquiry-based unit of instruction in a high school government class, centered around the question, “How have Americans’ conceptions of what qualifies and disqualifies a presidential candidate changed over time?”
mcsweeneys.net
Final Exam for the Class “What a Presidential Candidate Can and Cannot Survive, Apparently” Taught by Howard Dean
1. Which of these public utterances would immediately end a candidate’s presidential ambitions? A. “I want to be a dictator.” B. “If [she] weren’t my daughte...
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
Exactly right. This headline and the “vibes” behind it reinforce ignorance of clear, compelling evidence that, when people across SES groups collectively press to win public-educational goods for their communities, those goods benefit everyone - particularly lower-SES community members.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Key findings: youth aren’t very interested in news; more watch videos on social media and listen to podcasts than read; those who read increasingly use AI chatbots as sources. What are the implications for K-12 educators? Two concerns: issue impermanence, impacts on source credibility evaluations.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
@elizabethreynolds.bsky.social and Sarah McGrew (2025, J. Learning Sci.) suggest we might help youth evaluate conflicting online media like this by focusing on three frames: gut checks for plausibility, valuing what credible others think, inspecting modes of communication and evidentiary grounds.
A Trump post on social media about “very good and productive conversations about a total resolution of hostilities in the Middle East,” followed by an AP report of Iranian state media denying any conversations with the Trump administration about resolving hostilities in the Middle East.
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Samuel Perry @profsamperry.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
New study. We had adults place historical figures on the left-right ideological spectrum. Folks most often place history's villains (Hitler, Stalin, etc) as extreme examples of their opponents. But they place heroes (Jesus, MLK, Lincoln) are on their own team. 1/4 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Anyone who’s been on an athletic team knows this asshole. Awkwardly and inappropriately inserts himself into celebratory moments as if he’s part of them, but has none of the talent or perseverance, has done none of the work, has sustained none of the risk, has contributed nothing to team community.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
This thread presents a well substantiated critical reading of an uplifty-framed op-ed by an elite actor in the “education industry” whose motivations and impacts are less uplifty than the op-ed’s headline would suggest.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Image analysis task for teachers: split this into separate segments; ask students to describe the part of each segment that holds their attention most, and why. Responses might include one slob’s split pants; another’s retro Nikes; a cloud of gas; a pinned protester, face caked in yellow chemicals.
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Governor Tim Walz @governorwalz.mn.gov · 23/01/2026
Trump’s America.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
Social studies teachers: for a task on how political cartoons elicit affective responses. Create a “stronger-weaker” scale; have students place cartoons, compare placements, discuss what text qualities/devices prompted those placements and how their placements correspond with types of response.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
Powerful data visualizations, here. In 2025, “the Trump administration disproportionally cancelled or froze [nearly 8,000] projects on topics it disfavours, such as misinformation, vaccine hesitancy, infectious diseases and research on people from under-represented ethnic and gender groups.”
nature.com
US science after a year of Trump: what has been lost and what remains
A series of graphics reveals how the Trump administration has sought historic cuts to science and the research workforce.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
It would be great if wealthy, powerful, amoral elites who control mass discourse spaces didn’t get to hijack language and its implications for everyone else. Speech has limits. “No nonconsensual nudes” is LEGITIMATE censorship, legally and ethically.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Please, stop posing these kinds of “will [authoritarian move] serve the public good or right-wing political aims?” questions. If “question = real,” then it reveals journalists’ inattention, uncriticality, and lack of credibility. If “question = not actually real,” then why ask it?
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Pew’s “striking findings” reports are great resources for comparing what issues are salient year over year, and what we’re learning about them. An opportunity for teachers to ask students, “what are your take-aways from 2025; and how does ‘what’s significant’ now compare to, say, 2023 or 2021?”
pewresearch.org
Striking findings from 2025
Here’s a look back at 2025 through 12 of our most striking research findings.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
Country and Christian pop/rock will be the two genres most quickly permeated by AI slop because adherents don’t care much whether the music’s any good; it just needs to appeal to their worldviews, make them feel connected to other adherents, and sound like stuff that already exists.
theguardian.com
AI slop tops Billboard and Spotify charts as synthetic music spreads
Hits include country songs and a Dutch anti-refugee anthem, both entirely made without human composition
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Anthony Michael Kreis @anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
Whenever people complain about the number of folks relying on food stamps, it is worth reminding them that SNAP is, by too large of a degree, a subsidy for corporations that refuse to pay a living wage and their political allies who reject public policy prescriptions to reduce income inequality.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
I read this differently. SU has not been invited to sign or provide feedback on the compact. Syverud seems to be “inoculating” his community against future assaults via compact 2.0. His remaining term is short; is he cueing what’s to come, in potential compact expansion and leadership response?
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
Disease research and prevention. Public education. Renewable energy. And our government’s agencies and infrastructure - including the White House. They’re Americans’ shared investments, our shared wealth, built painstakingly over time. And Trump is destroying all of them with impunity.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 12/10/2025
Polling “is DT doing what he promised?” is like polling “does DT say what he thinks and mean what he says?” Both are shit questions that ignore “is what he’s doing good, true, and what people want and need?” They reveal an impoverished view of gov’t as fundamentally unfulfilling and inauthentic.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
It was a nice civil society while it lasted… “‘There is almost no digital content that can be used to prove that anything in particular happened.’ Such an effect is known as the liar’s dividend: that increasingly high-caliber A.I. videos will allow people to dismiss authentic content as fake.”
nytimes.com
OpenAI’s Sora Makes Disinformation Extremely Easy and Extremely Real
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
A fantastic column about corporate power, information disorder, corrupted political discourse, a collapsing First Amendment, and the consequences thereof, post-Kirk. “No citizen who simply settles for being a consumer of democracy should expect to have a real democracy ever again.”
nytimes.com
Opinion | Mourn, or Else
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
Speech goals: (1) ensure top military leaders are all in one place and have to listen; (2) say outrageous, unconstitutional, violence-affirming things; (3) wait to see which leaders disavow those things; (4) purge those leaders and empower the rest.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
Just gonna leave this right here. Wondering which big-name recording artist will crack the top 40 with a contemporary Horst Wessel Song, and when. Or maybe it’ll be a well propagandized, previously unknown Rich-Men-North-Of-Richmond-style viral sensation.
en.m.wikipedia.org
Horst Wessel - Wikipedia
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
Related pragmatic problems include “autocrats use isolated instances of political violence as false pretexts to dehumanize and wage oppressive, large-scale warfare on political opponents” and “this will calcify martyrdom and vengeance within the right-wing victimization narrative.”
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
“Why would we put at risk laboratories that are working to cure cancers or perfect artificial limbs… or test the limits of artificial intelligence? We need to get up from under our desks and persuade fellow citizens that the institutions they’ve helped create with their tax dollars are important.”
nytimes.com
Opinion | We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
I’ve heard “I didn’t vote for this” among folks who went the wrong way in the easiest two-item multiple choice test ever. Response: “Yes, you did. Maybe you didn’t INTEND for things to be this way, though there were many signs that they could. That said, how do you INTEND to act from here forward?”
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
"many ... wrongly believe there would be one clear unambiguous moment where we go from 'democracy' to 'authoritarianism.' Instead, this is exactly how it happens — a blurring here, a norm destroyed there, a presidential diktat unchallenged. Then you wake up one morning and our country is different."
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Will Saletan @saletan.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
Your occasional reminder that the current U.S. government — headed by a felon, his personal attorneys, and other criminal sympathizers — has used federal power 1) to protect convicted thugs who assaulted police in his behalf and 2) to punish the law enforcement officials who prosecuted those thugs.
nytimes.com
Reframing Jan. 6: After the Pardons, the Purge
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
Bad people are taking our public wealth - investments in our shared understanding of health, education, our environment, our economy - and reallocating it to pay cruel, violent, masked fascists to attack and imprison people in flagrant defiance of the rule of law.
theconversation.com
Data that taxpayers have paid for and rely on is disappearing – here’s how it’s happening and what you can do about it
Detailed data that US government agencies collect and make available has underpinned research about people, medicine, science, crime, jobs, housing, climate and the economy.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
“The assumption of our goodness protects us from accountability for indecent thoughts, words, and actions... But goodness is determined by the way you move through this world; and good people don't align with this kind of criminality and immorality, no matter what story they tell themselves.”
johnpavlovitz.substack.com
No, Good People Don't Still Support Him
Everyone believes they're essentially a good human being.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
We educators of civic educators must rethink and rebuild. Questions: why, how, and what ought we teach now that “American democracy” is past tense; how do we assert public good and verifiable truth as core to our teaching; what kinds of micro/meso/exosystemic civics are practicable, to what ends?
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
Chaos and uncertainty, leading to wastefulness and claims that public goods are inefficient and ineffective, are features, not bugs, of this administration.
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Kevin Meuwissen @kevinmeuwissen.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
The arc of history bends toward impunity for those who use power and money to dismantle justice under false pretenses.
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