4Then, instead of mounting a populist campaign in volunteer-friendly Utah, they relied on dark money (mind you, after years of using the corrupting influence of out of state money for such propositions as a regular talking point).
3Seeing a threat to their power, they made ballot initiatives more difficult to secure years ago. This ended up hurting them when it was their turn to complete one.
2Although this was mostly a very expensive hail mary that probably would have failed on the ballot in November, what I find interesting is how they planted the seeds of this failure in their anti-democratic policies and thinking (democratic as in governing by the people, not the political party).
This is also where sociology is currently. Administrators, overinterpreting state law, are strangling sociology by not replacing any of our multiple retirees. Once six people, we are being asked to survive with two full time professors, all while being evaluated for how “efficient” we are.
So much respectability politics, as if the only thing holding back Los Angeles' working class, poc, and immigrant communities is their inability to protest correctly, and your instructions to them about how to do it the right way are totally not reproducing dominant/subordinate power relations.
say it again:
4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities
ROI for NIH and NSF for local economies is conservatively 4x, often close to 10x
demolishing higher education is economic sabotage
Why did Grok suddenly start talking about “white genocide in South Africa” even if asked about baseball or cute dogs?
Because someone at Musk’s xAi deliberately did this, and we only found out because they were clumsy.
My piece on the real dangers of AI.
Gift link:
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/o...
I do wish that online rankings listed standard deviations too. There’s a big difference between a dull movie that’s a 5.5 out of 10 and a 5.5 where those rating it either absolutely loved or hated it.
Horror films, pretty much designed to turn off some of their audience, especially suffer from this.
This international student is incredibly brave for going on the record about his visa suddenly being revoked, including how he has one semester left and his mom has terminal cancer: www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/n...
a thread re DOGE cuts
When I was doing dissertation fieldwork I was struck by how often well-off white people talked about trash in Benton Harbor. A newly-formed "parks conservancy" had been granted control over park maintenance as one of the last acts of the departing emergency manager,
This is Utah in case anyone’s wondering how pissed off people are. I have never seen anything like this.
On saving higher education: ““I think that labor needs to fill the vacuum of leadership we’re seeing in the sector,” said Todd Wolfson, national president of the AAUP. “I don’t see another way forward.””
www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...
When people don't understand math, they blame themselves.
When people don't understand sociology, they blame sociology.
It’s so weird how we’re all just working like this is still a normal country.
https://usbe.portal.civicclerk.com/event/477/files/attachment/23235?fbclid=IwY2xjawJX0oxleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHWW4IhEL_h88UH8zRZwiqsYW3wUPPHsTow4_9V8l2ee3eQYT4gX67QA2fw_aem_e8SjG-6C4bWL5QC3vKSdNg
This is the Utah Board of Education in 2025. Kids wanting wheelchair ramps so that they can enter their schools in order to learn with other students is a soviet era communist plot.
Local police leaders have feared the erosion of public trust as a result of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts. Many officials say they're seeing signs that's happening.
My wife attended a Tesla protest in Salt Lake City today and of course MAGA was there with rifles...yes, brandishing rifles and the protest broke up and this is your country today.
I was a commercial fisherman in a past life and American fisheries *exist* because of regulation. Fishermen know that without regulation we don't have fish and we don't have fisheries. It's not just a nice thing - it's existential.
UPDATE: Here's where we're at w/ NIH grant terminations:
❌ 429 NIH grants terminated*
❌ 137 related to HIV/AIDS prevention
❌ 27 on cancer
❌ 16 on Alzheimer's
The full Airtable, thanks to wizardry of @noamross.net👇
*This is just what we know. There are certainly more we don't know about yet.
I fear this will soon be the standard for all red states' public universities, and also suspect that the feds will force private colleges and blue states public schools to follow similar guidelines by threatening funding (see how they acted at Penn, Columbia etc.).
While praising the DEI efforts at Costco, let's not forget that their hummus selection remains a crime against all people of the Middle East.
“Love Knows No Gender”: The Utah Pride Center organized a protest at the Utah Capitol Friday afternoon over HB77, a bill that bans pride flags from Utah schools and government property.
(Photos by Francisco Kjolseth)
Great thread! Makes me wonder if our parallel is more the 1870s than the 1930s... Expect we're a much more indispensable nation on the world stage then we were back then...
This former professor, along with the vice provost over undergraduate education at @utahstate.bsky.social, are looking to turn the talking points of white supremacists into reality at #Utah universities.
Pediatrician for ~20 yrs & chief med officer: 1st time experiencing w/ a measles outbreak. Health system has had ~20 unvaxxed pts hospitalized--most are kids w/trouble breathing linked to pneumonia
Austin pediatrician: "numerous calls at our office," asking if kids can get an early measles shot. 🛟😷
“Under peaceful conditions, the warlike man attacks himself.”
― Freidrich Nietzsche
How we did it: Texas Won’t Study How Its Abortion Ban Impacts Women, So We Did
Race/ethnicity breakdown of federal government employment and overall US population, 2021
Given recent purges of federal workers, it's such a crazy coincidence that a certain demographic group is greatly overrepresented in the federal workforce.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. - Frederick Douglass
Defunding the police, Utah style.
