#SantaOno abandoned #DEI for #FAFO #USPol #Academia #HigherEd #Education #Michigan #Florida https://www.chronicle.com/article/statewide-board-rejects-santa-onos-bid-to-become-u-of-florida-president

Fucking hell I can't believe this guy was my university prez at #UBC lol. This is an all time shameful performance.
"Ono spent much of the meeting repeating similar lines and also dodging direct answers, saying in some cases that he wasn’t qualified to opine. When Governor Carson Good pressed him on Covid vaccine mandates — pointing out that as an immunologist, he must have an opinion — Ono answered: “I’m a mouse doctor,” adding, “I’m a test tube kind of guy.”
https://www.chronicle.com/article/statewide-board-rejects-santa-onos-bid-to-become-u-of-florida-president

"We analyse the migration of 300,000 academic users from Twitter/X to Bluesky between 2023 and early 2025, combining rich bibliometric data, longitudinal social-media activity, and a novel cross-platform identity-matching pipeline. We show that 18% of scholars in our sample transitioned, with transition rates varying sharply by discipline, political expression, and Twitter engagement but not by traditional academic metrics. Using time-varying Cox models and a matched-pairs design, we isolate genuine peer influence from homophily. We uncover a striking asymmetry whereby information sources drive migration far more powerfully than audience, with this influence decaying exponentially within a week. We further develop an ego-level contagion classifier, revealing that simple contagion drives two-thirds of all exits, shock-driven bursts account for 16%, and complex contagion plays a marginal role. Finally, we show that scholars who rebuild a higher fraction of their former Twitter networks on Bluesky remain significantly more active and engaged. Our findings provide new insights onto theories of network externalities, directional influence, and platform migration, highlighting information sources’ central role in overcoming switching costs."

https://arxiv.org/html/2505.24801v1

the #CFP for openly licensed, peer-reviewed strategies that utilize #GenAI tools to support learning in #HigherEd by TRAIIL is open!

https://stars.library.ucf.edu/traiil/

#EdTech #Teaching #Learning

@edutooters @academicchatter

Education secretary (and lowbrow entertainment mogul) Linda McMahon testifies in the Senate. Kennedy (R-LA) leads her with questions about a program with an annual cost of a billion and change.

He grandstands that after ten years it would cost over a trillion dollars. She agrees.

Reed (D-RI) points out that ten times a billion is not a trillion.

Many of my students at a top US university think that a trillion is ten billion, LIKE SOME SENATORS

https://newrepublic.com/post/196045/trump-education-secretary-mcmahon-math-lesson-hearing

Robert W. Gehl: "We need to rethink higher ed, grading, the whole thing. I think part of the problem is that we've been inconsistent in rules about genAI use. Some profs ban it altogether, while others attempt to carve out acceptable uses. The problem is the line between acceptable and unacceptable use. For example, some profs say students can use genAI for "idea generation" but then prohibit using it for writing text. Where's the line between those? In addition, universities are contracting with companies like Microsoft, Adobe, and Google for digital services, and those companies are constantly pushing their AI tools. So a student might hear "don't use generative AI" from a prof but then log on to the university's Microsoft suite, which then suggests using Copilot to sum up readings or help draft writing. It's inconsistent and confusing.

I've been working on ways to increase the amount of in-class discussion we do in classes. But that's tricky because it's hard to grade in-class discussions—it's much easier to manage digital files. Another option would be to do hand-written in-class essays, but I have a hard time asking that of students. I hardly write by hand anymore, so why would I demand they do so?

I am sick to my stomach as I write this because I've spent 20 years developing a pedagogy that's about wrestling with big ideas through writing and discussion, and that whole project has been evaporated by for-profit corporations who built their systems on stolen work. It's demoralizing.

It has made my job much, much harder."

https://www.404media.co/teachers-are-not-ok-ai-chatgpt/

Trump Wants to Cut Tribal College Funding by Nearly 90%, Putting Them at Risk of Closing
—

ProPublica found that Congress was underfunding tribal colleges by a quarter-billion dollars per year. Rather than fixing the problem, proposed federal funding cuts unveiled this week would devastate the schools, tribal education leaders say.
https://www.propublica.org/article/tribal-colleges-universities-trump-cuts-funding?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

Meanwhile, down in #Floriduh where they are doing their best to send faculty elsewhere.

> Study: Post-Tenure Review Pushed Researchers to Leave Florida https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/academic-freedom/2025/06/03/post-tenure-review-resulted-florida-faculty-brain

Got another email about a virtual junket on how #AISlop will "revolutionize" #libraries and how #librarians all need to adapt to it because something or other.

This accelerating push to embrace #AI unquestioningly is concerning (not to mention stinks of Library 2.0 echoes).

Is the DOJ Web Accessibility Rule in Danger?
https://convergeaccessibility.com/2025/06/02/doj-web-accessibility-rule-in-danger/
Educause, American Association of Community Colleges, and other #HigherEd organizations have asked the U.S. administration to pause implementation of the previous administration's DOJ ADA Title II Web Accessibility regulation.
(They also wrote last year against changing #EquitableAccess automatic textbook charges from opt-out to opt-in: https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2023/memo-regarding-cash-management-books-and-supplies-submitted-by-lorgan-dobson-cioce.pdf )
#a11y #EdTech
via https://mastodon.social/@laura_carlson/114619158974743177

"Curiosity is a powerful catalyst for lifelong learning. By fostering a sense of wonder and a desire to explore, we can transform the prickly challenges of education into exciting opportunities for discovery and growth."

#LifelongLearning #Learning #Education #Curiosity #HigherEd

https://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/elearning/curiosity-in-lifelong-learning/

Trump admin can't avoid First Amendment trial on student protesters
https://www.allrisenews.com/p/aaup-rubio-trial

As the US halts student visas, global universities roll out the welcome mat

During a critical period in the international student application process, the Trump administration has targeted foreign students and paused all new student visa interviews. Universities across Europe and Asia are taking action to attract new students.

#education #highered

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2025/0530/Foreign-students-Trump-visas?

From CA Senator Perez' office.

https://wicl.us/frequently-asked-questions/ #HigherEd #Women #Scholarship #California

Ithaca Silenced Deaf Studies - Students Won't Stay Quiet

https://www.hercampus.com/school/ithaca/ithaca-silenced-deaf-studies-students-wont-stay-quiet/ #Ableism #Language #HigherEd #ASL

Reactionary speech police in U.S. Academia: What else is new?

"That morning, I got onto what I thought was a casual call with a senior colleague, someone who spoke with me regularly in order to keep the university updated on Mill Institute activities. Once we were past the opening pleasantries, it immediately became clear that something was wrong.

My colleague told me that we needed to talk about a social-media post of mine that “had become a big problem.” I rarely post anything online, so I was confused about what he meant. Apparently, it had something to do with DEI, and had angered a major funder. “We’re trying to slow things down,” my colleague told me. I got the impression that he was upset about the message he was delivering.

I dimly recalled that I’d written something about DEI on LinkedIn. But I was still confused, because it had seemed like such an innocuous post (to me, anyway); and I couldn’t imagine how it would upset anyone in the UATX community, let alone lead to this ominous phone call.

In that post (reproduced below), I’d thanked writer and Yale professor Michael J. Strambler for mentioning the Mill Institute in a magazine article titled The False Binary of the DEI Debate. The piece, which struck a liberal tone, walked readers through the pros and cons of DEI programs, concluding that regardless of one’s position on DEI, none of us should lose respect for those who hold different opinions."

https://quillette.com/2025/05/16/is-the-university-of-austin-betraying-its-founding-principles/