Week 9
Figuring out what to focus on now & what to focus on next in science and higher ed
This newsletter is my part of an ongoing conversation among colleagues who’ve had a rough week. I share two or three pieces of the puzzle that feel are most important, hazard a guess about what to expect next, and offer at least one useful thing to do.
MEETING THE MOMENT: 2025-03-21
Hi friends,
As the list of losses grows, I’ve noticed myself getting quieter. I haven’t had as much to say on Bluesky. It’s harder for me to send text messages. Conversations that have always delighted me are just a little harder to sustain. It all just takes more deliberate effort.
And some parts of my life just don’t feel worth the effort anymore. I have no more patience for leaders who aren’t leading, and for professional spaces that are failing to respond to the moment. In some cases, calling people out and walking away feels right. This week, I’ve been energized by being reminded that solidarity also means showing up despite frustration and disappointments – for wading into conflict and staying there. As Mariame Kaba says, “everything worthwhile is done with other people.”1
I don’t know which leaders and which spaces are failing you right now, but I’m sorry they are. What’s keeping me going is a balance. It’s not just keeping track of everything I want to fight against; it’s also appreciating all the people I’m fighting alongside, and staying focused on everything we’re fighting for.
This was week 9, let’s get into it:
What’s happening now
Universities are reeling. Columbia has decided to concede to extortionate demands.2 The Regents of the University of California have directed the system to abandon diversity statements. Across the country, universities are initiating layoffs, reducing graduate cohorts, abandoning programs, and instituting hiring and travel freezes in response to—and anticipation of—financial coercion. This week, for example, the White House “announced”3 a new freeze of $175 million in grants to the University of Pennsylvania. There are multiple lists of targeted institutions. The ones I know about include a list of sixty, a list of forty-five, and a list of six.
Over the past month, the Department of Education has fired almost half its employees and cancelled more than billion dollars of research and teacher training contracts. This Thursday, a new executive order was issued that purports to dismantle it entirely.4 The executive branch cannot legally dissolve the department; only an act of Congress can.5 The Department of Education is a cabinet-level agency tasked with enforcing educational policies, ensuring compliance with civil rights laws, and providing support for disadvantaged and disabled students.6 Lawsuits to block the layoffs have already been filed by parents and twenty states plus Washington DC, and more are promised. The additional announcement that student loans will be transferred to the Small Business Administration is also likely illegal, and impacts would be profound. The Department of Education collects repayment from 43 million people holding more than $1.5 trillion dollars of debt.
Attacks on intellectual freedom and speech continue to intersect with immigration issues. The most notable examples this week were the demand that Cornell student advocate Momodou Taal7 surrender himself into ICE custody and the deportation of transplant surgeon Dr. Rasha Alawieh.
What’s next
I don’t yet have a strong sense of what next week will bring. At least one court case I’ve written about previously is under a temporary injunction that will be expiring or updated. I find the Litigation Tracker to be very useful for reviewing updates all in one format, in one place, across legal suits. Looking a little farther ahead, the high-stakes Wisconsin Supreme Court election is on April 1, and the Supreme Court itself has set an April 4 deadline for an emergency appeal to revive the executive order attempting to restrict birthright citizenship.
What to do
My favorite technique for coping with anxiety is to redefine some parameters. I am better able to cope with icy dread when I limit the problem space to things I can reasonably understand and influence in the near-term future. I can’t rewrite it any tighter without losing precision, but yes, it is accurate to translate it as, “Reel it in, babe.”
It is strategic to focus on items immediately within your control. The most urgent topic for me, and everyone I know planning conferences and academic fellowships right now, is international travel.
Modern science is international. Competitive career pathways rely on our ability to travel to whatever training and professional development opportunities, conferences, and field work are required, wherever they may occur. And transiting the United States is no longer reliably safe for many of us.
The most important thing we can each do is to come up to speed on legal rights and responsibilities at US borders as well as within 100 miles of them. Educate yourself, know your rights, and talk about them with your community. Validate legitimate concerns first, and then combat misunderstandings and misinformation together. Another prudent step is to review recommendations for securing your devices and data. What other steps do you think should we take?
If you’re an event organizer, can you get creative about your range of options? Depending on your specific context and timeline, you might consider changing your venue, offering registration refunds, reinvesting in virtual attendance and accessibility, or providing laptops for those who may not safely travel with their own. What else?
Free yourself from the need to find a single, perfect solution. You don’t need to figure this out alone, and simply creating space to talk about needs and worries is an important part of the work. We cannot promise that everything will be alright, but we can do our best to look out for each other.
Take care of yourselves this weekend, okay? We need you.
Liz
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Strongest possible recommendation to read the whole conversation between Kaba and Eve Ewing from 2019. Good grief, what a pairing of giants. What a gift! ↩
It’s important to me to read beyond headlines: here is the university’s statement in full. Understanding the context and history of conflicts is also important, and on that front, this piece gave me additional context. In the same vein, this exclusive on discrepancies between accounts of the agreement between the administration and the targeted law firm Paul Weiss feels important. ↩
By retweeting an unattributed Fox Business news item on Wednesday. The university had not received official notification before I wrote this. ↩
This order is not archived in the Federal Register yet. It typically takes a few days for these to be listed. I’ll update this footnote with a direct link when it is available. ↩
I’m trying to be careful and clear in how I explain moves like this. I think it’s really important not to give authority to illegal claims, even in casual conversation. The Verge issued a correction this week that I’ve really taken to heart. It’s titled “We ran the wrong headline about Trump firing the FTC commissioners.” Sarah Jeong writes, “Although these are unprecedented times, a news headline should not quietly aid the erosion of our social consensus about the law, even if we ourselves are struggling to do our jobs because of that erosion.” ↩
I have used the site Archive.Today to share Department of Education webpages as they look as I’m writing this. I welcome suggestions for the best website archiving tool, if this isn’t it. ↩
Taal is a plaintiff in a case suing the administration over free speech. It was filed on March 15. ↩