Hello friends,
I started my day with some much-needed co-working time to draft my own public comment on the administration’s latest proposal for radically altering how the US government manages grants and loans. There are more than 15,000 comments already publicly posted.¹

I started with some notes to myself on my standing–what particular insight can I uniquely offer? What experiences have I had that equip me to discuss one part of the text with greater insight than other people?

I was surprised to find myself writing about innovation and breakthroughs.² But one of the things I know intimately is how easy it is for groups of people to get stuck when they’re all reading the same things and thinking about a shared problem in exactly the same way.

So all day today, I’ve been thinking about what it takes to shake ourselves free and unlock fresh possibilities.³
This was Year 2, Week 24. I have some thoughts.

What’s happening in science & higher ed

• We’re heading into what might be one of the worst El Niños events on record, a bit of news that pairs especially poorly with the administration’s wanton destruction of our Ocean Observing Initiative.
• It’s hard to believe that the Bethesda Declaration happened a full year ago. These NIH staffers have now written a follow-up report detailing the ways that, “The chaos of 2025 has been replaced with coordinated, systematic, institutionalized destruction in 2026.” They list nine current concerns, ranging from critical loss of expertise to widening disparities to heightened risk. Please read it.
• A new report on humanities scholarship is drawing intense criticism. The new Vanderbilt report⁴ got underway in September 2025, right before the failed Compact for Higher Ed, which Vanderbilt notably declined to reject. The authors open with “We presume that our readers recognize the value of the humanistic disciplines and their central place in the modern research university.” and then proceed to build a handy weapon for those who do not. They argue against allowing ideology to outweigh robust scholarship, using epistemic or epistemology⁵ 41 times in 30 pages. Since I’m now seventy-three weeks into this project of documenting political interference in our pursuit of knowledge, I was willing to entertain the possibility that this was a poorly-conceived but relatively good-faith effort. Then I read their multiple footnotes about biological sex as a binary variable⁶, and won’t waste any more of my time. Instead, I’ll just contemplate Vera Kempe’s illustration of the different choices that scholars make under autocratic regimes, including using the ideology to advance their own projects.
• And there’s more–so much more. I know some small part of it because every Thursday, I help write and edit the Unbreaking newsletter too. I have a few items I specifically wanted to share with you from this week’s briefing:
  • On the infectious disease front: “The administration is launching renewed efforts to change the vaccine schedule (this time legally), including a new ACIP charter and an executive order that encourages reducing childhood vaccination.”
  • For those of us who understand all the different flavors of data manipulation: ICE is no longer reporting deaths of newly released detainees. They’re reversing a 2021 policy put in place after they were caught releasing critically ill people not as a mercy, but to avoid accountability for their deaths.
  • And since we’ve been talking about regulations and submitting public comments: Did you know there’s also a new proposed rule out that would prohibit the postal service from delivering mail-in ballots in states that refuse to hand the administration their voter roles?

And what’s next

In our writing session for the public comments, I shared some of the guidance I wrote here last week. Specifically, I talked about writing in support of the values and processes we believe are essential, instead of (or in addition to!) eviscerating their proposals. I'm hungry for more positives vision of what science can become.

It is an urgent priority for us to make the time and muster the energy we need to create the world we want to live in. I saw a recent interview with poet Danez Smith, who talks in that clip about how reading philosophy and poetry and history made it possible for people to imagine this country before it was formed; to hold in their minds the possibility of what could be.

Are you reading enough to help you do that? Are you engaged with the art that sparks in your wordless depths? Are you throwing yourself into shaping the future we need as much as you are trying to document and mourn the past we’re losing?
Am I? Shall we? Let’s.

Liz

As ever, thanks for reading & thinking with me. Meeting the Moment will always be free, but if you want to contribute, you can ⤵️

If this email was forwarded to you, hi! 👋 I write briefings on the week’s news for those of us who care about science and higher education. If you like what you see ⤵️