Year 2, Week 4
Jan 17-23, 2026 - memories in the making
Hello friends,
Today, the people of Minneapolis are engaged in the first city-wide strike in this country since 1946. Religious leaders and unions1 issued a united call for a day of “No Work, No School, and No Shopping” in response to the violence and cruelty ICE is inflicting on the Twin Cities.2 Thousands of people are rallying in the brutal cold, hundreds of small businesses shut down in solidarity,3 and dozens of clergy were arrested while protesting deportation flights at the airport.
Never convince yourself that people don’t care. This was Year 2, Week 4 - let’s talk about it.
What happened in science & higher ed
I wish this news had made a bigger splash: on Wednesday, the Department of Education withdrew from legal proceedings over threats to withhold billions of dollars from schools who maintain diversity, equity and inclusion programs. In August, Federal Judge Stephanie Gallagher ruled against the administration on both procedural and free speech grounds. In October, the government appealed the ruling. The case had been one we thought might go to the Supreme Court. No explanation has been provided for why the appeal was withdrawn this week. We have the American Federation of Teachers, the American Sociological Association, & Oregon public school district Eugene 4J to thank for bringing the suit. I am thinking about all of the changes at all the universities made in response to that threat, how hard it will be to undo the impression that DEI is “illegal” now, and how important it is that we dispel that impression.
A major theme of the moment has to do with leadership, or a lack thereof. I am interested in the potentially massive changes at UVA, George Mason, and Virginia Military Institute. Immediately after governor Abigail4 Spanberger was sworn in on Saturday, she appointed more than two dozen new members to the governing boards of these state universities. There’s a lot to track - lawsuits, resignations, and the firing of top university lawyers - and a backstory connected to the assault on DEI.5 Some of the local coverage suggests that Spanberger and Virginia state lawmakers are trying to build institutional guardrails against future political capture of university governance. I’ll be curious to see whether and how their strategies are enacted.
Other bits and pieces:
The Florida Board of Governors is considering a rule that would forbid state universities from hiring H-1B visa holders for the rest of 2026.
The Kansas Board of Regents has instituted a new mandate for post-tenure performance and workload review.6
The administration is still attempting to deport Mahmoud Khalil, this time to Algeria. I last wrote about him in Week 22, when he was released after more than 100 days of detention. I keep writing about his case because free speech and academic freedom are critical issues for us.
Guinea-Bisau has reasserted that the HepB trial7 is not happening.
Yesterday, the US formally completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, and we owe $260 million in unpaid debts. Today, California announced that it has already joined the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network.
And what’s next
The new podcast episode, “Defund Science, Distort Culture, Mock Education” felt very familiar to me when I encountered it. The repeated return to “but why is the administration doing this to science?” echoes what I hear almost every day. I usually redirect the discussion,8 but one quote in the interview has been sticking with me. “Autocrats engage in a mix of utopia and nostalgia,” says historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat. The discussion links the alternative reality she describes not only to ideological interference with science, but also to the manipulation or destruction of historical records.
Last week I mentioned the Smithsonian museums facing review for “improper ideology.” This week, the Unbreaking team published our Archives & History page. As I was writing this, I saw the news that the city of Philadelphia just sued the administration over the removal of exhibits about the people who were enslaved by George Washington there. And tomorrow, I’m leading a new workshop that weaves together concepts from individual and social psychology to help participants understand just how much our decision-making depends on our memories, and how we might mitigate powerful social pressures to conform. I’ll be sharing ideas like the spiral of silence and pluralistic ignorance.
Sometimes our memories fail us, our fears dull us, and our institutions fail us. But I can’t stop thinking about the role every single person can play in resisting the erasure of our past and distortion of our present. Whether they are deliberate manipulations, or merely side-effects of exhaustion, cynicism, or stress, we must not allow false social realities to control us.
Liz
As ever, thanks for reading & thinking with me. Meeting the Moment will always be free, but if you want to contribute, you can ⤵️
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The demand from unionized faculty was more modest - they called on university leadership to reduce operations. ↩
If you haven’t read our most recent Unbreaking briefing on immigration, I just want to point you to that. It was eye-opening to do the math and realize that there are ten times more ICE agents in the Twin Cities right now than they sent to Chicago, which has substantially more than twice the population. ↩
Including the Bell Museum, the Bakken Museum, and the Science Museum of Minnesota. ↩
Correction - I got this wrong in my initial email and explicably wrote “Kathy.” Apologies. Thank you Libby for catching the error. ↩
Some of which I touched on in Week 38. Look for the link in the footnote about UVA forcing out President James Ryan, if you want to read more. ↩
I keep hearing about how universities need to prove their value and demonstrate good stewardship of taxpayers funds. I agree! I just also worry that it’s very convenient cover for maneuvers that undermine shared governance. The new rules for Kansas are described as having multiple rounds of faculty input, which is what we’d want to see. If you know more, I’m curious to hear about it! ↩
See my explanation last week - Year 2, Week 3. ↩
My storytelling work taught me to minimize the time I spend agonizing over other people’s motivations. I find it immensely freeing to focus on concrete and actionable impacts, rather than presumed intent, which usually just bewilders and enrages me. YMMV! ↩
