Apprised of budgetary downsizing to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from reading the independent undergraduate newspaper, Stanford Daily, yesterday I arrived at Hyatt Regency Chicago for a meeting of the Schizophrenia International Research Society planning to introduce myself to University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work Associate Professor Doctor Nev Jones but she texted saying she was on a travel freeze in conjunction with political incursions on her industry.

As our chair Helene Speyer noted in her introduction, the session description had included a diversity statement that now seemed hopeless because, in her words, “you can’t say the word diversity anymore.” Originally boasting some gender parity with two out of five female presenters, 40% had been whittled down to 25. As for the title’s language promising ‘integration’, if there were African-Americans who attended the conference I didn’t notice at the Lived Experience panel.

But I did notice Cherise Rosen (@CRosenPhD) sitting a few rows back in the comparatively empty right flank of seats already occupied by me thirty minutes before start time. Greeting her in the hallway outside afterwards, as she is recognizable both from Twitter as following a newsfeed for the Conference on Critical Psychiatry and my chair at Universidad de Valparaíso’s “Predictive Self Modelling and the Phenomenology of Psychosis” in May where my talk titled, Hysterically Determined: Reading for Schizophrenia as Niche, was presented alongside Sohee Park from Vanderbilt in Tennessee, Manuels Reyes and Ugalde-Duarte, plus Clara Humpston from University of York where one of my Stanford neighbors now teaches feminist ethics. Cherise likewise mentioned the state of research given curtailments to NIH studies.

Back at my desk I learned the Senate had agreed with Donald Trump’s nomination of Stanford B.A., M.A., M.D., Ph.D., and Prof. Jayanta Bhattacharya as NIH director. Conversant about autism and Alzheimer’s though not their overlap with schizophrenia, Mr. Bhattacharya’s dissertation was titled “Lifetime returns to specialization in medicine,” which reads like a one-liner warning women’s media from sentimentalism during the health crisis.

Stay tuned for a next installment of News is planned to address how the Department of Energy is polluting Fox River and Augusta’s water.