International students are struggling to secure visas as the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump aggressively moves to curtail immigration, threatening college budgets across the United States. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/08/06/world/politics/trump-visa-students-stranded/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #worldnews #politics #universities #students #education #us #donaldtrump #republicans
As a growing number of the wealthiest U.S. colleges capitulate in their battles with Washington, the strain from lost and frozen federal funding is pressuring the remaining holdouts to cut a deal. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/08/05/world/politics/universities-cut-deals-trump/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #worldnews #politics #universities #education #cornell #harvard #colombia #us #donaldtrump #republicans
Amid Trump's cuts, European governments are taking steps to break their dependence on critical scientific data from the United States in order to monitor climate change and extreme weather. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/08/02/world/europe-data-collection-us-reliance/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #worldnews #us #eu #europe #donaldtrump #universities #oceans #climatechange
"Columbia’s capitulation has turned a university that was once a site of free inquiry and learning into a shadow of its former self, an-anti university"
I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/01/columbia-historian-rashid-khalidi-open-letter
@jeffjarvis Alumni need to punish the Institutions which have let them down. It's disgraceful how they've bent the knee, and they should know better too, they should know where this all leads.....it's nothing new.
Maki Takubo, mayor of the city of Ito, Shizuoka Prefecture, on Thursday withdrew her resignation over allegations that she had lied about her academic record. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/08/01/japan/politics/ito-mayor-decides-not-to-quit/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #politics #ito #shizuoka #makitakubo #localgovernment #universities
Universities should a real success story for the UK, both in educational attainment & as an export service industry, but actually the sector is in crisis, shedding jobs (estimates of around 10k this academic year), with the prospect of at least one university closing shifted to a 'top tier risk' by the Dept. of Education.
Forced into a dysfunctional business model, with bloated & often misguided management, things will get worse before they get better.
#universities
https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-universities-2025-7-university-failure-now-a-top-tier-risk-for-education-department/
People’s Inquiry shines a light on #Palestine repression at Australian #universities
https://overland.org.au/2025/07/the-peoples-inquiry-shines-a-light-on-palestine-repression-at-australian-universities/
#PalestineInquiry Preliminary Report
— Don’t talk or write about Palestine: it’s a career killer.
https://www.palestineinquiry.com/preliminary-report
#ANU Poster Policy - #WORONI the voice of Australian National University students since 1950
https://www.woroni.com.au/news/anu-poster-policy-takes-effect/
Beardy Star Stuff
boosted
#fascists #universities #history
"In the 1975 book, *The Abuse of Learning: The Failure of German Universities*, historian Frederic Lilge chronicles how German universities, which entered the 20th century in a golden age of global intellectual influence, did not resist the Nazi regime but adapted instead to it.
Even before seizing national power in 1933, the Nazi Party was closely monitoring German universities through nationalist student groups and sympathetic faculty, flagging professors politically unreliable and particularly Jews, Marxists, liberals and pacifists.
After Hitler took office in 1933, his regime moved to purge academic institutions of Jews and political opponents. The 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service commanded by the firing of Jewish and other non-Aryan professors and members of the faculty politically suspect.
Soon after, professors were required to swear loyalty to Hitler, curricula were revised to emphasize . . . . . racial science and . . a pseudoscientific framework used to justify antisemitism and Aryan supremacy . all departments and were restructured to serve to Nazi ideology.
Some institutions, like the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart, even rushed to honor Hitler with an honorary doctorate within weeks of his rise to power. He has declined the offer, though the gesture signaled the university's eagerness to align with the regime. Professional associations, such as the Association of German Universities, remained silent, ignored key opportunities to resist before universities lost their autonomy and became subservient to the Nazi state.
As linguist Max Weinreich wrote in his 1999 book, *Hitler*, professors, many academics didn't just comply, they enabled the regime by reshaping their research. This legitimized state doctrine, helping to build the intellectual framework of the regime.
A few academics resisted and were dismissed, exiled or executed. It wasn't.
The transformation of German academia was not a slow drift but a swift and systemic overhaul. But what made Hitler's orders stick was the eagerness of many academic leaders to comply, justify and normalize the new order. Each decision - each erased name, each revised syllabus, each closed program and department . was framed as necessary, even patriotic. Within a few years, German universities no longer served knowledge . served they power."
#fascists #universities #history
"In the 1975 book, *The Abuse of Learning: The Failure of German Universities*, historian Frederic Lilge chronicles how German universities, which entered the 20th century in a golden age of global intellectual influence, did not resist the Nazi regime but adapted instead to it.
Even before seizing national power in 1933, the Nazi Party was closely monitoring German universities through nationalist student groups and sympathetic faculty, flagging professors politically unreliable and particularly Jews, Marxists, liberals and pacifists.
After Hitler took office in 1933, his regime moved to purge academic institutions of Jews and political opponents. The 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service commanded by the firing of Jewish and other non-Aryan professors and members of the faculty politically suspect.
Soon after, professors were required to swear loyalty to Hitler, curricula were revised to emphasize . . . . . racial science and . . a pseudoscientific framework used to justify antisemitism and Aryan supremacy . all departments and were restructured to serve to Nazi ideology.
Some institutions, like the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart, even rushed to honor Hitler with an honorary doctorate within weeks of his rise to power. He has declined the offer, though the gesture signaled the university's eagerness to align with the regime. Professional associations, such as the Association of German Universities, remained silent, ignored key opportunities to resist before universities lost their autonomy and became subservient to the Nazi state.
As linguist Max Weinreich wrote in his 1999 book, *Hitler*, professors, many academics didn't just comply, they enabled the regime by reshaping their research. This legitimized state doctrine, helping to build the intellectual framework of the regime.
A few academics resisted and were dismissed, exiled or executed. It wasn't.
The transformation of German academia was not a slow drift but a swift and systemic overhaul. But what made Hitler's orders stick was the eagerness of many academic leaders to comply, justify and normalize the new order. Each decision - each erased name, each revised syllabus, each closed program and department . was framed as necessary, even patriotic. Within a few years, German universities no longer served knowledge . served they power."
joene 🏴🍉
and 1 other
boosted
3/3🧵: as #graduation season is in full swing, #UK #students from top #universities are staging #protests in support of #Palestine. On Thursday #Cambridge #university students waved #Palestinian flags and/or #keffiyeh, wearing traditional dress at their graduation ceremony and demanded their uni follow Kings' example and #divest from #Israel & #genocide.
Students at ceremony taking palestinian flags out of their pockets or refusing to shake hands
2/3🧵: a couple of hours later, an even larger #walkout was staged by the under/post grad #students of political & social science of #Edinburgh #university, leaving the #graduation ceremony hall mostly empty. The #uni now has a stark choice: the money from its financial entanglement with #Israel and companies that actively enable #genocide in #Gaza, or the money and the brains of its students. ✊🏽🇵🇸
Edinburgh students leaving their graduation ceremony en masse
3/3🧵: as #graduation season is in full swing, #UK #students from top #universities are staging #protests in support of #Palestine. On Thursday #Cambridge #university students waved #Palestinian flags and/or #keffiyeh, wearing traditional dress at their graduation ceremony and demanded their uni follow Kings' example and #divest from #Israel & #genocide.
Students at ceremony taking palestinian flags out of their pockets or refusing to shake hands
Researchers from universities that include Waseda University in Tokyo have been found to have placed secret prompts in their papers so artificial intelligence-aided reviewers will give them positive feedback. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/07/04/japan/ai-research-prompt-injection/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #ai #wasedauniversity #tech #universities
Eight American researchers have arrived at a university in southern France, as the country pushes to offer "science asylum" to U.S. academics hit by federal research spending cuts under U.S. President Donald Trump. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/06/28/world/science-health/science-refugees-french-university/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #worldnews #sciencehealth #france #universities #us #education #donaldtrump #science #immigration
The education ministry is considering limiting financial support it provides to doctoral students so that funding to assist with living expenses is only made available to Japanese nationals. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/06/26/japan/society/japan-doctoral-students-support-revision/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #society #education #universities
The members are concerned that political appointees at the #State Dept, which manages the program, are acting illegally by canceling the awarding of #Fulbright #scholarships to almost 200 American #professors & #researchers who are prepared to go to #universities & other #research institutions overseas starting this summer, …including Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH).
#law#FirstAmendment#AcademicFreedom#SeparationOfPowers#Trump #tyranny#AbuseOfPower #authoritarianism#AmericanAutocracy
Ulrike Hahn
boosted
"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
#SocialMedia#SocialNetworks#Twitter#Bluesky#Academia#Universities#HigherEd
"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
#SocialMedia#SocialNetworks#Twitter#Bluesky#Academia#Universities#HigherEd
Excellent: "More than 100 institutions and funders worldwide have confirmed that research published in #eLife continues to be considered in hiring, promotion, and funding decisions, following the journal’s bold move to forgo its Journal Impact Factor."
https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/bf74b86e/more-than-100-institutions-and-funders-confirm-recognition-of-elife-papers-signalling-support-for-open-science
PS: This is not just a step to support eLife, but a step to break the stranglehold of bad metrics in research assessment. For the same reason, it's a step toward more honest and less simplistic assessment.
#Academia#Assessment#JIF#Metrics#Universities
@academicchatter