Miguel Afonso Caetano<p>"The abduction and attempted deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, coupled with ongoing threats to university funding and crackdowns on activists, academics, and the imprisonment and attempted deportation of those without US citizenship, has stirred collective horror and rage among members of the Jewish Faculty Network, whose membership includes more than 200 faculty members at universities across Canada.</p><p>Our anger is not new, but it has reached a boiling point, following a year and a half of pro-Israel lobby groups audaciously claiming to speak on our behalf in support of the genocide in Gaza. Worse, they claim objections to Israel’s actions since the horrific attacks of October 7th, 2023, are antisemitic. Even when human rights lawyers, international law experts and those expressing solidarity with Palestinian women, children and civilians object to the IDF’s brutal massacres of civilians, we are told that they too are modern day antisemites. Especially when Jewish intellectuals express solidarity with Palestinian suffering, we are called ‘self-hating’ or ‘antisemites’ ourselves. This absurdity must stop. Real harm is caused by diluting the definition of antisemitism and weaponizing antisemitism in response to political dissent.</p><p>As Jewish faculty at universities and colleges across Canada, we extend solidarity to our colleagues in the United States who face this wave of xenophobic “cleansing.” We view with alarm the Trump administration’s renewed efforts to purge US public and private universities of students and staff whose speech and research it finds threatening to white and Christian supremacy. Among these efforts, we note in particular the scapegoating of gender and sexuality studies, social studies, humanities research on colonialism, racism, capitalism, and imperialism, and scientific research into climate change, social determinants of health, and public health."</p><p><a href="https://socialistproject.ca/2025/04/statements-abduction-mahmoud-khalil/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">socialistproject.ca/2025/04/st</span><span class="invisible">atements-abduction-mahmoud-khalil/</span></a></p><p><a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/USA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>USA</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Universities" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Universities</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/HigherEd" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>HigherEd</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/AcademicFreedom" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>AcademicFreedom</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Israel" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Israel</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Palestine" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Palestine</span></a></p>
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6 Australian universities have quietly closed Chinese government-linked Confucius Institutes on their campuses.
The Australian government has ramped up scrutiny on the education centres over concerns that Beijing is using them to spread propaganda and spy on Chinese international students.
I think Ateneo de Manila hosts a Confucius Institute.
#Asian #Propaganda #Spying #Australia #Universities #UNSW #Melbourne
www.bbc.comConfucius Institutes: Six Australian universities close China centresAustralia has ramped up scrutiny on the centres over fears China is using them to spread propaganda.
#Lawsuits targeting #diversity efforts in #science are multiplying
The lawsuits join a recent uptick in legal action against #universities, departments, and professional societies with programs intended to increase diversity across academia, including in sciences.
Short of a court victory, the mere threat of lawsuits is likely to push many organizations to cancel or scale back their diversity programming, “Even that's a win for them."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/03/anti-diversity-lawsuits-likely-to-hurt-the-scientific-community-say-scholars/ #DEI
Ars Technica · Anti-diversity lawsuits likely to hurt the scientific community, say scholars
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Update. Thank you to former #Harvard President #DerekBok for recommending that Harvard abolish legacy admissions.
https://www.ft.com/content/32c1cef2-bb07-48ce-b1a2-0d9e06281f0d
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that it was reviewing $9 billion in federal contracts and grants awarded to Harvard University. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/04/01/world/harvard-federal-funds-us-review/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #worldnews #harvard #us #republicans #donaldtrump #universities #censorship #israel #gaza #israelhamaswar #palestinians #hamas
The Japan Times · Harvard at risk of losing $9 billion in federal funds amid U.S. review
"The current Republican embrace of xenophobic anti-intellectualism is bad for America. It will make the country stupider and more provincial."
~ Jeet Heer
#Musk #Trump #DOGE #ICE #immigrants #students #universities #education
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-academic-purge/
The Nation · Trump’s Academic Purge Will Make America Stupid and Provincial AgainThe administration’s targeting of international students is a return to a disgraced tradition of xenophobic anti-intellectualism.
Another preventable tragedy, on rights, disrupted lives, & on economic & societal terms:
">1.1M foreign students come to the US each year to study
--> they contributed >$43B to the US economy in foreign currency balances
--> students who came to the U.S. to study founded 55% of America’s 582 start-up companies worth at least $1B."
-J Allen
#Universities #Colleges #Trump #RIghts #Immigration #Racism #Economy #Trumpcession #USPol
https://newrepublic.com/article/193206/trump-war-higher-education-demands-aggressive-response
The New Republic · Trump’s Atrocious War on Higher Ed Demands an Aggressive ResponseAmerica’s colleges and universities enrich everyone in ways that aren’t often acknowledged. It’s high time to remind Americans of them.
Hey #universities, this is how you do it: https://www.commondreams.org/news/rutgers-protests
Common Dreams · Rutgers Senate Proposes Big Ten 'Mutual Defense Compact' to Protect Campus Speech | Common DreamsRutgers University Senate takes a stand against Trump's attacks on First Amendment rights, forming a mutual defense compact with other Big Ten schools. Will this bold move inspire other institutions to defend free speech and academic freedom? #HigherEdLeadership #DefendFreeSpeech
KDE adds The Open Source Promotion Program to its list of mentorship programs.
Want to learn how to contribute to an Open Source project? Check out our blog post and start writing your project submission now!
https://mentorship.kde.org/blog/2025-03-29-ospp/
"Most of our students are functionally illiterate. This is not a joke. By “functionally illiterate” I mean “unable to read and comprehend adult novels by people like Barbara Kingsolver, Colson Whitehead, and Richard Powers.” I picked those three authors because they are all recent Pulitzer Prize winners, an objective standard of “serious adult novel.” Furthermore, I’ve read them all and can testify that they are brilliant, captivating writers; we’re not talking about Finnegans Wake here. But at the same time they aren’t YA, romantasy, or Harry Potter either.
I’m not saying our students just prefer genre books or graphic novels or whatever. No, our average graduate literally could not read a serious adult novel cover-to-cover and understand what they read. They just couldn’t do it. They don’t have the desire to try, the vocabulary to grasp what they read,2 and most certainly not the attention span to finish. For them to sit down and try to read a book like The Overstory might as well be me attempting an Iron Man triathlon: much suffering with zero chance of success.
Students are not absolutely illiterate in the sense of being unable to sound out any words whatsoever. Reading bores them, though. They are impatient to get through whatever burden of reading they have to, and move their eyes over the words just to get it done. They’re like me clicking through a mandatory online HR training. Students get exam questions wrong simply because they didn't even take the time to read the question properly. Reading anything more than a menu is a chore and to be avoided."
https://hilariusbookbinder.substack.com/p/the-average-college-student-today
Scriptorium Philosophia · The average college student today
In the USA, exchange/foreign students don't have freedom of speech, students can better choose for the EU or other countries.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Z1vfWt4hDin5H8Mn4znKo?si=YfyvzfhvTXeqnnKu8pwJWw
#usa #students #freedomofspeech #trump #fascism #ice #universities #science
SpotifyICE on CampusThe Daily · Episode
"A prominent computer scientist who has spent 20 years publishing academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity has gone incommunicado, had his professor profile, email account, and phone number removed by his employer, Indiana University, and had his homes raided by the FBI. No one knows why.
Xiaofeng Wang has a long list of prestigious titles. He was the associate dean for research at Indiana University's Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, a fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a tenured professor at Indiana University at Bloomington. According to his employer, he has served as principal investigator on research projects totaling nearly $23 million over his 21 years there.
He has also co-authored scores of academic papers on a diverse range of research fields, including cryptography, systems security, and data privacy, including the protection of human genomic data. I have personally spoken to him on three occasions for articles here, here, and here."
Ars Technica · FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado