Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

A strong statement by the President of Princeton on the attack on Columbia University...

...and academic freedom.  We need more of this making of the case for American research universities.  Of course, Princeton has the luxury of perhaps being the only such school in the country that could actually survive loss of federal money!  But all the research universities need to band together and lobby the Republican Senators and Representatives who aren't nuts.

Speaking of misconduct by authoritarian regimes: the crisis in Serbia continues

I received the following from Serbian academics, and I hope others will join me in signing:

We write to you as members of the academic community, gravely concerned about the escalating repression targeting participants in peaceful students-led protests that have now persisted for four months.

From the very beginning, students and citizens have faced systematic state intimidation, culminating in a shocking act of violence during a mass protest on March 15 — a moment intended for solemn silence in memory of 15 fellow citizens who tragically lost their lives. In that very moment of commemoration, an unidentified device emitting a powerful sound and shock wave was unleashed against peaceful demonstrators without warning. The resulting pressure wave triggered mass panic, causing injuries and widespread distress. This deliberate deployment of such a device constitutes a flagrant violation of the Police Law of the Republic of Serbia. The intentional use of tactics designed to instill fear, panic, and chaos represents a grave breach of fundamental human rights — including the right to life itself. The report from Earshot confirming this is available HERE.

Universities must hold the line on free speech and academic freedom against the Trump Administration's attacks

Via Shamik Dasgupta, I learn of this petition/open letter addressed to the universities, which is certainly timely and right.  I have signed.

60 more universities targetted in Trump's fake war on anti-semitism on campus

This is ominous, and I hope all these schools are preparing legal action to stop this abuse of power.  The University of Chicago is not on any of these lists, and not because we didn't have anti-Israel demonstrations on campus.  We aren't on these lists because:  (1) there is no anti-semitism problem here, to put it mildly; and (2) UChicago has a good reputation in Repug circles going back to Milton Friedman (thanks Milton!) and UChicago has had a genuine, and longstanding, commitment to free expression and academic freedom (going back to when Robert Hutchins told the Illinois legislature in the 1930s to "fuck off" [he said it in Latin] when it complained because a communist spoke on campus).  We'll see how long that good luck lasts.

Trump is gaslighting American universities

Philosopher Mathias Risse comments.

Trump's "Title VI demand letter" to Columbia University violates both Title VI and the Constitution

Several Columbia law professors explain.  I hope this forms the basis of the lawsuit Columbia needs to file against the Trumpistas this week.

It's also well past time for Columbia to challenge the "anti-semitism" crisis narrative (which Columbia has stupidly fed).  Len Gutkin, at CHE, reviewed Columbia's own report, and wrote this:

[I]ts second antisemitism task-force report makes clear that the campus atmosphere could at times be unacceptably toxic. It recounts a handful of instances of abusive language on a Columbia-only social-media site, which provide evidence, however limited, of genuinely hateful attitudes among some of its students. But most of the other incidents the report includes are uncorroborated, and there’s no reason to think that the most alarming — necklaces ripped off of Jewish students while they walk back to campus, for instance — were perpetrated by Columbia students. As a piece of investigatory reportage, the document is a mess. It strains to make the most of very little; it was going to conclude that antisemitism was rife on campus no matter what it uncovered. 

Trump Administration makes demands on Columbia University...

...including treating anti-Zionism as anti-semitism (and thus making it a matter for univeristy discipline) and putting several departments into academic receivership for no other reason than faculty members hold views disfavored by the Trump Administration. Other demands are more banal, but these two are a frontal assault on academic freedom and free expression rights of faculty and students.  If Columbia doesn't go to court over this authoritarianism, then the capitulation is complete.

Letter to Congress from Union of Concerned Scientists and dozens of scientific associations...

...including the Philosophy of Science Association, about threats to funding of scientific research.

More on the illegality of the cancellation of contracts and grants at Columbia for alleged Title VI violations

From CHE:

Samuel R. Bagenstos, who served as general counsel for the HHS under the Biden administration, said there are typically due-process requirements — such as statements of findings, hearings, and appeals — in cases alleging violations of civil-rights law. (Columbia has been accused of running afoul of Title VI, which bars discrimination in education based on race, color, and national origin.)

“Congress set forth specific procedures for suspending or terminating funds based on allegations of discrimination,” Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, wrote via a LinkedIn message. “This purported ‘immediate cancellation’ complies with none of them.”

The administration’s decision comes without clear evidence of wrongdoing by Columbia under Title VI, said Jonathan S. Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education.

“They don’t have a ruling from a judge. They don’t have a finding by an administrative agency. They haven’t tried to reach a resolution. They simply started cherry-picking money that’s going to Columbia and saying, ‘We’re not going to pay that,’” Fansmith said. “That’s not how we do this in the United States.”

This is why Columbia's capitulation is so foolish.

Columbia fallout begins: Harvard (another target for the Trumpistas) freezes faculty and staff hiring

Here.

Petty tyrant serving as Interim US Attorney in Washington DC threatens Georgetown Law...

...and the Georgetown Dean responds forcefully!  This is how all educational leaders should deal with these little fascists in Trump's orbit.

Annals of political repression on campus: immigration authorities detain Palestinian activist at Columbia...

...despite his being a lawful permanent resident of the U.S.  Permanent residents have First Amendment rights, and his are being violated in the most egregious way.  If there is a  legal fund for Mr. Khalil, please let me know and I will post a link. Mr. Khalil does have a lawyer, and he will need one.

It's official: Columbia University capitulates

Here, in response to this.  The Trumpistas won't be satisfied, of course, until Columbia suppresses all speech critical of Israel or in support of the Palestinians.

Which school will be next?

Trump Admin pulls $400 million in grants/contracts from Columbia University over anti-semitism allegations

Just 48 hours later, the Trump gangsters have yanked $400 million in contracts and grants from Columbia University.  I'm sure this can't be legal, given the absence of even a semblance of due process which would be required for a Title VI sanction to be imposed.  Columbia's response to this robbery?

“We are reviewing the announcement from the federal agencies and pledge to work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding. We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combatting antisemitism and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff," a spokesperson for the university told NBC News.

Seriously?  The time for mealy-mouthed pablum is over.  Columbia needs to get their own Roy Cohn (Trump's favorite lawyer) on the case, who will respond roughly as Mr. Cohn did when his client, Mafia boss Carmine Galante, was dragged into court (scroll to the one minute mark:  short verison, it's all a publicity stunt, everything the government says about my client are lies).  Columbia, unlike Galante, has the advantage of not being guilty as charged!  Here's a draft of a more suitable response:

The allegation that Columbia University has tolerated anti-semitic misconduct is false and without basis, and the Administration knows that.  This is a political stunt, meant to intimidate universities and coerce them into suppressing lawful political speech, protected by the First Amendment.  The Univeristy will be taking the Trump Administration to court immmediately to seek remedies for its unlawful breach of contract and witholding of federal grants, all done without even a pretense of fair process.  We urge every university in the country to stand firm in protecting lawful speech.

I hope Columbia changes its tune quickly in the face of this plan to "destroy" the university.  Columbia needs to go on the offensive, and call out this fraud on the public for what it is.

Meanwhile, the ten universities being "visited" by the fake Anti-Semitism Task Force should be preparing their own legal and public relations campaigns.  Holmesian Bad Men only back down when costs are imposed on them.

 

 

Ben-Gurion University in Israel suspends professor for criticizing the IDF

Pretty egregious behavior by the university, which is forbidden by law from discriminating against employees based on their political viewpoint.  You can write to the BGU President, Dr. Daniel Chamowitz, to protest this violation of the free speech rights of a faculty member at:  [email protected]

(Thanks to Alon Harel for the pointer.)

More signs of the times: hiring freezes, reduced PhD admissions

The NYT reports:

Since taking office, the Trump administration has issued orders that threaten to broadly undercut the financial foundation of university based research, including deep reductions in overhead cost reimbursements through the National Institutes of Health. Court challenges have paused some of the cuts, but universities are bracing for uncertainty. The University of Pennsylvania could face a $250 million hit in N.I.H. funding alone....

In some cases, schools are pre-emptively cutting their expenses as a precautionary measure.

North Carolina State University announced on Feb. 14 that it was freezing most hiring. Stanford University announced on Feb. 26 that it was freezing staff hiring, citing “very significant risks” to the community. At the University of Louisville in Kentucky, President Kim Schatzel announced an “immediate pause” on faculty and staff hiring until July. She cited the potential loss of $20 to $23 million in N.I.H. research funding. Dozens of other schools have announced hiring freezes or “chills.”

Many of the cuts are now hitting graduate education...

A graduate program in biological sciences at the University of California, San Diego, usually enrolls 25 new graduate students a year. This year, the number will be 17....

Can AI hold office hours?

Several law professors trained AI on the class textbook, and AI still gave incomplete or wrong answers half the time!

UPDATE:  A senior scholar of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy elsewhere writes:

The other day I gave the same query to two different AI's (anthropic.claude-3.5-sonnet.v2 and openai.gpt-4o):

"I'm interested in Plato's Republic, and I'd like to read some recent scholarly literature concerning his proposals for censorship in books 2 and 3 of the Republic. Can you suggest some articles written within the last ten years?"

One gave me two citations, one gave me five. Of those seven, exactly 1 was a real citation to a real article. The other 6 were mix-and-match nonsense: the names of real authors (lots of my friends!), the names of real journals, and titles that were plausible pastiches of title-elements.  But none of them actually exist. 

People tell me that AI is useful for some things, but it is still far from a serious adjunct to scholarship.

Deciding Between Admissions Offers: The Importance of Visiting/Talking With Current Students

MOVING TO FRONT FROM LAST YEAR (SINCE TIMELY AGAIN--originally posted March 6, 2009)

Applicants to PhD and MA programs are now receiving offers of admission and, if they are lucky, are beginning to weigh choices between different departments.  I want to reiterate a point made in the PGR, namely, that students are well-advised to talk to current students at the programs they are considering.   There are often things you will want to know that you won't glean from familiarity with the excellence of the faculty's work, even if that remains the most important, if defeasible, reason for choosing a particular department.  Here are some examples of information that no ranking, no departmental brochure, and no "official" departmental representive will tell you about; all of these are drawn from stories I've heard from students over the last few years about ranked departments (the departments will remain unnamed, obviously).  You can think of them as representing "types" of problems you should be aware of before enrolling.  I've tweaked some of the details to protect identities.

The Absent Faculty:  Are the faculty who look so good on paper actually around and interested in working with students?  I heard a story about a key senior person in one department who is an alcoholic, and who simply ignored his students.  In another department, almost all the graduate students had to sign an open letter to the faculty a number of years ago protesting the failure of faculty to return graded papers and their general lack of interest in mentoring the students.   In yet another department, a well-known senior member of the faculty spent so much time travelling and lecturing around the world, that he rarely had time to review or discuss work carefully with students. 

The Sexual Predator Faculty:  Are women treated as young philosophers and aspiring professionals, or do faculty regularly view them as a potential source for dates and sexual liasons?  It's a bit shocking to realize that this is still a live issue in some departments, but, sadly, it is.  Are faculty-student sexual relations common in the department?  What happens when the relations end?  Are there repeated cases of sexual harassment complaints against faculty in the department?  Do they ever result in discipline?  I suppose it is possible this could be an issue for male students, but all the reports I've gotten over the years have been from women victimized by male faculty. 

Trump Admin targets Columbia

Straight out of the fascist sycophant's playbook:  right after Linda McMahon was sworn in as Education Secretary, the attack began:

The Trump administration is threatening to cut tens of millions of dollars in federal funding for Columbia University, making the school the first major target in its effort to root out what it considers antisemitic harassment on college campuses.

A comprehensive review of Columbia University’s federal contracts and grants was announced Monday night, shortly after Linda McMahon was confirmed as the secretary of education in a party-line vote.

The review, which will be led by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education and the General Services Administration, has already identified $51.4 million in contracts between Columbia and the federal government that could be subject to stop-work orders. Health and Human Services said in a news release that the review was necessary “given Columbia’s ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students.”

Far more could be on the line: A federal task force will conduct a comprehensive review of the “more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia University to ensure that the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities,” the news release said.

Kafka comes to UC Riverside

A pretty horrifying account of administrative misconduct by the DEI police (note to investigative journalists:  do some digging on Dean Daryle Williams and his approach to "diversity" hiring):

I wrote the following words, in December 2022, to colleagues on a search committee: “[Candidate X] is lively and charming — and yes, Black, which is great — but I can’t say that I found his sophistication and experience up to the level of our top candidates.” Someone on the committee reported that sentence to administrators on my campus of the University of California at Riverside (UCR), and soon a punishment machine clicked into gear. It moved inexorably. Three unanimous votes by faculty committees in the university’s Academic Senate took my side, but administrators countermanded all three and the machine trundled on. After 20 months, the university chancellor placed a “letter of censure” into my file....

The letter declares that I made “unwarranted comments” about race....

Some background: At the University of California, all members of search committees undergo “training” in which they are reminded of a state law that prohibits use of race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, and other personal characteristics as selection criteria. At the same time, trainees are strongly urged to pursue the university’s “diversity” goals, which ask that special attention go to those very criteria: race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, etc. While it might be possible, in theory, to accommodate both of these countervailing demands, the practical effect on human beings in the real world is to induce a language game: a person employs diversity criteria while pretending not to....

The New Yorker on Harvard, Claudine Gay, free speech etc.

Here, with a couple of quotes from yours truly, as well as Lawrence Summers, Steven Levitsky, Michael Clune, and others.

An example of remarkably irresponsible advice to prospective PhD students, and the AI question

In the earlier thread about how to advise prospective PhD students these days, philosopher Tim Maudlin reports the advice he got as an undergraduate at Yale from Professor Robert Fogelin in 1980:  "He said—and I quote verbatim because one does not forget something like this—'Not even if you were Immanuel Kant would I suggest going to graduate school in philosophy.'" What insane advice to give to an undergraduate, at Yale no less, which has sent many dozens of students on to successful academic careers in philosophy since that time.  Even now, that advice would be crazy, and the situation is much more grim in the U.S. due to the Republican war on higher education.  Despite all that, there will still be jobs teaching philosophy, but fewer than even in the last thirty or forty years.

The earlier thread also included various prognostications about AI taking over many pedagogical tasks.  Count me skeptical, although for reasons we have noted before, AI will certainly change teaching in various ways.  But we should not be sanguine, and the effects are hard to predict with any confidence.   

More signs of the times: Northwestern University to make 10% cuts in non-personnel expenditures, and to scrutinize future hiring and pay raises centrally

Here.  Northwestern is a top 20 recipient of NIH funding, but the announcement also notes concern about the effect of an increased endowment tax.

Here's the little fascist sycophant who cooked up the idea of slashing NIH research funding...

...and he's got other "ideas":

To scare universities straight, [Education Sectetary] McMahon should start by taking a prize scalp. She should simply destroy Columbia University.

Columbia was, perhaps, the worst offender in indulging the pro-Hamas campus radicals. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights should initiate a compliance review of every single decision Columbia made. To do that, OCR would need the identities of every single foreign student who supported the protests, actions the Trump administration could deem material support of a terrorist organization. Border czar Tom Homan could then revoke every single one of the foreign protesting students’ visas.

If Columbia doesn’t cooperate, McMahon could cut off its research grant funding.

If they do cooperate, she’ll surely find the evidence necessary to cut off its Title IV funding. That would mean that Columbia would become ineligible to receive federal research grants and subsidized student loans, which would jeopardize nearly half of its revenue....

And while the Trump administration is looking into Columbia, the Justice Department should thoroughly explore indicting former Columbia President Lee Bollinger for fraud if he, through commission or omission, played a role in Columbia’s submission of inaccurate data to US News and World Report. Bollinger submitted the data to boost Columbia’s rank in the report. Once the true data were reported, Colubmia’s rank fell from second to 18th.

College presidents regard Bollinger as perhaps the greatest college leader of the 21^st century. He should be regarded as the worst. Perhaps the college presidents could learn a valuable lesson from the sight of him in an orange jumpsuit.

Another canary in the coal mine: University of Pittsburgh suspends PhD admissions across all departments...

...due to the "financial uncertainty" created by the threat to NIH funding (Pittsburgh, recall, is a major recipient of NIH funding).  The suspension applies across all departments, according to the linked article, not just programs in the medical sciences.  Is this happening elsewhere?

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

Canary in the coal mine: UC San Diego suspends *all* faculty and staff hiring "for the indefinite future"

On the earlier thread about whether those with job offers should accept quickly, Professor Sam Elgin at UC San Diego just posted the following:  "My university - UC San Diego - has just announced a complete freeze on all faculty and staff hiring for the indefinite future. Our Executive Vice Chancellor cited financial uncertainty arising from potential federal funding cuts, which could account for a 10% budget shortfall for the campus."

This is extremely ominous. 

DOE Office of Civil Rights issues "Dear Colleague" letter regarding race-conscious programs of any kind

CHE reports:

OCR’s letter offers an expansive interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which banned the consideration of an applicant’s racial status. Though the so-called SFFA decision pertained only to admissions evaluations, Trainor wrote that the ruling “applies more broadly,” prohibiting institutions from considering race in “hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”

The SFFA decision did not hold what the OCR letter says, but it is almost certain that the current Supreme Court would agree with this blanket prohibition on the consideration of race.  And that's probably the bet that the Trump Administration is taking:  namely, that universities will comply because they anticipate that in a legal challenge, SCOTUS will side with Trump.

Racial preferences, as we have noted many times before, are deeply unpopular with the vast majority of Americans, including racial minorities (and putting aside their questionable legality).  The academy is one of the few institutions, along with portions of the media, still strongly committed to "diversity."  (Corporate America talks the "diversity" talk because it's cheap to do so and no threat to the plutocracy; now that it may be illegal, I suspect them to abandon the sinking diversity ship quickly.)  I, for one, will not be sorry to see the end of "diversity blather" in higher education, although I will be sorry it comes at the cost of actual affirmative action for the victims of American apartheid.  Of the battles higher education will need to fight right now with the Trump-lodytes, this is not the one that universities have any chance of winning, either before the courts or in the court of public opinion.

(Parts of the letter overreach the paragraph above, and suggest that it could be unlawful to teach about racial disparities.  Any attempt to try to prevent expression of the viewpoint that racial disparities are real and deleterious in America would meet with successful First Amendment challenges.)

Should job seekers accept offers quickly given the threats to the universities?

A colleague elsewhere expressed the view on FB that they should, and that may be right.  When universities face financial uncertainty, they do try reduce future costs, of which salaries for faculty are usually the most important.  It is not crazy that job offers will disappear in the face of the Trump war on the universities.  I would be interested to hear either from job seekers or faculty about the problems they have confronted on this score.  Please use a valid email address, but job seekers, in particular, may post anonymously.  The email address will not appear.

Please post your comment only once, they may take awhile to appear.

There is no bottom to dumb: Elon Musk edition

Ross Hyman, a computer scientist here at UChicago, writes:

I have not seen this mentioned anywhere, probably because it is impossible to keep up with all the wrong things that Elon Musk has been saying

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888022189984858476

But when Elon says “Can you believe that universities with tens of billions in endowments were siphoning off 60% of research award money for “overhead”?”, this is conflating the indirect rate with the percentage of the award.

The simplest way to show that these are different is to consider the extreme case of a university with a 100% indirect rate. That would mean that for each dollar that the NIH is awarding to a PI for direct costs, their university is receiving one dollar in indirect costs so the percentage of the award going to indirect costs is 50% not 100%.

For the 60% rate that Elon refers to, for every dollar to the PI’s direct costs, 60 cents goes to indirect costs. So, the percentage of the award going to indirect costs is 60/160 = 37.5%

Some of the indirect cost goes to a University’s Research Computing Center, which provides computing services to the grantee as well as all researchers on campus with or without grant awards. If Research Computing Centers were not funded by indirect costs, then researchers would need to pay for computing time out of their grants and computing time would not be available to people who are working on projects without grant money, which is necessary to develop successful pilots to get grant money, and would deprive the world of a lot of interesting research.

Kansas bill would effectively eliminate tenure...

...since it eliminates the ongoing property interest in the position (which is what triggers due process provisions) and eliminate the need to show "good cause" for termination.  (Bizarrely the CHE article repeats the proponent's propaganda that the bill does not eliminate tenure:  that's exactly what it does.)

(Thanks to Gregory Mayer for the pointer.)

LSU law professor Ken Levy sues university over his removal from classroom

MOVING TO FRONT AGAIN (ORIGINALLY POSTED JANUARY 30) --MORE UPDATES

Story here.  (A "go fund me" campaign for his legal fees has been started here.)  "Fuck Landry" and "fuck Trump" are admirable sentiments, but it's not clear they fall within the scope of his academic freedom as a teacher (it would depend on the nuances of the context of what he was teaching that day).  They are certainly not protected by his general free speech rights (he would be protected had he stood on a street corner saying that).  Faculty have less freedom of expression in the classroom than they do outside it.  Still, the absence of any notice or opportunity to defend against the allegations is a serious procedural failing by LSU, quite apart from the substantive merits (which, as I said, require more detail about context to evaluate).  Just to be clear:  even if he had no right to say what he did in the classroom, this is not even close to a firing offense, no matter how much the lawless Landry would like that.

UPDATE:  A state court has already issued a temporary restraining order on LSU, ordering that Professor Levy be returned to the classroom.  From the account here, it now seems clear that the comments at issue were a case of mentioning rather than using "fuck the governor" and humor.  Thank goodness for courts still committed to the rule of law.

2/5/25 UPDATE:   An appeal court has overruled the lower court's decision that Professor Levy must be returned to the classroom.  If Professor Levy prevails on the merits, his continuing absence from the classroom will then figure in an assessment of damages he is due for the university's action.

2/12/25 UPDATE:  Another judge has now ordered LSU to return Professor Levy to the classroom.  The decision to suspend him was made by the University President!

 

Leading research universities and their member organizations are among those who have sued over the illegal cuts to NIH funding

Here's the complaint:  Download NIH funding complaint.   As Gabe Mendlow points out to me, one of the lead lawyers on this case is a conservative legal stalwart, Paul Clement, a good advocate to have especially if this gets to the Supreme Court.

If the cuts to NIH funding go into effect the cost would be extraordinary for some schools with major medical schools

A federal judge has enjoined Trump/Musk's plainly illegal change to NIH support for indirect expenses (we'll see if the lawless Trump complies), but CHE has compiled some data on the likely cost to schools if the reimbursement rate for indirect costs were cut to 15% (these are estimates based on 2024 data), and some of the (rounded) numbers are staggering (especially for schools with large, major research medical schools):

Johns Hopkins University:  $153,000,000

University of Pennsylvania:  $140,000,000

University of California, San Francisco:  $139,000,000

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor:  $130,000,000

University of Pittsburgh:  $121,000,000

Washington University, St. Louis:  $117,000,000

Stanford University:  $114,000,000 (the Stanford Provost has pegged the cost at $160,000,000)

University of Washington, Seattle:  $93,000,000

University of California, Los Angeles:  $70,000,000

University of Texas Southwestern:  $66,000,000

University of Chicago:  $48,000,000

Chicago's medical school is much smaller than at other places, but UChicago is already running at $220,000,000 deficit thanks to its former President Robert Zimmer.  There is no way the school could absorb an extra $48,000,000 in expenses.

The state of Texas is estimated to lose a half billion dollars in federal funding for research if these proposed cuts take effect.  North Carolina would lose nearly $400 million; Ohio $280 million; Florida, $233 million.  I will bet money that every university leader in Texas has been in touch with Senators Cruz and Cornyn about this, and the same for the Republican Senators in other states.  My guess is that Trump will back off, once it becomes clear that Republicans hate this too.

Excellent statement from the leadership at UW Madison, which explains what "indirect" expenses are very well

Here; an excerpt:

As part of how the government provides funding, and how it has done so for decades, federal agencies like the NIH – most typically through highly competitive grant processes – allocate funding to individual projects and institutions. This funding supports direct expenses like staff salaries, graduate student stipends, and supplies. It also supports indirect costs, which include everything from large, shared scientific equipment, to laboratory and facility construction costs, data infrastructure costs, utilities, the costs of administering grants appropriately and the often-considerable expense of complying with federal rules and regulations surrounding research.

These so-called “indirect costs” aren’t optional expenses. They are both substantial and an absolutely fundamental part of innovative science. As is the case while running your household, you need both money to buy groceries (direct) and the financial resources to keep a working refrigerator and electricity (indirect) to store your milk and eggs.

On the illegality of Trump's cuts to NIH funding

Law professor Sam Bagenstos explains.

More on the catastrophic cuts to NIH funding of "indirect costs"

Dr. Roger Albin, a neurologist at the University of Michigan, writes:

Thanks for posting on the NIH demarche on indirect cost rates.  As commented in the NYT article, this would severely wound biomedical research in the USA. A couple of additional comments that may interest your readers.

1. If you talk to university research administrators, they will tell you that these indirect cost allocations don’t cover the costs of supporting research. Unlike some claims by university administrators, this one is credible. To give one example, the amount of salary that NIH grants allocate to investigators directing research projects is capped.  There is usually a substantial differential between faculty salary and what NIH pays.  The institution/investigators’ departments make up the difference.  This consumes funds that could be used for supporting research physical infrastructure, needed support personnel, regulatory compliance apparatus such as IRBs, etc.  There are other examples.  Ultimately, the NIH indirect cost allocations don’t completely cover the cost of supporting research.  Funds have to come from somewhere else – frequently income from clinical activities.  Up to this point, research institutions have been able to manage these subsidies. The 15% rate in the NIH announcement would make it impossible to support research activities on anything close to the present scale, even for relatively rich institutions. 

2. While the NYT article correctly describes this policy as a major change, it doesn’t really convey the foundational nature of Federal support for research infrastructure via these indirect cost agreements. Indirect cost agreements are negotiated between NIH and recipient institutions. The initial agreements generally date back to the 1960s and 1950s and were a key component of the post WWII/Cold War Federal commitment to supporting American science.  They are periodically re-negotiated, and as scientific research hasn’t got cheaper, they’ve gradually climbed, but in historic context, they were usually fairly generous at the outset. This new NIH policy would wrench away one of the primary supports of American science.   

3. The NIH statement linked in the NYT article is interesting reading. It’s likely this policy was drafted by individuals ignorant of how research works in the USA and/or so committed to neoliberal ideology that they are incapable of understanding how research works at all.

1. It’s correct that many foundations award lower indirect costs than NIH.  These foundations function with the general understanding that NIH and the recipient institutions are subsidizing research infrastructure.

2. Whomever wrote the NIH policy clearly didn’t do their homework. It’s stated that my institution, the University of Michigan, doesn’t accept grants with indirect cost awards below the NIH indirect cost rate.  I know this isn’t correct as I’ve been the recipient of foundation grants with substantially lower indirect rates.

4. One has to wonder where this came from. The incoming NIH Director, Bhattacharya, is a Stanford faculty member and should have some understanding of research administration.  If he signed off on this, he is even more incompetent than his track record indicates. 

The Trump war on the universities begins in earnest...

...although this one, I suspect, is motivated mostly by the need to save money to fund tax cuts for Trump and other members of the plutocracy:

The National Institutes of Health announced a new policy Friday to cap a type of funding that supports medical research at universities, a decision that most likely will leave many with a large budget gap. The policy targets $9 billion in so-called indirect funds that the N.I.H. sends along with direct funds to support research into basic science and treatments for diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s to diabetes.

Currently, some universities get 50 percent or more of the amount of a grant in indirect funds to maintain facilities and equipment and pay support staff. The new policy would cap those indirect funds at 15 percent.

“I think it’s going to destroy research universities in the short term, and I don’t know after that,” said Dr. David A. Baltrus, a University of Arizona associate professor whose lab is developing antibiotics for crops. “They rely on the money. They budget for the money. The universities were making decisions expecting the money to be there"...

An N.I.H. social media post said the change could save the federal government as much as $4 billion and sharply cut payments to Harvard, Yale and Johns Hopkins Universities, which have overhead rates above 60 percent of their grant sums.

While places like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford may be able to make up the shortfall, most other major research universities will not (that includes, I suspect, the University of Chicago, which already faces a $200 million deficit thanks to decisions made by its former President, Robert Zimmer).  That means they will have to dramatically curtail their medical research activities, or slash spending elsewhere.

UPDATE:  More about this draconian move, which will also face legal challenges.

British academic life, an on-going story of hardship

The latest:

The sheer amount of work  seems to be increasing exponentially, and not just in terms of scale but the number of vectors it’s all happening on too. It is impossible to be a top-line manager and administrator and mentor and researcher and writer and outreach officer and IT expert and online instructor and pedagogical innovator and recruiter and teacher and marker and external examiner and press pundit and grant bidder and editor and look after your own wellbeing. No-one can do that. Yet that’s what is often asked. 

What we’re really doing overall is running down our social capital, toiling away in a failing system that calls to mind nothing more than the late Soviet economy (far more similar to ours than we’d like to admit). When the money coming in continuously declines, organisations sweat their assets, and as they do so increasingly wear away their own foundations. What that involves is constantly whacking our own creativity, and capacity for ideas, against the brick wall of funders’ and employers’ indifference. That’s a losing game. Small wonder a lot of lecturers come to feel – or be made to feel – like losers. 

Beyond the line of hours worked, soaring ever upwards, and our own inability to actually come up with anything new, we have to add a third point – in most ways the most important of all: It’s a lack of money. When the ship’s afloat and running before the wind, change and movement can feel exhilarating. When it’s run aground, and it’s not so much stationary as lurching from side to side, that rush turns to nausea. Money is a great problem-solver and solvent. As the cash drains out of the system, all the nasty and gritty realities become nastier, gritter, more unpleasant. 

Curious whether this rings true to UK academics.

Trump's unlawful attempt to "impound" federal monies that Congress authorized be spent

Law professor Steven Vladeck explains the constitutional and legal issues; a few excerpts:

In essence, the Trump administration is claiming the unilateral power to at least temporarily “impound” tens of billions of dollars of appropriated funds—in direct conflict with Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, and in even more flagrant violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA).

When, not if, recipients of the frozen funds sue to challenge agencies’ compliance with the Vaeth memo, it’s a virtual certainty that the Trump administration will argue that the ICA is unconstitutional and that the President has inherent constitutional authority to impound. That argument is a loser, but it’s a good bet that it’s going to be up to the Supreme Court to say so—and probably a heck of a lot sooner than we might have predicted as recently as yesterday.,,,

[T]he prevailing consensus has long been that Congress’s power of the purse (the Spending Clause is the very first enumerated regulatory power that the Constitution confers upon the legislature) brings with it broad power to specify the purposes for which appropriated funds are to be spent—and that a broad presidential impoundment power would be inconsistent with that constitutional authority. If the President can accomplish Congress’s intended goal by spending less money, that’s one thing. But simply refusing to spend the appropriated funds because the President is opposed to why Congress appropriated the money in the first place is something else, altogether.

Even the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which tends to err on the side of the President in these kinds of separation-of-powers disputes, concluded in 1988 that the overwhelming weight of authority “is against such a broad power in the face of an express congressional directive to spend"....

Serbia facing a "general strike"

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FRIDAY, JANUARY 24

Here.  University students are centrally involved, and one was injured recently when a car rammed student protesters.  The University of Belgrade has issued a strong statement.  Comments are open for those who have more information.

The craven cowardice of Harvard and its contempt for free speech and academic freedom

Talk about craven cowardice:

Harvard Medical School canceled a planned Jan. 21 lecture on wartime healthcare and a subsequent panel with patients from Gaza receiving care in Boston in response to objections that students would hear from Gazans impacted by the war and not also Israelis.

Course instructors and students were notified Tuesday morning that the events — scheduled for that evening — would not be held.

Medical School Dean George Q. Daley ’82 wrote in a Wednesday email sent to first-year students and obtained by The Crimson that his office began receiving complaints from students and faculty within days after the session was first publicized last week.

The guest lecture — by Tufts professor Barry S. Levy, who studies the public health effects of war — was an optional evening session of the Pathways 120: “Essentials of the Profession” course, a requirement for all first-year students at the Medical School and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

Students had organized the moderated discussion with patients and their families as a follow-up to Levy’s lecture, which was not focused specifically on Gaza.

It is no part of free expression or academic freedom that any particular event be "balanced."  This is a straight-up violation of core free expression rights of students at Harvard.  I hope those at Harvard who profess a commitment to free expression will be up in arms abaout this.  The Dean of Harvard Medical School should resign.

(This comes on the heels of Harvard's equally craven decision to adopt a preposterously broad definition of anti-semitism, which will result in suppression of what should be perfectly lawful political speech.)

(Thanks to David Ozonoff for the pointer.)

Lawyer/philosopher Ken Levy, a law professor at Louisiana State, removed from classroom pending investigation...

...for "making political comments" in class.  There's not much detail here.  We know the Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry has open contempt for the First Amendment and academic freedom, but we also don't know what the remarks were and whether or not they were relevant to the class.  (Professor Levy teaches criminal law and constitutional law, both subjects that often make contemporaneous political events relevant.)  Recall that the AAUP definition of academic freedom in teaching states that, "Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject."  If the Louisiana Governor were not an authoritarian wannabe, one might be willing to give LSU the benefit of the doubt here.  We'll have to see what information actually comes to light.

ADDENDUM:  There's a bit more detail here, but not much: 

[I]n a classroom of about 82 students, Levy was teaching a class about police and public interactions. His attorney Jill Craft says students took issue with his comments in the confines of teaching the First Amendment.

Craft says a student recorded the lecture and Levy’s now been removed for making political comments, though what those comments were is unclear.

Clearly many "political" comments could be relevant and appropriate in a discussion of police interactions with the public, and the First Amendment.  That a student recorded the class is, of course, creepy.

Did Trump just end affirmative action at universities (including private ones)?

In the flurry of execcutive orders by the monster child, I missed this one; as CHE explains:

Decades of higher-ed hiring and employment practices aimed at avoiding discrimination could be upended after President Trump late Tuesday rescinded the Equal Employment Opportunity order signed in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

The order applies to federal contractors and likely includes the majority of colleges that receive federal financial aid or other federal funding....

The president’s action also takes aim at private colleges with DEI commitments. It orders all federal agencies to identify “the most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners” in their jurisdiction, including higher-education institutions with endowments of $1 billion or more. Each agency is ordered to identify nine potential cases that could be targets of civil-compliance investigations. The goal, the order states, was to “encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI.”

The now-revoked 1965 measure signed by LBJ had required federal contractors to “formulate affirmative action plans, develop plans to identify job groups where there are underrepresented groups, and come up with plans to address that underrepresentation in ways that are consistent with Title VII,” the federal law banning race, sex, and other forms of discrimination, said Scott Schneider, a prominent employment lawyer who advises colleges on discrimination and other matters.

“My two big takeaways are that all of the affirmative-action planning and report work being done on college campuses likely needs to stop under this executive order,” Schneider said. “Not only do colleges no longer have an obligation to pursue affirmative-action plans, I think this would prohibit it.”

An exception, he said, is likely to be colleges’ legal obligations toward disabled people and veterans.

(Related, earlier discussion here.)

Do UK academics need to provide their passport to be an external examiner in the UK?

Political philosopher David Owen (at the University of Southampton in the UK) posted about this topic on FB, and then kindly offered to draft something for the blog, since it seemed to me this is important information to get into circulation for UK academics.  Professor Owen's informative post is below the fold:

Should book authors consent to having generative AI train on their work?

Philosopher Elliott Sober posed a version of this question to me via email, and thought it would make a useful topic for discussion.  I agree.  What do readers think?  What are the pros and cons?  What decisions have you as an author made when approached by publishers about this?   Please note your academic discipline if it is not philosophy.

Millsaps College fired a faculty member for expressing a political opinion to students in an email

FIRE has the details, and I hope they will sue the college.

(Thanks to John Casey for the pointer.)

The Katherine Franke case at Columbia Law School

More details here.  As usual (recall Norman Finkelstein and Steven Salaita), vigorous support for the Palestinians and vigorous criticism of Israel waives ordinary First Amendment and academic freedom rights in America.

More on the crisis at Portland State University

Here.  A reader also flags PSU's President Ann Cudd's "explanation" of why big classes are better than small classes:

Because nobody likes to be in a class that has only about four or five other students, because if you don’t show up you really are noticed, for one thing. But the other thing is that it’s all on you and a couple of others to carry on the discussion and actually, you know, work together. So it’s a better classroom experience when there are more students than that.

Just to be clear, the President of a University, a philosopher no less, is actually arguing that bigger classes are better, in part, because it's easier for students to skip class.   Source.

The quiet bloodbath developing at Portland State University

Despite having a "feminist philosopher," Ann Cudd, at the helm, philosophers and other humanities scholars at Portland State University are not faring well.  An academic there writes:

Three long-term NTTF [non-tenure-track faculty] philosophers at Portland State University were notified on Friday that their contracts would not be renewed at the end of the current academic year. These are 20% of the 15 NTTF cuts in  the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, in addition to the previous dismissal of 70 adjuncts throughout the University, including several very-long term adjuncts in the Philosophy Department.

   These faculty teach many popular and current courses, such as Chinese, Indigenous, and other world philosophy, philosophy of sport and of gaming; philosophy of sex, eco-ethics, AI ethics, and other fields. The fired faculty include the Department's only phenomenologist, only pragmatist, and only Marxist. And yet Philosophy has been forced to cut staff each of the last several years.

   This leaves Philosophy, History, and other departments barely able to serve majors and in a poor position to attract students.

   Plus program eliminations are upcoming, including some of PSU's best-known programs. A concerted effort is under way to dismantle the award-winning general education program, in which humanities and social science departments heavily participate.

   The rationale for these cuts remains unclear to most faculty here, despite the "Strategic Plan" on which they are supposed to be based. The courses these philosophy faculty taught are central to current student interests. It is hard to see how the University can thrive if its curricula are so badly attenuated. There has been a lot of pressure to turn the University's programs toward "career readiness."

   Not a single administrator has lost a dollar in pay.