Sara Emily Burke

You are being misled about renewable energy technology. YouTube video by Technology Connections

Let's do this.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9...

At this scale, there can be no perfect guardrails, but a commitment to being careful, working together, and citing sources can go a long way, and the world would be a better place if more people would do that in their everyday lives.

Over the past two decades, I've seen Wikipedia grow into its promise. It is a massive, collaborative encyclopedia - built from a chaotic process but impressively reliable, almost shockingly reliable.

Like Green, I, too, "hate that the quiet invisible usefulness of Wikipedia is getting dragged into this fight," this ongoing assault on freedom that some people refer to as a "culture war."

"It's one of the only places on the internet where you can see how the sausage is made. You can read the real argument. You can check the sources. You can decide for yourself how you feel. And it is not designed to get clicks."

But, in fact, Wikipedia is "transparent, it is citation-based, it is globally accessible, it is self-correcting, and ... it is boring. And in the media landscape designed to amplify ... conflict, the fact that Wikipedia is kind of boring is one of the most beautiful things about it."

There is a major political movement that seems to depend on that "blood sport" to survive -- this is, Green says, "a political movement that needs Wikipedia to be corrupt, because if Wikipedia is neutral and boring and well-sourced, then that is a threat to their ... ability to define reality."

Wikipedia is "not a place to get outraged, not a place to get radicalized, not a place to make money, but just a place to learn things." This is essential when many other places on the internet are descending into "polarization, misinformation, algorithmic blood sport."

Wikipedia and the Destruction of Trust YouTube video by Hank Green

I love Wikipedia, and I'm proud to be a monthly donor and to have been an (occasional, sporadic) editor for nearly 20 years.

This is a good video.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zi0...

Here are some choice lines:

Letter to the Editor: AAUP condemns assault on free speech, suggests caution After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, faculty and students nationwide have been punished for exercising free speech on social media. The Executive Committee of the SU Chapter of the AAUP condemns these ...

Statement from the Syracuse chapter of the AAUP on this incident, expressing similar concerns about academic freedom: dailyorange.com/2025/09/lett...

Don't sell your reputation for short-term financial gain.

If you sign an oath of allegiance to a preconceived agenda, you are moving away from being a university and toward being something like the "Creation Museum" that says dinosaur bones are less than 6000 years old. Why would any self-respecting scholar want to associate with you?

@vanderbilt.edu, @upenn.edu, @dartmouthartsci.bsky.social, @usc.edu, @mit.edu, University of Texas, @uarizona.bsky.social, Brown, UVA -- do you want to have a shred of credibility left after this is over?

Moreover, this compact seems like an attempt to set a precedent that the president can, by bribe or by force, coerce other institutions into ideological purity.

Trump asks 9 colleges to commit to his political agenda for better access to federal money A document sent to the universities encourages them to adopt the White House’s vision for America’s campuses, with commitments to accept the government’s priorities on admissions, women’s sports, free...

Any university that takes a bribe in exchange for swearing loyalty to any aspect of Trump's ideology is abandoning its legitimacy as an institution of higher education.
www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...

How can faculty at Texas Tech establish the credibility of new public research reports when their colleagues know that they might be compelled to lie? The best way to demonstrate credibility when someone has publicly attempted to coerce you into falsehood is to openly defy them.

It also raises questions about whether faculty are also being pressured to commit fraud when reporting research results featuring human participants. (It would be fraudulent to intentionally mislead readers about the gender composition of the sample.)

Texas Tech Moves to Limit Academic Discussion to 2 Genders

The chancellor of Texas Tech has apparently ordered faculty to ignore the scientific research literature when teaching about the psychology of gender (at least in the classroom). This undermines the credibility of a psychology degree from Texas Tech.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/u...

"He died in a horrifying fashion under circumstances that our society should take every step possible to prevent. But he also made a career of using words to hurt people, and the people he hurt should freely share their feelings about him, even if those feelings are hard for some to hear."

"Kirk made a living advocating for the subjugation of marginalized people, especially transgender people and Black people. His unrestrained cruelty had wide influence, reaching even the president and other powerful politicians."

So far, Syracuse University has left it ambiguous whether faculty who wrote irreverent social media posts about Kirk have been subject to administrative actions -- but there should be no ambiguity on this matter.

When it comes to a bigot as cruel, committed, and influential as Charlie Kirk, it is unreasonable to expect the people he openly hated to walk on eggshells.

Syracuse University must protect faculty who criticize Charlie Kirk (Your Letters) To maintain the ethos of thorough inquiry at universities, "we must protect professors from institutional interference in the things they say and write," says the letter writer.

Academic freedom should protect honest criticism of Charlie Kirk, even if the criticism is delivered with an irreverent tone.

My new opinion piece on Syracuse.com:
www.syracuse.com/opinion/2025...

But I hope it can help build a more thorough picture of some of the relevant psychological processes to mitigate harm in the long run.

Extremist authoritarian politicians in the US are currently treating transgender and nonbinary people as political scapegoats, fanning the flames of bigotry and ruthlessly entrenching discriminatory policies and practices. My theoretical review paper cannot solve this urgent ongoing crisis.

Answering most of these sorts of questions will require carefully distinguishing between forms of miscategorization, and carefully distinguishing miscategorization from prejudice, even when they are highly correlated.

Unanswered questions abound in this literature. For example, what explanatory role is played by group identification processes, threat-related processes, religious beliefs, trust and distrust, essentialism, or preferences for simple cognitive structures?

Many people hold false beliefs about transgender men's and women's membership in the categories "male" and "female." Separately, many view nonbinary gender identities themselves as illegitimate. These two forms of biased miscategorization are quite different conceptually.

Also, the miscategorization transgender women and men face is quite different from the kind nonbinary people face. This observation helps make sense of some past research and encourages future researchers to distinguish among kinds of bias and adopt more precise measures.

We review research about biases against transgender women and men and nonbinary people. Miscategorization by gender is central to these forms of bias: they cannot be summed up by talking about prejudice and stereotyping alone.