Starting in 2026, the National Endowment for the Humanities will only fund research on "Western civilization"
Journalist: What do you think of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
My first op-ed got picked up by essence
www.essence.com/news/ai-raci...
With a stinging rebuke of the credibility and motives of the U.S. Department of Justice, a federal judge issued a final order rejecting the agency’s demand for medical records of minors who received gender-affirming care at a Pittsburgh hospital.
From @petehallpa.bsky.social
What's missing? The public. Decisions about whether AI can surveil American citizens or autonomously deploy lethal force are being settled in a contract dispute. No Congress. No democratic deliberation. No accountability. We've outsourced questions about the use of force to a corporate negotiation.
Thank you! I didn't realize Bluesky (& maybe Twitter before) was partly how I recognized your name either!
She’s been released 🙏🏽
There is no reform, there's no body cams, there's no amount of anything that is going to fix this. Abolition is the BARE MINIMUM.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Darn, I liked the resisting authoritarianism take.
bsky.app/profile/donm...
The secret to higher birth rates? Vigorously opposing authoritarianism
Feeling beyond fortunate to have spent the last few days at the 8th Critical Mixed Race Studies Association Conference in L.A.
This was my 3rd CMRS (though my 1st was virtual). It's only gotten better each year!
An appreciation 🧵 for #CMRS #CMRS2026
criticalmixedracestudies.com
Muttering "ugh yeah" followed by a deep sigh as I repost
This is a terrific article full of useful information and actionable ideas for literally anyone, anywhere who cares about their community.
He did! And the women's team declined.
I have spent the past several months studying the cutting-edge research on modern democracies that have defeated authoritarian leaders.
I've learned that the conventional wisdom on the topic is wrong — in ways that have clear implications for the US going forward
THREAD www.vox.com/politics/479...
When Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in December 2024, thousands of ordinary Koreans familiar with the country's history immediately perceived an acute threat of democratic collapse. Their spontaneous protests played a critical role in ending the emergency.
I found that this is wrong. Democracy actually is a powerful motivating force for a critical slice of the population *if they perceive a real threat*.
I call this the "legibility" theory of democratic backsliding: the more legible the threat, the more likely it is to prompt effective pushback.
Rest in Power!
Sadly, if not for one of the killers (they were convicted, thus the label) releasing a video thinking it exonerated them, we may not have gotten the truth.
Night aerial view of LA from an airplane window. Yellow tinted lights cover the landscape beneath an airpline wing with a single light at the tip.
Thank you so much to the conference organizers, executive board, staff, and volunteers. Each new crew creates something amazing. I'm already looking forward to 2028.
A reframe that came out of my preparation for this conference: siblings as co-conspirators in addressing parents' racism.
I'm excited to get back to writing. It's been a minute since I've felt this way.
Powerpoint title slide reading: Multiracial Children's Resistance Strategies in the Face of Familial Racism Monica Heilman Lafayette College Critical Mixed Race Studies Association Conference February 21, 2026
I suppose I should also say something about my research. I presented on how multiracial children respond to racism in their own families. Grateful for the conference theme (Critical Healing) that gave me space to think about this topic differently.
#CMRS #CMRS2026
Three paintings of Indigenous women overlaid bright orange in the shape of poppy flowers.
An art installation with paper poppies hanging from the ceiling over an orange cushion. The lighting is dim and leaves poppy shadows on the walls.
And as a scholar-artist / arts-based researcher / scholar trying to bring arts into research, or something like that, you know I'm thrilled to be in a space with not only academics, but artists and community members.
A non-exhaustive shout-out list of people I could find on here:
@kaimitsuru.bsky.social @auroratsai.bsky.social @kevinwongla.bsky.social @marcjguerrero.bsky.social
@keishacornelius.bsky.social
@corinnenicol.bsky.social
It was wonderful to meet &/or reconnect!
CMRS is also interdisciplinary and international. I'm always energized to connect with fellow sociologists. But it's uniquely generative to engage with psychologists, linguists, education scholars, & many others. From the silos of a large university to this. Fresh air.
A small but consistent #CMRS dilemma: at other conferences, we attend all the multiracial/mixed sessions. (There's 1 or maybe 2.) What do you mean we have SEVERAL choices during each time slot?
(I say "we" after having this conversation multiple times.)
Many of us cite the same statistics on growing multiracial populations to justify our studies.
A small but consistent #CMRS delight: watching presenters realize in real time that here, we already know. Boy do we all know.
Three speakers on stage for a keynote dialogue.
There's something so incredible about being in a space where your work is inherently recognized as valuable. Perhaps even more so in today's climate.
This year's theme was "Critical Healing: Honoring Resilience and Disrupting Power through Diverse Critical Mixed Race Perspectives."
Feeling beyond fortunate to have spent the last few days at the 8th Critical Mixed Race Studies Association Conference in L.A.
This was my 3rd CMRS (though my 1st was virtual). It's only gotten better each year!
An appreciation 🧵 for #CMRS #CMRS2026
criticalmixedracestudies.com
Uphill battle to post something nice on this app before getting distracted by the latest dystopian developments
What this technology is going to do is not end higher education, but it is going to undo so much of the baseline work on accessibility by pushing overworked professors to take things back to offline modalities, in person timed exams, keeping tech out of the classroom, etc.
Married women who took their partners’ names — around 69 million of them — will be especially impacted by a citizenship requirement. Their current names don’t match the names on their birth certificate–and only about half of women have a valid passport. In practice, it will be far more complicated for these women to ‘prove’ their citizenship. The surest option–a passport or a paper trail reconciling their married name with the name on their birth certificate–requires significant investments of time and money.
The SAVE Act requires citizenship ID to vote. It may be that some Republicans truly believe that lots of non-citizens are voting, but that is just not the reality.
So who will the law impact? People without ID docs and people whose ID docs are not current - which is mostly women.
