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#highered

32 posts29 participants0 posts today
Public
Miguel Afonso Caetano

"She is 30 years old, shy and prone to nervous laughter. She cannot work, because her laptop was confiscated. She plays chess with other women when the guards allow it. Otherwise, she passes the time reading books about evolution and cell development.

For nearly eight weeks, Kseniia Petrova has been captive to the hard-line immigration policies of the Trump administration. A graduate of a renowned Russian physics and technology institute, Ms. Petrova was recruited to work at a laboratory at Harvard Medical School. She was part of a team investigating how cells can rejuvenate themselves, with the goal of fending off the damage of aging.

On Feb. 16, customs officials detained her at Logan International Airport in Boston for failing to declare samples of frog embryos she had carried from France at the request of her boss at Harvard.

Such an infraction is normally considered minor, punishable with a fine of up to $500. Instead, the customs official canceled Ms. Petrova’s visa on the spot and began deportation proceedings. Then Ms. Petrova told her that she had fled Russia for political reasons and faced arrest if she returned there.

This is how she wound up at the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, La., waiting for the U.S. government to decide what to do with her.

Ms. Petrova’s case is being watched by thousands of young, highly educated Russians who, like her, fled the country after Russia invaded Ukraine."

nytimes.com/2025/04/11/science

Kseniia Petrova, a Harvard scientist, in 2021. She has been in a Louisiana prison since Feb. 16.
The New York Times · She Worked in a Harvard Lab to Reverse Aging, Until ICE Jailed HerBy Ellen Barry
#USA#Trump#Harvard
Public *
Paria sans portefeuille

State of Emergency in US #HigherEd

Alan Wald of UMichigan's Faculty and Staff for Justice in #Palestine discusses the climate of #politicalRepression directed at #PalestineSolidarity work and the parallels with earlier periods including the McCarthy and Red Scare eras

marxedproject.org/event/state-

#Gaza #GazaSolidarity #StudentProtests #FacultyProtests #USpol #USpolitics #stateRepression #FreeSpeechOnCampus #deportations #civilLiberties #civilRights #censorship #AcademicFreedom @palestine

Marxist Education ProjectState of Emergency in US Higher Education - Marxist Education ProjectAlan Wald presents an overview of the state of emergency in higher education in the United States that recalls earlier eras of extreme political repression, such as McCarthyism in the 1950s. Students, faculty, and staff at US colleges and universities who stand up for Palestinian human rights and stopping the genocide in Gaza are being threatened with deportation and punished by the administrations.
Continued thread
Public
AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

So, if you were wondering whether there's anything hypothetical about the "chilling effect" all this fascist repression is designed to produce in folks who oppose the Trump regime, a recent Guardian article demonstrates that it's real and ongoing - not just for anti-genocide protestors and foreign students, but for US-born critics of the regime writing in college papers too:

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/a

US student journalists go dark fearing Trump crusade against pro-Palestinian speech

"Fearing legal repercussions, online harassment and professional consequences, student journalists are retracting their names from published articles amid intensifying repression by the Trump administration targeting students perceived to be associated with the pro-Palestinian movement.

Editors at university newspapers say that anxiety among writers has risen since the arrest of the Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, who is currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention fighting efforts to deport her. While the government has not pointed to evidence supporting its decision to revoke her visa, she wrote an op-ed last year in a student newspaper critical of Israel, spurring fears that simply expressing views in writing is now viewed as sufficient grounds for deportation.

Ozturk is one of nearly a dozen students or scholars who have been seized by immigration officials since 8 March, when Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student and green card holder, was arrested and placed in deportation proceedings over his role in pro-Palestinian protests. Student editors report particularly acute anxieties among international students who have contributed to their newspapers, but say that requests to take down stories over fears of retaliation are coming from US citizens, too."

The reality that no authoritarian regime wants dissidents to realize, is that they literally do not have the resources to police and punish *everyone* who opposes the state. What they rely on is cracking down on high profile targets that generate a lot of publicity, folks like Mahmoud Khalil, and Rumeysa Ozturk, to force everyone else to self censor, lest they be next. I'm not going to criticize the student writers for asking college newspapers at institutions that have shown no ability or willingness to protect them, to erase their critiques of the regime to protect their personal safety; very few people in our society are actually prepared to suffer the horrible consequences of a fascist police state targeting them personally, and a lot of people reading this would make the same decision in their shoes.

What I will say however is that this response is exactly what the fascist Trump regime wants, and that's why it behooves the rest of society to give a fuck about the free speech rights of student protestors and journalists; and act in numbers large enough to protect us all while working to stop this fascist repression by any means necessary.

The Guardian · US student journalists go dark fearing Trump crusade against pro-Palestinian speechBy Guardian staff reporter
#Fascism#Trump#StudentProtests
Public
Alexander Karn

More student visas revoked for thought crime.

Due process? As if.

“Inside Higher Ed says that the majority of college officials say they’re unsure why the foreign-born students had their visas revoked or have yet to receive formal notification of the changes. Most have still not received any communications from immigration authorities.”

#highered #academia #democracy

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/a

The Guardian · US government has revoked more than 600 student visas, data showsBy Marina Dunbar
Public
Miguel Afonso Caetano

Wow! I didn't known that McChesney was a rock critic once upon a time. RIP :-(

"Robert W. McChesney, the lion of anti-corporate media scholarship, is dead at the age of 72. He was, for decades, probably the most prominent academic critic of American media from the left, focused on all the ways our idealized vision of a “free press” was actually hampered by the power of big business, the wealthy, and government.

McChesney came from my favorite subgenre of media scholars: those who had a career in working journalism before entering the hallways of academe. He was a sports stringer for UPI and — even more hardcore — an ace ad salesman. In 1979, he was founding publisher of The Rocket, the Seattle alt newspaper that would become the bible of the Pacific Northwest music scene, including being the first to write about Nirvana.1

Ironically, his primary contribution to The Rocket’s editorial ethos seems to have been to convince its staffers to cover mainstream acts (AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Rush) alongside all the local indie bands they preferred — all “so that advertisers would believe that 100,000 people actually read our magazine…[we] participated in launching The Rocket not because we cared that much about music, but because we cared that much about publishing.” Not the early career you might expect from the man who’d become the country’s chief critic of corporate media ownership."

niemanlab.org/2025/03/robert-w

Nieman LabRobert W. McChesney, America’s leading left-wing critic of corporate media, has diedAfter studying the early days of radio, McChesney developed a holistic critique of media structures that exposed how open they were to manipulation by those in power.
#PoliticalEconomy#Media#News
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Real Syntactic

this essay lays out some of what Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s platform to “put an end to the imposition of woke ideology in the federal civil service and in the allocation of federal funds for university research” would do to the research enterprise in Canada. Of course it’s not just “science” that would be affected. Departments of history, philosophy, literatures, music would likely disappear. Uni curricula would be externally controlled. thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025/04/10/ #canpoli #highered

Public
Brian Gettler

"Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, has pledged to 'end the imposition of woke ideology in the allocation of federal funds for university research' should his party win the Canadian federal election on 28 April."

Scholars allocate most research funding in Canada, even if the federal government sets priorities and establishes envelopes. Regardless, Poilievre's position is anything but reasssuring.

science.org/content/article/ca

#cdnpoli#HigherEd#AcademicChatter
Public
Dewey Ritten (taylor's version) :donor:

Looking for advice, resources, and textbook recommendations on
technical & professional writing.

I'm tutoring someone with extensive software development expertise who's now looking to improve her technical writing skills. She's also dyslexic, and any resources specific to strategies and pedagogies for adult learners with dyslexia would be appreciated.

It's been a long while since I've taught composition, and I was hoping the #rhetcomp community would have some suggestions. I appreciate your help!

Please feel free to tag anyone who you'd think I could benefit from following, too.

#rhetoricandcomposition
#writingcommunity #writing #writingpedagogy #composition #teaching #writinginstructor #highered #technicalwriting

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