Alex Bronzini-Vender reviews Elise Stefanik's new book, 𝘗𝘰𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘐𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘴: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘈𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘤𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘤 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘙𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘵 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢’𝘴 𝘌𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘜𝘯𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/elise-stefanik-goes-woke
(#paywalled)

"Stefanik…has assembled here the most serious version of the Trumpist case against 'woke' academe. The problem is that the most serious version of the Trumpist critique turns out not to be serious at all…In Stefanik’s telling, the woke academy has poisoned itself with the conflation of discomfort with harm, arbitrary line-drawing between legitimate ideas and hateful ones, and the fetishizing of subjective experience. And Stefanik’s antidote, it turns out, is more conflation of discomfort with harm, arbitrary line-drawing between legitimate ideas and hateful ones, and the fetishizing of subjective experience."

#Academia #AcademicMastodon #Censorship #DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #Universities #USPol #USPolitics

An unnamed school in the UK used #AI to decide which books to ban from the library.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/uk-school-library-1984-ai-b1276535.html

#BookBans #Censorship #DefendResearch #Libraries

EDIT. I fixed a broken link. Thanks to @staringatclouds .

"Trump remembers to appoint science panel, fills it mostly with tech bros."
https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/25/trump_science_tech_panel/

Among the new members of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (#PCAST) are #MarcAndreessen, #SergeyBrin, #MichaelDell, #LarryEllison, and #MarkZuckerberg.

If you're curious, Wikipedia lists the PCAST members under Biden and Obama.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Council_of_Advisors_on_Science_and_Technology

#DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Event: Why we all need to #DefendResearch
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
From 15:00 GMT to 16:00 GMT

Panelists will share their perspectives on "why, when, and how organizations can fight back against censorship of research, and discuss the challenges — and opportunities — this represents for our community".
https://www.uksg.org/events/free-uksg-webinar-why-we-all-need-to-defendresearch/

Love this: "The Forbidden Words Quilt, led by Lorraine Woodruff-Long and Patricia Hickey, is a community quilt project launched in August 2025 and completed in 2026 with contributions from 195 quilters from all 50 U.S. states and D.C. and 5 countries. The quilt features 384 words and phrases identified by #PENAmerica.org [@penamerica] that are among the growing list of words being scrubbed from government websites and documents and flagged for review by federal agencies."
https://mailchi.mp/quiltinginthefog/july2024-6423127#mctoc1

h/t @lschiff

#BannedWords #Censorship #DefendResearch #Quilts #Quilting #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. It turns out that the National Academies of Science (#NAS) did 𝗻𝗼𝘁 acquiesce in this #censorship of #climate science. In a short statement (March 11), it said that “The manual, including the chapter on climate science, will continue to be available on the Academy’s website.”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/national-academies-of-sciences-resisting-pressure-to-pull-climate-info/

PS: Bravo to the NAS. Although it's not part of the govt, about 85% of its funding comes from govt agencies, making it highly vulnerable to retaliatory defunding. It's the first agency I've seen with that level of vulnerability flatly reject a Trumpist demand to censor research.

EDIT. I meant to make this a threaded reply to my earlier post on the same subject, before we knew the NAS decision. But I inadvertently made it a separate post. Here's the earlier post (Feb 11, 2026).
https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/116052723394052889

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

From #ElizabethGinexi:
https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/i-wrote-research-funding-announcements

"In 2024, #NIH published 756 funding announcements.

In 2025, it published 120.

In 2026, as of March 15, it has published 14…

This is not a temporary slowdown. It is a structural collapse."

#DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics