Bradford Vivian

@bradvivian.bsky.social

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Professor + Author | Words in @washingtonpost
@insidehighered
@PhillyInquirer @ConversationUS @ArcDigi | Views my own. Substack: https://bradfordvivian.substack.com/?r=2r65kj&u

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Bradford Vivian

Important essay by @bradvivian.bsky.social about the link between the attack on universities in the U.S. and international authoritarianism. A PDF version should be accessible through this link: acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?u...

Tracing the roots of anti-university rhetoric (opinion)www.insidehighered.com Bradford Vivian writes that growing anti-university sentiment can be traced to pro-authoritarian movements abroad.

👇👇👇

Please note the wildly incorrect polling in France. No matter what the cacophony of pundits keep saying, polls are not predictive, and are never the end of the story. Organizing, volunteering, engaging in conversation, and direct action are effective tools. Let's use them here too.

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Bradford Vivian

Going by the largest meta-analyses of survey research, college-aged young people routinely show greater openness to free speech and diverse views than other groups. Going by historical and structural trends, higher ed today is more intellectually diverse and tolerant than ever before.

The only debate that matters.

open.substack.com/pub/bradford...

Despite their claims of neutrality, mainstream U.S. political journalists demonstrated this week that they’re very capable of opposing a major party candidate. They just happened to exercise this capability against a pro-democracy candidate.

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Bradford Vivian

I gotta say that people are having a lot of trouble distinguishing cognitive decline (Trump) from age-related changes in expression (Biden). Biden is elderly and talks like it. Trump literally does not have preserved reality-testing

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Bradford Vivian

"Academics researching online misinformation in the US are learning a hard lesson: Academic freedom cannot be taken for granted." @rcalo.bsky.social & @katestarbird.bsky.social: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

American academic freedom is in perilwww.science.org Academics researching online misinformation in the US are learning a hard lesson: Academic freedom cannot be taken for granted. They face a concerted effort—including by members of Congress—to undermi...

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Bradford Vivian

There are many things that infuriate me about the pundit class right now, but probably one of the top on my list: Project 2025 has posted their plans for every single federal department on their website. They have a training academy for prospective appointees. Where are the hard hitting op-eds?

The people most disturbed by politicians relying on teleprompters seem to be cable news anchors who do their jobs every day by reading from teleprompters.

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Bradford Vivian

Academic freedom depends on solidarity across institutions. It's important for all who care about a desegregated, truly merit-based system of higher education to call this what it is: a tactic to impose discriminatory practices on universities via frivolous lawsuits. www.reuters.com/legal/legali...

Northwestern law school sued for discrimination against white men in faculty hiringwww.reuters.com A conservative group on Tuesday sued Northwestern University, claiming its law school discriminates against white men in faculty hiring and in the selection of articles that appear in its flagship law review.

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Bradford Vivian

Project 2025 is full of attacks on publicly funded, desegregated, pluralistic education. Manufactured populist outrage against education is a classic sign of rising authoritarianism. Re-upping my @insidehighered.bsky.social article on these connections. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

Tracing the roots of anti-university rhetoric (opinion)www.insidehighered.com Bradford Vivian writes that growing anti-university sentiment can be traced to pro-authoritarian movements abroad.

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Bradford Vivian

There was no GOP party platform in 2020, and Trump wants to shrink the proposed 2024 one. He opposes providing detail on how radical his second term will be because he knows its unpopular. Make no mistake: Project 2025 was written by Trump appointees & loyalists. Its their shared agenda.

even trump’s campaign staff (i assume he didn’t write this) knows that the reactionary, authoritarian agenda that’s project 2025 is going to be unpopular with the average voter.

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Bradford Vivian

Reply to

Seth Cotlar

Here's the announcement from Heritage that they've hired McEntee for their PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION PROJECT. They note that McEntee headed up the Presidential Personnel Office for Trump at the end of his last administration. This is not complicated people. www.heritage.org/press/former...

Former PPO Director John McEntee Joins Project 2025; Personnel Database Launches | The Heritage Foundationwww.heritage.org WASHINGTON—John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump administration, is joining the 2025 Presidential Transition Project (Project 2025) as a senior ad...

Tracing the roots of anti-university rhetoric (opinion)www.insidehighered.com Bradford Vivian writes that growing anti-university sentiment can be traced to pro-authoritarian movements abroad.

Never forget.

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Bradford Vivian

The theory of popular government and inalienable rights is the most famous part of the #DeclarationofIndependence. Today, we should also recall its indictments of the king: they charge him with abuses of power to corrupt legal and political institutions of self-governance. 1/2

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Bradford Vivian

Dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal. Birthright citizenship Equal protection of the laws Due process of law No race or sex description in voting No titles of nobility No insurrectionists in office No cruel and unusual punishment Happy Birthday America!

It’s always good to remember this fact, but especially these days: US political journalists rely on and enthusiastically encourage an entire pseudoscientific polling industry because dissecting polls is so easy and inexpensive compared to time-consuming investigative journalism.

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Bradford Vivian

There are no "liberal" or "conservative" ideas. That's the language of electoral advertising. There are just...ideas. Asking if there's "too much" or "not enough" of such content in classrooms turns educational spaces into extensions of political advertising + cable news TV. 1/3

The topic of DEI in public discourse has been subject to enormous amounts of misinformation. www.insidehighered.com/news/diversi...

Group says colleges spend big on DEI. Is it overstating?www.insidehighered.com American Transparency publishes spending investigations under the moniker OpenTheBooks but doesn’t say where it gets its own money. Its definitions of DEI positions are way too broad, says one targete...

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Bradford Vivian

this entire crusade against diversity in hiring and admissions is based on the supposition that all white men are necessarily more qualified than any nonwhite person or woman who might be considered for the job. like, this lawsuit more or less states that outright.

Lawsuit: Northwestern’s law school is biased against White men in hiringwww.washingtonpost.com The lawsuit, filed by a prominent attorney, alleges the university’s law school gives hiring preference to women and people of color.

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Bradford Vivian

The facts are *only* in dispute. 1. No official records exist about whether profs are liberal or conservative. That's a good thing--in a free society, we don't require such records. Any surveys are small, strictly voluntary, often poor in quality. 1/3 🧵 www.chronicle.com/article/why-...

Why Are There So Few Conservative Professors?www.chronicle.com The facts are beyond dispute. The causes and solutions are not.