“Investigative reporters across the country are increasingly working under the shadow of high-dollar legal threats — a climate that can chill the kind of patient, public-interest journalism democracies depend on.” @columbiajournalism.bsky.social @jelaniya.bsky.social #journalism
“The retreat from public purpose will not enhance trust…A lack of public engagement and an air of cloistered privilege are a big part of why so many people now view universities with suspicion. Retreating further behind the gates will make a bad situation much worse.” — @msroth.bsky.social #highered
I was happy to speak with producer Cynthia J. Tong for our new issue of Wesleyan University Magazine: “Tong is not only helping bring new works and voices to Broadway, but she is also helping reshape who gets to be part of the process—onstage and in the rooms where decisions are made.” #TheaterSKY
Too soon to start planning summer travel to Donnyland?
I was happy to speak with producer Cynthia J. Tong for our new issue of Wesleyan University Magazine: “Tong is not only helping bring new works and voices to Broadway, but she is also helping reshape who gets to be part of the process—onstage and in the rooms where decisions are made.” #TheaterSKY
flipping through a proof of yet another book from a somewhat well known liberal voice diagnosing “where the left went wrong” and i’m struck, again, by the fact that a large part (if not most) of the liberal commentariat simply does not believe that the political right has agency.
…I feel targeted.
As the U.S. approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we must ask, “What kind of country is being prepared for the next 250 years? What will future generations receive from this era of chest-thumping and cultural vandalism?” #arts
Amazing musical sequence from BALL OF FIRE. The matchsticks!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRjQ...
“Like many traditions under the second Trump administration, this one has been turned on its head. The art world veterans are out. Taking their place: a months-old nonprofit run by a woman whose most recent job was owning a luxury pet food store in Tampa, Fla.” @nytimes.com
Encouraging development in one of the Trump administration’s attacks on free speech. Proud that my Cato colleagues filed an amicus brief.
As the U.S. approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we must ask, “What kind of country is being prepared for the next 250 years? What will future generations receive from this era of chest-thumping and cultural vandalism?” #arts
My latest: “A country that weakens its own cultural institutions looks less like a superpower than a bully with thinning skin…Public investment in art, history, libraries, journalism, and education is treated as weakness, frivolity, or ideological contamination.”
I swear every time I read or hear a NPR piece about gender-affirming care for kids, I get in an emotional defensive crouch. And then I'm so grateful that they are really good. Foregrounding kids and families and their actual lives, focusing on the research and not the "controversies." Thanks, NPR!
The kind of scene that at once stirs feelings of immense pride in human achievement and profound humility at human smallness.
The kind of image that captures the difference between the beautiful and the sublime.
The kind of scene that just forces you to reflect: "Dude. No way."
We have to fight more than ever for a world in which education remains a project of developing us as humans. www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...
My latest: “A country that weakens its own cultural institutions looks less like a superpower than a bully with thinning skin…Public investment in art, history, libraries, journalism, and education is treated as weakness, frivolity, or ideological contamination.”
Overheard in the theatre: An elderly lady is complaining to her husband because they are in the mezzanine. “How much were seats in the orchestra? $100 more? What are you saving money for?” 👀 #TheaterSKY
That Yale report on what's wrong with U.S. college saw some trees (high cost, unfair admission, etc.) but missed the forest: the 60-year right-wing crusade to undermine higher ed, from slashing budgets to stifling speech
How to really fix college. My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/yale...
“From attacks on public broadcasting to the broader dismantling of education and cultural institutions, the message has been relentless: imagination is expendable, learning is expendable, public-minded culture is expendable. Those things helped make the United States influential in the first place.”
“Shortly after Trump’s shutdown announcement, the center’s president, Richard Grenell, told me to “get rid of everything” in the permanent collection because we needed all new art for the reopening.” @theatlantic.com #KennedyCenter #arts
Deliberate destruction of culture was the subject of an episode of my podcast, Autocracy in America
www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/202...
“The closing of a tiny, unique college is sad enough on its own; it would be sadder yet if it led students away from other liberal arts colleges that provide a genuinely different approach.” @jamessmurphy.bsky.social #highered
I’ve been working overtime to have my daughter appreciate all of Hayley Mills’ Disney classics. Simply the best.
Screenshotted excerpt from linked article reading as follows: "In public, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has cultivated a reputation for care and caution. The papers reveal a different side of him. At a critical moment for the country and the court, the papers show, he acted as a bulldozer in pushing to stop Mr. Obama’s plan to address the global climate crisis. When colleagues warned the chief justice that he was proposing an unprecedented move, he was dismissive. “I recognize that the posture of this stay request is not typical,” he wrote. But he argued that the Obama plan, which aimed to regulate coal-fired plants, was “the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the power sector,” and too big, costly and consequential for the court not to act immediately."
OOP
New York Times got receipts on John Roberts being like, 'I know this isn't how anything works, but a Democratic president is about to implement a policy!!'
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...
A photo of Bill Nye speaking outside of the Capitol
Bill Nye and hundreds of Planetary Society members are heading to DC on Monday to protest the White House's proposal to slash NASA's science budget in half.
These cuts were announced as the Artemis astronauts were on their way to the Moon:
The Broadway theaters that have staff out front shouting orders at the arriving audience members, though most of them have done nothing wrong — do they not know that people really, really don’t like being yelled at and/or treated like cattle? There is a better way.
“The C.G.I. of it all is a profound bummer. Even a halfway decent—if not educational—show…is foiled in its occasional charm by the perfect low-poly uniformity of the trees…And the eyes. What lasting impressions are our children taking from all these empty eyes staring at them?” @newyorker.com
