🚨 NSF is already quietly eliminating the SBE Directorate, despite Congress’ mandate that NSF support the behavioral & social sciences.
Steps to counter this are in motion.
If you
- have an SBE proposal under review
- serve on an SBE grant panel
You can help! Fill out this form: shorturl.at/xuKw2
We do now know the NSF is proceeding with dissolving the Social and Behavioral Sciences Division. Congress might reverse it, but it is now already underway. YOU CAN NO LONGER SUBMIT FUNDING PROPOSALS TO SBE. Program officers are being moved to different parts of the agency. Call your Congress member
Concerned about the possible dismantling of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Directorate of NSF?? www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Find out what's happening and what we can do to protect behavioral science with @fabbs.org Friday April 10th at 1:30 ET. Register at us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
🚨 Congress held NIH and NSF budgets roughly flat. Scientists celebrated.
Here is what actually happened.
NIH awarded 4,641 fewer grants in FY2025 than the 4-year avg. New awards dropped 14%. Over $1.3B never reached investigators.
NSF awards fell 22%.
The money was there.
You can submit to the Journal of Black Language and Culture (JBLAC) @jblacjournal.bsky.social here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Saving SBE starts before the bill is written.
SBE needs a distinct FY27 appropriation. If your sch. is on the list, get a group of colleagues to meet w your House/Sen. offices. Esp. for Republican seats, direct constituent comms matter. Timeline/templates/updates:
www.paigeamormino.com/pages/9337
BREAKING: In response to huge cuts in Trump's budget request, NSF is shuttering its SBE directorate. Staff will be transferred to other parts of the agency and "grants that align with Administration priorities" will be maintained.
That & more w/ @maxkozlov.bsky.social & @edwrdchen.bsky.social
Wondering why NIH and NSF aren't making new grants? We explain what's happening at OMB. www.science.org/content/arti...
The genius businessman strikes again
If you are in Houston - or want to travel - join us at Rice Thursday March 12-14 for DeLange XIV: Brains in Society: Preparing for Neuroscience’s Impact on our everyday lives. DeLange.rice.edu
UF restricted professors from volunteering for post-tenure review because too many were getting the highest evaluation
A line curve showing number of awards for fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021-2025 across NSF. The fiscal year 2026 curve lies well below curves for other fiscal years.
NSF Update
Funding curve overall. A little bit of progress in the past week, but only a little bit.
Now by Directorate...
1/11
A word cloud from the titles of ~1100 NSF grants that were terminated. The most frequent words are STEM, ADVANCE, Student, career, and engines.
This a word cloud from the titles of ~1100 terminated NSF grants.
It is hard not to see these grant terminations as an attack on the training of the future United States scientific workforce.
Final Schedule F rule published: in defiance of the vast majority of public comments, it commits to further politicizing government, removing anyone the Trump administration dislikes.
public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-02375.pdf
The best tool we have to push CEOs to take on the president and prevent further erosion of the American brand is in our pockets — an economic strike that builds on calls for Apple boycotts that are already starting to emerge.
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college:
1. Political philosophy
2. Modern Japanese Literature
3. Cooperation
4. Intro to African and African-American Studies
5. Latin American and US Relations
❤️
This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.
This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.
www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
Trump wants violence on our streets this year. Bcuz he thinks it’ll help him in the midterms. So he’s pulled all guardrails off his masked thugs and given them the green light to be as abusive & cruel as possible. In the hopes that they’ll incite the American people to violence. That’s Trump’s plan.
Just days into 2026, the killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has sparked protests around the US.
If you’re planning to protest, here’s how to safeguard your digital security.
Congratulations!! Very well-deserved!
blue and green cover of the book "Sociophonetics: Implications for Phonological and Phonetic Theory", edited by Jennifer Nycz and Lauren Hall-Lew, published with Oxford as part of the Oxford Surveys in Phonology and Phonetics
📚 Sociophonetics: Implications for Phonological and Phonetic Theory (co-edited by me and @lhlew.bsky.social) is now available online at Oxford Academic! (print copies coming end of January) academic.oup.com/book/61815
Marco Rubio is reportedly saying Maduro will stand trial in US courts.
Which means it’s now the US administration’s position that US courts can hold foreign presidents, but not the US president, accountable for crimes.
Say what? 🤣🤣🤣
Just found out that Glossa was on bluesky from this tweet, seconding the suggestion to use the #linguistics hashtag to help people find out about new papers!
(And give em a follow if you want open access linguistics papers in your feed!)
One of my favorites between Japanese and Spanish is /baka/, cow in Spanish (vaca) or idiot in Japanese バカ
The National Science Foundation starts 2026 with a new management structure that affects every scientist with--or applying for--NSF funding. Here's what you need to know. www.science.org/content/arti...
!! Here’s a link to full video of the 60 Minutes segment that Bari Weiss killed last minute, via @jasonparis.bsky.social:
is.gd/paU8Ko
(It was uploaded to the Global TV app in Canada, seemingly by accident, and has now been taken down)
“Once-unthinkable” here should be “in wild and blatant violation of the law and the US Constitution.”
At NIH alone:
The RIFs were illegal (as a judge, Illston, ruled). The grant terminations were illegal (Young ruling). The probationary firings were illegal (Alsop ruling).
We must say this. 1/
My lab at BU is recruiting PhD students and possibly a postdoc this year!
We study humans & machines, centered around topics like meaning, generalization, evaluation methods and design, and the nature of computation and representation that underlie language and cognition.
🫴🫴
