Sept 6-12, 2025 - the purpose of a parachute

Hello friends,

There are some weeks where it just feels like we’re approaching terminal velocity. This was one of them.

This is acute pain layered on top of overwhelming strain. Throughout my networks, I feel it in the no-shows, the missed deadlines, the careless errors. I see it exacerbating the miscommunications, frustrations, and group chat meltdowns. It can make the work feel futile.

But as a friend reminded me today, the purpose of a parachute isn’t to stop the fall, it’s to make the landing survivable.

This was Week 34. Let’s see if we can slow down enough to get through.

What’s happening now

• Last week, Forbes published its 2026 America’s Top Colleges report with University of California campuses sweeping the top rankings of public schools. This week, UC Berkeley furnished the administration with a list of 160 faculty, staff, and students named as “potential connections to reports of alleged antisemitism.” And Judith Butler is among them. Apparently, the university has suspended normal procedures for handling the complaints and expects ”additional production obligations” to follow. In Butler’s words, “…did you consider not complying with this request?”
• The Department of Education has just announced that it is ending discretionary funding to minority-serving institutions. The move freezes $350 million dollars previously budgeted this year and more than 70% of that total was dedicated to Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). I think it’s worth noting that California has many more HSIs than any other state in the country. 6 of the 10 University of California campuses and 21 of the 23 California State University’s campuses are HSIs. Governor Newsom used his State of the State address this week to highlight ongoing defiance in the face of administration attacks, including the attempt to financially strangle UCLA.  
• California is hardly the only place where higher ed is struggling. This week, the president of Texas A&M responded to political pressure around gender ideology by firing a senior lecturer - and also directing the provost to remove her department chair and her dean. The university chancellor has additionally announced a system-wide audit of course content. You’ll notice how careful I am with my verbs and attribution here. Most headlines just say “professor fired!” and while that lacks precision, it gets at the heart of the danger this poses to academic freedom. But I think the specific details really matter. I can’t verify whether the chair and dean have officially been fired or demoted, I don’t know whether they put up a fight, and I know that the president’s job is at risk too. So, until we have more details, much of what we have is speculation, but when I think about all the links in that chain (trustees → chancellors → presidents → provosts → deans → chairs → professors → classes), I think about how many opportunities for courage and resistance I just listed. May we take up our own opportunities whenever we see them.
  

What’s next & what to do

On Monday, I got to watch Ed give the closing keynote at the ASTC annual conference. It was a talk about birding, a hobby he’s had for just two years and has been sharing publicly more recently. I am profoundly biased, but the talk was just… stunning. It was funny, reflective, and quite literally eye-opening - his portrait of a harrier drew audience gasps. It opened at least one heart too: I can admit that I’m one step further down the birding path now.

But there was a particularly interesting moment at the end that wasn’t really about birds at all. The question was,  “If you could take anyone birding with you, who would it be?”

I think people who care about public engagement with science might be expecting that answer to be some specific person - probably a powerful antagonist. (If only we could get them to care about birds, right? Wouldn’t that be a game-changer?) But that’s not how Ed answered the question at all. He talked about all the regular people who quietly love nature even though it’s not something they center in their identity. His answer felt akin to why I’m writing this newsletter.

This is for you, whether you’re “a science person” first and foremost, or you just care about it a lot. It’s to help you talk with all the people who you’re connected to, who might care about science but definitely care about you.

I imagine us all, sparkling nodes in a huge and intricate network of connections. We’re each pushing ideas and information outwards, and pulling on the nodes closest to us. Please read this. Help me think about this. Join me in this action. Sometimes we persuade each other with arguments and stories. Sometimes we’re building up social capital - doing favors, making connections, proving that our recommendations are good - and sometimes we are spending it. I’m going to do that now.

I have a request for you. I want you to read and really think about this argument for why we should demand a “fighting continuing resolution” in this round of budget negotiations. I’d like it if you share it too, but I really want you to absorb it. The text is specifically about federal funding, but the context is much bigger - it’s about how to weigh the increasingly painful decisions we face.

Reading this article will take some effort and potential discomfort. It also needs to happen very soon. The government shutdown deadline is September 30 and next week may well be pivotal. You may not end up agreeing with the strategy laid out in this piece, and even if all of us do, we may not be able to block this next flex of authoritarian power. What matters to me is that we hold tight to each other as we try to figure it out.

The purpose of a parachute is not to stop the fall.

Liz