I wrote about chasing solar eclipses, the fallibility of memory, and the value of looking at things only our eyes can see for @NoemaMag
https://t.co/BrJg2E2rIx
Clemson is $1.5B in debt. Syracuse is closing or pausing 93 programs, UNC-Chapel Hill plans to cut spending by $89M over 3 years. Duke recently let 600 employees go in a $350M budget cut. Indiana public colleges announced a plan to eliminate or merge 580 programs statewide.
The public research university is in crisis.
Between NIH/NSF funding cuts, AI, questions on free speech and democracy, and enrollment, the university beset on all sides.
Doesn't help that the university isn't sure what its core mission should be, either.
Great piece from Rob here. A few additions of my own:
- Cannot emphasize enough how outdated the distinction between comms and digital teams is. The only things that matter are: 1) Did you get people’s attention? and 2) Did you do something useful with that attention?
By hiring separate senior staff, campaigns are still building an unnecessary and duplicative layer of approvals into a process that needs to be even faster and more risk-tolerant.
*I caveat this by saying small-dollar online fundraising is its own skill set and the people who are good at that benefit from being in an independent digital carve out.
- There are issues both with the way digital has tended to run campaigns and with how the current structure of presidential campaigns limits digital. Can’t say how many times people have asked why Harris (or Biden) so rarely make content featuring actual voters besides the glancing interactions they have on rope lines, etc.
Why can’t more Democrats make videos like the one Mamdani made after the ‘24 election, standing on the street, asking people why they voted the way they did, and genuinely listening?
Well, try making that happen with the giant apparatus of security, advance, legal staff surrounding the candidates as they’re traveling. It’s much easier to do successfully if you are lesser known at first. Which to me is an argument for Democrats needing to be more open to insurgent candidates, because they’re often the ones that can run the digital a winning campaign in ‘26 and ‘28 will need.
@daveweigel I thought it was evoking the "Okay, let's do this one last time," joke from the Spiderverse movie? The glitch at the end felt like a reference too
Was super pleased to open up @jackclarkSF's substack this morning and see a (considered and insightful, as one expects) discussion of Radical Optionality. Always feels good to see that some DC ideas are percolating through to SF, and vice versa!
You should go read the essay if you haven't already, because it's a fun and enlightening read. But if you're like me and you don't have time to read all the papers you should read, go read Jack's summary/response. He gets it!
@RatOrthodox I think that's because we know most of our needs are not changeable. "I need to not need air" is strange to think about, for example. Although I suppose that's what deep divers or astronauts might think!