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Brendan Cantwell

@cantb.bsky.social

3.6K followers 1.3K following 220 posts

Professor of Higher Education. Mediocre poster (sorry for the bad spelling) who periodically deletes. Views and speech are mine alone.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 52m

As a baseball genius, I have determined that it would be good for the Detroit Tigers if they scored some runs.

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 1h

lumbers

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 1h

Josh Naylor runs smart; he doesn’t run fast.

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 5h

Trump announces 1,000,000% tariff on inflatable frog suits.

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 5h

The puppy and I encountered a rafter of turkeys on our walk just now - she thinks I was mean by holding her back, but I was saving her from a world of hurt.

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 7h

I don’t know about you but I’m a little uncomfortable by the fact that anyone who disagrees with the GOP is increasingly classified by elected Republicans as terrorists.

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 10h

I guess one response might be that my disagreeing with the way that MIT admit students or understands merit is perfectly consistent with the idea that MIT has and should have institutional autonomy

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 10h

Does MIT’s Compact rejection change the calculus for other universities? Probably more for the other privates than for the publics. The language MIT uses does put the onus on all universities that accept to explain how they are not surrendering academic freedom and institutional independence.

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 10h

Errr sort of. I guess I misunderstood the Canadian specifics about nursing. I’m thinking more of the Marco Rubio / Barack Obama, consensus around welding versus art history.

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 10h

Sounds a lot like the consensus that formed in the US in the 10 years leading up to the current crisis

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 10h

MIT’s response to The Compact invitation

The document also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution. And fundamentally the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core beliefs. That scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 11h

Maybe businesses should run more like universities?

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 11h

In higher ed, we’ve always these memos. They’re called annual review reports and promotion in tenure applications. They determine if you get to keep your job and what raise you’ll get. The differences there are on a set timeline (not random) and reviewed by peers.

Oliver Darcy @oliverdarcy.bsky.social · 11h

News: Bari Weiss just sent a memo to staffers at CBS News asking them to produce a memo explaining "how you spend your working hours—and ideally, what you've made (or are making) that you're most proud of."

One CBS News staffer puts it like this to me: "We just got Elon Musked."

Reposted by Brendan Cantwell

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 14h

Immigrant Nobel Prize winners exiting the United States

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 17h

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

🧵 1/7

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 13h

This was much more of a sociological treatment and didnt address finance global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 13h

Paying for a high-quality mass system of higher education in a way that is sustainable, politically and socially tolerable, and reasonably fair is nearly impossible. I’d be interested in doing a comparative project on this.

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 1d

The problem with college costs is that, with some exceptions, spending more allows campuses to do more good things better. Sure, competition and glitz, high salaries explain some of it. But much of it is a problem about how to ration quality.

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 14h

As I was saying

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/o...

Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Badly Needed

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Brendan Cantwell

Times Higher Education (THE) @timeshighered.bsky.social · 14h

UK universities have announced cuts equivalent to more than 15,000 jobs over the past year as financial pressures mount, according to @ucu.org.uk

#AcademicSky #highered

Cuts equivalent to 15,000 jobs planned at UK universities – UCU

Proposed job losses almost triple since March as unions prepare to vote on nationwide industrial action

www.timeshighereducation.com

Reposted by Brendan Cantwell

Stephanie Baker @stephabaker.bsky.social · 14h

“… it affirms what the desegregators see as an unnatural principle: that nonwhite people are equal to white people, that women are equal to men, and that LGBTQ people deserve the same rights as everyone else.”

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 1d

This remains the most important piece i’ve written about the goals and ideological principles of the second Trump administration www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

bsky.app/profile/jame...

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 14h

The administration’s hostility for solar energy seems like a good example of how its cultural grievances override other concerns. It could easily make solar a crony bonanza, right? In higher ed they want to control traditional universities and TBH are not doing as much graft as I expected.

Reposted by Brendan Cantwell

jael holzman @jael.bsky.social · 22h

This is enough carbon-free energy to power maybe two thirds of Vegas btw

jael holzman @jael.bsky.social · 22h

SCOOP: The Bureau of Land Management says the largest solar project in Nevada — the Esmeralda 7 mega-farm — has been canceled

The news was quietly dropped via a sudden website update with no public word from any of the companies involved or a statement from the agency

@heatmap.news

Esmeralda 7 Solar Project Has Been Canceled, BLM Says

It would have delivered a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power.

Reposted by Brendan Cantwell

Adam Gurri @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com · 14h

New @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com piece just dropped

Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 16h

“The problem with billionaires isn’t that they’re hoarding money that would otherwise pay for a Scandinavian social utopia. It’s that their money has become a source of wildly distorted political power that allows a few men with extremist views to wreak havoc on the rest of us.”

Billionaires Are Hoarding Power, Not Money

Billionaire money has become a source of wildly distorted political power that allows a few men with extremist views to wreak havoc on the rest of us.

www.liberalcurrents.com

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 1d

“Isn’t horrible that billionaires can’t just buy a university, fire all the tenure faculty, and remake it in their image like Bezos did with the Post?”

That’s the question posed by Trump’s Compact.

Philip Bump @pbump.com · 1d

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 1d

Gordon Gee wrote to me once and said that he likes to make decisions before the board or legislature makes it for him. Say what you want about Gee but us faculty could often en benefit from taking that advice to heart.

Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 1d

🤨

UNC schools of data science and information science to merge, forming unnamed ‘School of AI’

SDSS Dean Stanley Ahalt will be made dean of the new school while SILS Dean Jeffrey Bardzell will stand as the University’s Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer and Vice Provost for AI.

dailytarheel.com