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Reposted by Mara Breen

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 18h

MIT President Sally Kornbluth just issued a statement to the campus community saying NO to Trump’s authoritarian compact

“And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.”

Dear Madam Secretary,
I write in response to your letter of October 1, inviting MIT to review a "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education." I acknowledge the vital importance of these matters.
I appreciated the chance to meet with you earlier this year to discuss the priorities we share for American higher education.
As we discussed, the Institute's mission of service to the nation directs us to advance knowledge, educate students and bring knowledge to bear on the world's great challenges. We do that in line with a clear set of values, with excellence above all. Some practical examples:
• MIT prides itself on rewarding merit.
Students, faculty and staff succeed here based on the strength of their talent, ideas and hard work. For instance, the Institute
was the first to reinstate the SAT/ACT requirement after the pandemic. And MIT has never had legacy preferences in admissions.

• MIT opens its doors to the most talented students regardless of their family's finances. Admissions are need-blind. Incoming undergraduates whose families earn less than $200,000 a year pay no tuition. Nearly 88% of our last graduating class left MIT with no debt for their education. We make a wealth of free courses and low-cost certificates available
to any American with an internet
connection. Of the undergraduate degrees we award, 94% are in STEM fields. And in service to the nation, we cap enrollment of international undergraduates at roughly
10%.
• We value free expression, as clearly described in the MIT Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom. We must hear facts and opinions we don't like - and engage respectfully with those with whom we disagree.

These values and other MIT practices meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document you sent. We freely choose these values because they're right, and we live by them because they support our mission - work of immense value to the prosperity, competitiveness, health and security of the United States. And of course, MIT abides by the law.
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 belief that scientific
funding should be based on scientific merit alone.
In our view, America's leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that tree marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences.
Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.

As you know, MIT's record of service to the nation is long and enduring. Eight decades ago, MIT leaders helped invent a scientific partnership between America's research universities and the
U.S. government that has delivered extraordinary benefits for the American people.
We continue to believe in the power of this partnership to serve the nation.
Sincerely,
Sally Kornbluth
CC
Ms. May Mailman
Mr. Vincent Haley

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Reposted by Mara Breen

Kendra Albert @kendraserra.bsky.social · 29d

Very glad to see that someone is doing the important work of aligning AI alignment. alignmentalignment.ai

Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers

We align the aligners

alignmentalignment.ai

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Felipe De Brigard @felipedebrigard.bsky.social · 1d

AI, and philosophy of mind in general. Here's the link: open.substack.com/pub/felipede... [2/2]

Vitalism in the age of AI

Is biological naturalism committed to some sort of "élan consciente"?

open.substack.com

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Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social · 1d

Higgledy piggledy
Timothée Chalamet
Has a name meriting
Endless design

Much like his forerunner
Benedict Cumberbatch:
Hexasyllabically,
Easy to rhyme

tweet from childish branzino @absflora:
timothée chalamet is the new benedict cumberbatch in the sense that you can say ANYTHING and we know who you mean. tiffany chevrolet. timpanogos charlemagne. symphony cabernet. jiminy castaway.

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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 1d

I have to fan-girl for a minute here. My friend @rosvall-lab.bsky.social built an app to gather data on bird behavior during the 2024 solar eclipse. 10,000+ citizen scientists contributed (including my kids), and the resulting paper was published in Science today!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Total solar eclipse triggers dawn behavior in birds: Insights from acoustic recordings and community science

On 8 April 2024, a total solar eclipse disrupted light-dark cycles for North American birds during the lead-up to spring reproduction. Compiling more than 10,000 community observations and artificial ...

www.science.org

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Tiffany Ito @tiffanyito.bsky.social · 18d

University of Colorado Boulder Psychology & Neuroscience is searching for TWO tenure track assistant professors!!

jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

#socialpsychology #cogpsyc #PsychSciSky #PsychJob
#psycjobs #psychology

1/n

Assistant Professor

jobs.colorado.edu

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Rosanne Rademaker @rademaker.bsky.social · 11d

We’re looking for a postdoc to join our Max Planck group in Germany some time in 2026. If you have computational and/or neuroimaging expertise, and are interested in questions intersecting perception and cognition, please reach out! I’ll also be happy to chat at the #Bernsteinconference this week.

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Bria Long @brialong.bsky.social · 4d

We’re recruiting a postdoctoral fellow to join our team! 🎉

I’m happy to share that I’ve opened back up the search for this position (it was temporarily closed due to funding uncertainty).

See lab page and doc below for details!

Bria Long @brialong.bsky.social · Nov 18

The Visual Learning Lab at UC San Diego is looking for a postdoctoral research fellow to join our lab!

Read more about our lab at www.vislearnlab.org

Home | The Visual Learning Lab at UCSD

Lab webpage for the Visual Learning Lab at UCSD, lead by Dr. Bria Long, Ph.D. Launching in July 2024!

www.vislearnlab.org

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Nancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · 4d

I am proud of MIT, where our branch of AAUP has voted unanimously to endorse this statement urging MIT leadership and the MIT Corporation to reject the Compact wholesale
docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Letter Regarding Compact

MIT Chapter of the American Association of University Professors October 6, 2025 Statement on the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” MIT has been invited by the federal governmen...

docs.google.com

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 4d

My new op-ed with @lkfazio.bsky.social:

Trump sent a 'compact' to our universities. They should reject this devil's bargain.
Any institution that yields to these broad and intrusive demands would forever be subservient to the whims of the government.
www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 7d

New preprint 🌟 Psychology is core to cognitive science, and so it is vital we preserve it from harmful frames. @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I use our psych and computer science expertise to analyse and craft:

Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🧵 1/

Cover page of Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 1 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 2 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

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Susanne Brouwer @susannebrouwer.bsky.social · 8d

PhD Position: Accented Speech Processing - Apply now!

Come work with Mirjam Broersma, @davidpeeters.bsky.social, and me at the Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University in the Netherlands.

Application deadline: 19 October 2025

For more information, see
www.ru.nl/en/working-a...

PhD Position: Accented Speech Processing | Radboud University

Do you want to work as a PhD: Accented Speech Processing at the Faculty of Arts? Check our vacancy!

www.ru.nl

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Karen S Wilcox, PhD (she/her) @karenswilcoxphd.bsky.social · 7d

Are you an alum outraged by Trump's attacks on universities? Defend your school now by signing this alumni petition in support of these 9 universities as well as campus communities across America. alumni.controlshift.app/petitions/tr...

Trump attacks 9 universities: Sign the alumni petition to defend your school now

Are you an alum outraged by Trump's attacks on universities? Defend your school now by signing this alumni petition in support of these 9 universities as well as campus communities across America.

alumni.controlshift.app

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Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 7d

Here's the assignment folks. Write op-eds for your local papers and campus newspapers too. Just. Say. No. This is a classic authoritarian move and risks the future of higher education and science and innovation in the US. Speak out today. No time to lose. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Just Extortion

www.nytimes.com

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Matt Goldrick @mattgoldrick.bsky.social · 8d

Postdoc (flexible start): child language development across different populations and contexts, methods including behavioral studies, large-scale data analysis, and/or computational modeling. M. Cychosz, Linguistics, Stanford Univ. postdocs.stanford.edu/prospective/...

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Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics @mpi-nl.bsky.social · 7d

We're seeking the next Director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics! Lead cutting-edge research in language & cognition. Nominations (incl. self) due 19 Dec 2025.
mpi.nl/career-education/vacancies/vacancy/nominations-and-self-nominations-sought-position-director-max

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Solomon @solomonmissouri.bsky.social · 9d

If I’m the president of npr and there is no federal funding…

Bring me Michelle Norris… and the swear words button

a man is pointing up with his finger while holding a cell phone .

ALT: a man is pointing up with his finger while holding a cell phone .

media.tenor.com

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Natalie Boll-Avetisyan @natalieboll.bsky.social · 9d

How do multilingual babies acquire their languages? In Africa, multilingualism is the norm. In our new study with 9-11 month old Ghanaian babies learning up to 5 languages simultaneously, we found that they were able to recognize words in text passages in Akan, one of their languages.

Tongue root harmony cues for speech segmentation in multilingually raised infants learning languages with and without vowel harmony in Ghana (Africa) | Bilingualism: Language and Cognition | Cambridge...

Tongue root harmony cues for speech segmentation in multilingually raised infants learning languages with and without vowel harmony in Ghana (Africa)

doi.org

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Science and Freedom Alliance - SAFA @safa-science.bsky.social · 9d

Federal workers are speaking out on how the Trump regime is harming Americans:

"We stand here today at a moment of the greatest assault of our lifetimes on our freedoms. The US Constitution is being shredded... We are here to call on Congress to stand up and stop it."

youtu.be/uw1KwIBgrCw?...

Mark Histed, NIH Scientist *speaking in personal capacity

YouTube video by Civil Servants Coalition

youtu.be

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Jonathan A. Michaels @jonathanamichaels.bsky.social · 9d

The neural control & computation lab is recruiting!

If you're interested in using large-scale neural population recordings to study how the brain learns to produce complex and flexible behaviours, please get in touch.

www.ncclab.ca

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Prof Sam Illingworth @samillingworth.com · 9d

🐭 Mouse faces reveal hidden thoughts

Researchers found that subtle facial expressions in mice reflect not only their current decisions but also unexpressed cognitive states, offering a new window into brain activity.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#SciComm #Neuroscience 🧪

Facial expressions in mice reveal latent cognitive variables and their neural correlates - Nature Neuroscience

The face reveals more than just emotion. Cazettes, Reato and colleagues show that subtle facial movements reveal hidden cognitive states, reflecting the brain’s ongoing computations and offering a noninvasive window into unexpressed thoughts and decisions.

www.nature.com

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Meltem Yucel @drmeltemyucel.bsky.social · 9d

Does anyone use #RedCap for child participant database management? If so, would you be willing to share screenshots etc. of what your user interface looks like or share the template, whichever is easier.

#PsychSciSky #socialpsyc #devpsyc #AcademicSky #cogsci

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Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 10d

What's your favorite Bluesky account that primarily posts about something other than current events/politics?

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Anita Devineni @anitadevineni.bsky.social · 10d

My department at Emory is a hiring a tenure-track neuroscientist!

Anyone who's talked to me in the last 4 years knows I cannot say enough good things about my dept and the neuroscience community here. My colleagues are so wonderfully supportive. Postdocs, please apply!

apply.interfolio.com/174371

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

apply.interfolio.com

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Sam Nastase @samnastase.bsky.social · 9d

I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab in Fall 2026! The Shared Minds Lab at @usc.edu will combine deep learning and ecological human neuroscience to better understand how we communicate our thoughts from one brain to another.

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