Trump’s Education Department Scaled Back Investigations Into Discrimination and Sexual Assault on Campus, New Data Shows [ ProPublica ]

The flava:

The civil rights arm of the U.S. Department of Education has dramatically scaled back investigations involving schools and colleges since the second Trump administration began, even as complaints continue to pour in, a ProPublica analysis of newly obtained records found.

The analysis shows how severely the department’s Office for Civil Rights has retracted from its mission, launching an average of about 100 new investigations a month — 1,839 total from Inauguration Day in 2025 through July 2026. The OCR launched an average of 310 new investigations each month in 2024 during the Biden administration, according to data previously obtained by ProPublica.

Under President Donald Trump, the OCR abandoned the public-facing list of schools it was investigating and the reasons for those investigations, including claims of discrimination based on race, sex and disability. ProPublica sued the department to obtain internal case data. The government subsequently provided records of the OCR’s actions in the first 18 months of Trump’s return to power, and we are publishing the data so the public can search the cases. . . .     

The article & the data:

https://www.propublica.org/article/civil-rights-office-education-department-investigations

The MIT Professors Bedazzling Security Cameras to Highlight Campus Surveillance [ Hyperallergic ]

The flava:

Tenured faculty members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are decorating the university’s surveillance cameras with googly eyes, rhinestones, and glitzy decorations to protest its investment in what they call “Big Brother technology.”

Faculty members Catherine D’Ignazio, Marah Gubar, Tanalís Padilla, Dwai Banerjee, and Karrie Karahalios began decorating the cameras in August, four months after the student newspaper, The Tech, reported that MIT would be spending over $3 million on more than 500 surveillance cameras from 2025 to 2026. According to the report, the cameras can be activated to identify faces and objects with AI, and are stationed in exterior locations and academic facilities, among other high-traffic areas around campus.

“We have these little buckets of gems and tinsel, and create these little Gumby-type creatures with googly eyes,” D’Ignazio told Hyperallergic in a phone interview. None of the adornments interfere with the camera function, but are intended to remind passersby that they are under surveillance.

In a faculty newsletter announcing the deliberately unwieldy project name, “The Initiative to Beautify the AI-capable Surveillance Benevolently Installed by our Administrator Overseers and the MIT Corporation In Collaboration with Big Brother Tech Companies,” the faculty members said that the campus had been transformed into an “AI-capable Panopticon.” . . .       

The article:

https://hyperallergic.com/the-mit-professors-bedazzling-security-cameras-to-highlight-campus-surveillance/

What Happens When Incarcerated and Free Students Learn Together? | POV Shorts

M.I.T. Scientist Wins $6 Million in Sexual Harassment Defamation Suit [ NYTimes ]

The flava:

A prominent Massachusetts Institute of Technology biology professor forced out of his job over sexual harassment allegations won a defamation case against his accuser on Friday, along with a $6 million award.

The biologist, David Sabatini, was among the most prominent scientists in his field, and ran a research lab at the Whitehead Institute, in Cambridge, for 24 years. His lab studied cellular biology to better understand neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, diabetes, and aging.

He was forced out of his lab in 2021 after an internal Whitehead investigation concluded he had a past sexual relationship with a younger and less experienced colleague, Kristin Knouse, over whom he had a career-influencing role. The investigation also found that his lab had maintained a sexualized atmosphere. Dr. Knouse said that the relationship was coerced.

But Dr. Sabatini denied his lab had an improper atmosphere. He maintained that his relationship with Dr. Knouse had been consensual and that Dr. Knouse had schemed to get him fired and disgraced after he became interested in another woman. . . .      

The article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/us/mit-scientist-sexual-harassment-defamation-lawsuit-david-sabatini.html

Why small colleges are closing and the toll on students and communities [ PBS NewsHour ]

Santa Monica College offers affordable Bachelor of Science degrees [ CBS LA ]

I am sad about AI in maths... [ Sophie Maclean ]

TCU Showgirls - WOW (10/3/2026 - BYU)

The woman with the mattress: the radical, rage-fuelled history of anti-rape art [ The Guardian ]

The flava:

In September 2014, Emma Sulkowicz began to carry a blue mattress weighing 23kg around her university campus. The mattress was similar to the ones New York’s Columbia University used in its dorm rooms, where Sulkowicz said she had been raped by a fellow student two years earlier. Her performance/endurance artwork constituted her visual art senior thesis, drawing attention to the lack of criminal charges brought against her alleged attacker and his continued presence at the university. As she hauled it across campus, others could choose to assist her with her burden. Many did. She recorded responses to the piece in a diary. . . .    

The article:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/oct/08/anti-rape-art-history-cornell-mattress-performance

The wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattress_Performance_(Carry_That_Weight)

The Former NFL Lineman Who Solved a Decades-Old Math Problem [ WSJ ]

The flava:

A former NFL player named John Urschel decided to do some light reading this week, and for him that meant leafing through the latest math papers from OpenAI about topics such as the Riemann hypothesis. 

“Oh my lord,” he thought. “I was absolutely floored.” 

Urschel was blown away by the findings because he happened to understand the hundreds of proofs better than nearly any human on the planet. Nine years ago, he traded the National Football League for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And Monday, instead of studying abstract play designs, he was publishing some impenetrable language of his own to prove a decades-old mathematical conjecture.

Urschel’s paper, titled “On the Growth Factor of Random Matrices,” is one in a deluge of AI-assisted proofs that mathematicians have achieved in this new era when they can combine their genius with supercomputing power. But within this community of brainiacs, there isn’t a single person quite like the 35-year-old Urschel. After three years with the Baltimore Ravens, the offensive lineman who was listed at 6-foot-3 and 313 pounds ditched his helmet to become a professional egghead in 2017. And he hasn’t regretted it for a moment since. . . .      

The article:

https://www.wsj.com/sports/football/john-urschel-math-nfl-mit-ravens-38b6ca11

Generative AI in Higher Education: Evidence from an Elite College [ Zara Contractor & Germán Reyes ]

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.00717v2

Karl Deisseroth on winning the 2026 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine [ Stanford ]

Inside the Enrollment Cliff Hitting US Colleges [ Bloomberg Television ]

How colleges are responding to Trump administration’s ‘call to action’ [ CSMonitor.com ]

The flava:

Two months after the Department of Education called on colleges and universities to publicly state their commitment to principles the Trump administration accuses them of abandoning, a pair of major state university systems have complied, while many more institutions remain wary.

Even that limited response is vastly different from the uniform rejection from nine leading universities last year of the administration’s previous initiative, the Compact for Academic Excellence. That effort tied compliance to federal research and grant funding.

This time, the U.S. government has not issued an overt threat of consequences. Still, college leaders worry their answers could become grounds for punishment or that not answering could draw its own wrath. They question whether complying risks institutional independence. Complicating the decision: The questions themselves deal with subjects that colleges wrestle with constantly and feel to many like they are already addressing.

The National Call to Action issued by Education Secretary Linda McMahon in August asked colleges and universities to respond publicly by the end of the year. The list of questions probes how institutions are handling admissions transparency, the free exchange of ideas, intellectual pluralism, affordability, academic rigor, foreign influence, and the goal of advancing the nation’s interests. . . .     

The article:

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2026/0929/trump-colleges-education-principles