H. Holden Thorp

Dear Commons Community,

Science had an editorial in its latest edition entitled:  “The new reality for American academia” by editor-in-chief H. Holden Thorp.  He has a good pulse on the issues such as the value of science research, reevaluating elitism in private universities, the focus of medical research, and the need for a “horizontal” relationship between universities and the American people—one that is based on mutual respect and reciprocity.”

Below is his entire editorial.

Important reading!

Tony

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Science

The new reality for American academia

H. Holden Thorp

The endless churn of damaging actions from the Trump administration toward science—from freezing and canceling grants to ending programs that encourage greater participation in science—has wreaked havoc in American universities and reverberated around the world as worries about international collaborations and access to American scientific resources threaten the global scientific enterprise. The situation has created anxiety and stress on campuses in the US as administrators contemplate their next moves and faculty and students wonder how to respond. As I travel to campuses around the United States and talk with research faculty, trainees, and students, a common question I hear is “What can I do?”

As with any long-standing institution, there are surely things that can be improved, like better communicating the value of scientific research and academic freedom to a public that supports academia with their tax dollars. But the vitriol from the White House only makes talking about needed changes that much harder. How can academia engage in honest conversation about reform in a way that rebuilds the partnership with the country without seeming to give affirmation to the political attacks?

After reading her insightful piece in The Atlantic about a potential way forward, I talked to Danielle Allen, a professor at Harvard University who studies political science, democracy, and philosophy. She argues for a new social contract between higher education and the federal government that simultaneously calls for a firm commitment to academic freedom and what she calls a “horizontal” relationship between universities and the American people—one that is based on mutual respect and reciprocity. She also makes a compelling call for universities to do a better job of expressing appreciation for the support that the American taxpayers have provided to higher education in the decades since World War II. In her estimation, gratitude from academia has been scant or not apparent. It’s important to remember, she noted, that politicians who are carrying out the Trump agenda are not speaking for the majority of the American people. Despite recent losses of confidence, members of the public “continue to have aspirations for the value of colleges and universities to our society,” she told me. Indeed, in a recent poll, 70% of the public opposed an increase in the federal government’s role in the operation of private universities, whereas only 28% were in favor.

How can academia engage in honest conversation about reform in a way that rebuilds the partnership with the country…?

Exploring this idea further, I talked to Ryan Enos, another Harvard professor and a political scientist. He also supports the idea of acknowledging higher education’s obligations to the American public. Given the tremendous responsibility that universities in the United States are given to educate society and the influence that higher education has on the public, he told me there is “an ethical obligation to ask whether we are effectively fulfilling our duty to the country.” What all of this suggests is that academia needs to find a new way forward—one that involves admitting where it has fallen short and where reform is needed while continuing to defend the values that have led to the many contributions that science and universities have made to enable American success. That way forward will require substantial change. As Allen told me, “I think this is like going through a divorce and then trying to get into a new relationship when you’ve discovered that all kinds of habits and patterns and expectations have to adjust.”

After World War II, in which American science played such a pivotal role, universities in the United States entered an agreement with the federal government in which they were granted sizable federal research support for science and guaranteed freedom from government interference. In return, they would produce medical and other scientific advances and enable a strong economy through new technologies and an educated and technically skilled workforce, all of which would help support a strong defense. This social contract stoked tremendous growth in universities and their research efforts, but it also gave the government great leverage—the power of the purse—which is now being exploited by the Trump administration. Another side effect of this long-reliable social contract may have been to give universities and investigators an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for the social consequences of their research, because the focus was on the knowledge gained rather than on any impacts on the public. “It’s not a crazy strategy,” Allen told me, “but it does have this accidental by-product of cultivating a habit or an ethos of not taking responsibility for downstream consequences of choices that we’re making.”

So, how can higher education reorient its relationship with the American public? Allen argues for counteracting the elite image of private universities like Harvard by expanding enrollment, though she acknowledges that the consequential increase in teaching load might face resistance from faculty that prefer doing more research. Enos points out another downside to that approach: “Admissions in the top universities is a grain of sand on the beach of the American population and so increasing the student body size might be nice, but doing so would have no practical implications for American society.” It’s important to keep in mind that much of what Allen is recommending is already being done by larger public universities. Shifting the focus away from Ivy League institutions in the coming months is a crucial strategy because public and land grant universities are already sending the message that all of higher education needs to embrace—solving problems while showing a strong sense of public commitment and service.

Allen also suggests that medical schools shift more attention from research to medical education and primary care. Today, many academic physicians lobby for less time caring for patients and more time for research that might advance medical science. This makes sense, both in terms of what the system rewards but also in fulfilling the social contract. Biomedical research remains politically popular: 77% of the public opposed reducing funding for biomedical research, whereas only 21% supported the cuts. Still, many medical schools have emphasized research over medical education and patient care to the point that a rebalancing is required to maintain public support.

Taken together, these ideas set the stage for more consideration of how higher education can move forward in these critical times. Meanwhile, what should individual researchers and faculty do on a day-to-day basis? In her Atlantic piece, Allen recounted a story about the terrorist attacks of 9/11. When the planes were hitting the World Trade Center towers, she and her colleagues elected to continue with a planned workshop on Thucydides rather than gluing themselves to televisions to watch the news. She sees this as a parable for how academics should respond to the current moment—by ensuring that amid the chaos, activities that are the core mission of a university are maintained. At a time when forces are trying to distract and disrupt the scientific enterprise, doing the important work of finding and sharing the truth is now a great act of resistance.

H. Holden Thorp, Editor-in-Chief

Dear Commons Community,

Democrats are blasting former President Biden’s reemergence in the limelight following his interview Thursday on “The View,” his second major post-presidency interview.

During the sit-down, which took place alongside former first lady Jill Biden, Biden slammed President Trump’s second administration, saying he’s had “the worst 100 days any president’s ever had.” The former president also denied reports of his mental decline during his term and took responsibility for Democratic losses in 2024, telling the show’s hosts, “I was in charge, and he won.”

Yet some Democrats are criticizing Biden’s recent appearances, arguing the former president is becoming a drag on the party as it seeks to rebuild following its widespread losses in 2024.  As reported by The Hill.

“Elections are about the future. Every time Joe Biden emerges, we fight an old war,” said Democratic strategist Anthony Coley, who worked for the Biden administration. “Every interview he does provides a contrast to Trump that’s just not helpful for the Democratic brand, which needs trusted messengers and fighters who can reach independents and moderates and inspire the base. Joe Biden ain’t that.”

Coley said it was “good” Biden took responsibility for the events that led to Trump’s election but questioned whether it mattered going forward.

“Honestly, what good does that do now? Many Democrats — from elected leaders to the party faithful — are just ready to turn the page. I just don’t think he understands how wide and deep this sentiment is,” he said.

Other Democratic critics argue the former president did not go far enough.

One Democratic strategist said Biden needs to “take responsibility for his actions” and “own up to the fact that he caused Democrats to lose.”

“I don’t think there’s a willingness to cop to the fact that he should never have run again in the first place,” the strategist said. “Why can’t he come out and acknowledge that part of this is on him?”

Thursday’s interview with “The View” was his second sit-down interview of the week, with the first airing Tuesday on the BBC. Biden took multiple opportunities to criticize Trump’s foreign policy in his conversation with the British broadcaster, taking particular aim at Trump’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Some Democrats say Biden would be better suited avoiding sit-down interviews and instead focus on community outreach, much like former President Carter did.

“There is a way for President Biden to build his post-presidency, but this isn’t it,” said Steve Schale, a longtime Biden ally who ran a pro-Biden super PAC in recent cycles. “I really wish he’d embrace the thing that’s been his calling card for 50 years: his humanity.”

While Biden focuses on preserving his legacy, Schale said he would take an approach similar to what Carter took in the years following his presidency.

“By the end of his life, we were reminded of the decent and humble nature of the man thanks to his acts, not his words,” Schale said. “I really wish Biden would follow a similar path.”

“Get out and work in the community. Do … things that highlight the things his administration did to help people,” Schale said. “Let the images of his human interactions and the stories they tell rebuild the brand. That’s way more powerful than playing pundit.”

The interviews come amid a slew of books detailing the last year of the Biden administration, including accusations his mental acuity was slipping while in office. Biden denied those reports, calling them “wrong.” The former first lady also slammed reporting on Biden’s mental acuity while in office, noting “the people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us.”

A second Democratic strategist predicted the Biden narrative on his mental acuity will not go away and will be something future presidential contenders will have to answer for.

“There’s a good chance that the most significant litmus test for any Democrat in the 2028 field will be how and if they admonish Biden for the political judgment in the final 18 months of his political career,” the strategist said.

But Biden still has staunch defenders within the Democratic ranks who argue his storied career in politics is needed in the party.

“I thought that was good for Joe Biden to just be honest and open about where things were, and where they are, and where he thinks they very well could be based on his own life experiences,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright, who has spent time with Biden after his administration.

“If you know Joe Biden like I know Joe Biden and have spent time with him post-the presidency like I’ve spent time with him, then you will know that Joe Biden is doing what is still in the best interests of the country,” he continued. “Joe Biden can still be helpful to the country, to the Congress, the Constitution, and the community.”

Seawright said the choice of “The View” for Biden’s first American post-presidency interview was good, given the program’s broad reach.

“I think ‘The View’ is a very captive audience. It’s also a very diverse audience that crosses many sectors of the country,” he said.

But as younger voices become more prominent voices in the party, other Democrats are questioning why the interview was even necessary.

“I don’t know who’s asking for this,” Democratic strategist Jon Reinish said. “I actually think that a lot of people are starting to pay much more attention to a younger generation of Democrats free of baggage and who are finally starting to move the party away from folks who stayed too long at the fair.”

I believe that Biden should stay out of the political limelight. He was the major reason the Democrats lost to Trump!

Tony

Jeanette Nuñez

Dear Commons Community,

Former Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, who was appointed interim president of Florida International University in February, is the sole finalist to become president of the Miami-based school, the chairman of a search committee announced yesterday. 

Carlos Duart, an FIU trustee who led the search committee, wrote in a message to the university community that the committee selected three finalists, but two said they would only continue to a public phase of the process if they were chosen as the lone candidate.   As reported by CBS News and The Miami Herald.

“As a result, these two finalists withdrew their candidacy,” Duart wrote. “Given her proven record of leadership and unique qualifications, the committee unanimously agreed to move Interim President Nuñez forward as its sole finalist for consideration by the FIU Board of Trustees.”

The trustees and the state university system’s Board of Governors would have to approve hiring Nuñez as president.  Duart’s message said Nuñez will take part in campus forums on May 21 and the Board of Trustees will meet June 2 to formally interview her.

The announcement came after the University of Florida on Sunday said University of Michigan President Santa Ono is the sole finalist to become UF president. UF conducted a search after former President Ben Sasse resigned last year.

Nuñez has a history with the school  

Nuñez, a Miami Republican who received bachelor’s and master’s degrees at FIU, left the lieutenant governor’s job to become interim president. She replaced Kenneth Jessell, who had served as FIU’s president since 2022.

While the FIU Board of Trustees did not specifically discuss Nuñez serving as president on a more-permanent basis at the time she took the interim post, trustee Dean Colson during a Feb. 7 meeting indicated the “probable results of the search are already known.”

Duart’s message Thursday said the search committee selected as finalists Nuñez and a “sitting president and sitting provost at other institutions.” He did not identify the other two candidates.

State law provides public-records and public-meetings exemptions for information about candidates to become university presidents, though the identities of final candidates are released as they are vetted publicly. The Florida House this spring tried to get rid of the exemptions, but the Senate did not go along.

Duart wrote that FIU is “central to Interim President Nuñez’s life and that of her family.”

“Interim President Nuñez’s distinguished career and commitment to further cement FIU’s position as a leader in higher education in Florida and across the country make her an excellent leader for FIU at this pivotal point in our university’s journey,” he wrote.

Nuñez, who also is a former state House member, is making an annual base salary of $850,000 as interim president and is eligible for a bonus up to 15 percent, according to information released in February.

The announcements this week about Nuñez and Ono being the sole finalists for the FIU and UF jobs have come amid heavy turnover in leadership of state universities and colleges.

For example, former state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner was chosen in February to become president of Florida Atlantic University. Also, Florida A&M University last month announced the names of four finalists to become its president, and University of South Florida President Rhea Law has announced she is stepping down.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The protodeacon of the College of Cardinals announced in St. Peter’s Square to the world yesterday afternoon that a new pope had been elected.  Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected to succeed Pope Francis and will take the name Pope Leo XIV.

He was born on the southside of Chicago to American and Latina parents and graduated from Villanova University.  He has spent much of his religious life in Peru and has dual citizenship in the United States and Peru.

He is considered a centrist and supportive of immigrant rights.  He has also taken conservative stands regarding LGBTQ rights and the role of women in the Church. His biography as appeared in Forbes can be found at:   What We Know About the First American Pope.

Viva el Papa!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Catholic Church announced that priests will be excommunicated if they follow a new Washington State law requiring clergy to report confessions about child abuse to law enforcement.  As reported by several news media.

“Catholic clergy may not violate the seal of confession — or they will be excommunicated from the Church,” the Archdiocese of Seattle said in a statement. “All Catholics must know and be assured that their confessions remain sacred, secure, confidential and protected by the law of the Church.”

“The Catholic Church agrees with the goal of protecting children and preventing child abuse,” the statement added, noting that it “remains committed to reporting child sexual abuse, working with victim survivors towards healing and protecting all minors and vulnerable people.”

The new law — signed by Democrat Gov. Bob Ferguson last week — added “members of the clergy” to a list of professionals who are required to report information that relates to child abuse or neglect to law enforcement, and the measure does not provide an exception for information offered at a confession booth.

Priests in the Catholic Church have been bound by the absolute seal of confidentiality, an obligation that requires them to keep anything learned in confession a secret.

The Archdiocese of Seattle said its policies already require priests to be mandatory reporters unless the information is received during confession.

“While we remain committed to protecting minors and all vulnerable people from abuse, priests cannot comply with this law if the knowledge of abuse is obtained during the Sacrament of Reconciliation,” its statement said.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has opened an investigation into the law for possible violations of the First Amendment’s religious protections.

“SB 5375 demands that Catholic Priests violate their deeply held faith in order to obey the law, a violation of the Constitution and a breach of the free exercise of religion cannot stand under our Constitutional system of government,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said.

“Worse, the law appears to single out clergy as not entitled to assert applicable privileges, as compared to other reporting professionals,” she continued. “We take this matter very seriously and look forward to Washington State’s cooperation with our investigation.”

The bill will go into effect on July 26.

Washington is one of just five states that does not explicitly or implicitly require clergy to report suspected child abuse or neglect, a federal report shows, according to Fox 13. Most states exempt information obtained through confession from mandatory reporting, but Washington now joins just a handful of states that do not provide such exemptions.

“This new law singles out religion and is clearly both government overreach and a double standard,” the Archdiocese of Seattle said. “The line between Church and state has been crossed and needs to be walked back. People of every religion in the State of Washington and beyond should be alarmed by this overreach of our Legislature and Governor.”

The Catholic Church will never yield on the issue of confidentiality in confession.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Trump administration has terminated hundreds of federal grants awarded to advance STEM education in K-12 schools, colleges and universities—a move that educators and experts say will eliminate important sources of science teacher training, learning opportunities for students, and research into best instructional practices.

These cuts come as part of a broader package of grant cancellations at the National Science Foundation, an agency that is a major funder of science and engineering research. In April, the agency canceled more than 1,100 awards, which the Department of Government Efficiency called “wasteful DEI grants” in a post on X.   As reported by Education Week.

More than 400 of these grants were under the NSF’s directorate for STEM Education, according to a database maintained by researchers at Harvard University and the nonprofit rOpenSci.

Among the projects canceled: an after-school robotics program for middle school girls in Chicago, an initiative to expand access for students of color and low-income students to higher-level math courses in Milwaukee public schools, and a research project to recruit and train more computer science teachers from underrepresented groups in California.

Then, this week, NSF staff were told to pause all future grant awards “until further notice,” the journal Nature reported. This directive came after leadership at the agency instructed staff to screen all new proposals for “topics or activities that may not be in alignment with agency priorities.”

Going forward, grants awarded by NSF shouldn’t “preference some groups at the expense of others, or directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups,” the agency’s former director, Sethuraman Panchanathan, wrote in a statement on April 18 before stepping down the following week.

Projects focused on misinformation or disinformation will also no longer receive funding, according to a “frequently asked questions” document on the NSF website. An agency spokesperson declined to comment on a request for further information about how the foundation chose which grants to terminate.

The cancellations could have big ripple effects in K-12 schools, said Christine Royce, a past president of the National Science Teaching Association, and a professor of STEM education at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.

“We’ve had a longstanding history of having different types of money support teacher development [in STEM],” she said.

The Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite prompted investment in teacher training and science curriculum development, a response to fears that American students wouldn’t be prepared to compete in science fields on the world stage. In the 1990s, the federally funded Eisenhower programs provided classroom resources for math and science teachers until Congress cut them in the mid-2000s.

“We’ve seen dropoffs over time when money has been reduced but not eliminated, where … there’s evidence that shows fewer teachers can attend a conference, or not as many teachers can attend a summer program,” Royce said. “I think with this next step of what’s happening, it will have a significant impact.”

Cuts target grants deemed to be connected to diversity, equity, and inclusion

The NSF has several grant programs designed to support work that directly affects teaching and learning.

Computer Science for All awards, for instance, support research and partnerships that help train K-12 teachers to teach computer science and computational thinking. Discovery Research Pre-K-12 grants fund research into STEM learning. The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program helps recruit, prepare, and retain science and math teachers in high-need districts.

In applying for these grants, as with all NSF grant competitions, researchers are required to outline their proposals’ broader impacts—their “potential to benefit society,” as described on the NSF website. There are many ways for researchers to meet these criteria, but one is through furthering inclusion of underrepresented minorities in STEM—a goal that Congress has required the NSF to address since the 1980s, and one that some Republicans have taken aim at over the past year.

In October, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas—then the ranking Republican on the Senate’s commerce, science, and transportation committee, which oversees NSF—spearheaded a report claiming that the Biden administration had “politicized” science and identifying 3,483 grants that he claimed went to “questionable projects that promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) tenets or pushed onto science neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle.”

Slightly more than half of the terminated grants were on the Cruz list, according to the database maintained by researchers at Harvard University and rOpenSci.

An analysis of the grants in Cruz’s report by ProPublica earlier this year found that many had nothing to do with DEI themes. Research into biodiversity of plants, for example, seemed to have been flagged for including the word “diversity.”

Some, though, sought to expand participation of underrepresented students in STEM, or use science to investigate problems in students’ communities—goals that the researchers say can get more children to engage in the subject.

“If we can make science relevant to students’ lives, it really broadens how they see themselves,” said Tammie Visintainer, an assistant professor of teacher education at San Jose State University in California.

Visintainer’s $786,285 grant, which trained teachers to help students research the causes and effects of urban heat islands in their communities, was canceled on April 18. Cruz had targeted her work in his 2024 report for her focus on “climate justice”—the idea that low-income communities and communities of color disproportionately feel the effects of climate change, and that policy changes can mitigate those effects.

But her grant doesn’t target specific groups of students over others, she said—her program is open to any classroom, and she doesn’t pick the schools or students.

Teachers participate in a 10-day summer institute that digs into the science behind extreme heat in urban areas, explores community-based solutions, and helps educators create curricular units to use with their students.

“There’s this big need for climate science education that puts students in positions of agency and action,” Visintainer said. Experts say that children need opportunities to work through their emotions about the topic, which can often feel overwhelming and scary, while also having a solid understanding of the science behind how climate change occurs.

On a topic like climate change, NSF-funded workshops might have given teachers an opportunity for professional learning they wouldn’t have otherwise seen—most teachers don’t get training in how to teach the topic, a 2022 EdWeek Research Center survey found.

But even in subjects that are more commonly covered in science professional development, grants that fund the dissemination of the latest research to teachers and students play an important role in science education, said Royce, the former NSTA president.

“New science is happening every year, and it’s being released every week,” she said. “By the time it catches up with the medium, whether it’s a printed textbook or an online textbook, there’s going to be a delay.”

Among the grants canceled by NSF was a project  that I was a research associate on at Borough Manhattan Community College and the CUNY Graduate Center related to students with special needs in STEM courses delivered via online learning.  This was a five-year grant that was to run through 2029.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Columbia University said yesterday that it will be laying off nearly 180 staffers in response to Trump’s decision to cancel $400 million in funding over the Manhattan college’s handling of student protests against the war in Gaza.

Those receiving non-renewal or termination notices represent about 20% of the employees funded in some manner by the terminated federal grants, the university said in a statement.  As reported by The Associated Press.

“We have had to make deliberate, considered decisions about the allocation of our financial resources,” the university said. “Those decisions also impact our greatest resource, our people. We understand this news will be hard.”

University spokesperson Jessica Murphy declined to say whether more layoffs were expected, but said Columbia is taking a range of steps to create financial flexibility, including maintaining current salary levels and offering voluntary retirement incentives.

Research will also be scaled back, with some departments winding down studies and others maintaining some level of research while pursuing alternate funding.

The work impacted ranges from a project to develop an antiviral nasal spray for infectious diseases to various scientific studies on maternal mortality and morbidity, treatments for chronic illnesses such as long COVID, caring for newborns with opioid withdrawal syndrome and screenings for colorectal cancer, according to the university.

The layoffs, while expected, were “dispiriting” for faculty, said Marcel Agueros, secretary of Columbia’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which has filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration arguing the cuts are unlawful.

University officials say they’re working with the Trump administration in the hopes of getting the funding restored. But Agueros, an astronomy professor, said it will take years to undo the damage already inflicted.

“When there’s an interruption in funding, people have to leave, new people can’t be hired, some initiatives have to be put on hold, others need to be stopped, so research stops moving forward,” he said.

In March, the Trump administration pulled the funding over what it described as the Ivy League school’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023.

Within weeks, Columbia capitulated to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration as a starting point for restoring the funding.

Among the requirements was overhauling the university’s student disciplinary process, banning campus protesters from wearing masks, barring demonstrations from academic buildings, adopting a new definition of antisemitism and putting the Middle Eastern studies program under the supervision of a vice provost who would have a say over curriculum and hiring.

After Columbia announced the changes, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the university was “ on the right track,” but declined to say when or if Columbia’s funding would be restored. Spokespersons for the federal education department didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday.

Columbia was at the forefront of U.S. campus protests over the war last spring. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment and seized a campus building in April, leading to dozens of arrests and inspiring a wave of similar protests nationally.

Trump, when he retook the White House in January, moved swiftly to cut federal money to colleges and universities he viewed as too tolerant of antisemitism.

Tony

Jack Schlossberg

Dear Commons Community,

Jack Schlossberg, John F. Kennedy’s grandson, had this to say when he learned Trump unclassified his grandfather’s assassination.

A. “President Trump is obsessed with my grandfather — but not in his life or what he achieved in it. No, just like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Donald Trump is only interested in JFK’s carcass.”

B. “JFK drafted the civil rights act — Trump made DEI illegal.

C. JFK stared down Russia and did not blink — Trump is Russia’s closest ally.

D. JFK sent a man to the moon — Trump gave Elon the keys to Air Force One.

E. JFK created USAID — Trump eliminated it.”

F. JFK fought fascism and communism. Trump is selling us out to tech warlords, at home and abroad.

G. JFK stood behind unions and labor, demanding healthcare, higher pay. Trump is stripping working families from lifesaving care and financial support.”

In sum, Trump and his cronies “are stealing history from present and future generations — by appropriating the past for their criminal agenda, they normalize themselves in the minds of those without living memory.” 

US president Barack Obama awards the 2010 Medal of Freedom to Warren Buffett at the White House © AFP/Getty Images.

Dear Commons Community,

Warren Buffett announced over the weekend that he would retire at the end of the year as chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.  He was a class act and a model for all of the other billionaires in this country.  Below is a guest essay by Buffett biographer Roger Lowenstein that appeared in The New York Times this morning.  Lowenstein laments that we may never see the likes of Buffett again.

Well-worth a read.

May Buffett have a long and healthy retirement!

Tony

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The New York Times

Guest Essay

The Likes of Warren Buffett We Will Never See Again

May 5, 2025

By Roger Lowenstein

Mr. Lowenstein is the author of ”Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist.”

After six decades of pearly wisdom and investment gems, the news from Omaha hit like a thunderbolt.

As a fellow shareholder emailed me after Warren Buffett announced on Saturday that he would retire at the end of the year as chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, “Even though we knew it was inevitable, Warren’s announcement today came as a shock to the system.”

In an age of insecurity, Mr. Buffett was an anchor of endurance. Since he took the helm of Berkshire — on May 10, 1965 — General Motors, then the largest American corporation, has greeted 11 new chief executives. Sears, Roebuck, the biggest retailer, has vanished from the scene. Eleven U.S. presidents have come and gone (two of them having survived impeachment and one forced to resign), and Coca-Cola changed its formula, but Mr. Buffett didn’t change his.

And it wasn’t just constancy. Berkshire’s stock that day in May closed at $18 a share. When he delivered the news, it was above $809,000 — almost 45,000 times as high. Over the same span, the Dow Jones industrial average is up just under 45 times.

For the uninitiated, that means his performance was, literally, a thousand times that of the blue-chip American index. Mr. Buffett was the best investor ever — no second choices. But as I wrote 30 years ago in a biography of him, “The numbers alone do not account for the aura.” Since his performance reflects his many decades of managing Berkshire’s investments, he is also among the greatest corporate leaders.

It was not just the math (Elon Musk is richer) but also the quality of his performance. To paraphrase the famous testimony of J.P. Morgan Sr., with whom Mr. Buffett is often compared, it was his character.

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Mr. Buffett has long stood out on Wall Street because he eschewed its frequent chicanery, self-dealing and greed (and the double-talk that went with it). He revered the institutions of capitalism; most especially, he treated the executive’s duty to shareholders as a sacred trust.

Lest he be accused of violating that trust, he capped his annual salary at $100,000, He never took a stock option (the unholy tool by which chief executives expropriate a piece of the business from the shareholders for whom they are fiduciaries). In corporate America, that made him all but unique.

Today so many institutions seem diminished that the sense of loss at this news stretches beyond the corporate suite. Where in Congress, the media or government is a leader of such principle?

This is why Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase, could say, with tolerable hyperbole, “Warren Buffett represents everything that is good about American capitalism and America itself.”

On Wall Street, Mr. Buffett’s most distinguishing mark (aside from sheer skill) was his fealty to what many leaders proclaim but few adhere to: unwavering focus on the long term.

As recently as Berkshire’s annual meeting on Saturday, when he dropped the big news, Mr. Buffett replied to a shareholder’s question on whether he was taking steps to hedge the effects of currency fluctuations on the company’s quarterly or annual earnings. With a bemused grin and one of his patented lectures, he said, “We don’t do anything based on its impact on quarterly and annual earnings.” He added, “What counts is where we are five or 10 or 20 years from now.”

It sounds easy, but a vanishing few could ignore the momentary fashions, the short-term distractions. His ability to look past the next set of numbers is as rare in business as it is in politics. It required an internal value system, a willingness to think for himself.

Contrary to what is often written, Mr. Buffett’s biggest coups were not based on privileged access. He invested in Coca-Cola in the late 1980s and in Apple starting in the mid-2010s based on his evaluation of the publicly reported data. Every investor on the planet had the same information.

They were signature moves — big but well considered — notably unheedful of the Wall Street fetish for diversification. One of his favorite aphorisms was that investors would invest more wisely if they were told at birth they could make only 20 investment decisions. Like many of his best sayings, it was also a commentary on living. Selectivity required courage, personal responsibility.

He lived that way. He had no corporate hand-holders. His sidekick, Charlie Munger, was a sounding board, but Mr. Buffett spoke for himself. I would call from time to time (he even kept the same number) and got right through. Never did I hear, “He is in a meeting.”

In 1991, Mr. Buffett was recruited to rescue Salomon Brothers, a Wall Street bank mired in scandal. He was confronted by a suspicious press, most of whom had never met the so-called wizard of Omaha and some of whom took him for a hayseed. He disarmed them in a Wall Street minute; he would answer their questions, he said, “in the manner of a fellow who has never met a lawyer.”

I thought of that late in 2023, when three university presidents, facing most hostile interrogators in Congress, retreated behind legal formalities. Which is not to take a side — only to point out how rare a leader Mr. Buffett is.

This explains the most curious aspect of his celebrity — the annual trek of thousands of Buffett cultists and other shareholders to his capitalist Woodstock in Omaha. No less than the uncounted bigwigs who call him privately, his fans sought unvarnished answers delivered with his cornhusker simplicity (and his razor wit). And some sought inspiration.

Though his sermons occasionally strayed into political economy (his recent defense of trade was a gem of simplicity), he frustrated those who wanted him to speak out on politics. He preferred to engage within, as he would say, his “circle of competence.”

During the 2008 financial crisis, he helped to prop up the U.S. financial system by investing in Goldman Sachs. He had done similar before — rushing in where others fled. Coupled with his oft-expressed faith in America’s future, his efforts seemed like a capitalist version of a national security blanket. No one else could confer such an endorsement. That he will step down, at age 95, without having overstayed his powers, heightens the sense that he is irreplaceable.

We always had Warren Buffett as a backstop. Until, at the end of this year, we won’t.

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, by Sarah Wynn-Williams.  It is a memoir by a former Facebook employee, which portrays the executives at Facebook as a greedy bunch of individuals only interested in the bottom line no matter what the costs to society or to its people.  Wynn-Williams held a high global policy position at Facebook and worked closely with the upper echelon of the company including founder Mark Zuckerberg and CEO Sheryl Sandberg.  Neither of them come across as people anyone would want to work for and I didn’t accept Wynn-Williams’ reasons for staying for seven years.  She ends up being let go by Facebook. Many of the stories told in this memoir have been already reported in the news media but if you are not at all familiar with the Facebook culture, you will find the treatment here illuminating.

Below is an extensive and well-done review that appeared in The New York Times last month.

Tony

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The New York Times

Review of Books

Careless People A Facebook Insider’s Exposé Alleges Bad Behavior at the Top

By Jennifer Szalai

Published March 10, 2025Updated March 18, 2025

CARELESS PEOPLE: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, by Sarah Wynn-Williams

For seven years, beginning in 2011, the book’s author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, worked at Facebook (now called Meta), eventually as a director of global public policy. Now she has written an insider account of a company that she says was run by status-hungry and self-absorbed leaders, who chafed at the burdens of responsibility and became ever more feckless, even as Facebook became a vector for disinformation campaigns and cozied up to authoritarian regimes.

“Careless People” is darkly funny and genuinely shocking: an ugly, detailed portrait of one of the most powerful companies in the world. What Wynn-Williams reveals will undoubtedly trigger her former bosses’ ire. Not only does she have the storytelling chops to unspool a gripping narrative; she also delivers the goods.

During her time at Facebook, Wynn-Williams worked closely with its chief executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. They’re this book’s Tom and Daisy — the “careless people” in “The Great Gatsby” who, as Wynn-Williams quotes the novel in her epigraph, “smashed up things and creatures” and “let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Wynn-Williams was so eager to work at Facebook that she pitched herself to the company for months before it eventually hired her. Born and raised in New Zealand, she had been working as a diplomat at her country’s embassy in Washington and, before that, at the United Nations. She was drawn to human rights and environmental issues.

Relying on Facebook to stay connected with her friends back home, she believed the platform “was going to change the world.” As governments realized what Facebook could do, she sold herself to the company by telling its officials they could use a diplomat. When they finally hired her, she was elated: “I can’t believe I have the opportunity to work on the greatest political tool of my lifetime.”

What follows is a book-length admonishment to be careful what you wish for. Any idealism about Facebook’s potential as “the greatest political tool” sounds bitterly ironic now, 14 years later. By the end of her memoir, Wynn-Williams is told that her superiors have “concerns” about her performance; she feels so beaten down by her tenure at the company that she describes getting fired as a “quick euthanasia.”

Wynn-Williams sees Zuckerberg change while she’s at Facebook. Desperate to be liked, he becomes increasingly hungry for attention and adulation, shifting his focus from coding and engineering to politics. On a tour of Asia, she is directed to gather a crowd of more than one million so that he can be “gently mobbed.” (In the end, she doesn’t have to; his desire is satisfied during an appearance at a Jakarta shopping mall with Indonesia’s president-elect instead.) He tells her that Andrew Jackson (who signed the Indian Removal Act into law) was the greatest president America ever had, because he “got stuff done.”

Sandberg, for her part, turns her charm on and off like a tap. When Wynn-Williams first starts at Facebook, she is in awe of Sandberg, who in 2013 publishes her best-selling corporate-feminism manifesto, “Lean In.” But Wynn-Williams soon learns to mistrust “Sheryl’s ‘Lean In’ shtick,” seeing it as a thin veneer over her “unspoken rules” about “obedience and closeness.”

Wynn-Williams is aghast to discover that Sandberg has instructed her 26-year-old assistant to buy lingerie for both of them, budget be damned. (The total cost is $13,000.) During a long drive in Europe, the assistant and Sandberg take turns sleeping in each other’s laps, stroking each other’s hair. On the 12-hour flight home on a private jet, a pajama-clad Sandberg claims the only bed on the plane and repeatedly demands that Wynn-Williams “come to bed.” Wynn-Williams demurs. Sandberg is miffed.

Sandberg isn’t the only person in this book with apparent boundary issues. Wynn-Williams has uncomfortable encounters with Joel Kaplan, an ex-boyfriend of Sandberg’s from Harvard, who was hired as Facebook’s vice president of U.S. policy and eventually became vice president of global policy — Wynn-Williams’s manager. A former Marine who clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and who was part of the “Brooks Brothers riot” of 2000, which helped bring George W. Bush into office, Kaplan went on to serve as a deputy chief of staff in his administration.

Wynn-Williams describes Kaplan grinding up against her on the dance floor at a work event, announcing that she looks “sultry” and making “weird comments” about her husband. When she delivers her second child, an amniotic fluid embolism nearly kills her; yet Kaplan keeps emailing her while she’s on maternity leave, insisting on weekly videoconferences. She tells him she needs more surgery because she’s still bleeding. “But where are you bleeding from?” he repeatedly presses her. An internal Facebook investigation into her “experience” with Kaplan cleared him of any wrongdoing.

Such scenes of personal degradation are lurid enough, but Wynn-Williams also had a front-row seat to some of Facebook’s most ignominious episodes. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Facebook employees embedded with the Trump campaign helped it micro-target potential voters, feeding them bespoke ads filled with “misinformation, inflammatory posts and fund-raising messages.” (The Clinton campaign declined Facebook’s offer to embed employees.) The following year, in Myanmar, a country heavily reliant on Facebook, hateful lies propagated on the platform incited a genocide against the minority Rohingya ethnic group.

Wynn-Williams says she started raising the alarm about Myanmar several years earlier, trying to persuade Facebook to beef up its monitoring operations when she learned that hate speech was circulating on the platform. Content moderation was painfully (and lethally) slow, she writes, because the company relied on one contractor who spoke Burmese: a “Burmese guy” based in Dublin, multiple time zones away from both Myanmar and Facebook’s California headquarters. “Myanmar demonstrates better than anywhere the havoc Facebook can wreak when it’s truly ubiquitous.”

The book includes a detailed chapter on “Aldrin,” the code name for Facebook’s project to get unblocked in China. According to Wynn-Williams, the company proposed all kinds of byzantine arrangements involving China-based partnerships, data collection and censorship tools that it hoped would satisfy China’s ruling Communist Party.

Knowing that Zuckerberg would probably face questions about China from Congress, his team gave him cleverly worded talking points. “There seems to be no compunction about misleading Congress,” Wynn-Williams writes. “Senators will need to ask exceptionally specific questions to get close to any truth.” When Zuckerberg eventually appears before a Senate committee in 2018, a senator asks him how Facebook is handling the Chinese government’s unwillingness “to allow a social media platform — foreign or domestic — to operate in China unless it agrees to abide by Chinese law.” In his reply, Zuckerberg states, “No decisions have been made around the conditions under which any possible future service might be offered in China,” to which Wynn-Williams comments: “He lies.”

Wynn-Williams has filed a whistle-blower complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Professionally, she has moved on, to work on policy issues related to artificial intelligence and to pour her gallows humor into this book. “Careless People” may contain a cast of careless people, but it’s ultimately Zuckerberg who “wants to be the decider.” She shows him replacing the imperfect system of checks and balances that her policy team developed over the years with his decrees, which typically coincide with his business interests: “Facebook is an autocracy of one.”

And autocracies aren’t bound by term limits. In 2016, during a summit of world leaders in Peru, Wynn-Williams noticed that many faces were familiar; a number of other leaders were gone. “I’m struck by the impermanence of importance,” she writes. “Yet Mark could conceivably continue to hold his place chairing world leaders for another 50 years. He’ll see these leaders off and the generations of leaders that follow them. Like the queen.”