Chuck Todd. Courtesy of William B. Plowman/NBC.

Dear Commons Community,

Chuck Todd, the former “Meet the Press” moderator, is leaving NBC News, he told colleagues in a memo issued yesterday, a move he’s making in order to pursue ventures outside the NBCUniversal empire.  As reported by Variety:

Todd had in recent weeks been meeting with other news outlets and potential employers, according to people familiar with the matter. His current contract with NBC News had been expected to lapse at some point after the 2024 election.

“There’s never a perfect time to leave a place that’s been a professional home for so long, but I’m pretty excited about a few new projects that are on the cusp of going from ‘pie in the sky’ to ‘near reality,’ Todd told NBC News staffers in the memo.  “So I’m grateful for the chance to get a jump start on my next chapter during this important moment.”

He said his “Chuck Toddcast” podcast would be “coming with me,” and urged colleagues to “stay tuned for an announcement about its new home soon.” Todd plans “to continue to share my reporting and unique perspective of covering politics with data and history as important baselines in understanding where we were, where we are and where we’re going.”

“We’re grateful for Chuck’s many contributions to our political coverage during his nearly two-decade career at NBC News and for his deep commitment to Meet the Press and its enduring legacy,” NBC News said in a statement. “We wish him all the best in his next endeavors.”

Many personnel at traditional TV outlets have explored opportunities with digital or new-tech outlets in recent months, a nod to the more difficult economics of national newsgathering in the current climate. Jim Acosta, the CNN anchor, announced earlier this week that he was leaving the Warner Bros. Discovery-backed network to launch his own Substack. Don Lemon and Megyn Kelly are among the ranks of well-known TV anchors who have moved on to digital media.

When he moderated “Meet The Press,” Todd demonstrated an entrepreneurial streak, bringing the long-running Sunday program into podcasting and even launching a film festival.

“Everyone is trying to figure out how to get in front of millennials. I think the millennial generation learns as much visually as they do the old-fashioned way, by the book,” Todd told Variety in 2017. “We are no longer in the business of telling people how they should consume information. Our job is to provide depth and information in any way they want to consume it.”

He told staffers he expected to continue to try to build new media businesses. “The media has a lot of work to do to win back the trust of viewers/listeners/readers and I’m convinced the best place to start is from the bottom up.  At my core, I’m an entrepreneur — I spent my first 15 years professionally working for the company that started the political newsletter craze that dominates today.  And this is a ripe moment,” he said, adding: “The only way to fix this information eco system is to stop whining about the various ways the social media companies are manipulating things and instead roll up our collective sleeves and start with local.  National media can’t win trust back without having a robust partner locally and trying to game algorithms is no way to inform and report.  People are craving community and that’s something national media or the major social media companies can’t do as well as local media.”

Todd joined NBC News in 2007 as a political director, after having spent 15 years working at National Journal and leading the “The Hotline,” an early digital newsletter focused on inside-the-Beltway maneuvers. In 2008, he was named chief White House correspondent. In 2014, he was elevated to top duties at “Meet The Press,” succeeding David Gregory. He expanded the program by doing a regular daytime hour on MSNBC called “MTP Daily,” a program that was eventually moved over to the live-streaming service NBC News Now.”

I always thought of Todd as a fine newsman.  We wish him luck in his new ventures.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

John Horgan, who is the author of Mind-Body Problems and My Quantum Experiment, had an article in Scientific American in 2022 and republished earlier this week sub-titled “A radical quantum hypothesis casts doubt on objective reality.”  It reviews individual perceptions and whether reality is strictly  in the eye of the beholder.  This is an old issue that has been debated ever since Max Planck and Niels Bohr first posited quantum mechanics which challenged traditional deterministic, empirical theories in the early 1900s. Horgan refers to QBism (Quantum Bayesianism Probability Theory) which Horgan defines as:

“A newish interpretation of quantum mechanics called QBism (pronounced “Cubism,” like the art movement) makes subjective experience the bedrock of knowledge and reality itself. David Mermin, a prominent theorist, says QBism can dispel the “confusion at the foundations of quantum mechanics.” You just have to accept that all knowledge begins with “individual personal experience.”

According to QBism, each of us constructs a set of beliefs about the world, based on our interactions with it. We constantly, implicitly, update our beliefs when we interact with relatives who refuse to get vaccinated or sensors tracking the swerve of an electron. The big reality in which we all live emerges from the collisions of all our subjective mini-realities.”

QBism is similar to multiple realities and  has been a bedrock for qualitative researchers for decades. I have been lecturing on this since the 1980s in my education research methods courses. In sum, this new interpretation of QBism seems like old wine in a new bottle.

Below is an excerpt from the Horgan article.

Tony

————————————————————————–

“As philosopher Michael Strevens points out in The Knowledge Machine, science resolves disputes by means of repeated observations and experiments. Strevens calls scientists’ commitment to empirical data the “iron rule of explanation.” Ideally, the iron rule produces durable, objectively true accounts of the world.

But subjectivity is hard to expunge even in physics, the foundation on which science rests. Quantum mechanics, a mathematical model of matter at very small scales, is science’s most rigorously tested theory. Countless experiments have confirmed it, as do computer chips, lasers and other technologies that exploit quantum effects.

Unfortunately, quantum mechanics defies common sense. For more than a century, physicists have tried to interpret the theory, to turn it into a coherent story, in vain. “Every competent physicist can ‘do’ quantum mechanics,” a leading textbook says, “but the stories we tell ourselves about what we are doing are as various as the tales of Scheherazade, and almost as implausible.”

Many physicists ignore the puzzles posed by quantum mechanics. They take a practical, utilitarian attitude toward the theory, summed up by the admonition, “Shut up and calculate!” That is, forget about those quantum paradoxes and keep working on that quantum computer, which might make you rich!

Others keep probing the theory. In 1961 a prominent theorist, Eugene Wigner, proposed a thought experiment similar to the conundrum of Schrödinger’s cat. Instead of the fabled cat in a box, imagine that a friend of Wigner is inside a laboratory monitoring a radioactive specimen. When the specimen decays, a detector flashes.

Now imagine that Wigner is outside the lab. If Wigner’s friend sees the detector flash, he knows that the specimen has decayed. But to Wigner, standing outside the lab, the specimen, his friend and the entire lab hover in a blur of possible states. Wigner and his friend seem to occupy two distinct realities.

In 2020, physicists performed a version of Wigner’s thought experiment and concluded that his intuitions were correct. In a story for Science headlined “Quantum paradox points to shaky foundations of reality,” physics reporter George Musser says the experiment calls objectivity into question. “It could mean there is no such thing as an absolute fact,” Musser writes, “one that is as true for me as it is for you.”

A newish interpretation of quantum mechanics called QBism (pronounced “Cubism,” like the art movement) makes subjective experience the bedrock of knowledge and reality itself. David Mermin, a prominent theorist, says QBism can dispel the “confusion at the foundations of quantum mechanics.” You just have to accept that all knowledge begins with “individual personal experience.”

According to QBism, each of us constructs a set of beliefs about the world, based on our interactions with it. We constantly, implicitly, update our beliefs when we interact with relatives who refuse to get vaccinated or sensors tracking the swerve of an electron. The big reality in which we all live emerges from the collisions of all our subjective mini-realities.

QBists hedge their mind-centrism, if only so they don’t come across as loons or mystics. They accept that matter exists as well as mind, and they reject solipsism, which holds that no sentient being can really be sure that any other being is sentient. But QBism’s core message, science writer Amanda Gefter says, is that the idea of “a single objective reality is an illusion.” A dream, you might say.

Proponents bicker over definitions, and physicists and philosophers fond of objectivity reject QBism entirely. All this squabbling, ironically, seems to confirm QBism’s premise that there is no absolute objectivity; there are only subjective, first-person viewpoints.”

John Horgan, who has written for Scientific American since 1986, comments on science on his free online journal Cross-Check. He has also posted his books Mind-Body Problems and My Quantum Experiment online. Horgan teaches at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Satya Nadella, the C.E.O. of Microsoft, said his company will keep up its investments in A.I. despite China’s DeepSeek! Credit…Chalinee Thirasupa/Reuters

Dear Commons Community,

Both Meta and Microsoft are committing to large investments in artificial intelligence, despite new Chinese software developed by DeepSeek outperforming American rivals at a lower cost.

Wall Street has been on tenterhooks about how Silicon Valley would respond to DeepSeek, the Chinese start-up whose low-cost artificial intelligence software threatens to undercut the pricey American approach to the technology.

So far, the answer appears to be: full steam ahead.  As reported by The New York Times.

Meta and Microsoft, two of the so-called Magnificent Seven group of tech stocks, said they each planned to keep spending billions on A.I. And news reports about SoftBank’s talks to inject billions more into OpenAI suggest that deep-pocketed investors are still bullish on the ChatGPT creator.

Continuing to spend heavily on A.I. will be a “strategic advantage over time,” Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s C.E.O., told analysts on Wednesday, defending plans to invest up to $65 billion, largely in A.I.-related resources, this year.

And Amy Hood, Microsoft’s C.F.O., told analysts that her company — which plans to invest about $80 billion in A.I. this fiscal year — will grow such spending next year, though at a slower rate. It’s worth noting that Microsoft’s sales growth slowed in the most recent quarter partly, according to the company, because it lacked the cloud computing capacity to meet A.I. demand.

The comments were a strong defense of the status quo, where the prevailing wisdom is that winning the A.I. race requires lots of money to buy expensive Nvidia chips and build data centers to train and power such software.

That’s despite DeepSeek seemingly showing that it was possible to achieve industry-leading performance with a fraction of those resources (even as OpenAI has raised questions about its rival’s achievements.)

And then there’s SoftBank, which is in talks to invest $15 billion to $25 billion in OpenAI, according to The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. That would come after the ChatGPT creator raised $6.6 billion from SoftBank and others, and after OpenAI and SoftBank agreed to collaborate on the $100 billion-plus Stargate data center initiative.

Masa Son, SoftBank’s wildly ambitious C.E.O., wants to become a central figure in A.I. A deal would make OpenAI SoftBank’s biggest bet to date on A.I., underscoring a belief by Son — who tends to bet big on companies he thinks will be clear winners — that OpenAI fits that bill.

But there are signs that Microsoft is willing to hedge on OpenAI. Microsoft is the start-up’s largest investor, at least for now, and Satya Nadella, the tech giant’s C.E.O., said that he remained committed to their partnership.

He added, however, that the data centers that Microsoft is building to support A.I. applications were “fungible” and could be tasked to different models, including DeepSeek’s.

Investors appear to have mixed feelings. Shares in Meta were up 2 percent in premarket, a seeming ratification of Zuckerberg’s plans. But shares in Microsoft were down nearly 4 percent, in part because of uncertainty over sales growth and spending.

The battle of the AI titans is heating up!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

America’s children have continued to lose ground on reading skills in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and have made little improvement in math, according to the latest results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam also known as the nation’s report card.

The findings are yet another setback for U.S. schools and reflect the myriad challenges that have upended education, from pandemic school closures to a youth mental health crisis and high rates of chronic absenteeism. The national exam results also show growing inequality: While the highest-performing students have started to regain lost ground, lower-performing students are falling further behind.  As reported by The Associated Press.

Given every two years to a sample of America’s children, the NAEP is considered one of the best gauges of the academic progress of the U.S. school system. The most recent exam was administered in early 2024 in every state, testing fourth- and eighth-grade students on math and reading.

“The news is not good,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the assessment. “We are not seeing the progress we need to regain the ground our students lost during the pandemic.”

Among the few bright spots was an improvement in fourth grade math, where the average score ticked up 2 points on a scale of 500. It’s still 3 points lower than the 2019 pre-pandemic average, yet some states and districts made significant strides, including in Washington, D.C., where the average score increased 10 points.

For the most part, however, American schools have not yet begun to make progress.

Growing numbers of students lack basic reading skills

The average math score for eighth grade students was unchanged from 2022, while reading scores fell 2 points at both grade levels. One-third of eighth grade students scored below “basic” in reading, more than ever in the history of the assessment.

Students are considered below basic if they are missing fundamental skills. For example, eighth grade students who scored below basic in reading were typically unable to make a simple inference about a character’s motivation after reading a short story, and some were unable to identify that the word “industrious” means “to be hard working.”

Especially alarming to officials was the divide between higher- and lower-performing students, which has grown wider than ever. Students with the highest scores outperformed their peers from two years ago, making up some ground lost during the pandemic. But the lowest performers are scoring even lower, falling further behind.

It was most pronounced in eighth grade math: While the top 10% of students saw their scores increased by 3 points, the lowest 10% decreased by 6 points.

That could reflect investments by families in high-performing students’ recovery from the pandemic. “Families that had the resources, they hired extra tutors, they got extra support to build on what was going on in the classroom,” said Eric Mackey, superintendent of education in Alabama. “Families that either could not afford that or didn’t have the opportunity or resources for that continued to struggle.”

The drop in scores continues a post-pandemic slide

The latest setbacks follow a historic post-pandemic backslide in 2022. In that year’s exam, student achievement fell across both subjects and grade levels, in some cases by unprecedented levels.

This round of testing again featured students whose lives were disrupted by the pandemic. When COVID hit in 2020, the fourth graders were in kindergarten. The eighth graders were in fourth grade.

But Carr said poor results can no longer be blamed solely on the pandemic, warning the nation’s education system faces “complex challenges.”

A survey done alongside the exam found in 2022 that fewer young students were reading for enjoyment, which is linked to lower reading scores. New survey results found students who are often absent from class — a persistent problem nationwide — are struggling the most.

The results provide fresh fuel for a national debate over the impact of pandemic school closures, though they’re unlikely to add clarity. Some studies have found that longer closures led to bigger academic setbacks. Those slower to reopen were often in urban and Democratic-led areas, while more rural and Republican-led areas were quicker.

The new results don’t show a “direct link” on the topic, Carr said, though she said students clearly do better when they’re in school.

Among the states that saw reading scores fall in 2024 are Florida and Arizona, which were among the first to return to the classroom during the pandemic. Some big school systems that had longer closures made strides in fourth grade math, including Los Angeles and New York City.

The success of big urban districts — 14 of which saw notable improvement in fourth-grade math when the nation overall saw only minor gains — can be credited to academic recovery efforts funded by federal money, said Ray Hart, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools. Investing in efforts like intensive tutoring programs and curriculum updates is “really proving to make a difference,” he said.

Is screen time to blame?

Pandemic-era changes in childhood outside the classroom may have impacted scores as well.

“We should be looking at what social media and the rise of the screen-based childhood is doing for reading skills,” said Marty West, academic dean at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Parents should be reading with their kids, and listening to them read, Mackey said. “We are concerned that students are spending … too much time on the phone and not enough time reading books,” Mackey said.

Even in school, West pointed out, students are reading and writing less. A majority of eighth graders last year said their teachers asked them to write several sentences about reading assignments fewer than six times a year.

“There’s no way around the fact that relationships, high-quality teachers and really engaging and high-expectation classrooms matter the most for kids,” said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education.

It will take a small miracle to turn this around!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Russian physicists have been banished since late last year from Europe’s CERN, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, and increasingly isolated by trade sanctions that have complicated purchases of scientific equipment, many Russian physicists are having to dramatically reorient their work—with some looking to China for collaboration.  As reported in Science.

Some Russian  scientists have found ways to sustain their connections to CERN and other institutions in Europe and the United States. But they have faced pressure from Russian officials to sever ties.

The breakdown in collaborations, catalyzed by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, is producing “obvious losses” for all sides, says Alla Skovorodina, a spokesperson for the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics (BINP), a leading Russian research center. Researchers from the institute had worked with CERN for decades, she notes, a collaboration that “has always been mutually beneficial.” Russian scientists played a significant role, for example, in building and operating the Compact Muon Solenoid, one of two key particle detectors fed by the world’s largest atom smasher, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which discovered the Higgs boson.

But several hundred Russian scientists were forced to end their work at CERN on 30 November 2024, after the laboratory terminated its partnership agreements with institutes operated by the governments of Russia and Belarus, Russia’s close ally. At least 90 Russian researchers sidestepped the ban by reaffiliating with institutes in other nations, according to a CERN spokesperson. The ban also did not apply to scientists affiliated with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) near Moscow, which is operated by a coalition of more than a dozen nations and has its own agreement with CERN.

More Russian researchers might have attempted to reaffiliate if not for opposition from prominent Russian officials, says Andrey Seryakov, a Russian physicist who in recent years had spent up to 3 months a year at CERN. For example, when researchers attempted to establish a new organization, based outside Russia, that would have enabled Russian scientists to continue working at CERN, they faced fierce criticism from physicist Mikhail Kovalchuk, president of the Kurchatov Institute nuclear energy research center, who is known for his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Given that most Russian scientists working at CERN have their main place of work in Russian universities and research centers, most of them were forced to refuse to cooperate,” Seryakov says.

Although Seryakov can no longer work at CERN, he says he is still analyzing data he collected at the laboratory while he looks for a job. (He lost a post at St. Petersburg State University because of political activism.)

Other Russian physicists who have lost access to CERN say they will turn to domestic projects, such as the Nuclotron-based Ion Collider Facility under construction at JINR, which will create fleeting puffs of fundamental particles called a quarkgluon plasma, and a pair of small electron-positron colliders at BINP. The larger of the two produces a particle called the tau lepton, a fleeting heavier cousin of the electron. The smaller, just 24 meters in circumference, has pioneered a new technique to produce round particle beams, which are more compact and stable than the usual flat, ribbonlike ones. That should enable a collider to run longer before refilling the beams. “These are worthy projects, although they are not as advanced as the LHC,” says physicist Fedor Ratnikov of the Laboratory of Methods for Big Data Analysis at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

At BINP, another “promising direction is China,” Skovorodina says. China has ambitious plans for a next-generation collider that could surpass the LHC in energy, she notes, “and our institute plans to participate.”

In the meantime, Russian physicists continue to struggle with trade sanctions that have made it difficult to obtain electronics and other high-tech gear from the U.S. and Europe, and ongoing pressure from Ukraine and its allies to expel Russia from other collaborations. For example, a BINP researcher says Russian contributions to a nuclear physics experiment called PANDA at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research, a large accelerator project currently under construction in Germany, have been largely frozen.

Such ruptures trouble Anatoli Romaniouk, a Russian physicist who has worked at CERN since 1990 and was not directly affected by the ban. “Science is a bridge that allows people to communicate and exchange both intellectual and moral products,” he says, adding that he will try to maintain some communication with colleagues in Russia, in part because he thinks it is important to “give young scientists the opportunity to participate and develop in the global scientific community.” But he’s not optimistic that U.S. and European institutions will become more welcoming to Russia anytime soon. “I do not foresee any significant changes in attitudes towards Russian scientists in the next decade,” he says. “And perhaps longer.”

Science indeed can be a bridge between countries!

Tony

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Photo courtesy of Win McNamee via Getty Images.

Dear Commons Community,

In response to external attacks on DEI at big-name financial firms, JPMorgan Chase CEO and Chair Jamie Dimon had a few choice words regarding the activists: “Bring them on.”

The comments were made yesterday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” program, filmed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.  AS reported by HR Dive

This comes shortly after President Donald Trump’s two-day cascade of executive orders — including several that dismantle or seek to dismantle DEI initiatives — following his inauguration on Monday.

The forum correspondent asked Dimon about “a rebuke of ESG, a rebuke of DEI” spearheaded by conservative activists such as Robby Starbuck. 

“You now have a couple of activists going after your company,” the interviewer said.

“Really? Not that I’m aware of,” Dimon responded. When the interviewer pushed him, Dimon said, “Well, bring them on.”

Standing by DEI, despite executive orders

Trump has signed at least five executive orders that pertain to DEI in both the public and private sector:

• Jan. 20: One rescinds former President Joe Biden’s 2023 order creating an equity team.
• Jan. 20: Another order shutters every federal agency’s diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility program “under whatever name they appear.”
• Jan. 20: Another denies the existence of gender identity, and bars trans people from single-sex spaces, including in the workplace.
• Jan. 20: Yet another executive order bans discussion of gender identity in the federal hiring process.
• Jan. 21: Trump also demands that federal agencies encourage private-sector firms to end DEI programs.

The topic of executive orders came up during the conversation with JPMorgan Chase’s CEO.

“First of all, I don’t like monikers and it makes it sound like it’s a binary thing of what you do,” Dimon said at one point. He outlined what JPMorgan Chase does and has “always done.”

While some policies may change, he acknowledged, the firm has long followed its own map. 

For example, he said, “We’ve always done our own thing in climate. So we get criticized by people on the left and the right about climate. We’ve financed the biggest oil and gas companies — who’ve done a great job reducing their CO2, by the way. We’re the biggest financer of solar and wind.”

Adding to his illustrations of arguable contradictions, Dimon said, “We are going to continue to reach out to the Black community, Hispanic community, the LGBT community, the veterans community […] And wherever I go, red states, blue states, green states, mayors, governors […] they like what we do.”

Ultimately, he said, “We’re not trying to pander to any which side or any which thing.” 

ESG Dive sister publication HR Dive reached out to JPMorgan Chase for additional comment. A spokesperson pointed to Dimon’s previous statements on diversity and inclusion efforts. The document, published in 2023, highlights the firm’s commitment to business resource groups and community outreach for Black people, women, veterans and people with disabilities.

“This approach is integral to what we do, in great scale, around the world — and it works,” Dimon said at the time. “We are quite clear that whether our efforts are inspired by the goodness of our hearts (as philanthropy or venture-type investing) or good business, we try to measure the actual outcomes.”

We need more CEOs like Dimon speaking out on DEI!

The above story was sent to me by my colleague, Patsy Moskal.

Tony

Yann LeCun, chief A.I. scientist at Meta, said “the current state of machine learning is that it sucks.”Credit.Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Participants at this year’s Joint Mathematics Meetings explored everything from the role of A.I. to the hyperbolic design of a patchwork denim skirt.

The world’s largest gathering of mathematicians convened in Seattle from Jan. 8 to Jan. 11 — 5,444 mathematicians, 3,272 talks. This year the program diverged somewhat from the its traditional kaleidoscopic panorama. An official theme, “Mathematics in the Age of A.I.,” was set by Bryna Kra, the president of the American Mathematical Society, which hosts the event in collaboration with 16 partner organizations. In one configuration or another, the meeting, called the Joint Mathematics Meetings, or the J.M.M., has been held more or less annually for over a century.  As reported by The New York Times.

Dr. Kra intended the A.I. theme as a “wake-up call.” “A.I. is something that is in our lives, and it’s time to start thinking about how it impacts your teaching, your students, your research,” she said in an interview with The New York Times. “What does it mean to have A.I. as a co-author? These are the kinds of questions that we have to grapple with.”

On the second evening, Yann LeCun, the chief A.I. scientist at Meta, gave a keynote lecture titled “Mathematical Obstacles on the Way to Human-Level A.I.” Dr. LeCun got a bit into the technical weeds, but there were digestible tidbits.

“The current state of machine learning is that it sucks,” he said during the lecture, to much chortling. “Never mind humans, never mind trying to reproduce mathematicians or scientists; we can’t even reproduce what a cat can do.”

Instead of the generative large language models powering chatbots, he argued, a “large-scale world model” would be the better bet for advancing and improving the technology. Such a system, he said in an interview after the lecture, “can reason and plan because it has a mental model of the world that predicts consequences of its action.” But there are obstacles, he admitted — some mathematically intractable problems, their solutions nowhere in sight.

Deirdre Haskell, the director of the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences in Toronto and a mathematician at McMaster University, said she appreciated Dr. LeCun’s reminder that, as she recalled, “the way we use the term A.I. today is only one way of possibly having an ‘artificial intelligence.’”

Dr. LeCun had noted in his lecture that the term artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I. — a machine with human-level intelligence — was a misnomer. Humans “do not have general intelligence at all,” he said. “We’re extremely specialized.” The preferred term at Meta, he said, is “advanced machine intelligence,” or AMI — “we pronounce it ‘ami,’ which means friend in French.”

Dr. Haskell was already sold on the importance of “using A.I. to do math, and the huge problem of understanding the math of A.I.” An expert in mathematical logic, she plans to use a theorem-proving program to create the equivalent of a textbook: a collection of results that can be used by A.I. systems to generate and verify more complex mathematical research and proofs.

For Kenny Banks, an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro who attended the J.M.M., artificial intelligence does not appeal as a tool for guiding exploration. “I think the mathematics that people currently love is driven by human curiosity, and what computers find interesting cannot be the same as what humans find interesting,” he said in an email. Nevertheless, he regretted not squeezing any A.I.-related talks into his itinerary. “The math + A.I. theme was definitely of interest, it just ended up not working with all the things I had planned!”

Other highlights are available here!

 Tony

Caroline Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, Jr.   Photo by Pat Hoelscher/AFP via Getty Images/ Kevin Lamarque – Pool/Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Caroline Kennedy, the only living child of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in a video (see below) posted on social media yesterday called her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of Health and Human Services, a predator.

“I have known Bobby my whole life,” Caroline Kennedy says in the video (below), in which she’s reading aloud a letter she wrote to senators. “We grew up together. It’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because he himself is a predator.”

Robert Kennedy Jr., U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, walks in the U.S. Capitol subway on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 17, 2024.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Caroline Kennedy’s son, Jack Schlossberg posted the video on X, formerly Twitter. He said his mother had sent it to a Senate committee, an action first reported by the Washington Post. RFK Jr.’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for today at 10 a.m.

In the letter, she praised her cousin for recovering from substance abuse but said before getting sober, he encouraged siblings and cousins to use drugs and they wound up addicted, ill or dead. She said, broadly, that her cousin had gone on to “misrepresent, lie and cheat his way through life.”

“Bobby is addicted to attention and power,” Caroline Kennedy says in the video. “Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children – vaccinating his own kids, while building a following hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.”

She characterized running the Department of Health and Human Services – which includes overseeing the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health – as “an enormous responsibility, and one that Bobby is unqualified to fill.”

“He lacks any relevant government, financial, management or medical experience,” Caroline Kennedy said. “His views on vaccines are dangerous and willfully misinformed. The facts alone should be disqualifying, but he has personal qualities related to this job, which, for me, pose even greater concern.”

RFK Jr. has acknowledged skeletons in his closet and admitted he is “not a church boy.” His children’s former babysitter, who is about 20 years his junior, accused him publicly of sexual assault. He apologized to her but said he had no memory of the alleged encounter. The case never went to court.

Seventy-seven Nobel Prize winners penned a letter in December urging the Senate not to confirm his appointment, saying his leadership would “put the public’s health in jeopardy.”

Thank you, Ms.  Kennedy. We hope the Republican senators heed your advice!

Tony

Penny Schwinn is greeted by students at Fairmount Elementary in Bristol, Tenn.

Credit:  David Crigger/Bristol Herald Courier via AP.

Dear Commons Community

Though Trump’s pick for the top education job, Linda McMahon, has limited experience in the field, she’ll be joined in leadership by a seasoned educator with a bipartisan track record—creating what could be an effective team for advancing the Trump administration’s priorities. The appointment of former Tennessee state education commissioner Penny Schwinn as deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Education contrasts with Trump’s selection of McMahon for the agency’s top job.

McMahon’s background in business—as co-founder and former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO before serving as administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration in Trump’s first administration—and Schwinn’s robust education experience could pair well together, said Cate Sommervold, a professor at Doane University and author of a 2024 book on the nation’s 12 secretaries of education.  As reported in Education Week.

“They are a good balance of business acumen and experience in education—they complement each other,” Sommervold said in an email. “I believe that the complementary combination of the secretary and deputy secretary will allow for an effective team that will be able to make the significant policy moves that the president has proposed.”

Schwinn’s appointment was also greeted with optimism by three former secretaries of education who served presidents from both parties, and other policy watchers expressed hope that her selection foretells a focus in the federal agency on bolstering academics following historic achievement declines.

The reaction has been more mixed in right-wing circles. When Schwinn left her job in Tennessee in 2023, she criticized culture war battles over gender and race instruction as “extraneous politics” in an interview at the time with The 74.

But the Trump administration is already wading into fiery policy decisions by rolling back protections for transgender students and overturning previous policy that prohibited immigration officials from making arrests on school property.

Under one of Trump’s directives, the Education Department suspended staff who were involved with diversity, equity, and inclusion work. Its office for civil rights also dismissed claims related to district book removals and eliminated a coordinator position the Biden administration created to “address the growing threat that book bans pose for the civil rights of students.”

Supporters of Schwinn’s appointment hope it portends a focus on learning outcomes.

“She has proven to be capable and practical, solutions-oriented, and willing to reach across the aisle to get things done,” said Roberto Rodriguez, who worked at the Education Department during the Obama and Biden administrations. “I think she’ll be a good partner.”

Schwinn draws praise for her work on literacy in Tennessee

The pick of McMahon as secretary of education drew a swift denunciation from the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union.

Schwinn’s appointment, by contrast, drew no immediate reaction from either of the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions. Three former education secretaries, meanwhile, thought she was a promising pick.

Arne Duncan, who served under Democratic President Barack Obama, described her during a Jan. 21 Brookings Institution panel as “a serious person.”

“She’s smart, she cares about kids,” he said.

Schwinn served as Tennessee’s schools chief under Republican Gov. Bill Lee from 2019 to 2023. She started her K-12 career as a Teach For America teacher in Baltimore, before later moving into education leadership positions in several states. She had most recently worked at the University of Florida and earlier in her career founded a Sacramento charter school. Schwinn is a proponent of school choice—a priority for the Trump administration—but has also discussed a need for fiscal and academic accountability measures as part of policies expanding choice.

During her tenure as Tennessee schools chief, she oversaw the development of the first federally registered teacher apprenticeship program, oversaw implementation of a 2021 state law requiring that schools shift to evidence-based early literacy instruction, and led a review of the state’s funding formula that led to its first revision in decades.

“When she was in Tennessee, she was a voice for urgency around helping students read better, do math better, graduate better prepared for college and careers,” John King Jr., who served as education secretary under Obama, said on the same Brookings panel. “We need that kind of leadership in this moment; we are still way behind where we were before COVID.”

Margaret Spellings, who served under Republican President George W. Bush, echoed the sentiment.

“They’ve been in government,” she said of Schwinn and McMahon. “They know how to work with a legislative body. There’s some real encouraging signs.”

Schwinn is a less polarizing pick than the No. 2 in Trump’s first Education Department

During Trump’s first administration, the president’s pick for the No. 2 slot at the Education Department, Mick Zais, the former South Carolina state chief, was nearly as polarizing as Trump’s selection of Betsy DeVos for education secretary.

Schwinn cuts a different mold, and she could help the Trump administration overcome some of the animosity created by the president’s executive orders targeting career staffers, said Carlas McCauley, who worked at the department as a career staffer from 2007 to 2014.

“Penny Schwinn is incredible,” said McCauley, an associate professor of education leadership and policy studies at Howard University. “I’ve watched her, from Delaware to Texas to Tennessee, build the kind of rapport internally, regardless of party line, to fight for and educate the most vulnerable student populations in the country.”

Her background as a state chief—especially one with a “proven track record”—will be vital in a role that’s heavy on state-federal relations, said Carey M. Wright, the state superintendent of schools for Maryland, who calls Schwinn a good friend and whose tenure as Mississippi’s state schools chief overlapped with Schwinn’s in Tennessee.

“It’s easy to sit up in an office and say, ‘Oh, let’s make the states do X.’ If you don’t have any experience at doing X, you have no idea the amount of work that goes into implementation and execution at a state level to get that accomplished,” Wright said.

Schwinn understands how fellow state chiefs will respond to new policies and initiatives from the department, and knowing how things are done at the state level will ultimately help the federal agency, Wright said.

Schwinn has “a real depth in background,” particularly when it comes to operating large, complex bureaucracies, said Jim Blew, who served in the agency during Trump’s first term.

“That puts her in a position to be very helpful to the secretary,” said Blew, who is now a co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, a nonprofit focused on conservative policy solutions. “She’s going to be a great deputy secretary.”

Whereas McMahon’s job will have her interfacing with the White House, Schwinn’s will have her managing the department. With the two seeming “very aligned philosophically,” Blew anticipates they’ll complement each other well.

Her appointment, however, has rankled some on the right.

When right-wing activist Christopher Rufo, a high-profile critic of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, came out in support of Schwinn’s appointment last week, his post about it on the social media platform X drew several critical responses from conservatives.

During her tenure in Tennessee, one move that drew criticism from Republicans was a policy providing COVID relief funds to districts to support at-home well-being checks of students during the pandemic.

Schwinn’s pick signifies making use of the department, rather than abolishing it

Schwinn’s and McMahon’s confirmation hearings have yet to be scheduled, but they’re sure to feature questions for both about their thoughts on eliminating the U.S. Department of Education—a key Trump education priority.

The administration has two options—diminish the agency’s role and move its essential functions to other departments, or use it for various political ends, whether that’s as a “machine of culture war” or expanding private school choice, said Mark Hlavacik, an associate professor of communication studies at the University of North Texas.

“I see the decision to add Schwinn in that [latter] direction,” Hlavacik said. “There are plans to make use of the Department of Education.”

It’s a risk for the department to get “distracted” with matters like rolling back diversity, equity, and inclusion, rather than focusing on learning, said Rodriguez. He hopes the addition of Schwinn is a good sign that learning will take precedence.

“That work—the real work around teaching and learning, student well-being and success, and economic preparedness, economic competitiveness—that can’t wait. That is very urgent work,” Rodriguez said.

Wright said Schwinn is good at keeping “the main thing, the main thing.”

“We’re all out here trying to make sure that students lives are changed for the positive, and that they become good readers, and have numeracy under their belts—all the things that you want young adults growing into,” she said.

Blew predicts a second Trump term that looks a lot different from the first, with the president taking office focused on issues squarely in the Education Department’s portfolio—including Title IX, student loan debt, and DEI.

“I think the White House will be much more engaged in shaping the Education Department’s agenda and work this time,” he said.

Penny Schwinn sounds like a good choice. We wish her luck!

Tony

Source:  President’s Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration (July 23. 2024).

Dear Commons Community,

The following is taken from an article that appeared this morning in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Tony

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What’s New

As immigration enforcement ramps up under the new Trump administration, some public colleges are releasing statements and revised protocols for what faculty, staff, and students should do if they are approached by federal authorities.

The announcements from institutions follow a slew of immigration-related orders signed by President Trump during his first week in office. In response, the Department of Homeland Security issued a directive rescinding a policy that had protected schools and colleges from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. Public colleges now could be subject to enforcement actions, including arrests by ICE officers, without advance notice.

Around 400,000 college students nationwide are undocumented.

The Details

Previously, immigration officers were required to get approval from DHS — “their agency’s headquarters or an authorized delegate” — to carry out enforcement actions on campuses, thanks to a policy protecting “sensitive” areas. The Trump administration’s move last week reversed guidelines that had been in place for over a decade.

Colleges are still bound by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, which prohibits schools from releasing students’ records to law-enforcement officers — unless the request is related to a valid court order or subpoena.

Some colleges have released information regarding what ICE can and cannot do on their campuses. Northern Illinois University published a resource page specifying which areas of campus are publicly accessible, such as library common areas, hallways of academic buildings, and cultural centers.

Other colleges announced plans to comply with law enforcement, but it’s not yet clear what compliance would look like.

During a faculty-council meeting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Friday, Chancellor Lee Roberts said the university will “follow the law” when questioned about responding to the new directive.

“If we’re asked by law enforcement, we’re going to comply with any requests from law enforcement about that or anything else,” Roberts said at the meeting.

Jonathan Holloway, president of Rutgers University, which includes three campuses, emailed senior administrators on Friday advising faculty and staff members and students to contact Rutgers’ police department if they become aware of ICE activities on campus.

“Rutgers is committed to ensuring that any federal enforcement actions on campus adhere to due process, including the requirement of a warrant when necessary,” Holloway wrote in the message, which a university spokesperson provided to The Chronicle.

The Backdrop

Many of these campus guidelines aren’t new. Some colleges have had immigration- and ICE-related policies and resources for years; Trump’s second term has just drawn fresh attention to the issue.

For instance, Marquette University released a statement on Friday listing existing protocols in place that protect students’ privacy.

“For any outside agency that comes to campus, it has always been Marquette’s policy to direct officials to MUPD first to verify there is a legitimate, lawful request and then to respond as required under the law,” Marquette’s statement reads.

What to Watch For

The Trump administration has yet to publish guidance on how federal officials will deal with “sensitive” areas like college campuses going forward.

Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, said that although protections have been lifted, that doesn’t mean the Trump administration’s directive is “about prioritizing previously sensitive locations.” The alliance is a group of university leaders that aims to educate the public on how immigration policies affect students.

Feldblum said the withdrawal of the sensitive-areas policy is concerning “because of the anxiety and uncertainty it generates.”

“Colleges and universities are deeply committed to national security, to the support of students,” Feldblum said. “These can be done together, but when you create the uncertainty and fear, then you’re not allowing students who really are coming to learn, to flourish, to be able to do so.”

But the Trump administration’s directive “is not the time to panic,” Feldblum added.

“It’s the time to prepare and collaborate and communicate on campus,” she said.