Credit:  Joan Wong.

Dear Commons Community,

Ms. O’Rourke, editor of The Yale Review and a professor in the English department at Yale University, had a guest essay in The New York Times yesterday entitled, “The End of the University as We Know It.”  Her main thesis is that:

“Conservatives have been trying to reshape the American university since the federal government began funding it in earnest in the mid-20th century. But now the Trump administration appears prepared to destroy it. The [Trump] administration has issued sweeping executive orders and deployed the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to slash funding; dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; and intervene in university policy. On March 7 the administration announced it was pulling $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University, alleging “continued inaction” to protect the civil rights of Jewish students on campus during the protests against the war in Gaza. The result, if all goes through, will be nothing less than the permanent diminishment of research universities and an upheaval of the free speech principles at the core of the country.”

She goes on further by observing that the attack on universities is really an attack on freedom of ideas:

“the real wound ran deeper: the quiet, creeping sense that something larger — the very idea of the university as a place of free inquiry — was slipping away. In an era when both the right and the left have had their moments of speech policing and ideological rigidity, some hope this moment will force universities to rethink their own commitments to open inquiry, that it will serve as an invitation to resist the intellectual and moral narrowing that happens not only through government decree but also through the hardening of internal orthodoxy.

But the more likely outcome is that this moment will close, rather than expand, the range of what is possible. Because what we are witnessing is not just an attack on academia or a set of fiscal reforms or a painful political rebalancing. It is an attack on the conditions that allow free thought to exist. We may not yet know its full cost, but we will feel its consequences for decades.”

I agree with much of what O’Rourke says but I am going to be a bit more optimistic that the core purpose of the academia is to promote freedom of ideas and it will survive.

Her entire guest essay is below.  Excellent commentary!

Tony

———————————————————————————–

The New York Times

The End of the University as We Know It

March 16, 2025

By Meghan O’Rourke

The rumors had been building for months: The Trump administration was coming for the universities. In the weeks after the president issued the first executive orders of this term, the effects rippled through my academic world: A Rutgers conference on H.B.C.U.s was canceled; graduate students on visas asked a professor I know if it was safe for them to travel; a colleague at a public university texted about an undergraduate crying in his office, worried about the job landscape. There was news of endangered climate projects, grant pages disappearing (and sometimes later reappearing) as people were applying to them and forestalled scientific programs of all kinds, including one at Columbia’s maternal health center studying how to reduce America’s maternal mortality rate.

A meeting at Yale, where I teach, to discuss the impact of the Trump administration’s policies had to be moved to a larger auditorium because so many concerned faculty members showed interest in attending. After listening to a bracing description of the financial implications of the government edicts, we milled about, stunned. The reality was much worse than we had imagined. I run a small program for students who want to be editors and writers. In the grips of uncertainty, I stayed up late that night to figure out which parts I would have to kill if my budget was cut. I finally realized there was no good solution; in that scenario, I would have to cancel the whole thing.

Conservatives have been trying to reshape the American university since the federal government began funding it in earnest in the mid-20th century. But now the Trump administration appears prepared to destroy it. The administration has issued sweeping executive orders and deployed the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to slash funding; dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; and intervene in university policy. On March 7 the administration announced it was pulling $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University, alleging “continued inaction” to protect the civil rights of Jewish students on campus during the protests against the war in Gaza. The result, if all goes through, will be nothing less than the permanent diminishment of research universities and an upheaval of the free speech principles at the core of the country.

This attack on higher education has been a long-brewing project for Trump-aligned conservatives. Christopher Rufo, a key architect of the assault, has been explicit about the strategy: use financial pressure to put universities into what he called “existential terror,” making compliance seem like the only viable option, forcing them to dismantle programs and reshape hiring and curriculums. Mr. Rufo, who was invited to Mar-a-Lago to discuss higher education overhauls shortly after Donald Trump was elected again, views universities as having been “captured” by leftist ideology and rejects the idea that diversity is a worthwhile goal. He envisions a radical restructuring of the humanities, replacing current frameworks with what he confusingly calls a “classical” model while bringing in more conservative faculty members.

This assault isn’t happening in a vacuum, of course. Decades of conservative attacks have primed the public to see universities as elitist indoctrination centers. These attacks date at least to the Red Scare in the 1950s, when suspected Marxist professors were forced to testify before the Senate (and the F.B.I. leaked disparaging information about 400 teachers and professors to their employers). But more recently these attacks have evolved into a strategic, well-funded campaign. As Ellen Schrecker, a historian who studies higher education and political repression, noted in a 2023 essay: “During the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s … right-wing philanthropists poured millions of dollars into demonizing higher education as infested by ‘political correctness’ whose advocates supposedly purveyed a dogmatic brand of left-wing identity politics while suppressing free speech and conservative discourse on their campuses.”

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Mr. Trump and his allies have hammered home that message, fueling Republican distrust in academia, even as soaring tuition costs put private institutions ever more out of reach and the pandemic deepened skepticism in expertise. Gallup polls found that in 2015, 57 percent of Americans had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education, a figure that had dropped to 36 percent by 2023. Among Republicans, it cratered from 56 percent to 20 percent. Some of this distrust stems from the fact that since the late 1990s, the number of university faculty members who identify as liberal has risen, while the numbers of moderates and conservatives have declined. But it’s also the product of the right’s campaign against universities, which has caricatured them as breeding grounds for a narrow-minded woke ideology that brooks no dissent, rather than the large, complicated places they are. While there have been instances of a campus left that was hubristically convinced of its own point of view, the reality for most of us who teach on campus looks nothing like the distorted portrait that the right has painted.

Indeed, it’s crucial to acknowledge the qualitative difference between any excesses the left has committed in the enforcement of campus norms and speech and the federal government’s decision to use the full force of state power to prevent people from saying things it doesn’t like. As Hari Kunzru, a novelist who teaches creative writing at N.Y.U., put it to me recently, “The notion that this is a justified response to the excesses of the left is not a legitimate framing.” The destruction underway is not a considered reaction to allegations of civil rights violations or a fine-tuned reform of university policy. Instead, it is a hammer smashing a very complicated mechanism. It will have real, damaging consequences across party lines. It will dismantle expertise that benefits America and its status in the world. Cancer research. Maternal health. Climate-related technology. All this will be materially worse off. The economic impacts will be enormous. But so, too, will be the cultural ones. What is really happening here is an attack on the American faith in knowledge as a value and a public good that has served us well.

For much of its history, the American university has stood at the intersection of knowledge production and national interest. The Morrill Act of 1862, which established land-grant universities, was one of the first federal efforts to expand access to higher education, aligning colleges with the needs of a growing industrial economy. In 1890, the Second Morrill Act brought funding to historically Black colleges and universities and reinforced the idea that higher education was a public good, one that served not only individuals but also the broader needs of the nation. But it was World War II and the Cold War that fundamentally transformed universities into engines of state power, binding research to military and technological supremacy.

The war effort had demonstrated the strategic value of academic research. Universities played a crucial role in projects like the Manhattan Project and the development of radar, showing that scientific breakthroughs created by university research could determine military superiority. In 1945, Vannevar Bush, a key wartime science administrator, argued that the federal government should sustain this partnership in peacetime, leading to the creation of the National Science Foundation in 1950. From then on, higher education was integral to American dominance on the global stage.

By the 1960s, in the wake of Russia’s launch of the Sputnik satellite, America was seized by a national fervor for scientific and technological education. Federal R & D funding skyrocketed, supporting not just engineering and military projects but also the social sciences, humanities and the arts. Universities became hubs of government-backed knowledge production. In 1957, funding from the National Science Foundation stood at $40 million; by 1968, it had climbed to nearly $500 million. These investments fueled space exploration, medical research, literary magazines and global diplomacy. Knowledge in this era was not partisan; it was a national asset.

Yet this arrangement also carried contradictions with it. While the university thrived on public funding, the presence of left-wing voices among its students and faculty members made it a target for conservatives, who, as evidenced by the Red Scare, were already profoundly distrustful of left-leaning academics. Ronald Reagan targeted Berkeley’s free speech movement in his campaign to become governor of California. In the late 1960s, President Richard Nixon’s administration debated cutting university funding over Vietnam War protests on campuses. Though it never followed through, more than 100 people without tenure were fired for their political activities, and states considered bills to criminalize participation in campus protests. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush attacked “political correctness” for restricting “enterprise, speech and spirit” and leading to “bullying.” But on a broader level there seemed to be a tacit sense on the right that for all of its problems, the modern research university was of real value — even a great strength of America, a reason people come here, an instrument of soft power and, indeed, a branding tool. As Nixon himself originally put it, when he rejected House-proposed legislation to end federal funding to universities that allowed campus protests of the war, doing so would be “cutting off our nose to spite our face.” The responsibility, he insisted, “should be on the college administrators.”

Not now. What is distinctive about what is happening is that the very concept of the research university as an autonomous institution is under direct attack. The shift is stark. If, during the Cold War, the government funded universities as a way of strengthening America, Mr. Trump’s second administration treats them as a threat to be dismantled. The real question driving their “reforms” is not whether federal support for universities should continue but whether universities deserve to exist in their current form at all.

If the university has always been politicized one way or another, why should conservatives care about protecting the intellectual freedom currently housed in what are predominantly liberal institutions? The answer is earnest and aspirational: because the serious, reflective work of scholarship benefits us all. Because academic freedom makes it possible to critique institutionality from within at a time when institutions rule our lives. Because it permits intellectuals and scientists to question realities we have become complacent about. Because it creates space for values that live outside the capitalist marketplace. Because it houses art and artists. Yes, the university can be, like any community anywhere, divisive, censorious, sometimes too ideologically homogeneous. But when it works, it trains people to think critically, powerfully and unflinchingly. The strongest critiques of the National Institutes of Health I’ve heard, for instance, have been voiced not by Mr. Trump or Elon Musk but by academics who understand its workings and have the theoretical framework to imagine how to reform it.

The Trump administration’s orders arrive at a precarious moment in America — a moment of transformative technologies, escalating climate crises and global instability. It’s a moment that demands more from universities, not less. “The core mission of the humanities is more important than ever,” Robin Kelsey, a former dean of arts and humanities at Harvard, told me. As he explained, the humanities as we know them emerged in response to the violence of the two world wars, precisely because those conflicts revealed that scientific progress does not guarantee moral progress. A humanist education teaches us to question dominant narratives, to recognize how certain ways of thinking rise to prominence while others fade from view.

Dr. Kelsey warned against abandoning the humanities precisely when their lessons are most needed. “One of the contradictions at the heart of the humanities,” he said, “is that they are supposed to practice the same skepticism, open inquiry and refusal of dogma that science is known for — while also addressing questions about meaning, virtue and ethics, which had long been the domain of religion.” That contradiction has made the humanities both essential and vulnerable, open to attack from those who see them as frivolous or politically suspect. But what is now more clear than ever is that Mr. Rufo and other Trump-aligned ideologues actually know how important the humanities, and the civic and aesthetic values they explore, are. That is precisely why so much effort is being spent on trying to impose a set of nostalgic, premodern views at the heart of the university.

The defunding of Columbia and the threat of cuts have sent a chill through the halls of academia. If the battle over universities were only about budgets, the fight might be different. But what is being targeted is something more profound: the ability of institutions to sustain the freedoms that form the foundation of our democracy. Mr. Trump campaigned on free speech: “I’ve stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America,” he told Congress on March 4. But make no mistake: His administration is trying to force universities to conform — and to make its faculty members quite literally stop saying or studying things that they don’t want said out loud or studied. Most egregiously, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, recently wrote the dean of the Georgetown University Law Center, a Catholic institution, saying that it was “unacceptable” for the school to “teach D.E.I.” (whatever that means) and declaring that until Georgetown revised its curriculum, his office would refuse to hire — that is, would blacklist — its students.

The obvious threat here is that institutions will fall in line with the administration’s broadest goals in order to preserve their funding. But beyond that, there is the deeper threat that the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz identified in “The Captive Mind,” his exploration of how intellectuals adapt to authoritarian regimes. Living under Soviet rule, Mr. Miłosz observed that artists and scholars, without direct coercion, anticipated the regime’s desires, adjusting their behavior before the government even had to intervene. Fear reshaped their internal weather, dictating what they would — and wouldn’t — say.

That fear, or one like it, is settling now into American institutions. Last week, it became more difficult to get affected professors and university administrators to talk to me, whereas before, many had been eager to weigh in. The silence was instructive. In a faculty meeting I attended recently, in a high-ceilinged room with carved wood and delicately painted windows, anxiety reverberated. We were warned of funding cuts. But the real wound ran deeper: the quiet, creeping sense that something larger — the very idea of the university as a place of free inquiry — was slipping away. In an era when both the right and the left have had their moments of speech policing and ideological rigidity, some hope this moment will force universities to rethink their own commitments to open inquiry, that it will serve as an invitation to resist the intellectual and moral narrowing that happens not only through government decree but also through the hardening of internal orthodoxy.

But the more likely outcome is that this moment will close, rather than expand, the range of what is possible. Because what we are witnessing is not just an attack on academia or a set of fiscal reforms or a painful political rebalancing. It is an attack on the conditions that allow free thought to exist. We may not yet know its full cost, but we will feel its consequences for decades.

Idaho school district orders teacher to remove ‘Everyone is welcome here’ sign.

Dear Commons Community,

An Idaho teacher is in a standoff with her own school district after officials ordered her to remove classroom signs, including one that reads, “Everyone is welcome here.”

Sarah Inama, a sixth-grade history teacher at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Meridian, Idaho, says she won’t comply with the order, arguing that the message is a fundamental part to ensuring a positive learning environment for her students.

Inama, who has taught at the school for five years, says her commitment to inclusivity isn’t about politics. It’s about her passion for education and students.  As reported by TODAY.com and NBC News.

“I love the area that I teach,” she says in an interview with TODAY.com. “It’s really a valuable thing for people to know our human history, things that humans have accomplished, our time on this earth, things that they’ve overcome, patterns that exist.”

Five years ago, when she first put up the two signs, it was to make sure students knew they were in an open and welcoming space. Now, she says she is risking her job in the name of those values.

A notice from her school district

Inama says the controversy began in January when her principal and vice principal came to her classroom to inform her that two posters on her walls were controversial and needed to be removed, a detail the district verified in an email to TODAY.com. Inama says other teachers were given similar instruction, but she was caught off guard by the directive.

Photos of the two posters show that one features the phrase “Everyone is welcome here,” with an illustration of hands in different skin tones. The other says that everyone in the classroom is “welcome, important, accepted, respected, encouraged, valued” and “equal.”

“I was just so confused,” she recalls. “I still can’t even wrap my head around what they’re referring to as far as why it’s controversial.”

Inama says the principal cited district policy that classrooms must respect the rights of people to express differing opinions and that decorations are to be “content-neutral.”

“There are only two opinions on this sign: Everyone is welcome here or not everyone is welcome here,” she says. “Since the sign is emphasizing that everyone, in regards to race or skin tone, is welcome here no matter what, immediately, I was like, the only other view of this is racist. And I said, ‘That sounds like racism to me.’”

A change of heart

Feeling pressured, Inama removed the signs, but reconsidered as the decision weighed on her into the following weekend.

“I told my husband, ‘I have to put that sign back up,’” she recalls.

That Saturday, she says her husband accompanied her back to the school where she re-hung the signs and emailed her principal to let him know.

“I just was not interested in taking it down,” she says. “I didn’t agree with why they were asking me to take it down. And for that reason, it was back up.”

According to Inama, the principal warned her that her refusal constituted insubordination and could result in further action.

TODAY.com has reached out to the principal for comment on Inama’s allegations but did not receive a response.

A compromise

A meeting was soon arranged with district personnel, including West Ada School District’s chief academic officer Marcus Myers and a West Ada Education Association representative.

In its email to TODAY.com, West Ada School District states that the meeting was arranged to “provide further clarification and support” to Inama and to “discuss concerns about the poster and how it violates Policy 401.20.” The policy says that banners in the classroom must be “content-neutral and conducive to a positive learning enviornment.”

TODAY.com reached out to Myers for comment regarding the district’s decision and his role in the discussion with Inama but has not yet received a response.

Inama says the officials offered to purchase any alternative signs for her classroom during the meeting, just as long as they didn’t have the same messages as her current posters. Challenging the request, Inama pointed out that district policy classifies motivational posters as learning aids, which she argued should be allowed under the current rules.

Inama says the conversation escalated when Myers attempted to justify the request to remove her posters saying that “the political environment ebbs and flows, and what might be controversial now might not have been controversial three, six, nine months ago, and we have to follow that.”

The more the discussion continued, Inama says she became increasingly convinced that what the district was asking her to do was wrong.

“The more that we talked about it, the more it just solidified,” she says. “It seems so gross what they’re asking me to compromise about. I mean, there’s no way you’ll convince me that the differing view they’re trying to protect of that sign is not racist.”

She says the meeting ended without resolution and another warning, this time that further action might be necessary if she did not comply.

Legal counsel intervenes

After their meeting, Inama says the district offered to have legal counsel review her position, but that she would have to submit an email explaining why she believed the poster did not violate policy.

“I typed a big, long email and sent it off to them about why it was important for me to keep this poster up and why I don’t find it to be in violation,” Inama explains.

A week later, the district responded, maintaining that the signs violated policy. Inama says she was told she has until the end of the school year to remove them.

In a statement issued to TODAY.com via email, Niki Scheppers, chief of staff for communications at West Ada School District, explains the district’s decision to enforce its policy.

“West Ada School District has been and always will be committed to fostering a welcoming and supportive learning environment for all students while upholding district policies,” the statement reads.

“Classrooms are places where students learn to read, write, think critically and build the skills needed for future success. While classroom decorations can contribute to the atmosphere, a truly welcoming and supportive environment is built through meaningful relationships and positive interactions between staff and students, not posters on the walls. Our focus is on fostering kindness, respect and academic achievement so that every student can thrive in a distraction-free learning environment.”

According to the statement, approved classroom displays include the Idaho state flag, instructional materials like the periodic table or U.S. Constitution, student artwork, approved club information and school-sponsored achievements. Other permitted items include temporary displays of world flags for educational purposes, personal family photos of employees and promotional materials from colleges or professional sports teams.

“This policy is designed to maintain consistency across all classrooms while ensuring that no one group is targeted or offended by the display of certain items.”

The district underlined that its policies are not intended to limit free speech but to ensure fairness in classroom materials.

“While we respect individuals’ rights to express their perspectives, it is important to reaffirm that this situation is not about limiting speech or expression but about ensuring consistency in our classrooms and maintaining a learning environment free from distraction,” the statement said.

The district confirmed that legal counsel determined Inama’s poster must be removed and that she has until the end of the school year to find an alternative that complies with policy.

Fighting for her students, no matter the cost

Despite the district’s ruling, Inama refuses to remove the signs, even if it means risking her job.

“I would feel so sad to like leave my students before the end of the year, and financially, it would be difficult, but I just feel like your job, like your specific workplace, is not like your whole identity,” she explains. “There’s no way I would be able to allow myself to just take it down and roll over to what I feel like they’re asking me to do.”

Inama says what helps her now is knowing that she is not alone in her resistance. She says hundreds of people — including teachers across the district — have reached out to extend their support since her story became public.

“I’d say at least half of them are from other teachers in this district and in some of the other districts in Idaho and in other states,” she says.

Above all, Inama says she will prioritize the students seated in her classroom and stand by what she believes to be right.

Good for her!

Tony

An armed volunteer for the Lincoln Heights Safety and Watch Program stands guard near a community center.  Courtesy of NBC News.

Dear Commons Community,

This story appeared on NBC News.

Nearly every morning for the last month, Jay has been waking up before sunrise to drive around the streets of Lincoln Heights, patrolling neighborhood bus stops to make sure children are getting to school safely.

“We have a very tight community, so all of our kids, they know us,” he said.

But for anyone outside the community, Jay’s presence might be a mystery. He wears a face covering along with tactical vests, and Jay is not his real name, which he asked not to use to prevent harassment from hate groups.

He’s a member of the Lincoln Heights Safety and Watch program, an initiative that started shortly after Feb. 7, when a neo-Nazi group waving swastika flags and shouting racial slurs demonstrated on a highway overpass just on the edge of this majority-Black community about 30 minutes north of Cincinnati.

Officers from Evendale, which borders Lincoln Heights, and the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office both responded that day. No arrests were made, and Evendale police officers did not take down any names or identifying information from members of the neo-Nazi group, according to the mayor’s office. The Hamilton County Prosecutor’s office is currently investigating the incident to see if criminal charges could be filed.

In a statement, Evendale Mayor Richard Finan said officers’ emphasis on de-escalation “resulted in the incident’s resolution without injuries to any of the persons involved, passersby or law enforcement officers. During this evolving scene, protecting life took priority over immediate identification.” The Evendale Police Department was the first to respond to the incident, which took place on a bridge linking Evendale with Lincoln Heights.

But for Daronce Daniels, the safety and watch group’s spokesperson, the police response was just as alarming as the neo-Nazi appearance, making residents feel they wouldn’t be protected if another hate group were to visit their town.

“They’ve been very clear that if it happens again, they’ll allow it to happen again, that their hands are tied,” Daniels said.

Lincoln Heights residents said the police response to the incident was insufficient, prompting Daniels and other members of the Heights Movement, an existing community empowerment organization, to devise the safety and watch program, which includes armed volunteers wearing tactical gear and face coverings. Some of the same volunteers who helped mentor youth through the Heights Movement are now going on armed patrols. Ohio state law allows anyone legally allowed to own a gun to open carry without a permit.

“I’ve never felt safer as a Black man in my community than I have right now,” Daniels said. “These are my friends. These are my cousins, my brothers, my sisters, my aunties.”

Local business owner Eric Ruffin was accosted in his car by the neo-Nazi group as he was coming home from a work meeting.

He said he supports law enforcement, but that its handling of the Feb. 7 demonstration doesn’t give him faith that it will protect him in the future. For that reason, he says he’s proud of the neighborhood safety and watch program, even though he wishes it weren’t needed.

“What I don’t understand is how I can be standing here in America in 2025 and somebody can walk up to my window with a swastika and have guns and call me the N-word and law enforcement watch,” Ruffin said.

“We don’t want to become what we hate. You know, we don’t want to become a group of people that walk around feeling like we have a reason in America to have to protect ourselves. That’s what the Nazis want.”

The village of Lincoln Heights was formed in 1923 for Black families escaping the South, and it incorporated in 1946 as the “first African American self-governing community north of the Mason-Dixon Line,” according to the town’s website. However, residents say the community has been underserved by local municipalities, and its police department was disbanded in 2014, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, leaving it under the jurisdiction of the Hamilton County Sheriff.

For many safety and watch volunteers, that history plays a role in their decision to add to their everyday duties as parents and workers.

“It’s just something that our grandfathers and our great-grandmothers — they started this. So we’re going to make sure that that history stays intact,” said one volunteer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from hate groups.

Yard signs that read “We Support Lincoln Heights Safety & Watch” are peppered throughout the town, and community members could be seen waving to safety and watch volunteers as they stood guard near the local elementary school one Tuesday morning.

Chantelle Phillips said she saw the neo-Nazi rally playing out on social media as it happened. She said she trusts the neighborhood protection group to be more proactive than officers with the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, whose jurisdiction includes Lincoln Heights.

“I feel like it’s more secure now,” Phillips said. “I know my son can walk home and be OK.”

Hamilton County Sheriff Charmaine McGuffey is now calling on the Ohio state Legislature to pass laws that make it illegal to wear a mask “for the purpose of intimidation” while open carrying. She said this measure would have given her officers more leeway to make arrests during the neo-Nazi rally.

In an interview with NBC News, she defended her officers’ response on Feb. 7 but said she understands why Lincoln Heights residents are concerned for their safety. Still, she worries that an armed confrontation between neighborhood residents and another hate group could lead to a dangerous situation.

“They feel they need to arm their residents, and they’re allowed to,” McGuffey said. “At some point, we are going to likely face a very dangerous situation that we are trained to handle. But the unknown is, who else is armed? How many juveniles are standing around with a gun in their hand? I cannot be more emphatic that this issue that we’re embedded in, and the way that people are reacting and acting with guns with open carry is directly related to the inaction of legislators who say they support law enforcement, who say they support families and order, and they do not.”

Tony

An artist’s impression shows a red dwarf (left) and a white dwarf (center) closely orbiting each other. Astronomers believe the tight orbit causes the stars’ magnetic fields to interact, releasing radio pulses every two hours. – Daniëlle Futselaar/artsource.nl

Dear Commons Community,

Over the past decade, scientists have detected a puzzling phenomenon: radio pulses coming from within our Milky Way galaxy that would pulse every two hours, like a cosmic heartbeat. The long radio blasts, which lasted between 30 and 90 seconds, appeared to come from the direction of the Ursa Major constellation, where the Big Dipper is located.

Now, astronomers have zeroed in on the surprising origin of the unusual radio pulses: a dead star, called a white dwarf, that is closely orbiting a small, cool red dwarf star. Red dwarfs are the most common type of star in the cosmos.

The two stars, known collectively as ILTJ1101, are orbiting each other so closely that their magnetic fields interact, emitting what’s known as a long period radio transient, or an LPT. Previously, long radio bursts were only traced to neutron stars, the dense remnants left after a colossal stellar explosion.

But the discovery, described in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature Astronomy, shows the movements of stars within a stellar pair can also create rare LPTs.

“We have for the first time established which stars produce the radio pulses in a mysterious new class of ‘long period radio transients,’” said lead study author Dr. Iris de Ruiter, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Sydney in Australia.

The unprecedented observations of such bright, long radio bursts from this binary star system are just the beginning, astronomers say. The discovery could help scientists better understand what types of stars are capable of producing and sending radio pulses across the cosmos — and in this case, reveal the history and dynamics of two entwined stars.

Locked in a stellar dance

To solve the Milky Way mystery, de Ruiter devised a method to identify radio pulses lasting seconds to minutes within the archives of the Low-Frequency Array telescope, or LOFAR, a network of radio telescopes throughout Europe. It’s the largest radio array that operates at the lowest frequencies detectable from Earth.

De Ruiter, who developed her method while she was a doctoral student at the University of Amsterdam, uncovered a single pulse from observations made in 2015. Then, focusing on the same patch of sky, she found six more pulses. All of them appeared to originate from a faint red dwarf star. But de Ruiter didn’t think the star would be able to produce radio waves by itself. Something else had to be instigating it.

The  pulses differed from fast radio bursts, which are incredibly bright, millisecond-long flashes of radio waves. Almost all FRBs originate from outside our galaxy, and while some of them repeat, many appear to be one-off events, de Ruiter said. Fast radio bursts are also much more luminous. 

“The radio pulses are very similar to FRBs, but they each have different lengths,” said study coauthor Charles Kilpatrick, research assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics, in a statement.

“The pulses have much lower energies than FRBs and usually last for several seconds, as opposed to FRBs which last milliseconds. There’s still a major question of whether there’s a continuum of objects between long-period radio transients and FRBs, or if they are distinct populations.”

De Ruiter and her colleagues conducted follow-up observations of the red dwarf star using the 21-foot (6.5-meter) Multiple Mirror Telescope at the MMT Observatory on Mount Hopkins in Arizona, as well as the LRS2 instrument on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, located at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains in Texas.

The observations showed the red dwarf was moving back and forth rapidly, and its motion matched the two-hour period between radio pulses, Kilpatrick said. The back-and-forth motion was due to another star’s gravity tugging on the red dwarf. The researchers were able to measure the motions and calculate the mass of the companion star, which they determined to be a white dwarf.

The team found that the two stars, located 1,600 light-years from Earth, were pulsing together as they orbited a common center of gravity, completing one orbit every 125.5 minutes.

Deciphering mysterious pulses

The research team believes there are two possible causes behind the pulses. Either the white dwarf has a strong magnetic field that routinely releases the pulses, or the magnetic fields of the red dwarf star and the white dwarf interact as they orbit.

The team has planned to observe ILTJ1101 and study any ultraviolet light that may be emanating from the system, which could reveal more about how the two stars have interacted in the past. De Ruiter also hopes the team can observe the system in radio light and X-rays during a pulse event, which could shed light on the interaction between the magnetic fields.

“At the moment the radio pulses have disappeared completely, but these might turn back on again at a later time,” de Ruiter said.

The team is also combing through LOFAR data in search of other long pulses.

“We are starting to find a few of these LPTs in our radio data,” said study coauthor Dr. Kaustubh Rajwade, a radio astronomer in the department of physics at the University of Oxford, in a statement. “Each discovery is telling us something new about the extreme astrophysical objects that can create the radio emission we see.”

Other research groups have found 10 long radio pulse-emitting systems over the past couple of years, and they are trying to determine what creates them because the pulses, all of which originate in the Milky Way, “are unlike anything we knew before,” de Ruiter said.

Unlike the short bursts produced by pulsars, or rapidly spinning neutron stars, LPTs can last anywhere from a few seconds to nearly an hour, said Natasha Hurley-Walker, radio astronomer and associate professor at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Australia. Hurley-Walker was not involved in the new study.

“Looking back, transient radio sources have stimulated some of the most exciting discoveries in astrophysics: the discovery of pulsars and therefore neutron stars, the discovery of FRBs which have unlocked the capacity to measure the otherwise invisible matter between galaxies, and now the discovery of LPTs, where we’re only at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what they will tell us,” Hurley-Walker said via email. “What’s fascinating to me is that now that we know these sources exist, we’re actually finding them in historical data going back decades — they were hiding in plain sight. 

Scanning the sky with powerful radio telescopes will only lead to more incredible findings, she said.

“The biggest would most likely be the discovery of technosignatures via SETI,” Hurley-Walker said of signals that could be created by intelligent life, which is something the SETI Institute has sought out for decades.

Most interesting! 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In a dramatic break with much of their party, ten Senate Democrats voted alongside Republicans yesterday to pass a six-month funding bill, averting a government shutdown with just hours to spare. The move defied a majority of the chamber’s Democrats who opposed the measure, underscoring deep divisions over how to confront President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress.

Ahead of the vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada were among the first Democrats to publicly back the Republican funding bill, arguing that a shutdown would only strengthen Trump’s hand. They were joined by six more Democrats—Dick Durbin of Illinois, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Gary Peters of Michigan, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire—as well as Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats.   As reported by Time.

“This was not an easy decision,” Cortez Masto, who represents a state that Trump carried last year, said in a statement. “I’m outraged by the reckless actions of President Trump, Elon Musk, and Republicans in control of Congress, so I refuse to hand them a shutdown where they would have free rein to cause more chaos and harm.”

For many Democrats, the bill was more than just an unfavorable spending deal; it was a moment to push back against what they see as the Trump Administration’s creeping executive overreach. The legislation stripped away numerous funding directives, giving Trump the power to reallocate money as he saw fit without fear of judicial intervention.

The spending measure, which passed the House earlier in the week, was presented to the Senate as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. The vote in the Senate was 62-38, with 37 Democrats opposing the bill along with Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who wanted the measure to codify Trump’s cuts to foreign aid.

Schumer’s decision to support the bill marked a turn from earlier in the week when he sought a 30-day extension to negotiate a bipartisan compromise. His pivot drew sharp criticism from House Democrats, who had largely united against the measure. At a retreat in Leesburg, Va. Thursday night, they made urgent appeals to their Senate counterparts, with lawmakers texting and calling senators throughout the day. “I think there is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told reporters at the retreat. “And this is not just about progressive Democrats. This is across the board. The entire party.”

Prior to the vote, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democratic appropriator, published a list of examples of programs that the measure could allow Trump to change, such as diverting resources from combating fentanyl to funding mass deportation efforts and giving him more authority to pick which health-care or mental health programs to implement.

Adding to the opposition was the bill’s treatment of Washington, D.C., which would have been forced to roll back its budget to the prior year’s levels, requiring $1.1 billion in cuts. Schumer said immediately prior to the vote that he had negotiated a deal with Senate Republicans to pass a D.C. funding fix—but the measure would still need to pass the House, which is on recess.

The political implications of voting with Republicans are uncertain, but the vote ensured that the government would remain funded through September, averting furloughs for federal workers and disruptions to key services.

However, the anger within the Democratic caucus is likely to linger, and could spell trouble for Schumer, who has led Senate Democrats since 2017. While no Senator has publicly called for his ouster, murmurs of discontent have grown louder, particularly among progressives who feel he has conceded too much ground to Republicans.

Here are the nine Democrats, and one independent, who helped avoid a shutdown:

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)

The Senate Minority Leader, who has been the chamber’s top Democrat since 2017, sent shockwaves when he announced he would back the Republican spending bill on Thursday evening.

“While the [continuing resolution] bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse,” Schumer said on the Senate floor in announcing his decision.

He argued that a shutdown would allow Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to accelerate efforts to dismantle federal agencies. “A shutdown will allow DOGE to shift into overdrive,” he warned on Friday. “Donald Trump and Elon Musk would be free to destroy vital government services at a much faster rate.”

While Schumer framed his support as a necessary step to prevent Republicans from exploiting a shutdown, many in his party saw it as a surrender. His vote, combined with his leadership in pushing the bill forward, has fueled speculation about whether his position atop the Democratic Senate caucus remains tenable. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, when asked on Friday whether Schumer had “acquiesced” to Trump, Jeffries sidestepped the question: “That’s a question that is best addressed by the Senate.” Asked if the Senate needed new Democratic leadership following Schumer’s move, Jeffries replied: “Next question.”

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.)

Cortez Masto, who represents a state that Trump carried last year, emphasized that her decision to support the bill was not taken lightly. She cited concerns that a shutdown would provide Trump and his allies with more opportunities to erode federal institutions.

“A government shutdown would be devastating for the American people,” she said in a statement, arguing that it would force thousands of Nevadans to work without pay and delay the courts which are weighing lawsuits against the Trump Administration. “The last government shutdown cost the American economy $11 billion and thousands of hardworking Americans were harmed. I cannot vote for that,” she said.

As one of the more moderate Democrats in the Senate, Cortez Masto has often navigated a fine line between party unity and the political realities in Nevada, where she was narrowly re-elected to a six-year term in 2022. In voting for the bill, she broke with fellow Democratic Senator from Nevada, Jack Rosen, who voted against it. The pair rarely split on issues.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)

Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, had not publicly shared how he would vote for the Republican spending bill before he walked onto the Senate floor. Ultimately, he voted for it.

In siding with Republicans and nine other Democrats, Durbin broke with fellow Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who said she was a “hell no” on the bill.

In a statement posted to X, Durbin said: “There is very little about this CR that I like—but there is even less I like about shutting down the government.” He added that he was “disappointed” that Republicans would not work with his party to pass a 30-day stopgap measure that would have given Congress more time to reach a bipartisan agreement.

Durbin, who is 80, has served in the Senate since 1997 and is widely expected to retire soon.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.)

Fetterman, who represents a state Trump won in both 2016 and 2024, has been an outspoken critic of his party’s political messaging in recent months. He was the first Democratic Senator to announce his support of the Republican spending bill, arguing that a shutdown would have given Republicans the power to dictate the terms of reopening the government.

“You don’t start wars unless you have an exit plan. We had no exit plan,” Fetterman said. “That would give [Republicans] the absolute, absolute ability to decide, on their terms, how to reopen it after we shut it down, just to respond to our highly agitated left part of our party.”

Fetterman, who was elected to a six-year term in 2022, has consistently positioned himself as willing to buck Democratic orthodoxy when he believes it serves working-class voters. His decision to back the bill fits within his broader critique of Democratic messaging, which he has repeatedly argued fails to resonate with key voting blocs.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)

Gillibrand, who chairs the Senate Democratic campaign arm, joined her fellow New York Senator in backing the bill. While Schumer’s support carried the weight of party leadership, Gillibrand’s vote signaled that even some Democrats focused on electoral strategy saw avoiding a shutdown as the better political option.

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.)

Hassan, a former governor, was once considered a vulnerable Democrat given her narrow win in 2016. Her lead in 2022, when she was re-elected to a second six-year term, was less narrow. But New Hampshire remains a competitive state for both parties. Last year, voters there backed Democrats for Congress and Kamala Harris for President, but also elected a Republican governor and expanded Republican majorities in the state legislature.

Both Hassan, and New Hampshire’s other Senator, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, voted for the Republican spending bill.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine)

King, a Maine Independent who caucuses with Democrats, referred to the vote as “two really bad choices” in a video posted to X. He added that he voted for the spending bill “because a shutdown would open the door to unprecedented, lasting damage.”

While Maine is far from a swing state, it shifted slightly to the right in the previous presidential election. King, 80, is a particularly popular figure within the state; he has served in the Senate since 2013 and was a two-term Governor before that. King won a third six-year term in the Senate in November.

“The problem is with a shutdown, the President and Elon Musk and the OMB have almost unfettered discretion about what happens,” King said. “Who’s essential, who’s not essential, what agencies can get to work, which ones don’t. And in my view, and in the view of many of my colleagues, this is a significantly greater danger to the country than the continuing resolution with all of its faults.”

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.)

Another Senator from a state Trump won in 2024, Peters defended his decision to vote for the Republican spending bill: “I believe Congress must do its most basic job to keep the lights on,” he said in a statement.

“When the first Trump Administration shut down the government, they repeatedly broke the law,” he added. “This time, they would take it even further.”

Michigan’s other Democratic senator, Elissa Slotkin, voted against the bill. Their conflicting votes highlight the difficult balancing act for Democrats in battleground states, where political calculations often involve not just party loyalty, but also the concerns of a divided electorate.

Earlier this year, Peters announced he would not run for re-election when his current term ended in 2026.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii)

In a statement, Schatz called his vote a “difficult and close call” but said he ultimately “made the determination that a flawed bill was better than no bill at all.”

“I understand people’s frustration — I share it,” he said. “But Trump and the Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, presented us with a bad choice and a worse choice. Both would produce terrible outcomes, but a shutdown would be more devastating for everyone.”

Referencing the opposition to his vote from progressives, he added that Democrats “can’t let disagreements about strategy and tactics divide us.” Schatz has served in the Senate since Dec. 2012, easily winning re-election to a second full term in 2022.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.)

Shaheen, who announced earlier this week that she will not run for re-election in 2026, said in a statement that a government shutdown “would have hurt Granite Staters and enabled President Trump and Elon Musk to do more harm.”

She said she hoped Congress would stop relying on “never-ending continuing resolutions” like the one passed today, which she warned would only increase instability in government operations. A continuing resolution, also known as a CR, is a temporary funding measure that allows the federal government to keep operating at current spending levels when Congress fails to pass a full appropriations bill—a common theme in recent years.

While I would have liked to have seen Trump and the Republicans handed a defeat, it was probably the prudent thing to do not to cause a government shutdown.

Tony

Photo courtesy of www.eduba.com.

Dear Commons Community,

Science has an in depth article this morning entitled, “Large AI models are cultural and social technologies.” Well researched and carefully presented, the authors present a cogent argument that the “large language models” (LLMs) that are driving today’s AI applications are not by design the AI agents that might one day take over human life.  The basic definition of an artificial intelligent agent is a digital helper that can think and make decisions on its own. It uses information from its surroundings, learns from its experiences, and acts to accomplish tasks without human intervention. The authors’ thesis is well-founded and built on careful research that references work by the likes of Herbert Simon, Friedrich Hayek, and Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz.   The article’s conclusion is:

“Of course, as we note above, there may be hypothetical future AI systems that are more like intelligent agents, and we might debate how we should deal with these hypothetical systems, but LLMs are not such systems, any more than were library card catalogs or the internet. Like catalogs and the internet, large models are part of a long history of cultural and social technologies.”

I highly recommend this article (below) for anyone seriously interested in the issue of AI and its future particularly as related to its evolution as a true intelligent agent. Although long, it is quick read.

Tony

———————————

Science

Large AI models are cultural and social technologies

Implications draw on the history of transformative information systems from the past

By Henry Farrell¹, Alison Gopnik^2,3,4, Cosma Shalizi^4,5,6, James Evans^4,7

March 14, 2025

Debates about artificial intelligence (AI) tend to revolve around whether large models are intelligent, autonomous agents. Some AI researchers and commentators speculate that we are on the cusp of creating agents with artificial general intelligence (AGI), a prospect anticipated with both elation and anxiety. There have also been extensive conversations about cultural and social consequences of large models, orbiting around two foci: immediate effects of these systems as they are currently used, and hypothetical futures when these systems turn into AGI agents—perhaps even superintelligent AGI agents. But this discourse about large models as intelligent agents is fundamentally misconceived. Combining ideas from social and behavioral sciences with computer science can help us to understand AI systems more accurately. Large models should not be viewed primarily as intelligent agents but as a new kind of cultural and social technology, allowing humans to take advantage of information other humans have accumulated.

The new technology of large models combines important features of earlier technologies. Like pictures, writing, print, video, internet search, and other such technologies, large models allow people to access information that other people have created. Large models—currently language, vision, and multimodal—depend on the internet having made the products of these earlier technologies readily available in machine-readable form. But like economic markets, state bureaucracies, and other social technologies, these systems not only make information widely available, they allow it to be reorganized, transformed, and restructured in distinctive ways. Adopting Simon’s terminology, large models are a new variant of the “artificial systems of human society” that process information to enable large-scale coordination [(¹), p. 33].

Our central point here is not just that these technological innovations, like all other innovations, will have cultural and social consequences. Rather we argue that large models are themselves best understood as a particular type of cultural and social technology. They are analogous to such past technologies as writing, print, markets, bureaucracies, and representative democracies. Then we can ask the separate question about what the effects of these systems will be. New technologies that are not themselves cultural or social, such as steam and electricity, can have cultural effects. Genuinely new cultural technologies—Wikipedia, for example—may have limited effects. However, many past cultural and social technologies also had profound, transformative effects on societies, for good and ill, and this is likely to be true for large models.

These effects are markedly different from the consequences of other important general technologies such as steam or electricity. They are also different from what we might expect from hypothetical AGI. Reflecting on past cultural and social technologies and their impact will help us to understand the perils and promise of AI models better than worrying about superintelligent agents.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS

For as long as there have been humans, we have depended on culture. Beginning with language itself, human beings have had distinctive capacities to learn from the experiences of other humans, and these capacities are arguably the secret of human evolutionary success. Major technological changes in these capacities have led to dramatic social transformations. Spoken language was succeeded by pictures then by writing, print, film, and video. As more and more information became available across wider gulfs of space and time, new ways of accessing and organizing that information also developed, from libraries to newspapers to internet search. These developments have had profound effects on human thought and society, for better or worse. Eighteenth-century advances in print technology, for example, which allowed new ideas to quickly spread, played an important role in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. A landmark transformation occurred around 2000 when nearly all the information from text, pictures, and moving images was converted into digital formats; it could be instantly transmitted and infinitely reproduced.

As long as there have been humans, we have also relied on social institutions to coordinate individual information-gathering and decision-making. These institutions can themselves be thought of as a kind of technology (¹). In the modern era, markets, democracies, and bureaucracies have been particularly important. The economist Friedrich Hayek argued that the market’s price mechanism generates dynamic summaries of enormously complex and otherwise unfathomable economic relations (²). Producers and buyers do not need to understand the complexities of production; all they need to know is the price, which compresses vast swathes of detail into a simplified but usable representation. Election mechanisms in democratic regimes focus distributed opinion toward collective legal and leadership decisions in a related way. The anthropologist Scott argued (³) that all states, democratic or otherwise, have managed complex societies by creating bureaucratic systems that categorize and systematize information. Markets, democracies, and bureaucracies have relied on mechanisms that generate lossy (incomplete, selective, and uninvertible) but useful representations well before the computer. Those representations both depend on and go beyond the knowledge and decisions of individual people. A price, an election result, or a measure such as gross domestic product (GDP) summarizes large amounts of individual knowledge, values, preferences, and actions. At the same time, these social technologies can also themselves shape individual knowledge and decision-making.

The abstract mechanisms of a market, state, or bureaucracy, like cultural media, can influence individual lives in crucial ways, sometimes for the worse. Central banks, for example, reduced the complexities of the financial economy down to a few key variables. This provided apparent financial stability but at the cost of allowing instabilities to build up in the housing market, which central banks paid little attention to, precipitating the 2008 global financial crisis (⁴). Similarly, markets may not represent “externalities” such as harmful carbon emissions. Integrating such information into prices through, for example, a carbon tax can help but requires state action.

“But these systems do not merely summarize this information, like library catalogs, internet search, and Wikipedia. They also can reorganize and reconstruct…information…”

Humans rely extensively on these cultural and social technologies. These technologies are only possible, however, because humans have distinct capacities characteristic of intelligent agents. Humans, and other animals, can perceive and act on a changing external world, build new models of that world, revise those models as they accumulate more evidence, and then design new goals. Individual humans can create new beliefs and values and convey those beliefs and values to others through language or print. Cultural and social technologies transmit and organize those beliefs and values in powerful ways, but without those individual capacities, the cultural and social technologies would have no purchase. Without innovation, there would be no point to imitation (⁵).

Some AI systems—in robotics, for example—do attempt to instantiate similar truth-finding abilities. There is no reason, in principle, why an artificial system could not do so at some point in the future. Human brains do, after all. But at the moment, all such systems are far from these human capacities. We can debate how much to worry now about these potential future AI systems or how we might handle them if they emerge. But this is different from the question of the effects of large models at present and in the immediate future.

LARGE MODELS

Large models, unlike more agentive systems, have made notable and unexpected progress in the past few years, making them the focus of the current conversation about AI in general. This progress has led to claims that “scaling,” simply taking the current designs and increasing the amount of data and computing power they use, will lead to AGI agents in the near future. But large models are fundamentally different from intelligent agents, and scaling will not change this. For example, “hallucinations” are an endemic problem in these systems because they have no conception of truth and falsity (although there are practical steps toward mitigation). They simply sample and generate text and images.

Rather than being intelligent agents, large models combine the features of cultural and social technologies in a new way. They generate summaries of unmanageably large and complex bodies of human-generated information. But these systems do not merely summarize this information, like library catalogs, internet search, and Wikipedia. They also can reorganize and reconstruct representations or “simulations” (¹) of this information at scale and in new ways, like markets, states, and bureaucracies. Just as market prices are lossy representations of the underlying allocations and uses of resources, and government statistics and bureaucratic categories imperfectly represent the characteristics of underlying populations, so too are large models “lossy JPEGs” (⁶) of the data corpora on which they have been trained.

Because it is hard for humans to think clearly about large-scale cultural and social technologies, we have tended to think of them in terms of agents. Stories are a particularly powerful way to pass on information, and from fireside tales to novels to video games, they have done this by creating illustrative fictional agents, even though listeners know that those agents are not real. Chatbots are the successor to Hercules, Anansi, and Peter Rabbit. Similarly, it is easy to treat markets and states as though they were agents, and agencies or companies can even have a kind of legal personhood.

But behind their agent-like interfaces and anthropomorphic pretensions, large language models (LLM) and large multimodal models are statistical models that take enormous corpora of text produced by humans, break them down into particular words, and estimate the probability distribution of long word sequences. This is an imperfect representation of language but contains a surprisingly large amount of information about the patterns it summarizes. It allows the LLM to predict which words come next in a sequence and so generate human-like text. Large multimodal models do the same with audio, image, and video data. Large models not only abstract a very large body of human culture, they also allow a wide variety of new operations to be carried out on it. LLMs can be prompted to carry out complex transformations of the data on which they are trained. Simple arguments can be expressed in flowery metaphors, while ornate prose can be condensed into plain language. Similar techniques enable related models to generate new pictures, songs, and video in response to prompts. A body of cultural information that was previously too complex, large, and inchoate for large-scale operations has been rendered tractable.

In practice, the most recent versions of these systems depend not only on massive caches of text and images generated and curated by humans but also on human judgment and knowledge in other forms. In particular, the systems rely on reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) or its variants: Tens of thousands of human employees provide ratings of model outputs. They also depend on prompt engineering: Humans must use both their background knowledge and ingenuity to extract useful information from the models. Even the newest “chain of thought” models regularly begin from dialogue with their human users.

The relatively simple though powerful algorithms that allow large models to extract statistical patterns from text are not really the key to the models’ success. Instead, modern AI rests atop libraries, the internet, tens of thousands of human coders, and a growing international world of active users. Someone asking a bot for help writing a cover letter for a job application is really engaging in a technically mediated relationship with thousands of earlier job applicants and millions of other letter writers and RLHF workers.

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

The AI debate should focus on the challenges and opportunities that these new cultural and social technologies generate. We now have a technology that does for written and pictured culture what large-scale markets do for the economy, what large-scale bureaucracy does for society, and perhaps even comparable with what print once did for language. What happens next? Like past economic, organizational, and informational “general purpose technologies,” these systems will have implications for productivity (⁷), complementing human work but also automating tasks that only humans could previously perform, and for distribution, affecting who gets what (⁸).

Yet they will also have wider and more profound cultural consequences. We do not yet know whether these consequences will be as great as those of earlier technologies such as print, markets, or bureaucracies, but thinking of them as cultural technologies increases rather than decreases their potential impact. These earlier technologies were central to the extensive social transformations of the 18th and 19th centuries, both as causes and effects. All of these technologies, like large models, supported the abstraction of information so that new kinds of operations could be carried out at scale. All provoked justified concerns about the spread of misinformation and bias, cultural homogenization or fragmentation, and shifts in the distribution of power and resources. The emergence of new communications media, including both print and television, was accompanied by reasonable worries that the new media would spread misinformation and strengthen malign cultural forces. Similarly, the categorization schemes that bureaucracies and markets deploy often embed oppressive assumptions.

At the same time, these technologies generated new possibilities for recombining information and coordinating actions among millions of people at a planetary scale. Emerging debates over the social, economic, and political consequences of LLMs continue deep-rooted historical worries and hopes about new cultural and social technologies. Orienting these debates requires both recognizing the commonalities between new arguments and old ones and carefully mapping the particulars of the new and evolving technologies.

Such mapping is among the central tasks of the social sciences, which emerged from the social, economic, and political upheavals of the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath. Social scientists’ investigation of the consequences of these past technologies can help us think about less obvious social implications of AI, both negative and positive, and to consider ways that AI systems could be redesigned to increase the positive impacts and reduce the negative. As media, markets, and bureaucratic technologies expanded in the 19th and 20th centuries, they generated economic losers and winners, displacing whole categories of workers, from clerks and typists to “human computers.” Today, there are obvious worries that large models and related technologies may displace “knowledge workers.”

There are also less obvious questions. Will large models homogenize or fragment culture and society? Thinking about this in historical context can be particularly illuminating. Current concerns resemble 19th- and 20th-century disagreements over markets and bureaucracies. Weber worried (⁹) about the deadening homogenizing consequences of economic and bureaucratic “rationalization,” whereas Mill (¹⁰) thought that market exchanges would expose participants to different forms of life and soften impulses to conflict (“doux commerce”).

Large models are designed to work well—to faithfully reproduce the actual probabilities of sequences of text, images, and video—on average. They therefore have an intrinsic tendency to be most accurate in situations most commonly found in their training data and least accurate in situations that were rare in data or entirely new. This might lead large models to worsen the kind of homogenization that haunted Weber.

On the other hand, large models may allow us to design new ways to harvest the diversity of the cultural perspectives they summarize. Combining and balancing these perspectives may provide more sophisticated means of solving complex problems (¹¹). One way to do this may be to build “society-like” ecologies in which different perspectives, encoded in different large models, debate each other and potentially cross-fertilize to create hybrid perspectives (¹²) or to identify gaps in the space of human expertise (¹³) that might usefully be bridged. Large models are surprisingly effective at abstracting subtle and nonobvious patterns in texts and images. This suggests that such technologies could be used to find patterns in text and images that crisscross the space of human knowledge and culture, including patterns invisible to any particular human. We may require new systems that diversify large model reflections and personas and produce the same distribution and diversity as do human societies.

Diversifying systems like this might be particularly important for scientific progress. Formal science itself depended on the emergence of the new cultural technologies of the 17th and 18th centuries, from coffee houses and rapid mail to journals and peer review. AI technologies have the potential to accelerate science further, but this will depend on imaginative ways of using and rethinking these technologies. By wiring together so many perspectives across text, audio, and images, large models may allow us to discover unprecedented connections between them for the benefit of science and society. These technologies have most commonly been trained to regurgitate routine information as helpful assistants. A more fundamental set of possibilities might open up if we deployed them as maps to explore formerly uncharted territory.

There are also less obvious and more interesting ways that new cultural and social technologies influence economic relationships. The development of cultural technologies leads to a fundamental economic tension between the people who produce information and the systems that distribute it. Neither group can exist without the other: A writer needs publishers as much as the publisher need writers. But their economic incentives push in opposite directions. The distributors will profit if they can access the producer’s information cheaply, whereas the producers will profit if they can get their information distributed cheaply. This tension has always been a feature of new cultural technologies. The ease and efficiency of distributing information in digital form has already made this problem especially acute, as evidenced by the crisis in everything from local newspapers to academic journals. But the very speed, efficiency, and scope of large models, processing all the available information at once, combined with the centralized ownership of those models, makes these problems loom especially large. Concentrated power may make it easier for those who own the systems to skim the benefits of efficiency at the expense of others.

“…large models are themselves best understood as a particular type of cultural and social technology.”

There are crucial technical questions: To what extent can the systematic imperfections of large models be remedied, and when are they better or worse than the imperfections of systems based around human knowledge workers? Those should not overshadow the crucial political questions: Which actors are capable of mobilizing around their interests, and how might they shape the resulting mix of technology and organizational capacities? Very often, commentators within the technology sector reduce these questions into a simple battle between machines and humans. Either the forces of progress will prevail against retrograde Luddite tendencies, or on the other hand, human beings will successfully resist the inhuman encroachment of artificial technology. Not only does this fail to appreciate the complexities of past distributional struggles, struggles that long predate the computer, it ignores the many different possible paths that future progress might take, each with its own mix of technological possibilities and choices (⁸).

In the case of earlier social and cultural technologies, a range of further institutions, including normative and regulatory institutions, emerged to temper their effects. These ranged from editors, peer review, and libel laws for print, to election law, deposit insurance, and the Securities and Exchange Commission for markets, democracies, and bureaucracies. These institutions had varied effectiveness and required continual revision. These countervailing forces did not emerge on their own, however, but resulted from concerted and sustained efforts by actors both within and outside the technologies themselves.

LOOKING FORWARD

The narrative of AGI, of large models as superintelligent agents, has been promoted both within the tech community and outside it, both by AI optimist “boomers” and more concerned “doomers.” This narrative gets the nature of these models and their relation to past technological changes wrong. But more importantly, it actively distracts from the real problems and opportunities that these technologies pose and the lessons history can teach us about how to ensure that the benefits outweigh the costs.

Of course, as we note above, there may be hypothetical future AI systems that are more like intelligent agents, and we might debate how we should deal with these hypothetical systems, but LLMs are not such systems, any more than were library card catalogs or the internet. Like catalogs and the internet, large models are part of a long history of cultural and social technologies.

The social sciences have explored this history in detail, generating a distinct understanding of past technological upheavals. Bringing computer science and engineering into close cooperation with the social sciences will help us to understand this history and apply these lessons. Will large models lead to greater cultural homogeneity or greater fragmentation? Will they reinforce or undermine the social institutions of human discovery? As they reshape the political economy, who will win and lose? These and other urgent questions do not come into focus in debates that treat large models as analogs for human agents.

Changing the terms of debate would lead to better research. It would be far easier for social scientists and computer scientists to cooperate and combine their respective strengths if both understood that large models are no more—but also no less—than a new kind of cultural and social technology. Computer scientists could bring together their deep understanding of how these systems work with social scientists’ comprehension of how other such large-scale systems have reshaped society, politics, and the economy in previous eras, elaborating existing research agendas and discovering new ones. This would help remedy past confusions in which computer scientists have adopted overly simplified notions of complex social phenomena (¹⁴) while social scientists have failed to understand the complex functioning of these new technologies.

It would move policy discussions over AI decisively away from simplistic battles between the existential fear of a machine takeover and the promise of a near-future paradise in which everyone will have a perfectly reliable and competent artificial assistant. The actual policy consequences of large models will surely be different. Like markets and bureaucracies, they will make some kinds of knowledge more visible and tractable than they were in the past, encouraging policy-makers to focus on the new things that they can measure and see at the expense of those less visible and more confusing. As a result, reflecting past cases of markets and media, power and influence will shift toward those who can fully deploy these technologies and away from those who cannot. AI weakens the position of those on whom it is used and who provide its data, strengthening AI experts and policy-makers (¹⁴).

Last, thinking in this way might reshape AI practice. Engineers and computer scientists are already aware of the problem of large model bias and are thinking about their relationship to ethics and justice. They should go further. How will these systems affect who gets what? What will their practical consequences be for societal polarization and integration? Can large models be developed to enhance human creativity rather than to dull it? Finding practical answers to such questions will require an understanding of social science as well as engineering. Shifting the debate about AI away from agents and toward cultural and social technologies is a crucial first step toward building that cross-disciplinary understanding (¹⁵).

¹SNF Agora Institute and School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.

²Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.

³Department of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.

⁴Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, USA.

⁵Department of Statistics and Data Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

⁶Department of Machine Learning, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

⁷Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

Email: [email protected]

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. H. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (MIT Press, 1996).
2. F. A. von Hayek, Am. Econ. Rev. 35, 519 (1945).
3. J. C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale Univ. Press, 1998).
4. D. Davies, The Unaccountability Machine (Univ. Chicago Press, 2025).
5. E. Yiu, E. Kosoy, A. Gopnik, Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 19, 874 (2024).
6. T. Chiang, New Yorker 9 (2023).
7. C. Goldin, L. Katz, Q. J. Econ. 113, 693 (1998).
8. D. Acemoglu, S. Johnson, Power and Progress: Our 1000 Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity (Hachette, 2023).
9. M. Weber, Wissenschaft Als Beruf (Duncker & Humblot, 1919).
10. J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy (Longmans and Green, 1920).
11. L. Hong, S. E. Page, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 101, 16385 (2004).
12. S. Lai et al., Proc. 41st Int. Conf. Mach. Learn. 235, 25892 (2024).
13. J. Sourati, J. A. Evans, Nat. Hum. Behav. 7, 1682 (2023).
14. S. L. Blodgett, S. Barocas, H. Daumé, H. Wallach, arXiv:2005.14050 [cs.CL] (2020)
15. L. Brinkmann et al., Nat. Hum. Behav. 7, 1855 (2023).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All authors contributed equally to this work. J.E. began a visiting researcher affiliation with Google after this manuscript was submitted.

Judge William H. Alsup

Dear Commons Community,

A federal judge called the administration’s justification for the firings of workers with probationary status a “sham.”

Judge William H. Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California yesterday ordered six federal agencies to rehire thousands of workers with probationary status who had been fired as part of President Trump’s government-gutting initiative.

Ruling from the bench, Judge Alsup  went further than a previous ruling. He found that the Trump administration’s firing of probationary workers had essentially been done unlawfully by fiat from the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources arm. Only agencies themselves have broad hiring and firing powers, he said. As reported by The New York Times.

He directed the Treasury and the Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy and Interior Departments to comply with his order and offer to reinstate any probationary employees who were improperly terminated. But he added that he was open to expanding his decision later to apply to other agencies where the extent of harms had not been as fully documented yet.

His order stemmed from a lawsuit brought by federal employee unions that challenged the legality of how those agencies went about firing probationary workers en masse. The unions argued that those workers were swept up in a larger effort by Mr. Trump and his top adviser, Elon Musk, to arbitrarily ravage the federal government and demoralize its employees.

Judge Alsup said he was convinced that federal agencies followed a directive from senior officials in the Office of Personnel Management to use a loophole allowing them to fire probationary workers by citing poor performance, regardless of their actual conduct on the job. He concluded that the government’s actions were a “gimmick” intended to expeditiously carry out mass firings.

“It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” he said.

“It was a sham in order to try to avoid statutory requirements,” he added.

He also extended his restraining order issued last month blocking the Office of Personnel Management from orchestrating further mass firings. But before handing down his ruling on Thursday, Judge Alsup was careful to make sure the lawyers representing the unions understood its limits.

Agencies planning to conduct large-scale layoffs, known as a “reduction in force,” can still proceed in accordance with the laws that govern such processes — meaning that the reprieve for workers may only be temporary. The Office of Personnel Management had set a deadline of Thursday for agencies to submit reduction in force plans.

“If it’s done right, there can be a reduction in force within an agency, that has to be true,” Judge Alsup said.

As the Trump administration continues to contest the judge’s order, a substantial portion of the hearing on yesterday also focused on the ways the government has moved to circumvent the courts and sideline workers by any means available.

In other cases focused on the administration’s suspension of federal contracts and grants, judges have similarly fretted that agencies have forged ahead to terminate those programs faster than courts could order the funding unfrozen.

Danielle Leonard, a lawyer representing the unions, said that even after an independent agency that protects government workers in employment disputes ordered the Agriculture Department to reinstate 6,000 probationary workers this month, the agency had kept many on paid leave, restoring their salaries but not their jobs.

“We do not believe that they are going to return any of these employees to actual service,” she said.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Agriculture Department said it was working on a “phased plan for return to duty” for those workers.

Judge Alsup had originally planned to have Trump administration officials appear to testify on Thursday about the process through which the layoffs were planned. But the government made clear on Wednesday that Charles Ezell, the acting head of the Office of Personnel Management, would not appear.

Mr. Ezell became a central character in the lawsuit because of memos and meetings he held with agency heads in February that included detailed guidance on how to conduct the mass layoffs of probationary workers. Lawyers representing the federal workers’ unions that sued called the Mr. Ezell’s guidance “insidious” and clearly devised to enlist Mr. Trump’s appointees into a broader effort to decimate the federal work force.

Judge Alsup said he had hoped testimony from the officials involved in the firings would provide clarity about the conception and execution of those plans. He also excoriated a lawyer from the Justice Department for failing to produce him and other potential witnesses.

As part of his ruling, Judge Alsup specified that the government must allow Noah Peters, a lawyer working with Mr. Musk’s team who was detailed to the personnel office, to be deposed in Washington about the impetus behind the firings.

“You will not bring the people in here to be cross-examined,” he said. “You’re afraid to do so, because you know cross-examination would reveal the truth.”

Kelsey Helland, the lawyer present from the Justice Department, said the government had submitted ample evidence that agencies were acting on their own and were never beholden to orders from Mr. Ezell.

On Wednesday, the government filed news releases from a variety of agencies. They included language indicating that the appointed leaders of those agencies made the decisions to shrink their work forces independently and in line with Mr. Trump’s political agenda — not based on any directive from the Office of Personnel Management.

“These were the actions of the political leadership of these agencies in response to a priority, a clearly communicated public priority of the administration, rather than an order from O.P.M.,” Mr. Helland said.

Mr. Helland added that it was not unusual for the Trump administration to try to shield its top officials from appearing in court.

“Every presidential administration in modern history has jealously guarded their agency heads against being forced to give testimony,” he said.

But Judge Alsup grew increasingly riled by those explanations, saying he felt “misled by the U.S. government” about the way it had proceeded.

He said the Trump administration appeared determined to “decimate” agencies such as the Merit Systems Protection Board, a venue through which workers can appeal adverse personnel decisions, and the Office of Special Counsel, which used to be well positioned to assist probationary workers in this case.

All the while, Judge Alsup said, the government appeared to have obfuscated its intentions with regard to federal workers while sidestepping his orders to have top officials testify.

“It upsets me; I want you to know that,” he said.

“You’re not helping me get at the truth,” he added. “You’re giving me press releases — sham documents.”

Unfortunately, this ruling will only delay not stop Trump’s plans.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The first total lunar eclipse of the year is set to be visible starting tonight (March 13) through the early morning of March 14.

According to NASA, lunar eclipses “occur when the Sun, Earth, and moon align so that the moon passes into Earth’s shadow.” During a total lunar eclipse, the moon passes by the darkest part of Earth’s shadow known as the umbra and makes the moon appear a red-orange color, giving it the “blood moon” nickname.  As provided by PEOPLE.

Unlike a total solar eclipse — which can only be seen in certain locations for a few minutes — a total lunar eclipse is visible in the sky for a few hours and can be seen in larger parts of the world, per the National Weather Service. Lunar eclipses also occur more frequently than solar eclipses and are safe to view with the naked eye. That being said, this will be the first total lunar eclipse since November 2022, making it a rare celestial event.

In astrology, eclipses are known to bring plenty of change in a person’s life and astrologer Valerie Mesa tells PEOPLE this lunar eclipse is “all about illumination and powerful endings,” adding that “they’re known to shed light on what’s been hidden beneath the surface so we can purge and release what doesn’t serve us.”

Here’s everything you need to know about this upcoming total lunar eclipse, including where it will be visible.

When is the 2025 total lunar eclipse?

The first total lunar eclipse of the year will take place in the evening between March 13 and March 14.

Where will the total lunar eclipse be visible?

Per Space.com, the total lunar eclipse will be visible across North America — including all 50 states — South America, Europe, Africa and Oceania — which includes New Zealand.

What time does the total lunar eclipse start?

Getting a good glimpse at the total lunar eclipse will depend on your location. Per NASA, the lunar eclipse will begin at 11:57 p.m. EDT, and reach totality 2:26 a.m. The moon will stay in totality for a little over an hour, ending at 3:31 a.m. The lunar eclipse will then end at 6:00 a.m.

How do you watch the total lunar eclipse?

The total lunar eclipse is safe to view with the naked eye, unlike a solar eclipse which requires special glasses or other tools to safely view.

During the lunar eclipse, NASA recommends observing the eclipse in a dark spot away from bright lights and using binoculars or a telescope for the best view. While you’re observing the lunar eclipse, stargazers may also be able to catch a glimpse at Jupiter and Mars in the western part of the night sky.

It should be a good show assuming the weather cooperates!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Donald Trump’s dream of U.S. control over Greenland may be on hold after this week’s election in the autonomous Danish territory.  As reported by The Huffington Post and The New York Times.

During a debate earlier this week, leaders of six parties vying in the election were asked if they trust Trump.

Five said no.

The one yes, Karl Ingemann of the relatively new Qulleq party, didn’t even win a seat in Parliament after his party flopped with just 1.1% of the vote.

The biggest winner this week was the center-right Demokraatit Party, which took nearly 30% of the vote.

Its leader, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has been blunt in addressing Trump’s ambitions for the territory, calling his rhetoric “a threat to our political independence.”

The New York Times said the party was likely to enter a coalition with Inuit Ataqatigiit, a moderate party that came in third in this week’s election with 21.4% of the vote. Its leader is the current prime minister, Múte Egede, who has also dismissed joining the United States.

“I think in the future, we have a lot to offer to cooperate with, but we want to also be clear. We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be a part of U.S., but we want a strong cooperation together with U.S.,” Egede told Fox News earlier this year.

Both parties favor a gradual approach to the territory’s independence from Denmark.

The second-place party, Naleraq, won nearly a quarter of the vote. Its leader, Pele Broberg, wrote an editorial this week calling for a more rapid independence from Denmark and a pact with the United States but “without becoming a U.S. territory.”

Trump has repeatedly said he wants Greenland to join the United States.

“We need [Greenland] really for international world security, and I think we’re going to get it,” he said during last week’s address to Congress. “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.”

Polls show it’s not a popular notion in Greenland, with 85% of respondents opposed in a January survey.

Trump reportedly floated purchasing the island during his first term in office but didn’t say much about it publicly. Then after he won a second term last year, he called control over the territory an “absolute necessity” and suggested taking it by force if needed.

Trump’s scheme isn’t popular in Denmark, either, with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen insisting that the territory “is not for sale.”

Others have been more blunt, with Danish politician Anders Vistisen telling the president he can “f*** off.”

Tony