Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on Thursday that The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill hasn’t tenured a single professor in fields outside the health sciences since January — an unusual period of inaction that has spurred confusion and alarm among faculty.

At its normal meeting last week, the university’s Board of Trustees deferred a vote on pending tenure cases outside of the health-affairs schools. At its March meeting, the board didn’t act on any tenure cases, and in January, it only approved two tenure bids outside the health sciences: one professor at the civic-life school and another at the School of Social Work.

No professors in the College of Arts and Sciences, the university’s primary academic unit, have received tenure this year.

The university’s interim provost, James W. Dean Jr., acknowledged last week’s deferral in a message to deans. “I understand the stress this ongoing uncertainty places on affected faculty members and the schools and departments that support them,” he wrote, adding that he was “confident that these votes will be taken at the next Board of Trustees’ meeting.”

A university spokesperson did not offer a specific reason for the board’s inaction. “The exact timing of tenure awards is subject to a number of variables that our Board of Trustees and administration may consider with any recommended appointments,” the university said in a statement to The Chronicle. The university has not changed its tenure policies and tenure-track faculty across the university, including those in the College of Arts and Sciences, are eligible for tenure, the spokesperson wrote.

Jennifer Lloyd, a trustee and former professor of the practice in UNC’s economics department, told The Chronicle in an email that she was the only trustee to vote against a motion to defer consideration on tenure decisions at the March meeting. “I … always seek to be a fair and honest advocate on issues impacting faculty,” she wrote. A spokesperson said the university could not comment on this vote since it was taken during a closed session. John P. Preyer, the board’s chair, did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Beth Moracco, chair of the university’s Faculty Council, said she’s never seen this happen since she joined the faculty in 2008. “Typically, the personnel actions are reviewed and acted upon during the meeting that they are submitted,” she said. “The only personnel actions that were acted on were from schools within health affairs. It was a selective inaction, which was also extraordinary.”

Moracco said faculty are frustrated and confused, especially by a lack of communication from the university and uncertainty over when their cases might be considered. Many of them found out about the deferred vote through rumors from colleagues, she added. Moracco discovered that the board had not voted on some tenure cases by checking the board’s website.

The board’s delay hinders a faculty member’s career planning and hampers recruitment, Moracco said. “To go through that amount of work for a career milestone, and then to have it be deferred with a question mark of what’s going to happen next is extremely deflating,” she said. It’s especially demoralizing when higher education is facing funding cuts and attacks on academic freedom, she added.

The board’s inaction also comes at a time when state legislatures nationwide have aimed to weaken tenure or add stipulations to it. A wave of bills propose post-tenure reviews or productivity requirements, and lawmakers in Texas and Nebraska have even introduced legislation to outright ban tenure.

Delaying tenure bids has unique resonance in Chapel Hill. In 2021, the university was embroiled in controversy after it removed tenure from a job offer to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the investigative journalist behind The New York Times’ 1619 Project. That decision came after a trustee raised questions about her qualifications. Following a nationwide uproar, the board voted to offer Hannah-Jones tenure, but she declined to accept the UNC professorship.

While the Hannah-Jones case was specific to one faculty member, Moracco said that the controversy and the board’s recent lack of action on tenure cases are both examples of overreach: “The principle that’s being violated here is the allowing of the rigorous processes that are in place to go forward.”

The board’s next full meeting is scheduled for July 31.

This meeting will be watched closely by the higher education community.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Jimmy Kimmel mocked  Trump for changing  his tariff policy so often that the process has been given a new nickname: TACO. 

That’s short for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

“You’re not gonna believe this,” Kimmel said. “He doesn’t like the nickname at all.” 

TACO refers to how Trump frequently announces a new tariff, causing markets to crash, then backs off, causing them to rise again. Some investors have used it to make cash in a time of economic uncertainty.  

Kimmel said Trump flipped out at a reporter who asked him about the name, calling it “a nasty question.” 

“But it seems to be catching on,” Kimmel said, then showed off some of his favorite TACO Trump chicken memes. 

“How does it feel to be on the other end of the nickname game?” Kimmel asked. “Not great, does it?” 

Kimmel said there’s only one way to make this even worse for Trump: “If somebody changed the lyrics to a song by his beloved Village People to drive it home.” 

Kimmel played a parody (see below) of “Macho Man” ― a song Trump has frequently used at campaign events ― called “Taco Man,” complete with a video to match.

In the meantime, Trump is taking it out on his staff for not alerting him and heading off all the memes going around the Internet.

Tony

TACO Man Starts at about the 1:40 mark.

Dear Commons Community,

President Trump, it would seem, is not one for a “TACO.” The taco in question is not a dish made with tortillas, but rather a reference to how markets are responding to his tariff policies.

The TACO name, short for “Trump Always Chickens Out”, is a tongue-in-cheek term coined by the Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong. It has been adopted by some analysts and commentators to describe the potentially lucrative pattern in which markets tumble after Mr. Trump makes tariff threats, only to rebound sharply when he relents and allows countries more time to negotiate deals.

The president has spent years cultivating a reputation for political muscle. So when he was asked by a reporter in the Oval Office on Wednesday whether the term might be a valid description of his approach to tariffs, Mr. Trump reacted with ire.

“I chicken out? I’ve never heard that,” he said. “Don’t ever say what you said,” he told the reporter. “That’s a nasty question. To me, that’s the nastiest question.”

But gyrations driven by the president’s on-again, off-again tariffs are by now taken for granted on Wall Street. Stock markets jumped on Tuesday, for example, after Mr. Trump delayed a proposed 50 percent tariff on the European Union that he had threatened only a few days earlier.

TACO, TACO, TACO!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

EDUCAUSE has just published its Horizon Report for 2025. Based on a survey of global leaders, merging trends and key technologies and practices are identified.  This report surfaces not only what is changing but how and why these shifts are happening. Here is an excerpt from the Executive Summary.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Higher education is moving through a period defined not by a single disruption but by a complex layering of global trends.

From climate instability to shifting global economic dynamics, institutions are facing pressures that stretch far beyond the campus gates. At the same time, institutions, educators, and students alike are navigating challenges including shifting learner expectations, demographic changes, workforce realignments, and persistent questions about the value of higher education.

Technological advancement, particularly in AI and virtual reality, is reshaping how students engage with content, how cognition is understood, and how learning itself is documented and valued. Political and regulatory landscapes are evolving in ways that both challenge and redefine the role of higher education. Taken together, these forces form a backdrop of a field that no longer enjoys the luxury of being able to evolve slowly.

This year’s teaching and learning Horizon Report captures the spirit of transformation through the lens of emerging trends, key technologies and practices, and scenario-based foresight. This report surfaces not only what is changing but how and why these shifts are happening. The insights and provocations offered here reflect the perspectives of a global panel of experts who brought deep knowledge and diverse experiences to bear. Their contributions, grounded in modified Delphi methodology supported by tools from the Institute for the Future, illuminate multiple possible futures and the choices institutions face now to shape the learning landscape of tomorrow.

Key Technologies and Practices

After trends were established, panelists were asked to describe the key technologies and practices they believed would have a significant impact on the future of teaching and

learning, especially focusing on those that would accelerate or impede the trends. The results of the panel vote brought six technologies/practices to the top of a long list:

• AI Tools for Teaching and Learning
• Faculty Development for Generative AI
• AI Governance
• Shoring Up Cybersecurity
• Evolving Teaching Practices
• Critical Digital Literacy

Panelists were then asked to identify the ways in which stakeholders might leverage the technology or practice to support teaching and learning; potential risks higher education stakeholders might face when implementing that particular technology or practice; and, finally, the potential impact on creating a welcoming environment.

The entire report is 55 pages long and is worth a read.

Tony

The Lenghu observatory in China’s Qinghai province may soon be getting a big addition.  PHOTO: CHEN JIE/XINHUA NEWS AGENCY VIA REDUX

Dear Commons Communiyt,

High on a Tibetan Plateau, China appears to be laying the groundwork for what will be the largest optical telescope in the Northern Hemisphere.  But to the puzzlement of some astronomers, China has been keeping a tight lid on plans for its 14.5-meter Large Optical Telescope (LOT), with only glancing references in a handful of abstracts and Chinese media reports.  As reported this morning in Science.

“As far as I can tell, it’s real. And it will certainly put China in the big leagues,” says Robert Kirshner, a cosmologist at Harvard University and executive director of the Thirty Meter Telescope, one of two massive U.S.-led optical telescopes undergoing design review and at least a decade away from first light.

The National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) is racing to have the LOT up and running as early as 2030, according to a Chinese astronomer who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak about the project. It will be the crown jewel of NAOC’s newest astronomical aerie: Saishiteng Mountain, a 4500-meter peak east of the town of Lenghu in Qinghai province that hosts other cutting-edge telescopes.

In November 2024, NAOC announced a $22 million contract to build the LOT’s dome. But NAOC and the lead institute on the LOT, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology, have not released details, for example, on the design of the mirror, other than that it will observe at both optical and infrared wavelengths.

Purchase orders on NAOC’s website suggest the LOT will have a variety of instruments that would allow it to tackle a range of targets, much like the twin 10-meter W. M. Keck Observatory telescopes in Hawaii. With its larger aperture, LOT’s discovery potential—its light-gathering power and spatial resolution—would be about four times that of the Keck telescopes, the largest in the United States.

The 39-meter Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) being built by the European Southern Observatory in Chile’s Atacama desert will eclipse the LOT in size. Originally slated for completion in 2018, the $1.5 billion ELT is now expected to see first light in March 2029, with scientific observations—which could include studies of Earth-like worlds around other stars—to commence at the end of 2030.

Still, Kirshner calls the LOT “a wake-up call for American science.” With plans for giant telescopes moving slowly, he fears U.S. leadership in ground-based optical astronomy is slipping away. “I don’t mean to scare people, but we really need to get moving,” he says.

Tony

Harry Haysom for The Chronicle.

Dear Commons Community,

L. Maren Wood, the director and chief executive of the Center for Graduate Career Success, has an article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education, warning college graduates of the “worst job market” in a generation. Here is an excerpt.

“As a long-time observer of hiring trends, I’m (L. Maren Wood) increasingly concerned about the career prospects of graduate students and postdocs in the next few years. This will very likely be the worst job market in a generation, and many of them lack strategies and support to manage the tumult.

I work with nearly 80 universities as director and chief executive of the Center for Graduate Career Success, and I can tell you, the hiring outlook has rarely looked this grim:

• Faculty hiring will almost certainly be at a near standstill in the next academic year. Universities were already facing an enrollment cliff driven by the decline in the number of 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States, and the fact that fewer high-school graduates are planning on attending college. Fewer students mean fewer faculty members. Now that outlook is being exacerbated by political factors. The hostility toward immigrants and international students may deter many from studying in the United States. Federal funding cuts have already led to hiring freezes at many institutions.
• In other economic downturns — such as the Great Recession of 2008 or the Covid pandemic — graduate students could extend time in their programs or move into postdoc positions. But this time, federal cuts have eliminated many postdoc positions and constricted funding for existing grad students.
• A shrinking federal work force means fewer job opportunities in that sector for Ph.D.s. The highly skilled federal workers being laid off have years of experience and are now moving into state and local governments, further diminishing opportunities for new graduates.
• Meanwhile, hiring in the private sector has slowed to rates not seen since 2009. When people expect a recession, they act accordingly. Uncertainty caused by tariffs and the trade war threatens to slow hiring further.

So this time is different. In 2008, President Barack Obama and a Democratic majority in Congress quickly passed a stimulus bill to revive the economy. During Covid, the federal government passed stimulus bills to mitigate the worst economic effects of the pandemic. But today’s looming economic downturn is a direct result of federal government policies: The Trump administration’s attack on higher education is intentional. Deterring international students is the plan. Tariffs and cuts in the federal work force are the fulfillment of campaign promises.”

The entire column offers advice for graduates but the future is indeed gloomy.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A video of two nuns on a Catholic TV show in Brazil beatboxing has gone viral. It is being likened to the hit movie, Sister Act that starred Whoopie Goldberg.  The nuns were using their performance to recruit new members to their order.

Take a look below.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

After back-to-back explosions, SpaceX launched its mega rocket Starship again yesterday, but fell short of the main objectives when the spacecraft tumbled out of control and broke apart.  As reported by The Associated Press.

The 403-foot (123-meter) rocket blasted off on its ninth demo from Starbase, SpaceX’s launch site at the southern tip of Texas.

CEO Elon Musk ‘s SpaceX hoped to release a series of mock satellites following liftoff, but that got nixed because the door failed to open all the way. Then the spacecraft began spinning as it skimmed space toward an uncontrolled landing in the Indian Ocean.

SpaceX later confirmed that the spacecraft experienced “a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” or burst apart. “Teams will continue to review data and work toward our next flight test,” the company said in an online statement.

Musk noted in a post on X it was a “big improvement” from the two previous demos, which ended in flaming debris over the Atlantic. Despite the latest setback, he promised a faster launch pace moving forward, with a Starship soaring every three to four weeks for the next three flights.

It was the first time one of Musk’s Starships — intended for moon and Mars travel — flew with a recycled booster. There were no plans to catch the booster with giant chopsticks back at the launch pad, with the company instead pushing it to its limits. Contact with the booster was lost at one point, and it slammed into the Gulf of Mexico in pieces as the spacecraft continued toward the Indian Ocean.

Then the spacecraft went out of control, apparently due to fuel leaks.

“Not looking great with a lot of our on-orbit objectives for today,” said SpaceX flight commentator Dan Huot. The company had been looking to test the spacecraft’s heat shield during a controlled reentry.

Communication ceased before the spacecraft came down, and SpaceX ended its webcast soon afterward.

The previous two Starships never made it past the Caribbean. The demos earlier this year ended just minutes after liftoff, raining wreckage into the ocean. No injuries or serious damage were reported, although airline travel was disrupted. The Federal Aviation Administration last week cleared Starship for another flight, expanding the hazard area and pushing the liftoff outside peak air travel times.

Besides taking corrective action and making upgrades, SpaceX modified the latest spacecraft’s thermal tiles and installed special catch fittings. This one was meant to sink in the Indian Ocean, but the company wanted to test the add-ons for capturing future versions back at the pad, just like the boosters.

NASA needs SpaceX to make major strides over the next year with Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built — in order to land astronauts back on the moon. Next year’s moonshot with four astronauts will fly around the moon, but will not land. That will happen in 2027 at the earliest and require a Starship to get two astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface and back off again.

SpaceX is not having a good time with its rockets.

Tony

Jake Tapper

Dear Commons Community,

The cover-up of former President Joe Biden’s mental decline might be a bigger scandal than Watergate, CNN host Jake Tapper acknowledged on Monday in an interview with Piers Morgan.

Tapper, the co-author of a new book, Original Sin,  detailing Democratic efforts to hide Biden’s deteriorating health from the public during his 2024 re-election campaign, was asked by Morgan why he concluded in the book that the efforts to prop up the octogenarian former president were not akin to the 1972 burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters that eventually forced Richard Nixon to resign.

“Joe Biden is not Richard Nixon, and the hiding and cover-up of his deterioration is not Watergate.’ I am not entirely sure I agree, Jake, with that conclusion,” Morgan, host of “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” told Tapper, quoting from his book.

The CNN host noted that he considers the Biden health cover-up “an entirely separate scandal” from Watergate but “a scandal” nonetheless.

“It is a scandal. It is without question – and maybe even worse than Watergate in some ways,” Tapper admitted, adding, “Because Richard Nixon was in control of his faculties when he was not drinking.”

Tapper insisted that he and “Original Sin” co-author Alex Thompson didn’t “mean to exonerate” by concluding the Biden scandal was “not Watergate.”

“The only reason that we have the Watergate thing in there is because we quote Archibald Cox, who was a Watergate investigator, talking about how powerful the presidency is and how presidents get surrounded by people who have a vested interest in keeping that president propped up.”

“This is an entirely separate scandal,” Tapper reiterated. “Maybe even worse … maybe even worse.”

While promoting his book, the CNN host has drawn criticism over his past coverage of Biden, including accusations that he insufficiently reported on the former president’s health concerns during his term.

“I think some of the criticism is fair, to be honest,” Tapper told CNN earlier this month.

“Of me, certainly. I’m not going to speak for anybody else, but knowing then what I know now, I look back at my coverage during the Biden years — and I did cover some of these issues, but not enough,” he added. “I look back on it with humility.”

Asked point blank by Morgan if he owed the American people an apology, Tapper responded: “I feel like I owe the American people an acknowledgement that I wish I had covered the story better.”

In their book, released last week, Tapper and Thompson chronicle Biden’s mounting health struggles during his term in the White House and his inner circle’s attempt to cover up the decline and get him re-elected.

I am currently reading Original Sin and while suspicious of Biden’s condition for quite a while, I am appalled by the extent of the cover up especially by his wife, Jill.

Tony

Jessica Tarlov of Fox News’ “The Five” admitted cable news can enrage viewers. John Lamparski/Getty

Dear Commons Community,

Jessica Tarlov, one of Fox News’ few (maybe only) credible news personalities, acknowledged how toxic cable news has become—and admitted she’s part of the problem.

Tarlov, the progresive panelist on Fox’s top show, The Five, asked Larry Sabato, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics founder and director, what issue enraged him the most.

“I watch more TV news than I ever have before,” he said on the Prof G podcast, which Tarlov co-hosts. “TV funnels what’s selling on social media, I think, more than the reverse. That makes me rage.”

Tarlov said she is part of the problem.

“It does,” she said. “As someone who’s on cable news, I apologize to the entire world for what we export.”

Sabato laughed at Tarlov’s remark, saying during the Friday interview that the main issue is social media’s dominance of political discourse. “There’s nothing we can do about social media,” he said.

“The one thing I’ve been waiting for that I was promised as a young person was a time machine,” he added. “We still don’t have one, cause I’d love to go back and make it impossible to create social media. I don’t know how I do it, but I would try to do that.”

Sabato told the Daily Beast in further remarks that he was disappointed by the “sane-washing” of Trump from multiple media outlets, who he said underestimated Trump’s penchant for retribution.

“I’ve personally seen the effects of Trump’s intimidation of media companies, law firms, and yes, universities,” he said in an email. “The solution they’ve adopted seems to be, ‘Let’s keep our heads down, stick to a lot of both-sides coverage, and then Trump will target others.’ It hasn’t dawned on some that Trump will eventually get around to slamming them too, as well as misusing the power of government to exact revenge.”

Several other cable news hosts have rebuked the sector in recent years.

Chuck Todd, the former NBC News anchor who hosted Meet the Press before leaving the network earlier this year, told Mediaite last month that he had grown demoralized by cable news’ content.

“I had it on in my office all the time,” Todd said. “But most cable news felt like a whole bunch of people trying to game an algorithm. It stopped being informational.”

Former Fox News and NBC star Megyn Kelly said on podcast The Megyn Kelly Show last year that, after watching cable news during the election, she was sad to see that “nothing’s changed.”

“The people don’t look as good—that’s changed,” she said. “But they’ve changed nothing. They’re having the same stilted, guarded, fake conversations that last four minutes long with, like, the stupid panels. It’s amazing how out of date they are.”

The three major cable news channels Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC have become embarrassments to the news profession.  They are indeed “toxic” with Fox News being the worst.

Tony