Mike Wagner
William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea, Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, U of Wisconsin-Madison. Director, Center for Communication and Civic Renewal. Inflated sense of karaoke ability. 10/10 Room Rater.
- Reposted by Mike WagnerThe worst happened. We were DOGE’d. Our NSF funding is gone. So now there’s nothing stopping me from sharing Expert Voices Together, a crisis response system for US-based researchers and journalists facing harassment. It's a true passion project. 🧵 1/ expertvoicestogether.org
- I spoke with Science about scholars—myself included—self-censoring. In my case, my team and I feared losing our NSF funding for Expert Voices Together (expertvoicestogether.org), a program, ironically, built to support researchers and journalists under attack. www.science.org/content/arti...
- Spouse: “Hey, wasn’t Wilson Juggins hosting SNL tonight” Me: …
- Reposted by Mike Wagner1. After getting some further insight into changes at NSF (thanks to those who reached out), I deleted a previous post where I tried to make sense of Cheatham's memo as reported in the Science story below.
- Reposted by Mike Wagner🚨New Bright Line Watch report on the state of US democracy -Democracy ratings ↓ w/experts & public, including Rs -Performance ↓ in numerous areas such as free speech/press, abuse of government powers -Faculty report academic freedom decline & self-censorship brightlinewatch.org/threats-to-d... 🧵
- Reposted by Mike Wagner🚨 Read this to see how extremists within the US State Dept have *weaponized the government*. They made a list of journos & researchers they personally don’t like, ideological keywords, and are searching for mentions. They plan to leak, Twitter Files style. www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/01/1...
- Prof. Ankur Desai made this same point a few weeks ago during our teach in on campus.
- “Five former National Weather Service directors have taken the unusual step of signing onto an open letter warning that cuts to the organization by the Trump administration may soon endanger lives.” Gift link: nyti.ms/3YrIw3Q
- The 2025 writers laying it on thick with Sovereignty winning the Kentucky Derby followed closely by Journalism.
- Reposted by Mike Wagner(sigh) Tariffs went up again this morning. The whole Trump-paused-tariffs narrative was always overstated. He has redistributed tariffs, but not really cut them in total. The tariff wall is higher than the isolationist Smoot-Hawley rates.
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“A budget is a moral document” is a fine lens to consider Trump’s budget proposal to Congress, or to whatever the Republican controlled Congress will come up with, which in its broad outlines is likely to be a large wealth transfer from the more vulnerable to the more wealthy. - Presenting Dr. Jisoo Kim & her dissertation committee. So very proud of my lucky number 13th Ph.D. advisee! Dr. Kim is off to the other UW, the U of Washington, where she joins the tenure-track faculty in the fall. The Huskies are getting a terrific scholar, teacher, & colleague! @uwsjmc.bsky.social
- Besides killing innovation, this action on NSF puts 8 decades of freely available, consistent, rigorous, & widely used time-series evidence about who we are, what we do, what we want, & what we know at risk of never being collected again. The ANES and GSS are at risk. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
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- Reposted by Mike WagnerThanks to @donmoyn.bsky.social for the platform to share my NSF experience & some thoughts on the recent cuts to misinformation research. Publicly funded research & accurate information is vital to our democracy. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/i-oversaw-...
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- Shared a bit about our grant termination and the consequences of other canceled grants at UW-Madison. pbswisconsin.org/news-item/mi...
- Reposted by Mike WagnerIt's hard to find the words. NSF just terminated the grant for Journeys, a mentoring workshop that tried to tackle underrepresentation of women in international relations. Future scholarship will be the worse for it. But this photo from our last gathering will motivate me to keep fighting.
- Reposted by Mike WagnerHarvard's Steve Levitsky, coauthor of How Democracies Die: "We are no longer living in a democratic regime." Must-listen interview - remarkably clear about the severity of the situation we now face www.npr.org/2025/04/22/n...
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- Reposted by Mike WagnerEntirely predictable: a law parading itself as championing free speech on campus has become a means to censor and threaten academic freedom
- Reposted by Mike WagnerAlternate frame: how the U.S. created the Internet, advanced digital technologies, and developed medical innovations that have increased the quality of life and health of the entire world.
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- Friday Night Massacre of accurate information. A devastating day for the USA as tens of millions of dollars of grants seeking to combat the spread of false information were terminated. We have a federal govenrment that does not consider the verifiable truth a priority. www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...
- Reposted by Mike WagnerNSF has posted an “update on priorities.” They’re canceling all “DEI and misinformation/disinformation” grants. And the guidance on how to fulfill the longstanding, legally mandated Broadening Participation requirement is utterly incoherent. www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...
- Excellent story in @dailycardinal.bsky.social about or teach-in on Wednesday night. College journalists are doing very good work covering this moment. www.dailycardinal.com/article/2025...
- Our turn, Wisconsin.
- Sounds like they want D.iverse viewpoints E.quitable viewpoints I.nclusive viewpoints
- Proud of this terrific conversation between experts and students about how we understand and navigate this moment together.
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- Reposted by Mike WagnerI don't think I've ever seen someone speak about children (in this case, specifically Autistic kids) with such disgust and such disdain.
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- Reposted by Mike WagnerToday in weird statistical coincidences
- Thanks to the 100+ students who came to our teach-in tonight that discussed the threats and hardships our university, faculty, staff, & students are facing from the executive branch. Great, engaged questions from the students. Grateful to the faculty experts who shared their experiences & evidence.
- Reposted by Mike WagnerConfession that due process is or should be optional according to the vice president
- Adding the brilliant and kind Ankur Desai to the panel to talk about what is happening to research about climate change.
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- Reposted by Mike WagnerBrief from the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and more than 80 universities says arrests and deportations of student protesters create a “climate of fear” at universities across the country. This is a big deal—the first time universities have weighed in. knightcolumbia.org/documents/eh...
- Join me as I'll be part of a discussion of misinfo & higher ed @ucfreespeech’s 7th annual #SpeechMatters conference w/ @UW’s @chriscoward, @UCIrvine’s @simone_schamber & Connie Moon Sehat (Discourse Labs)! 🗓️ Tune in April 10: uci.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
- I gave twice! Once, in honor of our amazing graduate students and once in the memory of a much-missed colleague and friend, the late Jim Baughman.
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- It’s an anxious time at best for universities, but I’m putting my money where my mouth is and supporting @uwsjmc.bsky.social for #DayOfTheBadger you can support our amazing students here: dayofthebadger.org/campaign/jou...
- @michaelmirer.bsky.social met a former classmate of yours, Daniel Fastenberg, who talked to me for Reuters for a SCOWIS story. He says hi.
- Reposted by Mike WagnerHUD had a similarly empty booth at the American Planning Association conference in Denver last weekend.
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- Kudos to former AG Brad Schimel for conceding his loss to Susan Crawford in the SCOWIS race. And for stopping audiences members who were falsely shouting voter fraud. Important for leaders to lead even in defeat. m.youtube.com/watch?v=PEmI...
- Pour one out for Chris Knight. It’s a moral imperative. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/m...
- Reposted by Mike WagnerIt's getting a lot of attn today. But even before today most of the country had very little idea of what has happened at NIH or through it the entire ecosystem of biomedical research in the US. Simply put, Musk, Kennedy & Trump exploded a bomb right in the middle of cancer cure research in the US.
- Reposted by Mike WagnerNew, from me: Elon Musk is the biggest loser in Wisconsin. His brazen effort to buy a state supreme court did not just fail - it undermined his image of political kingmaker. This is the clearest indicator that voters are angry with Trump/Musk agenda. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-bigges...
- Reposted by Mike WagnerBooker, after speaking for more than 24 hours and breaking Thurmond's record, is still standing and still speaking--using his time to warn his colleagues and his country about the dangers of defunding universities and defunding scientific research.
- The first issue @booker.senate.gov discusses after breaking the record for longest senate floor speech: the long-term, own goal, catastrophic consequences of cutting university funding of innovative research on quantum computing, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, etc.
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- Historic senate speech from @booker.senate.gov get to C-Span to see history.
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- Context for below electionlawblog.org#:~:text=In%2...
- Soon we will learn whether Wisconsin election law allows you to hit the reset button after you illegally offer to pay people for voting and then say that you didn’t really mean you’d pay people for voting when you said you’d pay people for voting, but you meant you’d pay them to sign a petition.
- Reposted by Mike WagnerWorking with an interdisciplinary team, we have developed a website to communicate how the White House's proposed cuts to health research would cause losses of $16B and 68,500 jobs. Find out how your community may be impacted. Explore more at SCIMaP: scienceimpacts.org a 🧵
- Bob lived on my street here in Madison, even after leaving my dept. at UW-Madison for Illinois years ago. He will be terribly missed by his neighbors & by the country he sought to inform and engage with his scholarship & public writing. Lovely remembrance from @nicholsuprising.bsky.social 👇🏼
- 29 articles/books. But not the article that described Meta’s collaboration with academics studying the 2020 presidential election.
- Meta used at least 16 of my books, and numerous articles, to help train the AI it will use to make billions. Authors, search your name here: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...
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- Reposted by Mike WagnerThis is a very good piece from Paul Musgrave on how academic conferences work, and why they will cease to work as the US becomes perceived as a pariah state. Yes, its a perk for people like me, but real knowledge generation occurs in such spaces. substack.com/home/post/p-...
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- Reposted by Mike WagnerIf the government can do this to universities, we don't live in a free society. Five alarm fire.
- Reposted by Mike WagnerThere's a lot of work to do. We're hiring another Legal Fellow to start ASAP. Please send the best people our way. @knightcolumbia.org knightcolumbia.org/page/legal-f...
- Free speech except for anyone we don’t like. If that 👇🏼is real & Americans let this happen, the country I grew up in, was educated in, got married in, earned a Ph.D. in, welcomed children in, taught 1000s of students in, conducted rigorous research in, tried to contribute to democracy in, is gone.
- With all of the attention on the dismantling of the research infrastructure that helped make the U.S. a superpower, let’s remember that most world-class researchers spend tons of time teaching the next generation. Here’s a podcast I was interviewed 4 abt my teaching. idc.ls.wisc.edu/2025/03/06/e...
- We are running out of time. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
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- Reposted by Mike Wagner"Vote for the bill so that the president can refuse to spend the money you just voted for" is whole other level of saying the quiet part out loud.
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- Reposted by Mike WagnerHarvard Must Take a Stand for Democracy www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
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