Jackie Gardina
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jackiegardina.bsky.social
Jackie Gardina
@jackiegardina.bsky.social
2K followers 3.3K following 2.5K posts
Higher ed supporter, podcast host, and a law and politics junkie with a social justice focus. *All opinions are my own
https://sidebarmedia.org
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jackiegardina.bsky.social
When a board of trustees gives policy making authority to the government, it has sacrificed instiutional autonomy. Boards need to recognize their fiduciary obligations go beyond financial sustainability.

agb.org/governnow/#P...
Across the country, trustees are facing mounting political pressures that challenge their core fiduciary duty: to govern in the best interest of their institution’s mission, not transient ideologies. When boards become instruments of partisanship, academic freedom erodes, public trust wanes, and the fundamental purpose of higher education is distorted. This is not a theoretical debate—it’s an urgent call to action. Boards must lead with integrity, uphold institutional autonomy, and safeguard the intellectual freedom that fuels discovery and democracy. The choices made now will shape U.S. higher education for generations.
November 29, 2025 at 10:52 AM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
🔥🔥🔥

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/o...
The administration maintains that it can investigate Senator Kelly because he is a retired naval officer. In other words, because he fought for his country — something Donald Trump managed to avoid doing — Senator Kelly has less First Amendment protection than the rest of us. That’s wrong.
November 26, 2025 at 2:20 PM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
I really appreciated @carolecadwalla.bsky.social frank assessment of AI and the AI bubble. This paragraph sums it up for me. broligarchy.substack.com/p/the-great-...
What we’re seeing is a closed doom loop underpinned by…well, what exactly? The promise of a world-changing technology that, guess what, isn’t here yet and there’s no real sign that it ever will be. These companies are stealing every scrap of data they can find, throwing compute power at it, draining our aquifers of water and our national grids of electricity and all we have so far is some software that you can’t trust not to make things up.
November 16, 2025 at 11:59 AM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
The Trump immunity decision comes to life once again,

www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23p...
Second, the majority designates certain conduct immune while refusing to recognize anything as prosecutable. It shields large swaths of conduct involving the Justice De- partment with immunity, see ante, at 19–21; see also Part V, supra, but it does not give an inch in the other direction.
November 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
A "win" now includes a provision in a CR that requires the President to follow a law passed in 2019 to pay furloughed workers.

Oh how the Overton window has shifted.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/u...
Their biggest win was language that would restore the jobs of thousands of federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown and bar further reductions-in-force through Jan. 30, while guaranteeing back pay for hundreds of thousands of others who were furloughed, as required by law.
November 10, 2025 at 10:17 AM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
Handmaids Army kicked off there day of action at the Heritage Foundation today.

In a pique of pettiness, Heritage put huge loudspeakers outside blasting Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA.

Nonetheless, they persisted.
Handmaids Army - women dressed in red cloaks holding signs with SHAME on them outside Heritage Foundation.
November 5, 2025 at 2:18 PM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
A frightening and accurate paragraph describing the death of rule of law in the US aided and abetted by SCOTUS and a partisan Congress.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/u...
It is becoming clearer than ever that the rule of law in the White House has depended chiefly on norms — on government lawyers willing to raise objections when merited and to resign in protest if ignored, and on presidents who want to appear lawful. This is especially true in an era when party loyalty has defanged the threat of impeachment by Congress, and after the Supreme Court granted presidents immunity from prosecution for crimes committed with official powers.
October 24, 2025 at 11:30 AM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
Some created a Project 2025 graveyard for Halloween.🎃 Grave markers include:

Due process
Truth
Facts
Research & Health
Civil Rights
Trans in the Military
EPA & Climate Science
Checks & Balances
SCOTUS independence
USAID
A Project 2025 graveyard with grave markers identifying all we have lost in 8 months.
October 23, 2025 at 10:50 AM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
“We are all the couch now.” #NoKings DC
October 18, 2025 at 5:34 PM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
I just listened to former FBI agent @michaelfeinberg.bsky.social and @nytimes.com reporter Devlin Barrett discuss the politicization of the FBI. Feinberg worked counterintelligence and gave a damning assessment of our current state. @hillcenterdc.bsky.social

I will not sleep tonight.
A picture of reporter Devlin Barrett and former FBI agent Michael Feinberg.
October 9, 2025 at 12:43 AM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
We've been fighting for academic freedom a long time.

From 1926:

"I do no know whether the theory of evolution is true, & I realize there are sincere men on both sides of the controversy, but there is an impending danger to the freedom of teaching when it is forbidden by law..."

@aaup.org
A 1926 article about the right to teach evolution in college classrooms. "I do no know whether the theory of evolution is true, and I realize there are sincere men on both sides of the controversy, but there is an impending danger to the freedom of teaching when it is forbidden by law to teach such well-established theory."
October 6, 2025 at 8:18 PM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
University attorneys are too risk averse for this moment. Avoid regulatory consequences is not the same as "defending the university." [Gift Link]

#academicsky

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/u...
“I did ask him about whether he had thought about not complying, and he said no,” Dr. Butler, a gender theorist who joined Berkeley’s faculty in the early 1990s, recalled in an interview. Professor Butler said the lawyer, who declined to comment, responded that his job was to defend the university. “But perhaps,” Professor Butler remembered replying, “it’s your job to defend the highest ideals of the university.”
September 27, 2025 at 12:09 PM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
No lies detected. @adamserwer.bsky.social neatly summarizes the capitulation of institutions.
Big companies and their CEOs have cowered before Trumpist intimidation, trying to ease his temper by settling frivolous lawsuits over “bias” or slathering the president in juche-style flattery. Media companies have settled First Amendment cases they were likely to win in order to curry favor or protect their parent company’s commercial interests. Newspaper owners have compromised the integrity of their own publications. Elite academic institutions have sacrificed their independence to try to preserve their federal funding. At least one has turned the names of its own students over to the government for potential political persecution. Major law firms with deep pockets and armies of lawyers have shrunk from defending the rule of law because they fear Trump’s wrath.
September 25, 2025 at 12:30 PM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
Topa?
September 9, 2025 at 12:27 PM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
Congress could act to maintain HHS and CDC's mission and focus on public health.

Congress could do a lot to at least slow what is happening across the administration - from tarriffs to the deployment of the National Guard.
We have a message for the rest of the nation as well: This is a time to rally to protect the health of every American. Congress must exercise its oversight authority over H.H.S. State and local governments must fill funding gaps where they can. Philanthropy and the private sector must step up their community investments. Medical groups must continue to stand up for science and truth. Physicians must continue to support their patients with sound guidance and empathy.
September 1, 2025 at 11:51 AM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
Woof!
August 24, 2025 at 4:33 PM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
Topa is a really good listener.
August 23, 2025 at 10:24 AM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
Only law professors and lawyers can appreciate this. In a “free library” in Washington, DC, someone has offered the Bluebook. #lawsky #appellatesky
August 19, 2025 at 12:17 AM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
I wrote this sentence nearly 20 years ago in "Toward Military Rule? A Critique of Executive Discretion To Use the Military in Domestic Emergencies."

It is apparent that the limited guardrails that existed then are completely gone today.

scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcont...
Unfortunately, today there is little left of this hard-fought compromise. Congress has delegated excessive discretionary authority to the Executive to use the military domestically." And, with the transformation of the National Guard into an international fighting force rather than a domestic security force, the federal government has virtually wrested control of the Guard away from the states. Congress's actions have slowly eroded the shared power paradigm erected by the framing generation. 3 Other than the good will and good sense of the Executive, there is little to protect the American public from "the corrosive effect upon liberty of exaggerated military power."'
August 17, 2025 at 11:42 AM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
I’m really sorry, Jeff. In solidarity.
August 8, 2025 at 10:17 PM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
I tried to come up with a place that was more intolerant than Martha’s Vineyard but I couldn’t…..
A black high school student seeking to enter the school with a white mob following behind her in Little Rock, AK
August 4, 2025 at 1:13 PM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
Here’s my timeline. @willbunch.bsky.social and @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social are saying the exact same thing.
Two posts one right after the other - the first by Will Bunch and the second Bill Kristol expressing dismay about BLS termination and Maxwell prison transfer.
August 1, 2025 at 11:02 PM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
None of these "deals" or "agreements" could go forward without Board approval. I am interested in whether there is a way to hold university boards accountable for these decisions. They have a "fiduciary duty" that is broader than just financial.

agb.org/knowledge-ce...
Fiduciary duties are at the heart of effective governance. Contrary to popular belief, fulfilling one’s fiduciary duties cannot be reduced to simply overseeing financial assets of colleges and universities. Governing boards must make good faith decisions in the best interest of their institutions by acting in accordance with the fiduciary duties of care, loyalty, and obedience. While boards act as a body, “the fiduciary duties applied by law and best practice fall on individual board members.”1 AGB empowers its members to ensure their governing boards’ actions align with their institutional mission and comply with the law.
July 31, 2025 at 2:20 PM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
I am a little late to the party.
July 28, 2025 at 6:58 PM
jackiegardina.bsky.social
Can we please center the victims/survivors in this conversation, not the perpetrators.

If you need a reminder about what a jury convicted Ghislaine Maxwell of after several vicitms testified at trial about the abuse.

www.cnn.com/2021/12/15/u...
Maxwell, 60, had pleaded not guilty to six federal charges: sex trafficking of minors, enticing a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and three counts of conspiracy. She was found guilty by a New York jury on five of the six counts and acquitted on the charge of enticing a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts. Maxwell faces up to 65 years in prison.
July 26, 2025 at 1:40 PM