Joeva Sean Rock
joevarock.bsky.social
Joeva Sean Rock
@joevarock.bsky.social
Anthropologist @ Stony Brook University. Food & agriculture - Technology - Environment - Politics of development. Book: https://tinyurl.com/joevarock
Pinned
*taps mic* 🎤 is this thing on?
The Giving Pledge after 15 years: Only 9 of the 256 billionaires actually followed through on giving away half their wealth

fortune.com/2025/08/07/b...
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge after 15 years: Only 9 of the 256 billionaires actually followed through on giving away half their wealth
The Institute for Policy Studies’ report “The Giving Pledge at 15” finds that the initiative remains mostly unfulfilled.
fortune.com
August 11, 2025 at 2:43 PM
More very bad news for researchers in the US. New executive order:

▪️pauses new federal funding
▪️places political appointees at federal agencies
▪️requires grants to "advance the President’s policy priorities"
▪️allows cancelation of active grants

arstechnica.com/science/2025...
New executive order puts all grants under political control
All new funding on hold until Trump administration can cancel any previously funded grants.
arstechnica.com
August 8, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Great insight from @marionnestle.bsky.social on why moving the USDA out of Washington DC is bad for the agency and those it serves:

www.foodpolitics.com/2025/07/the-...
The proposed destruction of the USDA: it's deja vu all over again. - Food Politics by Marion Nestle
The USDA has just announced a plan for reorganization that will move most of the agency out of Washington, DC, as flagrant an act of self-destruction as can be imagined.
www.foodpolitics.com
July 30, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Reposted by Joeva Sean Rock
Weekend reading: The collapse of the FDA—a National Tragedy

The New York Times Magazine has published an astonishing investigative report about the FDA, totally worth reading: Inside the Collapse of the F.D.A.  How the new health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is dismantling the agency. She…
Weekend reading: The collapse of the FDA—a National Tragedy
The New York Times Magazine has published an astonishing investigative report about the FDA, totally worth reading: Inside the Collapse of the F.D.A.  How the new health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is dismantling the agency. She begins with RFK Jr's opening salvo on Twitter (X): FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” Kennedy wrote. “This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.
www.foodpolitics.com
July 25, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Trump signed executive orders on Wednesday which, of many things, "bars the U.S. government from buying, using or promoting A.I. models that contradict the views of the president or his supporters"

#PoliticsofAI

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/u...
Trump’s A.I. Challenge: Focus on World’s Most Dangerous Weapons or Woke-ism?
www.nytimes.com
July 24, 2025 at 11:52 AM
"2025 will likely go down in history as the year donors set fire to their international development commitments"

www.cgdev.org/blog/chartin...
July 22, 2025 at 4:15 PM
What's interesting to me about the US withdrawing from UNESCO is how a Trump official describes the UN Sustainable Development Goals: “a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/w...
U.S. Says It Will Withdraw From U.N. Cultural Organization, Again
www.nytimes.com
July 22, 2025 at 2:30 PM
In a WhatsApp chat with Trump officials, Marc Andreesen advocated for the destruction of the NSF: “Raze it to the ground and start over.”

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
Tech billionaire Trump adviser Marc Andreesen says universities will ‘pay the price’ for DEI
Tech investor and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen in a private group chat attacked colleges for promoting diversity, saying they had discriminated against “native born kids.”
www.washingtonpost.com
July 13, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Japan has more than doubled its foreign aid budget in just five years

ourworldindata.org/data-insight...
July 2, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Aid cuts spark a rethink of African food systems rooted in agroecology

www.devex.com/news/aid-cut...
Aid cuts spark a rethink of African food systems rooted in agroecology
With the dismantling of USAID and a shift away from traditional official development assistance, activists see a chance to reshape the future of African agriculture.
www.devex.com
June 4, 2025 at 2:36 PM
In an essay outlining why she is resigning from the NSF and Library of Congress, Alondra Nelson writes that "DOGE [has] by fiat the authority to give thumbs up or down to [NSF] grant applications"

time.com/7285045/resi...
Why I’m Resigning from the NSF and Library of Congress
I cannot participate in systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging.
time.com
May 13, 2025 at 4:39 PM
The Department of Education has cancelled 2025 Fulbright-Hays grants. Devastating news for students and faculty alike!

www.insidehighered.com/news/global/...
Fulbright-Hays Grants Canceled for the Year
The grant programs have supported the international research of students and scholars for more than 60 years.
www.insidehighered.com
May 9, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Bill Gates has announced the Gates Foundation will close in 2045.

The GF was never designed to be like the Rockefeller or Ford Foundations, both of which have lasted long beyond their founders. This should raise more Qs - not less - re how the GF dominates global health & development spaces.
Bill Gates says he will donate 99% of his remaining tech fortune to the Gates Foundation. He also announced the foundation will now close in 2045, earlier than previously planned.
Bill Gates pledges his remaining fortune to the Gates Foundation, which will close in 20 years
Bill Gates says he will donate 99% of his remaining tech fortune to the Gates Foundation. Today, that would be worth an estimated $107 billion.
apnews.com
May 8, 2025 at 3:45 PM
"The current moment feels both urgent and misleading. Yes, African states must build independent systems. But the real issue isn’t just the loss of money, it’s the legacy that money has left behind." - Marjorie Namara Rugunda (via @africasacountry.bsky.social)

africasacountry.com/2025/04/as-a...
As aid ends, empire endures
Western donors are cutting budgets, but the aid model they built—rooted in control, dependency, and depoliticization—still shapes Africa’s development.
africasacountry.com
April 30, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Content moderators in Ghana are suing Meta over extreme and disturbing content and poor working conditions

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Meta faces Ghana lawsuits over impact of extreme content on moderators
Workers at contractor in Accra say they have suffered from depression and anxiety as a result of their work
www.theguardian.com
April 28, 2025 at 1:32 PM
Oh wow, Trump/DOGE are dismantling the Millennium Challenge Corporation

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/u...
DOGE to Dismantle Millennium Challenge Corporation
Millennium Challenge Corporation staff members were offered early retirement or deferred resignation in the latest effort by the Trump administration to gut the foreign aid apparatus.
www.nytimes.com
April 24, 2025 at 2:09 AM
Reposted by Joeva Sean Rock
One of Rachel Schurman's final articles posthumously published today & the final piece of a great NSF funded collaboration across Burkina Faso, Mozambique & Ivory Coast. The study convincingly offers more evidence that the New Green Revolution is not working onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Agricultural Value Chain Development Projects and Household Nutrition in Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Côte d'Ivoire
Many mainstream development actors and scholars concerned about rural poverty and hunger in Africa recommend integrating smallholder farmers, especially women, into formally structured agricultural v...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
April 22, 2025 at 2:39 PM
I really appreciated the opportunity to write in AIAC about a special issue Matthew Schnurr, Ann Kingiri & I have been working on re: genome editing and the future of food. The issue contains a fantastic set of open-access articles.

Check out the full issue here: online.ucpress.edu/elementa/col...
April 21, 2025 at 2:35 PM
Between 2013 and 2022, for-profit firms received nearly half of USAID funds going to non-government organizations

archive.ph/KyyB7
April 14, 2025 at 1:57 PM
Florida’s DOGE agency asks university faculty to hand over research

www.tampabay.com/news/educati...
Florida’s DOGE agency asks university faculty to hand over research
A letter sent last week asks colleges to compile a list of all research and grants.
www.tampabay.com
April 12, 2025 at 11:58 AM
12 hours later and the numbers have changed rapidly:

640+ students from 120+ colleges and universities have had their visas revoked.
April 11, 2025 at 12:21 AM
As of April 10, over 100 colleges and universities have identified 500 plus international students and recent graduates who have had their student visas revoked

www.insidehighered.com/news/global/...
Where Students Have Had Their Visas Revoked
The Trump administration has quietly revoked hundreds of student visas across the country, wreaking havoc on the system.
www.insidehighered.com
April 10, 2025 at 11:21 AM