Rebekah Modrak
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rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
Rebekah Modrak
@rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
370 followers 190 following 140 posts
artist, writer, prof at UMich, co-editor of Trouble in Censorville, and creator of RETHINK SHINOLA https://rethinkshinola.com/ and ReMade Co https://remadeco.org/
https://rebekahmodrak.com/
Posts Replies Media Videos
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
Dartmouth rejects Trump’s attempts to control speech in higher education
October 4, 2025 at 1:15 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
This Tuesday in Ann Arbor. A reading about attempts to intimidate and silence academics.
September 13, 2025 at 12:01 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
With new language to the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities (in defiance of students and faculty), U-Michigan’s regents, general counsel and Student Life enact a final coup to control how “violations” are defined and adjudicated.
September 11, 2025 at 2:15 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
correcting the maddening dishonesty
August 7, 2025 at 3:03 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
Guidepost Solutions' chairman is monitoring the extortion of Columbia by Trump. U. of Michigan regents, all on their own, hired "consultants" from Guidepost last year to comb through video tapes to harass and attempt to expel students who protested the war on Gaza.
July 29, 2025 at 1:07 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
Bravo to the Mississippi educators seeking a restraining order to the law prohibiting educators from teaching students about issues "related to race, sex, color, gender identity, sexual orientation or national origin.” @insurgentprof.bsky.social
In April, Mississippi enacted a new anti-DEI law that would, among other things, prohibit public colleges, universities and K-12 schools from “engag[ing]” in “any formal or informal education . . . that focus[es] on increasing awareness or understanding of issues related to race, sex, color, gender identity, sexual orientation or national origin.” So, we’re suing. We had our first hearing in federal court on Tuesday, seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary junction. We’re right, and we’re going to win.
June 29, 2025 at 9:04 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
Michael Roth at Heterodox. 👏👏👏
“Your complaints at the Heterodox conferences for almost 10 years now—about being too woke, about not having enough jobs for white people, about too many women in the academy—have found resonance with an authoritarian push to control our spaces,” Wesleyan University president Michael Roth said Tuesday during a plenary panel at the event. “We can make nice and not say that and we won’t get investigated,” he said. “Or we can do our job, which is to call the indecent attack on our sector indecent, wrongheaded, lawless, authoritarian, fascistic—choose your words. But if you sit there and worry about the sociology department and whether Near East studies is really antisemitic, I think you’re doing their work of authoritarianism.”
June 27, 2025 at 10:28 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
U of Florida Law student writes article claiming the U.S. constitution only protects white people. Student receives award.

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/u...
June 22, 2025 at 12:53 AM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
June 9, 2025 at 3:21 AM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
When you need to apologize and say, “we hired random idiots to follow and photograph our students, thereby putting them at risk” but instead you say, “we would never target anyone and the rogue guy who acted shamefully has been sacked.”
June 9, 2025 at 3:10 AM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
June 6, 2025 at 3:50 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
The Guardian broke the story about excessive surveillance on U Michigan’s campus (thousands of surveillance cameras, undercover cops trailing students, drones over public squares).

U-M regents approved spending for cops/cameras and ignored our complaint in the May Faculty Governance report.
June 6, 2025 at 3:22 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
June 4, 2025 at 5:34 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
June 3, 2025 at 11:20 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
“there were precious few questions about his academic plans for the institution”

tinyurl.com/3674pmks
Ono’s appearance before the trustees on Tuesday felt at times like a presidential debate, with the trustees standing in for feisty news moderators. For nearly two hours, board members grilled Ono almost exclusively on ideological issues. Relatively speaking, there were precious few questions about his academic plans for the institution. Several trustees asked Ono to pledge that he’d guard against antisemitism and crack down on any student encampments that might emerge on his watch.
May 28, 2025 at 12:48 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
Project Esther exploited real concerns about antisemitism to radically reshape and control speech at universities, and university presidents and trustees complied.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/u...
Project Esther’s architects envisioned outcomes that at the time might have seemed far-fetched. Curriculum it believed to be sympathetic to a “Hamas support” narrative would be taken out of schools and universities, and “supporting faculty” would be removed. Social media would be purged of content deemed to be antisemitic. Institutions would lose public funding. Foreign students who pushed for Palestinian rights would have their visas revoked, or be deported.
May 18, 2025 at 12:51 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
If you’re craving serious examples of bad-ass women, I just published a single-essay book about Arijana Lekić-Fridrih, who has literally been standing up to confront the men praying for “male authority” en masse in public squares in Croatia.

disobediencepress.com/arijana-leki...

#womensrights
May 4, 2025 at 1:43 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
“Already this semester, she said, more than a dozen staff have been fired as Michigan administrators ended campus DEI initiatives. ‘Either they wanted to do this and used the Trump policy as cover, or they’re cowards,’ Weineck said Tuesday.”

archive.ph/aIjEA

@silkyweineck.bsky.social
April 24, 2025 at 2:15 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
University of Michigan faculty approve Motion 1 — the Rutgers mutual defense compact!
April 21, 2025 at 1:57 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
ALL FOUR U-MICHIGAN FACULTY SENATE MOTIONS PASS BY LANDSLIDE MARGINS!
@umich.edu faculty push back on Trump’s assaults on higher education and affirm commitment to DEI.
April 21, 2025 at 1:54 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
long line for the urinal after this meeting
April 18, 2025 at 5:18 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
a strategy of “negotiation and conciliation seems to have no acceptable ending point.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/u...
April 16, 2025 at 11:34 AM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
Thursday April 17, 12pm
April 15, 2025 at 11:46 AM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
Opportunity to Hear From and Ask Questions of an Immigration Attorney

When: Monday April 7, 11:45am - 12:45pm
Where: This event is hybrid
In person: The Annenberg Auditorium, the Ford School of Public Policy,
735 S State St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Zoom: umich.zoom.us/j/98575561235
Opportunity to Hear From and Ask Questions of an Immigration Attorney The Managing Attorney for the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC) will give a streamlined version of MIRC’s Know Your Rights Presentation for encounters with immigration enforcement officers, will address the concerns that people on work visas or student visas might face about travel and deportation, and will address the First Amendment Freedom of Speech concerns that we might have regarding immigration and attempts to deport people for political speech. Monday, April 7, 11:45am - 12:45pm. Open to students, faculty, staff, and community members.
April 4, 2025 at 5:14 PM
rebekahmodrak.bsky.social
Anyone out there studying the language of how executives communicate with and envision the capacities of manual laborers? This is Shinola's job posting for a Watch Assembler.

"Listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words"?

"Move hands and arms together"?
Duties and Responsibilities: Quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine to exact positions to perform various tasks. Move hands and arms together to grasp, manipulate, or assemble small objects. Arrange items or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific sequence or set of rules. Listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences. Concentrate on a task over long periods without being distracted. Other responsibilities may be assigned from time to time.
April 4, 2025 at 2:57 PM