ISSUES

The New School Makes Some Painful Cuts

The New School will employ 65 fewer full-time faculty members in the fall than it did last year, Kessler said. Based on the most recent federal data, that reduction would amount to roughly 36 percent of its 2024 full-time faculty work force. - Chronicle of Higher Education

Trump Administration’s Plans To Cancel Student Loans For Almost All College Arts Programs

Yale University’s master’s programs in visual arts and music would fail. Harvard University’s master’s degree in museum studies would fail. The Juilliard School’s undergraduate and graduate programs in music would fail. - The New York Times

Report: Australian Arts Participation At Highest Level Ever

More Australians are attending live arts events and festivals, with 2025 the highest level of attendance recorded. While some art forms have seen shifts back towards more frequent pre-COVID-19 attendance patterns, others have not fully recovered. - Creative Australia

Trump Administration Wants To Judge Higher Ed Institutions On Graduates’ Earnings, Posing Dangers For Arts Schools

“The Department of Education has proposed a new ‘accountability’ system that would judge higher-education programs largely by graduates’ earnings, ... a test that music, visual arts, and filmmaking programs would, by their nature, be likely to fail." Programs whose graduates don't meet earnings benchmarks could become ineligible for federal student loans. - ARTnews

A Priority For Australia’s Next Cultural Policy: Protecting Freedom Of Expression

Treating freedom of expression and social cohesion as trade-offs is a category error. Freedom of expression is an internal attribute of cultural activity, an inherent good. Without it there is no culture worthy of the name, only sanctioned content. - ArtsHub

Arts Council England, The National Cultural Funder, Names A New Chairman

As of August 1, Dawn Airey, a longtime television executive who is currently chair of the National Youth Theatre and the educational platform Digital Theatre+, will succeed Nicholas Serota, who spent almost a decade leading the Council after a famously successful tenure as director of the Tate galleries and museums. - The Independent (UK)

Survivors Recount Living Through Russia’s Bombing Of Kyiv’s Cultural Sites

“We began evacuating the artefacts while the roof was still ablaze and the firefighting operation was still under way,” said the director of one museum. “We could hear the roof collapsing. We were constantly wading through water.” - The Guardian

The Trump Administration Is Dismantling Support For Social Science Research

If the National Science Foundation does stop funding social scientists, experts told me, our 5,000-foot-view of American life will get foggier. The NSF, through the SBE division, is the primary funder of the “big three” social-science surveys, which have enabled the work of several generations of academics, economists, and policy wonks. - The Atlantic

How Alice Walton Culturally Transformed A Corner Of Arkansas

It’s impossible to miss the scope of transformation that’s happened in Bentonville, population 63,000. - Fast Company

Not So Fast: Interior Secretary Won’t Commit To Removing Trump Name From The Kennedy Center

Secretary Burgum’s hedging came as Trump attacked the decision and the judge behind it on social media Friday and Saturday. - Time

A Deeper Dive Into How That Book About The Problems Of AI Was Partly Created By AI

Um, ouf? “He doubled down on his personal commitment to AI, noting that he still uses it every day. … I asked him whether he would rather stop writing than stop using AI in his writing process. ‘Yeah,’ he answered.” - Wired

Even If Trump’s Name Comes Off The Kennedy Center, He Might Still Destroy It

“When the history of Trump’s second administration is written, the whole sorry Kennedy Center chapter will be key to understanding the chaos, cruelty and grotesque egotism of the president, as well as the bravery and determination of those who resisted and persevered.” - Washington Post (Yahoo)

The Five Top Takeaways From The Kennedy Center Ruling

And yes, we sure do mean the Kennedy Center. - The New York Times

The Creator Of This Animated Cupcake Is Furious At Buzzfeed’s GenAI Plan

Remember when Jonah Peretti of Buzzfeed seemed like a good guy? That was a long time ago, and we were all so much more innocent, including the creator of Good Advice Cupcake: "I trusted them, though naively, when they said they had no interest in continuing Cuppy without me." - Wired

On TikTok, Scammers Are Using AI Blackface To Push Cheap Products

Those belt buckles sure aren’t handmade. And: “Nearly all aspects of the accounts appear to be AI-generated — from the ‘person’ in the video to automated responses to comments, which in some cases attempt to mimic African American vernacular.” - The Verge

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