A few weeks ago, I posted about my plan to reflect on and share some of what I’m learning and thinking about in my study leave. While I have been reading and posting, I’m increasingly feeling like this is not the time, and I am not in the right place to do this right now.

I still will be reading and working on my study leave projects – that’s a given, as it’s currently my job. Blogging and sharing on this topic, on the other hand, are feeling increasingly irrelevant and pointless in this moment.  As a scientist and university educator* living in the US, it’s devastating to see the massive cuts and layoffs in these areas. People close to me have lost their jobs; others are at risk of losing them. Meanwhile, the H5N1 influenza virus is sticking around, so the gutting of public health in the USA seems particularly ill-timed. (I was glad to hear that Canada has ordered H5N1 vaccine doses, with the intent of making them available to high-risk people.) The damage that is being done now is likely to have an impact for a very long time, and while I am lucky enough to work in Canada, we have our own issues and constraints. (If you can vote in the Ontario election, please check out the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA)’s 2025 Ontario election advocacy platform.)

So … I am not sure what blogging I will be doing in the future, but for now, I’m putting the study leave reading and blogging focus on hiatus.  (I’d still love to talk to other folks about this stuff, but that may be better done in conferences/workshops.)

I will share  a resource that might be of interest to those of you who are struggling with the onslaught of awful news. I sometimes feel like I can’t escape it – on the banks of TVs at the gym, flooding Bluesky (I follow a lot of folks in education and science, many who are based in the USA). I’m limiting my deliberate exposure to most news sources and social media, but it also feels irresponsible to completely escape the news. Liz Neeley and Liminal are doing the work to sort through the news, through the lens of science and science communications (“… sensemaking in a noisy and complicated world”). Check out the weekly posts/newsletter here.    

* And a human who cares about science, education, other folks …