Clark Gray
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clarklgray.bsky.social
Clark Gray
@clarklgray.bsky.social

Professor of Geography and Environment, UNC-Chapel Hill
https://clarkgray.web.unc.edu/

Sociology 27%
Political science 27%
Pinned
Advisee brunch at Carolina Coffee Shop!
OU has put the professor here on administrative leave:
Universities are assembling larger and larger teams to deal with academic integrity issues--mostly focused on AI--while simultaneously holding AI "writing" contests, AI-themed events, "hey, come play with these fun tools!" The messages are so mixed, it's criminal. Because AI is bloated with money.

Reposted by Clark Gray

Open PhD position here in UMN forest resources in the analysis of forest change in tropical mountains, with a focus on geospatial analysis. Applications due Dec. 8. More information and instructions on how to apply here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com
This means NSF dissertation improvement grants in the social sciences are simply...not happening.
NEW from me - NSF cancels grant scheme for social science research.

Seems the NSF quietly archived ALL calls for DDRIG grants in the SBE directorate. This is a massive blow for PhD students wanting to do cutting-edge social science research. 🏺🧪
Today's biggest science news: Doomed comet explodes | Comet 3I/ATLAS course alteration | Dark matter detected?
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025: Your daily feed of the biggest discoveries and breakthroughs making headlines.
www.livescience.com

Reposted by Clark Gray

Have been getting a bunch of emails about Springer Nature's Discover XYZ journals over the last couple of months.

Seems like MDPI/Frontiers got hold of a tuxedo.

It's so over for #academicpublishing.

Reposted by Clark Gray

Duke Asked Some Faculty to Avoid Talking to Media https://bit.ly/3M0OBAK

#EDUSky #AcademicSky #HigherEd

Reposted by Clark Gray

I attended a lovely invited @wikipedia.org page editing meeting today. It's been a while since I did one, and relearning how it works was great.
Apologies for topic vagueness, but just giving a shout out to such a highly used resource in health. Yes, really.
a white puzzle with the letters w and i written on it
Alt: a white puzzle with the letters w and i written on it
media.tenor.com
One of the fun southern #CostaRica specialties, the Speckled Tanager. In San Vito, Puntarenas.

#birds #green #nature
NEW from me - NSF cancels grant scheme for social science research.

Seems the NSF quietly archived ALL calls for DDRIG grants in the SBE directorate. This is a massive blow for PhD students wanting to do cutting-edge social science research. 🏺🧪
Today's biggest science news: Doomed comet explodes | Comet 3I/ATLAS course alteration | Dark matter detected?
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025: Your daily feed of the biggest discoveries and breakthroughs making headlines.
www.livescience.com

Reposted by Clark Gray

Jakarta, Indonesia’s vibrant, overcrowded and sinking capital, has displaced Tokyo as the most populated city in the world, according to the UN, thanks to its new way of counting urban populations.
Jakarta Overtakes Tokyo as World’s Largest City, UN Report Says
The capital of Indonesia surpassed Tokyo as the world’s most populous city after the United Nations overhauled how it measures urban populations.
nyti.ms
This is wild!

Seven-day-ahead weather forecasts in high-income countries are more accurate than one-day-ahead weather forecasts in low-income countries.

Reposted by Clark Gray

As the number on the list approached the total number likely to be recommended for funding (typically ~75%), each application was presented and discussed. These discussions tended to be rich and could be spirited as each program officer had opinions and also had competing favorites.

6/8
Insightful piece by Larry Lessig on the need for more transparency in Harvard faculty members’ ties to Epstein

The 2020 Harvard Epstein report now looks like a big joke

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
The First Epstein Report Ignored Summers. Harvard Must Do Better. | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson
How could Harvard have allowed this production of Hamlet without the Prince? And will it now commit to a practice that will not protect the elite among us, while shaming those not quite elite enough?
www.thecrimson.com
"She said that lenacapavir has become a kind of diplomatic carrot — and stick.

Friendly, compliant governments, like Eswatini, have received early shipments, whereas South Africa or Nigeria — countries that have fallen out of favor with Trump — seem to have received the short end of the stick."
The US is fast-tracking this important HIV drug — for everyone except South Africa
Why the Trump administration is cutting out a country that needs it most.
www.vox.com

The “malleability of students to what they study” seems exactly right to me but it’s so good to have empirical confirmation.

The riskiness of STEM focus feels like it doesn’t *need* to be true yet probably *is* true in most settings, whereas the political consequences probably vary across settings?
Twitter accounts are based in Russia. BlueSky accounts are based in homes with, frankly, too many books, plants, obsolete cables, and pieces of rustic pottery, that could do with a bit of a tidying up, to be honest.
My hot take is that over the next 10 years, we're going to see more emphasis on and investment in the humanities at Ivy League and other fancy schools just as state schools and small privates continue to decimate and even eliminate the humanities.
"While other universities report that the humanities are shrinking, at Berkeley, the opposite is true. The music major is the fastest-growing major on campus. We are finding bigger classrooms because film is exploding. English is back to the numbers we saw 15 years ago. We are hiring" bit.ly/4ohKuOe
"The humanities really are a resource — a confidence for living in our times.” Dean Sara Guyer on the modern utility of humanities degrees
This interview originally appeared on the Division of Arts
bit.ly
Journalist challenge: Use “Machine Learning” when you mean machine learning and “LLM” when you mean LLM. Ditch “AI” as a catch-all term, it’s not useful for readers and it helps companies trying to confuse the public by obscuring the roles played by different technologies. 🧪

Reposted by Clark Gray

No more paylines at the NIH
grants.nih.gov/news-events/...
Implementing a Unified NIH Funding Strategy to Guide Consistent and Clearer Award Decisions | Grants & Funding
grants.nih.gov
Policy should focus not on fertility targets but on how “societies can remain prosperous, equitable & sustainable under conditions of low fertility, population aging & population decline. That is a question better aligned with what we actually know—and with the uncertainties we must acknowledge”
The demographic future that we do not know about
The demographic future of the planet has rarely been as questioned as it is today. For much of the 20th century, the demographic transition theory provided a clear narrative: With modernization and de...
www.science.org

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📣 Applications open for GENIUS 2026, a 3-day mentoring workshop at Penn State for rising third- and fourth-year students underrepresented in geography. 🌍

📅 May 27–29.

Apply by Feb. 15, 2026: www.geog.psu.edu/geniusworkshop
This week, I withdrew from a speaking engagement at a public university because they sent me a list of prohibited “words & concepts.” I will not humor this censorship. It does a disservice to the stories I’m discussing & the audience, who deserve unfettered access to information & conversation.

Reposted by Clark Gray

Here is a comparison for the world population.un.org/wup/countryp...

Reposted by Clark Gray

Sara Ghebremicael at @uncpopcenter.bsky.social presenting her work on conflict and climate drivers of migration in northern Ethiopia at Wittgenstein Centre conference
CDC has overhauled its website to assert that “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim”
INCREDIBLE CURVES

Reposted by Clark Gray

New pre-print! Brazil Data Commons

arxiv.org/abs/2511.11755

Collaborative work led by Isadora Cristina with Ramon Gonze, Jônatas Santos, Julio Reis, Mário Alvim, and Fabrício Benevenuto.

Brazil Data Commons: A Platform for Unifying and Integrating Brazil's Public Data
Brazil Data Commons: A Platform for Unifying and Integrating Brazil's Public Data
The fragmentation of public data in Brazil, coupled with inconsistent standards and limited interoperability, hinders effective research, evidence-based policymaking and access to data-driven insights...
arxiv.org

Reposted by Clark Gray

Previously, the UN used each country’s own definitions of which areas were urban. That approach tells us that only 58% of the global population was urban in 2025. In contrast, the new 81% statistic is based on a universal definition of urban areas as relatively dense settlements of 5000+ people.
The New School is now a place where students cannot major in History, Anthropology, Sociology, Global Policy & International Affairs, Global Studies, Urban Studies, or Environmental Studies. And more pauses, closures, and mergers coming down the pike this week. The future is uncertain.