When the National Science Foundation tabbed Arthur “Skip” Lupia to head its Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE), it was making a statement whether it meant to or not. Lupia, officially the Hal R. Varian Collegiate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, has been one of social science’s ablest defenders — and occasional critics.

Making its largest-ever grant in the social sciences and humanities, the Wolfson Foundation awarded the British Academy £10 million to promote high quality research. Under the initiative, the British Academy will create a fellowship program to support early career researchers, develop an international community of scholars and create an intellectual hub at the academy’s London home on Carlton House Terrace.

Predatory publications are different from mainstream journals because they charge exorbitant fees to publish the articles they solicit, and they don’t follow any of the quality assurance processes expected in academic publication. Academics in the developing world have become a favorite target for these journals, and many seem to be falling into the trap. We need to ask why.

U.S. government-funded research that on its face looked only at fame, names and gender turned out to be pioneering work into implicit bias. This year a Golden Goose Award went to three researchers who developed the concept of implicit bias and then made a huge impact on popular culture by giving the world a test to measure it.

The Coalition for National Science Funding hosted a webinar titled “Communicating the Value of NSF to Elected Officials”; Focusing on the need to engage with elected officials while they’re at home in their district. An issue of importance as US Government continues to go back and forth on its funding for the next fiscal year.

Both houses of the United States Congress have appropriations bills that increase funding for the National Science Foundation and the 2020 Census in the works, and ‘regular order’ is still the rule for seeing them advance to passage. But how long will regular order be regular?

Arbitrary choices –all those political considerations that twist and constrain scholarship without adding to it in intellectually meaningful ways — are rife in contemporary academic sociology, says our Daniel Nehring. Tired of trying to pointlessly argue against them in hopes they disappear, he asks that we make these choices explicit and visible.

Funding for basic research, visas for scholars from outside the United States, and streamlining regulations that get in the way of research are areas of concern for a consortium of business and academic interests that annually reviews the state of American government’s commitment to innovation.

The academic world has the power to transform events in redefining its social mission, by responding to this highly ambitious EU action plan with the emergence of courses that match the expectations not only of businesses but, above all, society.

Legislation to fund the National Science Foundation and the Bureau of the Census, among many other U.S. government agencies, in the next fiscal year sailed through its first public hearing today in the House of Representatives.

The House approved several financial services measures, the 21st Century IRS Act, the Taxpayer First Act, and the FAA Reauthorization Act. The House also voted on and failed to adopt a balanced budget Constitutional amendment. The Senate voted to confirm several nominations, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

A group of professional organizations, universities, businesses, and scientific societies are thanking Congress for this year’s 4 percent increase in funding for the National Science Foundation — and wondering if they might double that next year.