When the forest is no longer a home – forest bats seek refuge in settlements

Using high-resolution GPS data from bats, a team of scientists has analysed in greater detail than ever before how Leisler's bats use their habitats, which tree species they look for when searching a roost, and which forest types they avoid

Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW)

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Leisler's bat at a treehole in an old oak tree

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Credit: Photo by Carolin Scholz

Many bat species native to Germany, such as the Leisler's bat, are forest specialists. However, as it is becoming increasingly hard for them to find tree hollows in forest plantations, so they are moving to settlements instead. Using high-resolution GPS data from bats, a team led by scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) has analysed in greater detail than ever before how Leisler's bats use their habitats, which tree species they look for when searching a roost, and which forest types they avoid. They found that these bats increasingly seek refuge in old trees in urban areas and in old buildings such as churches. In an article published in the “Journal of Environmental Management”, the team calls for stronger efforts to preserve these alternative roosts in settlements, as well as for ecologically sustainable forestry that protects old trees and promotes structurally rich forests.

With more than 1,400 species worldwide, bats are an enormously species-rich group of mammals. Many native species in Germany and Central Europe, such as the Leisler's bat (Nyctalus leisleri), are classic forest dwellers that depend on tree hollows and structurally rich forests. In their study, the research team demonstrates how today’s forestry is altering the habitat of these animals and highlights the importance of targeted measures to preserve their roosts. Leisler's bats are increasingly having to switch to daytime roosts in villages, as old trees with suitable cavities for roosting are getting rarer in forest plantations. They therefore seek shelter in the walls of old village churches and in old trees in residential areas, parks, and along lanes.

European forests have been intensively managed for a long time, which has had a detrimental effect on many specialised species, such as Leisler's bats. Professor Christian Voigt, from the Leibniz-IZW and the University of Potsdam, explains the new study in the east of Germany: 'We wanted to know how Leisler's bats, which are typical forest dwellers, respond to the intensification of forest management. This European species of bat is dependent on diverse deciduous forests with many old trees bearing woodpecker holes. This kind of habitat has become hard to find in the monotonous pine plantations of the study area.” Although Leisler's bats are relatively abundant in Germany, their exact population size is unknown.

Oak forests favoured – spruce forests avoided: first detailed insights into the habitat use of the Leisler’s bat

For the study, the team fitted 32 adult Leisler's bats in the German state of Brandenburg with miniature GPS loggers. These loggers generated detailed movement data, describing where the bats forage, where they rest during the day and which corridors they use for commuting. "Thanks to the high resolution of bat movement data, we were able to compare these with high-resolution landscape data for the first time, enabling us to carry out analyses at the level of individual forest tree species and small-scale structures such as copses, hedges or rows of trees," explains wildlife biologist Dr Carolin Scholz from the Leibniz-IZW. 'Such detailed insight into the habitat selection of the Leisler's bat was previously unavailable. However, this information is crucial to better consider the ecological requirements of the species in the future.'

The team's analysis clearly shows that Leisler's bats favour structurally rich oak forests as a habitat, while certain coniferous forests including those dominated by spruce forests were largely avoided. Old trees, especially oaks, are a key habitat for Leisler's bats. Interestingly, the data also shows that Leisler's bats regularly roost in residential areas. Bat expert Dipl.-Biol. Uwe Hoffmeister from the natura Büro für zoologische und botanische Fachgutachten (office for zoological and botanical consulting) explains: “With the help of GPS telemetry, we were able to show that, Leisler’s bats are increasingly exploring village centres and historic buildings such as churches, although they prefer forests as their natural habitat. We suspect that this is a response to the lack of suitable daytime roosts in managed forests – Leisler’s bats are probably forced to switch to alternative habitats in settlements because they have lost their original roosts in the forest.”

Sustainable forestry and preservation of old trees also necessary in residential areas

According to the authors, it is key to protect alternative roosting sites for bats and to develop an ecologically sustainable forestry practice that promotes old trees and structurally rich deciduous and mixed forests. According to the authors, this is the only way that forest bats such as the Leisler’s bat can survive in managed forests in the long term. Measures such as targeted, careful timber extraction and longer growth periods before harvesting can significantly increase structural diversity without fundamentally jeopardising the economic benefits of forestry. Furthermore, urban green spaces should be recognised as refuges for wildlife, such as bats. "Old and hollow-rich trees should be protected not only in forest plantations, but also in urban areas for species such as the Leisler’s bats", concludes Voigt.

Wind turbines in the forest as an additional threat

As Leisler's bats are frequently die at wind turbines, expanding the use of wind energy in forests could negatively impact this species' population growth. Wind turbines even appear to attract Leisler's bats. Voigt explains: ‘At dusk, the bats may mistake the turbines' silhouettes for large trees and fly towards them in search of roosts. The risk of collision could increase notably, as the bats fly at a height at which the turbines' rotor blades spin.” It is therefore urgent that we consider the habitat requirements and the movement behaviour of this highly mobile species. This study provides data that will enable foresters, landscape ecologists, and nature conservation authorities to implement effective protection measures for the bats. For example, new wind turbines should not be erected near structurally rich deciduous forests or next to bat roosts.

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Journal

Journal of Environmental Management

DOI

10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.125753 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Oak woodlands and urban green spaces: Landscape management for a forest-affiliated bat, the Leisler's bat (Nyctalus leisleri)

Article Publication Date

26-May-2025

 

Recognizing those who build a vibrant technical community

Special awards honor computing professionals for impactful service

Association for Computing Machinery

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This year’s awardees drove advancements in computer science curriculum, cyberinfrastructures, computer science education, and assistive robotics. They will be formally recognized at ACM’s annual awards banquet on June 14, 2025, in San Francisco.

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Credit: Association for Computing Machinery

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today recognized five individuals with awards for their exemplary service to the computing field. Representing diverse areas, the 2024 award recipients were selected by their peers for building a vibrant community that benefits both their colleagues and the broader society. This year’s awardees drove advancements in computer science curriculum, cyberinfrastructures, computer science education, and assistive robotics. They will be formally recognized at ACM’s annual awards banquet on June 14, 2025, in San Francisco.

Dan Garcia, Teaching Professor, UC Berkeley, and Brian Harvey, Teaching Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley, receive the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for their advocacy of and advances in education to bring the beauty and joy of computing to all students, especially those from historically underrepresented communities.

Together Garcia and Harvey have been instrumental in expanding computer science education, most notably through the development of the Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) curriculum, which began as a national pilot for the CSforALL movement. A key part of this effort was Snap!, a blocks-based programming language on which      Harvey collaborates with principal developer Jens Mönig. Subsequently Garcia and Harvey and BJC co-PI Tiffany Barnes went on to expand BJC’s reach by training over 1,000 teachers, offering the curriculum in Spanish, and developing a middle school version, BJC Sparks. Importantly, the BJC Course at Berkeley is the only EECS course to exceed 50% female enrollment, and once exceeded 70%.

The Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award is presented annually to an outstanding educator who is appointed to a recognized educational baccalaureate institution. The recipient is recognized for advancing new teaching methodologies; effecting new curriculum development or expansion in Computer Science and Engineering; or making a significant contribution to the educational mission of ACM. Those with 10 years or less teaching experience are given special consideration. A prize of $10,000 is supplied by Pearson Education.

Manish Parashar, Professor, University of Utah, receives the ACM Distinguished Service Award for service and leadership in furthering the transformative impact of computer and computational science on science and engineering.

Parashar’s record of service includes leadership at the National Science Foundation (NSF), where he developed NSF’s strategic vision for a national cyberinfrastructure, as well as at the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), where he developed the Future Advancement Computing Ecosystem Strategic Plan (FACE). For ACM, Parashar served two terms as editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (ACM TAAS), and has led steering, organizing and programming committees for numerous ACM conferences.

The ACM Distinguished Service Award is presented on the basis of value and degree of services to the computing community. The contribution should not be limited to service to the Association but should include activities in other computer organizations and should emphasize contributions to the computing community at large.

Judith Gal-Ezer, Professor Emerita, Open University of Israel, receives the Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award in recognition of her sustained contributions to computer science education policy and research and, more broadly, to the ACM Europe Council.

Gal-Ezer has been an internationally recognized leader in computing education. For her accomplishments, she has received the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award as well as the ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education. Gal-Ezer has been very active in the ACM Europe Council and its sub-committees. She represents ACM Europe in the Informatics for All (I4All) coalition—a collaboration between ACM Europe, Informatics Europe, CEPIS and IFIP. This ambitious initiative was created to promote informatics education in primary and secondary schools across Europe. The sustained advocacy of I4All has been instrumental in the European Commission’s decision to prioritize informatics education at all stages of the curriculum.

The Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award recognizes outstanding service contributions to the Association. Candidates are selected based on the value and degree of service overall and may be given to up to three individuals each year.

Maja Matarić, Professor, University of Southern California, receives the ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics for pioneering socially assistive robotics (SAR) for improving wellness and quality of life for users with special needs.

Over the past two decades, Matarić has been the leading figure in the field of socially assistive robotics. These robots are designed to gain insights into the drivers of human behavior related to overcoming challenges. The goal of this field is to provide people with personalized assistance to enhance their abilities in areas such as convalescence, rehabilitation, training, and education. Socially assistive robotics is an interdisciplinary field which emphasizes co-design and user participation throughout the development process.  Her research is aimed at major challenges, including post-stroke rehabilitation, cognitive and social skills training for children with autism spectrum disorders, cognitive and physical exercises for Alzheimer’s patients, study support for students with ADHD, and personalized therapy interventions for students with anxiety and/or depression.

The ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics recognizes an individual or group who has made a significant contribution through the use of computing technology. It is given once every two years, assuming that there are worthy recipients. The award is accompanied by a prize of $5,000.

About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.

 

 

New study highlights health risks of ultrasonic cigarettes

UC Riverside researchers find harmful metals in u-cigarettes’ liquids and aerosols

University of California - Riverside

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Photo shows Prue Talbot (left) and Esther Omaiye.

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Credit: Talbot Research Group, UC Riverside.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A study by scientists at the University of California, Riverside shows ultrasonic cigarettes, or u-cigarettes, marketed as a less harmful alternative to traditional e-cigarettes, may pose significant health risks due to the presence of harmful metals in their liquids and aerosols. 

U-cigarettes have a “sonicator” that vibrates a liquid solution, usually containing nicotine, flavorings, and propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin, to produce microscopic droplets (aerosol). The technology uses high-frequency ultrasonic vibrations instead of heating coils used in traditional electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes. 

The study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, quantified chemical elements and metals in various flavors of SURGE u-cigarettes, JUUL e-cigarettes, and other pod-style e-cigarettes.

“U-cigarettes claim to be less harmful than e-cigarettes,” said Esther Omaiye, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology and the paper’s first author. “Since this novel technology has limited evidence-based data, we were interested in investigating this claim to understand the chemistry and toxicology involved and the potential impact on user behavior.”

Using advanced analytical techniques, such as scanning electron microscopy and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy, the study identified 16 elements in at least one fluid or aerosol sample. 

“We found u-cigarette fluids and aerosols generally had higher concentrations of metals compared to fourth-generation e-cigarettes,” Omaiye said. “Metals in u-cigarettes are not essential for the functioning of the device. However, they are usually present as unintended contaminants. Their presence is a health concern.”

The researchers found that the products they tested, including SURGE, contained silicon, while nickel was found in low concentrations across all fluids, except for the KWIT Stick, which showed levels of up to 66,050 micrograms per milliliter of e-fluid. Additionally, the researchers found SURGE u-cigarettes have copper and zinc in their fluids, with minimal transfer to aerosols.

“The most concerning results were the elevated levels of arsenic and selenium in SURGE products, both of which are listed on the FDA’s Harmful and Potentially Harmful Constituents List,” said senior author Prue Talbot, a professor of the graduate division. “Our study underscores the urgent need for regulations to limit arsenic and selenium in these products and calls for routine surveillance to identify rogue products with abnormally high metal levels.” 

According to Talbot and Omaiye, the data raises serious concerns about the long-term health risks associated with u-cigarette use, including potential cancer and neurotoxicity. They note that inhalation of high levels of these elements can have severe health consequences, including lung diseases such as silicosis and metal fume fever, organ damage, and cancer, particularly from carcinogens like nickel and arsenic. 

“Even metals like zinc and selenium, essential for life in small amounts, can become toxic at high levels, highlighting the potential danger of inhaling contaminated aerosols,” Omaiye said. “As fine particles or aerosols, these elements can bypass body defenses and reach deep into lung tissues. Users should stay informed about what is in their devices and exercise caution when evaluating claims about safety. For non-vapers, it is best not to start, but if they choose to, they must understand the risks involved.”

Talbot and Omaiye plan to build on their findings to deepen their understanding of emerging tobacco products and technologies, as well as their impact on public health. 

“Regardless of the vaping technology, inhalation of metals like arsenic, nickel, lead, or chromium is always hazardous—even at low concentrations over time,” Talbot said. “These metals are not filtered by the lungs the way they might be by the digestive system, making inhalation exposure particularly concerning.” 

Omaiye emphasized that researchers must continue conducting independent studies on vaping technologies to assess metal exposure risks, focusing on device design, materials, and long-term effects. 

“Stricter manufacturing regulations and accountability are needed to ensure the safety of device components and vaping liquids,” she said. “Medical professionals, regulatory agencies, and the public must stay informed and proactive as new vaping technologies emerge, recognizing that changes in components may not eliminate health risks.”

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, California’s Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, and UC Riverside. Omaiye is a recipient of a UC President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship.

The title of the paper is “Quantification of 16 Metals in Fluids and Aerosols from Ultrasonic Pod-Style Cigarettes and Comparison to Electronic Cigarettes.”

The University of California, Riverside is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment is more than 26,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual impact of more than $2.7 billion on the U.S. economy. To learn more, visit www.ucr.edu.

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Journal

Environmental Health Perspectives

DOI

10.1289/EHP15648 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

Quantification of 16 Metals in Fluids and Aerosols from Ultrasonic Pod-Style Cigarettes and Comparison to Electronic Cigarettes

Article Publication Date

28-May-2025

LGBTQ Rights

New Oral History Captures Decades of Trans Life in the Words of Elders of Color

Amid the current anti-trans backlash, let’s heed the wisdom and perspective of the trans elders in our communities

Interview
By Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore , 

Truthout

May 23, 2025

Cover image for So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color (2025).Algonquin Books

We are living in a time of intense anti-trans backlash. Almost every day now, we get news of another attempt to criminalize trans and gender-nonconforming people — our government denying gender affirming care to trans youth, banning schools from teaching about gender identity, barring trans athletes from competing in sports, prohibiting Medicaid reimbursement for gender-affirming care, rejecting changes to legal name and gender marker on government identification, and challenging the very existence of trans and nonbinary people while simultaneously promoting sensationalized and pathologized portrayals of trans existence to justify exclusion.

Trans people of color, especially trans women of color, have long borne the brunt of systemic violence. As genderqueer novelist Caro De Robertis told me recently when we discussed their first nonfiction book, So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color, “The criminalization of queerness and transness is not new. And, in the history of this country, authoritarianism isn’t new either — just look at Jim Crow, enslavement, Japanese internment camps and the genocide of Native people — but, fortunately for us, neither is the beautiful power source of gender euphoria.”

So Many Stars is an in-depth look at this power source, through interviews with trans and gender-nonconforming elders of color who share mesmerizing stories of survival, resistance and community-building from Havana to Texas to New York to Oklahoma to Buenos Aires to San Francisco, from the 1940s to the present. Filled with intimate conversations that reveal fascinating historical details left out of the public record, this book is refreshing in its range, candor and resonance. In this interview, De Robertis discusses what they learned in the process of writing the book, and how everyday acts of courage throughout history can inspire us in these frightening times.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore: One thing I love about this book is that it does not feel burdened by our current moment of anti-trans backlash — it feels like an internal conversation, by and for trans, nonbinary, genderqueer and two-spirit people of color — and I think this enriches the experience for anyone who reads it, since the narrative is on the speakers’ terms. I wonder if you could talk about this intention.

Caro De Robertis: I’m so glad the book lands this way to you. I think one of the reasons this mood is possible is embedded in the nature of oral history. As a genre, oral history is by definition intimate, unrushed and capacious. There’s room for nuance and complexity, for the surprising anecdote that sheds extraordinary light on seemingly ordinary moments of life.

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Part of what I learned in the excellent oral historian training I received as a Baldwin-Emerson Fellow was the understanding that, unlike with other modes of interview, there’s room to take your time, to go deep. There’s something deeply human about this practice, and when it comes to a community as kaleidoscopic as that of trans and gender-nonconforming people, it allows for a deeper dive, beyond the headlines, into the dazzling range of who we are and can be. Or at least, that was my hope with this project.

The form of the book is really fascinating, because you draw from 20 separate interviews, but then you place excerpts from the interviews alongside one another as if the interviewees are in conversation. It feels so intimate, and I know it must’ve taken a lot of work to make the book legible in this form.

Once I committed to this narrative structure, it was a really exhilarating and gorgeous process for me. As a novelist, I found such joy in shaping a narrative arc that could hold these disparate yet overlapping stories and voices, drawing connections without conflating people’s experiences.

Bearing witness to these remarkable people’s personal stories was a conduit to expanding my deeper understanding of who we are, of our inheritance.

Of course, it was also painstaking! First, I went through all the transcripts, gathering pieces that sang or stood out and placing them in a file of thematic “buckets” — childhood experiences, migration, transition, activism, and more. Then, within those buckets, I took to sculpting those pieces and arranging them. Sort of the way a visual artist might craft a collage out of lots of tiny and larger magazine cut-outs, seeking something greater than the sum of its parts.

In the chapter on the AIDS crisis, Sharyn Grayson talks about how Black trans women were actively prevented by a Black gay service organization from accessing resources for HIV in the early years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Honestly, it shocked me to learn of this blatant exclusion at the hands of Black gay men, not just white service providers. And I think this is the potential of anecdotal history, that you learn something you didn’t know before, and this opens doors to making other connections.

I’m so glad you brought that up, because the experience of Black trans women in the AIDS crisis — from the transphobia they faced in queer spaces to their role in spearheading change — was one of the elements I learned about, too, during the course of this project. I didn’t know before that Black and Latinx trans women had been pressured to detransition in order to access services. And that leaders like Sharyn Grayson and Adela Vázquez responded by blazing trails for trans women to find not only services, but dignity, and to build movements of their own.

How could I have been a queer activist for 25 years, and not known that history? That’s just one example of how bearing witness to these remarkable people’s personal stories was a conduit to expanding my deeper understanding of who we are, of our inheritance.

Another part that really struck me was the stories of survival under dictatorship, such as Andrés Ozzuna talking about being taken into prison with everyone in a gay bar in Argentina, or Nelson D’Alerta Pérez, who was tortured by the Cuban government for throwing drag shows. These stories of crisis are told alongside everyday survival — it’s everything at once. Was this your intent: to show the multiplicity of trans lives in this way?

Definitely. It felt essential to me, in writing this book, to portray the vast range of ways that we as trans and gender-nonconforming people have always existed — in every culture, region and period of history. Given the world we live in, that is going to include life under authoritarian regimes — that’s part of the broad spectrum of human experience, and therefore of trans experience too. Of course, with the brutal authoritarian reality we’re currently living through in the United States, stories like these become essential parts of our legacies to know and remember.


There’s a kind of tapestry of thousands of acts of blazing courage that make marginalized lives more possible.

One of the things I cherish about Pérez’s story is that, even as she describes being arrested and tortured for her drag shows, she also speaks of the art she created with incredible joy. I, for one, can feel myself there with her in those Havana mansions, watching these glorious queens descend a grand staircase toward an adoring crowd, all in defiance of the regime. That, too, is our history, and might have medicine for us in our current times.

All of that said, putting these stories alongside others was also a way of affirming the worth and depth of all trans and genderqueer life stories. It took courage for Ozzuna to survive his terrifying arrest in Argentina, and for Pérez to stage her shows in hostile Cuba. But the everyday steps other narrators in this book took to live their authentic selves, and to affirm and uplift their communities? These are acts of blazing courage, too. There’s a kind of tapestry of thousands of acts of blazing courage that make marginalized lives more possible. I very much hope this book can help illuminate that tapestry.

I also love how sometimes interviewees appear to contradict one another, such as when Donna Personna says she knows she would have died if she stayed in Texas, and Sharyn Grayson says she was always accepted there. These are two trans women born in Texas in the 1940s, describing radically different experiences, and this is right at the beginning of the book. Talk about the way you weave these differing opinions throughout and what this accomplishes.

No identity is a monolith, and when we write from marginalized identities, we often feel the burden of representation — the pressure for the story we’re telling to somehow speak for our whole identity. That’s an enormous amount of pressure and can lead to a flattening of our collective truths. There’s power in affirming the range of experiences in a community and creating a symphonic rather than reductive portrait.

Another example of where this comes up in the book is in the chapter on transition. There are narrators who enthusiastically celebrate and discuss what certain gender-affirming care has meant for them, while others reflect on their decision not to engage with this or that physical approach to transition. There is no right or wrong way — as Ms. Billie Cooper says, “In my life, I have the right to transition any way I want.” I hope that, in hearing the true and nuanced stories of these different people’s journeys, readers can find both mirrors of their own experience and windows into the experiences of others.





Most of these interviewees lived in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time of your conversations, even though many grew up elsewhere, so I think this book also offers a fascinating portrait of the Bay Area. What did you learn about the Bay Area that you didn’t know before?

Of course, I’d always known that the San Francisco Bay Area is a queer mecca. I myself came here for that reason, at the age of 21, seeking signs of queer life and more room to live and breathe. As a person separated from my family of origin by familial homophobia, and later transphobia, and as an immigrant, that search for belonging felt essential to making a life, and the Bay Area caught me, helped me feel more possible.

And yet, delving into these stories from generations that preceded me, I learned new layers of the great epic story of the queer and trans Bay Area, which is also a great epic story of queer and trans migration. The people in this book who claimed the Bay as home hail from all over the country, and the world. I also learned a great deal more about the racial richness of those stories: the Black, Latinx, Native and Asian layers of the queering and transing of this region, which are less visible in the white queer mainstream.

In the intro, you identify as “a Latinx immigrant who’s had their long journey to claiming the many gender terms that personally resonate: genderqueer, gender fluid, nonbinary, transmasculine, butch, and woman.” How has working on this book influenced your own journey?

As a person with an expansive gender identity, it took me a long time to feel permission to claim space for my whole authentic gender. It felt radical, and still feels radical, to fully embrace and name all of what I am and who I am, embracing the man in me along with the genderqueer butch woman in me, without apology. Of course, I want to do that while wholeheartedly affirming the gender of those who identify as binary trans women or trans men. All our genders are amazing! I want room for all of us, in all of our radiantly varied selves, to be whole and safe and free.

Working on this book, then, was one of the most affirming and powerful experiences of my life. These narrators are all incredible people — bold and loving, witty and thoughtful, visionary and salty and generous and full of stories and ideas that expanded me, that amazed me, that blew open my mind and heart. In these people’s presence, I felt grace. I felt that I myself, in all my unique genderqueerness, had more room to exist and flourish thanks to their voices.

Nothing could give me greater joy than for readers to experience the same.


Copyright © Truthout and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. May not be reprinted without permission.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the author, most recently, of Touching the Art, a finalist for a Pacific Northwest Book Award and a Washington State Book Award. Her new novel, Terry Dactyl, will be out from Coffee House in November 2025.

US Elites Want to Turn Schools Into Factories of Hopelessness. We Can’t Let Them.

“End times schooling” risks turning schools into graveyards for hope — but they can also be greenhouses for resistance.

Op-Ed

By Jesse Hagopian ,

Truthout

May 26, 2025

Ayo Walker / Truthout

What happens when the most powerful people give up on the future — but still control the schools?

To understand what’s happening in education today — the banning of books, the rise of AI that surveils and dehumanizes learning, the outlawing of honest lessons on race and gender, and the criminalization of critical thought — we must look beyond the classroom and name the dystopia being built around us.

Prophetic storytellers have long warned us about this moment. What once read as science fiction is fast becoming science nonfiction. In Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler envisioned a nation unraveling under climate collapse and corporate rule, where the wealthy retreat to walled-off company towns protected by private security. Neill Blomkamp’s film Elysium imagined a world where the elite flee the earth to an orbital fortress.

What Butler and Blomkamp warned of in fiction, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor now name in fact. In a searing essay for The Guardian, they call this era end times fascism: a grim convergence of white supremacist nationalism, billionaire bunker fantasies, apocalyptic Christian Zionism and a pandemic response that treats mass death as collateral for profit.

At the heart of this strategy is a billionaire exodus — a flight from accountability and from the world they set ablaze. Plutocrat preppers like Elon Musk envision colonizing Mars through SpaceX, building a self-sustaining city governed by AI and populated by a select few. Jeff Bezos talks of offloading Earth’s industry to space. Peter Thiel has invested in luxury bunkers in New Zealand and backed “seasteading” projects aimed at building floating, privately governed city states in international waters beyond the reach of democratic regulation. This isn’t science fiction. It’s class war — the ultrarich abandoning the rest of us to climate collapse and surveillance capitalism, while shielding themselves behind fortress walls, digital firewalls and ideologies that sanctify abandonment.

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Consider the world they’re trying to escape: 2024 was the hottest year ever recorded. Wildfires in Los Angeles revealed the scale of the unfolding climate catastrophe, causing rising sea levels, crop failures and mass displacement. The AI arms race is accelerating, with experts warning of mass labor displacement, autonomous weapons and systems beyond human control. Nuclear tensions are rising. And the U.S. government is funding the bombing of schools, universities, hospitals and mosques in Gaza — while punishing teachers who allow students to even debate the morality of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Schooling is being recast as a tool not just for compliance and surveillance, but for instilling hopelessness and surrender.

This is end times schooling — and we must decide whether to be its instruments or its interruption.

Armageddon Academics

It’s not just that schools are impacted by end times fascist policy; teaching young people to accept the end of the world is a prerequisite to bringing it about.

That means teaching students that history is made by elites, not everyday people; that the climate disasters they see either don’t actually exist or are unstoppable; that unregulated AI is benevolent and beyond challenge; that genocide in Gaza is too “complicated” to name; and that questioning power is dangerous, while submission to it is safety.

You can see it in the criminalization of truth. Today, nearly half of U.S. public school students attend schools where teachers are banned from teaching honestly about race, gender or sexuality. Texas law prohibits teachers from giving credit for student civic engagement. The statute reads: “[A] teacher may not require, make part of a course, or award a grade or course credit … for a student’s … efforts to persuade members of the legislative or executive branch at the federal, state, or local level to take specific actions by direct communication.” Laws like this are about crushing the idea that education can empower students to make change.

You can see it in the rise of AI tutors and scripted lessons that sever learning from human relationships. AI is being used to justify fewer teachers, larger class sizes and automated discipline — where algorithms decide who gets flagged, suspended or punished. The result is a digital caste system: Rich youth get mentorship and creativity; the rest get automation and monitoring.

You can see it in the crackdown on teaching and protesting the genocide in Gaza: educators disciplined, students arrested and campus groups disbanded for daring to name the violence.

And you see it in what we could call “armageddon academics”: the near-total erasure of climate crisis education. For example, McDougal Littell’s Modern World History limited climate change to just three paragraphs, claimed “not all scientists agree,” and blamed the Global South for inaction — without quoting a single person affected by climate collapse.

This is schooling for extinction.

The fascist project has no room for young people who think critically, question authority, or imagine a world beyond border walls, binaries and bunkers.
An Unshakable Belief in the Future

The danger of naming end times fascism is that it can feel paralyzing, like the system is so powerful and cruel that resistance is futile. That’s exactly the point. This project feeds on despair.

The antidote is not denial; it’s defiant hope and collective action. As the editors of Rethinking Schools remind us, “To step into a classroom is to express confidence in young people’s capacity to learn, to grow, to change, to make a difference — to do good in the world.”

We need to say this out loud. Because everything about end times schooling tells young people their lives don’t matter — that nothing they do will make a difference.

But history tells us otherwise.

Every major movement for justice — abolition, labor, civil rights, anti-colonial uprisings — was built during hard times, under hostile regimes. The Montgomery Bus Boycott began just months after Rosa Parks told fellow organizers she didn’t believe anything big would happen in her city. Then she acted — and history turned. Before that, the 1936–37 Flint Sit-Down Strike erupted at the height of the Great Depression, when autoworkers faced brutal conditions and mass unemployment — and still seized General Motors’ Fisher Body plants, holding them for 44 days until they forced the company to recognize their union.

If end times fascism tells students there’s no future, we must teach as if the future is ours to shape. If schools are being weaponized to train youth for extinction, then education must become a form of survival — rooted in truth, care, resistance and imagination.

And that kind of education is already happening — in walkouts for Gaza, in classrooms defying book bans, in radical reading groups and mutual aid projects. Just listen to Alex Ames, one of the founding members of the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition (GYJC), speaking at the “Our Freedom to Learn” forum hosted by HEAL Together:

It has been an incredible three years at GYJC since we first started building young people’s power toward education justice and toward multiracial democracy. Just this spring, we defeated the largest voucher bill in Georgia’s history. We stopped “Don’t Say Gay” legislation for the second time in two years — they keep coming back. We halted policies criminalizing librarians or banning gender-affirming medical care. And we won $25 million for public school counselors that our students need. And last year we halted every book ban in the state. … I also should mention we just won the largest public school budget in the entire history of the state of Georgia.

This is what end times fascists fear most: the imagination of a generation not willing to disappear quietly.

Educating against end times schooling doesn’t mean offering shallow optimism; it means helping students confront the world as it is — and insisting it doesn’t have to stay that way.

The Struggle for New Beginnings

In their essay on end times fascism, Klein and Taylor invoke the Jewish tradition of Doikayt, Yiddish for “hereness” — a call to stay and struggle for justice where you are, rather than escape to imagined sanctuaries.

I share that ethic. But I’d argue we can’t fully commit to the here and now without first journeying through time and space, using the people’s true futuristic technologies: memory, study and imagination.

We must travel back in time — through conversations with elders, research and engagement with study groups — to remember what has been stolen and to gather lessons from the people and movements who dared to fight back. Then we must travel to the future — through the power of radical imagination — to glimpse a world where housing is a right, where we feed people instead of bombing them, where freedom isn’t gated, policed or sold. (If you need a high-powered time machine: the Zinn Education Project offers free people’s history lessons; Molly Crabapple paints revolutionary futures into being; and Afrofuturists like Octavia Butler, Sun Ra and Ryan Coogler carry us forward beyond today’s limits.) Only then can we return to the present, with new perspectives and strategies, ready to fight.

Billionaires know this. That’s why they are trying to smash the curricular “flux capacitors” of social justice classrooms — curricular devices that allow students to travel through history, with freedom to dream about the future and act in the present.

They know they cannot inflict end times fascism without turning classrooms into graveyards for hope. That’s why they’re attacking schools with such ferocity.

But if we refuse to surrender the schools, they cannot win.

The 2018–19 Red State Revolt showed us how to fight back. Educators in GOP-controlled states like West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona won dramatic gains by shutting down their entire school systems until funding for public education was substantially increased.

The Chicago Teachers Union’s (CTU) recent contract victory shows what that resistance can build. CTU not only won higher wages, but also protections for teaching the truth about race, gender and sexuality; investments in housing and mental health; immigrant protections; and groundbreaking environmental initiatives, from installing solar panels to launching composting programs.

This is social justice unionism: bargaining for the common good.

And here is the inconvenient truth for billionaires: even in their bunkers or space stations, they still need labor — because they won’t be cleaning their shelters, caring for the sick, or repairing technology on their own.

But while billionaires need us, we don’t need them.

The world would do quite well without them — and that means we hold power. We can refuse. We can refuse to code their surveillance, fly their rockets, or educate the next generation for extinction. That spirit lives in the growing call for a general strike in 2028. After its 2023 strike victory, the UAW aligned all contracts to expire on May Day and invited other unions to do the same. CTU’s new contract expires in 2028 and they have joined with the UAW to launch an organizing initiative to prepare.

While the oligarchs are doing everything they can to make this the era of end times fascism, we are not at the end; we are at the start of a process of revealing what this country truly is and what we must overcome to achieve a new beginning — the one our ancestors dreamed of and that our children deserve.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Jesse Hagopian

Jesse Hagopian is a Seattle educator, the director of the Zinn Education Project’s Teaching for Black Lives Campaign, an editor for Rethinking Schools, and the author of the book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. You can follow him at IAmAnEducator.com, Instagram, Bluesky or Substack.

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