Renowned American legal scholar Austin Sarat, a founder of the humanistic study of law, on the responsibility of public intellectuals in the United States, the bracing “slap in the face” Trump dealt to universities, and the path forward in defending academic freedom and democracy.

How did universities stop being spaces of freedom, politics turn into hatred, and art become a lifestyle? Why has everyone suddenly become obsessed with postcolonial studies, and what is AI still incapable of? And why, amid such tectonic shifts, write books about Ancient Greece? T-Invariant spoke with Mikhail Yampolsky, recipient of the George Gamow Award founded by the Russian American Science Association (RASA-America).

November 15–16, 2025, in New Jersey, the Gamow Prize ceremony, established by RASA, will take place. One of this year’s laureates is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Southern California, Anna Krylov. In October, she announced a boycott of the Nature Publishing Group, refusing to peer-review a manuscript for the journal Nature Communications — due to disagreement with the policy of promoting the social justice agenda. T-invariant spoke with Anna Krylov about why politics has no place in science, what scientists can be canceled for, and how to resist scientific censorship.

We launched exactly two years ago. T-invariant seeks to amplify the voices of scientists who oppose the war and resist archaic mindsets. Since then, these outdated ideologies have increasingly taken hold across continents. We are diligently working to find our own way to combat this. But in this search, it’s vital for us to know we’re not alone. We were delighted to receive birthday messages from our heroes, readers, and colleagues.

The Innopraktika Foundation of Vladimir Putin’s daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, has made a number of statements about its readiness to gather development institutions into “one perimeter”. The public speaker to promote these initiatives was Tikhonova’s friend Natalia Popova, a former photo model and now the first deputy general director of Innopraktika. Over the past few years, Popova has been lobbying for Innopraktika’s interests in Africa and the BRICS countries, and probably wants to continue the reform of development institutions that began in 2020 but was interrupted.

The Russian-American Association of Scholars has announced the names of the winners of the prize, which is awarded to members of the Russian-speaking scientific diaspora. This year they were Professor Ekaterina Zhuravskaya of the Paris School of Economics and Professor Vladimir Vapnik of Columbia University.

In Togliatti, in the local special economic zone (SEZ), they can build another plant for the assembly of Iranian combat drones. There is no official information about this and in words the plans are purely peaceful. The EFKO group of companies, the founder of enterprises producing drones in Tolyatti, pretends that it has nothing to do with the plant. T-invariant looks at how this big business moved from projects with GM and Volkswagen to assembling deadly machines for the war in Ukraine.

How do Russian-speaking scientists work in America today during the war in Ukraine? Why is it important to maintain contact with colleagues from the countries of the former USSR? What awaits Russian science after Putin? We talked about these and other topics with Igor Efimov, professor of biomedical engineering and medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, first president of RASA.