Good piece and a vital point. One issue that gets less attention (unless I missed): researchers crave uninterrupted time, and for most, that's only in summer. V tough for people with kids. Gotta figure out camp--this year, no camp (and never camp in Aug when unis start). 1/ https://twitter.com/dmedelstein/status/1313444287963693056

Policies to make teaching more flexible so those who want to teach in summer & research in another term (course banking, on-load in summer, etc) would help. Say some kids don't go back to school til Fall 2021. What could uni do to help parents focus on research in Fall 2021? 2/

I'm lucky to have tenure but remember the feeling on t-track of knowing when summer came around I had to buckle down and it wouldn't come around again til next year (still feel that!). But routines diff, kids get sick, etc. And I was v lucky and it was still hard. 3/

Now so many facing this and if unis can help make research time available when it's available, rather than only in summer, that might help with other Q's like tenure clocks. Of course, I'm not an admin and have zero experience, so these are just musings, FWIW. 4/4