Kitsune, Issue 1 -  21 May 2026

Greetings, Independent Scholar!

Thanks to everyone who introduced themselves via the many threads and started sharing their vision towards building a collaborative future.

Let's not forget why we became independent scholars: people are being mobbed and psychologically abused in academia and scientific circles by bullies. The more abusive, the higher up in the hierarchy. 

Remember who you are, or at least, who you would like to be. https://www.ronin-institute.org/ronin-philosophy

The meek shall inherit sod all. There is no easy way to talk about it.

Kitsune, the Ronin Institute newsletter, is re opening  for business. Some of you may have been featured in past editions, and some may be featured in future ones. The theme of the next issue is Academic Mobbing -- please submit an article or contact us to join the curation team. We will consider pseudonyms for those who fear retaliation.

Building the organisation

We still need to set up one or more lean, reliable organisations, and then decide how to fund and manage our activities. Please bear with us a little longer while we process what is happening and the many emails that reach us. Incorporating a legal entity on paper and asking members to chip in a few bucks is the easy part, but it is not enough to create an Institute. When we start collaborating towards our shared goals, when we are confident that our peers can demonstrate and defend their status as scholars, and when we can rely on them -- then we can start doing the paperwork.

When invited to join this mailing list, scholars are asked to take notice of the history of the Ronin Institute. We used to love the old logo and decided for now to keep the same theme but update the design. Feedback welcome. Although our new organisation has not yet been formalised -- and a revamped old logo does not make an Institute either -- a visual proposal of what it could be gives a sense of where we are heading.

We are keeping our history because we want to learn from it. We do not want to sweep the horror stories under the carpet and then repeat the same mistakes. Keep the good qualities of the Institute that was disbanded, and create new good qualities for a future one with new energy and resources.

The motto says in Latin, Scientiae apertae fidimus -- "In open science we trust." It is not yet definitive. If and when we have a decision-making process in place, we can decide whether to keep it or change it.

Contributing and affiliating

We have new repositories. Let them be populated with meaningful essays relating to topics you want to contribute to:

Zenodo -- Ronin Institute Community

Because members of this list are not yet formally affiliated, it is okay to provide your affiliation as "Guest Scholar" in the meantime. You may notice some organisational identifiers have not yet been disambiguated from other organisations with the same name -- we are working on that.

A couple of working documents have been published to get the ball rolling, including a draft document detailing the qualities we are looking for in scholars. It needs to be discussed and agreed upon:

Scholar Qualities -- Draft Document

Coming together

We are hoping to find the time this summer to gather around the issues at hand:

Events

So much to do.

Get in touch: www.ronin-institute.org