🫶

proofs 👀

Arbella Bet-Shlimon@abshlimon.bsky.social · 3w ago

Iraq is a site of contested sovereignties and a barometer for global crises. I’m excited to have contributed to this forthcoming volume (Edinburgh, 2026) that theorizes from Iraq to understand land, law, politics, and to imagine something better 🧿 edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-living-...

Mariam and I talked about why it’s important (and hard) to write about genocide denial in the academy, how Assyrian issues are treated by our fields, and more. It’s on YouTube now for anyone who wants to watch: youtu.be/T6mNxrS0w20?...

In Conversation with Dr. Arbella Bet-Shlimon

YouTube video by Assyrian Studies Association

youtu.be

Arbella Bet-Shlimon@abshlimon.bsky.social · 3w ago

Well, I’m going to talk in public about my latest article—why it’s important to write critiques like this, the challenges, what editors tell us to leave out—with the great Mariam Georgis. Register here if you’re interested 🙏🏽 us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Something I haven’t seen discussed much is how some people are drawn to LLMs—if they’re ”anti-AI,” they see them as a temptation to be resisted—while others (me) find them repulsive and wouldn’t use them even if personal and professional norms allowed or encouraged it

Kotaku@kotaku.com · 5d ago

YouTuber Hank Green Admits He Has Unhealthy Relationship With AI After Facing Backlash Over Recent Video 'The level of dopamine I've been getting from interacting with LLMs is not healthy for me,' said Green

when cuts like this happen at Harvard of all places it at least clarifies that the motives are ideological not financial — not that it’s any consolation

Rebecca Colesworthy@rcolesworthy.bsky.social · 7d ago

“Closing the Writing Center and removing its leadership now sends a disturbing signal about how seriously Harvard actually takes [its] mission.” Closing a writing center or library or dept or program or university press—an attack on one is an attack on all. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

the way I cackled at this, ohhhh boy

Marisa Kabas@marisakabas.bsky.social · last wk.

“boy george admits he used AI to create his new pro-israel song” is now a sentence we can say

I was happy to contribute a couple comments to UW’s student newspaper on the zombie-Title VI NRC competition that is now underway after the administration of the funds moved from ED to State. www.dailyuw.com/article/jack...

Jackson School reapplies for federal funding after $2.5 million worth of allocated funds were withheld last year

Jackson School reapplies for federal funding after $2.5 million worth of allocated funds were withheld last year

dailyuw.com

*These* are the higher education stories that matter, not some half-assed report farted out by a group of faculty cranks at ivy and ivy-adjacent universities

Texas Conference of the AAUP@texasaaup.bsky.social · 2w ago

“Two courses for the fall of 2026 were canceled outright, while several more had to alter their syllabi to comply. Professors teaching those courses told The Chronicle they weren’t provided with any rationale for why their “exception requests” were partially or fully denied.”

After a conversation with a colleague: if someone’s only experience of AI is chatbots and ambient exposure to the need for checking for accuracy or its ecological costs, they will be genuinely surprised by any further information you provide about its uses in government, policing, commerce etc 1/n

Iraq is a site of contested sovereignties and a barometer for global crises. I’m excited to have contributed to this forthcoming volume (Edinburgh, 2026) that theorizes from Iraq to understand land, law, politics, and to imagine something better 🧿 edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-living-...

Living Iraq

Living Iraq

edinburghuniversitypress.com

Well, I’m going to talk in public about my latest article—why it’s important to write critiques like this, the challenges, what editors tell us to leave out—with the great Mariam Georgis. Register here if you’re interested 🙏🏽 us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Friends of Exeter, former students and alumni, can you please sign the petition below: www.change.org/p/stop-redun...

Sign the Petition

Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter

change.org

I love how every recipe with spinach in it is like “You need 1 assload of spinach. If you do not own a donkey, take a wheelbarrow to the grocery store. Back home, divide into 17 giant bunches and sauté each one at a time until wilted. After sautéing you will have 1.5 cups [225 g]”

Yesterday, @uofwa.uw.edu faculty and staff received the official announcement of PurpleAI, with the following message: explore.uw.edu/index.php/em... As you might imagine, this whole thing is a cabinet of horrors. 🧵>>

Mona Khalil, Lebanon’s most well-known sea turtle conservationist, died of her wounds today after being injured by an Israeli strike I feel sick

Megaphone News@megaphone.news · 2mo ago

Mona Khalil spent over 20 years protecting sea turtles on Mansouri Beach. After she was injured in an Israeli attack, activists continued her initiative at Rmeileh Beach, where they protected the first loggerhead nest of 73 eggs on Thursday. youtu.be/fbBKzK4JNRc

One thing that will never be not terrifying to me as a woman is how quickly and decisively things can deteriorate in terms of human rights and democracy and basic human decency. Like with women's rights, all it took is a VERY right-wing parliament and now it's legal to marry female children in Iraq.

Nick Brumfield@nickjbrumfield.bsky.social · 2mo ago

It's wild seeing the WaPo almost instantly go from a deeply imperfect but still very good newspaper to the most blatant right-wing rag essentially overnight

Reading now: Arbella Bet-Shlimon's necessary challenge to one of Middle East studies' most enduring forms of racism: the disparagement of Assyrians. The piece traces the genealogy of atrocity denial and how scholarly practices reify racism. Will be assigning this! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

MIT (endowment: $27B) shuttering three of its four main libraries is one of those news items that just knocks you off balance, auguring, as it does, profound and permanent changes to the entire institutional apparatus of higher education in this country.

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“I write with dismay, grief and sorrow for the permanent closure of MIT Libraries Barker, Dewey and Rotch, and termination of library staff in those libraries. For MIT to be closing three of its four major libraries..." fnl.mit.edu/may-june-202...

Her UW voice teacher said Blessing was caring and funny, with a dry sense of humor. She could sing “pretty much anything,” from Mozart to musical theater, and was dedicated to her music studies even while pursuing a scientific dream of researching hurricanes. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

UW student Juniper Blessing, 19, remembered as ‘full of life’

Those who knew Juniper Blessing, the 19-year-old trans woman killed in her off-campus housing building, said she had a powerful, moving voice.

seattletimes.com

Trump has destroyed America’s knowledge infrastructure. This is an opportunity for knowledge workers across disciplines-natural science, social science, humanities-to see their interests in rebuilding this infrastructure on democratic grounds as connected.

Ted Pavlic (he/him/his)@tedpavlic.bsky.social · 3mo ago

MIT announces “the number of grad students will be 20 percent less than it was in 2024 — about 500 fewer students” www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...

personally I think it's a very big deal that the Canada bureau chief for the @nytimes.com — certainly one of the highest-paid journalists in the country — asked an unspecified "AI tool" what Poilievre said & published its AI-hallucinated quotes in her reporting.

we're getting pretty close

From the rutgers community on Reddit

Explore this post and more from the rutgers community

reddit.com

ali alkhatib@ali-alkhatib.com · 4mo ago

which university will be the first to forego students' graduation speeches entirely and have a chatbot produce one by inputting a bunch of students' submissions and asking for a good synthesis?

The steering committee of the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network writes in defense of Mosab Abu Toha, a writer from Gaza who has been smeared absurdly by the president of a university for describing a genocide as a genocide drive.google.com/file/d/101OZ...

Protesting U of Washington’s firing of Prof. Aria Fani as Middle East Center Director

April 24th is remembrance day for the Ottoman Empire’s WWI genocide of Armenians and Assyrians—which, for decades, was routinely denied by academic historians. My new article in Review of Middle East Studies documents and explains one of the legacies of that denial www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

“Given the lack of any explanation for Fani’s dismissal or even an initial acknowledgement, we are left to conclude that what was presented as a procedural intervention was in fact an act of academic censorship motivated by ideological objection to Fani’s statements.” www.dailyuw.com/article/on-t...

On the Termination of Aria Fani from the University of Washington Middle East Center Directorship

On the Termination of Aria Fani from the University of Washington Middle East Center Directorship

dailyuw.com

“I want students to be resilient. It's a very difficult time right now to have hope. But we must exercise our agency. We can't just be passive and let warmongers destroy everything on our planet. We must fight back. This is an existential fight.“ www.dailyuw.com/article/remo...

Removed Jackson School Middle East Center director speaks out

Removed Jackson School Middle East Center director speaks out

dailyuw.com