As a Religious Studies professor, this directly targets my livelihood in a way that makes a mockery of any supposed profession of concern the administration has ever expressed for me as a Jewish person on campus.

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d ago

President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v

again, the danger from AI is not that it will attain sentience and destroy us. the danger is that it's a mindless flattery machine and being mindlessly flattered literally drives people insane.

as an ambulatory wheelchair user and faculty member, the dissonance between the hard push for Title II digital compliance and the reality of navigating campus spaces is sometimes difficult to manage. especially when people complain "why do we need to do this work for just a few people?"

Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa@benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · last wk.

I'd love to see a study of the effects on faculty, students, and staff when they see their university as hypocritical, especially around issues of social justice. I imagine these are pretty common sentiments that have measurably negative effects. It'd be useful to have evidence of that.

How is the summer almost gone already. So little of my to-do checklist has gotten to-done!

hey! you! almost 1000 folks have read/downloaded Virginia Burrus's new Element in Religion in Late Antiquity, isn't it time you joined them? www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Martyrdom as Witness in Late Ancient Christian Literature

Cambridge Core - Religion: General Interest - Martyrdom as Witness in Late Ancient Christian Literature

cambridge.org

WELP I WAS ANNOYED AND HAD THE TIME: “When men say she should be grateful for the attention, they’re saying a woman’s scholarship only gains true meaning when a famous man shines a light on it.” news.chanda.science/archive/an-o...

An Odyssey Through Testimonial Injustice

On reading Dr. Emily Wilson, properly

news.chanda.science

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌@chanda.blacksky.app · last wk.

Don’t make me write a newsletter about how Emily Wilson is allowed to be an expert, you guys

it's a monday afternoon at the end of july, of course we're writing syllabi against-a-i.com is here for you! and if you're a humanities teacher who's developed materials you'd like to contribute as we glow up for fall, PLEASE SEND! against-a-i.com

Folks, after two days of searching the only foster I have found is willing to take only the babies and not the mother. I could make this happen, but it makes me sad. Do I do this? Do I leave them as they are? These are the only two choices.

Jessica Huseman@jessicahuseman.bsky.social · 2w ago

Folks, a mama cat has given birth to four kittens in my bf’s Not At All Safe garage in oak cliff in Dallas. We cannot foster (leaving the country in 5 days), and I doubt my ability to capture any of them. If you are in Dallas and have experience fostering cats, please reach out.

hey Baltimore/DC (and environs) folks: the adoption countdown is at SIX WEEKS surely one of you needs a pair of kittens who are being socialized from practically day one, and someone who needs an incredibly sweet and gentle one-year-old mother who just wants constant belly rubs and head scritches

The Anishnabek Nation is collecting donations for the Namaygoosisagagun First Nation members displaced in these fires: an7gc.ca/donate/

don't miss out! the deadline for proposals to the ever amazing, annual Queer and Trans Studies in Religion conference is ONE MONTH from today, August 15! studyofreligion.ucr.edu/holstein-cha...

To channel Judith Butler for a minute, the whole point of the trans panic has always been to institute the fantasy of a restored patriarchy.

Jess Calarco@jessicacalarco.com · 3w ago

This was the point all along. To insist that everyone fits neatly into a pink or blue box, so that it's easier to justify treating the whole pink box as less deserving of rights and opportunities and dignities than the blue.

"Students whose teachers had access to the AI tool rated their classes as less enjoyable, less interesting and less important than students in the control group." 👀 This seems...important? hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

Teachers save time with AI. Their students may pay the price

Students say AI-assisted classes feel less interesting, less enjoyable and less important

hechingerreport.org

So. I did it. Lotta people gonna be mad about this one. Show it some love?

A Jewish Case for AI work exemptions

or: why should CHICAGO POPE have all the fun

lifeisasacredtext.com

If students are simply uninterested in the core bargain of a class like this, it’s hard to know what to do. You teach the material because you think it’s important they know it; they don’t give a shit, but want the credential; and the university wants their money. Your main option is “pretend”.

Andrew Heiss@andrew.heiss.phd · 4w ago

woof ≈80% of assignments this summer term have essentially been just raw chatgpt/claude output, including assignments that required designing stuff in illustrator/affinity/canva. The battle is lost for asynchronous online courses.

Here’s the thing: I could probably come up with lots of creative, AI-proof online approaches. But finding the time to reflect an innovate comes at a premium. I often revamp my courses, but this is an order of magnitude much higher in redesign. AI is not a pedagogical crisis, it’s a labor crisis.

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 4w ago

It’s such a bummer. Online/asynchronous/virtual teaching can be incredibly valuable and with a little extra structure can be an amazing and scalable resource but now AI has rendered the whole enterprise impossible.

It's conference season, so I wanted to share the AI refusal statement I put at the end of my presentations and book talks. Feel free to use it!

I finally read The Widening of God’s Mercy by Christopher and Richard Hays. I went in skeptical. I came out with more questions and a few thoughts. Have a look if that’s your thing. open.substack.com/pub/vandeney...

Flavor Flav and Paris Hilton teaming up to handle the US women's hockey team travel for an awards show is the crossover event I didn't know I needed

FLAVOR FLAV ⏰@flavorflav.bsky.social · 4w ago

THANKX to Paris Hilton and Hilton for stepping up to cover hotel rooms for all the hockey players to attend the ESPYs together and celebrate their TEAM OF THE YEAR nomination together,!!

librarians. 💜

Tim Ellis 🍁@djdynamic.ca · 4w ago

"They just want to turn it off." A fascinating story of the librarians who have started teaching classes showing people how to remove AI "features" from their phones and apps. www.bangordailynews.com/2026/07/02/m...

The oldest story we have is of a maniacal demi-god king named Gilgamesh who wants to best death and live forever, only to realize he’s mortal like everyone else. Literally the oldest human story recorded. Just came to mind for some reason.

Resist 🕎🍉@antizionistjew.bsky.social · 4w ago

Biohacker Bryan Johnson reveals he has incurable disease amid mission to ‘defeat death’ - "My stomach is eating itself" Looks like the millionaires are finding out - you can't cheat the cycle of life.

Check out Gabriel Chazan's review of Provoking Religion: "Ultimately, the strongest argument of the book is that the historian of American culture ignores the significance of Christianity...for an exclusive focus on queer history or politics at their peril." asapjournal.com/review/queer...

Queer Religious Forms: Review of Anthony Petro’s Provoking Religion - ASAP/Review

Anthony Petro’s Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Culture Wars brings forward a significant counternarrative of the role of religion in American art during the 1980s and 1990s. This period is freq...

asapjournal.com

Just here to post this again like I do every year, not only because Douglass was one of the founding philosophers of American liberty but because I am so moved by the kids Frederick Douglass’ descendants deliver “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July”

‘What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July?’: Descendants Read Frederick Douglass' Speech | NPR

YouTube video by NPR

youtu.be

It's not appropriate for cis people to say that trans people are too alarmed, or that certain trans writers are irresponsibly causing trans people to think the sky is falling. I want to take some time in this 🧵 to write personally about how my skies have fallen.

Benediction: on this final day of pride, may you be blessed by being or knowing a queer or trans person, who reflect the image of god not despite being queer or trans but because they are queer and trans. In the name of the Nonbinary Parent, the Transgender Son, and the Genderfluid Spirit. Amen.

Fuck every single Democrat that has ever been willing to compromise on trans dignity, rights and humanity. I hope you assholes are pleased with yourselves. I don’t know if you could’ve prevented this moment, but you should’ve been fighting every step of the way.

ElieNYC@elienyc.bsky.social · last mo.

See, people always want to make this just about "sports," but the real upshot here is that, 6-3, trans women can't make a claim under the Equal Protection Clause. And if they can't do that, it's hard to see how they have constitutional rights.

Will never get over that those of us who do academic work at the center of supposed “woke” (🙄) tried to warn EVERYONE else in academia this would come for them, that this would be a mass democratic crisis, that people would die, and well…really wish we’d been wrong…but there is still time to fight

Bethany Brookshire@beebrookshire.bsky.social · last mo.

You may have heard about the OMB rule change that will put politics over federal grants. However bad you think it is? It's probably worse. Thanks to @theverge.com for letting me report this one out. There is still time to comment. bit.ly/4v2X4nQ

I've been enjoying DuckDuckGo, but it needs a quick "pre-AI" search option where it returns only results published before 2023.