Martha Martinez from DePaul University not pulling her punches in her great presentation at the ASA Teaching Preconference:
Michel Estefan
@mestefan.bsky.social
Sociologist at UCSD. Views my own; not employer’s. Repost ≠ endorsement.
Not sure if ya’ll remember, but in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, in the preface to the last action sequence, when Ras Al Ghul shows up at Bruce’s birthday party, he tells Bruce that they’ve attacked Gotham before, using a new weapon: “economics”. Found that amusing.
In this podcast Claude Steele (if you know, you know) summarizes findings from an article he published trying to figure out under what conditions are Black students more likely to trust critical feedback from a White professor.
Claude Steele on the Hidden Stress of Diverse Spaces
Yascha Mounk and Claude Steele discuss why diversity can produce anxiety—and how it differs from prejudice.
persuasion.community
Higher Ed Colleagues: I’m presenting at HACU’s 40th Annual Conference in Chula Vista on Nov 1st from 2-3:15pm!
Listen up. This is truly wild. It’s today’s version of the early 2000s line at Wal-Mart just before Black Friday begins.
There's this guy and he's really concerned about how corporate interests have infiltrated university boards of trustees and steered decision making in a direction that is contrary to the pursuit of knowledge and the teaching of students....
If you know me you know I have an insatiable sweet tooth that takes an enormous amount of will power, planning, and luck to keep at bay.
Another way one could view this table is to say that each campus occupies an important space and it’s good we have them all. We shouldn’t be trying to make the Merceds in higher ed into Berkeleys, nor should we be trying to make the Berkeleys into Merceds
One strange feature of the SAT debate is how often critics argue against a claim i don’t really see anybody making:
One way to read this table posted by @jaweedkaleem is that as a whole, the UC system has a place for everyone. With amazing faculty across all campuses.
Let’s talk about trust and higher ed. The (mostly or most-intensly) right-wing narrative goes a little something like this: higher ed has lost people’s trust because it’s too woke, too expensive, and no longer guarantees a job. That about cover it?
People who call other people “stupid” remind me of Beavis and Butt Head. Hard to believe someone would do that in a live press conference full of people recording what you say. #StupidIsStupidDoes, I guess. 🤷
Folks who liked Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference, what did you like most about the speech?
This WaPo piece shows that you can publish an op-ed in a major newspaper without meaningfully, substantively engaging with any of the views you disagree with. 90% of the op-Ed is: ‘I can’t believe the person in this interview didn’t recant and agree with me on everything. Shame on them.’ 🤔
Opinion | The interview that exposed academia’s cluelessness
A leading academic’s bizarre response shows how insular college campuses are.
washingtonpost.com
Instead of defunding the humanities, conservative critics should really just take a couple of humanities classes. Long story short, Homer did the same thing Nolan did: recreate a story, hundreds, maybe a thousand years old, for the audience of his time. 🤷 www.artnews.com/art-news/new...
The Online Backlash to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Misses the Point of the Epic Poem
Classics scholars and archaeologists respond to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and the internet that arrived before the film even hit theaters.
artnews.com
Mexico’s national public university, the UNAM, administers its admissions exam entirely online for the first time and apparently there’s just a huge improvement in scores across the board compared to years past (#cheating #AI).
Rector de la UNAM ordena revisión del examen de ingreso y crea comisión técnica
Leonardo Lomelí, rector de la UNAM, ordenó la elaboración de un informe sobre el proceso de Selección de Ingreso a Licenciatura para el ciclo escolar 2026-2027
excelsior.com.mx
Once you read a little contemporary psychology and sociology, you quickly realize that “know thyself” really means “know thyselves (plural).” Cuz “the self” is a narrative built out of disparate parts.
From a 1963 Harvard admissions brochure sent out to prospective undergrad applicants: "wealth, like age, does not make a university great. But it helps" (cited in Thelin 2004, p.xiii). Hard to argue with that.
¿Qué examen es más justo? ¿El examen de admisión a la UNAM o el SAT que se usa en Estados Unidos? Which exam is fairer? The admissions exam for UNAM in Mexico or the SAT?
A few questions folks are wrestling with regarding the SAT debate, from the particular standpoint of CA and the UC system:
High school AP English teacher makes the case for the needed return of the SAT. In a sea of AI, grade inflation, and post-Covid student expectations, it’s the only thing we’ve got that gives us a sense of what students actually know
I’ve Taught High School English for 22 Years. Here’s What the Debate Over Standardized Testing Is Missing.
The U.S. educational system might not be able to withstand this.
slate.com
I mean, like, I’m just giving you the hard data. A UC college degree is one of the best investments you can make in your life. What, you prefer to bet your professional career on corporate training? 🤔 Investing in a UC degree IS an investment in yourself and in the CA public.
People who say college isn’t worth it haven’t seen this data
A UC degree pays off with higher earnings that grow over time, and UC graduates enter the workforce with greater financial flexibility due to no or low debt.
universityofcalifornia.edu
I mean, like, I’m just giving you the hard data. A UC college degree is one of the best investments you can make in your life. What, you prefer to bet your professional career on corporate training? 🤔 Investing in a UC degree IS an investment in yourself and in the CA public.
People who say college isn’t worth it haven’t seen this data
A UC degree pays off with higher earnings that grow over time, and UC graduates enter the workforce with greater financial flexibility due to no or low debt.
universityofcalifornia.edu
Weird that, like, Bernie Sanders, Trump, and Sam Altman all agree, for different reasons of course, on some type of public control over AI.
Wait, who does ruis benefit? 🤦 “Omar Yaghi, an immigrant to the U.S. who shared last year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has left his faculty post at the University of California, Berkeley, for one in China,
Nobel-Winning U.S. Chemist Omar Yaghi Will Move to China to Lead A.I. Institute
Omar Yaghi of the University of California, Berkeley, will head an initiative to apply artificial intelligence to the discovery of new materials.
nyti.ms
American universities are organizational behemoths that house a multitude of often conflicting constituencies, goals, interests and values.