A university that called the cops on its own peaceful students is now set to be represented by one of them in Congress

Abe Silberstein@abesilbe.bsky.social · last mo.

Two years after Darializa Avila Chevalier took part in the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University, she is now set to represent the district in which the university is located in Congress.

The toxicity this policy will introduce in both students and faculty will be off the charts. But most of all I worry about how this will impact vulnerable graduate student teaching fellows who do the bulk of the teaching & grading at Harvard. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

70% of Faculty Vote to Overhaul Harvard Grading With A Cap | News | The Harvard Crimson

Harvard faculty voted to impose a roughly 20 percent cap on A grades beginning in fall 2027, approving the College’s most aggressive attempt to reverse grade inflation and reshape academic standards.

thecrimson.com

Very rich people getting booed during commencement speeches is my new favorite genre of entertainment.

I know there are lots of good people in college administration, but it's increasingly one of those roles like "private equity lawyer," "oil executive," or "Red Sox fan" where you're really going to have to convince me in each individual case

The president of Cornell backed his car into a student and a recent grad after a campus debate on Israel-Palestine. Then he lied about what happened in an email claiming he'd been the victim of harassment. Then, magnificently, Cornell's student newspaper found a video of the incident

Dan Hirschman@asociologist.bsky.social · 3mo ago

“Video footage obtained by The Sun shows Students for a Democratic Cornell members Aiden Vallecillo ’26 and Hudson Athas ’27 being struck by the car. In the video, no person can be seen touching the vehicle before it drove into Vallecillo and Athas.” www.cornellsun.com/article/2026...

You have to know how to read. Why do you think Che Guevara and Fidel Castro pushed the Cuban Literacy campaign? They knew reading was important. So you should know as well.

An important essay on how everything from covid to climate to imperial wars the rich, and those who imagine they are or will be, act not only as tho they are insulated from social and very literal ills, that the ills are believed only hurt the poor encourages the rich exacerbate them

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 3mo ago

"The structure whose supports our elites are steadily kicking down is also the one that props up their own personal safety from disaster and political invulnerability to accountability. And all of this can go away." me in @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-y...

Where is the class action lawsuit for those of us who teach, and for those of us who learn — the lawsuit that holds companies accountable for the daily violence of AI? For all the ways it turns student thinking into slop and teachers into cops??? Where is that lawsuit and how do I sign on?

The problem is not that older faculty are sticking around - it’s that they are not being replaced. The argument of this piece is quite pernicious as it substitutes a class war btw workers and a neoliberal administration w an age war btw different ranks of workers

and speaking of which, here's a great piece titled "AI Is Trash" from my colleague @apasek.bsky.social ---> drive.google.com/file/d/1gg9P...

OH MY HEART...the Oberlin Luddites Reject "The Year of AI Exploration"! 💚

Much of what you need to know about the politics of that Yale report can be encompassed in the fact that Heterodox Academy has walked right up to the line of claiming outright credit for its contents. (You should also read this thread).

Joey Fishkin@fishkin.bsky.social · 4mo ago

The Yale report on trust in higher education has some good recommendations for reforms in many areas that I hope Yale and other schools implement. But its diagnosis is oddly silent about what I suspect is the most important force driving the decline in trust in higher education: political attack.

No one is going to close Yale if the anti-university flames are fanned even higher. But small public colleges are put at real risk by this largely manufactured narrative. It would help us all out if the wealthy, elite institutions would at least refrain from reinforcing the attacks on higher ed.

It's not just Iran whose surrender is being demanded. It's yours. Your hope. Your belief in yourself and our collective potential. Your empathy. They want to crush those things. They want you to believe their will is inevitable. They want you to surrender.

please send a few bucks to Priscilla if you can, a comrade of mine who's had her life upended by RICO charges around Stop Cop City for attending a music festival

Priscilla "Wants Medicare for All" Grim@priscillagrim.bsky.social · 4mo ago

My support crew just sent out this email to help me pay rent for last month. The fight to stay housed continues.

As part of an AI committee at my university, I spent this weekend trying out Claude (Opus 4.6) for writing, and I have to say, far beyond its hallucinations and the usual complaints, it is a baffling experience cognitively. I want to be more precise in my evaluation here than I usually am about AI.

Made a little zine for the panel called "Writing With Humans as Collaborative and Collective Practice" and you can have one if you attend

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Sorry but I am going to #AWP26 With Arisa White, Shana Youngdahl & Éireann Lorsung, I'm talking about "The non-coercive rearranging of desire: Teaching Writing Despite 'AI'" on Friday 3/6 at 10:35. You will like it I'm also doing this workshop in Perry Hall later that day

Tomorrow morning at 10:35 in Room 308 at #AWP26, you will like it Panel is called "Teaching Writing Despite 'AI': The Noncoercive Rearranging of Desire" & includes @eireannmor.bsky.social , Arisa White, @shanayoungdahl.bsky.social & me

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Made a little zine for the panel called "Writing With Humans as Collaborative and Collective Practice" and you can have one if you attend

PSC/CUNY supports the SJU-AAUP chapter at St. John's University and condemns their administration's outrageous attempt to undermine the union and collective bargaining agreement. (1/3)

New York Daily News [Unofficial]@nydailynews.com.web.brid.gy · 6mo ago

Only thing I have to say about BS about white men in academia "not being able to get jobs b/c of women and POC" is organizing a labor union will always be a better option than racism and sexism. But I guess that doesn't work for entitled men who think they're smarter & better than everyone already

great thread that pretty much nails the relationship between systematic lying and institutionalized hatred of poor people as consummated in those special hells known as phd programs.

Nate Holdren@nhold.bsky.social · 8mo ago

This has reminded me of an ugly time. I was in grad school at the U of Minnesota in 2008 when the financial crisis hit. Prior to that the norm in the dept I was in (history) had been that people could stay in grad school on assistantships until they finished the degree but the university introduced

"We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction." "How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...

Four Frictions: or, How to Resist AI in Education - Public Books

We are calling for resistance to the AI industry’s ongoing capture of higher education.

publicbooks.org

“At Vincennes there was no hierarchy among the students or the teachers⁠—none at all… It was a place of freedom, wisdom, equality. It was a marvelous, joyous, alive place. I was in charge of appointing the first thirty-six professors… ‘Would you like to join a university of dreams?’”

Hélène Cixous, The Art of Criticism No. 7

“There’s a feminist discourse that women can't do it all. This is what many women experience, and it’s very difficult. But I am not like that.”

theparisreview.org

later that night i held an atlas in my lap ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered where does it hurt? it answered everywhere everywhere everywhere. (from warsan shire “what they did yesterday afternoon”)

what they did yesterday afternoon by Warsan Shire • Read A Little Poetry

"later that night / i held an atlas in my lap / ran my fingers across the whole world / and whispered / where does it hurt?"

readalittlepoetry.com

someone should invent a thing that's like a university but it's goal is to facilitate learning

My employer, Dartmouth College, today boasts it's 1st Ivy "to launch AI at an institutional scale." It is doing this by partnering--"more than a collaboration"--with Anthropic, a company that stole the books of many faculty, me included, which many of us are suing.

Sign the petition linked below to support higher ed workers at the UNC System in their fight against the requirement to create a searchable repository of all university syllabi, which will endanger students and instructors by inviting political actors to attack free inquiry across UNC campuses.

Protect Academic Freedom, Our Faculty, Our Communities

Faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members: The UNC System is preparing to cave to political pressure from the Heritage Foundation, the Oversight Project, and the James Martin Center by ...

actionnetwork.org

Yeah shit’s fucked up at The New School. It’s true. I’m living it. It’s a microcosm of what’s happening everywhere in America. gothamist.com/news/the-new...

The New School faces identity crisis amid planned layoffs, reorganization

The storied leftist university faces a $48 million deficit.

gothamist.com