These beautiful pottok horses on Bianditz mountain, Navarra. Behind lie the Aiako mountains. The Pottok is an endangered, semi-feral breed of pony native to the Basque Pyrenees. This photo by Mikel Ortega was named image of the day on Wikipedia.

“Cutting this much from the university budget will mean that some of the core functions of the university will be lost. It’s not possible to just do more with less — to work smarter, to trim around the edges. We’re going to have to do less with less.” Gift link: www.startribune.com/umn-cuts-sta...

Perry: What we lose if the U cuts $225 million

"Austerity doesn’t work. Instead, it creates a death spiral, where reduction in services leads to reductions in revenue, which lead to reductions in services, which leads to reduction in revenue, whic...

startribune.com

Awesome news for Los Angeles and surely too for Velázquez’s formidable Conde-Duque, who now gets to live in California.

Getty Acquires Rediscovered Diego Velázquez Painting | Getty News

“Portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares” strengthens Getty’s collection of 17th-century European paintings.

getty.edu

Yes, this:

Charles Logan@charleswlogan.bsky.social · last mo.

Wins against GenAI are “win[s] for democracy - for all the teachers and parents and students who said to district leaders that moving fast with ‘AI’ was going to break things, break people; who asked that their needs be met, their voices be heard over the needs and voices of vendors” Audrey Watters

Non-Motherhood, (In)Fertility, and Choice in Two Recent Spanish Narratives - preview of my recent article published with the Hispanic Studies Review, where you can access the PDF (links in my blog post) rebeccambender.com/2026/09/03/n...

Non-Motherhood, (In)Fertility, and Choice in Two Recent Spanish Narratives

This post shares my recent article, published in the Hispanic Studies Review, which analyzes two Spanish “hybrid narratives”: Míriam Aguilar’s “¿Y ahora qué?” (2024) a…

rebeccambender.com

Harvard 86-ing its writing center is a bit as if the wealthiest suburb in a hot, dry region threatened by climate change decided to save money by abolishing its fire department. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

In Defense of the Harvard College Writing Center | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson

As current and former Harvard College Writing Center tutors, we write to condemn the dissolution of the Writing Center as an independent entity and the laying off of its director, Jane Rosenzweig.

thecrimson.com

"Let’s stop pretending Big Tech companies care about kids, educators or our public schools. It’s time we admit their end goal isn’t to better the educational landscape...And educators need to be more involved with decisions that directly affect what we do in the classroom,” writes Liz Shulman.

Liz Shulman: Why are we still pretending Big Tech cares about our classrooms?

All kids deserve protection in school. Instead, AI companies are equipping classrooms with surveillance tech to gather data on K-12 students.

chicagotribune.com

No os perdáis este nuevo librazo editado por Mario Santana, Esther Gimeno Ugalde y @santiperezisasi.bsky.social, con casi 20 ensayos sobre la historia y el estado actual de los estudios ibéricos. brill.com/display/titl...

With such a large study abroad group this year i read a bit less than normal, but these were a few books I enjoyed: a dystopic look at motherhood; poetry on (non)motherhood; a narrative exposing maternal grief & solitude; and my fav (punto bobo), interwoven narratives centered on a mother & daughter

🚨 New publication alert 🚨 In which I join an all-star group of scholars to discuss the problems with what we call "critical optimism" about AI in education and offer instead three forms of AI refusal: curricular, bureaucratic, and administrative. The article is paywalled, so DM me for a copy.

Refusing Educational Technology: Artificial Intelligence, Inequity, and the Problem of Critical Optimism - Niral Shah, David Stroupe, Aman Yadav, Tess Bernhard, Charles Logan, Elizabeth B. Dyer, Peng ...

Artificial intelligence (AI)—like many technologies before—comes with hope and worry about its implications for education. In this essay, using generative AI as...

journals.sagepub.com

This looks really fascinating!

Heidi Backes@heidibackes1.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I'm so excited to share the cover of my forthcoming book, "Fascist Female Gothic," which will be published in January with @uniwalespress.bsky.social. Read more about it below... 1/2

New publication on 2 recent Spanish texts that expose the uncertainty & grief of prolonged fertility struggles, resist internalized societal pressures/cultural norms about biological motherhood, and reveal the complexities of maternal desire hispanicstudiesreview.cofc.edu/article/1624...

Who doesn't love a bit of gossip?

This is the dumbest dystopia.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 4mo ago

These people are so fucking boring.

Another reminder that LLMs make us all dumber. Adults can recover from the atrophied skills. There is no recovery for younger students who never developed them. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-...

Adults Lose Skills to AI. Children Never Build Them.

Discussions of cognitive offloading often miss a critical distinction: What AI does to a 45-year-old's brain is categorically different from what it does to a 14-year-old's.

psychologytoday.com

this graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive. when you're inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. but everybody isn't.

Statehouse subsidization of Canvas in places dominated by reactionaries tells you a great deal about what Canvas IS now: an enclosure of educational practices serving the ambition of automation & indoctrination.

Julie Ingersoll@julieingersoll.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The State forces it. The mandated syllabus platform that they also require is embedded in Canvas. There are also other mechanisms. And tenure is no protection since we now have Post Tenure Review and compliance with all of these things is one of the categories included.

What I wish for everybody to remember when Canvas comes back online: The reason OUR data can be held for ransom is because Instructure, their owners (KKR private equity & Dragoneer venture capital), & our own employers (see ASU Atomic) monetize it. It's Canvas that hacked education & stole our IP.

huh. you what didn't get hacked? bluebooks, printed essays, grading notebooks, even excel files on my pc for tracking grades.

Jess Calarco@jessicacalarco.com · 5mo ago

Kind of surprised that this hasn't been bigger news. It's finals week for a whole lot of universities, and yet, Canvas (a learning/grading platform used by ~9,000 schools globally) is currently inaccessible because of a pay-or-have-your-data-leaked hack. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

That's me!! I stopped using it this academic year, went back to printed packets/binders, in-class exams and presentations, and it has been glorious - this incident further validates/justified that choice (though I feel back for all students/faculty struggling with this right now!)

Min Hyoung Song@minsong.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The one faculty member who doesn’t use Canvas just because is probably laughing at everyone else right now.

I love this. Might have to find an old typewriter or 2 (and learn to use it better myself!). My analogue Canvas-free classes were a massive improvement this year and I like the idea of adding more "old tech" to vary tasks & teach MORE analogue skills (ex: 3-ring binders were new to EVERY student!)

My 2 semesters Canvas-free confirm = SUPERIOR Kane says: Screens offer students cover, a way to appear engaged without any actual sustained effort...when he got rid of all laptops & tablets, students' needs became plain. Education is profoundly & stubbornly SOCIAL www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

What Happened After a Teacher Ditched Screens

Why one early adopter of computers in classrooms has decided to toss them

theatlantic.com

This is largely by design. If we stop thinking about AI as simply technology and instead as part of a political and economic program, its chief function become easier to see: namely to erode interpersonal trust so that ultimately we give up on forms of agreement & negotiation arbitrated by people.

Julia Carrie Wong@joolia.bsky.social · 6mo ago

there are so many things to be angry about but at the moment I really fucking hate the fact that I’m expected to be able to recognize AI generated slop text

Disgraceful. And languages have been dealing with this for years; many universities no longer require even a single language course, let alone basic competency via 4 semesters (which used to be a far more common requirement)...

Jess Calarco@jessicacalarco.com · 7mo ago

This is how disciplines die. Now that Sociology courses don't count for GenEd credit, far fewer students will take them, let alone choose Sociology as a major. And so, Sociology department budgets will shrink, meaning fewer faculty and fewer courses offered. www.miamiherald.com/news/politic...

This is why the phrase comes up in so many of the things I've written about AI. AI does three main things: 1) dismantle the institutions necessary for democratic society to thrive 2) transfer wealth upwards 3) create the permission structure for (1) and (2)

This is called a community college and if we funded them properly we wouldn't need private individuals to offer these kinds of services.

NPR@npr.org · 8mo ago

Schools across the country are offering courses and retreats for people 50+ who want to reinvent themselves and embrace lifelong learning and discovery.

Proud of my 2025 students for completing such great interdisciplinary research projects on-the-ground in Spain, and looking forward to what the 2026 cohort will come up with! Read a bit about their projects, which they presented at the KSWLA's annual conference! rebeccambender.com/2026/01/30/t...

Transformative Study Abroad: Bridging Language and Research in Spain

First post of 2026! This year my goal is to return to posting at least once per month (*fingers crossed*). This past August 2025 I returned to my role as Associate Professor of Spanish – and …

rebeccambender.com

Madrid's reputation as “a graceless city of reactionary generals and slow-moving civil servants” is undeserved, says Luke Stegemann in his urban biography (@yalepress.bsky.social). Bécquer Seguín (@becquer.bsky.social) and I are not so sure. In @thenation.com. thenation.com/article/cult...

How Immigration Transformed Europe’s Most Conservative Capital

Madrid has changed greatly since 1975, at once opening itself to immigrants from Latin America while also doubling down on conservative politics.

thenation.com

"La red aeroportuaria española ha crecido un 3,9% en pasajeros, un 4,1% en movimientos y un 7,2% en mercancías este 2025, tercer año más caluroso desde que hay registros. Estas cifras chocan con los objetivos de emisiones del sector y el propio Gobierno."

Climática@climatica.coop · 9mo ago

✈️ Casi 2,7 millones de aterrizajes y despegues en un solo año. Madrid y Barcelona concentran buena parte del tráfico internacional de largo radio, el más intensivo en emisiones por distancia. Lo cuenta @edurobayna.bsky.social 

1934 poster for premiere of Federico García Lorca's play Yerma.