When we have proposed an Academic Freedom article for our union contract—now three times, first two rejected outright—the representatives of the Harvard administration have repeatedly asked us: “Is this a real problem for workers in your unit?”

Continued tales in the Harvard administration's commitment to undergraduate education

Strange paragraphs to write: "In JRL Syr. 10, in the left margin of fol. 304r, aligned to the top of the column, there is a transfer-sticker representing an anthropomorphic green frog dressed as a medieval soldier with breastplate, sword, and chainmail head protection, topped by a feathered hat. 1/

One of the biggest labor battles in the US is happening right now in Los Angeles, at USC, where our faculty-union campaign with majority support is being met by nasty, corporate-grade administrative resistance, and national press won't cover it.

The irony of Hampshire College closing now is that its pedagogical model, independent projects, oral exams, and collaborative research, is precisely what is needed to stem the tide of AI slop and cognitive offloading.

Guggenheim had about a 4% funding rate this cycle; ACLS had roughly a 3% funding rate; & the Trump NEH is ideologically distorted. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

damnit.

We've launched the website for our 'Coptic in Manchester: Connecting Manuscripts and Communities' UKRI-funded project ('26–28) with @thejohnrylands.bsky.social ! Please share! sites.google.com/view/coptici...

Really does not feel like this is the moment in history to be cutting Religious Studies education.

As my undergrad advisor put it when imparting a valuable lesson about how academia works, "Those who have, get."

Are you looking for an online global book history festival that features work on ancient through contemporary textual cultures? Look no further! Registration is open now! events.zoom.us/ev/Ap9iEZwmC...

It was such a joy to participate last May in this panel on Virginia Burrus's book Earthquakes and Gardens. You'll be able to read all the papers at the AJR forum this week.

Move slow and fix things

Keep an eye out for Dr. Hanna Tervanotko’s new book, Signs and Meanings: Divination and the Production of Knowledge in Jewish Antiquity, which comes out later this year with University of California Press! www.ucpress.edu/books/signs-...

shitty little sentence that makes no sense but i just like the sound of it

university admins are like

We've been arguing at the bargaining table for well over a year that this program of individualized advising for first- and second-year students is work that must be paid. They'd rather eliminate it altogether than pay people to do it. Harvard showing how interested it is in undergrad instruction.

Calling all Professors of Religion! Do you teach an intro to the study of religion course? If so, would you be willing to share your syllabus? Collecting for research purposes.

WE DID IT! Our illegal union @uam-umd.bsky.social is a lot less illegal today. 12,000 contingent faculty in MD just won the right to collectively bargain. Life-changing win for teachers and students. Only happened bc thousands of people worked together to beat our bosses in the statehouse.

Once again, the national average pay for adjunct professors with PhDs is a flat fee of $3900 per course.

I love all of your footnotes. I’m reading all of them! No footnotes left behind.

And hearing a sixth-grader incant lines from industry press releases about the utility of chatbots is, and I’m sorry kiddo it’s not your fault, horror show terrifying.

The Denial of Saint Peter, by Caravaggio, 1610

Pat was right

Portland! Good Enough Art at Reed College, one week from today events.reed.edu/event/good-e...

fortunately I am a f'ing rainmaker for my project and despite having been DOGEd a year ago I've now raised enough private money + an internal grant to pay our part-time researcher for nearly the entire time we promised him a job on our NEH grant

The fight we’ve been waiting for, the Battle of Brattle: Waymo vs. Cambridge turkey. @universalhub.com

UVA has one model for first-year advising. Harvard is developing another one. Who's to say which is really better? www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

the “combing through and finding weird little details that interest me” part of research is so crucial

Institutional surrender to the instrument of cognitive surrender will result (is already resulting) in political surrender to big tech and, ultimately, social surrender to capital. That UNIVERSITIES would willingly and enthusiastically turbocharge this systemic collapse is just devastating.

Having a PhD doesn’t mean you’re always right, but it does mean that you unlock new and more powerful ways to be wrong.

DH *and* Book History and Biblical Literatures session 😉

"criticizing AI use in journalism or other creative industries is classist" NO IT IS NOT there is a class that benefits enormously from cognitive surrender, epistemic warfare, and the enclosure of all hitherto produced culture and it is NOT THE WORKING CLASS

“The power that we have in the bargaining room comes from the power that we have outside of the bargaining room." ✊🏻

A Medieval Coptic translator was confronted with a dilemma: the Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53-8:11) is not attested in his exemplar. He visited archives in Cairo & Damascus to collect its versions in Coptic, Syriac, Greek, &Arabic. what did he find? Join his facinating journey in this new article

Losing patience. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

have you downloaded your *free* PDF yet? get on it, only 10 days left!!!

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

Tomorrow (Zoom) 👀 Thursday 26 March (16:15-18:00 EET/Helsinki time) Anna Jarosz-Wilkołazka, Anna Rysiak & Andrzej Kokowski, "Secrets of the Warrior’s Herbarium: Natural Stimulants in Ancient Northern Europe"

The TA is, far and away, the strongest NTT faculty union contract I've ever seen. Includes not just the 20% raises (as if that weren't enough!) but: - Paid prof development leave (i.e., sabbaticals) - Course releases for union service - Union security (fair share fees) - PI rights - Academic Freedom

go go go nyunews.com/news/03/25/2...

🧯Hot off the press: Education in Religious Contexts of Late Antiquity (Cambridge Element) > free download until April 8! www.cambridge.org/core/element...

I visited Bernard McGinn today and he very kindly gifted me some folders with material dedicated to German mysticism that he has collected over the years. They contain articles, book chapters, primary sources, unpublished translations and lectures, as well as notes and summaries.

As Wendy Doniger wrote, "Campbell....took other people's stories and turned them into easy-listening religion, Muzak mythology. He reduced great books to slogans. He made the myths he retold his myths, instead of letting them tell their own story.”

Almost 1 year since D. Graham Burnett prognosticated: "Within 5 years, it will make little sense for scholars of history to keep producing monographs in the traditional mold—nobody will read them, and [AI] will be able to generate them, endlessly, at the push of a button" How's he doing?

Non-tenure-track contract faculty at NYU went on strike this morning after over a year of bargaining (capped by a 24-hour+ marathon session). Big crowd of @uaw.org members and supporters, incl lots of students. They’re picketing over pay, workload, AI, a voice in faculty governance, & more.

As of 11:00AM, I am on strike. Along with my colleagues in the NYU Contract Faculty Union. We've been pretty transparent about issues being negotiated. See docs.google.com/spreadsheets... . Interesting set of documents. I happen to be out of city but will be on a picket line tomorrow. 🪧✊ #Solidarity

This is such a stupid time to be writing a book

New essay in a forum on Bavli studies from Yitz Landes, who brings Book History to the study of the Talmud's reception. www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2026/3/...