Applications are open for MIR Summer Seminar 2026 on the theme of Marxist Internationalism! See the call for applications: docs.google.com/document/d/1.... Open to all non-faculty University of California affiliates (undergrads, grads, staff, lecturers). App deadline Jan. 16. Please share!

Eminent 👏 Domain 👏 The 👏 Coast 👏 Line

I was just looking at the history of the estate tax. It started in 1916, but we set up the modern version in 1977, with an exemption (no tax) on estates up to $120,000. At the time, median household income was about $13,500 so back of the envelope, median lifetime income might be about $540,000.

“AI boosters promise that the technology will find greater efficiencies in education; but this is less about the functionalities of AI itself, and far more about eviscerating the public nature of public education.”

In two unrelated images, downloading my students' assignments is disabled for _security reasons_ and the UC Regents invest 32% of a $1.2B portfolio into microchip technologies. At least my students' work is not being used to train AI EdTech webinars... Oh. Oh, no. corp.kaltura.com/landing_page...

Big exposé on (lack of) instructional spending at UC-Merced, by their intrepid and fearless chapter of the @uc-faculty.bsky.social. “UC Merced has actively divested from instruction, showing a pattern of deprivation of the instructional budget relative to ourselves and other campuses.”

All the centers they’re cutting add up to less than $7 million in spending. UNC athletics budget is $185.4 million for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

#OtD 17 Dec 1933 sexual contact between men was re-criminalised in the USSR, after it had been decriminalised in 1922 in the wake of the 1917 revolution. After it was introduced, gay and bisexual men began to flood into the gulags stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8868...

Stuff like this fuels fascism. Complete disrespect of the law, blatant corruption.

Excellent news. What's left of Serbia's independent judiciary + a tremendous amount of activism on the ground stopped the construction of a Trump hotel on top of NATO bombing ruins in the center of Belgrade. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/u... (some historical context in 🧵)

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@ankahajkova.bsky.social work has illuminated voices and identities hidden by history. Challenging dominate narratives Anna provides us with an important new work of scholarship. Will be using it in class in the spring.

L.A. City: we might not know the right name of the street, but we know this project is exempt from HLA.

Chomsky has always been the archetypal tunnel-vision anti-imperialist, an inherently Realpolitik, unprincipled stance. His apologia for Milošević, Assad, or Khmer Rouge set the stage for Bannon friendliness. Hopefully, a lesson for the Russia or Iran apologists on the “anti-imperialist” left.

Why do bourgeois elites try to transform cities? What happens when their fantasies fail to materialize? Learn about the social costs of elite-led urban change in my book! Published by @stanfordpress.bsky.social and available for pre-order today! bookshop.org/p/books/citi...

Trying to redo my website and remain surprised that in the face of all this innovation, writing simple HTML+CSS still seems easier. As it did 30 years ago when I first dabbled in HTML. No one needs CI deploy strategies and node.js for five static pages.

this, from @kevinbaker.bsky.social, is a better analysis of the intersection between LLMs and academic science than 98% of what's out there.

tonight we are all spurs fans. that block by wemby on chet.. 😥 www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Be-...

Solid reporting by @jaweedkaleem.bsky.social of the @latimes.com on pressure inside the DOJ to pursue a case against UCLA despite very weak facts. (Indeed, the real facts are in my view considerably weaker than this story states.) Nine DOJ attorneys resigned rather than pursue this bogus case.

I have spoken extensively, albeit, I fear, at times in truncated fashion about what is taking place at UCLA and how it connects to broader politics of suppression both at the level of the federal government and at the level of the UC. My colleague @fishkin.bsky.social has authored a must-read.

In our most recent AAUP TV episode, Jeremy Varon, Prof of History and AAUP The New School Leadership Council member, discusses the university administration's proposal to terminate up to 40% of full-time faculty. The proposed layoffs will be catastrophic for faculty, students, and staff.

It’s important to contextualize just how much less safe American drivers are than everywhere else in the world, and it’s getting worse!

Something stinks at The New School. Between ’22 & ‘23, numerous high-level admin received large raises: President Joel Towers ( 11.6% to $417,000), exec dean Richard Kessler (11.7%, to $469,000), & provost Rene White (10.9%, to over $712,000). Now they’re broke? 🤔 @newschoolaaup.bsky.social

Really neat example of how everything about an object—binding, foxing, water damage, annotations—can help us understand it.

Another wretched thing about the #LargeAsphaltRepair scandal (other being anti-ADA & anti-HLA) is that the Bureau of Street Services is leaving heavily damaged areas where people bike, while resurfacing areas where people drive…https://futureis.la/p/la-has-stopped-repaving-our-streets

A colleague just shared this, saying, “This collection of union contract provisions over technology governance is full of ideas.” laborcenter.berkeley.edu/negotiating-...

Administrators are inking deals with OpenAI and inviting Palantir onto campus, ignoring faculty expertise and rolling out unproven data-thieving surveillance snake oil tech on our studens, staff and us. Enough.

“The non-property classes are far from homogeneous. They have different political, aesthetic, and cultural standpoints — and the role of politics is to give them a common project.” jacobin.com/2025/12/fern...

Cool to see that students and staff at the University of Rochester created a book wheel from 16th-century designs (from 2019). Book history is so much more interesting than you might think!

RIP to Asad Haider— a great excerpt I came across earlier today from another individual below

You may have heard that Trump’s extortion of University of California was defeated in court. But do you know who won this historic case? Spoiler: not a single UC administrator participated. It was all faculty members of the UC Faculty Associations and @aaup.org! Cc: @veenadubal.bsky.social