A helpful read for thinking about the need to push back against false dichotomies—maker/taker, builder/critic, innovator/regulator—that are currently being used to further marginalize the humanities.

I'm co-hosting this event, titled "Values of Waste," with Alistair Cartwright at the University of Liverpool in two weeks! Please come if you happen to be in the area! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/values-of-...

An excellent line-up featuring two very lovely grad school classmates, including @elliotts.bsky.social!

Little appreciation for my Stargate references in class today. "You know, Abydos, where they first travelled to after entering the Stargate?"

"Trump has been signaling for a decade or so that political violence committed by his supporters is acceptable and might even be rewarded...Trump and...his acolytes frame such conduct not as violence, but as legitimate...self-defense;...they portray themselves as perpetual victims." New column:

I highly recommend both!

Shoot. It. Into. My. Veins.

"It is as if the administration is building a simulacrum of authoritarianism, albeit one meant to bring the real thing into being." www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/o...

"The postmodernists may have won the battle, but the modernists . . . won the war. What’s ridiculous about all of this, however, is that one side—not dissimilar to the rest of Trump’s quixotic culture warrior fantasies—never stopped fighting." www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Calling all part-time and full-time faculty in the South: Speak out on academic freedom, shared governance, and your working conditions! Survey closes 8/29 at 5pm ET. States: AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, TX, VA. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

People working in universities know a lot of the work that makes the organization function is outsourced to for-profit companies (catering, landscaping) or runs on platforms requiring payments to such companies: Workday, Canvas, Microsoft, Zoom. This thread will be for less obvious examples. 1/

During the Great Recession & the pandemic, doctoral candidates could continue their studies until things got better. This time, the Trump admin cuts to research funding have stripped many of that option. “This is way worse than those earlier crises. Doctoral students are in panic mode.”

Just wish a single email from my employer was something like: "We are hiring more TAs and increasing the Writing Center's capacity!" Rather than the more familiar: "We are pleased to announce our exclusive partnership with Panopto at the upcoming EdTech Conference!"

I'm chairing a panel on "The Architecture of US Empire" at the College Art Association (CAA) conference in February 2026. Abstracts due Aug. 29. Please consider applying! Description ⬇️ caa.confex.com/caa/2026/web...

I'm chairing a panel on "The Architecture of US Empire" at the College Art Association (CAA) conference in February 2026. Abstracts due Aug. 29. Please consider applying! Description ⬇️ caa.confex.com/caa/2026/web...

Very keen for similar suggestions (now that AI literacy seems to be a mandatory part of all our jobs).

"The Voting Rights Act is quite likely dead. Long live the Voting Rights Act." www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/o...

My colleague Prof Marianne Hirsch has shared a letter she sent Columbia’s Acting President Claire Shipman about the dangerous measures the university is taking as part of its “agreement” with Donald Trump and Stephen Miller. open.substack.com/pub/riseupco...

“It’s not that traditional liberal arts is out of step with student demand. Instead, it’s out of step with the priorities values desires of a powerful board of trustees with no apparent commitment to liberal education, an administrative class.” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...

Also hard to get students to listen when all you have to say is: "It's too late. There is nothing left to do."

On Carlos Duart, FIU Board of Trustees Chair, and his ilk... prospect.org/power/2025-0...

"Toward the end of Khalil’s short remarks, he looked at Mamdani as if it were just the two of them in the room, and he said, 'I am excited about the possibility of raising my son in a city where you are mayor.'" www.newyorker.com/news/essay/z...

The Ontario Place waterpark is a catastrophe. Diamond Schmitt @diamondschmitt.bsky.social want to tell you it is great. It is not. www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic... #topoli #onpoli #ontarioplace

I exhort the rest of the world to leave the United States, in all its spiteful backwardness and lung-cancer cronyism, in the dust.

Weber on "antifascist economic policy." www.newyorker.com/news/the-fin...

#topoli New from me on @spacing.bsky.social: Council this week will get a chance to greenlight sixplexes in residential neighbourhoods. The sky will not fall! In fact, this move represents a generational opportunity to repair Toronto's troubled housing market. spacing.ca/toronto/2025...

Just reading the latest drip coffee maker reviews...

little did I know my research into the history of tropical fruit growing in Florida was going to be so relevant to contemporary politics

this obsession with a handful of high status universities is also low key an indication of elite disdain for the institutions that educate most americans who attend colleges and universities

"In November a country enamored (again) with populist wealth elected (again) a Rococo president." People unhappy about inflation thought Rococo the answer? Plus, the -- in itself correct -- analysis of Rococo is taken from a much sharper critic, The Nation's Kate Wagner, without acknowledgement.

Columbia University Acting President Claire Shipman welcomed to Columbia College's graduation ceremony with sustained jeers and boos. Minutes later, students break out in loud chants of "Free Mahmoud":

ecological catastrophe in florida but no worries they are focusing on the real threats: fluoridated water project.tampabay.com/investigatio...

I guess this is how it's done...

“Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate…Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”

Will clutch this while I walk across a 12-lane highway everyday next semester...

"Most critically, it diverts attention from the actual drivers of distress: poverty, housing instability, criminalization, systemic racism and a broken healthcare system." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Before you read this, try to guess why each is fleeing. (1) New Hampshire (2) Idaho (3) Texas (4) California (5) Florida www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Thinking about the destruction of the NEH: the right is happy for people to study texts and ideas as long as the outcomes of that study is predetermined. This is why the right-wing loves and funds civic leadership institutes on college campuses devoted to the study of 'fundamental' texts and ideas.

FML... "Let professors and students carry guns on campus, Florida board of ed member says" www.miamiherald.com/news/local/e...

Got my hands on a PDF. I wasn't aware of Lee's other noted works...

I feel more should be made of the fact that this self-published book is currently #17 on the Amazon "Best Sellers in Architectural History" list... (Ching, Jarzombek, and Prakash's "A Global History of Architecture" is #64.)

Sent my students to see this show at UM for extra credit and asked them to take a selfie in the exhibition. I didn't expect the joy of seeing their faces on my screen while grading their assignments! (Note to self: More of this next AY.)

The humanities don't matter, no one cares about history, they say, as they cut funding and lines, and yet they are so determined to regulate what we teach and what we say so obviously it all matters. It's the worst of both worlds-- we matter enough to censor, but not enough to fund.

What amazed me while reporting this was that ACSA felt the best course of action was to gather design education's foremost social justice advocates on an editorial board & then antagonize them by blowing up a JAE issue on the top social justice issue of our time www.archpaper.com/2025/04/jour...

My Architect’s Newspaper follow-up to the ACSA/JAE conflagration. The entire JAE board resigned, as well as several ACSA board members, and at least one school is walking away from ACSA because of the cancellation of the Palestine issue. www.archpaper.com/2025/04/jour...