My public research university literally has a cattle ranch

UC Berkeley Law creates new AI policy that bans AI for "conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit" or exams because "thinking remains the sine qua non of good lawyering (and of a quality legal education)." That's what I'm talking about.

Good!

You can't make this stuff up. There is a proposal to force students to take classes from a Center on "Intellectual Freedom." www.kcrg.com/2026/05/20/i...

Sir, another graduation ceremony in which the students booed AI has dropped. "College graduates were pissed after their school used AI to announce graduates’ names and missed hundreds of names" (via @/FearedBuck on Twitter)

I speculated on Polis’ motivations a few months ago open.substack.com/pub/smotus/p...

Takes twice as long to fix an AI’s mistakes and all of those data centers are costing billions. Not a single one of these companies are profitable. But sure, tell us how AI will take all our jobs.

Counter-point: this magical technology is the wave of the future and we should reorganize higher education around it without any systematic analysis.

Every NYT story since 2016: "Working-class" means not having a college degree. NYT today: For this guy, we need "More than two dozen interviews, reviews of his financial documents and a visit to his hometown." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/u... ***This is NOT an endorsement or criticism of Platner.

still not quite over the fact that i watched 15 year olds get sued for millions of dollars for downloading twelve songs and now we all have to accept AI slop because every tech company in the known universe decided that IP laws don't exist now that they're inconvenient for them

Important: "Are you a developer at Google, Microsoft, or another tech being pressured to use AI? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at ‪(609) 678-3204‬. Otherwise, send me an email at [email protected]."

Q: Does my thesis adviser pick the snake? A: No. Your adviser just tells the guy who picks the snakes how good your thesis was.

Companies trying to sell new untested curricula for $$ have not discovered something about the developing brain that teachers don't already know! They're just grifters!

I cosign all of this

A rare perfect work of satire. “We’re Diversifying the University by Hiring More Crackpots“ www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wer...

"If you live in harmony with Nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to what others think, you will never be rich." ~ Seneca, 'Letters from a Stoic' The Pine Forest (1901) 🎨 Gustav Klimt

This is truly heartwarming, especially the joy when the camera pans to students. Every senior university administrator should watch this interaction. Queued up in official video: youtu.be/zwYkHS8jvSE?...

If you can’t rigorously validate the LLM‘s output, you’re not being scientifically responsible. LLMs aren’t “intelligent.” They’re LLMs.

Adulthood is just cycling between "If I don't say yes to every opportunity, no new opportunities will ever be offered to me" and "Oh no, I have said yes to too many things" over and over until you die.

The Canvas hackers probably gave up when they were flooded by “I have an 89.3% is there any way I can get to a 90%?” messages.

Happy birthday to John Brown, who knew exactly how to handle the south’s “Peculiar Institution”

The CHE is really going all in with AI, it seems. It would be amazing to have a journal of higher education that actually care about teachers and students, instead of Provost Monthly or whatever it is this thing has become.

We need to seriously consider boycotting The Chronicle of Higher Education. This piece is the latest in a long line of increasingly neoliberalist and pro-AI trash. The days of CHE being a robust and practical source of discourse on higher ed is now over.

"That’s just as well, as an earlier study from Gartner found that AI agents get office tasks wrong about 70 percent of the time. It predicted many of these projects will collapse by the end of 2027 due to rising costs, murky business value, and inadequate risk controls"

WILL COCAINE MAKE COLLEGE OBSOLETE?

By this logic, Tekken 2 made me a jeet kune do master

Just had Canvas stop working as I was typing comments on a student paper. I now can’t access anyone’s work or grades. Strangely, this never happened back when I used a grade book and had students email me their papers, a system no shareholders extracted money from.

I have missed teaching, but not the "AI" hype or the transphobia or the Canvas blackouts or the wholesale, generally batshit way academia has just handed itself over 100% to be devoured by private tech and surveillance and handed itself over to be censored by the state without so much as a fight

This may be my one chance to gloat about not using Canvas (or any LMS) this academic year. YOU'RE ALL WELCOME.

[email protected] and I are so excited to announce that THE AI CON has been selected as Book in Common for 2026-27 at Cal State Chico! We're excited for thousands of folks to read and engage with our work. We'll be visiting campus on April 7, 2027 for a public event.

@alexhanna.bsky.social and I are so excited to announce that THE AI CON has been selected as Book in Common for 2026-27 at Cal State Chico! We're excited for thousands of folks to read and engage with our work. We'll be visiting campus on April 7, 2027 for a public event.

Strong candidate for Best Spider-Man Ever.

From a work retreat where we were encouraged to talk about how we "leverage AI" and people with ethical and practical concerns were invited to share their "fears." I'm the one who hogged the pink post-its.

"So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, 'These are your gods'."

Monthly ebook releases on Amazon were basically flat before the release of ChatGPT and other LLMs. Now around 2/3 of all ebooks released on Amazon are fake.

Obviously university admin don't realize this, but they are destroying the "value proposition" of their institutions. The more you make a university like a tech company, the more you give people a reason to NOT be part of it. Google will hire you w/o a college degree.

New issue of the @aaup.org Academe magazine -- AI in the Corporate University -- looks incredible. Important pieces by @dmgreene.bsky.social @hellobrittparis.bsky.social @heavyredaction.bsky.social @heavyredaction.bsky.social @tisjune.bsky.social and many others. www.aaup.org/academe

"So when you say this is a 'separate universe,' that means there’s totally no way to have Spock on my committee?" Gold.

"I sense much fear in six. Fear of seven. Why? Because nine, seven ate."

Carnegie again recognizing one of single the best political scientists of this generation. Congratulations, @adambonica.bsky.social!

And just like that, I'm going to have to become one of those people yelling at a school board meeting.

Join @dairinstitute.bsky.social and workers on the front line of resisting AI as we release the Luddite Lab Resource Hub, a new resource for fighting AI at work. 9 AM PT / Noon ET / 4 PM GMT on Wednesday, May 20 www.eventbrite.com/e/launching-...

Separate from the wisdom (or lack there of), of putting kindergarteners in front of screens more, how is it practical to build a 12 year curriculum for a technology that is, from the public's perspective, less than four years old? (Chat GPT launched Nov 20 2022)

It remains very weird to me that in a world of actually useful technology -- photovoltaic power generation, mRNA vaccines, maglev trains, smart phones, etc -- the tech sector has gone so all-in on bullshit generators and plagiarism machines.

A British king is lecturing us - correctly! - about constitutional democracy. The Founding Fathers are turning over in their graves.

when we mourn le guin, we mourn one of our greatest writers & thinkers. but we also mourn one of our all-time greatest haters

Yes, Trump is trying to destroy American higher ed but do not underestimate the role of administrators.