So now the Trump admin is censoring papers at an academic conference. Everyone shd walk out & organize an alternative conference online including the censored papers. The T admin wants researchers to self-censor even more than some of them already have. (P. S. Self-censoring is not the answer.)

My response to that "Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences" is up. tinyurl.com/y39crkzp As I say on Facebook, I back-loaded the good stuff, like showing that the authors' account of the 2017 Hypatia controversy reveals them to be unreliable reporters.

Astonished to learn that at 92 Gordon Wood died after a car hit him. I hvn't read a lot of his work after his amazing 1st bk, & I didn't find everything I read persuasive, but he was a great historian & a brilliant lecturer whose lecturing style greatly influenced my own teaching. Many thanks. RIP.

If you think California is taking a while to count votes, wait until you hear how long the Trump Administration is taking to release the Epstein files…

“Missouri Republicans are taking an ax to Dolly Parton’s signature initiative. The state’s decision to freeze enrollment in Parton’s Imagination Library, which offers free books to kids, comes at a perilous time for children’s literacy.” www.ms.now/opinion/doll...

Literature is the least-supported artistic discipline in the U.S., receiving only 1.9% of the $5 billion in arts grants from foundations. This underfunding, which is persistent, underscores the urgent need for increased support for the nonprofit literary arts field. #LiteraryArts

The Literary Arts Fund is pleased to announce the recipients of its inaugural general operating grants, 40 nonprofit literary arts organizations and publishers spanning 19 states—from Alaska to Florida—that will receive a combined total of $7.7 million in unrestricted funds.

On this day, June 2nd, 1910, Quentin Compson III died by suicide in Boston, Massachusetts. Quentin's death is fiction, but suicide is not. According to the WHO, over 700,000 people die by suicide each year. There is always help available. www.thecalmzone.net

"The anti-immigration campaigns of today carry reminders of the antisemitic laws that were imposed in the UK and the US in the early 20th century to prevent Jews fleeing persecution in eastern Europe from finding refuge, including after the Holocaust." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Watched a video of staff scraping Gloria anzaldua's name and the rest of the Mexican American and Latino Studies logo off the office door at UT

~7% of all US public teachers' salaries for the year = two weeks of bombing

The book is dead! Long live the book! yalereview.org/article/shei...

Today is the official publication day for the Arden 4 edition of Titus Andronicus that I edited with Ayanna Thompson. I'm told that the book has already been reprinted because it was set as the required text for an English lit exam in France!

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...

The US Department of Education is currently overhauling federal accreditation rules for colleges & universities. The April 6, 2026, Proposed Changes to Initial Draft Regulations unacceptably seek to narrow & control what can be taught, learned, & researched on college & university campuses. 🧵 1

This is one of the clearest policies I've seen put forward and I LOVE it!

As a University of Iowa alum who’s trans lemme say: Fuck this bullshit.

If you care about academic freedom, you’ll want to read this article. #Education #Teaching #Research

A poem for World Bee Day.

(RNS) — The Jewish Diaspora Movement, launched Monday (May 18), consists of 40 groups, mostly in North America, that are united in their rejection of Israel’s ethno-nationalist Judaism.

All this viral razzmatazz over AI scholars complaining that they're not allowed to cite things that don't exist makes me look naive for actually READING (at least some of) everything I cite, but I stand by that practice. #AI

A hidden masterpiece uncovered during a church restoration reveals a dramatic battle against a dragon that lay unseen for over 380 years.

A general reminder: you don't *have* to use Substack. While I get that it's easy and convenient, realize there are alternatives that (1) give you more control and (2) don't regularly fund and promote neo-Nazis. Continuing to use Substack for your newsletter is a choice. You can make a different one

The Authors Guild @authorsguild.org has issued a new set of "AI Best Practices for Authors," and it looks pretty good, EXCEPT that it never mentions the environmental devastation of AI use. authorsguild.org/resource/ai-... #Writing #AI #Environment

Yesterday, the Texas Tech Faculty Senate passed a resolution condemning Chancellor Brandon Creighton and his moves to censor teaching and research at the university. 🧵 of the full resolution. Professors are standing and fighting ✊

Many thanks to Elysia Balavage‬ ‪@drgreasefire.bsky.social‬ for this generous review (the first!) of my recent book, The Literature of Extreme Poverty in the Great Depression (available online for free at many academic libraries). What a kick to read a reviewer who gets what you do.

Weird not to see real estate expansion projects, chatbot TAs, or ed-tech privatization on this report of what makes university experience valuable to students

Recently, FamilySearch digitized and uploaded tons of microfilmed records, including many from 18th-century Massachsuetts. They're using some sort of AI to transcribe/summarize the handwritten documents. I've noticed that the AI strips out references to race and enslavement in 18thc documents.

Fingerprint Awards Shortlists: Capital Crime mysteryreadersinc.blogspot.com/2026/05/fing...

if you wanna hear zora neale hurston singing the work work songs she preserved, click here www.loc.gov/collections/...

📚"Covers designed by folk who didn't bother to read the book" Episode 2: Henry James, 'The Turn of the Screw' (1898) The novel is a #C19th gothic tale of a governess caring for 2 cherubic children who may or may not be in league with ghosts. Also...that's a nut.

How much are kids assigned full-length books in US high school English classes? There's a big socio-economic and racial divide. www.chalkbeat.org/2026/05/06/h... #Education #Reading #Booksky

“Huck shows great disrespect for the Court’s precedent in Dred Scott when aiding the fugitive Jim, presumably due to liberal indoctrination by the Widow Douglas.” www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/exc...

It's not too late to sign up for today's discussion! See the link below for the Zoom registration. We hope to see you there!

This thread is required reading. I hope that my book How to Interpret Literature can join the distinguished company on this list. It would be an honor. #Censorship #Education #Teaching #Goals

#Poetry #Libraries

Absalom.

Thank you people who clarified this for me:

www.france24.com/en/french-re... #Languages #Iran #Writing

Time to check on the state of the crime novel. crimereads.com/state-of-cri...

Texas Tech just instituted “one of the most extreme anti-speech policies ever imposed at a public university.” The policy bans professors from discussing LGBTQ+ topics in core & lower-level courses and eliminates entire fields of study across the five-university system. #AcademicSky

Controversial Holocaust comparisons are a ubiquitous feature of our public culture. They're not a new phenomenon but they've clearly intensified since Oct 2023. In a new book I'm exploring what I call "comparison controversies" before and after 10/2023. This lecture from the fall offers a preview.

Illinois made history as the first state to outlaw book bans once and for all. Marginalizing people, ideas, or facts has no place in our state — and they have no place in a democracy. This National Library Week, we continue our commitment to free thought and free speech.

Don't miss this great, newly discovered recording of Robert Johnson: www.openculture.com/2026/04/reco... #Music #Blues #Guitar

Fed up with AI boosterism on our campus, my colleague Tim Donahue and I wrote this Teaching Tip for our Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. www.oakland.edu/cetl/teachin...

Today is publication day for my new novel, First Daughter. I thank the friends and family who helped along the way. And a special nod to Ruth Cleveland, Grover Cleveland’s daughter—who, in the world of this story—is kidnapped in the summer of 1895.

This is NUTS www.thehandbasket.co/p/trump-usai...

Brilliant: Chicago gets thousands of more kids to the public library by making their school IDs double as library cards. Public schools everywhere need to do that. It will change kids' lives. www.vice.com/en/article/c... #Libraries #Schools #Education #Reading

“If this policy stands, politicians & the monied interests who support them will have effectively taken over the curriculum of our institutions in the TTU System, whose credibility will be indefinitely and irreversibly harmed.” — Andrew Martin, Texas Tech AAUP Chapter President

Excellent: the phony claims that campuses suppress intellectual freedom are just a cover for right-wing efforts to shut down the intellectual freedom they pretend to support. #Education #Universities