I sincerely hope this appeal leads to the exoneration of Ms. Curth and a formal apology from the OU administration. It remains an embarrassment that the university took this complaint seriously in the first place.

Quote this with what you accomplished in 2025, no matter how big or small Published three articles Set up our Adv. Certificate in Health Humanities program Became an editor for the Pediatric Humanities section of JPeds Launched the Injury Studies Network website Saw ten movies at The Little!

To reiterate: it doesn’t matter if you’re an expert. Unless you have formal labor protections, universities are more than willing to discard their instructors, especially if they’re not straight white men with the right politics.

As soon as a contingent instructor becomes the subject of an official administrative review, even if they’ve done nothing wrong, their job is in jeopardy. This is one of the many reasons TT faculty should support graduate student and adjunct unionization.

The news has been… bad. In an effort to bring SOME cheer to the holiday season: what’s one thing (professional or personal) that you’re proud of this year? I’m glad to have written about the reasons why healthcare professionals should care about product safety. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Constantly rehiring and retraining people every 18 months due to churn is a way bigger resource sink than building a high retention culture, but there’s a certain kind of brain which is incapable of viewing employees as nonfungible

RFK Jr. is dismantling our already broken healthcare system, and Congress and the president are aiding and abetting his project to make us all less healthy, less safe, and less prosperous.

It’s feeling very real!!! Publication date: June 16, 2026. @pennpress.bsky.social

Excited to learn about the launch of the Injury Studies Network. Lots of talented scholars are involved, including @safetyworkhstm.bsky.social, @bachynski.bsky.social & @slobogin.bsky.social! (Many thanks to @neurotimes.bsky.social for calling attention to this group on LinkedIn!) #histSTM #STS 🗃️

I’m thrilled to announce that the Injury Studies Network website is now online! We are an international community of researchers, practitioners, artists, and advocates committed to the interdisciplinary study of injuries. Visit the site to learn more and connect! #Histsci #Histmed #injurystudies

When I was in grad school, I had whooping cough. It progressed so far, that I actually developed the tell-tale "whoop," which is just the sound you make as you desperately try to breath in oxygen in-between coughs. It was terrible and scary. Now imagine an infant going through that.

My PhD is in History, not English. But as an alumnus of @CarnegieMellon and a firm defender of the Humanities, I categorically and in the harshest possible words condemn the decision to cut/replace Literary and Cultural Studies. www.chronicle.com/article/a-co...

I’m in this picture and don’t like it.

It’s beyond infuriating to see people filling the comment sections of Tiny Desk videos with complaints about “wasting taxpayer dollars” on NPR when NPR has an annual budget of $320 million, which amounts to less than ONE CENT per person.

The AHA's Vetted Resources compile materials that have been professionally vetted by historians, offering instructors access to high-quality accessibility guides, pedagogy resources, and materials specific to a range of places, eras, topics, and fields that meet professional standards.🗃️

Northeastern is hiring in Ethics and Health! The job is tenure track with great colleagues in a great city. Philosophers of science, bioethicists, research ethicists, and STS scholars, please apply! Soft deadline is December 15th. philjobs.org/job/show/30469

(Male) academics would rather write an incomprehensible, 200-page screed than go to therapy.

Someone should fix this.

A millennial confession: I still unapologetically enjoy Avril Lavigne.

Between this and previous rulings, U.S. corporations have effectively put a bullet in the head of labor protections, consumer protection, public safety, environmental law, and corporate oversight I wish journalists would go a bit lighter on the legalese and a bit heavier on the real-world impact

Even from a purely practical perspective, you never know what your career might involve. I never expected to do much with technical writing after my MA, but I use those skills all the time to write grants and manage projects.

My latest for JAMA Pediatrics on the history of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and its continued importance to health professionals. The U.S. needs a product safety system with robust government oversight. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

it's particularly sickening that the US is committing atrocities against immigrants given that it has historically invited and recruited immigrants as a desired labor source. Irvin Ibarguen wrote about this for Made by History. time.com/7334455/immi...

Historian of eugenics here. I don't normally like to retweet bad arguments, but this is such a fundamental misunderstanding of eugenics, I think it's important to point out. I don't have time to debunk all of the ways this is inaccurate, but I'll highlight a few things and then recommend some books🧵

Banger

The Oklahoma House of Representatives gave that girl an award for writing a terrible essay? For getting a trans person fired? This whole thing is an op.

In my book, I talk about the “dog-too” drug pipeline which wrings profit from human drugs by remarketing them (often needlessly) to companion animals and I could literally not imagine a clearer example than this

This thread is 💯. Labor precarity in academia means the evisceration of faculty governance and academic freedom, opening the door to administrative purges of the most vulnerable. And faculty-esp tenured faculty and academic leaders-who aren't defending their trans colleagues are enabling it.

I taught composition and technical writing at OU for three years. This decision is a disgrace. If instructors are expected to treat personal beliefs as formal “evidence,” then why even bother offering courses?

I had an interesting set of interactions w AI-generated content that I think is instructive. A very bright student made a claim in an essay that struck me as outlandish, so I searched the question on Google which turned up that phrasing the search a certain way makes the AI summary agree w the claim

With the semiquincentennial behind us, launching the next 250 with my 251st #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Add more below, share as widely as possible, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...

If you work for a UP, you can submit everything contingent-authored on your list this year. If you're a journal editor, you can submit every piece in this year's issues written by a contingent historian. If your friend wrote a book or an article, submit it for them!

The DoE has reclassified numerous health professional and other degrees, limiting access to federal student loan programs eligible for the higher OBBBA loan caps from thousands to a few hundred. As ALWAYS, this is about $$. We're about to become REALLY "great"... shorturl.fm/xs7gY

“Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year…Citing data that shows the risk of pedestrian fatality is cut in half by reducing a car’s speed from 40 to 30km/hr, city officials imposed the lower limit in most of Helsinki’s residential areas & city center in 2021.”

Most of my “fun” facts are slightly morbid, but: During the 1960s, Rapco made a die-casting set that invited kids to make their own toys with molten lead. The toy, unsurprisingly, was voluntarily taken off of the market.

Calling all contingent historians and their editors--if you haven't submitted for this year's lists, why not? Seriously, these are our most highly read pieces of the year. They are a great way to get your scholarship in front of people and SELL YOUR BOOKS.

There's a lot here, and it's fascinating and important. (I do some injury epi and injury prevention work, as well as learn from the emerging subfield of #InjuryStudies so this is especially interesting to me) cc @slobogin.bsky.social @safetyworkhstm.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/w...

My partner and I just had the harrowing experience of disassembling and reassembling our 1980s-era gas dryer to replace the drum belt. We’re hoping it’ll work now, but I guess we should give ourselves credit for trying to do the repair ourselves.

A lot of education discourse is at root an inability to decide whether the purpose of our education system is to 1) teach material and measure learning 2) reward students who work hard 3) separate the smart kids (destined for smart guy jobs) from the dumb kids (destined to serve the smart guys)

I still can’t quite believe I made this. 7 years, 127,000 words, 330 pages. I won’t ever do anything like it again.

Message to all faculty: your expertise is no longer trusted or valued at this so-called “university.”

This article is deeply concerning. Our students may have trouble reading long, dense material because they never received evidence-based reading instruction. Students can’t close-read if they only rely on context and can’t actually process the words on the page. www.apmreports.org/episode/2019...

🚨ONE MONTH'S TIME!🚨 Railway Work, Life & Death project co-lead Mike is privileged to give the 2025 @balhnews.bsky.social Dymond Lecture! ‘Heads – you lose!’ Working for the railways in Britain before 1939 Thursday 11 December 2025, 7pm, online #LocalHistory #Railway200 www.balh.org.uk/dymond2025

Years ago, we found a bunch of old film and tapes rotting away in some boxes. We digitized them as fast as possible and are sharing the videos on our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

It is shocking that Trump is quickly tearing down a portion of the White House. But isn’t the bigger story that this action is of a piece with his autocratic presumption that he can unilaterally destroy public goods without any public consultation or explanation? www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/u...

Oh you're trying to say the cost of living is skyrocketing? Donald Trump can't hear you over the sound of bulldozers demolishing a wing of the White House to build a new grand ballroom.

The Treasury Department instructed employees not to share to share photos of the demolition of parts of the White House’s East Wing

Dear funding agencies, I know we all want to discover the wonder drug that will cure the horrible diseases, but to do that, we need to invest in basic, unsexy, foundational research on how the systems work. Funding can’t all be drug development. Sincerely, Looking for basic research grants.

The 2026 SSHM Conference will be @universityofleeds.bsky.social. The theme will be In/Out and we are inviting papers that consider experiences of being in and/or out of health or health care in any period or geographical location. #HistMed #HistSTM sshm.org/sshm-2026/