Working through editorial feedback for a book review for a Classics journal (not something I do often) and golly Classics is the only discipline I work with where comments about how a book helps redirect the field get read as an attack. *So* much defensive gatekeeping

The question that faculty in 2024 should be asking is not, “How do we stop our students from using AI?” The much more urgent question should be, “How do we prevent our administrators from paying outrageous sums for AI, or trying to integrate it into any facet of institutional instruction?”

I once wrote an article about the parable of the Good Samaritan that people apparently read. So far, 80k people have watched this collab with Religion for Breakfast which breaks it down - so if you want to see how this all translates to public scholarship, have a peek www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0Yy...

I did not realize that West Virginia University's plans to cut its entire world languages and literature department is yet another example of supposedly "data-driven" admins eliminating a humanities program that their own data shows is a profit center: www.languagemagazine.com/2023/08/15/w...

This is 100% true in academia, too. So many of the things that administrators do work much worse than what was being done before but make sense when you realize administrators need stuff on their CVs

Business culture and American society in general needs less management and more leadership. That sounds kind of trite and dumb but management culture in my experience is really geared around *making the manager look good to their bosses* which is actually cancer to the overall organization.

“The second issue, but the more important one…is that RCM/ IBB has been a soft coup that steals power at the university away from the faculty.” University budgets are bad and should feel bad From me & @lollardfish.bsky.social FREE TO READ & SHARE (but please subscribe)

The "butts in seats" budget model of universities contributes to, or at least doesn't help, many seemingly unrelated problems: - administrative bloat - grade inflation & dumbed-down courses - adjunctification - alienation & social isolation of students - inter-unit competition vs. cooperation More:

As we’re fighting for pay increases that even come close to the rate of inflation, our class sizes increase & assigned time for service work is clawed back. Our buying power is eroding, and it impacts conditions for student learning.

"Status between Law and Religion," our seminar issue of the Journal of Law and Religion is accessible w no paywall for a short while, so get it while it's hot! www.cambridge.org/core/journal... @mjchalmers.bsky.social #Mishnah #Samaritans #Hindu #gods #religiousminorities

But because budgets are allocated by number of students, fewer instructors would mean fewer students thus justifying more cuts thus meaning fewer instructors this meaning fewer students thus justifying more cuts thus meaning fewer instructors this meaning fewer students thus justifying more cuts /4

It is my pre-existing belief (so you might want to be wary of my analysis )that models of revenue sharing, shifting core curriculum requirements, and the establishment of undergraduate business majors lie at the heart of the destruction of the modern university. Today's case: U Chicago. /1

on reflection, I should not be surprised that an ethics centre headed by conservative senior faculty understands the avoidance of moral judgement as a general good but depressing, nevertheless

70% of academic positions are now contingent, but this team of senior scholars recommends that you accept shitty colleagues and working conditions, be enthusiastic as fuck, don't hang in there longer than four years, and don't stop applying to job openings. www.chronicle.com/article/dos-...

I think the main reason we talk about these op eds so much is that a decent society requires consequences for antisocial behavior. It's not like that needs to be the media's job but they shouldn't work hard to insure the opposite, which is their thing

Q. What do a police officer, a victim of racism, a domestic violence survivor, and an NRA member have in common? A. They are people who, according to a new initiative by the ethics centre(!) at one college I work at, we need to "unjudge". The horrid, moral emptiness of identity capitalism

As the semester kicks off, the inevitable emails about how cool AI is ooze down from management. Here's a thread about how, regardless of AI being a good tool or not, it's not clear it's *ethical* atm Two main points: environmental strain and labour 1/n

I’m teaching an intro to religion class next term and have the chance to totally overhaul the syllabus, so, I’m not gonna ask y’all to do my work for me, but if you have a short reading in religious studies that rewired your brain/is worth sharing for you, drop it here.

I do not understand why we still ask for multiple customized documents plus three letters of recommendation for 1-year visiting positions* We really should just lift some of that unnecessary burden from junior and precarious colleagues *also unnecessary for tenure-stream positions, as an aside

Our new open-access article: without attention to non-European premodernity, can you properly understand minority status? (Co-authoring is fun - you can collate knowledge to throw some punches) www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

an awful lot of the time, the conditions for cuts in higher ed are just like this one invented out of thin air for reasons that management either (1) use cynically or (2) train themselves to then consider to be vital

When we bemoan how "things have changed" in academia, we can and should center the ongoing devastating toll of the pandemic on so many of us. If we're disengaged, at least for many of us, its because we're genuinely struggling to cope. And department "climate" or socializing is not a priority.

"people just realized how much of their lives were being taken up by stuff they weren't getting paid for" is the nail-on-head explanation for 90% of management headscratchers in higher ed cheap free cookies aren't going to get extra attendance at faculty meetings and that's not surprising

Several years ago I did a thread on different types of “it’s complicated” claims, and I think I should bring it over here. The histories of Palestine and Israel, its’ peoples’ claims re: the land, etc. are all legitimately complicated. Whether it’s acceptable to bomb civilians is emphatically not.

Two factors at least, imo First, there's still COVID, lots of folks are careful about it, and few places are taking precautions Second, faculty morale is v low, and rightly so. It's hard to commit extra for a job that wants to be a community but doesn't (or can't) do the necessary legwork

They just do both - nobody doing the actual work of education makes any money, tuition never stops going up, and yet somehow, massive financial crisis

This is part of what's so amazing about this stuff. These desecrations are always justified by the need to cut costs - but they never have to explain why replacing lots of permanent employees w/ ppl being paid 3k a class didn't cut costs

An early bird special, fonts.geez.org is ready for public viewing and now includes a link to download an archive of 169 free-to-use-and-share Ethiopic fonts (131 of which are OpenSource). My thanks to the typeface designers who helped contribute to the archive! #ethiopic

It's so dumb but so true that padding admin CVs is a big reason things are the way they are. Nobody ever does "we paid em a little more and made their jobs a little easier," just "we created a new center for doling out back pats"

Among the things you might expect in a sector where upper admins have tons of mobility and workers have little to none: a relentless cycle of new programs, cuts to programs, threats of additional cuts to create urgency for even newer programs - with most value accruing to the C.V.s of upper admin.

Me, aged 14, in history class: "Wartime propaganda was so obvious though. How could anyone fall for that?" Me, aged 44, opening Twitter: "Oh."

I am all aboard with best teaching practices, but I also wish more folks would acknowledge the labor involved at a time when faculty are asked to do a lot more with a lot less. Student success is tied to faculty (especially non-TT) working conditions. I don't think they are separable. #AcademicSky

I think the obvious point to make about this stuff is university presidents no longer spend nearly enough time with professors or, more broadly, the basic educational mission that is the justification for the university's existence but

“while Japan’s colonisation of Manchuria was unfolding, there was reluctance to condemn Japan by Western scholars. This confusion helps illuminate why other similar settler colonial projects unfolding in the Global South have received little condemnation today” aeon.co/essays/settl...

one of the things that makes me happy about my History of Christianity course is that we don't read the (canonical) Gospel of Matthew but we do read Pseudo-Matthew (reason: to reflect on the popularity of massive, creative, expansions on bible-as-written) (also dragons)

partly facetious, and with apologies to Rabbinicists, but I feel like if people want to read critical reviews they should dip their toes into Rabbinics sometime and then think about how much they want their field to look that way

We should destroy AI even IF it's useful for some things. Humans very obviously can't be trusted with it

Excited—& a bit nervous—to have this essay in the world. It started as an MLA talk—which I described at the time as the political unconscious of the usual How To Publish Your Book fare—& became much more thanks to the wonderful team at Public Books. Solidarity! www.publicbooks.org/publishers-a...

Are there /any/ early Christian figures considered martyrs who were killed extrajudicially? I’m struggling to think of anyone before Cyprian starts applying it to some living people (who were still condemned, just not to death). (I know the term is problematic; just work with me here.)

I promise I'm not going to go back and rehashtag all my posts but... #GospelThrillers

So, see also the plan for Higher Ed, the path cleared for this by adjunctification. #AI h/t @jackiantonovich.bsky.social

This is the whole point of AI. It’s not to actually replace humans. It’s to change your title from “head writer” to “assistant AI technician,” not credit you, and pay you half of what you were paid before

“The issue is not just servility, however, but a hubris that can superficially look like servility’s opposite, as when academics tell themselves that they are only humouring management while actually pursuing their own, subtly subversive agendas.“

Success as an academic selects for both obedience and individualism, this essay suggests, a deadly combination for solidarity across ranks of the academic labor force. Secure academics, on this view, are as much to blame as admin/management for the deterioration of labor conditions in higher ed.

answering the question, what is an academic and why are they like that? newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...