Can't wait to hold this amazing book in my hands!

Still plenty of time to put together an application. Three scholars held this role previously. Each of them made a significant impact working with graduate student instructors at CUNY, and then moved on to a tenure-track position at other universities.

Love this!

Found the coolest website that takes random found cassette tapes people submit and digitizes them. I’m listening to an NYC hip hop station from 1994: intertapes.net

Grateful to have had a small hand in shaping this program, and thrilled for these awardees. I cannot wait to see what they do!

Care is the holy grail of automation. Because we need it to survive, but it's too labor-intensive to be profitable, even as it gets more expensive. And because we could make it a public good, but only by raising taxes on billionaires. So, be *very* skeptical when they claim AI can replace care.

Incredible book, if you haven’t seen it. I think about the “technologically precocious boy” all the time.

So many great pieces in this volume. Can’t wait to see it out in the world!

Favorite natural experiment or favorite natural experiment?

Our School of Information Sciences is running four searches, and we can hire more than four candidates. Here’s the first link, for a job that might appeal to people working in history of information, history of science, or digital humanities. +

The first of a series of talks about DATA BY DESIGN, this one with @chronictanvi.bsky.social about how vis history can shape current design practices, is now online--along with all of the other amazing talks from @infoplusconf.bsky.social. Check them out! informationplusconference.com/2025/talks/

@wearehighered.bsky.social has designed a quick survey to gather information about current state and federal attacks on higher ed, program closures, budget cuts, etc. There is a lot happening all over, and a lot that isn’t being reported on. Take a moment to document it here:

My new big visualization project is out: The Trans News Initiative, a collaboration between UM's School of Communication, the Trans Journalists Association, and Polygraph (The Pudding): transnewsinitiative.org Here's a piece about it in the Columbia Journalism Review: www.cjr.org/news/visuali...

This is a 52-pound 9000+ page accordion-bound artist’s book of Donald Trump’s lies, conceived, printed, and bound by Jill and Ray Nichols of @leadgraffiti.bsky.social in Delaware. Each of the 9000 pages has the text (per the Washington Post) of one or more of Trump’s lies; none are repeated.

Excited to be up in Boston with @chronictanvi.bsky.social for Info+, a conference I’ve long admired

Just need everyone to Google the name "Rosalind Franklin" at this moment.

Cannot wait to share this with all of you!

I so appreciate this attention to what we’ve been doing with ed tech at CUNY and the notion that the higher ed ecosystem can benefit from it. Too many folks to name have been involved in those projects over the years, and it builds upon work and commitments at CUNY that goes back generations.

In fact already many people at CUNY doing this exact work! cc @mkgold.bsky.social @lukewaltzer.bsky.social @lmrhody.bsky.social etc

For those in Atlanta, TIME 100 in AI honoree and mental health activist Kauna Malgwi will be gracing us with her presence at Georgia Tech tomorrow as part of our @aiainetwork.bsky.social Distinguished Speaker Series / IPaT Brown Bag crossover event. Info here: research.gatech.edu/ipat/fall-20...

Very proud to have worked on this statement of the Modern Language Association with @annamillsoer.bsky.social and other colleagues on the MLA’s task force on AI in Research and Teaching. It is a direct call for faculty input into Ed Tech decision-making, especially AI: www.mla.org/Resources/Ad... 🧵

So much good stuff in here. I'm reading @bschmidt.bsky.social's piece on computational history: "The split in American digital history shows a way to make computation focus not on making the humanities more scientific but instead making them more creative."

"Computational Humanities is far more than a collection of essays; it is a meticulously curated critical tool kit." This is exactly what we were going for! dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/projects/com...

As DH grows, it’s increasingly important to publish conference papers, but there hasn’t been a clear venue for that. So I’m thrilled to share this new home for DH proceedings, which will include CHR papers & more. Thanks to @taylor-arnold.bsky.social for leading this effort! bit.ly/ach-anthology

Wonderful to spend time with @roopikarisam.bsky.social and @cindyanguyen.bsky.social talking data and empire and history. Mark your calendars for these two amazing books--BIBLIOTACTICS and DATA EMPIRE--which, I can attest, will be terrific!

There are some tantalizing tattoo options among this spooky Venn diagrams

It's a perfect autumn morning in Atlanta, coffee shop is spinning Air's Moon Safari on vinyl, and Vauhini Vara (@vauhinivara.bsky.social) is speaking at Emory at 4PM this afternoon. Come on out! www.eventbrite.com/e/vauhini-va...

Very excited about this forthcoming volume in the Debates in the Digital Humanities series! @uminnpress.bsky.social @alanyliu.bsky.social @laurenfklein.bsky.social

Just when you think you’re keeping it together, you open your toiletry bag to discover that you’ve packed contact lenses for only one eye

Never forget.

The syllabus and schedule for my fall semester quantitative literary analysis course is now online, better late than never! github.com/laurenfklein...

Academic librarians, come join us in the CUNYverse! We have a few jobs open in CUNY libraries: cuny.jobs/queens-ny/in... cuny.jobs/new-york-ny/... cuny.jobs/new-york-ny/... I’m not at these campuses but happy to answer questions!

Theory as "a tool to open up the world." Love this!

So proud to see my friend @kanarinka.bsky.social quoted in The Boston Globe about how this egregious new college "compact" goes against everyone and every thing that higher education stands for: www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/04/b...

🚨🚨 My dear friend and fellow academic, the Palestinian American sociologist @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social has been taken by the Cook County Sheriff near Chicago. They have not mirandized her. Please signal boost. All eyes on Broadview for Eman and the community she was defending 🚨🚨

Cannot wait to share this entire project with all of you!

public goods "47% have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher ed institutions, w a net positive rating of 33—up 13 points since 2023. more confidence in higher ed than in the police (44%), the medical system (38%)+large tech companies (25%)" www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

What if NIH had been 40% smaller? "We analyze 27 years of NIH extramural awards & their review scores to identify the bottom 40% of grants that would have been eliminated from 1980 to 2007... We then identify new molecular entity drugs, approved in the 21st century, that are linked to these grants"

Q. Who aligns the aligners? A. alignmentalignment.ai Today I’m humbled to announce an epoch-defining event: the launch of the 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀.

Cuts to and closures of university presses are 100% part of the separation (or as @mattseybold.bsky.social has called it "unbundling") of research and teaching in the humanities and the devaluation of both quite frankly--in this case at the expense of the career training admin claims to care about.

Incl. @kanarinka.bsky.social and yrs truly!

"higher ed is an economic engine, health-care engine, technological-innovation engine. it should be a common public good for everyone. the vast majority of Americans of any political stripe need education for their kids, their families, in order to move forward." www.chronicle.com/article/is-t...

@aiainetwork.bsky.social is hosting Vauhini Vara at Emory on Thursday Oct 16 for the talk, “If Computers Can Write, Why Should We?” Vara was a Pulitzer finalist for fiction in 2023. Her latest, Searches, investigates what is at stake for writing with the rise of AI www.eventbrite.com/e/vauhini-va...

“Keep your head down, follow without questioning, adjust field of study” It’s alarming how many academics are already lining up to join this camp and publicly recruiting others to do the same, including US citizens and profs with tenure.

A few days ago, amidst everything else, I pressed send on the book I've been working on (and off) for over a decade. It's still a long way from finished, but the final phase has begun. Watch for DATA BY DESIGN: FROM THE HISTORY OF VISUALIZATION TO THE FUTURE WE NEED in print and online in Fall 2026!

Guess how many articles about this topic have been written in 2025, since Trump started demanding political retribution against universities who taught the wrong thing or allowed students to protest the wrong thing

Today in small victories, this pairing of Chris Wiggins and Matt Jones's chapter on the "average man" from HOW DATA HAPPENED with @seyiolojo.bsky.social's essay on counterdata from @datasociety.bsky.social's DATAFIED STATE is the first time I've felt happy with the framing for my "what is data" day

Let that sink in. What DOGE burned through in six months, through sheer stupidity, carelessness, and cruelty, could have funded the NEH for more than a century. This was never an attempt to save money, it was a mugging.

Just to reiterate: What this administration is doing right now is orders of magnitude more dangerous for academic freedom and free speech than anything the right has spent the last 30 years complaining about.