I don't know if AI is a bubble that will burst or not. But I find the rapidity of its acceptance profoundly upsetting.

Recent reporting alleges that civilian men are impersonating ICE agents to kidnap and sexually assault immigrant women, with cases in North Carolina and New York. Unmasking ICE agents is important, but it’s a Band-Aid on a broader, systemic crisis. Read @kylietcheung.bsky.social's full Op-Ed ⤵️

I have always found the dna kit things kind of fun, in theory, but this one is extremely off-putting. You cannot have Ostrogoth DNA. What is this weird nineteenth-century insanity?

@jimmykimmel.com @hcrichardson.bsky.social @rbreich.bsky.social Please, look what happened less than an hour ago here in Des Moines, Iowa. ICE DETAINED OUR DES MOINES SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS! who13.com/news/des-moi...

In Which a University Administration Again Fails Both to Comprehend the Purpose of a University and that Students do Understand (and Desire/Demand) It 😑

Quite the week for the Book of Revelation, y’all. 🔥

Silicon Valley freaks being obsessed with the antichrist was not on my bingo card.

Absolutely outrageous to say that a uni’s academic press doesn’t serve its undergraduates. Non-profit university presses support and sustain a scholarly and intellectual system THAT MAKES TEACHING UNDERGRADUATES POSSIBLE. No presses? no fields of study, no professors, no college.

CNN found more than 100 U.S. citizen children, many through public GoFundMe pages, essentially orphaned in recent months because of ICE enforcement. No one is tracking these children, and experts say it's just the beginning.

We're still following this story. If anyone has information about service changes at Planned Parenthood clinics, contact us on Signal: garnethenderson.12 susanrinkunas.73

Nothing says "serious journalism" like the term "doomers."

Join our partners at the @aaup.org for an important conversation about the weaponization of the accreditation system. 10/6 7pm ET Politicizing Accreditation in the South and Beyond www.aaup.org/event/politi...

I wrote about whether we can protect teachers -- the celebrities in our kids' lives -- the way we protected Jimmy Kimmel. H/T to @thetattooedprof.bsky.social and @davelevitan.bsky.social.

Is it wrong that first thing that sprang to mind when I saw this was St. Roch?

"No single study on AI in the workplace is going to be definitive, but evidence is mounting that AI is affecting people’s work in the same way it’s affecting everything else: It is making it easier to output low-quality slop that other people then have to wade through."

“The “refrigerator mother” myth was used as a justification for taking children away from their parents and subjecting the kids to ever-harsher treatments…now the Trump administration is poised to start a new cycle in which moms are once again blamed for their kids’ autism.” My latest.

An ebook should always, always, have the same set up as the print book. Pagination, notes, etc. all the same. What is more useless for scholarship or teaching than an ebook that lacks page numbers? Why? WHY?

"“If things feel bad for you now, they are likely to get much worse,” was Watson’s advice... “I know it feels like giving up and abandoning your students, but it’s like the guidance on an aeroplane: put your own mask on first and then help those around you.”"

AN #EARLYMODERN POST!! They still exist! And a lovely one at that, for five years and with the brilliant people at KCL who have turned that place in quite the hub of exciting early modern research. Run, don’t walk.

My department is hiring an associate/full professor of Early Modern/Modern Jewish History. Please apply and please share within your networks. I have been told to say we're very interested in the early early modern. Note: I am not involved in the search but am happy to answer general questions.

Any recommendations for key scholarship at the intersection of productive gardens/agriculture and health institutions like sanatoriums, leprosariums, and convalescent homes?

Been thinking about the way gAI is being sold to us is as the universal tool, a kind of Swiss Army Knife—especially in higher ed. What might have a use in Compsci doesn’t have a use/is harmful in the humanities and arts, and there is something coercive about how it’s being forced on us regardless.

finally had time today to sit down w the summer issue of JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES and friends do not miss this piece by Christine Luckritz Marquis muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

Loyola Marymount University has abruptly stopped recognizing its faculty union after 10 months of negotiations, citing constitutional religious exemptions, @suhauna.bsky.social reports www.latimes.com/business/sto...

Today, at long last, is publication day for @bloomsburybooksuk.bsky.social's Cultural History of Magic. I contributed a chapter to the volume on the Enlightenment, which features a case study on the prosecution and decriminalisation of magical acts in Lithuania www.bloomsbury.com/uk/cultural-...

Progressive federalism being born

Delete your accounts, folks. I fully admit that the time to do this was probably yesterday, but I've definitely done it now.

This is what infuriates me with the Right's attacks on higher ed: they are profoundly anti-student. They hold young people in contempt. They assume students mindlessly swallow anything they're told, that they cannot think for themselves. They couldn't be more wrong about what we and our students do.

This is grim reading and applicable well beyond the subfield having the discussion.

Update on this story: As many of us feared, it turns out that Berkeley wasn't the only UC to release personal info on its pro-palestine anti-genocide professors to the justice department, it looks they they all did. Berkeley was just the only one to tell profs they did it.

every Jewish Studies colleague I know who had an NEH grant saw their funding cut earlier this year. now we know where the money went: to the far-right, "western-civilization"-worshipping Tikvah Institute to promote their vision of "Jewish Civilization" as a foundation stone of "the West"

I apparently now live in an “all Kpop Demon Hunters all the time” household.

Bari Weiss’s Free Press is blaming universities for a shooting that was done by someone who attended one semester at the university. Weiss is making campuses across the country less safe. And will do so with the weight of CBS behind her.

Jobs For Medievalists Tenure-track Assistant Professor of English: Medieval Literature Review of applications will begin 10 November, 2025 The English Department at Trinity University seeks to hire a tenure-track Assistant Professor in medieval www.themedievalacademyblog.org/jobs-for-med...

Calling #earlymodern and historians of religion! I'm looking for work on food, eating and fasting among religious radicals around 1700. I've found some work on Jansenists and Pietists, but would love to know more about all the other groups out there. Very grateful for any ideas! #foodhistory

It is quite simply dishonest to describe TPUSA as a “free speech” organization and not even mention the “Professor Watchlist,” as NPR just did. Reporting on a crime does not entail adopting the victim’s views.

Well worth the read!

Pundits are focusing on Kirk’s willingness to debate people while studiously ignoring the people whose basic humanity he was willing to debate

Lectureship in Arabic, continuing appointment, at Oberlin: jobs.oberlin.edu/postings/16841

A professor at Texas A&M taught… something related to gender that offended a student, who secretly filmed herself objecting. That video is picked up by TX legislators, who demand her firing, and now the dean and dept head have been fired. www.kbtx.com/2025/09/09/a...

Today was one of those fun moments were I talk about late antique Manichaeans in one class and medieval Cathars in another and the few students who are in both get their minds blown.

I am fascinated by this guy who was a Higher Ed administrator and has now moved into teaching classes as a faculty member. He is documenting his whole journey on TikTok. Over the summer, he had so much excitement 🧵

Not a parallel situation, but I'm teaching soon about how something like lost honor, declining esteem, and institutional disrespect were at the heart of grievances by late 13thc Florentine elites who found themselves politically marginalized. Always strange how history can echo.

#Employment The University of California at Berkeley seeks applications for a full-time tenure-track faculty appointment at the level of assistant professor in the Department of History mesana.org/resources-an...

Stochastic terror comes to campus

Gorgeous manuscripts, simple interface! Also all the manuscripts I looked at, the images are in the Public Domain! Very cool project.

Emory University just closed all our DEI offices and programs. This is egregious.

Shelter in place warning at UMass Lowell. Welcome back to class in america

University of Michigan - Bellamy Professorship - Arabic & Islamic Studies: memorients.com/news/univers...

New findings from the HistoGenes project today in Nature: www.nature.com/articles/s41... #MedievalSky #Migrations