Look, requiring four letters at the time of application is whack. (Inspired by one job ad in particular, but also evergreen advice for all the hiring committees out there.)

Hey historians and digital humanists, in light of the AHA’s AIgate, here are a few ways I approach AI in the classroom. Feel free to add your own! These are in the context of digital humanities courses deeply rooted in history, literature, and tech/data ethics. #DigitalHumanities #AHA #Skystorians 🗃️

I abandoned the AHA long ago over its inaction as the historical profession burned to the ground, and this only reinforces that decision. The problems with such an uncritical approach to AI are too numerous to count, and demonstrate a profound unawareness of how generative AI works.

Apparently historical images are now based on vibes and historical writing can be conducted through hallucinatory autocomplete plagiarism machines. You could, instead, support historians and the important work they do. As a historian and archivist, I’m appalled by this “guidance”

When did we go from not letting students cite Wikipedia because it was "unreliable" to endorsing LLMs that aggregate info from sources without critical perspective, are environmentally destructive, promote plagiarism, prevent learning critical skills, and are FAR less reliable than wiki?

A funny thing is that "how would they treat a Democratic President in the same situation" thing is totally hypothetical because all the huge market crashes in my lifetime happened under Republicans.

The Journal of the Civil War Era will have a special issue on political economy edited by me, @maggor.bsky.social, Sofia Valeonti & Nicolas Barreyre. I'll post again when the link is up on the Muster, but wanted to get the word out now. See CFP. Submission deadline is April 25. 🗃️

1/🧵 Judges across ideological lines are ruling against Trump at strikingly similar rates (84% liberal, 86% centrist, 82% conservative). This isn't partisan opposition to Trump—it's the judiciary functioning as intended by cutting across partisan lines to uphold the Constitution.

Every war in which the United States lost American blood is quickly losing all meaning. What our men and women have always risked death to protect is what our traitorous POTUS gave away freely today.

A blast from the past (2023)

The US Constitution does not grant the President this unilateral authority. In Illinois, we will stand against unlawful actions that would harm millions of working families, children, and seniors.

Yes yes yes this this this many thousands times over.

Please stop using “revisionist history” as a stand-in for falsehoods. Any worthwhile work of history uses untapped sources, novel methodologies and/or new connections across fields to improve, alter and, yes, revise our understanding of history. Truly revisionist history is a *good* thing.

This is top notch detective work and a great example of how the game of historical “telephone” works, and how completely invented fabrications eventually shape and become reality.

Oof not everything is digitized and quick word searches are no substitute for archival research. Method shows when one reads books and articles.

hey bluesky, in case anyone's interested, I wrote this for my students about why I don't want them to use anything AI in my classes. It interrupts the course calendar part of the syllabus, coming immediately after the first day there's a writing assignment assigned. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

🗃️ Friends, check out the @richardscenter.bsky.social CFA for the Mark & Ann Persun Visiting Scholar's Program, this cycle in Civil War Era political history. This fellowship is designed for mid-career scholars & does not require relocation. Apps due Feb 15, 2025. Details below; email or DM w/ Qs.

the frenzy over the hunter biden pardon is a good reminder that the press knows how to make something a scandal and has decided that nothing trump does is truly deserving of that treatment

The Chronicle frequently does this self-flagelating trash, but this one is especially infuriating in our contemporary context. We're living in a world where multiple states are banning whole disciplines and subdisciplines for political reasons utterly detached from reality, and this feeds them.

If an echo chamber is a kind group of folks who share your interests and won't constantly bombard you with petulant argumentative bullshit, then yeah. I’m super down for this echo chamber

it's frankly pretty hurtful. faculty are just people trying to get a job done and in the lounge (if there is one) we're probably just eating lunch or exchanging ideas about how to get our students to do the reading, or figure out which form we need to fill out today.

There is a LOT that is infuriating about this November 18 @chronicle.com op-ed--including its flawed premise, hyperbole, and numerous straw man arguments--but let me highlight a couple of specific points that are particularly outrageous. www.chronicle.com/article/we-a...

It's fine to argue that Reconstruction didn't go far enough, but make sure to place it in historical context. Five years before the end of the war the Dred Scott ruling was law of the land. Few white Americans in 1860 could have anticipated the end of slavery and freedom for four million Americans.🗃️

Come work with me! I’m pleased to actually share a tenure-track job in African diaspora, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Latin history. The hire will be involved in our innovative CODES program, but will be full time tenure-track in history. Feel free to DM with any questions: www.siue.edu/employment/c...

It has a name

I figured things would be headed downhill once John C. Calhoun showed back up on the scene.

one reason i’d like to see an unapologetically pro-union civil war epic is that i think modern audiences still have a hard time with the idea that people could have genuinely hated slavery even if they weren’t racial egalitarians

I missed Vance’s comments comparing the 2020 election to 1876 a few days ago but it’s wild how this reference won’t die. @erikalexander.bsky.social & I wrote about it back in 2021 www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021... & @jbouie.bsky.social offers a good rebuttal here www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/o...

🗃️ Y'all I appreciate the Lincoln quote but we have to stop telling the story this way. Lincoln was not just reacting to a heinous decision, he was telling a vital truth about how people of the era understood constitutionalism. Near universal acceptance of judicial supremacy is a 20th c phenomenon 1/

🗃️ The folks over at the JAH process blog asked me and @erikalexander.bsky.social if we’d write about the origins of our article, “Dismantling the Party System” from the December 2023 issue. So we wrote this little piece about our intellectual influences: www.processhistory.org/alexander-an...

This is an essential point! @rachelshelden.bsky.social links it to the great JAH piece she and @erikalexander.bsky.social wrote about the instability of 19C parties in general

🗃️ 19th c Parties were neither stable nor deeply entrenched in ways that mimic today's political world. Instead they were fluid & federal--a world Lincoln would have understood well, as @erikalexander.bsky.social & I wrote about in the Journal of American History 3/3 academic.oup.com/jah/article-...

Perfectly said.

Extremely honored to have been included and helped author this brief (and I second Adam’s sentiments about being humbled to be alongside so many stellar historians).

This was inspired by reading Shelden & Alexander's "Dismantling the Party System" in the latest Journal of American History, which is a must-read for 19th century US historians, by the way. academic.oup.com/jah/article-...

The Times not only has a whole section devoted to Harvard firing its president, it's done two stories about the president of MIT not being fired, all while the strangling of the local public university system that teaches far more students gets ignored

Current higher ed discourse:

This is a fantastic piece of scholarship that should be read by every scholar of parties. Really important.

Rachel Sheldon’s fine new coauthored essay in the _JAH_ is helping 19th c. US historians to move beyond the “party period” synthesis (championed among others by my mentor David Donald). Party competition for Donald helped to promote unity (along with faith in the Constitution and popular oratory).

Love this whole thread fr @rachelshelden.bsky.social offering both a model of deep and essential historiographical context, but also of generous acknowledgement. Such a great representation of how historians develop interpretive argument that advances knowledge eg always in intellectual community. 🗃️

Just want to echo @rachelshelden.bsky.social here on our new piece in the Dec JAH, with a great discussion of some of the different work that shaped our thinking. I have a longer thread at the other place about the piece, but excited to hear feedback and engagement now that it’s out in the world.