You can either join your union, go to the meeting, and get in the fight, or you can watch them kill higher education in the US. This will not pass. There will not be a natural reset. You fight or die.

As of this morning, @thenewschool.bsky.social is de facto replacing its History department with a “Center for the American Experience,” which is funded by private and undisclosed donors. The New School has been New Colleged, and there’s no GOP to blame here. Our anti-fascist identity is over.

“Use AI to augment Teaching Assistant Labor” (UCLA proposal)

This month, UCLA admin circulated two white papers that are so harrowing they’ve kept me awake at night. If you’re a UCLA person and haven’t seen these, you really must. In response, the Faculty Senate has scheduled a Town Hall on June 2. senate.ucla.edu/news/june-2-...

@emmamay.bsky.social and I have an article in the pipeline on this very topic, but focused on how techs “accessibility” narratives are insidiously used by higher ed admin who refuse to provide meaningful accommodations for students, staff, and faculty. Stay tuned.

what gives us hope? communities standing up for themselves. I talked to @hellobrittparis.bsky.social this week about cooperative infrastructure and what can make the acres of land and miles of cable that comprises the internet "radical," on this week's interview episode:

The AAUP is committed to a higher ed system where universities are the engines of democracy & human flourishing—not silent partners in a reckless technological arms race that burns through public resources & weakens the very institutions needed for democratic society. ➡️ www.aaup.org/news/aaup-ba...

Had a great time talking with one of the best out there @samleecole.bsky.social for @404media.co about everything from historical security technology and struggles with laying cooperative Internet fiber to how AI slop has come to inundate education—and how to combat it. + lol our faces here.

@dmgreene.bsky.social 's great piece in Academe can be really useful for talking to your colleagues about why they should be more careful about jumping on the technology and AI bandwagon. Our bosses position tech as triage for the crisis of the university. www.aaup.org/issue/spring...

San Diego is spending at least 6 million dollars on encampment sweeps, there's no evidence it helps connect anyone to housing or services + police get overtime not included in 7 mill for supervising sweeps. A cruel subsidy in the millions to downtown tourism, real estate. pca.st/episode/f8dd...

We proposed this before the Canvas outage, but we’d like to thank the Canvas hackers for driving home the need for this language: "Provided instructors are meeting accessibility and pedagogical needs, faculty shall NOT be required to use ed-technologu." Full proposal here: https://loom.ly/rBZQFeA

Roll the tape. Read the story now: www.404media.co/ucf-ai-comme...

New from me @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social + Justin-Casimir Braun: Amsterdam believed that it could build a #predictiveAI for welfare fraud that would ALSO be fair, unbiased, & a positive case study for #ResponsibleAI. It didn't work. Our deep dive why: www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/11/1...

Reminder that unis do not have to develop individual online learning systems to be safe! They just have to do sensible data sovereignty stuff like use the self-hosted open source version!! It’s completely feasible & we’ve been recommending it for YEARS!!! jilltxt.net/uib-self-hos...

private details of health and social vulnerabilities students disclose in comms to their faculty are precisely what makes data of young people - soon to make the largest spending decisions of their life like more education debt, car ownership, home ownership - valuable enough to force platform use

For those of you considering self hosting course websites, Shannon’s model has always been the gold standard. I have used these models as a student and as a professor and can vouch 💙

What I wish for everybody to remember when Canvas comes back online: The reason OUR data can be held for ransom is because Instructure, their owners (KKR private equity & Dragoneer venture capital), & our own employers (see ASU Atomic) monetize it. It's Canvas that hacked education & stole our IP.

"I am convinced that such ameliorative efforts [like AI literacy] amount to yet another form of slop. At the very least, especially in conceding to a narrative of inevitable AI embrace in higher ed, it represents a massive concession where faculty and administration might instead be drawing lines."

New issue of the @aaup.org Academe magazine -- AI in the Corporate University -- looks incredible. Important pieces by @dmgreene.bsky.social @hellobrittparis.bsky.social @heavyredaction.bsky.social @heavyredaction.bsky.social @tisjune.bsky.social and many others. www.aaup.org/academe

Example #500 of how/why corporate edtech fails us

At Rutgers our union proposed this article last week to stop the top down deployment of unproven and harmful technology. drive.google.com/file/d/1Q3cd...

Chronicle of higher ed on the ASU Atomic shame. I contributed a small nugget on deepfakes and academic freedom which I hadn’t really thought about until this conversation. www.chronicle.com/article/a-un...

time.com/article/2026... Read about the Oracle workers fighting back against mass layoffs and AI slop

Humbly, if you wanted to check out this book in print, there’s a sale on right now see UCPress discount code below. (There’s also a free, open access PDF). www.ucpress.edu/books/radica...

@samleecole.bsky.social coming w the goods on this fresh edtech/AI nightmare

At Rutgers we’re putting forward contract language for decision-making ability around tech to protect our data/material + guard against discriminatory uses of tech. NJ’s future depends on Rutgers’ teaching, research, and service to promote real social + practical skills + outputs, NOT AI slop.

So excited for this and thrilled to be in conversation with one of the best organizers and humans in this space —Mixue Aizeki!!

May 7! Join author @hellobrittparis.bsky.social for a discussion of her book “Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up” with Mizue Aizeki, exec director of the Collaborative Research Center for Resilience, and D&S's @anthrotechana.bsky.social. datasociety.net/events/what-...

wow just got a note that I was voted Outstanding PhD faculty member this year by our Rutgers SC&I grad students for being an advocate for grads. I have never been more proud of an award!

Stellar Rutgers PhD student Serita Sargent helped with this in their work with BPL prison library services!

One of the biggest labor battles in the US is happening right now in Los Angeles, at USC, where our faculty-union campaign with majority support is being met by nasty, corporate-grade administrative resistance, and national press won't cover it.

Listening to this now and it's fantastic.

From the @aaup.org mothership: "Collective Bargaining Win in Maryland Makes History" You're damn right it does.

WE DID IT! Our illegal union @uam-umd.bsky.social is a lot less illegal today. 12,000 contingent faculty in MD just won the right to collectively bargain. Life-changing win for teachers and students. Only happened bc thousands of people worked together to beat our bosses in the statehouse.

Good news! OpenAI is canceling so many large purchase orders and datacenter expansions that the global price of RAM is dropping.

CBAs can't do everything, and not everyone has them, but they can be useful tools in pushing back against AI in higher ed. Here we offer a short review of the CBA landscape in education on tech/AI 🧵👇

At the bargaining table and in shared governance, faculty members must demand a meaningful role in decisions about the procurement and use of AI and other technology, @hellobrittparis.bsky.social and @rebeccareyn.bsky.social argue in a new #Academe article:

Talked about the new book Radical Infrastructures, gave a chapter rundown and chatted about relates to the current moment with AI and the difficult but possible path ahead with the wonderful Megan Finn for @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social newbooksnetwork.com/radical-infr...

You don’t have to participate in AI’s massive hype inflation, writes critical informatics scholar Britt S. Paris. You have a right to refuse the ‘inevitable’.

They want to get rid of faculty so bad, they are like slavering at the prospect

"If AI is inevitable, why is it being shoved down our throats? What options do we have?" writes @hellobrittparis.bsky.social in @techpolicypress.bsky.social. Refuse! Don't be a mark!

Just shared this piece with a friend and he replied back with a screenshot cancelling his subscription. BOYCOTT BABY! www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"AI is not simply a discursive formation that stands as a ‘common sense’ foregone conclusion, it also obfuscates large-scale, transnational coordination of resources, labor & people who make up the infrastructures that are required for artificial intelligence." journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

@emmamay.bsky.social, Serita Sargent, and I analyzed the 2023 SAG AFTRA contract on AI to inform bargaining around AI across sectors as a lever for more meaningful worker control technology in the workplace. Out today in Big Data & Society journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

“AI might have arrived in higher education without invitation—but not without resistance,” writes Robert Ovetz in a review of Lindsay Weinberg’s Smart University, which forecasts what "awaits us if we do not organize and escalate our refusal of AI." www.aaup.org/article/refu...

“the story of making AI ‘safe’ is fundamentally a story about class, about which humans absorb the costs so that other humans never have to think about them.” siliconcanals.com/sc-d-i-spent...

My book Radical Infrastructure came out last week! It goes deep into the political and economic roots of technological infrastructure to explain hype around various technical projects, and counters it with cases of people pushing back. Download OA: www.ucpress.edu/books/radica...

Telling that this attack on good scientists doing good jobs, without any pretense of due process is 1) at an HBCU 2) in the agricultural extension. Decades of underfunding mean HBCUs are testing grounds for the austerity we all get later. Ag stations are isolated and full of workplace abuse.

Across the US, people fed up with Flock cameras surveilling their communities, and with local governments that are often unwilling to listen to concerns over privacy violations and ICE data sharing practices, are taking matters into their own hands—and tearing them down.