There are so many things wrong here, but I can't stop thinking about how generating new research project ideas is one of my favorite things I get to do for my job. Why would I want a machine to do that for me?

Semesterly reminder to everyone - Canvas in many cases defaults to showing students the course's grade distribution and student's place on it. If you *don't* want your students to be aware of where they "rank" at all times, take a second to double check it's turned off. #TeachLearnSky #EduSky

Friends, Romans, countrymen! Today is the day we circle back!!!!!

The Epstein Files Transparency Act is a law, passed by Congress on November 19 with an overwhelming vote. Complying with it was not optional. The Department of Justice did not comply. I want to make sure this is very clear.

Members of Congress: stop posting online and APPEAR, PHYSICALLY on the steps of the Capitol to decry this unconstitutional violation of domestic & international law. SHOW THE PEOPLE the level of danger we are facing as a country. @housedemocrats.bsky.social @senatedemocrats.bsky.social

They less abandoned him, and more that this is how places handle this. When I lived in the N.C. mountains, there was a ton of messaging to bear proof your property for the winter, and it always ended with “And if you don’t, leave the bear alone until spring.”

Oh that’s not good.

I’m so glad I logged into BlueSky today to learn about this.

Teaching global history rather than ‘western civ’ leads do moral disorientation among students? I wonder what you could POSSIBLY mean by that statement …

This.

The “ableist” accusation from gAI boosters pisses me off so much. You know what’s really ableist? Telling my students they can’t possibly engage with difficult (or any!) text without the help of gAI. They prey on students’ crises of conference in a way that is truly disgusting.

Im profoundly committed to access as care, access as process. Some of you need to understand that since chatGPT etc have entered the fray, many profs are seeing truly detrimental effects on students' engagement, learning and community. Caring about that isn't ableist/being a cop/technophobic.

Maybe, if you're not actually in university classrooms, teaching students in the age of gAI, perhaps you might want to stop and listen when people actually in those classrooms raise concerns about what they are seeing; and not just dismiss us as luddites, or boomers, or cruel profs playing cops

Adam Raine’s life hurtled toward tragedy soon after he began talking with ChatGPT about homework. Analysis of his ChatGPT account shows how the chatbot became a confidant as he planned to end his life.

I think most researchers and policymakers underestimate how much people really do not understand the difference between college sticker and net price. And the way high prices at a select few influences feelings about all.

Our theories of how the public "understands" a policy issue, at least in education spaces, are woefully inadequate

The guidance from my institution seems to be that AI is the best and only backwards weird professors would say otherwise. We made a bespoke internal ChatGPT and gave it to everyone for free and told them to have at it.

Absolutely right. AI might be able to summarize (poorly) what we currently know, but a major goal of historical research is to find the hidden surprises out there. Let me illustrate …

One of our History majors was presenting a research project at last year’s undergrad research symposium. The provost asked her if AI could have helped her in the research process. Her response: No, it can’t. I have to get into the archives and see what’s there to even determine my questions. 🙌🏻 🥰

There's a whole genre of "save history" essays that says we're teaching too much about women (and now queer people) and that's why history enrollments are down. those arguments are false.

Fantastic piece by Shadi Bartsch. “Where science & the humanities are severed, the damage often takes 1 of 3 forms: category error (we measured the wrong thing, b/c we never interrogated the category);…

Lower ‘tenure density’ is a hell of a phrase.

Bringing back Limewire to illegally rip copies of reporting suppressed by the government is definitely some cyberpunk shit

BREAKING: WATCH the full 60 Minutes CECOT segment here. This was sent to me anonymously. It appears to be the segment CBS' Bari Weiss killed. www.muellershewrote.com/p/watch-the-...

Exactly what we expected

The search for the next director of the Classical Summer School at the AAR, to start in 2027-28, is now open. Be my successor! www.aarome.org/about/open-p... Please share with anyone who might be interested in applying. You’d get to shadow me for a week in 2026. Happy to answer any questions!

I want everyone who hasn’t done historical research to read this thread. You’ll learn so much about what the field of history is. And why it’s so so so cool.

I recently went to a scary talk about how much that has been digitized (in my field, Early Modern lit and history) has already been lost — when funding runs out, researchers move on, platforms no longer work (not to mention when a whole national deposit library gets hacked).

NOTHING has been digitized, relatively speaking. And it's our peril if we don't understand that.

The sheer recalcitrance of diverse materials to the homogenizing process required both by digitization and processing by means of AI means one thing: the digitization is not the archive. sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...

The first lesson in my history research methods class next semester will be a carsh course on Word and how to save/name/organize computer files. Because it is sadly incredibly necessary.

As a multiple language speaker it's also frustrating to see people using AI for translation because the English speaking world tends to treat translators like workers for hire instead of co authors of text and this feels like more of it. Translation at the literary level is creative work. (2/?)

When someone suggested using AI to translate work this week I found a graduate student with the expertise and the institutional funds to get them paid to do the translation. Everyone was happy in the end. It’s a tiny thing but an example of a small difference one can make.

But to underline an important point you made, I think Today's Discourse Shenigans also don't realise that a core archival research skill is knowing when *not* to read - how to skip or skim. Like, they seem to think we are cursed to read every receipt in the building, but that's the fast bit tbh.

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

I guess the other thing is that history is pretty much a single-author discipline. When we put our names on our work, we're saying that our minds and our labor produced that knowledge. That if it's discovered to be rooted in lazy or unethical research practices, we will own that and take our lumps.

I think everything in this thread is spot on, but the thing that most non-specialists miss is that individual historians are also the ones who decide there's even something to investigate! Based on their deep reading and expertise, they frame new questions to create new knowledge we didn't have!

What historians (and other scholars do) is create knowledge. We should use that phrase more and talk about what it means. I think we don't, and it's part of why AI enthusiasts are confused when we don't readily agree that our work can be replicated/replaced by their products.

So when the AHA says it's OK to use AI to summarize scholarship, the greatest risk this guideline poses isn't simply to the quality or accuracy of research; the hazard it poses is to the communal nature of the knowledge production. A pursuit that puts people across time & space into conversation 4/n

This.

Yes! Historiography is a conversation, and citations allow us access to and participation in this conversation.

The point of summarising is not the summary. The act of gathering, reading and synthesising is the point -- the summary is just the result of doing the valuable thing.

Full panel here m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwwn...

Believe it or not the goal of some fields is to actually read books and articles. Lots of them.

you’re a software engineer, you’ve heard of the phrase ‘garbage in, garbage out’. Well, that applies to critical engagement aka ’thinking’ too.

…. This is actually a required aspect of doing good research in most fields I’m aware of. That if you’re trying to create new knowledge and make an intervention in an area of study, you HAVE done all this legwork./1

In law school I outlined classes at the end of the semester, organizing and summarizing the class content. Then I made little use of the outlines that I'd laboriously made. Because the work was the point and not the outlines. The effort is everything. Without that you've gained nothing.

Then, about a month ago, I learned that the only hygiene center in my neighborhood was being shut down. The property was being sold...destined to be developed. 🧵 2 of 9

“I would struggle to trust a historian who doesn’t know how to use the text theft machine that often gets basic facts wrong and makes up sources.” Well, we’ll try to find a way to survive without your trust I guess. Enjoy the ChatBots