Let’s ride.

This is a melancholic piece by Rachel Toor that's unfortunately so relatable and, in that way, somewhat heartbreaking. A lot of my colleagues (and me, too!) feel ill-equipped to meet this moment. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

#academiclife goldengatexpress.org/114511/campu...

As our nation spirals into a nightmarish darkness, there’s an understandable temptation to despair ... But how can we fend off that temptation, especially when it sometimes seems as if the darkness is all there is? www.texasobserver.org/a-light-the-...

Earlier this year I got an email from a student requesting the full text of an article I didn’t write that doesn’t exist. Worse by a landslide is that one of my promotion support letters cited articles I didn’t write and presentations I didn’t give. From a colleague. We’re fucked, no?

I’m sorry, but it is disgraceful to be an academic who uses this technology to conduct research. It should be prohibited in all of our scholarly institutions, including universities and journals.

It’s been almost a year since book #2 made her debut! ✨🩰 It's about #ballet #pedagogy first because ballet is my artistic and educational home. And, it applies to *every* classroom where #embodiment is part of #teaching & #learning. So, all of them. Get a festive 20% off & a preview here:

Your daily reminder that there is no ethical AI.

Consumer facing "A.i." is about triggering the excretion of a mediocre product. It's a rejection of PROCESS. Life itself is process, not fucking product. Push "A.i." on kids and you rob them of the joyful experience of life itself. I am not exaggerating.

cc: dance

It's Monday of finals week at 9:24am and someone down the hall is blaring "Send in the Clowns." Bleak... real bleak.

My autocorrect just changed #ungrading to "ungrudging," and honestly? Yes.

There is no balance required, you just trust people. Because disabled people are met routinely with mockery, suspicion, neglect, discrimination and outright hate, we do not feed the ableism machine with more suspicion. If a few people get away with ‘cheating the system’ that’s just how things are.

One of my colleagues once pointed out that we aren’t necessarily the right people to invent ways to motivate students, because we’re the nerds who stayed and what motivates us does not work for everyone. I think about that a LOT

I can give students a million reasons why using #AI is a problem, but if I don’t also explain why the human alternative is worth choosing and make it possible (ie give it time to develop) inside my course design, those reasons might not be enough given the challenges they face.

There are so many reasons *not to use LLMs—cultural, social, economic, environmental, etc. Mostly, though, I don’t use them because I *like* using my own faculties. I like the rush of problem solving and revision—the feelings of learning and having learned. I wish I knew how to teach that.

I kind of can't believe I actually saw this happen with my own eyes. I've heard so many stories, but to be in the room with it and have it expressed to my face was truly remarkable.

That feeling when a senior male academic starts whining about how 90% of predators in the university’s compliance training videos are depicted as male: Smile, sweetie. You look so pretty when you smile.

cc: educators

"The right to culture is fundamental, and its revocation has grave consequences for the texture of daily life." You should definitely read this, by @annakornbluh.bsky.social and @isanchezprado.bsky.social

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

We are at that golden moment in the semester when "thank you for your patience with my delayed reply" prefaces all of my emails.

It turns out that being a kind human being is a practice.

My employer New York Public Radio just announced that it is offering @onthemedia.bsky.social, @radiolab.bsky.social, and other programs to at-risk public radio stations for free! More info: current.org/2025/09/wnyc...

Arts education matters.

Oh HELL yes

An astonishing book review of my Humanizing Ballet Pedagogies includes the following sentence, and I am gobsmacked: "Thus, rather than adhering to methods that might be more institutionally acceptable or familiar to readers, Zeller proposes a ballet pedagogy in which... +

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

Now updated with more links (thanks to everyone who suggested new material!) and with the years that each article was published. catherinedenial.org/blog/uncateg...

This is such an important conversation. #GiftLink #GiftArticle

I am enormously grateful for the clear writing and ethical perspective offered by my friend Mays Imad, in this vital piece for @insidehighered.com today: www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

"With [some AI bullshit] you can go from a rough idea to a structured draft — in just 3 minutes" We're so cooked.

"Funding for this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by annual financial support from viewers like you" <---I bet you hear the exact cadence of your vintage

They're just saying it out loud that their project isn't viable without theft at an epic scale

“When students realize their own humanity is at stake in their education, they are deeply invested in it.” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...

I just wish the brilliant young women I work with could have half of this confidence.

When you've never thought critically about anything, everything looks like a revolutionary discovery

Holy shit this is good. It says it’s a 6-minute read but I recommend taking more time with it. “There is no education in this future – certainly not as a practice of freedom, but not even as a hollowed-out practice of competence.”

Yeah this is the thing I'm told me and all my students need to uncritically embrace so they can get a job after college

now that i think of it, with claude, grok and chatgpt, they basically stopped making them woman-coded like siri as soon as they wanted them to act like topic based authorities

We are the worst.

GenAI resisters, here's your moment. This is good. openletter.earth/an-open-lett...

There is no ethical AI. The tech is based on stolen intellectual property, anti-solidarity between workers, labor exploitation, environmental injustice, climate destabilization, structural racism, and gender inequalities.

Folds: If we’ve been told our whole lives that we can’t spend money on the arts because they’re not important—then why was taking over the Kennedy Center and the arts the first thing they did? It is extremely important. It’s the bedrock of self-expression.

I'm still working on the clearest way to communicate this. The "why not" has to be central to any classroom AI policy, and it has to be made to matter to the students in the room.

Why am I squeezing in a conference before I go on medical leave? Because it's my favorite conference of the year. These are the people I want to be with when so many things are going wrong. For those of you who aren't at @socialismconference.org, here are some remarks I shared today.

“It struck me then, perhaps for the first time in my life, that intelligence is really not about what you know. Intelligence is about whether or not you have the capacity to learn or be taught. It is perhaps also about curiosity.” blgtylr.substack.com/p/amateur-hour