UT Austin is discussing eliminating or consolidating our departments of African American and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican/American and Latino/Latina Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Here is what AAADS alumni have to say. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

The mood at MONUMENTS (Geffen Contemp. at MOCA, Los Angeles) is quiet, suppressed, on edge as befits galleries of Confederate imagery dismantled, marked, and yes, even intact as designed. Rejoinders by Black artists swing back but the exhibition does not declare the fight over. We have not won yet.

The Text and Transmission Research Seminar hosts a Youtube channel, so you can see past lectures--- here's me from yesterday, talking through a condensed version of a chapter in Things Unseen www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kH9...

Call me controversial, but technology that leads vulnerable people into crisis and even holds their hand as they die by suicide should not be endorsed by schools and universities, we should not be giving discounted subscriptions to this monstrous tech to young people AT ALL

While administrators have been negotiating in secret, faculty and staff have been fighting. It just could not be more clear who gives a shit about the university as an ideal and who doesn’t.

“A federal judge on Thursday excoriated the Trump administration’s blitz of hardball tactics against elite universities, warning that the government’s threats and investigations were undermining academic freedom at the University of California.”

The judge also cited the dozens of UCLA faculty who testified to the "present harm" they suffer as a result of these threats. Thank you to my colleagues who were willing to go on record to describe their experiences.

Judge Lin: "The plaintiffs have provided overwhelming evidence" that the funding threats are designed to "endorse the administration's preferred views." It feels amazing to hear someone speak the simple truth.

Today is the opening day for AAUP v. Trump, in which a historic coalition of unions is suing the Trump administration for using funding threats to suppress free speech. I just listened to the judge's opening remarks and they were SCATHING to the defendants. www.courtlistener.com/docket/71360...

there’s a lot to learn from this

I emailed and I encouraged colleagues to do the same. the PPFP is a vital program which does so much good. if you can do something to support it, please do

+ While Provost Newman has announced her decision to campus leadership, UC President Milliken has *not yet signed off on it*. We have a critical window to let leaders know that this appeasement is both a betrayal of our values and absolutely the wrong strategy. Email [email protected].

I am very concerned about anticipatory compliance at UC. Provost Katherine Newman has opted to defund a critical program called the UC Presidents Postdoctoral Fellowship (PPFP). This incredibly selective postdoc has provided a route to UC faculty for many of my most valued colleagues. +

we are using the available tools of the existing systems; we are making the as yet unimagined tools of emergent systems. to quote Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò: "I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win"

The #1 lesson from yesterday’s blowout: Humanities majors killed on the job market 1) Mamdani- Africana Studies 2) Spanberger -French 3) Sherill - Global History

“The data, compiled by the Middle East Studies Association and the American Association of University Professors and relying on publicly available records, offers a detailed account of how landmark civil rights legislation…has become a primary tool to restrict speech on campus.”

well, smart and empathetic beats the rancidly entrenched!

I'll be so happy if it turns out that being cute is the key to humanity's salvation

Mamdani: "We can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves. After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him."

Major in Africana Studies or any humanities course like English Literature! You could be mayor of New York City. You could do anything.

🙌

Come to my book review panel at #AARSBL2025 ! A cross-organization, interdisciplinary joint session, Sat. Nov 22 @ 1-3:30 Hynes Convention Center 201 -- if not for me, then to hear one of these fabulous panelists! @jaxhidalgo.bsky.social @elprofebarba.bsky.social

An amazing and essential book for our times! I am grateful to be in the room for this set of panelists and their conversation about the #apocalypse and #immigration in the USA.

today’s the day!!

In April 2025, Mathias and I also gave a lecture on our book project for the Global Antiquity conference here at UCLA: youtu.be/ACA1Eoj2Cnw

The first fruits of our co-authored research project on rhetorics of race in the Ciceronian corpus appeared in 2024: bsky.app/profile/opie...

We’ve so been looking forward to making this official. Mathias (@mhanses.bsky.social) and I have just signed a contract for our book, Cicero and the Rhetorics of Race, with Yale University Press (@yalepress.bsky.social)!

They fired every Black woman at Teen Vogue and every trans staffer. It is astonishing watching the American media ecosystem just falling like dominoes, bowing its knees to fascism.

I am so upset. Last week Time Magazine solicited a piece from me on Zohran Mamdani & anti-Muslim hate. I pitched a framing re the dehumanization of Muslims & how Mamdani’s inclusive, socialist campaign in its content resists that. They agreed. I wrote the piece. 1/

I was laid off from Teen Vogue this week, alongside multiple other phenomenal team members. At our Summit, I was asked how it felt to be 1 of 2 Black women left and what that meant for representation. Now, there are no Black women at Teen Vogue and that is incredibly painful to think about.

We’ve so been looking forward to making this official. Mathias (@mhanses.bsky.social) and I have just signed a contract for our book, Cicero and the Rhetorics of Race, with Yale University Press (@yalepress.bsky.social)!

thrilling book mail today!! @maiakotro.bsky.social

Homogenizing the ranks through reduced avenues of scholarship, as well as reducing the ranks numerically, is a perfect way to accomplish this shared goal of the feds and the administrative apparatus at UC.

To my mind, not only is this a direct attack by a UC central admin content to capitulate and emulate the federal position that arrived via extortion letter, it is part of a much larger plan, congruent with UC central admin, of weakening and eliminating faculty governance and power.

UC Provost Katherine Newman has announced plans to defund this program, a preemptive capitulation with the feds that has not been ordered and should not occur. Newman has done this with zero consultation with campus-level leadership and none with any faculty — mentors or former fellows included.

The President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, PPFP, has been a jewel in the crown for faculty development and recruitment at the University of California for years and the results have been an expanded faculty with almost 100% tenure rates — unprecedented success.

So proud of news orgs like Boyle Heights Beat and LA Taco for telling these important stories from within our communities. boyleheightsbeat.com/boyle-height...

millions of people can't eat

#RaceB4Race #ShakeRace

It is great to see the work of colleagues in Canada and Africa expanding with this CFP.

It is my pleasure to share the CFP for a special issue of #ResDiffJournal guest-edited by Hasskei Majeed, Justine McConnell, Olakunbi Olasope, and Luke Roman, building on the Classics &/in Africa conference at UCL this summer. "Classics and Africa" resdifficiles.com/classics-and...

It is my pleasure to share the CFP for a special issue of #ResDiffJournal guest-edited by Yusi Liu, Chris Gipson, and Najee Olya, building on the Mountaintop Coalition's panel at the SCS earlier this year. "International Scholarship in a ‘Globalized’ World?" resdifficiles.com/internationa...

🚨CFP for #ResDiff7 is now available!🚨 Res Difficiles 7 will take place on 13th March 2026 with Dr Samuel Agbamu as our keynote speaker. Submit an abstract by 12th January 2026: resdifficiles.com/cfp/

A book salon for The Sweet Taste of Empire by @profkfh.bsky.social? Tonight? Yes please! Still time to get your tickets. See you there! www.eventbrite.com/e/the-sweet-...

In California, WIC will remain open and fully operational through November. Families should keep their scheduled WIC appointments and use their WIC cards for groceries as usual. Find updates at: myfamily.wic.ca.gov/Home/Federal... #WIC #WICWorks #FundWIC

one of my students today asked me what I thought the differences were between the way that Roman slavery has historically been taught in the UK vs. in the US, in relation to each country's own involvement in mass enslaving systems. such a great question!

Don’t miss it!!! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

As someone who has been on SNAP benefits in the past, what will happen Nov. 1 is that people will start diverting other funds towards groceries. They will choose to feed their families over making credit card payments, paying medical bills, car payments, etc. This is going to affect a lot of things.

every now and then I feel called to reread Tema Okun’s list of white supremacist traits, and not only because they so accurately capture academic cultural norms www.dismantlingracism.org/uploads/4/3/...

The "it's class not race" crowd 🤝 white supremacists