“Educational institutions are like beekeepers,” according to the report. “While their principal aim is to provide education and raise people’s earnings, in the process they create an array of external benefits...society indirectly benefits, just as orchard owners indirectly benefit from beekeepers.”

🚨 A new frontier of coordinated disinformation. Fossil fuel industry front groups are using AI platforms to flood clean air regulators with fake public comments—submitted under real residents' names, without their consent. @robbonta.bsky.social www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

Recently realized that when I circulate working papers, I have to start asking people not to use AI to read it. Not sure how to phrase the request to balance force, explanation, and brevity, without sounding like the crazy killjoy I am.

struck the space key by mistake, making a strangely poignant typo

Now open: call for abstracts for the 2026 Berkeley Graduate Conference on Political Theory Keynote: John T. Scott (UC Davis) Submission deadline: January 31 Date: April 11 Submission form: forms.gle/xZUupQbhSfD7... Please circulate widely!

New in Political Theory, by me: Does this guy's chain look like a necklace to you? ↓ Scholars have treated it as a necklace. By reading it as a chain instead, I recover Rousseau's paradoxical insight: pride can help us escape corrupt, unequal social conditions journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The whole point of being an academic is that you need to be willing to spend three days creating a 700-word footnote that you will later delete. And you need to LIKE IT.

Now open: call for abstracts for the 2026 Berkeley Graduate Conference on Political Theory Keynote: John T. Scott (UC Davis) Submission deadline: January 31 Date: April 11 Submission form: forms.gle/xZUupQbhSfD7... Please circulate widely!

While home sick for a few days, I successfully broke my caffeine addiction! ☕ ❌ 😌 Here's how it's impacting my life & work 👇🧵

I joined my Democratic colleagues in instructing USDA Secretary Rollins to use SNAP’s emergency reserves to keep food assistance flowing for the 42 million Americans who rely on it, including 16 million children, and 4 million people with disabilities. (1/3)

look, I'm no fan of the Bourbons, or of monarchy in general for that matter -- but to invoke them to characterize Trump is I think deeply unfair to Versailles and the French absolutist monarchy

Department floor is having a halloween door decor contest, I think our office wins for scariest @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social

The writing / academic-ish / research meme side-quest continues! And with halloween almost upon us, what could be scarier than Reviewer 2? #highered #academicsky #resdev

facts. #academicsky

Delighted to share the Call for Papers for a special issue of French Historical Studies on the theme "European-Indigenous Relations in the French Americas" (to be co-edited by Scott Berthelette and myself) CFP and submission guidelines can be found here: read.dukeupress.edu/french-histo...

guys I think I'm finally figuring out the regime types in Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws

Intellectual “work” is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heaven when he is at work -Twain, Conn Yankee

Abba's "take a chance on me" is a mood for academic job market season

The quote below is all true. But let's not forget the one major factor rich kids have in their favor: the ability to pay full tuition, which many colleges/universities seek to balance their books.

how it feels to get your article accepted for publication for the first time #GradLife #PhdCat

Love that the top of the distribution bar is zero. AI didn’t make a single developer work any faster. The best outcome is break even productivity.

one of my favourite things is when you have to do something and it's like "no. you ccant use your browser on desktop,, you have to download,, an app". And the app doesn't work.

A group of U.S.-based faculty colleagues from a wide range of disciplines and institutional affiliations have developed and are distributing a statement that expresses our shared commitments to democracy, diversity, and higher education. bit.ly/DemocracyAnd...

throwback to when one of Berkeley's mandatory cybersecurity trainings used stock images of the Jealous GirlfriendTM

When you're trying to optimize your article title for search engines

As of this morning, we've tracked over 600 student visa revocations at more than 100 colleges. That's double yesterday morning's count. Send updates to me or @amowreader.com and follow @insidehighered.com interactive visa map here: www.insidehighered.com/news/global/...

When I teach classes on the French Revolution I love to show students this satirical print from 1791. King Louis XVI is shown lifting off his 'mask' to reveal that he is, in fact, a 'cruchon' - a jughead or idiot! #18thcentury #politicalsatire #revolutionaryart #historysky #frenchrevolution

preparing for @mpsa.bsky.social by crying tears of joy at the amount of history of political thought in the conference program #MPSA2025

Jean-Jacques Rousseau roasted for small sample sizes

I bring a "are there ethical issues with feeding dead people's handwritten notes into chatGPT?" vibe that the AI fans don't really like

“Amazon healthcare” is among the most ominous phrases I’ve seen lately

Thread of my own work that has used data from Department of Education and columns that have focused on research funded by them 1/N Inequality in college graduation rates Uses data from Education Longitudinal Study, conducted by Department of Education www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/u...

[tapping head meme] can't have Humanities Phds if you've defunded the whole University

Why do my mug and my book look so good together

Me: "Do you know who Jean-Jacques Rousseau is?" My flatmate: "Linguini's father, from Ratatouille?"

Last call to apply for @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social's Graduate Conference on Early Modern Political Thought (1400-1800) Keynote: Alison McQueen (Stanford) @aejm.bsky.social Deadline: January 10 Date: May 3 Submission form: forms.gle/AEzA3CoMNTNh... More info 👇 Please circulate widely!

Last call to apply for @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social's Graduate Conference on Early Modern Political Thought (1400-1800) Keynote: Alison McQueen (Stanford) @aejm.bsky.social Deadline: January 10 Date: May 3 Submission form: forms.gle/AEzA3CoMNTNh... More info 👇 Please circulate widely!

QUERY: "ChatGPT, could you please tell me the problem to which LLMs are the solution?" RESPONSE: "The wide adoption of LLMs will help increase AI-start-up shareholder value"

Interviewer: can you explain this gap in your resume? Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

BREAKING: The biggest strike against Amazon in U.S. history is happening right now. The Teamsters are picketing facilities across the country. The union has organized workers at 10 Amazon locations AND they're putting up picket lines at hundreds of other Amazon sites nationwide.

when you're doing research in early modern dictionaries but you're still trying to get in the Christmas spirit

Another periodic reminder to read Rousseau. From his Ninth Letter Written from the Mountain.

reading livy during the lockdown I apparently made some really stupid niche roman history memes

The typesetting in Pierre Charron's De La Sagesse is gorgeous. Especially noticeable at section endings, where there's this lovely tapering effect. Is there a name for this?? Historians of typography & printing, save me! I must know. #skystorians

elon making the case for single payer health insurance

me when I'm sorry for being right

Looking for opinions ! help me choose a working title for my article draft on egalitarian amour-propre in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 30-second survey: forms.gle/Hdr78iFjfPYd...

Black Friday Deal Alert! Enjoy our current atmospheric CO₂ because we'll never see it this low again!

Me preparing to get feedback on my work

this cat (engraving from Rousseau's Émile) looks how i feel opening an email from reviewers