Recently, FamilySearch digitized and uploaded tons of microfilmed records, including many from 18th-century Massachsuetts. They're using some sort of AI to transcribe/summarize the handwritten documents. I've noticed that the AI strips out references to race and enslavement in 18thc documents.

We desperately need to get away from arguments for the humanities that elevate them because of what they do for technology. The humanities should not be understood as service disciplines. They are an extension of us, and that is enough.

Amazing the personal risks people will take to preserve archival material www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Just donated. If you have the means please consider it. Don’t wait for others. You are the cavalry.

NYT story 🎁 Proud & grateful for @historians.org and the collective. @acls1919.bsky.social's Joy Connolly: "Today’s decision is a step toward honoring the will of Congress and our mission as a nation—to... know ourselves and build a better future on that knowledge.." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/a...

I was lucky to write the lead article for a special issue of Academe on AI in the Corporate University. In "What does AI do?" I offer a provisional balance sheet of this technology's effects on our work, our finances, and our management, in a moment of rising fascist attacks on higher education.

A great thing about sabbatical is having the time to read and think about things that you normally don't have time for. Last summer I read three books about big tech and @academemagazine.bsky.social was kind enough to publish some of my thoughts on them.

A great thing about sabbatical is having the time to read and think about things that you normally don't have time for. Last summer I read three books about big tech and @academemagazine.bsky.social was kind enough to publish some of my thoughts on them.

We’re glad to have you ✊✊ Joining the AAUP is one of the best ways to celebrate May Day! If you’re a higher ed worker hoping to change our universities and colleges for the better, then find out how to become part of the movement here ⬇️

😂😂😂

Another part to add to this equation: UCLA (and I assume other u’s) is heavily encouraging faculty to build very specifically defined “online courses,” delivered via Canvas, consisting almost entirely of videos and quizzes that can be administered by TAs, without faculty involvement.

BREAKING NEWS - We have an additional 1-2 spots available for the Book Proposal Workshop. Email Amy Sayward ASAP if interested.

This reminds me of when I learned that the contractual level of cleanliness at my institution was "moderate dinginess"

“Not only did ASU allegedly not communicate to its academic community that their lectures would be spliced up and cannibalized by an AI platform, but the resulting modules are just bad.”

This piece by @moiradonegan.bsky.social is so beautiful. I've never understood the fixation on Marilyn & have mostly tried to avoid participating in the seemingly bottomless appetite for treating her, as Pratchett might have said, like a thing. Here, she is a person.

This is such a flagship moment for where America is right now. Gun violence, showmanship, celebrity, mass confusion, and also according to C-SPAN, people are opening the bottles of wine still on the tables.

Income isn’t supposed to play a role in how much housing assistance FEMA gives families. But in some North Carolina counties, the highest-income homeowners received two to three times as much money after Hurricane Helene as those with lower incomes. (Pub. Dec. 2025 w/ @theassemblync.bsky.social)

By acquiescing to demands that we cede class time to tutorials in the use of commercial products we are stealing from our students the opportunity for advanced intellectual development in the subjects we were hired to teach and destroying the future of our fields embodied by those students.

#highered Faculty—please join the AAUP and start a chapter if your campus doesn’t have one or a faculty union. They are working for ALL of us.

A Professor Union Grows Fast as It Ramps Up Its Fight Against Trump www.nytimes.com/2026/04/24/u...

I think this needs to be on my "Modern City" syllabus in the fall!

“Most Harvard faculty do not seek an adversarial relationship with their employer. Will that change if our administration continues to treat the faculty as adversaries?“ By our intrepid @aaup.org chapter president, @kirstenweld.bsky.social 🔥 www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

It's always great when you see your @hahr21.bsky.social article in print. Even better when they put your article's image on the cover! Sofía Pachas Maceda and I wrote the article to be accessible - please consider using it in LatAm history, gender history, labor history, history of tech.

"They went door-to-door to tell their neighbors what the city had not told them: The data center would use twice as much electricity as all of Monterey Park." The city’s notification in English reached only 40 people living within 500 feet. Activists worked in English, Chinese, Spanish & more!

"Video and photos published by local news organizations show a man standing with a gun on top of one pyramid while people duck for cover."

Today's delight is this by @alexanderchee.bsky.social - open.substack.com/pub/querent/...

Not everything is up for debate. Some views are just incorrect and there’s no point in debating perspectives that are not grounded in reality. That’s how we got here in the first place!

One of the great things about being a homeowner is the long list of things that you thought maybe should have come up in the inspection. Like for example the electrician asking, do you just want me to fix the small problem or do you want to know about *gestures wildly at the entire attic*

Another day, another round of "Am I filled with incandescent rage because of perimenopause or because of the increasing inequity and inhumanity of society"

Octavia E. Butler, 1998:

“The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations.”

#OtD 9 Apr 1944 legendary Palestinian socialist and the first woman to hijack a plane, Leila Khaled, was born in Haifa. Forced to flee during the Nakba, she joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/1248...

Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma & Tennessee legislatures are considering bills that will weaken tenure, academic freedom & shared governance at public colleges and universities. Inside Higher Ed breaks down the harmful impact of the bills and how AAUP chapters & leaders are responding to this threat⬇️

We’re on strike today! Support our fight for a fair contract by NOT visiting the @propublica.org website or engaging with ProPublica stories today. Tell ProPublica’s management you won’t cross the picket line: actionnetwork.org/petitions/te...

"It is not hope. It is the specific exhaustion of people who have been denied hope for so long that the mere postponement of catastrophe registers as reprieve. We celebrated nothing. We simply exhaled."

Armageddon is terrible, but our only other option was diversity trainings at work.

This isn’t a lamentable side effect of these products. It’s the actual reason they exist.

Boston University’s student newspaper, The Daily Free Press has been covering flag/free speech issues quite well. I especially love this line from their editorial: "A university that cannot distinguish between a symbol of hatred and a symbol of belonging has not built an inclusive community...." +

A great opportunity to publish.

"...lithium-rich brine is pumped from deep aquifers to the surface, where it is then extracted....[T]here’s emerging evidence that it can require at least double the amount of fresh water used in traditional mines, opponents say." Use scarce water to deplete the aquifer? What could go wrong?

Watching this has led me to reflect on an essay I published a couple of years ago about where I grew up and its relationship to "aerospace"

Decided to have this on while doing other work tasks and it is a nice distraction from all the other things m.youtube.com/watch?v=m3kR...

DC folks: I will be speaking about my new book BLUE POWER on Tues 4/21 at the Shaw Library, with @nightschool-dc.bsky.social Details and registration here: actionnetwork.org/events/blue-po…

I appreciate it when authors promote their work here multiple times, sometimes I need the reminder to order or bookmark for later! And sometimes I might have scrolled past the first (several? Many?) times before realizing I might be interested!

This is a multigenerational sin that isn’t really reparable

When you've internalized that things should go your way — & when things, for the most part, have gone your way, w/o significant struggle or suffering — you are less equipped, less resilient, and have less patience for obstacles to getting what you want. Women are used to a f-ing fight.

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: