New podcast about @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social linguistics grad student Tyler Lee-Wynant and the work of the California Language Archive. Give it a listen! (You can turn the volume way down when my voice comes on.) news.berkeley.edu/2025/11/06/b...

Work in the California Language Archive to support language reclamation: news.berkeley.edu/2025/11/06/2...

Here's a short, inattentive (but positive), and hastily written review of my book by William M. Chace, in "Common Knowledge" philpapers.org/rec/CHATUO-25

Awesome passive-aggressive brackets! (The original failed to capitalize "Zeitgeist".) Source: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

This fall brings not just one but two exhibitions about Ursula and her work. In Portland, A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin opens October 31st at Oregon Contemporary. In London, The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin opens October 10th at the AA Gallery.

I'm very proud of this paper, now published in Anthropological Linguistics: "Alfred Kroeber’s Documentation of Inuktun (Polar Inuit)," a study of the earliest substantial documentation of Inuktun (NW Greenland) and what it shows about Inuit dialects and change. muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

"It is important to refuse the notion that this is just how things are right now, invoking a feckless realpolitik that justifies complicity with a brutal and rising authoritarianism." www.chronicle.com/article/when...

"[T]he decision to send the information to the Trump administration was made by the University of California’s systemwide general counsel. ... Berkeley’s counsel declined to share with [Judith] Butler the contents of the files." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

In finally finished reading The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall by @andrewgarrett.bsky.social cover to cover and wooow, it's so good! Big recommendation for all linguists, anthropologists, ethnologists, Ursula K. LeGuin fans and everyone else! So many things 100% relevant to my work to reflect on

The most important news from today's reshuffle:

Jobs: General Linguistics: Assistant Professor - Language Revitalization - Linguistics, University of California Berkeley

There will be many casualties from UChicago ending ('pausing') PhD admissions in Humantities, but one which I am keenly aware of: this is close to a death sentence for teaching cuneiform in the United States (esp. Sumerian, Hittite, Elamite, Eblaite, Luwian) and it will affect the whole world.

a thought i have reading @clintsmithiii.bsky.social’s wonderful piece is that one reason the administration wants to erase any mention of the worst of our past is because it is intent on recapitulating those atrocities www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

My memory of Malcolm Margolin is of his generosity. Once, speaking of Leanne Hinton, he said, "She makes me proud to be a human being."

Come be my colleague! UC Berkeley Linguistics has a tenure-track position in language revitalization. aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05022

Another lovely Labov obit by @betsysneller.bsky.social @laurelmack.bsky.social and Meredith Tamminga. This one takes a birds eye view of how Labov has contributed to where the field is going, which is a nice forward-looking complement to Eckert's obit onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

My Berkeley colleagues & I are saddened by the death of our colleague Robin Lakoff. Her 1972 book Language & Women's Place created the modern field of language & gender. She also wrote articulately, passionately & impactfully about Latin linguistics (Abstract Syntax & Latin Complementation, 1968) 1/

"Mary Gaillard, Who Broke a Ceiling in Subatomic Research, Dies at 86" www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/s... Photo: "Mary K. Gaillard in 1985, four years after she became the first woman hired by the physics department at the University of California, Berkeley."

From Scott MacLochlainn, "Naming and Namelessness", Annual Review of Anthropology (@annualreviews.bsky.social‬) www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Awesome new @diachronica.bsky.social article by @austronesianist.com: "Late Malayo-Polynesian: A new model of Austronesian linguistic relations" www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour...

Absolutely beautiful obituary for Bill Labov, describing a life rich in insights and in humanity www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

Hard to choose just one ... www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoB...

I was unaware that LINCOM reprints out-of-copyright books at exorbitant prices, including half a dozen books by A. L. Kroeber (among others in the "Americana" series). These are almost all accessible as PDFs elsewhere (e.g. digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/82624). lincom-shop.eu/epages/57709...

“My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” writes Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. “I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.”

A touching piece by Rolf Noyer in memory of our colleague and friend Gene Buckley, who died in June and will be very deeply missed. www.ling.upenn.edu/news/2025/07...

This is very distressing news! So sorry for all Gene's friends and family.

From Howard Morphy's Afterword ("After Marcus") to Marcus Banks's "Understanding Social Images" (2025), with reference to "the danger of locking the resources of anthropology into the 'presentist' moment of the critique [of anthropology]."

"With the passage of Trump's death bill, we face the prospect of many great harms, including an archipelago of concentration camps across the United States." snyder.substack.com/p/concentrat...

Prof Skocpol making a crucial point here. The centralized police. And then the lawless quasipolice who guard the camps. Trump’s death bill moves the US towards those two thresholds, well known from Germany in the 1930s. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/criti...

It's hard to avoid recalling this passage from the English historian Tony Judt:

“If the engine of narrative is conflict, then what happens if a story organizes itself around another center?” Shruti Swamy asks in the introduction the the 2023 Harper Perennial edition of Always Coming Home (right).

Anna Morpurgo Davies would have been 88 today. philsoc.org.uk/anna-morpurg...

Looking forward to participating in this LSA-sponsored discussion webinar on Monday, with Benidiktus "Benny" Delpada and AL Blake. Anyone can join in (register at the link below). www.lsadc.org/ev_calendar_...

Delighted by Margaret Thomas's review of my book, in "Language" 101/2 (2025) 406-410 doi.org/10.1353/lan....

author beat me to posting this! tl;dr awesome book – highly recommmended

Pleased by @jamesmcelvenny.bsky.social's review of "The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, Memory, and Indigenous California" (2023), now published in "History of Humanities" 10 (2025) www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Next Thursday in Sydney! gleebooks.com.au/event/andrew...

"It is alarming that the administration would deploy law enforcement in response to something a faculty member says simply because their comments are uncomfortable or inconvenient." mailchi.mp/cucfa/statem...

Interested in the history of linguistics & phonetics & phoneticians? This lecture series — J. C. Catford's (1917-2009) life story — is awesome! deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027....

In Sydney on Thursday 29 May? Come hear Nick Enfield and me talking about my book and about the legacies of salvage anthropology and linguistics! events.humanitix.com/lecture-in-l...

"America has crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism." www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/o...

Seems true www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/t...?

"Remembering Ian Maddieson," by Louis Goldstein, Beryl Crocker, Carol Hadden, Pat Keating, Larry Hyman, Didier Demolin, François Pellegrino, Shelece Easterday, and Piers Woolston, introduced and edited by Keith Johnson — many moving tributes escholarship.org/uc/item/1hg2...

Couldn't be happier for Leslie Kurke (not on here, sensibly), one of the new members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (www.amacad.org/news/new-mem...), and in great company!

'If citizens endorse the idea that people named by authorities as "criminals" or "terrorists" have no right to due process, then they are accepting that they themselves have no right to due process.'