I don't need a summary of what's available online, in biographies, or even in my own notes. I need to comb through and find the great details, decide what interests ME. No, it's not efficient. It's slow and painstaking. But I don't believe in efficiency as an ultimate good, especially in writing. /

“today’s brand of anti-intellectualism… stems from the bedrock conviction amg tech oligarchs tht they have mastered everything… they believe deep intellectual work… has little or no inherent value. Their disdain for it has fueled their attacks on higher education.” www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Reminder! Tune into zoom this Friday, April 3, for a workshop with Lasse Lovlund Toft (University of Oslo) about "Literary Cycles and Homiletic Collections: On the Literary Context and Manuscript Transmission of a Copto-Arabic Homily on the Archangel Michael."

I have been doing a lot of thinking and starting to write about the liberal arts, and one of its greatest purposes is to liberate us from the imprisonment of this paradigm in which everything is made meaningful by ROI

Passover begins on the evening of 1st April: depiction of a matzah with creatures. #Passover BL Or 2737; 'Hispano-Moresque Haggadah'); 1275 CE-1324 CE; Spain; f.22r @blmedieval.bsky.social

Show me your spring flowers! In NYC, it’s been a looooong winter, and the flowering trees are only now starting to pop…

The divide is actually pretty stark! www.pewresearch.org/science/2025...

An unaccounted for part of the economy is how much young people virulently hate AI, despite how aggressively it's being forced on them. They realize it's making their friends dumber and ruining the world and they want nothing to do with it. From the Penn student paper: www.thedp.com/article/2026...

Two great scholars in conversation! politicaltheology.com/settler-colo...

We combed through the winners and finalists of the latest AJS Schnitzer Awards and National Jewish Book Awards for JQR alumni, and we have gathered their essays on our blog. Some open-access research by the honorees for your reading pleasure! katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

The Cotton Genesis (Cotton MS Otho B VI, 5th century) was left barely legible after the Ashburnham House Fire in 1731. Multispectral imaging on the MS has now uncovered texts and images unseen for hundreds of years. Join us at our upcoming conference to learn more. events.bl.uk/events/multi...

Imagine shutting down your entire fine arts program, your Russian program, your Modern Jewish studies programs and simultaneously setting up a Center for the Creator Economy, sweet baby Jesus

“The most dangerous threat to Black studies right now is not coming from the federal government… It is coming from institutions that have decided, in advance, that accommodation is the same thing as survival.”

Humanities are likewise not immune to this trend. Just in my own niche, I've seen numerous specialists in Biblical theology, comparative Semitics, book history, palaeography, etc. get annoyed at the mere suggestion that Orientalism and Eurocentrism are not solved problems.

Syracuse University is eliminating nine of its liberal arts majors, one of which is Jewish Studies. dailyorange.com/2026/03/suns... I sure hope the few Jewish people who got behind this attack on higher education in the name of "fighting campus antisemitism" are feeling proud of themselves.

New JEH! Including this fascinating (OPEN ACCESS!) piece on the reading of prohibited books www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Exciting news! I just had an article published calling out a homophobic article Novum Testamentum published last year. It’s open access and free to read thanks to my employer. Get it here doi.org/10.1163/1568.... A thread on what it’s about below:

Don't miss Elnatan Chen's scholarly note in our winter issue, which assembles evidence for the existence and nature of a previously unknown exegetical text on the Prophets by 11th-cent. Hebrew grammarian Jonah Ibn Janāḥ. muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

Hello, have you missed us? We’d love to hear from you.   Tell us your favourite British Library manuscript and we’ll post an image for you.

Why did I think they simply canceled all of them. Nope it was discriminatory

"The humanities endowment’s 17-member outside scholarly council, which by law must advise on most grants, voted not to recommend the Tikvah award, but Mr. McDonald overruled it. Last October, shortly after the grant was announced, the White House fired most of the board, with no reason given."

"Asked by the plaintiffs’ lawyers why Tikvah, which had never applied for a federal grant, was tapped for [the biggest grant in NEH history], Mr. Wolfson [whose wife works for a Tikvah-related group] said Mr. McDonald had been impressed by an episode of its podcast and asked him to reach out."

28 #Manuscripts from the #Vatican this week www.wiglaf.org/vatican/2026... Includes tons of Ge'ez, 3 Lorenzo Valla, additional classical works, the Conclave for Gregory XIV, juridical works, a chronicle of Padua and more! #MedievalSky #Skystorians

The Tower of Babel being destroyed by hammer wielding angels. BL Add 18850; 'Bedford Hours'; France, Central (Paris); c1410-1430; f.17v @blmedieval.bsky.social

It was wrong and harmful - and quite possibly unlawful - to cut already approved NEH grants because Donald Trump hates "DEI." But the way DOGE went about doing it was even dumber than you probably imagined. They fed abstracts into ChatGPT and demanded an answer in fewer than 120 characters.

Save the date - 4/22 Prof. Alex Jassen will be speaking at Harvard on the Dead Sea Scrolls & their first American audiences!!

Imagine viewing this and concluding that academic Gender Studies is no longer relevant as a field of inquiry.

⬇️ This. Many collections everywhere, but particularly beyond Europe or N. America, are undercatalogued or not catalogued at all. When they burn, no trace survives.

So excited for this! nesa.osu.edu/events/magic...

For the "everything is online" crowd in the back: Important to consider that "everything" cultural heritage related that is accessible online represents only 1% (one percent) of archives, libraries, and museum collections worldwide.

Today Jodi Magness takes us through her career and offers a retrospective on the significance of archaeology to the study of the ancient world.

The SBL call for papers closes March 4. Consider submitting a proposal for the Christian apocrypha section.

Join us March 6 for the latest First Friday Christian Apocrypha Workshop with Jeremiah Coogan (Jesuit School of Theology).

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed. Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

Good thing some US colleges are closing their Religious Studies departments—definitively not “useful” at all or an area of expertise that might be relevant for understanding our present…

Hi friends. As I previously noted, the U. of Iowa is planning to get rid of African American studies; Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, & the Classical Languages major—along with others. If you wish, please sign the classics petition: www.change.org/p/keep-the-c.... I will add more as I find out.

At a Cleveland newspaper, reporters assigned to the suburbs “are now expected to file four stories a day with the help of AI.” Also: one reporter “said they were caught off guard when their annual performance review indicated insufficient AI use.” Gift link wapo.st/4aX44e1

Today I learned that tempura originated from Portuguese missionaries in 16th century Japan, who brought their tradition of breading and frying foods with them. The name apparently comes from the Latin phrase “ad tempora cuaresma” (in the time of Lent) because it was popular Lenten food.

New digital platform expands access to ancient New Testament manuscripts: The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts on Monday announced the launch of a new online Digital Manuscript Collection interface, expanding public access to ancient New Testament manuscripts and related scholarly…

Shaul’s new translation book is out and Open Access—making accessible selections from the writings of the Satmar Rebbe (i.e. Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum) w/focus on recovering his significance as a political thinker @ucpress.bsky.social www.ucpress.edu/books/jewish...

the AIs are attractive because of what education has become in the US

Lots of good quotes here, and I think if anything good comes out of this awfulness it will perhaps be academics rethinking our reflexive obeisance to prestige and wealth. "...the notion of the meritocracy is completely revealed to be gendered bullshit.” - @dannagal.bsky.social

“…the Epstein files highlight issues that women in academe have mostly discussed in whisper networks: Who is unsafe to be alone with? Which advisers are to be avoided? Whose connections may come with a price?” www.chronicle.com/article/unma...

These are “low enrollment” majors but the classes are regularly at capacity. They changed the funding structure a few years ago here, switching the allocation from course enrollments to majors then blamed these departments for a structural, top-down change. This is entirely a political choice.

The closing of African American Studies and GWSS at Iowa is absolutely heartbreaking. It is such an important time to study these subjects. Words really cannot express how upsetting this decision is. www.thegazette.com/higher-educa...

Our society is so fixated on sexual violence, and yet so unwilling to examine the underlying attitudes that produce it. If you don't eliminate misogyny and patriarchy, you will never stop the violent symptoms they inexorably produce.

“We have this narrative that explicit misogyny is something from the ’50s and ’60s, and what we have now is like implicit bias and microaggressions… misogyny is still out there in science and in academia, it’s just perhaps behind closed doors.” 19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...

Friends, I am hiring two scholar-advisors this year! Come join the best advising team in the country (for real). Please help me spread the news about this great opportunity! This is a permanent, non-time limited instructional staff position, and I will be happy to answer questions!

Before the blizzard The flakes are yet to fall Seventeen added www.wiglaf.org/vatican/2026... New from the #Vatican lots of classical Latin, Humanist translations, Francesco Filfelfo, Ge'ez sermons and more #MedievalSky #Skystorians