Teacher here: Teachers absolutely DO NOT need AI to make their jobs easier. We need good high-quality curriculum (costs money) We need resources and supplies (costs money) We need smaller class sizes (costs money) We don't need AI slop substituting for any of that.

Rosenblum discussing the book on New Books podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/24GN...

No. Data centers cause harm, but you aren't the recipient so you overlook it.

"The New School was founded a little over a century ago precisely because you can’t put a price on critical inquiry and the free exchange of ideas. The dismantling of this promise spells disaster not only for the university itself but for the radical democratic aspirations it once represented."

Self-examination nothing: y'all need to confront the fact that you owe your academic career to the unique expertise of librarians and archivists. Who do you think organized those LIBRARIES of texts that you're drawing upon?

Great episode of Byzantium & Friends w/Aaron Butts! While centering on Aksum, it engages key questions in the study of late antique empires, such as how to historicize the use of religious imagery in imperial self-presentation, & the proxy war model (e.g. Bowersock) open.spotify.com/episode/4gkP...

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

hey my little "Thecla" entry for @bibleodyssey.bsky.social is up! www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/the...

I know disciplinary standards differ, but I've been at this for decades and I've never cited a paper I didn't read. Didn't like, sure; didn't understand, often; kind of drifted off in the middle there, it happens. But didn't read at all? Nah. Come on.

I’m sorry, but it is disgraceful to be an academic who uses this technology to conduct research. It should be prohibited in all of our scholarly institutions, including universities and journals.

Our tribute to Natalie Zemon Davis, in the Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte. Please share widely! www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/...

my contribution to the discourse: you really want to know whether one group or another is being slighted in some process? get a spreadsheet, fill it out with data from the last ten years, and then---crucial---do not squint when you look at the results look right at em and don't kid yourself

A non-existent paper attributed to ‪Ben Williamson‬ has already been cited 42 times. It's like Scholarly Communication has been injected with misinformation bombs. Events are totally out of control. No one has a handle on its extent. And, there's no plan to stop it. @benpatrickwill.bsky.social

Director of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies and Tenured Full Professor job with University of Texas at Austin

Not for race but for gender, but I’ve seen this happen! In one case, w/someone whom I know well enough to call him on it: he had told a male friend who didn’t get a job that it was b/c they “had to hire a woman,” despite knowing that wasn’t why this man (not very productive) didn’t get shortlisted +

STUNNING: Nearly a year since President Donald Trump took office, his education department’s Office for Civil Rights has not entered into a single new resolution agreement involving racial harassment of students, we found.  @jsmithrichards.bsky.social @megomatz.bsky.social @jodiscohen.bsky.social

I wonder how far back into the past this thread has been repeated. It seems every 20 years we rediscover this and it is depressing that we can't get over the hump. We can't even get to a meritocracy let alone get to the point where we can discuss "The Tyranny of Merit".

longstanding theory on this is that people who know the applicant that they don't want to hire has racial resentment offer "wish i could've hired you, but they made me hire a black woman instead!" as a let-them-down-easy cope rather than admit to them that they just didn't want to hire them.

UBC is looking to recruit internationally based researchers for Canada Research grants. If you‘re a senior scholar working in anything in the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world, I encourage you to apply. Please do share among your networks: research.ubc.ca/federal-rese...

Re-upping this 🧵 in light of recent discourse…

‘Real academic citations are messy.’ Long live mess.

The Center for European Studies, the African Studies Center, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies are all slated to close.

search your camera roll for hell

Cambridge University Press has launched a new grant to support under-represented early career scholars from diverse backgrounds and geographic locations, including first generation scholars 👇 #BookSky

2025 Book Censorship Wrapped: Trends, Challenges, & Successes Over The Year. Dive into this groundbreaking collaborative piece from @amlibraryassoc.bsky.social, @penamerica.bsky.social, @bookriot.bsky.social, @txfreedomread.bsky.social, and @flfreedomread.bsky.social bookriot.com/book-censors...

many moons ago I heard Maud Gleason give a talk that interpreted the florid and literary behavior of the Hasmoneans in Josephus as evidence for how elites internalized florid and literary behavior and reproduced it in their lives... does this ring a bell with anyone?

(From last night, but these days, perhaps best not to let any light or festivity slip by…)

I'm honored that *Black Religion in the Madhouse* is among the @nyupress.bsky.social books on the 2025 @choicereviews.bsky.social CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles.

'articles which include references to nonexistent research material — the papers that don’t get flagged and retracted for this use of AI, that is — are themselves being cited in other papers, which effectively launders their erroneous citations.'

What a time to decide to learn less about the world. dailytarheel.com/article/univ...

Lovely CSWR "Research Reflection" @maiakotro.bsky.social cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/12...

NEW: Public universities in red states, from Texas to Florida, are increasingly required to make their syllabi public. The University of North Carolina may be next. Does "syllabi transparency" help combat distrust in higher ed, or feed ill-informed suspicions of it? www.chronicle.com/article/when...

"the material histories of a paper-using humankind...are relevant and crucial to understanding global history...across different book cultures, belief systems, and political constellations...highlighting parallel developments, entanglements, and integrations between the world’s paper-using cultures"

while i am not an academic i did see this coming and post about it on bluesky, which is why i am quoted in this article

From my own niche: institutions of higher education should stop chasing trends, work internally to assert a set of values, and then build curriculum around those values.

this sicks and I'm not sure this quote accurately reflects the attendance policy at harvard (the recording is unpleasant but also harvard REQUIRED me to record my lectures during covid with my consent, so....?)

Reception need not be over hundreds of years. Interesting new Open Access volume on _Flavian Responses to Nero’s Rome_ is a case in point. Definitely gonna need @laurenginsberg.bsky.social’s assessment on this! www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edi...

🗃️ My History Department is hiring for a tenure track position in Native American history. See link for details! jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

AI is not our peer, so AI review is not peer review. If for some godforsaken reason the editor of a journal wanted to know what AI would say about a paper, they could do it themself.

Day 1 of “The ‘Other’ and ‘Empire’ in Christianity: Postcolonial Readings of Late Antique Literature,” a small conference/workshop organised by Classics and Ancient History at Durham University (www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...). This has been a superb meeting so far.

Okay, this one's just for the early Christian studies people: I'm updating the JECS list of preferred standard abbreviations, and a lot of journals have appeared or become more used in the field since the list got generated. I'm adding SLA, JLA, JOCS, EC (1868-7032), JECH, and ZAC. What else?

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delightful Butterfly Drawings

fellow precarious academics: let's recognise our achievements this year. We are doing a lot of research and in many cases this is without any institutional funding or support.

Another way to restart the world’s idea machine is to restore funding and grants to universities, researchers, and artists.

Today marks six months since nearly 70% of staff at the National Endowment for the Humanities were fired without cause. If you do nothing else today, please read and *share* this recent article outlining what this year, mostly without us, has looked like at #NEH. archived: archive.is/LgVyh

periodically, i post this utterly incandescent essay by @isanchezprado.bsky.social. it reminds me about the kind of work i’d like to pursue, the kind most worth pursuing, i think. and my gooooood, the prose. the prose, y’all.

Shalom, friends! The story of Judith and Holofernes is not only a #Hanukkah classic, it’s been the subject of some of the greatest artworks in history…. Plus these. Welcome to 8 Unhinged Depictions of Judith and Holofernes in Art History! Enjoy, & have a safe & happy Hanukkah youtu.be/hP7Ywv8G9A8