Getting away from it all at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. (AIA/SCS attendees: if you need to decompress from the conference for a couple of hours, you could do much worse than this ⬇️)

Here's to a Happy New Year—and to more light in our lives in 2026. ❤️

In 1990, Crayola "retired" several classic colors, including BLUE GRAY, GREEN BLUE, and an all-timer, RAW UMBER, replacing them with "fun" new colors like VIVID TANGERINE and WILD STRAWBERRY. We didn't know it at the time, but this was the beginning of the end. In this essay, I will

Don't really want the tech CEOs at the top of my posts. So I'll bump them for this afternoon's sunset.

This, for me, is THE image of 2025.

As I reflect on the year in politics, I reserve my most incandescent rage not for Trump, his Republican enablers, SCOTUS, or the MAGA right, but for the tech billionaires who have sold their souls to this regime. Those grotesque inauguration photos are near the top of my I WILL NOT FORGET list.

Just finished AMERICANAH (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie). Loved it. I wonder if it's too late to shoehorn it into my top 5 for 2025 (I had already squeezed six books in there anyway)...

The open embrace of ignorance as an indicator of trust has gone hand in hand with increasingly coarse and insulting language directed towards the marginalized—"saying the quiet part out loud"—as a marker of in-group solidarity on the right. Can we reestablish public shame? I believe we can. 👍

A pet peeve: when an established scholar declares that they wrote their conference paper on the plane (or, worse, in their hotel room after a night of carousing). It either signals disregard for the enterprise or serves as a self-congratulatory boast about their own brilliance. Seems to me.

"Quiet quitting" by professors when it comes to AI and student writing is a serious risk. The temptation to give up (in effect) instead of devoting *substantial* resources (of time, energy, and emotional investment) to what can seem like an unwinnable fight is real. But it *is* the good fight.

Studying history and reading novels both get us out of our own heads, the first by helping us to imagine different worlds, and the second by prompting us to inhabit different subjectivities. Those who do neither are forever imprisoned in the here, the now, and the self.

I have been struggling to understand how Cal lost to Hawaii. But then it hit me: their helmets were EVEN BETTER. Look at these!

Frida Kahlo wishes all of you a very merry Christmas! ☃️ 🌲 🎨

I am irrationally excited about Cal's helmets for tonight's Hawaii Bowl. These are FIRE. I just don't see how we could lose with these helmets.¹ _____ ¹ Actually, I do.

My desk also has a name.

The SF Bay looking very Nolan wine-dark Odyssey palette at the moment...

The visual aesthetics of the *Odyssey* trailer are exactly what I expected them to be—dark, grey, brooding and bleak, washed out. It's an aesthetic choice! And signature Nolan, it appears. Anyway, I thought it looked great (a minority view, I realize). 👍

Archives. "Archival." THE archive. Ancient historians on the outside looking in, intrigued but excluded, a single tear running down our cheek.

Again on AI (sorry). Son's buddy just back from 1st term at UCLA. Looks like a bro but is a very serious student. Was accused of having used AI. Didn't, and proved it. But the TA and prof. were suspicious of him the rest of the class. It bummed him out (understandably). We have to be so careful!

In my intro lecture course this Fall (120 students, mostly first years), I attempted to deal with the AI problem as follows. On day 1, I tried to *persuade* them not to use it, citing IP and enviro concerns but mainly highlighting the risks to their *own minds* of "cognitive offloading." 1/4

The 18 year old: "Alien movies are so dumb. They never depict aliens the right way." Me: "Well, Ok. What do you think aliens look like?" 18yo: "I have no idea." Me: Me:

Hey, have you read such and such book? Read it? I haven't even *reviewed* it yet!

📚 My Top 5 Fiction Reads from 2025 📚 5. Alexandre Dumas, THE THREE MUSKETEERS. Not sure this is a *great* work of literature (not in the same league as THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, I think), but damn was it FUN. That works for me!

📢 New SCS Blog Post Jordan Rogers on the affordances and challenges of teaching ancient Mediterranean history in a department of History (instead of Classics).

📢 New SCS Blog Post Jordan Rogers on the affordances and challenges of teaching ancient Mediterranean history in a department of History (instead of Classics).

On choosing kindness. A short thread for academics.

Area Studies Centers at UNC shuttered due to insufficient "return on investment," unclear "metrics of success," and non-alignment with the chancellor's "priorities." One day (soon), we will look back on the miracle of the public research university and will scarcely believe that it ever existed.

Recent editorial exchanges remind me to broadcast: I maintain a small freelance editing practice, and will have some space free for new clients in the new year. I help writers both scholarly and otherwise, as well as institutional clients. A short description here: benwurgaft.org/editing/

I read a number of mean-spirited comments today regarding "mediocre white men" and the difficulties of the academic job market. I don't want to weigh in on the discussion itself, but would like to suggest that we try to extend to one another a little more grace. ❤️

Jane Austen never used "compute" as a noun, and neither should you.

In Los Angeles for the weekend. Came across a stand with LA TIMES newspapers. I was a little taken aback by how small and lightweight the paper is now. Honestly, it looked like one of those free weeklies that one sees in drug stores or on college campuses. 😬

📢 New SCS Blog Post Stephen DeCasien on ramming warships in ancient Greece and early China—a comparative history of warfare and technology on opposite sides of ancient Eurasia. ⚓️ @sdecasien.bsky.social

Flying Southwest this morning, which means I get one final experience of their brilliant¹ open-seating plan and clever² boarding policy before they change their system³ in January. _________ ¹ idiotic ² dumb ³ chaos

Stillness, quiet, and crystalline light on the Berkeley campus this morning.

Congratulations to James Ker, Andrew Laird, and Julia Mebane, this year's recipients of the Goodwin Award of Merit from the Society for Classical Studies! And thanks to Andrew Riggsby and the rest of the committee for their work!

📢 New SCS Blog Post Vanessa Stovall on the staging of *Tantalids*, a composite play drawn from Aeschylus' *Agamemnon* and Seneca's *Thyestes* (how can you not be interested in THAT). Performed at the SCS: Thurs. Jan. 8, 7:30-9:30 PM, Yosemite Ballroom (including a talkback with cast and crew).

Are you planning to attend or tune into our #AIASCS2026 panel on January 9th? We're collecting questions for our panelists in advance! If you've got a question, submit at our form: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

📢 AIA/SCS Annual Meeting Roll Call 📢 Who's coming to San Francisco in January? Declare yourselves!

Welp, I guess the conservative-MAGA alliance has proven durable after all. I attribute this to MAGA delusion and to the conservatives' total abandonment of all principle, the former due in part to misinformation, and the latter revealing the fundamental fraud at the heart of GOP-style conservatism.

The 8 Books of Thucydides, ranked (personal preference only!): 8. Book 8 7. Book 4 6. Book 5 5. Book 3 4. Book 1 3. Book 2 2. Book 6 1. Book 7

"Israel confiscates capitals, coins, and stone columns in Cisjordan and transfers them to an Israeli museum in occupied territory, arguing that this is to protect the historical patrimony of the region." I am not sure that Israel is owed the benefit of the doubt here.

Some shots of Guggenheim Bilbao (Summer 2024). Difficult to capture with photography. It's a building that has to be experienced -- including (NB) the equally remarkable interior spaces. A stunning work of architecture. Frank Gehry (1929-2025). RIP.

Yes, same -- as many of my colleagues also feel, and as a number of responses to the OP show. The problems are real and the longer trendline is troubling. But it's crucial that we not succumb to the "doom and gloom all the way down" narrative. Something good is happening. Let's talk about *that*.

"Saying the quiet part out loud" is quickly becoming an anachronism. When Trump's gutter racism meets with no pushback from anyone on the right—when, in fact, the dumb Fox guy is prompted to blurt out that "not all cultures are equal"—what's happening is that they're saying the LOUD part out loud.

⭐ The inaugural RAFFAELLA CRIBIORE AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING TRANSLATION from the Society for Classical Studies has just been announced ⭐ C. Luke Soucy, *Ovid's Metamorphoses* (University of California Press, 2023).

In an ideal world -- which is ours to make! -- an exam should be an exercise designed not for institutions but for *students*, to help them consolidate their knowledge and activate it in a way that facilitates deep learning. Isn't that . . . kind of the point? (re: "accommodations" discourse)

I conclude my survey of the ancient Med. world (this week!) w some examples of the uses/abuses of antiquity in the modern period. This book (by a Berkeley PhD!) arrives at an opportune moment. Curtis has done so much to document this problem on his PHAROS website. I'm preparing for a bracing read.

This annotated bibliography makes accessible a body of material that can seem forbidding to non-specialists and reveals how valuable it can be for our understanding of the Roman empire -- well beyond histories of the Jews, rabbinics, or ancient Judaism more generally. Super valuable contribution.

This had been the "trendline," to be sure, but this semester has been a striking break from this pattern. The students in my big intro survey course, mostly first-years, are *clearly* more engaged in all parts of the class. They're also the first cohort whose high school was not disrupted by COVID.