Trump just announced that he always knew more about autism than the experts who‘ve studied it. Obviously, a very stupid, barely literate man with no expertise thinks he knows better than thousands of experts scientists. Not to worry, he has a man whose brain was partially eaten by worms to advise.

Crickets from our central administration, despite the overwhelming number of faculty we have on H1B visas. I can think of at least 5 in my own department!

Amongst the many, many other faults and follies of the party, perhaps the single most dangerous problem with the Democratic Party today is their incessant habit of reinforcing the idea that there is absolutely *no* principle that matters, no policy that is sacrosanct that they will stand behind.

The debate around what is or isn’t “cancel culture” really just obscures a simple truth that it’s BAD to be massively racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic and it’s GOOD to speak out against injustice. Some things are good and some things are bad and it’s okay to say which you think are which.

this may be the last nail in the coffin for US academia. generations of scholars from around the world have strived to get jobs at US unis, which has been a boon for US research and for US students. those scholars will not stay here if they cannot travel home to see their families. why would they?

One of the things to be remarked upon about the violence ICE directed at high-profile protesters in Broadview this morning—in full view of major media outlets—is what it says about the ICE violence that is occurring out of plain sight.

In other words: medical AI tools powered by LLMs produce the same epistemic injustice in clinic that women and minority patients already experience it's almost like these things recreate the same biases they're trained on, I wonder if anyone has considered that before 🤔

Anybody tune into the big press conference tonight that Dem leadership held to thoroughly denounce the fascist rhetoric & actions of the President & Vice President? (Just kidding, of course they didn’t do that)

one of the reasons these guys are just steamrolling right now is there isn't anyone in any kind of credible leadership role standing up passionately and effectively for civil liberties

In tenure letters the last few years I've been forcibly struck by how much service the women I'm reviewing are doing compared to the men. (Actual evidence backs this anecdote up - see below.) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Iconic opening lines of philosophy papers: "Isaiah Berlin was many things but he was not a black political theorist."

The question I try to keep in front of my students' minds is: how do you think the wealthy and powerful people who've developed these tools feel about students using them instead of thinking for themselves, and why?

100%. I'm sure the inboxes of every dep't chair, dean, and university president are currently full of complaints from students who dislike aspects of their classes. Those coming from right-wing students are coupled with threats that the next stop is DOJ.

The MSNBC commentator saying that most political violence has historically come from the left just once again showed how we suffer from failing to learn history. Lynching, pogroms, race riots, the political violence that ended Reconstruction, and against the Civil Rights Movement. Come on.

Great start to this university-wide town hall, where in the introduction the speaker said "although we are streaming this event we are not recording it" so people can speak freely.. As someone who is on the zoom, I can confirm they are very definitely recording this 🙃

I’m so sad and angry, man. The video in the article is chilling and exactly the type of action this WH hopes to see.

I would "ethical AI" edtech companies to stop pitching me. I despise you. I want you to fail. I want you to go out of business. I want you to sell all you own and walk the earth like Caine on Kung-Fu. This message will repeat.

This helps nobody and does a great deal of harm to junior/untenured scholars. What are we doing here?!

Several states are moving fast to remove barriers, but their power over insurance coverage is more limited than their power to permit pharmacists to give vaccines.…

Today I'm grateful to Elizabeth Camp for teaching me that when I don't understand passive aggressiveness and so obliviously respond to a speaker's literal meaning, I might instead be interpreted as engaging in the much more sophisticated practice of flat-footed pedantry

Class on Thursday was mind-blowingly great, so of course today's was an absolute train wreck, it's like a law of nature or something

and also self-destructive on the most narrow economic grounds: foreigners buying stuff in the US is one of our major exports! Foreign students spend $56 billion a year Foreign travelers and students are three quarters of the entire US trade surplus in services

It's time for today's game of "250 words is not a lot of words, actually"

"Environments where students with different views must talk to one another routinely... without distractions or prejudgments" Yes, we call those "humanities classes" and when students come out of them with more progressive views than they went in we are accused of brainwashing

Have just discovered that my college no longer has an office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Ahh the first day back in office after 9 months away, finally I can ponder life's truly important questions, like "why is my office an ice box?" and "why have I had to 2fa 6 times before noon?"

Military occupation of areas loyal to the political opposition is what you see in a civil war, kids.

👇🎯 The public isn't going to understand this, unless the presidents of R1 universities around the country <loudly> & <collectively> get out into the public square & start explaining this & calling out the existential threat to the entire 🇺🇸 university system. The silence is deafening right now.

I know profs don't like teaching intro courses but, as someone who's been directing academic programs for 10 years, I can say that if your introductory on-ramps aren't taught by passionate (semi-)experts, the rest of your mid- and upper-level program is f***-ed. The trenches are there for a reason.

If one were to, hypothetically, shift assessments to weigh class participation much more heavily, how would one prevent students from using gpt for class discussions without disadvantaging students with disability-based needs for laptop use? #AcademicSky #PhilSky

The fact that the thing we're calling artificial intelligence *can't do math* and yet we're jamming it into programs that successfully *have done math* for decades, then warning people against using the AI to do math, seems like an excellent summary of where we are.

the semester is starting soon and I'm once again baffled and furious that university presidents and boards/regents/etc in the US are not acting as if the entire system of higher education is under existential threat because, uh, we are

current status: taking periodic breaks from panicking about all the fascism to panic about the semester starting in 10 days

if you teach political philosophy, are you changing your course content/focus in light of *gestures at everything*? if so, how? #philsky #poltheory

🚨New peer-reviewed commentary that I co-authored with Chris Beyrer is now out in the journal Vaccine, gift link below We show the ways in which the MAHA & MAGA guys—RFK Jr, Makary, Bhattacharya, Prasad—have dismantled the US vaccine regulatory framework authors.elsevier.com/a/1lbDt,60n7... 1/5

#philsky #polisky who is doing the best work right now on the social and political economic impacts of AI?

I would like to submit a proposal for this conference my proposal: tequila

*Academics in early August

oster, who is already wealthy, is now going to make bank by spreading right wing lies about public health. congrats to the big names in our field who helped legitimize her!

This is the thing about student course evaluations—they were never originally intended as measures of teaching quality. That purpose was stapled onto them later.

literally every time I post something about refusing to read people's substacks and telling academics (ethicists and political philosophers in particular) to get off substack, I get multiple replies of "why?" this is why

Whatever you thought you’d be doing when fascism came knocking, you’re doing it now. That includes asking your readers to walk into a Nazi garden to read the stuff you write. That includes paywalling content on substack that can only be read if your readers pay your Nazi tithe. Get off of SS.

I had a student tell me once that what he was at CMU to do is learn how to work 70 hour weeks bc that is what it takes to deserve the big bucks and I gotta tell ya that broke me a little. Letting billionaire tech bros control the cultural zeitgeist has destroyed us.

I’ll always be proud of the students I know who protested the US role in the Gaza genocide. And I’ll always be pissed at the uni administrators who went along with vilifying and punishing them.

Reporter: How do you feel about the Columbia settlement? Dominique: Let me tell you about public universities in Republican-led states... I appreciate that I get the kicker on a lot of these stories because I'm the most grim www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

Yes. Saying "well, Harvard is fighting" while Columbia and Penn cave, while UVa and Indiana U. use Trump as cover for kneecapping faculty and student freedoms is evidence that Prof. Cottom is correct, not that the institutions have stood. It's a matter of degree now. And it's only been 6 months.

Hey #publichealth sky, did anyone happen to download the FDA's guidance on extended expiration dates for covid rapid tests before the FDA took them off their website (🙄)? Some Pittsburgh folks managed to secure several hundred from the govt to distribute, want to confirm how long they're good for

I'm going to try and publish my course materials on my personal website behind a password protected login. Anyone who came up with a simple, open source, plug-and-play template that profs can use for course schedules & assignments will be a low key modern edtech hero

But the parents are so lost they don’t even realize that it’s not the classes that changed your kid, it was separation from YOU. No gender studies, sociology, or history class could ever accomplish what three months of not having to live with your bullies will do.