I promised myself when I left my position at NEH that after a year had passed, I'd write something about my experience as an un/under/employed former fed. Here it is: halperta.com/public%20wri...

Powerful example of why just funding research on the basis of market interest is no substitute for funding research based on curiosity and social need: "With private industry largely uninterested in this kind of research, Dr. Antaki said he was grateful for government funding, despite the whiplash."

Always exciting to see Parker Library's collections being put in good use! And both manuscripts & early-printed books mentioned It is such a treat to be able to help to provide access to @parkerlibcccc.bsky.social, both in physical & digital forms. 🥰👏🎉

Data centers are guzzling California’s water. We have no idea how much. A new report warns that data center buildout is encroaching on California’s most vulnerable, water-stressed communities. The problem is, no one’s saying how much water they use

After five YEARS this western spicebush has finally flowered 🌱 #CaliforniaNativePlants

How do you deal with someone who takes over everything and just won't collaborate with other people? Even when she claims to be exhausted? This is for a volunteer organizer (not work)

The funny thing happening at this place is a critique of the Old English chatbots' syntax

Washington, DC: Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives Archivist (Assoc/Asst Professor), University of the District of Columbia

Maybe the creepy guy who uses his son's blood will become a patron of the arts. Dare to dream

Should be longer

The Gemini chat bot in Google photos is somehow even more annoying than I could have imagined

Work is underway on a planned ICE detention facility near Gilroy, prompting Santa Clara County officials to threaten legal action and raising new questions about federal detention capacity in Northern California.

I am very tired of the stupid-savvy 'oh you think politicians were honest before Donald Trump' take, like yes there has in fact been a qualitative change in the way modern american politics have been conducted that is largely attributable to him, and is bad.

just so; this is about the health of schools and not about the prestige economy of higher ed

Feeling overwhelmed with all of this. LISTEN. Another Louisiana resident (Marshawn is the only name we have) testifies against the state’s racial gerrymander, speaking truth to power up and down the hearing room and predicts how this story will end. Speak your truth, fight and believe.

The only good A.I. would be one that finds the phrase “pick your brain” in people’s emails and replaces it with something less gross like “get your input” or “hear your thoughts.”

Encouraging NPR segment this morning about school districts moving away from "Whole Language" snake oil and back to phonics to teach reading, which, to the shock of no one, has improved reading scores

Yesterday Kier Starmer announced Labour will nationalise British Steel, and save 2700 jobs. Today, the Uni of Nottingham put 2700 staff at risk of redundancy. This is just one university. Across the UK 15,000 higher education jobs need saving. Where is the rescue package for our universities?

🚨 #medievalsky 🚨 Middle English Dictionary update via FB: "In its 100-year history, MED has enjoyed periods of support, and periods when that support was lacking. It is about to enter on one of the latter. After this year...UMich will no longer fund ongoing editorial work and maintenance." 🧵

Parent of a chemistry major here to point out that the thing he loves about chemistry is actually learning about chemistry so that he can do chemistry! This is such a crap vision for all of us.

HMML is hiring a "Cataloger, West African Manuscripts," a full-time, benefits-eligible, remote position. Details: https://bit.ly/4njwcgW The Cataloger will participate in HMML's effort to catalog Islamic manuscripts recently digitized in Mali. This is a one-year, grant-funded position. #LibraryJobs

Fucking incredible. Play this for every university administrator in the nation. She says AI is the next “industrial revolution” and all the students BOO loudly. And then when she says “a few years ago, AI was not part of our lives” they all CHEER. She is shocked by their reactions. I am not!!!

May 8, 1926: A scene from “Old California Days,” a play staged at the San Gabriel Mission in the Golden State.

oh wow 😭

Members made this possible. Collective action requires the collective. Whether MLA, AHA, or another society, please join, engage, and participate. Together, we can accomplish some pretty amazing things.

Affirming that NEH's stated mission is explicitly to reflect diversity: "Congress did not merely omit the anti-“DEI” criterion DOGE applied; it affirmatively instructed NEH to support programs and research that “reflect the diversity and richness of our American cultural heritage..."

An important step in restoring the integrity of the NEH and affirming the value of the humanities in our society. I am very grateful for the efforts of my colleagues, our members, our collaborators, and our legal team.

I love some good news!! Our scholarly societies went to bat for us and won this important suit against DOGE and the Trump administration officials running the NEH. 🙏

Would love a boost for this post to get it to those interested in Arabic manuscripts please and thank you. #Skystorians #MedievalSky @soasuni.bsky.social @soaslibrary.bsky.social @soas-speccoll.bsky.social @soashistory.bsky.social @britishlibrary.bsky.social

Inventing a fake academic medal to award yourself and then realising you have to keep it going next year, so giving it (successfully) to Chomsky is actually wonderful, I respect it

the Dem tendency to malign academics as a cheap and lazy populist gesture, at a moment when Republicans are destroying academia while deploying cheap and lazy populist rhetoric, and while the main discernible Dem promise is not being Republicans, is neither great messaging nor great substance

The Azalea Woods at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library.

If you're in the mood to hear a tale about how we got to this point, the lessons we learned, and where we imagine the Global Medieval Sourcebook going next, do join us tomorrow for our CESTA talk, available on Zoom: stanford.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Powerful Dem voices are v scarce, so the educated/educating base of the party are desperate to elevate someone who might defend public education; honestly if he's still talking this way after everything since his leaving office, he will never defend public ed

Here's hoping Democrats look at that failure and choose to change

This is a roundabout way of telling people to expect to work until they die

Hello 20th c. periodical scholars! I'm looking for someone who'd be interested in writing a book review that would concisely cover several substantial edited collections. It's an ambitious project but also I think could be fun? DM me if you want more details! (or send your grad students my way)

Does anyone know what is going on with the Catálogo Coletivo de Marcas de Fuego? I haven't been able to get the website to load and haven't seen any information, so I hope the project is still available #bookhistory

To put this into perspective: Wyoming (~580k people) and California (~39 million people) have the same number of Senate seats. A state with the population of Fresno has as many Senate votes as all of California. If California and Wyoming had equal representation, CA would have about 133 Senators.

This is British Higher Education now. 👇

What does she know that you don't? Mary Magdalene, as painted by Carlo Crivelli. It's his day.

The hardest thing to convey about the late medieval thought world is the extent to which the sacred story was painted on walls, sung or read in poetry, in hagiographies, in statues, in sermons, etc. The notion of The Bible or even books of Bible stories isolated between covers was foreign to them.

Someone from Australia asked me how, in the wake of ChatGPT, universities would assure that, e.g., engineers had sufficient levels of expertise and I was like, uh, I’m not sure the US does “expertise” anymore

because a student did not know how to download a document from the online version of word they took a screenshot of the document and then submitted that and i am begging schools to help these students develop just a crumb more technological literacy

this would fix the website

And I was mad about the jingoistic design from the Bush era!

This is bad. It is made worse by regular people being able to place bets on whether the economy tanks using fake currency

I asked my Republican colleagues to explain why they want to ban the IRS from providing an online tool that ALREADY EXISTS to allow people to file their taxes for free. *Silence* Every Republican voted against @gluesenkampperez.house.gov's amendment to allow the IRS to offer Direct File.