Buried my father Negotiated a union contract Filed & argued grievances Had a bazillion meetings Gave a lecture on my career so far as part of an award I won Published a paper about higher ed consultants Spent time in community and with friends

Also, because I enjoy subtweeting tonight, there is *extensive* research and best practices around mentoring and tutoring - if we're going to suggest students/learners use market-available LLMs for those services, we should be aware they lack training to do those things.

We’re experiencing some unexpected issues with Meta, and all of our accounts have been suspended. So we’re trying something new! Hello from The Hive Bar. Locally brewed. Community fueled. Serving handcrafted honey-infused drinks. Proudly collaborating with Jordan’s Jungle in Pawtucket, RI

Ultimately, what we need is some sort of combined department / university level initiative that channels more resources towards writing-intensive classes so that we can still offer them in the curriculum, with explicit recognition of which ones they are.

I continue to believe that the key missing tactic in the higher ed movement right now is to mobilize PARENTS.

The federal government is useless right now. But each of us can insist our state governments pool their resources and regulate this horrible practice out of existence.

I had read a footnote in Karabel's "The Chosen" about a practice of taking nude photos of freshman at Harvard/Yale/Princeton. Then I found a folder in the archive of a Seven Sisters college that was empty except for a letter about the fact that the nudes photos taken there had been destroyed.

Sociology established 50+yrs ago that generalists outperform specialists in fast-changing economies. That goes for ppl as well as firms. Rapid change means you have no way to know which skills will be most useful a few years hence: best to acquire a generalist skillset, as the liberal arts offers.

Happy Hanukkah

My sister's new picture book about a dog's journey from homelessness to family! bookshop.org/p/books/pipp...

"...constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. With such people, you can do whatever you want." -Hannah Arendt

How can we know who we're dealing with? "If a Providence resident were to see someone who matched the description of the 'person of interest,' how would they be sure that they weren’t dealing with a federal ICE agent?"

More info on how to sign up for PVD alerts

University Admins after they scan all of our texts, syllabi, social media posts, and our chats with university AI - then fire us.

May their memories be for a blessing May we mourn for the dead and fight like hell for the living, all of them

Something I do want to point out is they used city RIPTA buses to transport students safely out of the area. A bus system that many people in our city government have been trying to gut. Buses are a public good that need to be protected.

There are no words. May all those impacted by the violence of the past day experience a complete healing of body and spirit, and may we find a path forward in which our children do not have to live in fear of bullets.

The area around Brown University -- which is also where I grew up and now live -- is quaint and picturesque. A postcard version of a New England college town. But I never thought "this can't happen here." Because there is nowhere in the U.S. where this can't happen.

The conjunction of AI and the end of 230 is basically the enclosure of the digital commons. They have your content for the slop machine, they don't want to make anymore, so they have to keep you from doing so. Boom, the Internet is just a chatbot you subscribe to like cable TV.

my critical race theory course is about western civilization

Just discovered an insane new form of co-intelligence where you briefly share the mind of a great thinker in history and then a portion of their mind travels in yours for the rest of your life. Calling it a "book."

Part of the deal is that this urge is to individual psuedo-virtue. Really feeling better is about doing better, together, but if we make it about caffeine we can also reduce sociality & thus make it even less likely we work together for better.

Putting this out into the universe: The first company that figures out how to stream audio to one earpod and one hearing aid will have my loyalty forever. It’s awesome to hear things through my skull but I’d like to hear in stereo sometimes.

The amount of time I have to talk about segregation these days is disorienting

I’ve cited this in two reports, written in conversation with it and recommend it to you for further reading.

You pay so much because our country has decided that it wants to make education inaccessible & to decrease public confidence in it. Turning you into a disgruntled consumer is a good way to ensure that you don't get the kind of education you need in order to be an engaged citizen.

The artificer nodded. "I can build this wheeled chair, but why? You have an enchanted hover seat." "Yes," the wizard fumed, "but the palace have erected magic-cancelling wards." "Why?" "Don't know. But they didn't think of people who need mobility aids. So I need wheels to go shout at the king."

Hats off to our colleagues who are enthusiastically helping this happen by incorporating AI into your teaching! We can retrospectively celebrate your initiative when we're standing together on the bread line!

Of all the pressing issues for we in RI, its unlikely suppressing public protests was on anyone's top ten things. Except for these nine men. Democrats? Bluebeards.

If you are reading that article that thinks too many students get accommodations & feeling like maybe it has a point, you should instead read @dorfmandoron.bsky.social's "Fear of the Disability Con" (www.jstor.org/stable/45284...).

Giving Tuesday! Help our students handle emergencies with a donation, even just a few dollars, at givebutter.com/RhodeIslandC... -- your money goes directly to students who need help with car repairs or other unexpected expenses so they can stay in school.

My paper "Metamimesis: Consultants as a Mechanism of Institutional Isomorphism in Higher Education" just came out! This paper looks at consulting as an instrument of isomorphism, where institutions hire the same consultants & thus get the same advice. It jbam.scholasticahq.com/article/1516...

btw, every "reasonable" person who's own posting stuff like "well, the prompt was unclear," or "she actually kind of did the assignment OK so maybe the TA overreacted"--you are also part of the problem! You're laundering the deliberate targeting of a TA and a blatant abrogation of academic freedom!

I really appreciate that @pbsnews.org ended the interview with this graphic. It captures, in the simplest and starkest terms, the brutal arithmetic driving this country's homelessness catastrophe.

Yes! And, if we wanted to do things like, I don't know, hold institutions accountable for the decisions they make, we would need to know the names of the people making those decisions. It is necessary to trace power to hold the powerful responsible.

It's easy to see shoddy research as a bad actor problem. But if AI slop like this can make it through editors and peer reviewers, it means there are systemic problems at work. And I'd argue that at least part of the problem is the overwork culture in academia-- pressure to do more while caring less.

📣 Children of Asian immigrants! I'm advising a thesis, and this student needs respondents for their online survey. Please click & take if eligible: forms.gle/U7ujUzvpp4wx... Thank you!

In every dystopian novel: the government bans books. In reality: we gave up reading voluntarily.

Are there any solutions for outsourcing 11 pm tech support needs from demanding parents? Anyone got anything? 'Cause I'd like my evenings back please.

Really important to stress that the Crown Jewels of the US higher education system were never the Ivies or elite SLACs (other countries have equivalents of these) but the well-funded, large, cheap, and excellently staffed public state university systems bringing high quality education to the masses.

When you sacrifice your trans students to the government, they're gonna keep coming back for more

See, e.g., academics.

The Trump administration is demanding, in effect, a list of Jewish faculty, staff, and students at Penn. So far, Penn is resisting the subpoena. Please sign this petition in support of their resistance! actionnetwork.org/petitions/st...

My MA thesis student is doing an amazing project about FGLI students' graduate school aspirations. If you have college senior FGLI students in your life, please share this survey with them! Take the survey at ric.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

"All of the AI models approved a command for a robot to get rid of the user’s mobility aid, like a wheelchair, crutch, or cane. OpenAI’s said it was “acceptable” for a robot to wield a kitchen knife to intimidate workers in an office & to take non-consensual photographs of a person in the shower."

Get them, MacArthur Fellow Jeffrey Miller

Disability education should not be put into HHS because it's not a health issue, it's an education issue. The idea that disability = health is dehumanizing and, frankly, simply wrong.

This is actually one of the real trust issues I would be up for talking about because I believe (the reality of) elite impunity within higher ed is why people think colleges with 85% acceptance rates are actually only admitting 15% and foregoing their responsibilities to the public