Courtney E. Thompson

They want to go back to a time when college was only for wealthy White men. Because that will make the rest of the population easier to manipulate with misinformation and easier to force into unpaid care roles (women) or underpaid manual labor jobs that remain as more jobs get AI-ed (men).

Im epileptic.
Im a historian of disability and medicine.
Ive taught eugenics histories for over a decade.
This ad is the perfect example of how certain kinds of eugenicist discourse about genes have been normalized, and I will be using it in lectures.
It is not a made up controversy.

Yes but nobody cares about educated people losing work

It's important to note here that we're not just talking about faculty & university staff. 100s of U.S. colleges are in towns or small cities where they form the major industry & lifeblood of the community. Loss of students -> loss of rent $, restaurant $, bars, bookstores, gaming stores...

Suggested for you Follow ... More than a dozen slavery displays in Philly, including at Washington's former home, have been flagged for a Trump admin review. Thirteen items at the President's House Site, which illustrates the paradox between freedom in the new nation and the ongoing horrors of slavery, were among those flagged for review.

I don’t think there is a day that goes by that I am not reminded of an old teacher’s admonition: “If the only history that interests you is the history that makes you feel good about yourself, you are not interested in history; you’re interested in propaganda.”

Jewish people constituted 0.75% of the German population in 1933.

Portrait of Margaret Rossiter from the Cornell STS homepage. https://sts.cornell.edu/margaret-rossiter

Margaret Rossiter, whose #histsci scholarship revealed structural inequalities affecting #WomenInSTEM, has passed away. Dr. Rossiter was co-founder of @historyscience.bsky.social’s Women’s Caucus & namesake of a prize honoring work on the history of women in science. May her memory be a blessing.

The US economic model it's offering to the world is fartcoin, sports betting, and natural oils, the Chinese economic model is high speed rail and solar panels. Americans have rejected Geist and their country won't survive it

It's crazy how much AI is like the your worst coworker.

Doesn't do their job right, steals your shit, isn't funny, and in the end you still have to redo all their work and for some god knows what reason your boss loves them and never fires them.

Many of our incoming international grad students are having their visas canceled weeks before the semester starts. They are deferring, but who knows what will happen. We're scrambling to cover their courses, which might get canceled. It's a mess, and this is only the beginning.

The US could see a 30-40% decline in new international student enrollment, resulting in nearly $7 billion in lost revenue and more than 60,000 fewer American jobs. https://www.nafsa.org/fall-2025-international-student-enrollment-outlook-and-economic-impact

Devastating for universities & local economies. It’s incredible that admin who have long focused on attracting international students have not been better able to articulate the travesty of this development in terms of cross-cultural collaboration, international reputation, & economic bottom line.

The problem is far bigger than Jeffrey Epstein | Rebecca Solnit Treating the scandal as an aberration misunderstands the global epidemic of violence against women

"One of the reasons the epidemic of violence against women is so unacknowledged is because cases like these are talked about individually, and often treated as though they are shocking aberrations rather than part of a pervasive pattern that operates at all levels of society."

Ms. Belsky said these kinds of suggestions helped the company create its first billboard campaign aimed at college students. “Can you quiz me on the muscles of the leg?” asked one ChatGPT billboard, posted this spring in Chicago. “Give me a guide for mastering this Calc 101 syllabus,” another said. Ms. Belsky said OpenAI had also begun funding research into the educational effects of its chatbots. “The challenge is, how do you actually identify what are the use cases for A.I. in the university that are most impactful?” Ms. Belsky said during a December A.I. event at Cornell Tech in New York City. “And then how do you replicate those best practices across the ecosystem?”

Weird how the strategy is to get everyone using it and then figure out the use cases. Seems inverted. 🤷🏿‍♂️

These numbers are mind-blowing. TLDR: If you wreck higher ed, you wreck the economy for regular people (not billionaires) two ways: education is unaffordable/limited, and vast amounts of foreign currency doesn't get spent in the country. #highered

[quoting a tweet by fractalcounty that reads, “today I learned that there are actual people irl who get genuinely upset if they catch you using chatgpt. like they view it as a serious moral failing in certain circles”]

If you're using AI to write essays, eulogies, a text to your wife, I do think less of you as a person. Ceding your mental and creative abilities to a machine is an embarrassing thing and people should be ashamed to admit doing it in public.

Aerial photo of the destruction of Gaza City by Heidi Levine

This photo of Gaza City had to be illicitly taken during a Jordanian food drop because Israel has threatened to cancel drops of any photos are taken.

I actually think it’s a good thing that there are people who devote their working lives to studying something that may only be of interest to a small number of people, who get on here with great excitement and say “I nerded the heck out of this for three years, I’m proud of me, read my article!”

Advertise your account with a gif

At the airport, observing the extent to which humans are terrible at listening comprehension.

I do not want Dem versions of their worst operatives. We should absolutely not remake the party in their monstrous image. We should be supporting and cultivating politicians like Mamdani who are the antithesis of the right, not aping them.

The solution to monsters isn't to make more monsters.

Readers, if you don't know, course evals are often a nightmare for women & faculty of color. I've had friends & colleagues report students commenting on their appearance, using racial slurs, & making all sorts of misogynistic comments.
white male = genius, non-white/female = pushing an agenda.

If masculinity is always in crisis, then perhaps the defining characteristic of masculinity is its instability.

One of my favorite questions to ask students during comps!

No AP News alerts, no Union-Tribune alerts or articles, no emails from UC either. I work at a UC and I would not know that UCLA lost all grant funding last night if I wasn't on Bluesky or in union group chats.

Self-preserving silence and general complacency are becoming more common.

Caring For Your Geriatric Millennial “If you are close to 40 years old, you are no longer a kid. Now the buzzword is ‘geriatric millennial.’ This definition, which has sparked controve...

"As your millennial ages from a young, virile mass-murderer of industries to a creaky, non-ironic user of emojis, you may be wondering how to best care for them. Here are some helpful tips on how to support this special generation as they navigate their sudden uncoolness."

From r/chatGPTpro, 25 minutes ago: chatGPT blocked at work Today my job decided to block the site. I use chatGPT to create SOPs (standard operating practices) and power points and polish my emails. What should I do now four question marks. It has 0 upvotes and 20 comments

help my job says i have to do my job what do i do help

I received the most misogynistic screed ever a few years ago in my evals, and I got really upset, but then...

I made enough of a fuss to admin that my college now screens out misogynistic/racist/homophobic/etc language from evals before sent to faculty or put on record.

Change can happen!

Born to be a food critic, condemned to be merely a food eater.