Will Smiley

It would be excellent if he were just to say “we are never making a deal with this mafia-ass organization, we’ll see them in court if they really want to press this lawless bullshit further” but I notice that he did not.

I think this will be a majority sentiment among students who choose arts and humanities majors within 10 years. The problem is what happens in the meantime before sentiment shifts.

ChatGPT dissidents, the students who refuse to use AI: ‘I couldn’t remember the last time I had written something by myself’ Some college students are beginning to limit their use of artificial intelligence, so as not to hinder their own creativity, discipline and critical thinking

english.elpais.com/technology/2...

FWIW, I find arguments over this legal characterization unnecessary to taking the appropriate US policy action w/r/t Gaza:

Adequate humanitarian aid

Stop the fighting

Free the hostages

(And I’m an atrocity crime specialist.)

www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

It's infuriating that the entire political universe understands why this is happening - Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are gutter bigots whose nativist politics are rooted in their all-consuming hatred of nonwhite foreigners - but for some reason we can't say it out loud.

Reuters found that major US law firms, fearing political backlash, have pulled back or hidden pro-bono and civil-rights work that could conflict with the Trump administration reut.rs/4l8V7kE

Agree, though I think what we really, desperately need is a movie that runs from Appomattox to the Compromise of 1877. America needs an anti-Birth of a Nation to understand how the heroes of Reconstruction got
sidelined.

The scammers' key tool here is LLMs, pointing to a bigger problem: if professors in asynchronous online classes can't tell if their students are bots, then how can they possibly tell if the REAL students are submitting real work? Asynchronous online education may be unsustainable in the age of AI.

The scammers' key tool here is LLMs, pointing to a bigger problem: if professors in asynchronous online classes can't tell if their students are bots, then how can they possibly tell if the REAL students are submitting real work? Asynchronous online education may be unsustainable in the age of AI.

I'm no expert, but I kind of feel like a Grad rocket doesn't qualify as a "precise strike."

Mellon Foundation The Mellon Foundation makes grants to actively unlock the power in the arts and humanities that helps connect us all.

“American Academy of Arts&Sciences reports 96.3% of humanities grads age 23-32 fully employed. Earnings in humanitiess comparable to social/life sciences, job satisfaction levels too. A serious mismatch bw actual employment for hum grads +general perception."
www.mellon.org/voices/human...

A mirror image of the Russian Civil War, where the Whites all wanted to reimpose traditional hierarchies of various sorts, the broad center-left couldn’t decide what they wanted, and the Bolsheviks did have a unified vision.

Just stunning short sightedness here, total contempt for the mission of a university, and utter disrespect for the people who serve that mission. A university isn’t a business, but this wouldn’t even be a good way to run a business.

A fascinating and horrifying read about how little the UNC board and chancellor understand about the very basics of the institution they control.

LOL CPB only closed yesterday.

Man speaking to a wedding party as he fires a machine gun into the air above them: “guys, never forget that since I pulled the trigger 1 second ago, NO BULLETS HAVE COME BACK DOWN. It’s fine to do this!”

I'm so tired of hearing that we need to "teach our students how to use AI" when the thing they most need to use it is a critical-thinking skill set that can only be acquired by NOT using it. I'm tired of hearing that it's inevitable. I'm tired.

Alex de Waal:

“Starvation takes time; authorities cannot starve a population by accident.”

Moreover, distinctively in this case, “If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel decided tonight that every Palestinian child in Gaza should have breakfast tomorrow, it could undoubtedly be done.“

I’ve now read my alma mater Brown University’s agreement with the Administration, and I’m deeply troubled by numerous provisions in it, but the larger problem is that bargaining with lawless authoritarians gives them legitimacy. They aren’t settling a proper investigation, this was a shakedown. /1

Mellon Foundation The Mellon Foundation makes grants to actively unlock the power in the arts and humanities that helps connect us all.

If you think that humanities degrees are useless, you've adopted a falsehood:

"It is a well-kept secret of US higher education that undergraduate students who have earned a degree in the humanities fare quite well on the job market."

#Edusky
#HigherEducation

www.mellon.org/voices/human...

It is striking to me, as a simple state university professor, how it’s the Ivy League bigwigs whose academic freedom is being most directly attacked, who are often quickest to explain why actually it’s all not that bad. Tooze is at Columbia.

University leaders failing to trust academic scholarship that is directly relevant to the crisis they are facing is *chef's kiss* to the whole insane thing.

『パレスチナ戦争』の訳書もあるラシード・ハーリディーがコロンビア大学で講義ができなくなった、というオープンレターを投稿。

The Boy Genius Who Killed 14 Million Poor People What is the moral weight of responsibility for the men who carried out DOGE’s work?

"Before January 2025 there had been no—zero, zilch—interest in killing off USAID. It wasn't something Trump ran on. It wasn't envisioned in Project 2025. It was only once Elon Musk decided that USAID was evil that destroying the agency became a policy goal for the Republican party."

So for example John Podesta's hacked inbox would include a POLITICO newsletter saying a Republican said Hillary was sick. On social media that became "secret Podesta email reveals Hillary is sick." Just a total failure of the most basic interpretive skills you should get in history or English class.

This has happened over and over since the original Clinton emails: people fetishize a "secret text" that "says something," while ignoring all interpretation: who wrote those words, for what purpose, and why were they in that particular document and file, for what purpose, representing whose ideas?

Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump.

Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt.

Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:

Haaretz Magazine - 01.08.2025 Pasta is not going to help The famine in Gaza is at a critical stage. Tens of thousands of children are in severe malnutrition. Thousands of children are in extreme malnutrition. Food trucks alone will not be enough to stop mass death. Experts recommend 8 crucial steps:

Haaretz Magazine, today: How to stop starvation
1. Flood Gaza with Plumpy'nut, a special food that is essential for starving children
2. Send medical missions to all areas of the Strip
3. Allow humanitarian organizations full freedom of movement
4. Open water pipelines to population centers

First and last paragraphs: We, the members of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, issue this statement to state in the clearest possible terms: Israel’s war crimes in Gaza must stop. We say this as scholars of Middle Eastern studies, as those who deal, among other things, with Palestinian studies, Israeli-Arab relations, the social and political situation in the region, its history and its religious movements, and most importantly as citizens who live in this country. ... ... Over the past two years, we have struggled to maintain some sort of academic routine for our students, out of a sense of obligation to them and to God in the face of a series of hardships. Students have lost family and friends, have been absent from school for long periods due to extended reserve service, and many have been forced to study while dealing with the anxieties that accompany such a terrible war and its damage. Also in the name of our commitment to the safety and future of our students, we must not remain silent. As lecturers and researchers in the field of Middle Eastern studies, we are confident that a different reality can be promoted, a reality that is not plagued by messianic delusions and eternal war, and that does not encourage further acts of violence and dispossession such as are occurring in the West Bank. We call for an immediate end to the war in the Gaza Strip, the return of the kidnapped, and the sanctification of human life. and the dignity of the human person as a human being, and to turn to the path of political solutions.

Stop the war now
Statement by the Dept of Middle Eastern Studies, BGU

Israel's policy in Gaza and the type of warfare there exceed all human or legal standards. The Israeli policy is making Gaza a place unfit for living and has led to the killing of tens of thousands of innocent people....

1/

The Ben Gurion University Department of Middle Eastern Studies out with a statement that, had it been released by the Princeton University Department of Middle Eastern Studies, might have landed that department in federal receivership, or possibly decommissioned altogether.

I also still use an old pocket digital camera for archives, instead of my phone. It’s nice to be able to mount it on the stand if they have one, and to have a full phone battery at the end of the day