Leila K Norako

a close up of a man 's face with #schitts creek written on the bottom right ALT: a close up of a man 's face with #schitts creek written on the bottom right

Right?!

How, in this year of our lord 2025, is someone who is clearly old enough to write and send an email unable to sort out which thoughts of theirs should, in fact, remain inside thoughts? I can’t with this concern-trolling and academic elitism. It’s beyond gross.

What an absolute trash thing to say.

Imagine actually typing out either of those tweets and not feeling embarrassed. Universities are losing billions of dollars thanks to a Republican president, American science/higher ed is being decimated, millions will lose jobs/be impacted, and here you two are whining about your feelings.

Wow. Just … wow.

If your first response is to call the cops, you're on the wrong side. Period.

We also heard of some ruckus outside the plenary. Wonder what actions might be planed for the last day of the conference?

#MAA2025 #MedievalSky #AcademicSky #MedievalAcademy

Exclusive | Columbia Yields to Trump in Battle Over Federal Funding Columbia’s agreement is a significant moment in the intensifying battle between Trump and elite universities.

A sad day for Columbia and for our democracy. "Additionally the school believed there was considerable overlap between needed campus changes and Trump’s demands" has got to be one of the most depressing sentences ever written.

www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

Columbia Concedes to Trump’s Demands After Federal Funds Are Stripped The administration has moved to cut $400 million in federal funding to the university without changes to its policies and rules.

Columbia University has failed to defend academic freedom & freedom of speech & allowed a great institution to be bullied & extorted into submission by an administration hellbent on contorting higher education to their will.

The AAUP condemns this capitulation. We can & must fight back.

@govbobferguson.bsky.social Those “tough choices” better be wealth taxes and income taxes on earnings over 1million, Bob. I didn’t vote for you to furlough state workers and run us even further into the ground financially. Your furlough proposal will only recoup .075% of the deficit. Do better.

@govbobferguson.bsky.social and if I am struggling to make ends meet, I know for a fact that contract and non-TT faculty are struggling exponentially more. The last thing your under paid and financially strained state workers need is yet another financial kidney punch.

@govbobferguson.bsky.social More pressingly though, this part of your proposal will be disastrous for so many underpaid and overworked workers and their families while only recouping 0.075% of the 4billion deficit. Might I suggest you get the ultra wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes instead?

Instead of asking state employees to lose 1+ paychecks by furlough, please consider wage disparity. So many(myself included, even after nearly a decade of meritorious service and a 10% raise that came with tenure) are not earning a living wage — why are we not being considered for exemption?

You will also be negating any tiny merit raise offered over the next two years (my 2% raises amount to about 3k). Faculty morale among my division is cratering right now. asking us to take a pay cut, and rendering merit raises moot, will only make that worse.

I am making roughly forty thousand less than what is now considered the minimal living wage for a family of my size. If you succeed in imposing the furlough you’ve called for, you will essentially be taking the equivalent of a paycheck away from me and so many others who are already struggling.

@governorferguson.bsky.social I am a state employee and primary earner for my family of four. I started my assistant professorship in 2016 with a starting salary of $72k. I have been meritorious each of those years, and yet because of the state’s refusal to grant faculty actual cola raises 1/many

Dudes Without Heirs | Irina Dumitrescu Translations of Beowulf are often judged by their first word. “Hwæt,” that enigmatic monosyllable, became a stately “behold” or “lo” in older versions of

"The only thing the men of Beowulf succeed in leaving behind is war. Its poet knew this, knew that kings grow old and foolish, that splendid civilizations go up in flames, and that every victory is hollow and provisional."

@nybooks.com

www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

I wonder, as a result, if these same white men are quietly cheering on the implementation of these new new NEH strictures, and the ways they will continue to aid in diminishing heavily minoritized voices. 6/6

These men tend to make working environments seethingly hostile and exhausting for their women, queer, and BIPOC colleagues because they like being known as an ally to us but cannot handle a single instance wherein we take up space or offer perspectives that make them even slightly unsettled. 5/?

These white men, on the one hand, claim to be queer allies, anti-racists, and/or feminists, but insist that political/ideological scholarship is inferior to the scholarship that they do, which is (so they claim) divorced from “ideology” or “politics.” 4/?

And while I would love to lay the blame solely at the feet of those who voted for the utterly tacky Christofascist takeover currently underway, I cannot help but think — as I read these new strictures from the NEH — of numerous white male scholars I’ve engaged with over the years. 3/?

And while I would love to lay the blame solely at the feet of those who voted for the utterly tacky Christofascist takeover currently underway, I cannot help but think — as I read these new strictures from the NEH — of numerous white male scholars I’ve engaged with over the years. 2/?

From the NEH’s new applicant guidelines. As a friend observed, gender “ideology” includes heterosexuality, so technically no human-focused content is allowed for these HUMANITIES-focused grants. But we know that they won’t enforce their new rules in this way. We know who this will disqualify. 1/?

Monstrous Fantasies by Leila K. Norako | Hardcover | Cornell University Press Monstrous Fantasies asks why medieval romances reimagining the crusades ending in a Christian victory circulated in England with such abundance after the 1291 Muslim reconquest of Acre, the last of...

And speaking of the book, here's a handy link!

I truly cannot thank @mahinder.bsky.social and everyone at @cornellupress.bsky.social enough for their support of and belief in this beast of a project!

www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

I recently sat down with Miranda Melcher of @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social to talk about my book Monstrous Fantasies. Listen in if you're interested in hearing about why the intro begins with an erasure poem, or why I yell about American Sniper in the coda: newbooksnetwork.com/monstrous-fa...