Jim McGrath

she’s the best!

Boston Globe article screenshot “We’re feeling her absence right now. She’s the liaison between the governor’s office and the community,” said Alberto Vasallo, president of El Mundo Boston, the region’s oldest Spanish-language newspaper. Bowser’s case, he said, is “a real-life example of how unfair some of these measures are.”

Boston Globe article screenshot: “Yves Cajuste, who has reported for InfoHaiti since 1999, said he has covered state government for decades, working with the administrations of Deval Patrick, a Democrat, and Charlie Baker, a Republican. Under Healey, Bowser would bring state officials to his outlet and facilitate access to the State House. “For a small media outlet working with the government, when they want us, they will come to you, but when you want them, it’s not that easy,” said Cajuste, who is based in Waltham. “Thanks to Valentina, it’s really easy.”

I continue to be proud of Val’s positive impact on life here in Massachusetts and this article does a nice job of highlighting that.

She was a link between the governor and immigrant communities amid Trump’s crackdown. Then she was sidelined by it. - The Boston Globe Valentina Amaro Bowser, a multicultural media director for the Healey administration, is caught up in the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

No immigrant should be enduring the inhumanities they are currently experiencing across the United States. This profile of my dear friend Val is just one of many stories about these cruel and xenophobic times. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/01/m...

and my giant face in the link preview because I was too lazy to find a Simpsons screenshot. It is Saturday after all!

Higher Ed Reading Roundup (February 2026) Hi! I miss writing and sharing writing related to my higher ed work online sometimes. Here are some recent thoughts that draw on recent readings and experiences. I continue to appreciate Eryk Salva…

new blog post with a roundup of recent reads and thoughts on AI, graduate pedagogy, and academic labor: jimmcgrath.us/teaching/hig...

"What remains urgently in dispute are the boundaries of utility: what usefulness means, for whom, and under what conditions? At what cost and from whom are benefits derived, and how are benefits and risks distributed?"

Stochastic Flocks and the Critical Problem of 'Useful' AI Acknowledging that AI systems are advancing does not buy into hype, it sharpens the precision of critical thinking about their impacts, says Eryk Salvaggio.

Helpful article to contextualize the wave of agentic AI hype we are currently experiencing (in the U.S. press at least). Particularly appreciate the perspectives on "computational solutionism" and "scaling resource extraction and waste." www.techpolicy.press/stochastic-f...

photo of Jazmina Barrera’s The Queen of Swords

loving The Queen of Swords so far www.catranslation.org/shop/book/qu...

who thinks 30% of the country lives in New York? did they exclusively interview New Yorkers lol

that was wild

And I do still have "skin in the game" in DH and PH. I'm teaching two (!) graduate level summer courses on these topics. But these questions do sometimes keep me up at night as I think about the values that I hope my courses provide and who those values are legible to (students, employers, peers)

I guess I am happy to talk with students about how my work in DH and PH prepared me for my work in instructional design on my terms, but sometimes I don't love it when places I went to school look at me and go "see, that mountain of student debt and stress was worth it, current students!"

I continue to have a hard time navigating the idealized institutional versions of digital humanities and public humanities that get rigorously defended in places like Bluesky (often by tenured folks) and the realities of labor, precarity, and economics that so many DH and PH graduates navigate.

screenshot from text appearing in blog post linked to in message. Text reads: "Can we have a candid conversation about outreach efforts beyond the people in this room or people who already find “public humanities” something they can tangibly support in explicit ways? Can we move away from stories we tell ourselves about our continued importance and value and move towards concerns in sectors where principles, projects, and activities we align with “public humanities” are under attack, at risk of defunding, but also not legible or resonant in ways we desire? How might data related to impact (or lack of impact) in certain sectors raise questions about methodology, staffing, funding, expertise? Who is doing this work better outside of the phrase “public humanities” and why don’t they value that particular term? Let’s not just simply claim them as evidence of the importance of public humanities. If we truly care about expanding and solidifying our field beyond cloistered and increasingly dwindling employment positions, what can data tell us about what priorities we need to set over the next five or ten years?"

I've been thinking about how Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance was legible as a kind of public humanities work, but at the same time our graduate students aren't entering a world where people are excited to hire them in particular to do that work. jimmcgrath.us/blog/public-...

We also talked a bit about the legibility of terms like "public humanities" and "digital humanities" beyond academic contexts. DH and PH methodologies are valuable, but the legibility questions continue to resonate for students interested in working beyond higher ed institutions.

Got asked to beam in to a graduate-level Public Humanities course last night to talk digital public humanities. Students had great questions related to:
-Collaborative dynamics w/ community partners
-AI's intersections/implications
-Student labor in course contexts
-Professional development for MAs

is this why everyone is talking about digital humanities today over here

(1/11) If you live in NY, you’ve probably started seeing a new warning: “THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA.” This mandatory disclosure went into effect late last year, and it’s the first attempt by a US state to grapple with a new generation of surveillance pricing.

photo of three books: Pedro The Vast, The Queen of Swords, and We Are Green And Trembling

the Brookline Booksmith’s transnational literature section took all of my money yesterday

Opinion | OpenAI Is Making the Mistakes Facebook Made. I Quit.

“the company is building an economic engine that creates strong incentives to override its own rules” www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/o...

it is also funny (and perhaps also telling!) that Altman doesn’t use his own tool to fine-tune his talking points in public appearances. he seems to hope that AI hype and the boosters in the room will clarify his hand-waving about “things”

It makes sense to pilot and assess AI use-cases in specific state workforce contexts. Unfortunately, the rhetoric and the cost model here seem to prioritize rapid adoption over careful assessment that centers the needs, values, and ethics of state residents and state employees.

Healey rolls out ChatGPT-powered AI assistant to help 40,000 state workers - The Boston Globe Massachusetts plans to make the digital tool available to all 40,000 employees in the state's executive branch.

“It’ll be everything from small things, like dealing with communications with state residents, writing things, reviewing proposals to new things…” -Sam Altman claiming that the new Massachusetts ChatGPT workforce rollout will be used for “things” (tellingly vague) www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/12/b...

saw my first “why don’t you ask an AI chatbot for help with that” response to a listserv question today. an even worse version of the “let me Google that for you” snark tbh

totally. most of our campus community is less interested in integration as an inevitability

Craftivism in a Crisis: Making the Humanities Matter When It’s All ... [/assets/images/header_craftivism.jpg] https://www.quinndombrowski.com/blog/2026/02/10/craftivism-crisis/ This is a write-up of a talk I gave at CESTA on January 29, 2026, with an epilogue covering...

I wrote up the talk I gave at CESTA a couple weeks ago, on how we're overdue on changing the narrative about what digital humanities prepares students for. It's not fallback jobs in tech, it's getting involved in your community in moments of crisis. And craft helps build those skills. #DHmakes

No, AI Written Romance Novels Are Not Inevitable The New York Times interviewed two authors who claim AI is the future of romance novels, who coincidentally also sell courses about how to use AI to write romance novels.

i got so mad about this article that i blogged about it aftermath.site/ai-romance-n...

fingers crossed! our office is definitely not advocating for deals with vendors right now lol

I am finally doing some big non-AI projects here (AI is still lurking in the shadows of them but not at the center). Stay strong!

Which is not to say that the study isn't useful in other ways! For example, it is helpful to laser in on particular disciplines and to see what types of course activities are explicitly referenced and what references change over time re: AI course contexts.