Dr. Gabriel Baker

Protest sign depicting American military landing at Normandy, with the caption, "OLD SCHOOL ANTIFA RALLY, JUNE 6, 1944"

#nokings

I can totally hear it!

Best Big City: Chicago Wins Award 9th Year in a Row Learn why Chicago was voted the Best Big City for the 9th consecutive year by exploring our vibrant culture, welcoming inclusion, and so much more.

BEST BIG CITY IN THE US 9 YEARS IN A ROW.

While critics try to paint Chicago as something to fear, the rest of the world knows the truth — this is the best big city in America.

These last lines are so telling. Aeneas' decision to kill Turnus (who is defeated and submitting) directly sets him against Anchises' assertion in book 6: Rome's destiny is "to spare the defeated and to conquer the proud" (parcere subiectis et debellare superbos). Virgil knew what he was about.

If Putin concludes that NATO’s incredibly weak physical and verbal response to his aerial assault on Poland is as robust as it is willing to get, then the disparity in wealth etc won’t deter him at all. How is this not blindingly obvious? VERY serious danger is now heading towards us at speed.

This is an excellent piece! Thank you for writing it and advocating for all of us so well. (I especially love this bit: "the greatest danger to university funding today is without a doubt a product of a catastrophic failure of public communication in his own field: medicine." Crit.)

How (Not) to Save the American University Why splitting the sciences and humanities—and appeasing Trump—won’t work.

So if you remember that frustrating article a couple of weeks ago at the Dispatch suggesting that we ought to save the sciences by shoving the humanities overboard, I wrote a response to the financial illiteracy and moral cowardice of that position: thedispatch.com/article/univ...

What’s Really at Stake if Fewer People Study the Humanities Why the University of Chicago’s decision to pause admissions to some doctoral programs hurts so much

The University of Chicago recently announced pauses on admissions to some of its humanities doctoral programs. Tyler Austin Harper argues that it's “a particular gut-punch to the humanities, not just at the university itself, but nationally and even globally.”

I think we should be using “real feel” for more things than just the weather, like you have a half hour meeting today but it’s at 4:00 so the real feel is gonna be up around 53 minutes, or you have 2 cats but they’re in a mood today so the real feel is gonna be somewhere between 7 and 9

We used Shelmerdine's Introduction to Latin in undergrad. I feel like maybe it tried to take a middle road between those two approaches (grammar-/reading-first). And I remember liking it a lot. But it was a lo(ooooo)ng time ago so I can't completely vouch for my memory.

What We Lost When We Lost the Greatest Generation It's no coincidence that democracy is backsliding in the US exactly eighty years after the end of World War II.

As we mark the 80th anniversary of WWII's end, I’ve come to believe that in losing that Greatest Generation, we are losing more than just the memories of combat. We are losing the memory and experience of what it means to fight fascism and authoritarianism. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/what-we-lo...

AI will never locate a new archive. It will never uncover a new source. It will never find a small, privately held collection of papers that can upend what we think we know about the past. It can never work with undigitized sources. It can never do real oral history or ethnography.

Regurgitating/remixing the work of historians ≠ doing history. But clearly the "researchers" who made this list had no idea what any of these professions actually do.

"You guys just memorize facts and dates right? And maybe speculate about ancient aliens? Prepare to be obsoleted!"

But because there's no giant 'history formula,' no tables of strange symbols (well, amusingly, there *are* but you don't work with them until you are much deeper in the field), folks assume that history is easy, does not require special skills and so contemptible. 12/

a good arbiter of how close we are to bad hybrid regime shit is if the political comedy shows start getting pulled for whatever reason

The tree at Sycamore Gap, on Hadrian's Wall in England.

American Teachers in Red States Are Walking Away for Good The predictable consequences of the right wing’s war on public schools are being felt as educators leave their communities—and their profession.

"We don’t make enough money to put up with this."

Last year, US K-12 schools opened short 55,000 teachers. Between book bans and political attacks on schools and educators, it's looking like this year's shortages will be even more dire, especially in red states.

newrepublic.com/article/1967...

To form a more perfect Union, implies as we all know, that we have something imperfect. But to strive for the betterment of all, and to keep striving no matter what - that is the American legacy. “For that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”

We strive still.

The article tries to determine when and in what circumstances acts of mass violence "became" atrocities for (some) Greeks and Romans. Link: ruhm.es/index.php/RU...

Many thanks to @badancient.bsky.social for suggesting my name to the editor, since otherwise I probably wouldn't have written it! (2)

New article out @ruhm.bsky.social! I examined negative reactions to mass violence (massacres, mass enslavements, etc) in Greek+Roman texts. Such reactions suggest that, for some ancient observers, acts of extreme violence were "atrocities"—i.e., transgressive, shocking, & worthy of condemnation. (1)

There are some things I miss about living in the Bay Area and some things I very much do not miss, but *that summer weather* is the thing I miss the most.

No problem! Tbh I wasn't 100% and had to double check it, too. A lot of this stuff is just rattling around my brain unmoored and half-remembered.

penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Rom...

It's in Suetonius, I believe!

Books? Authors, really. Larry Niven. Philip K. Dick. Michael Crichton. Stephen King. J.R.R. Tolkein.

My dad and I were different in so many ways, but my interest in genre fiction of all kinds is his doing.

But really, that just scratches the surface. Movies? All the OT Star Wars. Alien/s. Predator. Hunt for Red October. Star Trek II and VI. 2001.

Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Another good reminder from today is that to win this we all need to get used to cooperating with people we sometimes find highly annoying

I endorse this view.

Yeah this is an important point. One can find enough material for a survey class (Sources of the East Asian Tradition is a life saver) but have trouble finding sources that go beyond a broad sampling. I suspect that's at least partly due to my lack of familiarity w/the field and its resources.