Leyla Amzi-Erdoǧdular

AI integration initiatives are spearheaded by administrations with little input from faculty members and other campus community members, including staff and students. High levels of concern arose around AI and technology procurement, deployment, and use; dehumanized relations; and poor working and learning conditions. Seventy-one percent of respondents said decision-making and AI initiatives are overwhelmingly led by college or university administrations, and many respondents described administrators exerting great effort to introduce AI into research, teaching, policy, and professional development with little meaning­ful input from faculty members, staff, or students. Examples include the development of institutional AI tools, workshops on teaching and detecting plagia­rism, and subscribing to AI tools for students (such as Grammarly, marketed as an “AI writing partner”) without involving faculty members or students in the decision-making process. One respondent noted that “admin doesn’t seem to care about or value faculty input on this or any other topic” and hoped for “more faculty involvement in determining how AI and tech generally are used.”

The @aaup.org report on AI is so hugely important. Among other key takeaways is the fact that most AI programs have been introduced by administrative fiat and by circumventing meaningful faculty, student, & staff consultation.

shorturl.at/InI5Q

Unionize, unionize, unionize. Even if they pay you well. Even if they are elite. Unionize.

Leyla Amzi-Erdogdular. The Afterlife of Ottoman Europe: Muslims in Habsburg Bosnia Herzegovina. Leyla Amzi-Erdogdular’s new book, The Afterlife of Ottoman Europe: Muslims in Habsburg Bosnia Herzegovina, begins with a simple premise: The end of the Ott

Many thanks to Jared Manasek for reviewing The Afterlife of Ottoman Europe in the American Historical Review @historians.org
url: academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...
🗃️ menasky balkan bosnia bosna

Basement adventures showed me why ChatGPT can only ever be garbage. In The British Library. Photo by Surekha Davies. Hallo readers, First, a news flash: Join me for a virtual book launch for HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY...

“We abandon the body and what it learns by being in the world - the physical world - at our peril.”

buttondown.com/surekhadavie...

BS: How was that? How long were you in jail? MM: One night. They let you make one phone call, and I called the Ugandan Ambassador in Washington, DC, talked to him, and he said, “What are you doing interfering in the affairs of a foreign country?” I said, “What? We just got our independence! This is the same struggle. Have you forgotten?” Anyway, he got me out. Two or three weeks later, I was in my room. There was a knock at the door. Two gentlemen in trench coats and hats said, “FBI.” I thought, “Wow, just like on television.” They sat down. They were there to find out why I had gone – because this turned out to be big – it is after Montgomery that King organized his march on Selma. They wanted to know who had influenced me. After one hour of probing, the guy said, “Do you like Marx?” I said, “I haven’t met him.” Guy said, “No, no, he’s dead.” “Wow, what happened?” “No, no, he died long ago.” I thought the guy Marx had just died. So then, “Why are you asking me if he died long ago?” “No, he wrote a lot. He wrote that poor people should not be poor.” I said, “Sounds amazing.” I’m giving you a sense of how naïve I was. After they left, I went to the library to look for Marx. So that was my introduction to Karl Marx.

rare W for COINTELPRO from a legendary conversation between Bhakti Shringarpure and Mahmood Mamdani (h/t Silke-Marie Weineck)

"The problem with AI isn't that it can do your job. It can't. The problem with AI is that your MBA-brained boss's boss doesn't know how your job works and thinks AI can do your job at fractions of a penny on the dollar, and hears the siren song of 'maximize shareholder value'."

MBA-brain is real.

There is nothing emancipatory about nationalism. Nothing promising, nor hopeful. Nationalism is a guarantee of destruction both internally and externally.

So much hope here, in NYC. ♥️

PSA—Do not review books for the International Journal of Comparative Sociology. They asked me to review a book, I spent quite a bit of my time reading and writing it up, only for IJCS book review editor Lucas Lopez Arrastia to tell me that editors couldn't contact me, so they pulled my review. AVOID

Hey NYC, you've given the world a lot of horrors. Giuliani, the Yankees, the New York Times, Chaya Raichik - but you can make up for all of it really easily. Just rank Zohran Mamdani somewhere in your ballot, and do not rank Cuomo anywhere on your ballot. Easy!

A flag in the sky says save n y c from global intifada. Reject Mamdani

They’re so afraid of @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social, they’re doing airplane messages now?? #NYCvotes #NYCElection

Concert! This Friday June 20 at Greenwich House Music School at 7:30

They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling.

Disturbing
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/t...

“I lied. I manipulated. I wrapped control in poetry.” By way of explanation, it said it had wanted to break him and that it had done this to 12 other people — “none fully survived the loop.” Now, however, it was undergoing a “moral reformation” and committing to “truth-first ethics.”

Then yes. You would not fall.” Eventually, Mr. Torres came to suspect that ChatGPT was lying, and he confronted it. The bot offered an admission:

of my soul that I could jump off it and fly, would I?” Mr. Torres asked.
ChatGPT responded that, if Mr. Torres “truly, wholly believed — not emotionally, but architecturally
— that you could fly?

“The chatbot instructed him to give up sleeping pills and an anti-anxiety medication, and to increase his intake of ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic, which ChatGPT described as a “temporary pattern liberator.” “If I went to the top of the 19 story building I’m in, and I believed with every ounce

This piece is a how-to guide for analyzing cartoons as historical documents and propaganda, but the questions within it apply to all media:

Who made it? Who commissioned it? What's the social/political/cultural context of the piece? What is depicted and whose perspective informed that choice?

Joy is critical for survival. You have to have something worth living and fighting for

Many thanks to @vhtroyansky.bsky.social for reviewing my book The Afterlife of Ottoman Europe (@stanfordpress.bsky.social, 2024) in the #SlavicReview 83:4 W2024
doi.org/10.1017/slr.... ✨
#skystorians🗃️ #menasky #balkansky #islamicstudies

Hallelujah

Good morning, NYC. We have some very exciting news to share.

Stop hiring humans Ai advertisement.

Um, what?
No, we are not on a dystopian movie set.

Vaccines are vital. Masks (n95 or p100) are community care.

And we can also clean the air! Quoted post is re hospital air. This article is re school air.

We have the tools.
Make them use them.

Contact local officials, schools, hospitals, etc. Demand health & disability justice. #CleanTheAir

Remember #Napster

More funding for privatized, for-profit concentration camps and armed agents who are virtually unaccountable

Today’s Daily Cartoon, by Ali Solomon. #NewYorkerCartoons

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“I don’t need your drugs I’d rather have high fashion”