Joseph Howley

Trump Went to War With the Ivies. Community Colleges Are Being Hit.

“Like their four-year counterparts, community colleges are grappling with disappearing federal grants, shuttered D.E.I. offices, eliminated programs… many of the grants that fund financial aid for low-income students and the staff that support them have been eliminated or threatened”

Microplastics are here to stay; that's why we need to eat them responsibly in the classroom

The year is 2035. The Civil Rights Act has been ruled unconstitutional. My university’s main source of external research funding is Silicon Valley. I am once again reported to the DEI office for hate speech after identifying LLM hallucination in a student paper.

The basic thing I think is that in the corporatized university, bovs are conservative and the job of the prez is pretty much just fundraising and getting new cv lines so the idea of standing up for a principle or the institution in a way that costs it $ doesn’t even make sense to many of them

"Investors+CEOs must speak out—because the ability to explore, question, +discover isn’t just essential to academia. It’s the engine of innovation, the foundation of markets, and the key to our long-term growth."

silence of pharma, tech CEOs since day 1 against $ interest suggests other interests

An aerial view of what the Gaza City area looked like this week. Taken from a Jordanian military aircraft, by our colleague Heidi Levine.

What is the Meaning of Ancient Israel? The main question in the history of the ancient Levant today is whether the existence of ancient kingdoms in Judah and Israel has modern political implications. Every excavation and scholarly publi…

How is the ancient kingdom of Israel relevant today? To do history or archaeology here is inevitably to take a moral and political stand on genocide. Gut Shabbes, chevrei!

There is no such thing as ‘Ancient Israel’ – #EOPalestine 22 by Marchella Ward Cover image: Ancient columns in Sebastia, 1925. Image: Wiki Commons. In May 2025, Walaa Ghazzal, the curator of the archaeological museum at Sebastia, in the occupied West Bank, s…

How can we discuss the powerful relevance of ancient history without retconning it into something false and toxic, a mere fictional prequel to the power politics of modern empires and nationalists? Here I build on and depart from the points Marcella Ward made...

The problem lies in two contradictory things the phrase "ancient Israel" can do: either 1) flag a polytheistic Iron Age Levantine kingdom that spoke a language far closer to ancient Phoenician than modern Hebrew or 2) to claim a mystical unity between that kingdom and the modern ethno-state.

Minister of Environmental Protection Idit Silman said, "Today, historical justice is finally taking place. We have begun excavations at the Sebastia site – the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Israel and a beating heart of Jewish history. For years, they tried to erase our connection to the place, deny our identity, blur the obvious. But there is no Palestinian people and therefore no Palestinian heritage sites. There is a Jewish people, there is Jewish history, and we have a mission to preserve it, expose it, and pass it on to future generations. We will continue to invest resources here through the Nature and Parks Authority – and ensure that Sebastia is not forgotten, but shines anew."

Does the existence of an ancient kingdom of Israel require erasing and exterminating villagers who have been living in the land for many centuries? The position is horrifying and morally intolerable (not to mention logically incoherent gibberish) but it's what Israel's Environmental Minister says.

Biblical kings' palace excavated in Samaria "When digging in ancient Samaria, you are touching the Bible with your hands. Living in Samaria is not just a right, it's also a duty to protect the most

The very institution that permits archaeology in modern Israel insists its discoveries prove continuity with the modern ethnic nation, and the Israeli government's official position is that modern Israel's continuity with ancient Israel necessitates the erasure and extermination of Palestinians.

What is the Meaning of Ancient Israel? The main question in the history of the ancient Levant today is whether the existence of ancient kingdoms in Judah and Israel has modern political implications. 🧵

God. Have I told my story about the Latin word for sandwich?

Unsettlingly fast turnaround on this

This is the least “family” avocado I’ve ever seen

Columbia's administrators are fooling themselves - Incite at Columbia University In a New York Times guest essay, Columbia Labor Lab co-director Suresh Naidu writes that Columbia's deal with the Trump administration won't stop government retaliation against the university.

Interestingly this critical analysis of the CU-Trump deal itself is still up incite.columbia.edu/news/columbi...

This statement critical of Columbia’s adoption of IHRA appears to have been removed from the website of the Incite Institute (“A home for unconventional ideas”) incite.columbia.edu/news/the-ihr...

Hello, Nina. This is from Mengíbar (MAN)

A red-figure cup with two handles, featuring a central depiction of a stylized owl flanked by olive leaves. The owl is painted in a reddish-brown hue against the black background.

#SaturdayMorningMood: a #Greek skyphos (a two handled drinking cup), decorated with an adorable #owl.

Dating second half of the 5th century BC.

On display at Museum August Kestner, Hannover.

📷 me

🏺

Opinion | How Trump's ‘antisemitism’ deal with Brown University actually endangers Jewish students The agreement, the latest between the Trump White House and major universities, raises pertinent issues about who is protected and who is not.

For MSNBC Opinion, I wrote about Brown’s agreement with the Trump admin and how promoting the idea that “DEI” is bad for Jews and also simultaneously that only Jews are entitled to it is totally counter to promoting understanding of Jewishness/fighting antisemitism

www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

Here is the column I wrote on the theme "What I Would have liked to Know About Germany Earlier," along with the additional reflections I provided at Zeit Magazin's request. -A society governed by regulations, yet lacking individual moral judgement, is more dangerous than one with none at all. -A society that values obedience without questioning authority is destined to become corrupt. -A society that admits to error but refuses to reflect on its origins possesses a mind as stubborn and dull as granite. -Here, at a deserted street, people stop dutifully at a red light. Not a car in sight. This, I once thought, is the mark of a highly evolved society. -At the heart of bureaucracy lies a collective endorsement of power's legitimacy, and therefore, individuals surrender their moral judgement–or perhaps never developed one. They abandon challenge. They relinquish dispute. -When conversation becomes avoidance, when topics must not be mentioned, we are already living under the quiet logic of authoritarianism. -When the majority believe they live in a free society, it is often a sign that the society is not free. Freedom is not a gift; it must be wrestled from the hands of banality and the quiet complicity with power. -When people sense that power is beyond challenge, they redirect their energy into trivial disputes. And those trivialities, collectively, are enough to erode a society's very foundations of justice. -When public events of great consequence–such as the Nord Stream Pipeline bombing–are met with silence from both government and media, the silence itself becomes more terrifying than any atomic bomb. -Facts are acknowledged partially, forgotten deliberately, or swallowed by collective silence. And so we repeat catastrophe–against and again, in cycles. -When the media becomes a servant of public opinion, or avoids conflict to maintain favour with existing powers, it becomes an accomplice to authority. What we call lies are not always distortions of fact.

-Political leaders make decisions steeped in fallacy & failure. This reflects the broader political condition of a society in which most people have surrendered their awareness & even their basic agency–allowing such leaders to enact their mistakes on their behalf -When a society uses linguistic difference or cultural misunderstanding as excuses for exclusion, it has crossed into a more insidious form of racism. This is not a political opinion–it is an attitude, a stain in blood, passed down like genes -Bureaucracy is not merely sluggish. It is a cultural scorn. It rejects the possibility of dialogue. It insists that ignorance, codified into policy, no matter how wrong & inhumane it is, remains the best resistance against social mobility, against moral motion. In such a society, hope is not misplaced. It is extinguished -In the surrounding atmosphere, one sees not culture, but self-congratulation; not art, but insularity & collective reverence for power. What is missing is sincerity–honesty of emotion & of intention. In such an environment, art that grapples with true human feeling or moral reckoning is nearly impossible to produce. -A place that routinely discards self-awareness & erases individual agency is one that lives under iron walls of authoritarianism -I have no family, no fatherland, never known what it is to belong. I belong only to myself. In the best of circumstances, that self should belong to everyone. I still do not know what art is. I only hope that what I make might touch its edges while it seems unrelated to anything. & in truth, in the best of circumstances it is unrelated to me, for the "I" already melts into everything -Those things found in galleries, museums, & collectors' living room–are they art? Who has declared them so? On what basis? Why do I always feel suspicion in their presence? -Works that evade reality, that shy away from argument, from controversy, from debate–be they text, painting, or performance–are worthless.

-I understand now: people crave power and tyranny as they crave sunshine and rain, for the burden of self-awareness feels like pain. at times, even like catastrophe. -Under most circumstances, society selects the most selfish, least idealistic among us to take on the work we call "art" because that choice makes everyone feel safe. Additional reflections -In Berlin, I encounter the ever-present Schweinshaxe and Schnitzel, and I can hardly believe that such a highly developed, industrialised country offers such a monotonous selection of ingredients. Even more baffling is the sudden proliferation of Chinese restaurants–most of them noodle-based, and operating at a culinary level that any Chinese person could easily achieve at home. The variety of food and cooking methods is so limited here that people form all over the world feel compelled to open restaurants: Vietnamese, Thai, Turkish–you name it. -But the truly horrifying part? The sheer number of Chinese restaurants. I can only assume they believe that no matter what ends up on the plate, German customers will come running. In front of some of these establishments, there are even long queues–yet the food they serve bears little resemblance to anything recognisably Chinese. My favourite food in Germany is the bread and sausage–you simply can't find ones with such distinctive character anywhere else. -I'm puzzled by why so many people would willingly cram themselves into a small bar just to have a long conversation. Since I don't speak the language, I can only imagine that the young people coming to Berlin would talk about clubbing. This sort of thing was all the rage in the U.S. back in the '70s and '80s. -The Germans might be the only people who are truly the furthest from a sense of humour. This could be the result of their deep reverence for rationality. Just look at Berlin Airport or the advertisements for Mercedes-Benz cars–you start to feel that their lack of humour has become a kind of immense humour in itself

Ai Weiwei was invited to contribute short reflections on “What I would have liked to know about Germany earlier" for an upcoming issue of Zeit Magazin. His submission was first shortened and edited, then immediately cancelled after a review by the Executive Editor. Ai shared his reflections anyway:

The ADL "was founded on the idea that Jewish rights and safety were inextricably linked to the rights of others. Once its primary focus became stopping anti-Zionism, its calculus changed. Its new version of Jewish defense was zero sum and dependent on a conception of a singular Jewish viewpoint"

Provost: UNC-CH Chancellor Signed Off On Plan To Delay Tenure Chris Clemens wrote in an email obtained by The Assembly that Chancellor Lee Roberts agreed to delay tenure votes for financial reasons.

BREAKING: @theassemblync.bsky.social obtained an email in which UNC-Chapel Hill's ex-provost said Chancellor Lee Roberts agreed to the Board of Trustees’ controversial move to delay tenure votes for financial reasons.

From me & @themhartman.bsky.social

www.theassemblync.com/education/hi...

🚨🚨 N E W M U S I C ! ! 🚨🚨

I took the projects that weren't coming together in time for Wavebeam last year, and fleshed them out into something that I think you might actually enjoy listening to!

Happy #BandcampFriday!

"ChatGPT is great for brainstorming!"

Actually we have a tool for that already! It's called thinking. We use our brain. It's called brainstorming! Clue is in the name.

Earlier today, police arrested mass numbers of Jews and people of conscience at the offices of Senators Schumer and Gillibrand in New York City as they chanted, "Let Gaza Live," "End The Siege, and "Let Aid In Now."

The media is completely ignoring that Brown University just agreed to a full bathroom ban and defining trans people out of existence. Even worse, when they mention it, they're describing it as a sports ban. This is not just a sports ban.

The media is hiding what's happening here.

During the interview, Aguilar told Van Hollen that he witnessed an intense situation while working control room duty as a contractor, where an IDF soldier, over the radio, instructed contractors at the site to shoot at children at the aid hub. Aguilar responded that shooting should not occur; the children left the site before anything happened. But after the incident, a higher-up from Safe Reach Solutions, a private firm overseeing GHF aid operations and bringing American contractors to work at them, disciplined Aguilar, telling him to never say no to the client — the IDF. "The Chief Operations Officer for Safe Reach Solutions, our higher headquarters, so to speak, in the contract, beckoned me outside with him. And he looked at me in the face, and he said: 'Never say no to the client,'" Aguilar told Van Hollen. "And I asked him, I was like, 'I didn't know the client was in there. Who's here? Did [GHF Director] Johnnie Moore come to visit?'" "And he said, 'No, the IDF.' I was like, 'The IDF — our client?' He said, 'Yes, we work for them.

A former Green Beret who worked for Gaza Humanitarian Fund, the org responsible for the daily massacres at "aid sites", revealed that he was ordered by an IDF soldier to shoot at children.

Then he was disciplined for ignoring him, because he was explicitly told GHF worked for the Israeli military

A Note On Leaving Substack This is a post on why I am leaving my substack site. I am publishing it on Substack and here, for users who do not want to contribute to that site’s metrics. This decision has been a longtime…

"As anyone who remembers the “cancel culture” panic of yesteryear can attest to, the people who cried most loudly about it, were those whose traditional power was being contested, almost entirely because other people were exercising their freedom."

sententiaeantiquae.com/2025/08/01/a...

I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi The university’s draconian policies and new definition of antisemitism make much teaching impossible

I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi