Rafael Walker

This is madness. And, at a university where the provost is using dreadful phrases like "people who truly ‘visioned’ the potential synergies and multipliers in opportunities," the *last* thing they can afford to get rid of is the English department!

Proofs for the Cambridge History of American Gay Autobiography, which includes my essay on Whitman! As niche as the volume sounds, I'm sure it'll appeal widely—because who doesn't wanna read generations of gays talking about themselves, or, in Whitman's case, as I argue, artfully refusing to?!

Let me know, my dear, and I'll make the reservations. This probably will be our least-cynical meeting ever because I haven't felt this confident about our collective future since 2008.

I'm over here doing the jelly roll and everything else I can think of! I think it's time for you to make another NYC visit, and, this time, the wine and snacks are one me—especially since I may now be able to afford to live here! 🙌🏾

I can't tell you how significant it is that Manhattan went for our boyfriend Mamdani. When, in these streets, I found white, often straight finance bros rooting for ZM, I knew we had something. People are understanding that voting for their economic interests doesn't mean voting for their tax breaks

I am so thrilled—really! But how long do we have to keep saying that it's high time to vote Staten Island *off* the island! We just are not the same.

Tens of Thousands of White-Collar Jobs Are Disappearing as AI Starts to Bite Companies ranging from Amazon to Target are sending workers into an unwelcoming market.

Paired with this one:
www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...

How U.S. Billionaires Stack Up With the Rest of the World There are 3,508 billionaires on the planet. Americans dominate their collective wealth.

These two stories in today's WSJ make it clear that we all should be reading the Grapes of Wrath right now and make me all the surer about having cast my (early!) vote for Mamdani this morning.

This one:
www.wsj.com/business/bil...

Jobs | City University of New York

Our Black & Latino Studies Department is hiring a tenured associate professor in black and/or Latino queer studies (open discipline)! I'm so excited about this hire—excited enough to have agreed to serve on the search committee! Please spread the news. Baruch's great, and so is NYC!

Opinion | When Viewpoint Diversity Means Conformity Trump’s compact isn’t just coercive. It’s incoherent.

A clear-eyed explanation of the dangers to universities posed by the push for "viewpoint diversity," written by one of the clearest-eyed analysts of argumentation, Amanda Anderson.
www.chronicle.com/article/when...

And stay tuned for one more while we await the ad to come through!

Jobs | City University of New York

In BLS, we're hiring at the intersection of tech (algorithms, AI, etc.) and Black Studies.

cuny.jobs/new-york-ny/...

Jobs | City University of New York

Happy to announce that both my departments—English and Black & Latino Studies (BLS)—are hiring for TT positions this year!

In English, we're hiring in Anglophone South Asian.
cuny.jobs/new-york-ny/...

Remember that every IG photo you see taken on a busy Manhattan street was taken at the expense of people trying to get somewhere. DO NOT PRESS THE “LIKE” BUTTON!!!

The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker: 9780143122012 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books “If I could give each of you a graduation present, it would be this—the most inspiring book I've ever read." —Bill Gates A provocative history of violence—from the New York Times...

Surely, this is the worst-aging book of this century. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/302858...

Text from a book: “This is true of all of us except John and Candace, who are camp gourmets. They are the ones who taught me how to pack herbs like basil and tarragon so that they’ll keep fresh over several days and also how to carry eggs up a mountain, because a nice egg, soft-poached in boil- ing water over a camp stove, is handy meal booster. We never have wine to go with our meals because the bottles would be too heavy. Sometimes we have whiskey, but even when we don’t, or when the first night’s enthusiasm causes us to run out of it too quickly, we have other sedatives. We have the high, still mountain air, which, particularly on the eastern slope of the Cascades, grows tawny as the day tilts toward dusk. We have our exhaustion and all the miles we’ve already sweated now behind us. We have each other and a good year’s worth of conversation to catch up on. And, most importantly, we don’t have anything else: no screens to divert our attention when the conversation lags, nowhere else to be, no concerns apart from sore muscles and maybe the search for ground that is flat enough to accommodate a tent. Sometimes it rains and we hunker down and project our conversations through tent walls, searching each other out. Sometimes it’s clear and warm and perfect and we sit in a circle with our backs propped against logs or trees or our empty packs. And sometimes the bugs are too bad, or the ashes from nearby for- est fires, and the dinner party ends early in the hopes of better conditions to follow on the next night. I love this dinner party, which happens on repeat for about four or five nights in a row each year.”

Text from a book: “I make a lot of sacrifices — plane of enduring multiple cross-country flights in hiking boots— in order to secure my annual place at it. And I never regret the cost, though the climb can be arduous, the weather punishing, and, sometimes, when we emerge from the mountains via the wrong trailhead, I’m the one who gets stuck with the responsibility of flag- ging down a stranger’s car and hitchhiking back to the right one. (I have done this, quite recently, and it took a lot of crying to convince the person to let me ride with them—another sacrifice, of dignity in this particular case.) But each time I do it, I know that I’m seiz- ing one more link on a finite chain of possible moments. The oldest members of our little party are in their seventies. We will not be able to do this forever, so we have to do it now, to the best of our abilities. For “When shall we live, if not now?” asks Fisher.12 She is paraphrasing the stoic philosopher Seneca here, yet she is asking what is perhaps the most important rhetorical question about time of all time. When shall we seize and take that time for ourselves, if not in the short space of time that is to be found in a day—in this day, perhaps?”

My friend John died this morning.

I mention him in HANGING OUT and, in light of his passing, I can’t help but indulge in memories of our annual backcountry dinner parties.

💜

As I watch Cuo-NO’s campaign pivot to free transit for NYers who earn under a certain amount—essentially signing on to a program that exists already (peak desperation!)—I wonder afresh at the audacity of a person who had a big job, fucked up that big job, and thinks he should have another big job.

BLOCKED AND REPORTED

And all that they could find on Obama is that he wore a tan suit. 😔

I did not know that Bruno Mars has 16 Grammys.

Forgot about this moment in George Schuyler's 1931 novel *Black No More*, but whoa! 🤯

"You can't deport citizens, silly," Buddy remonstrated.

"That don't stop you from advocating it. This is politics, Big Boy."

Mamdani wins the primary with hearty support from the Jewish left, cross-endorses with Brad Lander, wins the Upper West Side, wins Dan Goldman's district, gets Jerry Nadler's endorsement

The NYT:

Call me a pessimist, but I'm not rejoicing yet. If Cuomo runs as an independent, he gets both his initial Dem supporters (a considerable number) AND Republicans.

Congrats! 👏🏾

you know shit's bad when kathy's cursing

Oh, God! Looks like DOGE missed a spot!

TFW the IRS mails you a certified letter because you owe them $5.23. 🙄

OMG, Bruce Robbins activates full BEAST mode in this interview!