Johanna Mellis

Thinking of my partner and her colleages at Ursinus College as their admins start the process of laying off more faculty and staff. Just ridiculous and terrible smh

From the tenure news back in February to this, in my inbox before 8am today.

It’s been awful on levels I didn’t think possible.

From the tenure news back in February to this, in my inbox before 8am today.

Faculty there started getting the bad news (separation agreements/offers to resign) today. I feel sick for them

a lot of people debating the merits of that dogshit essay meanwhile the girl’s mom is retweeting demands to ban all trans people from teaching at any level. it’s forest for the trees shit

Sorry to quote just using your question as a jumping off point

They framed it this way because they are in bed and getting money from pro AI silicon valley types and while I won’t say everything they do is bad it does cast a shadow on ALL their work. The media (as it is) is making choices

Trying to maintain my health & work boundaries so that my adhd & back/hip pain don’t make me collapse (the latter was awful Aug) feels damn near impossible.

there’s other stuff that I don’t feel like I can talk about openly, too.

It feels like a horrendous time to be an educator tbh.

Maybe ppl have said this…

also coinciding w/⬆️ in disability diagnoses in students - which isn’t a problem!

The problem is the lack of support. Our ODA office is great. & they are overwhelmed.

I am open ab being disabled to students. I am overwhelmed w/the gendered disability labor that keeps ⬆️

At Last, a Name for the Murderous Face in a Holocaust Photo

I’m not sure why AI is so prominent in this article since a historian did the lion’s share of the archival digging and AI simply verified what experts already confirmed.

At Last, a Name for the Murderous Face in a Holocaust Photo www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/s...

Last month, @theguardian.com framed this historical event project the same way; minimizing the years of archival work, the interviews etc it took to be able to do this.

Instead ‘AI solved this historical problem!’

bsky.app/profile/aust...

The dissolution if social media spaces really abets higher ed’s destruction. Just horrendous, devastating stuff is going down

Re: Ursinus—faculty will learn in a few weeks who is being laid off, just a few weeks after they announced the cuts smh

This is terrible. Ursinus College (where my partner works) spent last year planning a reorganization (they’re creating multidisciplinary “hubs”) only for its administration to announce layoffs this semester. I hope this isn’t in the cards for those working at Montclair State

Taking a survey. How many classes did you miss as a graduate student?

Absences due to personal/family emergencies, pregnancy/having kids, and injury/extended illness/hospitalization/disability do not count.

No need for details, just numbers. I'm just curious.

Did… all the universities hire the same consulting company last year?

WTF.

😭😭😭😭😭😭

Just awful. Solidarity.

So much of this going around 😭

Awful. We’re getting gutted everywhere.

i hope that a governor spanberger and a democratic general assembly uses its authority to discipline the university for its capitulation and to remove these BOV members who have decided that they work for donald trump and not the people of the commonwealth

Plaque at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum about “antisemitic and political violence.” It uses the same language to discuss Trump’s attempted & Charlie K’s assassination, but MN Rep Melissa Hortman was only “killed.”

USHMM doing some stuff.

Note that MN Rep Hortman was “killed,” not assassinated.

Plaque at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum about “antisemitic and political violence.” It uses the same language to discuss Trump’s attempted & Charlie K’s assassination, but MN Rep Melissa Hortman was only “killed.”

USHMM doing some stuff.

Note that MN Rep Hortman was “killed,” not assassinated.

Bullet point two literally means that I, a Holocaust historian, could not present any of my work ever.

Im in FL; the governor and state legislature forbids state spending for anything they deem "DEI" which includes anything remotely mentioning race/gender, including conferences and org memberships. Faculty are free to pay their own way, but often have to take vacation to attend.

FSU's policy refusing to fund presentations about structural racism is an example of structural racism. It will disproportionately impact marginalized scholars and deny them resources their colleagues can still access.

Third bullet point would restrict access to any conservative, "heterodox" or explicitly ideologically diverse conference, too--though we know that's not how it will be deployed in practice.