Narrator: they will not

Does my university’s announcement this week of a new Associate Provost for Corporate Engagement constitute as a contribution to the intellectual diversity I keep hearing places like Brown currently lack?

Will Harvard will seek “viewpoint diversity” in the Business School and some of the most popular undergraduate majors in Arts and Sciences, including Applied Math, Computer Science, Economics, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Psychology, Statistics, and the various Engineering and Biology programs?

Anna Zieglerin and the Lion's Blood – Penn Press In 1573, the alchemist Anna Zieglerin gave her patron, the Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, the recipe for an extraordinary substance she called the lion'...

www.pennpress.org/978081225089...

Pop-up marketing event for Googe Gemini AI on the Brown University campus.

Does anyone know anything about how these pop-up campus events promoting Gemini AI work? As in, who pays what to whom? Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Brown paid Google to come to campus today to hand out free water bottles and tell students how to cheat on their finals and make revenge porn.

Banner for Gemini on campus event on athletic fields at Brown University

Kiosks for Gemini on campus event on Brown University campus

How about this: Get OFF my campus!

four professors speaking in front of a full audience in a fancy room

Cross Talk: Labor #brown2026 @kawulf.bsky.social @sethrockman.bsky.social 📍 @jcblibrary.bsky.social

Service Economy - Claremont Review of Books Service Economy

My book got reviewed in the Claremont Review of Books.

claremontreviewofbooks.com/service-econ...

Surely it does! But for me, the industrial mediocrity of this version is precisely what makes it a nostalgia food. Someone once brought homemade gf to one of our seders, and while I was grateful for the effort, it was all wrong because it wasn't gross (and yet still delicious)

A jar of gefilte fish on a kitchen counter

The fateful day has arrived!

Thoreau’s Pencils - The American Scholar How might a newly discovered connection to slavery change our understanding of an abolitionist hero and his writing?

Do you know this recent essay? It is super interesting (and teachable): theamericanscholar.org/thoreaus-pen...

Cross Talk on Labor Join Brown 2026 and the Discovery Through Dialogue project for Cross Talk: A Whole Campus, Distinct Disciplines Approach April 3, 2026, at 5pm:...

Next Week: 4/3 at 5PM — Join Brown 2026 and the Discovery Through Dialogue project for "Cross Talk: A Whole Campus, Distinct Disciplines Approach." The first Cross Talk takes on an enduring aspect of the human experience: labor. Moderated by @sethrockman.bsky.social. Please register to attend!

Queer Possibilities in Revolutionary America The revolutionary era was one of surprising possibilities to express same-sex attraction and gender nonconformity. At the time, gender was widely understood not as an inner truth but as a social pra...

"Queer Possibilities in Revolutionary America" as part of the America 250 Founding Feminists Series at @msmagazine.com msmagazine.com/2026/03/23/q...

I have taught, now, for 35 years. And yet each class still involves weeks mulling how best to approach a topic; hours prepping; spontaneous in-class pivots; mistakes, doubt, and recommitment; and wonder at students' insights. Teaching is such a messy & profound art, done among people, always anew.

Wish I hadn't just done that.

Editorial | Penn has an AI problem The Daily Pennsylvanian Editorial Board argues that Penn’s choice to embrace AI is detrimental to the institution of higher education. 

Editorial from our student newspaper:

"In its tireless support for AI, the University has essentially endorsed shortcuts and the outsourcing of academic thinking"

Feel like there was also a Diff'rent Strokes episode where Dudley called Arnold "Benedict Arnold"

Peter Brady Plays Benedict Arnold in the School Play YouTube video by The Brady Bunch

Asked my current Am Rev students if calling someone "a Benedict Arnold" was a viable insult. They were about 50-50 on this, compared to what must have been like 100% viability for those of us alive in the late-70s and early 80s thanks to things like this Brady Bunch episode.

Happy 250th.

Yes, yes, yes-- this is what I've been waiting for.

An Open Letter to Georgetown Students, In Response to Recent Announcements about "Generative AI" Image source: Bibliothèque nationale de France An Open Letter to Georgetown Students, In Response to Recent Announcements by the University about “Generative AI” Dear students, As you know, in …

Solidarity with Emily Tucker and her open letter to students. Tucker writes, "But the great thing is, you don’t have to go along with this, and I urge you not to. You can refuse to use the chatbot. You can tell your professors that you don’t want them to use it or to require you to use it."

An important thing to know about these civics/ western civ centers. They have faculty lines and are hiring historians - regularly without any input from or even knowledge of their history departments.

The MA in Gender & Sexuality at the University of Birmingham is a rare thing: a chance to explore cutting-edge interdisciplinary research in queer, trans, feminist, and gender studies, with a practical placement built-in. #queerhistory #womenshistory
www.birmingham.ac.uk/study/postgr....

Have you, or a NYT reporter, spoken to any Brown faculty about this?

Brown is the cover image of the story and then never mentioned in the story. Very curious to hear which colleagues here are self-censoring.

Of course, @adamrothman.bsky.social wrote an article about abolitionist humor! I was disappointed to learn that the abolitionist repertoire hinged on sarcasm, rather than puns. I was hoping for puns.

Rebecca Brenner Graham: Dear Miss Perkins YouTube video by Brown University

many thanks to @brownhist.bsky.social for this video promoting DEAR MISS PERKINS (@kensingtonbooks.bsky.social) just in time for #womenshistorymonth www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsxx...

Looking forward to talking to @tricksterprince.bsky.social about my new book Keeping Hold: A Cultural and Social History of Possession at 1pm today!

Always. There must be dredging! Thanks for this!

"Basically Church Type Stuff:" Old Timey Christian Americanism and the Rhizomatic History of American Fascism Or, the crucial but sometimes fuzzy distinction between a) being a White American Christian, and b) being influenced by a violent, White Christian Supremacist variety of conspiratorial, antisemitic Am...

I finally finished writing a long, winding piece on "America's distinctive political culture of vernacular fascism." It's about white country music, AM radio, paramilitary camps for Klansmen in 1960s Colorado, TPUSA, and a former chair of the OR GOP. rightlandia.ghost.io/basically-ch...

A crude articulation of an indisputable fact. As @salemelzway.bsky.social and Jason Resnikoff argue @laborlawchajournal.bsky.social (2024), automation discourse is always about positing the inevitability of clear human-- and thus, political-- choices about how to organize work in a given society.