And like others responding to this post, I too seem to be circling back to similar themes after all these years.

To the extent I did one it was about Marsillo Ficino and the strong likelihood that he was suspected of necromancy. This wasn’t a senior thesis, but it was the most serious piece I wrote as an undergraduate.

Reading about the concept of “invincible ignorance” and I can barely maintain focus.

I'm not going to provide details, so don't ask. Nevertheless:

No, it is not OK to have one hallucinated cite. No, you can't delete that and expect me to take the rest of your work seriously. No, absolutely not. It should never ever happen.

This is a singularly stupid argument.

The Public Scholar publishes one week from today. Please consider pre-ordering and/or asking your library to order. Authors really need your pre-orders to make a book go.

I think it's a useful book! More importantly, so do real scholars and writers!

www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

Zimmerman: In March of last year, about two months after President Trump returned to the White House, I traveled to Washington for a meeting of American education scholars. The opening panel focused — appropriately enough — on Trump's threats to university funding, free speech on campus, and more. Then it was time for questions, and I raised my hand. I said that I agreed with all the critiques of Trump, but I also wondered what those of us who work in higher education might have done — or not done — to bring about this awful moment. Could we use it to look in the mirror, I asked, and not just to circle the wagons? Dead silence. Then another member of the audience spoke up. "I just wanted to say that I was deeply offended by Professor Zimmerman's use of the term 'circle the wagons, which connotes a hateful history of Native American displacement and genocide," she said, as I remember it. More awkward silence. Finally, the moderator of the panel interjected with something along the lines of: "Thank you for reminding us that we need to be careful in the language that we use to describe others." So the panel began with a diatribe about Donald Trump's assault on free speech and it concluded with a warning to watch our words.

I'm afraid that I'm unconvinced that this illustrates anything resembling a serious problem with academia

This is it. This is the most important part of my job as a professor.

Reminder: the first vaccine mandate in the history of what can be called the American armed forces was handed down by George Washington during the Revolutionary War.

Because Washington wasn't a goddamned idiot.

Again: young people might not realize that this kind of repugnant racism was unacceptable to express publicly, *not that long ago*.

Essentially, the idea that there is both value and justice in maintaining a society characterized by cultural diversity. That's as opposed to ranking societies in terms of some notion of relative quality so that some are superior and some inferior (which the manifesto explicitly says we should do).

I'll hand it to Palantir. Attacks on "pluralism" make it very easy to identify the bad guys.

It has been a hoot teaching students about Martin Luther in the midst of the conservative Catholic discourse of recent days.

The disappointment of realizing a talk you thought would be attendable online is in-person only.

Just saw a TikTok from an undergrad talking about how AI has totally ruined the group project for those who actually want to do the work (and also not be held responsible for those who don't)

It's hard to articulate the level of anger & rage I have about watching this happen. I first saw weev doxx people I love *TWENTY* years ago. I spoke to founders of multiple social networks about the risk of these people over 15 years ago. I wrote about it all a dozen+ years ago. They let it happen.

It was the day for Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Witch-hunting in class today. Always a good time.

Not the first time I’ve heard that.

At its core, the political economy of scholarship was never supposed to rely on ~$50k from a smelting fortune. Institutions have hollowed out their support, the feds have done the same, and all that's left is inadequate private funding.

Let's not forget to tip our hats to thinly veiled "great replacement" theory when we're looking for explanations on this one.

"There's just war doctrine!", he proclaims, failing to actually note whether anything about the war in question actually lines up with it.

Tulip bulbs. Just replace "AI" with "tulip bulbs" and that will tell you where we are.

Ah yes, the market, that timeless driver of human decency and endless wellspring of meaning and fulfillment. As we all know, the highest form of human life is the profitable life.

Tell me how generative AI without regulations is a good thing, again?!?

Imagine a big button in your brain that triggers that early wonder and pleasure, before all the crap. Mash that button.

I think that past person, and their wonder at whatever it was, is often buried under all the struggle, anxiety, and other crap that makes up a career. But, man, the shear pleasure of rediscovering it cannot be overstated.

I suspect deep inside the brain of most scholars is the memory of the moment when they first discovered the thing that sucked them into their field, of who they were in that moment. We ought to try to keep in touch with it.

Opinion | Don’t Use A.I. to Do This

Always read Colson Whitehead and never be a hacky motherfreaker who can’t do the work that makes it all worth doing. 🎁 link!

You know the worst part of having a religion department close? When faculty in other departments and administrators express total amazement at stories like these: “Can you believe this? I’ve never heard of anything like this. How is no one talking about this?”

You just sort of look at them and nod.