If anyone needs a gift link to read it, this one will work until June 4. authors.elsevier.com/a/1mxkbV6mk%...

Oh thank you!! ❤️

On the last day of the legislative session, the Alabama Legislature passed a bill restricting faculty governance, instituting post-tenure review & creating BoT curriculum oversight. If these kinds of self-inflicted wounds haven't hit your state yet, let this be the 500th warning that they will.

Response to HB580 The national AAUP organization rests upon three pillars: academic freedom, faculty governance, and higher education as a public good. As a defender of these values, the UA chapter of the AAUP must …

HB580 is being fast-tracked and is expected to be voted on TOMORROW. Read our full statement against this bill below, and then please consider calling your rep and telling them to vote NO.

alabamaaaup.com/response-to-...

A person wearing a hat saying Make America Think Again holds a sign saying No Kings But If We Had a King, Would We Want One Quite This Stupid?

Via @andreadotweb.bsky.social: A protestor at a "No Kings" demonstration in Tuscaloosa, Alabama holds a sign on March 28, 2026. The Tuscaloosa protest drew 700 people. (Andrea Tinker/Alabama Reflector)

text over a solid background that reads DEFEND A FREE & FAIR PRESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA

On March 23 student staffers at Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six filed a lawsuit against the University over the abrupt closure of the magazines in December, arguing that their First Amendment rights were violated. Let’s ensure these students still have a platform for free expression on campus.

HB580 came out of nowhere, had a hearing scheduled during spring break when legislators knew faculty would be away, and was moved out of committee with no discussion on Wednesday. That's not okay.

There’s been a lot of chatter about the dangerous SAVE America Act. TL;DR: Republicans still don’t have the votes. Here’s the state of play. 🧵

Update: The faculty senate/tenure bill passed out of committee with no questions from the members. I thought this was a public hearing with comments, but it wasn't.

Polaroid style photos of all authors with their books

We have had so much fun these last three days and truly could not do the work we do without our brilliant team of authors. See ya'll next year in Milwaukee! #4C26 @kellyritter51.bsky.social @timothyoleksiak.bsky.social @joshuabarsczewski.bsky.social @jennfishperson.bsky.social @ambuck.bsky.social

New title! We're excited to announce the publication of Visualizing Captions and Subtitles: The Embodiment of Accessible Multimodal Communication, by Janine Butler! Butler visualizes captions & subtitles as instruments of
connection that embody how we communicate through multiple modes.

PREORDERS available now - Digital Literacies for Human Connection: 25 Ways to Engage Students in People-Centered Digital Practices. @mettalrose.bsky.social @ambuck.bsky.social, Rich Shivener, and authors of 25 chapters have pour our heart and soul into this book. Check it out at #4C26!

Book cover of Composing with AI, featuring a robot with text and images of documents in the background

We're excited to launch our latest book, Composing with AI, edited by Nupoor Ranade and Douglas Eyman. This collection provides educators with frameworks & strategies to integrate AI responsibly into composition practices, emphasizing critical literacy. ccdigitalpress.org/composing-wi...

Via Andrea Tinker: Alabama’s two Democratic U.S. representatives want the University of Alabama to reinstate two student magazines suspended earlier this month. https://ow.ly/sOi350XKBro

On Dec. 1, university officials told student journalists at Nineteen Fifty-Six, a magazine celebrating Black student culture, and Alice, a magazine centered on women’s fashion and lifestyle, that their publications would be shuttered immediately.

Over the last year, you could have given into anger and despair.

Instead, you’ve organized in the largest numbers this country has ever seen to reclaim the power of the pro-democracy majority.

We could not be more thankful for you and everything you’re doing to defy Trump’s agenda.

Elon Musk’s Worthless, Poisoned Hall of Mirrors How X blew up its own platform with a new location feature

X (RIP Twitter) is "a Russian nesting doll of bullshit." www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Really important to stress that the Crown Jewels of the US higher education system were never the Ivies or elite SLACs (other countries have equivalents of these) but the well-funded, large, cheap, and excellently staffed public state university systems bringing high quality education to the masses.

Study: Racial voter turnout gap in Alabama in 2024 was highest in two decades | Alabama Reflector Restrictive voting laws that were introduced in many Republican-led states such as Alabama may be to blame for the divide.

60% of eligible Black voters turned out in Alabama for Obama in 2012, and it hasn't been that high ever since.

Here's an earlier story from @rchapoco.bsky.social at @alabamareflector.com with the data and potential reasons.

alabamareflector.com/2025/03/18/s...

How Alabama Power kept bills up and foes out to become one of the nation's most powerful utilities | Alabama Reflector Lax to nonexistent regulation by Alabama state authorities has meant Alabama Power customers pay some of the highest bills in the nation.

"Among households with extremely low incomes, Alabamians pay nearly a quarter of their earnings for electricity—the highest percentage in the country." alabamareflector.com/2025/11/04/h...

There are so many terrible things about SNAP funding being willfully throttled, and just one of them is being an org trying to figure out how to help without being overwhelmed.

Higher Ed’s Rush To Adopt AI Is About So Much More Than AI | Defector If you don’t work at a university or have college-age kids, you may have missed the flurry of news stories and social media banter about AI adoption in higher ed, stories which have snowballed into th...

This is one of the best analyses of the total grift and scammery of AI in education I’ve seen, and it is a MUST Read: “Higher Ed’s Rush To Adopt AI Is About So Much More Than AI - defector.com/higher-eds-r...

Our ability to comprehend daily events has been corrupted by a toxic info environment where political & attentional dynamics distort & manipulate our “collective sensemaking” processes. Our “official” sources are now products of that same environment. Reality fractures, along with the social fabric.

Authoritarianism Feels Surprisingly Normal—Until It Doesn’t Life in Venezuela was deceptively mundane. Then everything collapsed.

"Living through the rise of a dictatorship just means inhabiting a space that is gradually shrinking. There’s no point in resisting, not at first. You just make do with whatever breathing room you still have—until you lose that too."

As a historian of computing, can confirm, this is exactly what happened

🔥 “If I’m willing to drive three hours to come here and talk, I’m gonna ask you to get off your phone and listen to what I have to say.”

This from @tressiemcphd.bsky.social hit me over the head like a mallet of truth. This is the thing. This is what I’ve been trying to warn people about perfectly crystallized. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/o...

The US could see a 30-40% decline in new international student enrollment, resulting in nearly $7 billion in lost revenue and more than 60,000 fewer American jobs. www.nafsa.org/fall-2025-international-...

"As a college professor, watching the dismantling of America’s education system has been among the most discouraging events of my life."
We agree
@aaup.org @higheredlabor.bsky.social

Things I have searched for in the past week:
1. How do you get children to sleep in their own beds?
2. Are all 5 year olds sociopaths?
3. How to manage time out effectively
4. How to treat poison ivy

It’s been quite a summer.