Texas Tech University to Close Gender, Sexuality Programs All majors, minors, certificates and graduate degrees that are “centered on” sexual orientation or gender identity must be phased out and canceled, Texas Tech University system chancellor Brandon Crei...

“The decree is an escalation of the course content review policies implemented last year and reflects a trend of academic censorship at Texas public institutions.”

Instead of asking chatgpt, why not ask a librarian? You'll get real answers and they won't tell you to kill yourself.

Color photo of a magnolia tree in front of a fancier yellow brick bungalow with green clay tile roof. Tree is in full bloom, most of petals are on branches but many have fallen onto sidewalk and lawn.

Color photo of a large magnolia tree in full bloom, with crown connecting to crowns of nearby magnolias, in front of a midcentury three-story apartment building with a courtyard.

Color photo of a sidewalk, lawn, and parkway under the branches of three magnolia trees, big blossoms on the trees and petals on the sidewalk.

That's the stuff

Hugely important study on the (mal)distribution of resources in academia - must read. Perhaps no issue is more important right now, yet completely under-discussed 🗃️

My article on a vase with a kalos-inscription for Hephaistos has just been published, open access! In the article, I present a vase that's been largely ignored, but which gives us a new way to think about Hephaistos and his importance in 5th century BCE Athens.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The greatest indignity in this particular aspect of the neverending assault on the humanities is that the people leading the charge are incurious at best or in the case of this tool, aggressively stupid.

#ReliefWednesday - Sassanid relief depicting the triumph of Shapur I (r. AD 240-270) over Valerian at Naqsh-e Rostam, located 3 km north of Persepolis. It is the most impressive of eight Sassanid rock carvings cut into the cliff beneath the tombs of their Achaemenid predecessors.

A Dwarf Maiden on the Athenian Acropolis: Disability and Dedication in the Archaic Polis The study of ancient Greek sculpture is heavily influenced by the notion of the ideal and idealized human body, which has long been assumed to exclude notions of bodily difference and disability. I...

Our article on a dedication of a late Archaic representation of a dwarf woman on the Athenian Acropolis is out, and open access! This project began in earnest in Spring 2022, so it's been a long time coming and I am so proud of it. Share with your students!

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Hi everyone, I earned my PhD from the Department of Child Study and Human Development. My studies, research, and professional work focus on how positive media use among children and young people… |... Hi everyone, I earned my PhD from the Department of Child Study and Human Development. My studies, research, and professional work focus on how positive media use among children and young people ca...

DOCTOR Rümeysa Öztürk has earned her PhD!!

Feb 19: Disability and Dedication on the Archaic Acropolis The study of Greek art is heavily influenced by the notion of the ideal and idealized human body, which has long been assumed to exclude aspects of bodily difference and disability.

On Thurs, Feb. 19, I'll be speaking at UC Davis about my recent co-authored project, a late 6th century BCE statue of a dwarf woman that was dedicated on the Athenian Acropolis. A recording of the talk from the Fall is available on YouTube, if you're interested!

classics.ucdavis.edu/events/disab...

How White Elites Drained Ancient Art of Its Color The publication of “Chroma” represents an important shift by museums toward recognizing polychromy and its entanglement with white supremacy.

There is a fab new book out about the 2022 polychromy exhibition at the Met. It underscores 38 scholars who are the 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 experts in polychromy today. Coming out of polychromy retirement to review _Chroma: Sculpture in Color from Antiquity to Today_ for @hyperallergic.com (edited by Natalie Haddad).

Res Diff 7 2026 The 2026 Res Difficiles conference will take place on March 13th. Register for the conference here. Res Difficiles: A Conference On Challenges and Pathways for Addressing Inequity In Classics.&nbsp…

Registration for #ResDiff7 is now available:
resdifficiles.com/res-diff-7-2...

The White Pedestal How white nationalist thought leaders use ancient Greece and Rome to claim historical precedent for their violent and oppressive politics   It is difficult ...

My book, "The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate" is out! Promo Code WIN26 will get you 30% off at @yalepress.bsky.social. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Texas A&M Bans Plato - Daily Nous Drop the race and gender material from your course and the Plato readings, or teach a different course. You have a day to decide. That's a paraphrase of what Martin Peterson, professor of philosophy a...

"I’m going to pause here just to review: an institution that purports to be a university has told a philosophy professor he is forbidden from teaching Plato."

surreal times

dailynous.com/2026/01/06/t...

Stanford graduates spark outrage after uncovering reason behind lack of job offers: 'A dramatic reversal from three years ago' "That has changed."

“You didn’t get a high paying job right after graduation because you got a Humanities degree instead of learning to code”

Same people: “too bad, so sad, AI can do your job and no one cares about cultivating future leadership in the field.”

Same people:

www.yahoo.com/news/article...

I went to the Worcester Art Museum a few years ago when I was in town to give a lecture at Holy Cross. While I was primarily interested in seeing the Antioch mosaics there, I was pleasantly surprised that the collection is geographically and chronologically very broad. Definitely worth a visit.

Photograph of a building blocks set of the Egyptian god Anubis, fully assembled. In the background is a sewing machine and iron

Photograph of a building blocks set of the Egyptian god Anubis, fully assembled. In the background is a sewing machine

Photograph of a building blocks set of the Egyptian god Anubis, fully assembled. Detail of the head

Photograph of a building blocks set of the Egyptian god Anubis, fully assembled. On top of a book case with a senet board. A cat is sniffing the Anubis figure.

My sister got me a building set of Anubis and I spent about 8 hours straight on it to complete him. Look how cool he is!! I’ve placed him beside my senet set and he will probably get destroyed by cats

Super interesting article on the archaeology jobs wiki and trends in archaeology job ads

Almost every major news story this week is about how the entire economy is now gambling, scams, bribes and theft.

This is much more comprehensive than my own list, and reassuringly familiar from my experience of marking. I’ll be sharing the list with my students, both to think about writing for different audiences (encyclopaedia articles) and being aware of the weakness of LLM generated text.

I participated in this excellent conference a few years ago and I encourage anyone interested to submit an abstract!

companies make it difficult or impossible to disable ai in their products because it is an authoritarian project made from a stack of consent violations in a trenchcoat

they don't give you a checkbox for "i don't want this and will never use it" because they know many people would check that box

the person behind this unhinged, anti-factual editorial is set to decide coverage at one of the nation’s major news networks

UC Berkeley shares 160 names with Trump administration in ‘McCarthy era’ move Prominent professor Judith Butler among students and faculty investigated for ‘alleged antisemitic incidents’

There are so many unforgivable actions of capitulation being taken by the institutions most well-positioned to stand up to Trump’s authoritarianism if they wished to do so.

A must-read from @samtlevin.bsky.social:

"The president's laws"...they really aren't sending their best!

Academics love to pretend to be busy as an excuse not to respond to emails but will constantly be posting on Instagram, Facebook, and the like. Get serious!

UChicago Lost Money on Crypto, Then Froze Research When Federal Funding Was Cut While Stanford responded to the federal funding research freeze by halting administrative hiring and protecting research, the University of Chicago panicked. On January 28, hours after the Trump admi...

The University of Chicago “lost tens of millions investing in crypto around 2021” Hahahahahahaha

When unis say “we won’t fire you humanities professors, we’ll just take your majors away and merge your department with two others and rename it all,” what they’re doing is they’re making humanities expertise increasingly invisible and inaccessible…