One thing teen children don’t like is when you roll up on them when they’re with their friends and say, “what’s up, little rizzlers?”

Virginia Woolf and Clarice Lispector and subjectivity (with a heaping helping of Derrida and Cixous).

from the AP Lit FB group, this kind of thing happens across states—

Someone really does need to explain how this is supposed to work….

My great concern as well.

This is brilliant

Are we still a little puzzled how or why Habermas so assertively declined to supervise Karp’s research after reading a draft by him.

900lb crates full of onions in a field

The Coachella music festival is in the news with the minimum price of sold out 3-day ticket costing $549. Contrast that with "Nicolas" who is currently harvesting onions in the Coachella area and getting paid $22 for a $900lb crate. #WeFeedYou #coachella2026

Is there no other critical edition of To the Lighthouse than the Norton? I would love an edition that includes more scholarship on the novel from various perspectives.

Yale Report Finds Colleges Deserve Blame for Higher Education's Problems A 10-member committee offered a brutal assessment of academia's role in creating the forces challenging American colleges and universities. April 15, 2026Updated 4:04 p.m. ET nytimes.com C

I’ll never understand these performances of institutional guilt at a time of unprecedented state assaults on free expression and academic freedom. Esp since the story of higher ed over the past decade is not a “woke” takeover of campuses but increasing rationales for and mechanisms of that assault.

I have an abandoned novel project that is from Henry’s perspective but I never thought about a fake suicide! Golden! (My Henry chafed at being the arts and humanities guy with a victor babysitting side-gig. He also drugged victor while he was recovering at ingolstadt bc he was so intolerable).

Serial Failure Sal Khan Wants to Take Over Higher Education And anyone who cares about human-centered education should hope he fails.

Sal Khan is spinning up an alternative post-secondary credential in concert with the largest tech companies in the world. Anyone who cares about human-centered education should wish it nothing but failure. Thankfully, Khan has practice at that. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

the difference between high school and college is not difficulty or “rigor,” it’s not possible to actually do college in high school, it’s only possible to pretend that high school credit is college credit

A champ!

New Star Wars film that’s just the Emperor feuding so much with Death Star suppliers that he decides to blow up his own Death Star as punishment.

A frustrating moment in a long struggle: academics & journalists who insist they share your concerns about AI, which is why they want to find a “human-centered” AI. Yes, right after we locate the human-centered nukes. I’m not looking for a better way to work with AI. I know which side I’m on.

I do want that!

I missed this post several months ago but discovered it for myself when I tried to access a bookmarked lesson plan yesterday. This is a HUGE loss for educators at all levels. (fwiw I could access the lesson I wanted on the Internet Archive) 🗃️ cc @oah.org @ncph.bsky.social @historians.org

Yes, for the whole semester. Where I teach, adjuncts make less than that per class and are typically limited to 2 classes, so they end up cobbling together gigs at several different schools in the region (which means different processes, systems, etc at each). No benefits. No ongoing contract.

Yet be well assur’d
You put sharp weapons in a madman’s hands.

You can still be shocked can't you, even after years of this shit. That sentence chilled me to my bones. To see an American president say that. To see him boast about it.

“If we want to be considered a flagship university where top researchers want to come, where students think they’re going to get a great education, then we have to maintain that breadth. And breadth requires programs small and large.”

—Jeremy Pressman, @uconnaaup.bsky.social

Our horse
In the middle of our street
Our horse
It is cake he wants to eat

The NSF 2027 budget has noted that they will close out the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Program (SBE). This is not a good thing. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202...

University of Arkansas to fire professor dismissed over criticism of Israel - Arkansas Times UA System President Jay Silveria is moving forward with terminating Shirin Saeidi, former director of UA Fayetteville’s Middle East studies center, ignoring the unanimous recommendation of a faculty…

U of Arkansas president decides to fire professor who led Middle East studies center over her social media posts, disregarding unanimous decision by faculty committee. Admits he made decision because of threats by right-wing politicians to strip funding.
#arpx #arnews #Arkansas

No biggie, the most influential newspaper in Finland just casually reported that the defence forces had shot down Russian drones in Finnish airspace. Based on an LLM misrepresentation of a press release. That no one checked before publishing. Oops.

Yep, in France doing archival research now and one place still requires gloves. Opening folded manuscript pages makes me feel very nervous wit the gloves on, especially given they’re too large for my hands.

Jaw-dropping admission by DOJ to court.

DOJ admits to having repeatedly made "material mistaken" representations to judge - ICE never had authority (under 2025 Guidance) to conduct arrests at immigration courthouses!

DOJ admits court "relied on...prior misrepresentations."

DOJ blames ICE (page 2)

The Un-Naming of ‘Zamore’ and ‘Mirza’ A ‘name is an infinite source of control’ (George Lamming, ‘The Negro Writer and his World’, 1956). While personal to each human being, it also becomes a social designation of one’s identity. It is…

How 'Mirza' and 'Zamor(e)' became generic names for colonised persons in French literature of the 18thC: a fascinating blog post by Caroline Gleason-Mercier and Samuel Harrison (Turin Humanities Programme) voltairefoundation.wordpress.com/2026/03/20/t...

Translation is a form of creation. The translator has to make decisions about preserving style over direct content, about cultural equivalence, about how to preserve a sense of pun or sentence structure from one language to the next. People who assume an LLM can do it are not understanding the task.