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Dani Wenner

@daniwenner.bsky.social

3.2K followers 840 following 700 posts

political philosopher, okra & orca lover, nogoodnik she/her/Dr

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · Mar 5

Very excited to share that this paper co-authored with Derrick Gray is finally making its way into publication. In this paper, we use debates about exploitation to complicate taxonomies of ideal and non-ideal theory, and to highlight a problematic ideological bent in some non-ideal theorizing 🧵

Structural Injustice, Exploitation, and Static Non-Ideal Theory

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.We argue for two claims in this paper. First, we argue that existing taxonomies of ideal and non-ideal theory must be expa...

journals.publishing.umich.edu

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 10d

It is hard to overstate the stress produced by the incoherence of academic institutions pumping generative AI when they want to play business and then leaving instructors to deal with the results when they want to play school

Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 10d

Cheating with an LLM is the easiest thing in the world for a student to do, but it creates a massive, laborious headache for a prof, if you intend to take it seriously. There’s meetings, emails, discussions, moral dilemmas. It’s just incredibly burdensome, on top of everything else right now.

Corinne Gressang @corinnegressang.bsky.social · 10d

I had 9 meetings about students using Chat GPT/LLMs on their papers today.

If you want to know why professors burn out, ask anyone trying to teach critical thinking and writing skills to Freshmen....

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 12d

I would sincerely like for my colleagues to read this

apache/ @apache.be · 14d

Belgian AI scientists are advocating *against* the use of AI in academia. “If independent thinking is no longer encouraged at university, where would it?” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

Belgian AI scientists resist the use of AI in academia

Several AI scientists have published an open letter calling for a ban on AI use by students.

apache.be

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 14d

Not only an embarrassing decision for an institution of higher education, but also deeply dishonest to frame as "harmless" given the environmental and resource costs associated with this technology. Shame
triblive.com/local/region...

“The University of Pittsburgh is pioneering how institutions can responsibly integrate AI in higher education, and their approach aligns perfectly with our commitment to develop AI that is helpful, honest and harmless,” said Johanna Bowman, Education Partnerships Lead at Anthropic.

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 14d

A Bard College student was kidnapped by ICE and Bard’s administration is advocating for his release and has created a website to assist the rest of the community in joining them.

That’s what academic leaders should be doing for their students right now. www.instagram.com/p/DQKSTDJkeF...

Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.

www.instagram.com

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 18d

every real writer who thinks hard about what they want to say and then sits down and writes it feels like a fraud, and the people who have the computer write the book for them feel like accomplished authors

Saeed Jones @theferocity.bsky.social · 18d

That’s the other thing that baffles me about AI and creative writing, actually.

The work IS the joy for me. I don’t want to be able to snap my fingers and have a completed “product.” I want to be transformed by the process. I’m an author but I do this because I enjoy the rigor of being a writer.

Saeed Jones @theferocity.bsky.social · 18d

In terms of process, I enjoy writing but revising????? Oh, that’s my real kink. A second or third draft???? A fourth???? Making tweaks on my desktop AND my phone???? *moans* I’m a WHORE for revision.

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 18d

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E. Rosalie @erosalie.infoepi.com · 21d

We just gave $40 billion to a country that is screwing us by selling to China, so China doesn't have to buy from or deal with the US.

That's almost the entire budget for USAID, except instead of saving one South American dude, we could have saved millions of children.

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 21d

I hope that Tressie is right here, which in itself is a pretty bleak reflection of where we are

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 21d

In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.

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Martin Nutbeem @martinnutbeem.bsky.social · 28d

Nothing could possibly go wrong with this. Creating a lifelike digital avatar on a third party platform will definitely not open teaching staff up to career destroying issues in the event of that platform being hacked.

Schools Week @schoolsweek.bsky.social · 28d

Exclusive: Teachers will use 'deepfake' technology to create an AI avatar of themselves to deliver catch-up lessons for pupils who have missed school

Watch one of the school’s ‘deepfake’ teachers in our story below

schoolsweek.co.uk/schools-trus...

'Deepfake' teacher avatars to help pupils catch up

Academy trust staff to use AI generator to introduce resources for pupils returning to school

schoolsweek.co.uk

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 28d

relatedly, I am teaching this huemer piece in the graduate section of my political theory course this semester and it's pretty wild how well huemer diagnosed the vulnerability of rawlsian liberalism that we are seeing play out in real time rn

www.jstor.org/stable/23559...

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 28d

"prescient" maybe not the right word. maybe something like "more important in retrospect than it seemed 30 years ago"

Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 28d

had the occasion to reread Rawls on overlapping consensus and public reason this week and this passage stuck out to me in retrospect as rather prescient

Other great political values-the values of public reason-are
expressed in the guidelines for public inquiry and in the steps
taken to make such inquiry free and public, as well as informed
and reasonable. We saw in 11:4.1 that an agreement on a political
conception of justice is to no effect without a companion agreement
on guidelines of public inquiry and rules for assessing
evidence. The values of public reason not only include the appropriate
use of the fundamental concepts of judgment, inference,
and evidence, but also the virtues of reasonableness and fairmindedness
as shown in abiding by the criteria and procedures
of commonsense knowledge and accepting the methods and conclusions
of science when not controversial. We also owe respect
to the precepts governing reasonable political discussion.

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 29d

ResearchGate is now sending me unsolicited advertisements for "green card profile evaluations" from immigration attorneys, this is a sign that we live in a normal, well-functioning society

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 29d

A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · Oct 7

I endeavor in my scholarly output to never have somebody provide a laborious exposition of my sloppiness in an appendix to their own writing 🤣

Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · Oct 2

"a laborious exposition of nozick's expository sloppiness appears as an addendum at the end of this chapter" 💀

Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · Oct 7

He is delightfully snarky

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · Oct 1

People think they’re taking down a rich intellectual sinecure but they’re mostly terrorizing committed public servants who make $58,000 a year after 15 years of experience at a school that has to budget creatively so students can access textbooks.

Emily Farris @emayfarris.bsky.social · Oct 1

This new column by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social makes me think about when I recently had to talk to the police for yet another safety plan, I tried to “lighten” the mood by saying that we all knew this wasn’t my first rodeo. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

For at least the past 15 years, my colleagues in academia have grappled with angry letters to university officials for doing their jobs. They have weathered campaigns for their firing. They have contended with an internet army obsessed with doxxing them, their parents, their kids. I’ve been contacted by the F.B.I. more than once in my career. Not because I hold any important state secrets or know a biker gang but because one of my colleagues has lived with so much sustained harassment from right-wing “activists” that it has become a matter of federal concern. Watch lists (one of which was constructed by Kirk’s organization) do not distinguish between public intellectuals at wealthy enclaves and hoi polloi who teach popular classes at cash-strapped schools. In either case, an army of trained provocateurs stands ready to destroy their lives to prove their bona fides as conservative activists.

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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · Oct 2

Either most universities get shoehorned into the Trump scheme, eliminating the funding advantage, or a subset take the poisoned fruit and are isolated by peers who rightly view this as blood money and cheating.

There is no upside for any university to take the deal.

AAUP chapter @UT Austin @utaustinaaup.bsky.social · Oct 2

www.wsj.com/us-news/educ... UT Austin is one of the 9 schools offered a deal: accede to White House demands and get funding priority

Exclusive | White House Asks Colleges to Sign Sweeping Agreement to Get Funding Advantage

An initial round of nine schools is being asked to sign a wide-ranging accord.

www.wsj.com

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · Oct 2

"a laborious exposition of nozick's expository sloppiness appears as an addendum at the end of this chapter" 💀

Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · Oct 1

Objecting to the scheduling of workshop speakers in alphabetical order on the grounds that I don't wanna go last 😭

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · Oct 1

jfc I'm so tired Ben

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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.bsky.social · Sep 30

Pfizer "secured a three-year grace period from President Donald Trump’s promised tariffs on pharmaceuticals" and in return will "sell some drugs at a 50% average discount on a direct-to-consumer website called TrumpRx"

looks like state capitalism to me

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Pfizer Gets Three-Year Reprieve From Trump Pharma Tariffs

Pfizer Inc. Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said the company secured a three-year grace period from President Donald Trump’s promised tariffs on pharmaceuticals in a deal that would lower some o...

www.bloomberg.com

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · Sep 30

Yeah my point. We seem to be just opening the door wide & welcome for technology that (were it to work as advertised) completely undermines the purpose of being here in the first place. What tf are we doing?!?

Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · Sep 30

Our department chair asked at the last faculty meeting if we wanted someone from our IT group to come explain how we can use AI to help with grading and all my colleagues said "yes" like they really do not care that the end game of this is putting them or (more likely) their students out of work

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · Sep 30

Yesterday the main quad on campus had a big google gemini tent, giving away big bags of schwag to students and advertising "free student accounts" and just what are we doing here? Are we a university or nah?

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