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Reposted by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 8h

flipped classrooms & the unquestioned shift toward “student-led learning” were also part of the deprofessionalization->adjunctification->mechanization program whose ultimate goal was a fully administrative university

John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 9h

The over-reliance on standardization as the mechanism for writing instruction really was a pretty unbeatable context to produce de-professionalized teachers okay with using AI to grade

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 2d

All of the resources that umass is pouring into ’integrating AI into research’ could just be spent giving faculty more sabbaticals and we’d be more research productive and better off

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 2d

What if @umassamherst.bsky.social just gave faculty time, space, resources to actually do research?

Screenshot of email advertising an “AI in Research Accelerator” program

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 3d

Of course, humanistic disciplines actually do try to do this in their own ways.
But there is no prize for history equivalent to what the Nobel is in physics or chemistry and that’s a good thing!

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 3d

The lack of something like a Nobel Prize in the discipline means it loses the conferral of ‘scientific’ “prestige“ that the prize accords - which has negative material consequences for historians. But the epistemic consequences would be worse.

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 3d

Every year around this time I think about how bad for the discipline it would be if there was a Nobel Prize in History. I don’t think it’s good for knowledge production in a humanistic discipline to do incentive a particular elite’s definition of what constitutes a worthwhile scholarly ‘problem’

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 3d

The noble prize

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 3d

Full blown authoritarianism

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 3d

“Someone” cancelled my family’s flight out of the country at the last second.

We got our boarding passes. We checked our bags. Went through security. Then at our gate our reservation ‘disappeared.’

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Reposted by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 3d

“Someone” cancelled my family’s flight out of the country at the last second.

We got our boarding passes. We checked our bags. Went through security. Then at our gate our reservation ‘disappeared.’

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Reposted by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

Lex McMenamin (they/them) @leximcmenamin.com · 4d

"where's the left media?" "where's fact-checked reporting?"

lately @teenvogue.com has run profiles: of Assata Shakur's revolutionary history; a 23-year-old Palestinian journalist; what's happening in Chicago's ICE protests; and organizing supporting LGBTQ+ youth

📍 www.teenvogue.com/news-politics

Journalist Plestia Alaqad Is Publishing Her Diaries From Gaza: "A Dystopian World"
"Every time I read it, I just feel disbelief — is this real? Did I really live that? Are there still thousands of people in Gaza living that?”
By Lex McMenamin

Politics
Assata Shakur Was a Black Revolutionary Who Fought for Freedom Even in Exile
“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”
By Marian Jones

Politics
Inside Gen Z Candidate Kat Abughazaleh's Viral ICE Rally Tear-Gassing: "Fascism 101"
“If they are willing to do this to a congressional candidate in front of a bunch of press, imagine what they're doing behind boarded-up windows.”
By Maia McDonald

Politics
Hurricane Helene Devastated Asheville. A Local LGBTQ+ Organization Is Supporting Youth — With Cash
“We know that [direct cash transfers] are the number one support for preventing youth homelessness.”
By Colleen Hamilton

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 4d

and you got cancelled because an old, unflattering TikTok video resurfaced

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 4d

tack on a pulitzer while we're at it

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 4d

what if you got the Nobel prize and the MacArthur in the same week

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Reposted by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

Mary Rizzo @maryrizzo.bsky.social · 5d

What's happening to my colleague Mark Bray is disgusting. Him and his family are being doxed and getting death threats by right wing supposed "free speech" advocates bc wrote a book about anti fascism. You can't make this shit up! Our universities must fight back.

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 7d

I’ve received multiple death threats + doxing (including my home address) directly following harassment from Turning Point USA, Jack Posobiec, Andy NGO, + Fox News which called me an antifa ‘financier.’

I have been forced to move my classes online.

If journalists want to talk, DM me or reply here.

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Reposted by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 7d

I’ve received multiple death threats + doxing (including my home address) directly following harassment from Turning Point USA, Jack Posobiec, Andy NGO, + Fox News which called me an antifa ‘financier.’

I have been forced to move my classes online.

If journalists want to talk, DM me or reply here.

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Reposted by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

Sheila Liming @seeshespeak.bsky.social · 5d

Looks pretty freaking fire

Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · Aug 7

Announcing my book, Techno-Negative!

It will be out in Spring 2026, published with @uminnpress.bsky.social.

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Reposted by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

NEH Union - AFGE L3403 @nehafge3403.bsky.social · 5d

The cuts at the National Endowment for the Humanities go far deeper than any of these agencies - almost 70% of 179 people were terminated, despite no change to the agency's budget.

There were no savings here - only idealogical destruction. #NEH

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 5d

How much smaller the federal workforce is now vs. a year ago
Ed Dept 42%
OPM 33%
HUD 31%
Treasury 29%
Defense (civilian jobs) 22%
Small Biz Admin 21%
Energy 20%
Interior 15%
HHS 14%
SSA 11%
EPA 10%
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

How Much Smaller Is the Federal Work Force? Shutdown Plans Offer a Clue.

The number of federal employees has been trimmed by thousands since President Trump took office, according to contingency plans drawn up by federal agencies.

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 6d

Great call to arms by @cnewf.bsky.social, following the tactic of Jed Esty's "Future of Decline" by looking to Stuart Hall & the New Left, & urging us to forego "private agency within our universities" in favor of "collective agency by running them."

Academics Must Seize the Means of Knowledge Production - Public Books

Trumpism has canceled the knowledge society.

www.publicbooks.org

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Reposted by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

andy hines @andyhines.bsky.social · 8d

Oh, Marc Rowan?

Indeed, forprofit education has come to be embedded within the structure of public
education: the private equity owner of the University of Phoenix, Apollo
Global Management, has worked to sell the beleaguered institution to the
University of Idaho, following the sale of for-profit Kaplan University to
Purdue University in 2018. Even the country’s most elite institutions are
subject to these schemes: Marc Rowan, Apollo Global Management’s CEO,
has sought to radically reconfigure the priorities and principles of the University of Pennsylvania via a donor revolt, which gained strength in the wake
of the Israel-Gaza War, though his campaign started prior to October 7,
2023 (Snyder 2023; Tkacik 2023).1
These developments replicate within in1. Apollo connects private equity investments in higher education to hospitals. It owns more
hospitals in the United States than any other private equity firm and was one of the final investor
groups in Philadelphia’s Hahnemann Hospital, which had been the teaching hospital for Drexel
University before its closure; see “PESP Private Equity Hospital Tracker” (2024); and Pomorsk

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Reposted by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 10d

Always interesting to me when episodes from the back catalog find new life.

This was the second most-downloaded episode of September, trailing only the one new episode we released in September.

Strategic Presentism & Resistance History

with Jeffrey Insko, Anna Kornbluh, Asheesh Kapur Siddique, Walter Johnson, & Astra Taylor

theamericanvandal.substack.com

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Reposted by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

Ryan Boyd @ryanboyd.bsky.social · 10d

The reason a hillbilly scholarship kid like me got a great public education at William & Mary was because they invested in teachers, not bullshit computer magic. I guess that has changed.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 11d

“The pilot will explore how AI can enhance teaching, research and university operations, while also gathering feedback to guide the responsible and effective use of AI across campus.”

William & Mary launches ChatGPT Edu pilot

By integrating artificial intelligence tools, the university is positioning itself at the forefront of higher education innovation.

news.wm.edu

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 10d

Nobody should be finding ways to integrate AI into their research or classrooms. It's another tool through which capitalism aims to dismantle free thought. "Put plainly, you should feel bad for using AI." www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

Large Language Muddle | The Editors

The AI upheaval is unique in its ability to metabolize any number of dread-inducing transformations. The university is becoming more corporate, more politically oppressive, and all but hostile to the ...

www.nplusonemag.com

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 10d

I want to criticize the discursive emphasis in higher ed journalism on "how to teach with or in the context of AI"- pieces like this inevitably fail to place AI in the context of the structural crisis of higher ed capitalism, as yet another way that capitalist elites aim to undermine free thought.

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 10d

To what extent does the media/discursive fixation on AI as THE problem in higher education media discourse serve to occlude the deeper structural crisis at play here? In other words, why do so many of the handwringing MSM pieces on AI & higher ed not use the word "capitalism"?

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshksi.bsky.social · 10d

In the 20th cen, the automobile attained mass cultural signification long before most people owned cars. Capitalism's discursive/cultural production makes certain technologies seem ubiquitous & inevitable long before they actually are. Tech companies & corporate media are doing this now with AI.

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