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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm)

@medievaliste.bsky.social

4K followers 1K following 5.3K posts

lapsed professor research: music, political culture, and identity in medieval England and beyond academic editing and historical consulting ⤵️ glgower.com

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · Jul 2

Music and politics expert here. There is no music that is free from politics, because music is a human construct and whether or not we like to admit it, humans are all affected intimately by politics. Even music without words can express political ideas. You’re just noticing it for the first time.

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Reposted by Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm)

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 13h

Is THIS who you want writing your essay????

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 13h

I am aware, thanks

Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 15h

It’s “submit” and you don’t need to use three question marks to demonstrate that you didn’t read beyond the first sentence.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 17h

If you believe, as many of these guys do, that your wealth is something you deserve, that it authorizes you to act with impunity, then yeah, you’re not going to like meeting people who don’t agree that rich=right.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 17h

The right-wing donor class seems secure in the idea that no actual learning is required at university, presumably because they didn’t really have to do much of it in order to achieve success. But that arrogance reveals their deep discomfort with ideas that don’t confirm their self-belief

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 17h

What right-wing elites are trying to do to universities reveals their total disinterest in education as not just a public good but as a *practice*. To them, college isn’t for learning; it’s a credentialing service that offers ongoing opportunities to network with other wealthy elites.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 17h

The idea that alumni should have control over what courses a university offers just because they spent money on it is not unlike me deciding that Chipotle should start serving sushi because I got a mid salad there last week. That’s not what Chipotle is for!

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 18h

If you’re an alumnus and you think your alma mater is on the wrong track, you can simply choose not to donate. I myself do this every time I toss an unopened solicitation from my undergrad university into the recycling bin.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 18h

If you perceive a university as a poor fit for your personal values, then you can simply choose not to attend. Millions of high school seniors do this basic exercise in logic every year.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 18h

“You can only teach/research the way I want you to” is bad whether it’s coming from right, left, center, your students, or your department chair.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 18h

Either universities are private businesses that get to set their own priorities or they’re public goods that are obligated to serve everyone. You can’t have it both ways.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 18h

Jesus not this again

derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 19h

seems like a non-insignificant percentage of rage against the machine's fanbase are young republican men driving SUVs bopping their head to anti-oil, pro-immigrant songs thinking the lyrics are about how they wish their suburban parents would get off their back

Tom Morello tweets: "Fascinating that all those “don’t tread on me” posers and their AR-15’s are nowhere to be seen and government tyranny is instead being opposed by a guy in an inflatable frog suit."

Someone named Manny replies: "@grok
why do some people say Tom Morello and band mates are RAGE FOR THE MACHINE and not against ?"

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 20h

“Despite his apprehensions, [Sean Stevens from FIRE] said watchlists are often born from legitimate concerns, such as not enough conservative academics and concerns about rising tuition prices and return on investment.”

I’m sorry, one of these things is not like the other

Reposted by Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm)

Jillian @nogoodwyfe.bsky.social · 1d

the fact that rate my professor—violently commodifying and dehumanizing instructors w/o their consent or ability to opt out— is the ‘benign’ comparison is really a sign of how deep we are into the danger zone

Jeremy C. Young @jeremycyoung.bsky.social · 1d

I enjoyed speaking with Juliet Schulman-Hall for @masslive.bsky.social about how the Professor Watchlist and Canary Mission get us farther from, not closer to, a free exchange of ideas on campus. www.masslive.com/news/2025/10...

This isn’t Rate My Professor: Explosion in watchlists brings new threats to academics

Online commentary used to be limited to sites like "Rate My Professor," which jokingly rated how "hot" a professor was. It's changed drastically.

www.masslive.com

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 20h

no one in academia will admit it but the P in PhD actually stands for Plumbing

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 20h

“Academic freedom” is not supposed to mean “big donors direct research and teaching” but that’s exactly what systematic defunding of universities along with the college-is-a-corporation model has enabled.

Blake Emerson @blakeprof.bsky.social · 23h

One of the under-observed parts of the last several years is the switch where wealthy donors claims directive authority over university policy. So they think Trump’s efforts of undermine academic freedom promote their own control. It’s a symptom of oligarchy, and how oligarchy gives way to Tyranny.

Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 7d

The Times' coverage of Rowan's role has been remarkable. It is sad to me that after forcing his alma mater, Penn, to oust a really good president for incredibly poor reasons, Rowan's megalomanical next thought was "maybe the federal government should do this everywhere" and they're actually trying.

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Reposted by Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm)

Kevin Carey @kevincarey1.bsky.social · 23h

It's clearer by the day that Columbia making a deal with Trump in July was a catastrophe for higher education as a whole. It gave terrible people a bottomless appetite for extortion. The other eight universities must follow MIT's lead.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

M.I.T. Rejects a White House Offer for Special Funding Treatment

www.nytimes.com

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 20h

Every adjunct job is 100 miles away, every publishing job is in NYC, every NGO job is in DC, every media job requires 5+ years of experience, and every professorship is across the Atlantic. What’s a public service-oriented gal to do?

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Reposted by Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm)

Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 2d

You have to really *try* to convince a 20-year-old that it’s not worth asking what justice or freedom or social good is. They don’t come by that incuriosity naturally.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 20h

One thing I truly miss about teaching seminars is the opportunity to talk to those students one-on-one about their writing. The way they light up when they realize your feedback comes from taking their ideas seriously and wanting them to get better at communicating them… there’s just nothing like it

Faisal فيصل @faisalhamadah.bsky.social · 22h

Non-ironically my favorite genre of writing these days is a syntactically awkward student paper that is nevertheless brimming with ideas they’re trying on

Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 22h

The palpable relief of reading a syntactically awkward student paper nevertheless brimming with ideas they’re trying on after having to consume the stale cardboard generalities of a Chat GPT essay.

Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 20h

Targeted advertising is completely out of control

Edited image of a WhatsApp group chat (from an ad)
Text:
Team bride
8 members
- we need a bach theme!
- disco?
- rodeo???
- goldberg variations?

Reposted by Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm)

Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 1d

My dad has been suffering his own losses – mom’s dementia, cancer, fire — the past 3yrs, but he’s also been a great support as I’ve been at my lowest. Last night we talked abt what I’ve learned: don’t “pay forward” any labor, don’t ever trust administrators, prestige is empty, you are expendable

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 23h

“He was not an orc”

I regret to inform you that the slavery apologists are doing LotR movies medievalism again

Stephen West @stephenwest.bsky.social · 1d

Counterpoint:

You absolutely do not have to hand it to enslavers

Wilson: Now, one of the things I want to do is say: I’m really glad that slavery’s gone, and good riddance. And I want to say that the Southern slave owner, who read the books of Ephesians and Colossians and 1 Timothy and treated his slaves decently, remembering that he had a master in heaven who he studiously tried to obey — what Paul said slave owners were supposed to do — I would say he was not an orc, and he is part of the reason why slavery ended. In other words, I would say he’s a good guy.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 23h

AI gives the C suite an excuse to fire people. That’s its only real application.

Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 23h

Yes. It’s worth noting that Malala and Greta Thunberg have had extremely different lived experiences. And as this article explains, while they share a gender identity, their material conditions are simply not the same.

No activist will ever be “enough”, because no single activist can stop a crisis.

Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺 @katherineschof8.bsky.social · 1d

This REALLY annoyed me: “She is often compared unfavourably by her critics, particularly those on the left, with Thunberg, who is willing to put herself in physical danger”

Malala was literally shot in the head by the Taliban for her work and she keeps going 1/2

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

‘To the men who ran the world, I was just a photo op’: Malala Yousafzai on growing up, getting cynical – and how getting high nearly broke her

The global icon of women’s education is ready to tell the full story of her turbulent recent life, from arguing with her parents to being ghosted by the statesmen who were once desperate to be seen wi...