Annette Yoshiko Reed
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annetteyreed.bsky.social
Annette Yoshiko Reed
@annetteyreed.bsky.social

Stendahl Chair at Harvard Divinity School / studying demons, apocalypses, and ancient identities, between memory and forgetting

Annette Yoshiko Reed is an American religious historian. She holds the Krister Stendahl Chair at Harvard Divinity School. Reed's research interests span the topics of Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and Jewish/Christian relations in Late Antiquity, with particular attention to retheorizing religion, identity, difference, and forgetting. She is the daughter of political scientist Steven Reed and his wife Michiko. .. more

History 52%
Philosophy 20%
Pinned
A piece about me in my high school alum bulletin :) exeter.edu/annette-yosh...
Annette Yoshiko Reed '91: Rediscovered Stories - Phillips Exeter Academy
Annette Yoshiko Reed ’91 examines cultural and religious forgetting.
exeter.edu

Research assistant, working hard over the holidays, cont’d—no pile of papers shall go unpawed! 🐾

Research assistant, working hard over the holidays
No one says to legit business owners, "hey I see there's an underground market selling toxic knock-offs of your product: how will you incorporate the toxic product AND protect your customers against its harms?" But apparently it's fine to make this suggestion to educators with respect to AI.
Public discourse on this subject has utterly failed to direct citizens' attention to the actual problem, which is that a commercial industry is assaulting education. So every week we get another thoughtless op-ed on blue books or the death of the college essay, etc etc.
It is EXHAUSTING not only being made responsible for coming up with new kinds of assignments for our students; it's also tedious reading op-eds that suggest the core problem is a crisis in teaching. But, as Chris and I lay out here, this isn't a crisis in teaching; it's an attack on learning.
"We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction."

"How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social
www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...
Four Frictions: or, How to Resist AI in Education - Public Books
We are calling for resistance to the AI industry’s ongoing capture of higher education.
www.publicbooks.org
Teacher here:

Teachers absolutely DO NOT need AI to make their jobs easier.

We need good high-quality curriculum (costs money)
We need resources and supplies (costs money)
We need smaller class sizes (costs money)

We don't need AI slop substituting for any of that.
Rosenblum discussing the book on New Books podcast:
open.spotify.com/episode/24GN...
Jordan D. Rosenblum, "Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig" (NYU Press, 2024)
open.spotify.com
We know students, like the rest of the world, are using AI. Teachers need to be equipped to deal w/all the issues AI creates. Our approach starts with maximizing safety & privacy and empowering educators to make educational decisions, so AI tools can benefit not harm www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...
AI has become the norm for students. Teachers are playing catch-up.
At a New York City training session, educators explored how artificial intelligence could support teaching while also discussing their concerns around the technology.
www.nbcnews.com
AAUP @aaup.org · 4d
"The New School was founded a little over a century ago precisely because you can’t put a price on critical inquiry and the free exchange of ideas. The dismantling of this promise spells disaster not only for the university itself but for the radical democratic aspirations it once represented."
The Dismantling of the New School
The New School was founded as an institution dedicated to critical inquiry and the free exchange of ideas. The current austerity measures at the university are dismantling the radical democratic aspir...
jacobin.com
Great episode of Byzantium & Friends w/Aaron Butts!

While centering on Aksum, it engages key questions in the study of late antique empires, such as how to historicize the use of religious imagery in imperial self-presentation, & the proxy war model (e.g. Bowersock)
open.spotify.com/episode/4gkP...
146. Ezana of Aksum, the first Christian king in Africa, with Aaron Butts
open.spotify.com
When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.
Seems like it's worth posting this one again.
Why Do Historians Still Have To Go To Archives?
Why do historians go to archives? Hasn’t everything already been digitized?
contingentmagazine.org
I’m sorry, but it is disgraceful to be an academic who uses this technology to conduct research. It should be prohibited in all of our scholarly institutions, including universities and journals.
Our tribute to Natalie Zemon Davis, in the Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte. Please share widely!

www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/...
Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History Volume 116 Issue 1
Volume 116, issue 1 of the journal Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History was published in 2025.
www.degruyterbrill.com
I know disciplinary standards differ, but I've been at this for decades and I've never cited a paper I didn't read. Didn't like, sure; didn't understand, often; kind of drifted off in the middle there, it happens. But didn't read at all? Nah. Come on.

Both/and 🙋🏻‍♀️

This may or may not be me today 🫠

Evergreen, alas
Director of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies and Tenured Full Professor job with University of Texas at Austin
jobs.chronicle.com
Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵

Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
my contribution to the discourse: you really want to know whether one group or another is being slighted in some process? get a spreadsheet, fill it out with data from the last ten years, and then---crucial---do not squint when you look at the results

look right at em and don't kid yourself

In each case too, blaming “diversity” is an abnegation of responsibility—VS telling the truth and supporting; much easier to blame DEI than to say “Job market is brutal now; let’s make time to look over your materials together & see where you can strengthen & strategize to maximize your chances.”

What is striking to me was how deeply acculturated it is to assume a man gets a job b/c of he deserves it while assuming a woman gets a job b/c she is a woman—even among those who recognize the problem w/that logic the second they stop and think about it.

The other case I overheard when my office door was open—an advisor say that to his advisee (for whom he’d written not-so-strong rec); again, making him feel better in the moment. But in both cases, the result was missing an opportunity to give advice to help the man strength his file! +

He did this on the phone when I was in the room! When I asked him why, he said to make his friend feel better—but what was striking is that it was so habitual/commonplace that he hadn’t actually stopped to think out the ramifications & effects of saying that!!

Reposted by Andrew Jacobs

Not for race but for gender, but I’ve seen this happen! In one case, w/someone whom I know well enough to call him on it: he had told a male friend who didn’t get a job that it was b/c they “had to hire a woman,” despite knowing that wasn’t why this man (not very productive) didn’t get shortlisted +
STUNNING: Nearly a year since President Donald Trump took office, his education department’s Office for Civil Rights has not entered into a single new resolution agreement involving racial harassment of students, we found. 
@jsmithrichards.bsky.social @megomatz.bsky.social @jodiscohen.bsky.social
Monkey Sounds, “White Power” and the N-Word: Racial Harassment Against Black Students Ignored Under Trump
Since Trump returned to office, the Education Department’s civil rights office has not resolved a single racial harassment investigation. It sends a message that “people impacted by racial discriminat...
www.propublica.org
longstanding theory on this is that people who know the applicant that they don't want to hire has racial resentment offer "wish i could've hired you, but they made me hire a black woman instead!" as a let-them-down-easy cope rather than admit to them that they just didn't want to hire them.
UBC is looking to recruit internationally based researchers for Canada Research grants. If you‘re a senior scholar working in anything in the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world, I encourage you to apply. Please do share among your networks: research.ubc.ca/federal-rese...
Canada Impact+ Research Chairs Program
The University of British Columbia is inviting expressions of interest from top-tier, internationally based researchers as
research.ubc.ca