Early American History and other stuff. COYS!
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“The Department of History at Lehigh University invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position as Assistant Professor of History with a specialization in the United States and the World in the twentieth and/or twenty-first centuries and an anticipated start date of 1 July 2026.”
But also, I wish that they read more and that the habits of reading came more easily to them. I think that's just a basic good for them and the world.
But it does, and I need to remember to explain it to them. This is less of a "kids today" rant and more of a "I'm old and the basic assumptions of the world have changed" rant.
I'm always surprised when students seem to be unfamiliar with the idea that you do the reading ahead of time for the day on which it is listed on the syllabus. I know I take a lot of things for granted after 30+ years as a student and teacher, but I never thought that one would trip people up.
Why does having a cover for your book make it feel more official? Thrilled to share mine for Civil Blood: Vendetta Violence and the Civic Elites in Early Modern Italy out Nov 15 with @cornellupress.bsky.social This book has some things to say about the intersections between violence and statecraft.
Fascinating article by Nuala Zahedieh about the centrality of canoes in early colonial exploitation 🗃️https://academic.oup.com/past/advance-article/doi/10.1093/pastj/gtaf021/8231030
"...They want to create a new kind of mind, so they can force it into mindless servitude. Their dream is to invent new forms of life to enslave."
More: "..the makers of AI aren’t damned by their failures, they’re damned by their goals. They want to build a genie to grant them wishes, and their wish is that nobody ever has to make art again. ..."
This is great: "I am a hater. I am not here to make a careful comprehensive argument.... If you’re pushing slop...you wouldn’t read it anyway. You’d ask a bot for a summary and forget what it told you, then proceed with your day, unchanged by words you did not read and ideas you did not consider."
Yeah, us too. I’m sure there’s some spreadsheet that justifies it, and it’s not like I can’t clean up after myself, but it still just feels like a willful insult.
This really is it-trying to do normal stuff that's hard enough in ordinary circumstances while everything around us is a massive, jaw-dropping crisis every day. (I know things have been and currently are much, much worse in many places... but it still sucks.)
So the sandwich guy ... beat the wrap
My Dept of History at W. Michigan University in Kalamazoo is hiring an Asst/Associate Prof in African American History. Please come join us! 2-2 load/generous research & travel funding, diverse & culturally lively community/ free college in MI for kids. ?s welcome. www.wmujobs.org/postings/4277
bsky.app/profile/lizl...
I'm doing the same thing--basing mine on Joseph Adelman's assignment here josephadelman.com/2014/09/04/c... There was a thread a month or so ago with some good suggestions.
and this is why i dislike saying that LLMs are “bad at” doing semantic and epistemic evaluation of content. they don’t do it at all, and no amount of human “training” is going to get them to mimic it reliably enough to justify ceding any epistemic authority to them
I will say the thing that AI does really well is emulate that precise feeling of meeting someone new, and they seem amiable and pretty verbose, but over the course of the conversation you start to realize that they’re very stupid.
Key to the success is the institution's exploitation of faculty, especially contingent faculty and grad workers by making them feel like they have a moral obligation to engage in good pedagogical performance even as the institution progressively worsens their working conditions.
We dropped off both of our younger ones this week... but our neighbor who was in school with them is going to UCSB, so he's here by himself for like three more weeks.
I actually had to do this in graduate school
Journalists following up on Trump's DC takeover should be aggressively reporting on Trump’s real motives, which include distracting from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, perpetuating racism, and normalizing the military takeover of an American city. presswatchers.org/2025/08/the-...
The crazy thing is Virginia's economy isn’t reeling from a natural disaster or a global financial crisis. This is happening entirely because of bad policy choices made by Republican leaders like Donald Trump, Glenn Youngkin, and Winsome Earle-Sears. beyer.house.gov/news/documen...
Resharing my A.I. statement for the fall semester—I’ll be amending “hallucinatory” because hallucinations are actually interesting and original.
I've only recently seen the phrase "Dubai chocolate" popping up everywhere. I've been assuming it's called that because it's made with slave labor.
This is insane. And as dictatorial a power grab as we’ve ever seen in US history. Most of all, though, it’s also just unneeded. Crime is at a generational low in DC.
Bad as student cheating is, there’s too much emphasis on cheating when discussing AI’s problems. It’s bad for education (and my free time) that I caught 7 students for AI-generated papers last quarter. But I caught them because AI made up fake quotations. That disinformation is harmful by itself.
No, I don't think there is any need for you, me or anyone to have access to ChatGPT or CoPilot just to help you plan your kid's birthday party, or find nearby restaurants, or plan your holiday for you, or do your homework for you, or write your book review for you, all to see the world burn.
Mo Salah is asking the right questions
I would take Anderson-Devereaux-Orsulak *at their current ages* over this OF
I edited a book where the author, without checking first, had an AI application "tidy up" her notes. What it in fact did was redo them entirely, changing real citations to fictitious ones. It made a lot of extra work. AI has no concept of fact, only of probability, and has no place in scholarship.
***Job Opportunity*** Tenure-track Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies, Williams College 6/ networks.h-net.org/jobs/68936/w...
There is no starting from the position that AI summaries or AI-generated "sources" are viable components of historical understanding without ending up at the position that history as an attempt at human understanding of the past is worthless.
Promote Beavers you absolute frauds
I really don't get what they're waiting for... it's not service time at this point, right?
4-6 months is not a serious timeline for a presidential search. They’re rushing to announce a name before VA gets a new governor. The faculty lacks confidence in the board and the process. So does the legislature. What candidate would take the job under those circumstances?
Lesser Goldfinch is my guess
Ah yes the old ‘please add these 15 pages of bullshit boilerplate to your syllabus’ gambit. I’m sure when there is inclement weather the first place students will look for info is page 19 of the syllabus for their Hannah Arendt class.
New job: African American History Bryn Mawr College jobs.h-net.org/jobs/68899
It's both shocking to see and an utterly typical/predictable part of the fascist playbook.
Job Opportunity! Pomona College - Assistant Professor of History (Early Modern European history) networks.h-net.org/jobs/68930/p...
Oh, man. I’m glad he finally got to win a trophy and get the move he wants. But I’m so sad to see the end of an era at Spurs.
This is also true!
This is very true!
Still more shoes to drop (the BOV has a lot of feet, I guess), but this is good news for now.
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'Crimson Courage' is urging Harvard *not* to knuckle under to Trump protection-money demands, as Columbia and Brown have Started as Harvard-alum movement, now seeking support from all who care about acad independence Can read and sign letter here. (We have) crimsoncourage.fillout.com/august-letter
Today is August 1. Asking an academic how their book is going is a felony.
They couldn't understand the words anyway
The attack on US academia is ideological and destructive, yes. They’re not trying to improve higher ed, reform it, or do any of their flimsy excuses (uphold free speech on campus, combat antisemitism, etc). They’re trying to break it to satisfy a mix of cultural, political, and personal grievances.
Va. Senate Majority Leader Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax) said in a statement that, while “conservatives have been demanding academic freedom for years,” it now appears that they are acting as “thought police” and trying to “flex control over our Virginia educational crown jewels.” wapo.st/3H5Z8sh
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I've had this saved on my phone forever but I can't find the original artist and I'd really like to buy a print. Internet can you help?
Fucking cowards
'Solon Simmons, a sociologist who is president of the Faculty Senate, called the government’s inquiry 'flabbergasting.'” And Solon is not easily flabbergasted. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...
George Mason University is the latest target of the federal government's campaign against higher education. You can help mobilize support for the university by standing with @georgemasonu.bsky.social here: standwithmason.com
I hate the argument that AI is being used in lots of jobs so students have to learn how to use it in school. AI is not that hard to use. Lots of jobs also use job-specific convoluted enterprise software and we don't teach them how to use those in school.
Oh, of course!
I will take your word for it. Maybe I'll get there by 60.
Not infrequently, I'm reintroduced to music that I disdained when I was a kid and realize that it's awesome and I was simply too unsophisticated or uptight to appreciate it at the time. But this still sucks.
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The only real forward-thinking strategy is not to use AI. Cut it out of as many things as you can. That way when the AI wave has passed and destroyed everything else, you might still have something left.
EVERYONE NEEDS TO STOP DOING THIS SHIT, MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH LITERALLY EVERY LEADER OF EVERYTHING
"You should know by now: Everything is serious, until it’s suddenly a joke and you were a fool for not laughing. Everything is a joke, until suddenly it’s serious and how dare you laugh. Everyone is trolling, until they aren’t, and even when they aren’t, they are."
Newsweek has long since been enshittified. I do appreciate the Doug Williams callback, though.
Job Opportunity! Middlebury College - Assistant Professor of Latin American History, Middlebury College networks.h-net.org/jobs/68873/m...
If you’re a moderate Democrat already worried about the specter of leftists refusing to vote for Gavin Newsom I do have a solution for you: do not nominate that fucker
Fund SEPTA! Philly doesn’t want your shady Uber bus. It doesn’t want your Waymo death trap. Fund the good old public transit! Literally for goodness sakes!
the urge to be an authoritative interpreter of tech to your fellow benighted humanists is an essentially middle-management instinct
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This is great, thank you for creating and sharing it!
immigration is good, actually.
Grateful to the New York Times for covering my research. I am referred to as a potential “nut case” in the first paragraph, which is also pleasing. The Brooklyn Allergist’s Office That Was Once Home to a Spy www.nytimes.com/2025/07/06/r...
IF YOU ARE IN ONE OF THESE DISTRICTS PLEASE MAKE A CALL RIGHT NOW DOES NOT MATTER IF YOUR VOICE SHAKES CALL AND SAY YOU OPPOSE BBB Scripts here: 5calls.org
"I feel kinda lost and felt something is missing in my knowledge to understanding why the world is it is today...I am just a curious kid. (edu level: high school science student, to-be undergraduate)" reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lhhibi/how_what_to_learn_from_history_today
Within 2 hours of breaking news and @askhistorians.bsky.social users ask about historical events to understand the present. If any #SkyStorians want to get involved with AH to help people with Breaking Historical Questions, reach out- we'd love to have you participate www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...
Elon saying he’s going to reprogram his chatbot’s view of history is a perfect example of why these kinds of AI products aren’t the neutral “tools” people always defend them as. They’re little political projects reflecting the ideologies of their creators
100%
Hey #historysky #historiansky #academicsjy what is your favorite essay on either the purpose of History or why History matters? Hit me!
Yeah, that’s bothered me too since I first saw those signs. Sort of a parallelism issue there.
Just started pouring in Fairfax—hopefully this makes it downtown!
A pretty easy one, but slightly trickier to stick to a theme
I get the sentiment, and as a child of the 70s/80s I generally love Schoolhouse Rock, but I hate this one ... gets almost everything about colonial history and the Revolution wrong in some pretty pernicious ways.
They launched a coup, suffered no consequences for it, won back power, and have used the power to pardon everyone involved while remaking the country through violence and intimidation. It’s just ridiculous to talk about the political violence of yelling at ICE agents within that context.
We have tanks on the National Mall, friends. Fucking tanks. Like a tin pot dictatorship
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQOa...
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IT'S FRIDAY MY DUDES today is a good day to buy THE BUTCHER OF THE FOREST! A woman who once did the impossible must return to the dangerous magical forest of the Elmever to try again (and everything is still terrible there of course). us.macmillan.com/books/978125...
10.30.1973 Kiel Auditorium
Nothing says "academic freedom" like "renewable contracts" and "robust performance reviews"! Up is down, war is peace, &c.
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There's no doubt that editors for academic publishing need more help and support to keep things going. But my god, this isn't it. I've published in a number of OUP outlets. This would force me to reconsider. I suspect other #SkyStorians will, too.
This is such a rich image! When I had my students analyze it, they noticed that the number of stars on the flag doesn't make sense for 1814. The stars suggest a date from the late 1830s or early 1840s, which would make it interesting evidence of the construction and use of the war's memory.
HACK! Replace 15 minutes of doom scrolling with 15 minutes of reading a book from a university press 📖
I made this meme less than three months ago for something entirely different yet somehow it's relevant again 🙃
That's a pretty grim write-up too. Big city school planning, politics, and contracting gone very wrong. And then Hurricane Floyd.
