Paul Vierthaler

*my

Couple walking down the aisle (photo taken by Freeland photography)

There is a lot wrong in the world, but I married by best friend 14 years ago and that has made all the difference.

Pedagogy Under Threat (in the U.S. and Beyond) - Sponsored by AAS Diversity and Equity Committee Sat, March 14, 2026 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM PDT Location: VCC, Room 212 Over the last decade, higher education has experienced a disconcerting variety of threats which have taken a variety of forms at institutions globally, include but are not limited to restrictions on academic freedom, budget cuts and the adjunctification of instruction, the elimination of entire departments, surveillance, and much more. In recent years, the United States in particular has been a site of further and accelerated existential attacks on the infrastructure of the humanities, area studies, higher education as a whole, and students whose identities or activism make them vulnerable, destabilizing the foundations of critical pedagogy and rejecting the necessity of diversity, equity, and justice for educators and students alike. The reckless and often extractive push towards new and little-understood technologies like generative AI without consideration of their influence on teaching, research, or student development further hinders instructors of every discipline and background. Finally, the militarization of campus security, including intensive surveillance technology, has restricted free speech. With repercussions far beyond North American academic circles, these trends both echo and resonate with the experiences of colleagues and institutions around the world. These targeted forms of disempowerment have effects well beyond US borders, necessitating that we both raise awareness of these issues and collaborate on strategic paths forward.

As we get closer to #AAS2026, a number of scholars on the Diversity and Equity Committee panel "Pedagogy Under Threat (in the U.S. & Beyond)" have found that they cannot attend the conference due to visa issues. We are therefore encouraging scholars to stop by and share in this important discussion.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day, dude?

Speaking of anachronisms, I had to print out my dissertation and hand it in in hard copy so they could then scan it and send it to proquest. Also there were lots of detailed notes about the acceptable kind of paper cement used to glue figures in. In 2014!

we appear to have four competing fascist movements jockeying for control: blood & soil nazism under miller and hegseth, darwinian ecofascism from rfk, technofascism under vance and musk, and one Big Wet Hitler who understands the true animating core of the american volk is a deep love for shopping

Congrats!!!

Join us for the public talk later today!

Zoe Leblanc leading a discussion in the CDH classroom

@zoeleblanc.bsky.social leading a wonderful conversation on AI and data work in the @princetoncdh.bsky.social Modeling Cultures seminar series

AI and the humanities: Across the Princeton campus, an era of collaboration is underway. Princeton has firmly established its presence at the forefront of AI research — including transformative work in humanities scholarship.

"We should try our hardest to put the humanities into every aspect of AI development," says faculty director @mmvty.bsky.social in a new @princeton.edu feature spotlighting CDH-affiliated scholars—including associate faculty director @vierth.bsky.social—doing exactly that, some for over a decade.

I’m so sorry for your loss Mike. I can only imagine the heartbreak.

I think about him a lot these days. I don’t think he, or people like him, are welcome anymore. But for all of our sakes I hope he makes it to the other side of all this.

His wife told me her dad made collages to brag about him to his friends.

When I was doing a Fulbright one of the other Fulbrighters was transitioning from being a JAG officer to teaching Chinese military history and was finishing his dissertation. One of the kindest, most brilliant people I knew. Really dedicated to making the world a better place.

In the days that followed, Cundiff became something he does not quite know how to inhabit: a hero. "It's weird," he said. "I just did something that I would think anyone would do. What do you mean you would watch a stroller and a baby just sink?" The shock of the cold didn't fully register until afterward. After emerging from the lake, an ambulance transported him to the emergency room. At the hospital, doctors monitored him after his cardiac enzymes spiked to more than thirteen times the normal level, a marker sometimes associated with heart distress. He stayed about twenty-eight hours. He was not allowed to eat, in case doctors needed to perform a heart catheterization. "I was so sad," he said. "I love to eat." When he was discharged, he went straight to Redhot Ranch for the cheeseburger he'd been craving. "I just experienced some trauma. I wanted this cheeseburger," he said.

"'I was so sad,' he said. 'I love to eat.'"

And if the animal somehow survives, the narrator just says "this baby cheetah will have to wait another day for its meal," which is hardly better

The instant a nature documentary does a close zoom and the narrator says "this little jerboa is in for the fight of its life" I turn the TV right off. Nope, cannot do it

Some of my all time best students have been veterans/ROTC, and I have some amazing colleagues who came up through/now teach at the military academies. Never have I heard someone badmouth them or their service. Hegseth doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about (quelle suprise)

Frontiers | Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology Generative AI (GenAI) systems are increasingly recognized as cultural technologies, yet current evaluation frameworks often treat culture as a variable to be...

I'm on a 38(!)-author paper just published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, "Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology". We splice Schleiermacher and hermeneutic theory into AI debates, arguing AI are "context machines".
www.frontiersin.org/journals/art...

Awful news, and symptomatic of what is happening all over the place. I was teaching Chinese studies classes at or beyond capacity at William & Mary, but the state only cared about our major numbers

Huge nostalgia for me. I had a set of bootleg DVDs of the first couple seasons of the show while I was living in China in the mid 2000s. It was one of my few connections to contemporary American pop culture and a go to comfort show

FFS LET TRANS PEOPLE LIVE THEIR LIVES IN PEACE

Trans Kansan's being stripped of their licenses due to having previously - legally - changed their gender marker is absolutely shocking.

A person who misses the letter - let's they moved and forgot to have their mail forwarded - could drive to work and be arrested for driving without a license.

So awesome to see this international bestseller data *out in the world*! That's the goal!

Thanks to @jamesfolta.com, @literaryhub.bsky.social, and F. Poretti for these great pieces.

sarcasm obviously being the type of sly/layered comment you are talking about at the beginning of the thread

It's kinda funny to read that reply as sarcasm, which leads me to something I haven't really grappled with much: if and how models might represent sarcasm, which obviously just doesn't convey well in a purely text-based medium.

woot!!

From time to time I mutter about a secret project that involves benchmarks and historical language models. Here's a formal announcement of the Schmidt Sciences grant. Other PIs include @dmimno.bsky.social , @lauraknelson.bsky.social, @andrewpiper.bsky.social, and @mattwilkens.bsky.social. And +

Really looking forward to welcoming @zoeleblanc.bsky.social to the CDH next week!

Thanks Richard!