Coming soon...
12.03.2026 19:47
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Coming soon...
also a post about how everything is philadelphia
i think we can't underestimate the unusual and long tail benefits of supposedly useless education. I took a US art history class almost 20 years ago (largely for fun) and here I am working on a very unrelated project in which Eakins' The Gross Clinic is the perfect vehicle to make an argument.
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A page from the leaflet: OUR HISTORY... The California Labor School opened in a loft above a garage in 1942. It grew out of labor and progressive forces forged to defend democracy against fascism. This was the era when fifteen million American workers joined unions of their choice and became a new force in world history. The curriculum met the need for a School of a sharply different type, with a program of labor and social sciences centered on the issues of daily life. Under the direction of David Jenkins, recognition of this new adult education program came at once: a hundred leading CIO, AFL and independent unions endorsed the School. Many political, university and business leaders sponsored the programs or lectured in our classes. In 1944, Professor Holland Roberts of Stanford University joined the staff as educational director, assuming the directorship in 1949. From the beginning the School welcomed all oppressed people. It taught the necessity of removing the cancer of prejudice and discrimination against the Negro, Mexican, Asian and Jewish people, and organized systematic classes in the historic contributions of these peoples to our nation. ... Now with the rising demands for higher living standards and peace, the School must prepare a new people's leadership. With the people's help it will be done.
May be time to recommit to the workers' schools and people's colleges.
1952 leaflet featuring a black and white drawing of a diverse group of children and the words, "for the security of all children... for PEACE will you work with us?"
California Labor School, 1952.
You ever write something and there are so many parts you hope people engage with that you can't figure out which ones to quote?
I'll do a wee thread on the 3rd, and final, essay from my Red Scares series
www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...
This great assignment is an example of what would likely be banned under IA House Study Bill 714, which mandates civics content while “prohibit[ing] civics courses from including requirements related to political activism or “action civics.”
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briefly my thinking is informed by Cottom on this: the need for and proving of credentials as such might better be figured as an employer problem than an education problem per se. Unbundling as advocated by the right is a desire to expedite a credential and has little to do with learning.
Only adding the historical foundation that the fungibility piece of this — the abstraction into the exchangeable credit — was a result of the Carnegie Foundation and a push for academic and industrial efficiency.
Picture of DOGE guy Nate Cavanaugh
Screenshot of my DOGE letter “Dr. Joseph Rezek Dear NEH Grantee, This letter provides notice that the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is terminating your federal grant (Grant Application No. FEL29509824) effective April 3, 2025, in accordance with the termination clause in your Grant Agreement. Your grant no longer effectuates the agency's needs and priorities and conditions of the Grant Agreement and is subject to termination due to several reasonable causes, as outlined in 2CFR§200.340. For instance, NEH has reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President's agenda. The President's February 19, 2025 executive order mandates that the NEH eliminate all non-statutorily required activities and functions. See Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, E.O. 14217 (Feb. 19, 2025). Your grant's immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities. Any objections or appeals to this termination will be managed in strict accordance with the President's Executive Orders,
Last year, this guy (left) from DOGE used ChatGPT to find NEH grants that were too “DEI” for Trump, and canceled them, including mine, as shown by the letter I received last April (right). Huge new NYT article on the back story link below
In response to our YaleAAUP campaign to get codified academic freedom protections - which shockingly we do not have - Yale has created a committee to make a "statement." A sign that we are making progress. But nowhere close to where we need to be. More here --> yaledailynews.com/articles/pro...
Debt Collective Jubilee School Courses Debt Collective Jubilee School Course Offerings - Always free and open to the public. Upcoming Courses
College for All Jubilee School: Kickoff (virtual) Mar 5, 2026 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm EST In the United States, higher education has been careening toward collapse as a result of state and federal disinvestment, institutional segregation, the erosion of academic labor, plutocratic governance, and the explosion of for-profit higher education that cynically leverages Americans’ lack of time and opportunity. As a result, public support for colleges and universities is eroding.
College for All Jubilee School: The Making of the Student Debt Crisis (virtual) Mar 12, 2026 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm EDT Speaker: Astra Taylor In this session, Debt Collective co-founder Astra Taylor will unpack the roots of the current crisis, discuss current threats to our movement, and talk about the Debt Collective’s Right to Learn work to explore how we arrived at this current moment and define the work ahead. This session is a part of the larger Jubilee School... Part of our Rethinking and Reinventing Higher Education Series
College for All Jubilee School: Tuition Pricing & Antitrust Law (virtual) Mar 26, 2026 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm EDT Speaker: Doha Mekki Join guest speaker Doha Mekki, formerly the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the DOJ’s antitrust division, to learn how corporate consolidation in education drives up tuition and how antitrust enforcement can help protect affordability. Doha Mekki is a Senior Fellow at the University of California Berkeley Law School’s Center for Consumer Law & Economic
📣✊ This March, @debtcollective.bsky.social is kicking off free virtual Jubilee School Course offerings exploring Higher Ed. Courses are always free & open to public. Sign up now and check out more courses into the spring and summer at https://loom.ly/6CcXukQ
"In a rapidly evolving situation, the best way to assess the specific challenges+ leverage that workers have is to go out to our departments or labs to figure out who is currently working, what their jobs are, obstacles they might face, and what next steps workers could collectively build towards."
mapping power is so hot right now
longhaulmag.com/2026/02/27/a...
bad news: 3-1 down at half-time
good news: six play-off spots in the championship next season
Love this
Tried power mapping with my big lecture class and was pleased with the way it went. The assignment is here if you're interested in the logistics of it. docs.google.com/presentation...
a photo of Justice Powell from his time on the Supreme Court
Depending on who you ask, Lewis Powell Jr. is either: an ideological mastermind of the Right who led the corporate counter-revolution OR the Supreme Court’s quintessential “swing justice" upholding liberal positions in some of the Court’s most high-profile cases (from affirmative action to abortion)
Does anyone want an academics in the Epstein files episode with @andyhines.bsky.social
ONE LIKE and I’ll release it Sunday
hahaha low bar but we’ve cleared it!
Screenshot reads: She and other publishing specialists question whether LeapSpace’s limited reach is worth the cost. Users will need either an institutional subscription (based in part on the institution’s size and amount of research) or an individual one, which costs $32 a month. Many libraries are already struggling to afford existing subscriptions. And if users want to read the cited content, they will need a separate subscription to that content’s publisher—akin to paying for multiple video-streaming services.
The inevitable next stage of academic publishers profiting from academics' work is here - scraping it for AI then charging subscriptions for access to the AI summaries, and then again for the citations. Academic content assetization as we called it in a recent paper. www.science.org/content/arti...
Kansas May Withhold Millions From Universities With ‘DEI-CRT’ in Gen Ed
www.insidehighered.com/news/diversi...
Yesterday, those who teach Intro to Sociology at Florida colleges (as opposed to universities) received a ready-made curriculum from the state and were ordered to teach it.
Yes, you read that correctly. The *state* is enforcing a curriculum on college profs, complete w/ the following restrictions:
The Epstein files revealed new details of multiple meetings over several years between convicted pedophile Epstein, Apollo CEO Marc Rowan and his Apollo co-founder and former CEO Leon Black. The AAUP & AFT are demanding that the Securities & Exchange Commission open an investigation.
@aft.org
Deeply disturbing confessions from Heritage. Creating new accreditors like CPHE is simply part of their Plan B. Plan A is to eliminate federal funding and oversight, and turn higher ed into a cesspool of unaccountable charter schools and state patronage schemes. 👎
www.chronicle.com/article/the-...
yes absolutely
we all love having to understand a faculty practice plan
This story is wild and also worth staring at this revenue breakdown, noting the outsized share of medical center activities here