@laurenginsberg
she/her | Mellon Leadership Fellow | Humanities Advocate | professor of classics: Roman lit, culture, history, theater, civil war, & all things Nero | pedagogy geek | passionate about equity | lover of travel & food | never speak for my employer
Somehow the use of the LLM makes it all the more enraging, this literally high-powered (CPU-burning, fossil-fuel-burning) technology used to basically do a keyword search, adding no refinement or expertise, just augmenting ignorance in the service of destroying knowledge-making processes
“That film rests on generations of decades of research into history — the history of music, the history of slavery,” [Connolly] said. “It wasn’t just whipped up overnight with ChatGPT.”
Gift article linked above.
Joy Connolly, the president of the American Council of Learned Societies, cited George Washington’s belief that a democratic nation requires an educated citizenry. She also mentioned the hit movie “Sinners,” which has taken in nearly $280 million at the domestic box office."
The latest Pasts Imperfect is out, focused on the closing of humanities depts. & museums. @otavano.bsky.social discusses the U. of Ottawa, @mokersel.bsky.social on the DePaul Art Museum, @meirazk.bsky.social & @vox-magica.bsky.social on shuttering religious studies depts, & Justin Vorhis on U. Iowa.
Such an important issue voiced by exceptional scholars and teachers. Read every word.
Did anything top the Roman story?
I’ve also never spelled this word right on the first try. Ever.
accommodations didn’t exist when i was in college in the early 00s. of course there’s a “spike.” that’s a good thing; it means we’re getting better at educating all students.
Hi friends. As I previously noted, the U. of Iowa is planning to get rid of African American studies; Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, & the Classical Languages major—along with others. If you wish, please sign the classics petition: www.change.org/p/keep-the-c.... I will add more as I find out.
This! Every article I’ve had rejected by one journal has wound up published in another of equal standing. I learned things from the reviewer who said no, but also believed in my ideas & treated the review as insight into my most skeptical in-field reader.
LOL: "After this story was published, Paliwal said he received a cease and desist letter from Instructure, which owns Canvas, and has since taken down Einstein’s website." This was the
agentic AI that was going to do your Canvas homework for you.
www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...
Christopher Newfield’s work has a lot of important an useful data. I collect some of his pieces and those of others here if this is useful: Myths of the Useless Humanist: pasts-imperfect.ghost.io/pasts-imperf...
Duke strategically built its standing by investing in the humanities in the 80s because it was cheaper to get top humanist faculty and raise our rankings. dontaylor13.substack.com/p/humanities...
I’m super interested if you could point me to any reports or data on this for Oz. It’s not at all surprising! My context is US but have family in Oz who told me it isn’t the case there. I’d love evidence to the contrary.
Yup. Shout it again. Humanities classes subsidize STEM classes at most universities. The math isn’t hard to do.
Teaching engineering, per student and instructor, is damn expensive. Teaching history, literature, philosophy? Cheap!
Years ago our admin did a red and black report. It took salaries & how much $ each instructor made in tuition $ for classes we taught-you were in the red or black. They released numbers once & shut it down bc humanities were producing huge $ for uni & engineers, business and scientists were losing $
And letting Ilhan Omar carry the sword alone. Ugh. I am just so disappointed.
Want to know how bad the blizzard is here in the Northeast? For the first time in its 153-year-history, @bostonglobe.com
management has decided not to print and deliver a paper tonight.
www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/23/b...
We can’t be left behind in the massive embrace of deskilling even while we claim the deskilling is really maybe a skill!!
Question: if it can log into canvas & see other students’ work… isn’t that a FERPA violation? Students can do waivers for their own products. But they can’t waive FERPA protections for classmates? We’re told we have to use canvas because of data privacy requirements…
surely we can teach the children how to ethically use this product designed for unethical use by unethical people
Is Clodius adopting that name instead of Claudius an example? I don’t think the latter is in any documents but his choice for the former is commonly discussed.
This thought brought to you by seeing a contestant w a dog who clearly believes the bed is THEIR bed and I wondered how they were introduced to the new fiancé.
I think this is true in real life, but cats meeting strangers makes for less good TV on average. So I’m thinking about marketing here.
Hear me out: love is blind but the people are only part of it. They also get to spend time with the other person’s dog. And the dog chooses the future partner. Dogs are good judges of character.
The speed and extent to which higher education surrendered to Trump was probably the most depressing/infuriating thing to happen in 2025.
Thousands of institutions abandoned programs, ended or rewrote scholarships, closed down clubs and publications, all in pre-emptive compliance.
And you know why?
Mostly because they wanted to do it if they thought they could blame someone else for it.
