Explore our job opportunities focused on the Medieval and Early Modern periods (thread 🧵):
1. Assistant Professor in Early Modern British History, University of Warwick
memorients.com/news/assista...
@oieahc.bsky.social is accepting applications for a 12-week workshop, The Historian’s Writerly Craft: A Summer Intensive Grounded in Discipline and Artistry, geared toward authors who are working on their second book or beyond. April by 4/20 for the summer workshop!
oieahc.wm.edu/events-overv...
🧵 Trump administration AI policy is widely described as deregulatory. This description is misleading. What's happening is not the absence of governance but its rearrangement--intensive state intervention operating through mechanisms we don't typically call regulation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
I’m struggling w a deep sense of disillusionment. I can’t tell how much is a “typical” response to yrs of shared gov work vs a response to the challenges of this particular neolib moment—genAI, threats to academic freedom, erosion of the lib arts, pressure to prove degree ROI via job placement, etc.
Yes: #NEH supports projects and moreover PEOPLE. Which is why it's all the more egregious that 1,400 grants were terminated and over 100 employees were fired in April 2025.
Support funding for NEH, but also please support justice for those who were economically harmed last year.
I think this is the point where I admit I just don't understand Gen Z and that I am old.
I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed.
Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.
Screenshot of article on the state of deferred maintenance on higher ed campuses in MA
i know the campus is energy inefficient but I didn’t realize just how energy inefficient
Chances that the decrepit campus building I work in might get refurbished before I retire just went up slightly: gazettenet.com/2026/02/28/s...
It also remains the case that the Trump NEH will not fund work that 'promotes' "gender ideology," "discriminatory equity ideology," "support for diversity, equity, and inclusion," "diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility," or "environmental justice initiatives or activities"
Hugely respect to Celenza, but the problem with this take is that it completely ignores that the most pertinent and helpful critiques of universities are and have long been coming from WITHIN academia - by critical university studies and abolitionist university studies scholars, for example
Since we're complaining this morning, let me add that I deeply resent AI for stimulating the spread of CAPTCH/reCAPTCHA verification tests across the internet.
I absolutely hate two factor authentication
Screenshot of a job advertisement specifying that applicants over two years out from their PhD will not be considered.
Why do postdocs so often say that they won’t consider applicants more than a few years out from their PhD? This seems needlessly discriminatory in an absolutely awful academic job market.
The 2026 S-USIH Annual Conference will be held in Madison, Wisconsin, on November 12-14, 2026, on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The theme is “Intellectual Historians’ Toolkits: Methods, Theories, Practices.” Check out the CFP. s-usih.org/2026/02/s-us...
These are “low enrollment” majors but the classes are regularly at capacity. They changed the funding structure a few years ago here, switching the allocation from course enrollments to majors then blamed these departments for a structural, top-down change. This is entirely a political choice.
Thus starts a vicious cycle: at research universities, fields that teach “skills,” rather than “produce research” are targeted for cuts. Nevermind that “research” gets defined as “generating IP for corporations to use to get rich”
The Iowa case also shows how demands that curricula align with the goal of producing “high-demand jobs and [meeting] workforce needs” is code for “cut the humanities and/or turn them into service departments that teach ‘skills,’ not produce knowledge“
“Low enrollment“ is always a bad argument (tho one that many humanists buy into in worries about “declining” majors) but it’s a particular sham at a research university. These are vital, active research fields that produce important knowledge, which is why research universities must support them.
The closing of African American Studies and GWSS at Iowa is absolutely heartbreaking. It is such an important time to study these subjects. Words really cannot express how upsetting this decision is. www.thegazette.com/higher-educa...
I'd like at add a few things to this. (1) humanists have not been able to convince any political party that curiosity-driven humanities research is a public good that should be funded using tax dollars. Republicans don't believe this, but neither do Democrats.
Another day, another union-bashing, anti-labor op-ed from the "liberal" New York Times, which is increasingly indistinguishable from the Wall Street Journal opinion page.
does this mean the humanities are dead or that they’re primed for a comeback?
The only reliable way anybody has found to keep a lit mag solvent is have the CIA fund it.
Photo of the “Tarses Family Toilets” at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art
I love when you go to a museum or a university and some donor has given money to put their name on the bathrooms. Gives a whole new meaning to the term “endowed chair” 😂
I regularly see people wondering how it's possible that there are so many musicians and writers and film makers and artists from a tiny nation like Iceland.
And the answer is really simple: State funding for art education and artists. I literally get a salary from the government to write books.
The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us by Benjamin Recht
In The Irrational Decision, Benjamin Recht traces how the computer revolution shaped our conception of rationality—& why human problems require solutions rooted in human intuition, morality, & judgment.
Available March 10 (5 May UK pub).
Learn more: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
It was fairly well-covered in this excellent article last month by Jennifer Schuessler @nytimes.com - an important read about the happenings at the National Endowment for the Humanities #NEH
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/a...
Not that any of this is surprising - this is exactly what they said they were going to do - but nevertheless depressing.
