After covid didn’t change academic institutions I lost faith the system could ever evolve towards one of empathy and care. But that’s bc I was looking to admin to change. As I witness the strength of students at Columbia/Barnard & the solidarity of their peers—I have hope again.

Just sat in on an event for healthcare workers and a doctor who went to Gaza said in the first four days he was there he performed as many amputations--mostly on children--as he did in two years working in the United States.

How can anyone stay silent about this violence?

The impossible cruelty of Columbia University’s treatment of students. Many of whom, I’m sure, have gone into debt to attend this abomination of an educational establishment.

I would hope that Columbia Faculty see their admin arresting their own students for peaceful protest as a red line. These students are in our care. Our primary responsibility as academics is to nurture their minds and protect them from oppression. Faculty must walk out now.

The risks these young people are making are extraordinary. Every Columbia alum, faculty and staff member should be rallying around them. And ACAB forever and ever amen.

This year I taught an entirely virtual open-access graduate course. Materials were free, speakers were compensated, and students were in attendance from all over the WORLD. On-line learning and community is not only possible but often PREFERABLE. No need to 'return to normal.'

This @LitHub overview of all the people declining or withdrawing from PEN awards is a great look at a blossoming solidarity, and also serves a very handy reading list

lithub.com/withdrawals-an…

Sending love to those who didn't get an academic job offer or did and the salary is below living wage or will require leaving partner/friends/community or living in continuous precarity. This world is full of difficult decisions and plenty of grief. I witness you (am one of you).

The viewership numbers are in for the men’s & women’s 2024 NCAA Basketball National Championships:

Men’s: 14.8 million
Women’s: 18.7 million

Invest in women’s sports.

Can’t stop thinking about the fact I just learned that there are over 850 postdocs at the University of Pittsburgh and we were forced out of the union negotiations as a bargaining chip. Like we just go forth without a union. Like what the heck.

“When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”

- Toni Morrison, born on this day in 1931

Yes, a comically bad poem landed in all our inboxes but if you scroll to the end you will find a great poem under the insulting label “related”—there is no relation here—but anyway read rasha abdulhadi’s extraordinary writing today and every day poets.org/poem/safe-harb…

Just so we’re clear: taking a neutral position in a genocide is taking the side of genocide.

This event with Mimi Khúc is going to be FABULOUS!

The largest cohort of pediatric amputees in history.

Meet the children who lost limbs in Gaza.

newyorker.com/news/dispatch/…