Megan L. Cook

These fuckers who love western civilization sure do hate it

I do want to note that the plaintiffs here are the @acls1919.bsky.social @modernlanguage.bsky.social @authorsguild.org and the AHA and if anyone at any of those orgs has ever thought about doing a fundraising campaign similar to the @eff.org's "Let's sue the government!" stickers, now's the moment

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

When DOGE Unleashed ChatGPT on the Humanities

As someone who watched the careful stewardship of grants over many years, the lack of care and the dismissal of the hard work of scholars and NEH program staff described here is devastating and shameful.

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/a...

For folks outside of Middle English studies: METS (metseditions.org) puts out online teaching editions of Middle English texts. They're also available in inexpensive paperbacks. They've been doing this since the 90s. It's a crucial resource for the field and about as nuts-and-bolts as you can get.

They love the idea of the Middle Ages, especially as read through 19th century imperial racism; they love the actual historical Middle Ages considerably less so

Now I'm wondering if I need to delete this thread so they don't take our grant away. A GREAT AND NORMAL FEELING that is DEFINITELY A SIGN OF A HEALTHY DEMOCRACY

Also I know for a fact that a bunch of these grants that it says *weren't* DEI-related got cancelled anyway, though some have been reinstated. It's just an excuse for taking people's money away because they don't like the guy who was president when it was given to them

14th century England! Too woke for this administration! People lost their jobs and in some cases their best shot at a career because of these cancellations and the stunning laziness, incuriosity, and cruelty behind them

Here's the exhibit with the AI-generated output: www.historians.org/wp-content/u...

Here's the filing: www.historians.org/wp-content/u...

Obviously, NEH grants never should have been clawed back in the first place, DOGE is a lot of crap, and all grants should be reinstated, but if you want to feel PARTICULAR rage about how half-assed and cruel the whole process is, read the AI rationale for terminating the TEAMS METS grant

Surely, your parents had the idea of unconditional election on their side in that fight.

Those of Calvinist background (particularly Dutch Calvinists from western Michigan, of which I am one) are oddly overrepresented in medieval studies

Oh yeah, as a medievalist I have no doubt about that, but it's baked into the U.S. ab urbe condita in a way that seems directly related to this finding.

Likes are mostly historians (literary, religious, and otherwise) of early modern Europe and early America.

That's Calvinism for ya, baby!

I grade the PDF ones by hand on my ipad, and once they see the state of my handwriting, they usually remember to use a different format in the future

I ask them not to, but they often do, and I don't have time to chase them down about it. They write everything in google docs, and this is how they export it.

Out of all the apps I use regularly, I think Adobe Acrobat has enshittified the most rapidly with the addition of AI features, features which I adamantly do not want to use. No, I do not want a summary of this "long document," it's a five-page student essay and I'm trying to grade it

Too real

A mug with an illustration of a cloaked, smiling, and really quite friendly-looking figure standing before a cauldron filled with a red liquid that also drips from their upraised hands. The legend reads "Blood Of My Enemies" in a curvy, 70's-style font. I am holding the mug and my torso is visible in the background, but really it's about the mug

How things are going over here (I still can't decide if this is a work-appropriate vessel):

OK, but I reference several of those 123 all the time because it's easier to find them there than in the wild.

This is way out of my field, but if I were looking for what you describe, I'd probably start with Voltmer's footnotes

Same same same same same!

My experience is that this is a book that, in addition to its inherent problems, only pops up in settings that are deeply ill-suited to a nuanced discussion (punk rock show, faculty meeting, once in at an airport gate when a fellow conference-goer and I were on the same flight and delayed)

I am always amazed by how many people around me are reading (and teaching!) Caliban and the Witch and can now confirm this is a useful piece to share with those whose enthusiasm for marxist-feminist analysis (good!) outstrips their resources for critiquing Federici's historiography (which is bad)

Then I told them it was OK if they needed to take a little extra time during our break to go downstairs and get an energy drink out of the vending machine and that seemed to resonate with them more

Today I told them the story of how, the first time I went to the Bodleian to look at a manuscript, I couldn’t figure out how to open the clasps and had to ask for help. But someone with a little more experience showed me how! And now I hope I can be a version of that for them

For the record, this isn’t because my students hate learning paleography, I just like teaching it a whole lot

Yes! Not to get all zen about it, but I think paleography teaches so many useful skills around attention and patience (and also how to read 15th c manuscripts)

Both of these are really good points