Miller Wright

In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.

This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.

Cue passive voice writing lesson

If We had a Functional Constitution, We Wouldn’t have an Illegal War MAGA stooges destroyed the rule of law

Roberts’ 2024 opinion without textual or historical legitimacy, granted Trump immunity for virtually all crimes ushered in reign of domestic terror, and now an unconstitutional and shameful war for oil. No one has done more to destroy the “rule of law” than Roberts. open.substack.com/pub/contrari...

Congrats sir

RFK Jr. Wants to Revolutionize a Program That Supports Childhood Immunizations. The Results Could Be Catastrophic. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program stabilizes the nation’s childhood immunization system while paying those harmed by rare side effects. If the program topples, it could threaten access to vaccin...

NEW: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to overhaul an obscure but vital program that underpins the nation’s childhood immunization system.

Depending on what he does, the results could be catastrophic.

By @sheinvestigates.bsky.social

In intro courses we read our primary sources in class together and group discussion afterwards. Only way I can get some students to read a page or two.

Yeah this is the thing I'm told me and all my students need to uncritically embrace so they can get a job after college

Excited to share I will be joining the history department at UMBC in the Fall. Looking forward to meeting new students and colleagues and getting back in the classroom.

Thank you sir

Excited to share I will be joining the history department at UMBC in the Fall. Looking forward to meeting new students and colleagues and getting back in the classroom.

the White House's erasure of slavery (except for as something the founders sought to curb, which is weird since it didn't otherwise exist and wasn't otherwise bad) from its 250 materials is pretty bleak, a rewrite more reactionary than the 1876, 1926, or 1976 centennials.

Historic Places are the cornerstone of the National Park Service mission, and they (almost) always have been.

Every time I have tried to have an open mind and use chatgpt for academic research (finding new articles, etc), it has been entirely useless. The vast majority of citations are fake. Literally every single quote is made up. It's just a lie machine! I can't fathom how people have come to rely on it.

Trash

Gotta start calling it

Trump Wants to Cut Tribal College Funding by Nearly 90%, Putting Them at Risk of Closing ProPublica found that Congress was underfunding tribal colleges by a quarter-billion dollars per year. Rather than fixing the problem, proposed federal funding cuts unveiled this week would devastate ...

NEW: A nearly 90% funding cut proposed by the Trump administration would likely shut down and devastate the 37 tribal colleges and universities created to serve the students disadvantaged by the nation’s historic mistreatment of Indigenous communities.

By @mattkrupnick.bsky.social

Trump Administration Ends Program Critical to Search for an H.I.V. Vaccine

Breaking News: The Trump administration has dealt a sharp blow to work on HIV vaccines, terminating a $258 million program critical to the research.

It and the bots are getting worse

Diseases are spreading. The CDC isn't warning the public like it was months ago Some of the CDC's main channels for communicating urgent health information to the public have gone silent.

Some of the CDC's main channels for communicating urgent health information to the public have gone silent.

Cause if no one receives their evaluation reports is that because the reports were never done??

I know that the NEH Summer Stipend is being canceled but did anyone receive one this year? And did anyone receive their submission evaluations?

It’s not medical advice to advocate for vaccines when you head the nation’s largest public health agency and it’s your charge.

Arguably, however it is (very bad) medical advice when you promote useless interventions such as budesonide, vitamin A, clarithromycin as a false equivalent to vaccines

The president has covered the Oval Office in gold, is planning a massive military parade for his birthday, and is now accepting $400,000,000 luxury planes from foreign powers as personal presents.

What the fuck are we doing here?

Major airspace closures for civil aviation announced by both Pakistan (all airspace) and India (along the border with Pakistan) in the last few hours. We're possibly about to witness the start of the most intense and broad-spectrum direct conflict between two nuclear-armed states ever.

Have not heard of any winners so far

Got the notification that I did not win an NEH summer stipend, which I assumed with the gutting of the NEH. But did anyone?

Understanding the human experience is paramount in times like these. Humanities funding opportunities were already comically low, but the work must go on. Keep writing!

Framing the adoption of AI as an historical inevitability, rather than a way to do a thing you want or need done, gives the game away.

Nobody selling it this hard cares whether it helps; they want it to be the thing you have to deal with, like it or not. Problems, solutions, what’s the difference?

White House Proposal Could Gut Climate Modeling the World Depends On Potential funding cuts for NOAA and its research partners threaten irreparable harm not only to climate research but to American safety, competitiveness, and national security.

NEW: The total loss of NOAA’s office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research —a nerve center of global climate science, data collection and modeling — represents a setback for climate preparedness that experts warn the nation may never recover from.

By @abrahm.bsky.social