Today on the blog, @pricemargaret talks about her new book 'Crip Spacetime' and what it's like to be disabled in academe.
ow.ly/hNrF50RhnlR

Yesterday: GW English Dept memorial for our dear colleague Daniel DeWispelare, with loved ones, family, friends, students, colleagues. We all recalled his many talents & such humility: kindness/interest in others, deep knowledge of languages, and curiosity about the world & its cultures.

Wrote about this in August. It’s not getting better. These healthcare institutions are being willfully and violently incompetent while openly rejecting a massive opportunity for progress

thegauntlet.news/p/hospitals-ar…

I learned this the VERY hard way.
So to anyone reading this, please don't assume someone with LC who can't do the things you want them to do at the pace you want them to do it, is lying about their body or 'enjoys' being housebound (Ive seen this in 'leftist' circles, a lot)

I’ve learned on twitter that people will rag you for not responding to things when and how THEY want you to (without any context for any part of your life or actions), but centering your commitment/integrity/action is what matters, not just a recognizable performance.

Note the common thread b/w the arrests Columbia University and the suspension of the Valedictorian's speech USC is the language of 'security.' Universities should be spaces secure enough to have frank and open debate. And above all, where students should be safe expressing their views.

New horrors

i asked SARAH, the World Health Organization's new AI chatbot, for medical help near me, and it provided an entirely fabricated list of clinics/hospitals in SF. fake addresses, fake phone numbers.
check out Jessica Nix's take on SARAH here:
bloomberg.com/news/articles/… via Bloomberg

Students at Columbia U who are being arrested for demanding divestment and protesting in solidarity with Palestinian liberation, are being suspended, losing access to campus facilities, being evicted and given 15 minutes, under supervision, to gather/clear out their belongings.

our job as academic workers in this moment is to stand unequivocally and unapologetically with our students.

The truth about chronic illness/mental illness is that even those closer to you will eventually become really uncomfortable with the reality that your life is limited by your bodymind and they expect you to ‘do something’ to change that.
Which, you sometimes just can’t.

SHOP THE BOYCOTT: All books by the authors withdrawing from @PENAmerica awards available here!! Profits issued by Bookshop will be divided equally between UNRWA, which delivers life-saving aid to Gaza, and the Palestine-allied bookstore Word Is Change. bookshop.org/lists/2024-pen…

barbara johnson stan account can the tenured speak

columbia’s students against apartheid were right in 1985 and the students against the genocide in gaza are right today. the university responded the same way both times: mass arrests

africanactivist.msu.edu/recordFiles/21…

The hospital did not do airborne infection control, refuses to do airborne infection control, and openly states it’s too hard for them to do airborne infection control. patients should expect to be infected with COVID.

This is not healthcare. This is not medicine.

uncontroversial tweet of the day:

if someone writes you a letter of rec for something and you get whatever it is: tell your recommenders!!

Having your own students arrested for trespassing — a crime only because you suspended their right to be on campus — is just so obviously, horribly beyond the pale literally no matter what they were protesting.

QTNA

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.