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Eric Hayot

Eric Hayot

@ehayot.bsky.social

1.3K followers 630 following 220 posts

Teacher (Penn State), writer of books about China and the West, literary worlds, academic style, history of the humanities. New project on the end of aesthetic history.

Arsenal fan, occasional Cassandra.

Art 22%

Sociology 21%

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Reposted by Anna O. Law, Lisa W. Fazio, Elizabeth Saunders , and 5 more Anna O. Law, Lisa W. Fazio, Elizabeth Saunders, Rebecca Tushnet, Michael Jones‐Correa, Manisha Sinha, Eric Hayot, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 11h

"In every society fallen to authoritarianism, the state goes after the press first+ closes in on universities next.
All of us who live, work,+learn within the university should think of our institution as part of the larger constitutional structure of the nation."
www.chronicle.com/article/univ...

Universities Need a New Defense

The authoritarian threat is growing. The old playbook won’t work.

www.chronicle.com

Reposted by Eric Hayot

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 2d

But the truth is, thanks in large part to my travels for Vandal Live, I feel much better about the profession than I did at this time last year, or even last Summer. What I have seen is a professional class neither resigned to getting bowled over, nor with their heads in the sand. Rather...

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 4d

You're sitting on a gold mine...

www.ebay.com/itm/37537928...

Pardon Our Interruption...

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 4d

Per Wikipedia: "The band's name is derived from an article the Beastie Boys published in their Grand Royal magazine about a man they hired to acquire classic sneakers."

... So, yes x 100.

Reposted by McKenzie Wark, Andrew Jacobs, Eric Hayot , and 1 more McKenzie Wark, Andrew Jacobs, Eric Hayot, David R. Shumway

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 5d

This was published in the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s. If you work in education & were, reasonably, taking a break, maybe you missed it.

Don’t miss it.

The ‘Crisis of the Humanities’ Is Over. That’s Not a Good Thing.

All of higher ed now suffers the attacks of politics and technology.

www.chronicle.com

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 11d

"...to help turn your humanity into your hu-brand-ity" is really amazing.

Reposted by Eric Hayot

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 11d

and most importantly and most proudly this year, to the teachers, leaders, makers, and haters leading an organized critique and refusal of AI, especially my cohort @ehayot.bsky.social and Krista Muratore, against-a-i.com

against-a-i.com

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

Where are your "skills" now that you need them, Liam???? WHERE?????

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

You're right--I think I was misdescribing your position in the skeets above.

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

But based on the responses so far the most likely form of reaction seems to be a new understanding of the role EdTech is playing in this whole fight, and an interest in responding to that.

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

We'll see! My feeling is that many of my colleagues don't believe enough in organizing/unionizing to actually DO it, so maybe this pushes some folks from a generic and useless "belief" into action.

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

I think it's much narrower than you're making it out to be. But it's also written the way it is to appeal to ALL our colleagues (inclduign people who respond to varying kinds/levels/types of rhetoric). And Matt and I have also different rhetorical relns to those communities, too.

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

But it's not "life itself": it's civil society. And it's not a moral claim but a historical claim--that something called "the humanities" has actually (in exiting history) served as a wedge for a larger attack on civil society (which includes corporate DEI, but also the VRA, AADA etc.). ...

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

...then that's what it is. And we don't disagree along the lines that you lay out here. (END, sorry this is interminable)

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

... and that it's turning folks into aggressive/bad readers. If you think of the goal of that piece as: how can Matt and I write something that helps people (1) understand the institutional/political structure of their professional situation and (2) find paths to action rather than despair...

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

Anyway. I think that one of the effects of the current situation for all of us is that we're being pushed into sides (pro-AI, anti-AI, pro-humanities/anti-humanities) that are dividing people who otherwise like and support each other and are on the same side about 95% of the world. ...

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

...and on a quick reread I don't see much in there that you can cite to make it that. You can pick on the "we are all humanists now" but unless you insist on reading that literally (in which case it's false) then, it's a rhetorical claim, doing a certain kind of work, in a piece aiming to persuade.

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

...the case that humanities scholarship has a special role in this fight. Some people might think so; I don't, but it doesn't really matter in any case. I think you're misreading the piece as an expression of the thing that you've been arguing against for a decade. But it's not that...

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

...to defend our institutions (as expressions of social goods, b/c public and open; this is a political belief) against OTHER institutions that have/express/organize other values. Again, this is a place for us to act and change. It has NOTHING to do with scholarship. Nothing in the piece makes...

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

That's why that second half is about EdTech (not AI; I am hostile to Gen LLMs not b/c they are "AI" but b/c they belong to the general EdTech project of primitive accumulation/destruction that aim to turn public goods into private ones). Those of us taking our courses off Canvas are acting ...

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

...but rather that they have been politicized, and that the correct responses are therefore political (organization, unions).

PART 2: the other thing the piece was trying to do was to give people a way to act to defend public education in their actual classrooms, in their role as teachers.

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

Goal of the piece was to give faculty in the humanities ways to respond to this political situation in appropriate fields (unions, professional organizations, banding together with K-12, sciences, etc.) so that they can act POLITICALLY. The point is not at all that the humanities are political...

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

It's about the position of the humanities in political conflict today, the role they have played as a wedge to unlock the larger project of dismantling civil society/public education. And the argument of the first half is, the wedge is open, now the larger stakes of the political fight are clear.

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

I dunno, Aaron, I feel like this is a real misreading of the piece (since as you know I agree with you, or at least am near you, wrt some of your arguments here re reason/knowledge). Without repeating everything I don't think the piece is a defense of the humanities b/c they're politically good.

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12d

I'm not sure how we came up with that either but I recognize some of me in the rhythm and you especially in the final clauses... It was a total pleasure to write together and to find ways to say and mean together more than what I could have said or meant alone.

Reposted by John R. Hutchinson, Rosemary A. Joyce, Andrew Jacobs

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 13d

Happy to see this, written with the excellent @mattseybold.bsky.social , out in the world. Solidarity to everyone fighting for education and civil society!

www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

The ‘Crisis of the Humanities’ Is Over. That’s Not a Good Thing.

All of higher ed now suffers the attacks of politics and technology.

www.chronicle.com

Reposted by Eric Hayot

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 13d

"fear of an educated proletariat+ resistance to secular, integrated public schooling have been the central motive for defunding public education... public education, the closest thing to a lasting success amid the broader failure of Reconstruction, is in danger."

www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

The ‘Crisis of the Humanities’ Is Over. That’s Not a Good Thing.

All of higher ed now suffers the attacks of politics and technology.

www.chronicle.com

Reposted by Dustin Mulvaney, Bruce D. Baker, Bonnie Honig , and 6 more Dustin Mulvaney, Bruce D. Baker, Bonnie Honig, Robert C. Richards, Rebecca Tushnet, Johann N. Neem, Christine Kooi, Eric Hayot, Sarah Brouillette

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 13d

I wasn’t sure they were going to publish this. So good for them.

The ‘Crisis of the Humanities’ Is Over. That’s Not a Good Thing.

All of higher ed now suffers the attacks of politics and technology.

www.chronicle.com

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 19d

Couple name Fregel obv.

Reposted by McKenzie Wark, Eric Hayot

Richard Grusin @rgrusin.bsky.social · 19d

In the mid-1990s, at the time Jay Bolter and I were writing Remediation, articles like this began to appear in the media about the dangers of the Internet for children--not only discussion boards and forums and online predators, but also text-based games like MUDs and MOOs.
1/

Her daughter was unraveling, and she didn’t know why. Then she found the AI chat logs.

A majority of teens are interacting with AI companions, and many of their parents have no idea.