Antonia Alksnis
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antoniaalksnis.bsky.social
Antonia Alksnis
@antoniaalksnis.bsky.social
Political theory PhD candidate, UC Berkeley polisci | Rousseau & XVIIIe siècle

BA University of Toronto
While home sick for a few days, I successfully broke my caffeine addiction! ☕ ❌ 😌

Here's how it's impacting my life & work 👇🧵
November 15, 2025 at 4:16 AM
Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
I joined my Democratic colleagues in instructing USDA Secretary Rollins to use SNAP’s emergency reserves to keep food assistance flowing for the 42 million Americans who rely on it, including 16 million children, and 4 million people with disabilities. (1/3)
October 28, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
look, I'm no fan of the Bourbons, or of monarchy in general for that matter -- but to invoke them to characterize Trump is I think deeply unfair to Versailles and the French absolutist monarchy
October 31, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
Department floor is having a halloween door decor contest, I think our office wins for scariest @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social
October 31, 2025 at 6:21 PM
Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
The writing / academic-ish / research meme side-quest continues! And with halloween almost upon us, what could be scarier than Reviewer 2? #highered #academicsky #resdev
October 29, 2025 at 9:55 PM
October 29, 2025 at 10:22 PM
Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
Delighted to share the Call for Papers for a special issue of French Historical Studies on the theme "European-Indigenous Relations in the French Americas" (to be co-edited by Scott Berthelette and myself)

CFP and submission guidelines can be found here:
read.dukeupress.edu/french-histo...
Submission Guidelines | French Historical Studies | Duke University Press
Submission Guidelines | French Historical Studies | Duke University Press Submission Guidelines  CALL FOR PAPERS Special issue of French Historical Studies on European-Indigenous ...
read.dukeupress.edu
October 23, 2025 at 7:28 PM
guys I think I'm finally figuring out the regime types in Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws
October 23, 2025 at 8:09 PM
Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
Intellectual “work” is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heaven when he is at work

-Twain, Conn Yankee
September 10, 2025 at 8:21 PM
Abba's "take a chance on me" is a mood for academic job market season
September 7, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
The quote below is all true. But let's not forget the one major factor rich kids have in their favor: the ability to pay full tuition, which many colleges/universities seek to balance their books.
August 7, 2025 at 9:26 PM
how it feels to get your article accepted for publication for the first time
#GradLife #PhdCat
July 23, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
Love that the top of the distribution bar is zero. AI didn’t make a single developer work any faster. The best outcome is break even productivity.
metr.org METR @metr.org · Jul 10
We ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers.

The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't.
July 10, 2025 at 9:14 PM
one of my favourite things is when you have to do something and it's like "no. you ccant use your browser on desktop,, you have to download,, an app". And the app doesn't work.
June 25, 2025 at 3:43 AM
Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
A group of U.S.-based faculty colleagues from a wide range of disciplines and institutional affiliations have developed and are distributing a statement that expresses our shared commitments to democracy, diversity, and higher education.

bit.ly/DemocracyAnd...
Speaking Out for Democracy and US Higher Education
Speaking Out for Democracy and US Higher Education To add your name to this statement, go to https://bit.ly/DemocracyAndHigherEdSign We publicly affirm our commitment to the enterprise of higher educ...
bit.ly
March 24, 2025 at 8:58 PM
throwback to when one of Berkeley's mandatory cybersecurity trainings used stock images of the Jealous GirlfriendTM
May 8, 2025 at 11:51 PM
When you're trying to optimize your article title for search engines
April 26, 2025 at 3:01 AM
Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
As of this morning, we've tracked over 600 student visa revocations at more than 100 colleges.

That's double yesterday morning's count. Send updates to me or @amowreader.com and follow @insidehighered.com interactive visa map here: www.insidehighered.com/news/global/...
Where Students Have Had Their Visas Revoked
The Trump administration has quietly revoked hundreds of student visas across the country, wreaking havoc on the system.
www.insidehighered.com
April 10, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
When I teach classes on the French Revolution I love to show students this satirical print from 1791. King Louis XVI is shown lifting off his 'mask' to reveal that he is, in fact, a 'cruchon' - a jughead or idiot!

#18thcentury #politicalsatire #revolutionaryart #historysky #frenchrevolution
April 7, 2025 at 11:45 AM
preparing for @mpsa.bsky.social by crying tears of joy at the amount of history of political thought in the conference program #MPSA2025
April 2, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Jean-Jacques Rousseau roasted for small sample sizes
March 13, 2025 at 11:09 PM
I bring a "are there ethical issues with feeding dead people's handwritten notes into chatGPT?" vibe that the AI fans don't really like
March 11, 2025 at 11:13 PM
“Amazon healthcare” is among the most ominous phrases I’ve seen lately
February 26, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
Thread of my own work that has used data from Department of Education and columns that have focused on research funded by them

1/N Inequality in college graduation rates
Uses data from Education Longitudinal Study, conducted by Department of Education
www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/u...
February 15, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
[tapping head meme] can't have Humanities Phds if you've defunded the whole University
it seems one of the stated purposes of capping overhead on NIH grants at 15% by those who champion the cap is to starve PhD programs in the humanities

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
February 15, 2025 at 11:18 PM