I think Paul, of blessed posting memory, is entirely right here, and I say this *even though* the young people I know remain highly literate and engaged, because I think his sample is way more representative than mine.

musgrave.substack.com/p/a-post-lit...

The basic structure of so much commentary, some in the guise of academic study, reduces to:

(1) generative AI products are detrimental to the goals of education

(2) therefore, the goals of education must change.

Without the tacit axiom that AI has authority behind it, that just doesn’t follow.

I didn't create the error in the book's publisher, which should say Harvard University Asia Center, not Cambridge University Press, but I must confess to failing to catch it in copy-editing/proofs.

My review of @historianzhang.bsky.social's excellent Power for a Price is officially out in @hisjournalha.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Mais pour les étudiants à la maîtrise et surtout pour les doctorants, il est impossible d'avoir une université de classe mondiale sans accueillir un grand nombre d'étudiants venus de l'international.

Lorsqu'on parle d'étudiants universitaires, on pense souvent aux étudiants de premier cycle. Et oui, plafonner le nombre d'étudiants étrangers de premier cycle peut fonctionner (malgré certaines conséquences financières)

Comment détruire le réseau des universités de recherche du Québec le plus rapidement possible.

Wow, what a nightmare - I can see this becoming a big problem for those of us in Canada who work in fields where local library resources aren't great. Of course at the moment it doesn't matter for Canadians because the Canada Post strike has killed all ILL entirely anyway

This is an extremely important point, but I would be more sympathetic to Nous if it seemed like they were actually convincing administrators of this fact

Exactly! Now they'd just modify the headline when the results make clear it's wrong

Current headline practices are going to be such a pain in the ass to deal with for future historians

Sorry to the author, but I think refusing to provide physical review copies is ridiculous (and also makes it harder for me to read a book as intensively as is necessary to write a good review)

I'm making a highly principled stand on a matter of relatively small import and refusing to write a book review of a book whose press won't send me a hard copy.

Yeah, looking at Confucius in non-Confucian texts sounds like a lot of fun. Could throw in Zhuangzi too

A) I would not assume I know it better than you. B) I'm doing the film not the novel

That section will be taught by me personally and will be way more work, but students should also learn way more. Interesting question as to how many students will opt in to that - but I'm hoping it means that policing the scourge of AI will not deny learning opportunities to those who want them

Strategy for dealing with AI in my giant intro class next term, while not completely giving up on my desire to actually teach skills: students are evaluated entirely by in-class exams, except that there will be a small optional writing intensive section for anyone who actually wants to learn

Yeah, there are so many different ways to do it and the work of putting together a syllabus for a course of this sort involves a lot of "I can't believe I'm leaving that out"

I'll definitely be talking about the various competing traditions/schools in lecture, whatever the reading looks like, because I agree with you entirely about how to approach Zhou

Yeah, definitely looking at this as a way to bring in gender roles. But afterlife exams is a good idea, especially since by doing Pu Songling, I'm not doing Wu Jingzi!

though not far off a complete list, since there are a couple midterms that kill off the focused cultural thing for that week

stuff I think I'm doing (not a complete list yet): oracle bones, Mencius, Sima Qian, Mahamaudgalyayana, Journey to the West, Pu Songling, Lu Xun, East is Red, To Live, contemporary sci-fi (probably Folding Beijing)

I mean, they're getting some Confucianism because you can't just ignore it (giving them Mencius, since I think it's more accessible). Would love to include Daoist stuff too, but I've got to cover everything (to the present, not just pre-modern) in 13 weeks. So Zhou gets one week...alas

Survey: I'm teaching "Introduction to Chinese Culture" this fall for which I'm trying to combine a historical survey with a weekly focus on a different genre of writing/performance/film. For Qing, I'm thinking I may go with 志怪小說 and 蒲松龄. So what are your favorite stories in the Giles translation?