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Ted McCormick

@tedmccormick.bsky.social

15K followers 2.2K following 4.7K posts

Historian of scientific, economic and colonial projects in early modern Britain, Ireland, and the Atlantic; books http://bit.ly/3HYwNiA & http://bit.ly/3rKdAvt; http://memoriousblog.com; views mine; he/him. Montrealer in Philly, except when I’m in Montreal

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 1d

No university that signs the compact will be a university, in the accepted sense, anymore. They will be mere Trump Institutes, teaching only what subjects Trump doesn't bar them from teaching -- and only until he does. Signing is an abdication of responsibility and an act of great moral cowardice.

Benjamin Nathans | Autonomy or obedience

Guest Columnist Benjamin Nathans urges Penn’s leadership to resist the White House’s demands in its “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”

www.thedp.com

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 4h

Appendix 2: on tools

A tool is *for* something. If the things generative AI tools are *for* are not conducive to learning a given subject, generative AI is not a tool for learning that subject. Establishing that and then talking about how to integrate it into courses on that subject is incoherent.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 4h

In practice this is the most common “use case”

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 6h

Appendix 1: on gun analogies

Nobody ever asked me to teach gun safety in history class. The reasons are so obvious they don't need stating and have nothing to do with whether gun safety matters.

But I am being asked (not politely) to spend history class helping people to learn how to use Al.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 6h

Nobody has ever asked me to teach gun (or hammer) safety in history class. The reasons are so obvious they don't need stating, and they have nothing to do with whether gun (or hammer) safety matters.

But I am being asked (not politely) to spend history class helping people to learn how to use Al.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 6h

Nobody has ever asked me to teach gun (or hammer) safety in history class. The reasons are so obvious they don’t need stating, and they have nothing to do with whether gun (or hammer) safety matters.

But I am being asked (not politely) to spend history class helping people to learn how to use AI.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 6h

I’m not sure this analogy works any differently than hammers, really, if the subject I teach is history.

People should learn how to use guns in gun class. People should learn how to use AI in AI class.

But the pitch from genAI boosters is that they need to learn about AI in *every* class.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 7h

The history of Reconstruction is suddenly too sensitive for this game developer.

I wonder how the historical consultants feel about it.

Scoop: Ubisoft cancelled a post-Civil War Assassin’s Creed last year

Company leadership deemed the project too controversial for the moment, sources tell Game File

www.gamefile.news

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 7h

Accepting this as an argument means accepting that, as an educator, your primary commitment is not to educating your students, or to propagating knowledge of your subject, but to finding and securing new markets for products in whose success your employers (or their bosses) have some kind of stake.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 7h

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.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 8h

I’m sure that’s true. I’m talking about genAI products as objects of study, commentary, time and effort around specific classroom uses, because that is how it impinges on my existence.

The pure idea is comparatively uninteresting in this context, because the pure idea isn’t what I’m being sold.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 8h

This also indicates the essential dishonesty of saying “it’s just a tool.” A hammer is a tool. Nobody writes about the “inevitability” of hammers. Nobody has ever studied the harmful effects of hammers on learning and concluded that teachers must all hit their students with hammers “responsibly.”

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 8h

Generative AI, in both form and content, and whether looked on favourably or critically, seems to embody a collective hopelessness about the prospect of human learning and creativity, if not human knowledge altogether. It’s as if climate change had fans.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 8h

It is hard not to connect these observable features of “academic” work on AI to the collapse of faculty governance in universities. Even academics in the midst of *doing* academic work *about* their academic work write as if they have no real choices about the material context in which it occurs.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 8h

It is also remarkable how far what is essentially advertising copy has penetrated into ostensibly neutral, scholarly contextualizations even of critical studies — rote invocations of AI’s “power,” “potential,” and ubiquity, untethered to any specific sources or data, are just background noise now.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 8h

Imagine studying a technology whose presence in the classroom is so detrimental to the development of writing and research skills (including even the will to know the sources behind claims!) that mitigating its effects becomes a central goal of course design, and concluding with tips on adopting it.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 8h

A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.

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Reposted by Ted McCormick

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 9h

Our book launch is happening, at IASH in Edinburgh, October 29. It was there that @lindaaburnett.bsky.social and I first met, and had an idea that we might do some work together. That was in 2012! If you'll be in Edinburgh then, please come to our launch. Details below.

The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities @iashedinburgh.bsky.social · 12h

Book launch: "Race and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Colonial History, 1750-1820" (Yale UP)

Wed 29 Oct, 16:45-20:00, including drinks

Featuring a host of IASH alumni, this event celebrates the new volume by Linda Andersson Burnett & Bruce Buchan.

raceandthescottishenlightenment.eventbrite.co.uk

Race and the Scottish Enlightenment: Book Launch and Discussion

Join authors Bruce Buchan and Linda Andersson Burnett to celebrate "Race and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Colonial History 1750-1820".

raceandthescottishenlightenment.eventbrite.co.uk

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 18h

which way western civ

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 18h

I guess sometimes to make history you have to erase it a little

SaltyBitchables @saltybitchables.bsky.social · 1d

Gum Street? Incel Way?

#Pinks #ProudBlue #CharlieKirk

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 1d

There's a horror that comes wth recognizing where you are, the things you've already let pass: invasions of rights, perversions of mission. I think few parts of this society, and few corners of academia -- either here or elsewhere in the West -- are free of it. But it has to be faced to be stopped.

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 1d

Consider that you're not only surrendering your autonomy and your trust to a state that publicly despises both, in order to win some money and some favour for a while. Consider that, for anyone uninterested in your personal self-justifications, you're making yourself an accessory to this, and more.

Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 1d

Good reporting on the South Shore raid from South Side weekly here.

Confirms one thing I was told but didn't put in my own piece because I didn't have a second source and it seemed too insane: border agents segregated arrested residents by race

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...

Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children

Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes. Days later, neighbors are still searching for the missing.

southsideweekly.com

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 1d

If you are the sort of person who cares about how your actions are remembered -- I can't think many today are -- consider that you are abetting the takeover of places of learning by the same fascists who at this moment are using troops to suppress your fellow citizens' rights to speech and assembly.

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Reposted by Ted McCormick

LadyGiada @ladygiada.bsky.social · 1d

Call for Papers📣: Gender, Violence and the Early Moderns. Join us in Florence. We look forward to hosting you in May 2026😎☀️ @eui-history.bsky.social #skystorians #academicsky #earlymodern

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 1d

Benjamin Nathans | Autonomy or obedience

Guest Columnist Benjamin Nathans urges Penn’s leadership to resist the White House’s demands in its “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”

www.thedp.com

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Reposted by Ted McCormick

Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 3d

If you are a supporter and reader of @contingent-mag.bsky.social one of the biggest things you can do to help us at the moment is get this CFP to the NTT folks in your life. The fracturing of social media has made it very difficult to get the word out esp. to adjuncts and VAPs.

CFP: A Time of Monsters

The monster has been here all along. It is a historical constant that manifests in wildly different ways across time, place, and culture. Whatever form it takes, the monster claws at categories; it un...

contingentmagazine.org

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