Totally, completely flabbergasted. #MacFellow

hub.jhu.edu/2025/10/08/h...

This NYT podcast on the cratering of coding jobs is an advertisement for a liberal arts education. Don't train for today's jobs b/c they might not be there tomorrow. Develop enduring critical thinking skills that allow you to adapt to an evolving world www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/p...

For instance, this fantastic opening sentence from a student's essay I am grading right now. Is it a topic sentence? Debatable. But it does everything a topic sentence does, and that's what makes it so good. It's an evolved, improved version of what the student was likely taught to do in HS.

I think pretty much every paragraph needs a 1st sentence that establishes the paragraph's agenda and helps the reader understand why what comes next is relevant to what came before. Is every such sentence a HS english approved "topic sentence?" Maybe not, but they do similar things.

My argument: not everybody on the right is personally religious, but the right inspires religious thinking in its people.

In contrast, plenty of people on the left ARE religious, but the Democratic party operates according to a secular logic that has difficulty inspiring devotion among anyone.

Happy to share this little piece I wrote for Contemporary Sociology on religion and secularism in Trump's re-election:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Great thread on writing as thinking. Your LLM can't do this for you.

And verb your nouns, folks! Put the action of your arguments into verbs, not nominalizations!

Thanks, Dan. I know! I'm going to go over it in class with them bit by bit because I know they won't read it on their own.

pas de quoi!

I know there will be some resistance to this policy, but I'm excited about helping students see why real thinking and real writing matter.

Comments and feedback welcome, of course.

- Providing alternatives to AI (last page of the document) seems really important for getting buy-in. This was absent in the first version and lots of students suggested including it.

- Students are concerned about how I'll enforce my AI ban. I don't blame them. Reassuring them that this won't be a witch hunt and that they'll always have a chance to explain themselves will be an important part of implementing this policy.

- My students LOVED seeing it affirmed, in writing, that I see learning to think for themselves and communicate that thinking to others as the core goals of a liberal arts education. Many are feeling overwhelmed by the industry's increasing focus on careers and measurable outcomes.

A few things worth sharing from the process of developing this document:

- Students generally have NO IDEA how AI works. Even this most rudimentary summary of the technology was news to most of them.

- Whatever our attitudes about AI, students want to hear from us about why we feel that way.

This summer, I developed an AI Policy and Contract for my courses. After incorporating feedback from lots of students, here's the final version.

I'm sharing it here in case others would like to adapt it for their own use. Please feel free to adapt and use it.

docs.google.com/document/d/e...

The University of Minnesota, Morris provides an amazing liberal arts experience and learning environment that equals or exceeds MN's private liberal arts colleges at a 1/3 or 1/4 of the price.

Stop prioritizing 70k/yr institutions. Check out places like Morris! www.startribune.com/university-o...

all the way off

Even lots of “quaint” towns in New England are like this. You can live two blocks from the local school and your kids may not be able to walk to it because the town won’t build a sidewalk, there’s no shoulder, and the drivers traverse the hilly, wooded, curvy roads at breakneck speeds. It’s bonkers.

Some cities limit liquor licenses (the permit the government gives you to be able to serve alcohol). In these areas restaurants that don’t have a liquor license usually let you bring your own (known as BYO). Of course, restaurants that sell wine don’t allow BYO or else charge you $ for the privilege

WaPo: We've killed our independence and objectivity, please like our owner

NYT: Trump Making Amazing Deals, White House Says; Mamdani Late 4 Times in 6th Grade

CBS: We'll censor things you dislike, here's millions of dollars, please let our parent do a merger

WSJ: BREAKING: TRUMP-EPSTEIN LETTER!

Congratulations! I still teach Disciplining the Poor almost every semester. Eager to read this next one.

Andrew Cuomo is afraid he'll lose, so his donors want you to fear me.

His SuperPAC just sent out a mailer that artificially lengthened and darkened my beard.

This is blatant Islamophobia—the kind of racism that explains why MAGA billionaires support his campaign.

Congratulations, Evan!

At this point, I would suggest as a general rule that the greater the embrace of this kind of approach to generative AI, the less invested the institution is in students actually learning something or having genuinely meaningful experiences. Students beware. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/t...