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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson
@timwatson.bsky.social
2.6K followers 1.9K following 1.8K posts
English professor in Miami. British-American. London > Bishop's Stortford > Brighton > Brooklyn > Miami. Subtropical gardener. Florida Mangos: A Cultural History, forthcoming from U of Florida Press.
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 1h
Menard is featured on the web pages of the Equal Justice Initiative, which is featured in the NYT today.
Feb. 27, 1869 | Congress Refuses to Seat First Black Man Elected to House of Representatives
Learn more about our history of racial injustice.
calendar.eji.org
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 12h
Before that, Lincoln sent him to Belize to report on its suitability for Black emigration. He moved to Jamaica, met his wife there, and then was expelled as an agitator by the British to New Orleans in the aftermath of the Morant Bay rebellion.
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 13h
He spent most of the last 20 years of his life in Florida, editing newspapers in Jacksonville and Key West, and published a volume of poems, Lays in Summer Lands, focused on Florida and the Caribbean.
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 13h
somehow this U.S. Census fact sheet about Menard has escaped the current administration's censors www2.census.gov/library/fact...
www2.census.gov
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 13h
Today I'm thinking about the fact that the first Black person elected to Congress, John Willis Menard in 1868, was never sworn in and seated.

He won a special election for the US House in Louisiana after the previous rep died, but his white opponent (a Democrat, of course) contested the election.
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 20h
A frequently repeated line from a colleague who retired a few years ago after a long career at my university: "Remember, when they say they don't have the money to fund something, what they mean is they don't have the money *for you*."
robbhawkes.bsky.social
Rob Hawkes @robbhawkes.bsky.social · 20h
“‘Anything we can actually do, we can afford.’ Taxation controls the distribution of wealth. At bottom, however, state spending never rests on private profit. This means that an impoverished public good such as the present higher-education system reflects an impoverished public imagination.”
UK Universities in Crisis? Time to Transform Higher Ed Finance
by Rob Hawkes and Scott Ferguson Universities in the UK are in crisis. Job cuts in the sector are reaching ‘cataclysmic’ levels, with an estimated 10,000 already lost and many more at risk. Just da…
moneyontheleft.org
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 1d
I endorse the Montague Book Mill, however. One of the most amazing bookshops I've ever set foot in.
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 1d
Reading about coral reef bleaching is what we learn has pushed the protagonist over the edge in Lauren Groff's amazing story "Flower Hunters," for just one example.
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 1d
Also Flipper.

It's all the more striking given that the undersea world remains the least understood/visible part of our planet as far as humans are concerned.

Once you start looking for "coral reef bleaching" in books and articles about climate change, you see it everywhere.
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 1d
I've been wondering why threats to coral reefs are such a signature marker of global heating in popular discourse. This wonderful piece about marine biologist Elvira Alvarado made me think we can trace it back to the impact of the TV show The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau in the 1970s.
The mother of Colombian corals
Known as the mother of Colombian corals, at 70, marine biologist Elvira Alvarado is still diving — and pioneering "coral IVF" to help save endangered reefs.
www.npr.org
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Reposted by Tim Watson
kierisi.bsky.social
Jesse Mostipak @kierisi.bsky.social · 3d
that's enough internet for today.
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 2d
This is a really interesting development in public ownership of local media — it would be great if the Miami Herald was owned and operated by the Miami-Dade Public Library System instead of by McClatchy.
librarycolleen.bsky.social
Colleen @librarycolleen.bsky.social · 8d
The Ann Arbor District Library Plans to Acquire the Ann Arbor Observer 📚
aadl.org/node/647334
The Ann Arbor District Library Plans to Acquire the Ann Arbor Observer | Ann Arbor District Library
aadl.org
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 2d
One of my weird dual citizen habits is to go to garden centres in Britain to check out the houseplants, to see which ones are the same as plants in our Miami garden—which is how I found out recently that snake plant (Dracaena trifasciata) is known as mother-in-law's tongue in Britain?! Bloody hell.
Snake plants (Dracaena trifasciata) on display in pots at a nursery/garden centre in southern England, where they were called "mother-in-law's tongue".
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 3d
bookmarking this for future use (every day)
kierisi.bsky.social
Jesse Mostipak @kierisi.bsky.social · 3d
that's enough internet for today.
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 3d
As someone with mostly positive memories of living in Brighton, Hove, and Lewes between 1987-1990, I'm happy to have sparked that feeling.
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 3d
Absolutely, totally agree.

It was a life-changing year for me in every conceivable way.
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 4d
Ugh. We're currently using a 20-yr-old registration system that's clunky but works. I'm sure there will be pressure to switch to Workday, even though everyone hates Workday.
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 4d
Is this the promised end / Or image of that horror?
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 4d
Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Just Extortion
www.nytimes.com
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 4d
Searching for undergraduate programs at other universities today I came across the phrase "students can declare the major in Workday": please tell me Workday hasn't taken over the curriculum on top of university budgeting and hiring?!
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 4d
Anyway, the nine universities should be spending this weekend preparing a response that starts with Hell, No.
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 4d
I know none of this is good faith, but I don't see how you can square Universities Must Prioritize Hard Sciences with "a vibrant marketplace of ideas requires an intellectually open campus environment." bsky.app/profile/heid...
heidikitrosser.bsky.social
Heidi Kitrosser @heidikitrosser.bsky.social · 5d
2 – MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS & CIVIL DISCOURSE Truth-seeking is a core function of institutions of higher education. Fulfilling this mission requires maintaining a vibrant marketplace of ideas where different views can be explored, debated, and challenged. Therefore, signatories to this compact commit themselves to fostering a vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus. A vibrant marketplace of ideas requires an intellectually open campus environment, with a broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints present and no single ideology dominant, both along political and other relevant lines. Signatories commit themselves to revising governance structures as necessary to create such an environment, including but not limited to transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas. Given the importance of academic freedom to the marketplace of ideas, signatories shall adopt a policy protecting academic freedom in classrooms, teaching, research, and scholarship. Such policies also shall recognize that academic freedom is not absolute, and universities shall adopt policies that prevent discriminatory, threatening, harassing, or other behaviors that abridge the rights of other members of the university community. Signatories commit to rigorous, good faith, empirical assessment of a broad spectrum of viewpoints among faculty, students, and staff at all levels and to sharing the results of such assessments with the public; and to seek such a broad spectrum of viewpoints not just in the university as a whole, but within every field, department, school, and teaching unit. Signatories acknowledge that the freedom to debate requires conditions of civility. Civility includes protections against institutional punishment or individual harassment for one’s views. Universities
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 4d
The Trump administration doesn't often invoke "the public good," but does so in the higher ed Threat Letter, to compel universities to waive tuition for students in (undefined) "hard sciences," presumably the same fields whose federal funding (public money!) the administration is cutting massively
heidikitrosser.bsky.social
Heidi Kitrosser @heidikitrosser.bsky.social · 5d
of his or her membership in a racial, ethnic, national, or religious group, or a group based on sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity. 7 - FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Too many young adults have become saddled with life-altering debt that has affected, among other things, their ability to have a family or purchase a home. Universities have a duty to control their costs, including by eliminating unnecessary administrative staff, reducing tuition burdens, engaging in transparent accounting and regular auditing for misuse of funds, and cutting unnecessary costs. Signatories acknowledge that universities that receive federal funds have a duty to reduce administrative costs as far as reasonably possible and streamline or eliminate academic programs that fail to serve students. Towards this end, signatories to this compact commit to freezing the effective tuition rates charged to American students for the next five years. Further, universities poorly equip students when they fail to inform them about likely life earnings for students’ chosen majors or admit students without the skills or support needed to succeed. Universities shall publicly post statistics about average earnings from graduates in each academic program and shall refund tuition to students who drop out during the first academic term of their undergraduate studies. Signatories shall responsibly deploy their endowments to the public good. Any university with an endowment exceeding $2 million per undergraduate student will not charge tuition for admitted students pursuing hard science programs (with exceptions, as desired, for families of substantial means). Universities should also make efforts to expand professional opportunities for America’s military service members and veterans. To that end, signatories shall commit to accepting full transfer credits from the Joint Service Transcript of military service members and veterans enrolling in undergraduate and graduate programs, applying it to gener…
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timwatson.bsky.social
Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 6d
just saw my first Ruby-Throated Hummingbird of the season in Miami — the herald of cooler weather to come
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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 12d
CHOTINER: Many say Middlemarch is the greatest 19th-century novel.

GEORGE ELIOT: I sought only to shine a light on unhistoric acts, people destined for unvisited tombs.

CHOTINER: These Chotiner memes—Star Wars, the poem about plums, Moby-Dick. Are you jealous?

GEORGE ELIOT: That f***ing whale.
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