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Asheesh Kapur Siddique

@asheeshks.org
10K followers 2.8K following 3.7K posts

History & political economy of culture; Associate Professor of History, UMass-Amherst. Opinions my own. Prefer email to DMs. asheeshksi.substack.com asheeshks.org/

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Reposted by Asheesh Kapur Siddique
Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 40m
One of the consequences of the breathlessly described crisis of (plutocratic) trust in tier 1a super elite universities is the opportunity for entrepreneurial maneuvering among tier 1b elite universities. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/u...
nytimes.com
Donor Gives $3 Billion to Carnegie Mellon, the Largest University Gift Ever
The donation by Kenneth Griffin, intended mostly to help build a campus in Miami, was the biggest single gift in the history of U.S. higher education.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 38m
A Democratic governor celebrating a hedge fund billionaire's donation to a private university feels very on brand for the party's higher ed agenda.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 44m
"Griffin said he hoped students who attended the new school would eventually make their way downtown to the business district ... 'This will be in some sense the East Coast answer to what happens in Silicon Valley,' said Griffin." How do you mold a white collar workforce to serve tech capital?
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Jeff (Hot Type) Jarvis @jeffjarvis.bsky.social · 8h
Can some other incredibly rich people choose to give to public universities, please? Donor Gives $3 Billion to Carnegie Mellon, the Largest University Gift Ever www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/u...
nytimes.com
Donor Gives $3 Billion to Carnegie Mellon, the Largest University Gift Ever
Kenneth C. Griffin, the hedge fund executive, pledged to give $3 billion, much of it to build a campus in Miami.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 1h
South Florida is becoming what the Middle East and East Asia used to be for the neoliberal American university. The place to open a satellite campus, in this case to spread the "brand" to tech capital. Meanwhile, what of public higher ed in the state? www.vanderbilt.edu/chancellor/i...
vanderbilt.edu
Vanderbilt in West Palm Beach
Expanding Our Presence Vanderbilt University is proceeding with a planned graduate campus in West Palm Beach and has launched a new $250 million phase of the fundraising campaign for the project. With...
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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
What do you think "go all in" means? Here are some things on my mind: ✨ Tuition-free ✨ Education not entertainment ✨ Real vocational training ✨ Real liberal arts education ✨ Reinvestment in research ✨ Disinvestment from corporate pipelines
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James S. Murphy @jamessmurphy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
It's wild that an editor at the Chron could ask this question for any other reason than to point out that Yglesias is completely wrong and has no idea what he's talking about.
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Duke University Press @dukepress.bsky.social · 3h
Save 30% on #NewBook "The Afric-American Picture Gallery" by Britt Rusert, which examines William J. Wilson’s journalistic imagining of a museum that centers African Americans at a time when none existed. buff.ly/8b8fwac
Cover of The Afric-American Picture Gallery: William J. Wilson's Speculative Museum of Black Art by Britt Rusert. The cover features an installation resembling a Victorian picture display. Floral wallpaper holds framed historical photographs of various shapes. Two decorated tables flank the display and a small deer sculpture rests on the grass below. The title is in green serif at the top, with the author's name printed vertically in purple.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 3h
I'll have to be vague on the details, but I've been sad to see and hear how the Vanderbilt report is being used opportunistically by people who never cared for humanities research to begin with to begin "debates" about the "state" of the humanities.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 5h
Pete Hegseth removing tenure protections shows precisely why they are needed. He wants to silence dissent by being able to fire anyone who questions his vision of the military. www.militarytimes.com/news/pentago...
militarytimes.com
Hegseth halts tenure appointments for civilian faculty at military academies
Military academies will no longer appoint civilian faculty to tenured positions as Hegseth says it can contribute to “academic stagnation.”
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 7h
Maybe this will finally get us to understand that enrollment/majors arguments are political weapons, not something to engage with seriously.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 7h
Democrats control state government in Minnesota but they are still cutting public higher education funding: www.highereddive.com/news/univers...
highereddive.com
University of Minnesota eyes $225M in budget cuts
Senior leaders attributed its financial woes to “shifting enrollment trends, unpredictable state and federal funding, and rising costs.”
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Edouard Machery @edouardmachery.bsky.social · 8h
I am sure this has nothing to do with @cmu.edu cracking down on the free speech of its students and faculty. Students and faculty suspended etc. Griffin is an atrocious anti Palestinian.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 8h
www.the-tls.com/regular-feat...
Screenshot of Times Literary Supplement note on Anchit Sathi’s article “AI and the crisis of the author” stating that “We have removed this essay. AI was used in its preparation. The TLS editorial guidelines prohibit the use of AI in the writing and editing process. The author states that he was unaware of the policy.”
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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 11h
ok but she and everybody else should still get off twitter
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 9h
The end (?) of a disaster from which this country will never learn. Many trillions of dollars spent that could have gone to healthcare, anti-poverty, infrastructure, the arts & humanities, public education right here in the US rather than imperialism, war, and death abroad.
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Daniel S. Goldberg @profgoldberg.bsky.social · 18h
Trying to explain to colleagues from elsewhere on the planet that the US has no public funding body with real resources* to fund research in the humanities is amazing. I just get dumbfounded stares, usually.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 19h
Democrats defend "science," but what they really should be defending is "wissenschaft." No major social problems - from global warming to AI - can be solved without non-commercial research across multiple fields, including the social sciences and humanities. Really wish the party understood this.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 21h
I’ve heard three talks in the last couple of months by very prominent skeptics of AI who have all argued that the solution to the problem of AI in education is smaller classes and more teacher/faculty attention. I don’t know how that happens without a massive, massive investment in public education
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 23h
Honestly, something that would immediately improve things for higher ed workers is if somebody started a dedicated news outlet reporting on higher education from a labor perspective. Or if a major paper assigned even just one reporter to focus on higher education labor issues.
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Scott MacEachern @scottmaceachern.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The comfort zone of the Chronicle now is talking to presidents at elite universities about their plans to rationalize higher education… unimportant issues like academic freedom and politically-motivated attacks on faculty really don’t engage the Chronicle’s editors.
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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
New from @maschwar.bsky.social Melissa Schwartzberg, in response to Danielle Allen's repeated serious misreading of the moment and of the Trump administration's bad faith with respect to higher education. www.chronicle.com/article/dani...
chronicle.com
Danielle Allen Is Wrong About Trump
Dealmaking under duress is always undemocratic.
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Andrew Tobolowsky @andytobo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This by the way is the thing I (as a religious studies professor) find most chilling about Trump's new rule, I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see Dems agree with it, including Dem governors
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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
👇🧵🎯 Blue states/Democrats have also defunded public higher education for 50 years, & they parrot the same lazy, evidence-free, right-wing talking points about education as jobs training as red states/Republicans. They just do it without the authoritarianism. That must change. Maybe this is a start.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 29/09/2026
It's remarkable (in a very good way) to see an elected member of the Democratic Party saying this. For decades, the Party has treated public higher education as a jobs training program, not a site for cultivating democratic habits of mind. I deeply hope that things are changing.
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Representative Becca Balint @balint.house.gov · 29/09/2026
It’s almost as if there are more ways to measure the value of work than just the amount of money it makes people.
 A country with fewer social workers and teaching aides, with less study of the arts and history, is a country that’s not investing in its own future.
newrepublic.com
Trump Moves to Cut Off Student Loans for Tons of Degrees
Under a new rule, if your degree doesn’t make enough money, you won’t be able to get a student loan.
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
AAUP, AFT, and HELU have a plan draft! College For All, in expansion now for 2026 and 2028 www.aaup.org/sites/defaul...
aaup.org
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 29/09/2026
I’m over the whole trend of people at rich private institutions telling the rest of us what’s important in higher ed. And by “rich private institutions,” I’m including Vanderbilt, WashU, and the American Enterprise Institute.
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Sarah Osment @smosment.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A great example of a postliteracy argument that seems rooted in pedagogical innovation (or Platonic retvrn, lol) but which will actually be used to justify further defunding and ed tech creep. It won't be the last www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | I’m a College Professor. Writing Isn’t as Important as We Think. (Gift Article)
If I do not treat writing as essential for achieving thought, it is not clear why I should force my students to.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 29/09/2026
I’m sorry to say this but I don’t think analytic philosophers should be leading the discussion about higher ed “reform.”
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Johanna Winant @johannawinant.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
missing from this argument is the fact that Williams is an extraordinarily rich college with students who are overall very well-prepared for college—essentially none of this is generalizable even to a flagship university, much less any other higher education institution
nytimes.com
Opinion | I’m a College Professor. Writing Isn’t as Important as We Think. (Gift Article)
If I do not treat writing as essential for achieving thought, it is not clear why I should force my students to.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 29/09/2026
The Vanderbilt Report masquerades as a 'disinterested' inquiry into the supposed corruption of scholarship by politics. It's actually a compendium of various personal grievances that the authors have accrued over time with their fields, which they blamed on a made-up bogeyman called "postmodernism."
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J.D. Connor @jdconnor.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Two things: one institutional, one petty Institutionally, I don't think we can understand Henrich without seeing its relationship to the fraught bioanthro/cultural anthro split, particularly at Harvard.
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I Travel Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 29/09/2026
The fact that the preferred political movement of the free speech set immediately set about establishing “western civics centers” while gutting the rest of the humanities and supports for marginalized students really does tell you what the source of their concerns really were
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Zach Bigalke (he/him/his) @zbigalke.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Never forget that this ideological dumbfuck created the acronym WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) and argued that the preeminence of these people in anthropology studies is because the Catholic Church stopped letting people marry their cousins. Look into his politics.
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Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
conor friedersdorf is the susan collins of ross douthats.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 29/09/2026
The Chronicle Against Higher Education gives the Vanderbilt report endless publicity while not running a single story on the World Humanities Report, which shows that the disciplines slandered in the Vanderbilt report are actually making vital contributions to the world. worldhumanitiesreport.org
worldhumanitiesreport.org
Home - The World Humanities Report
The World Humanities Report Demonstrating the vitality of the humanities throughout the world
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 29/09/2026
I hope people can see that this is the logical end point of the "measure the value of disciplines by ROI were R is conceived solely in terms of $" thinking that has, quite frankly, been enthusiastically embraced by both parties, to the detriment of students, faculty, and democracy itself.
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Ann M. Lipton @annmlipton.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
And once again I have to ask, why has Reuters seen the prospectus and do we even have an SEC anymore? www.reuters.com/business/fin...
reuters.com
EXCLUSIVE: Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows sweeping AI vision, surging costs
Anthropic is making a massive bet that AI will transform the global economy ​more profoundly than industrialization, electricity and the internet, according to its IPO prospectus seen by Reuters.
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Alex Heyrman @aliks.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
If you're 55 this conversation is not particularly relevant to you and you can do whatever you want, but while skimming is a genuinely useful tool there are a lot of areas of learning which rely on actually reading entire texts! Students should at least be trying to do that from time to time.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 28/09/2026
“The goal was to destabilize U.S. educational infrastructure and carve out a large space for reactionary indoctrination within it. I think we have to acknowledge…it has been substantial everywhere and in some places the goal has already been reached.”
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Alpha School's "software is just techwashing for [Christopher Rufo and his coalition's] dream of teacherlessness and totalitarian surveillance of students and schools. That’s what they really want to hyperscale," writes @mattseybold.bsky.social.
theamericanvandal.com
All Our Kids Will Go To Alpha School
On the plans to hyperscale Alpha School’s “AI” tutoring software to “a billion kids.”
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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Every college in this country decided that expelling and/or sending the police to beat the shit out of their own students for the crime of being opposed to genocide was their top priority. That and giving Trump complete control of what they teach. Contrast that with how they treat rapists.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 28/09/2026
This is why the Vanderbilt/WashU report cannot be understood apart from both institutions‘ massive investments in AI. Their leaders needed to discredit those disciplines and forms of knowledge asking hard questions about the cultural, social, political, and environmental costs of AI.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 28/09/2026
Maybe another way to put this is that the only reason the Vanderbilt/WashU report exists is because of the power of capital. It is an effort by capital to set the terms on which those forms of knowledge that scrutinize capital's claims to what its "natural" ordering is, should be evaluated.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 28/09/2026
It would actually have been conceptually impossible for the Vanderbilt/WashU report to have been peer reviewed because the premise of the report is that we should ignore half a century of peer-reviewed research in the humanities when we assess what they have contributed to knowledge.
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Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
WashU and Vanderbilt went halfsies on a "Report on the State of the Humanities and Social Sciences." The day it was published is the first day any of us here had heard of it. This outstanding panel is our faculty's first public response to its existence. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmQJ...
youtube.com
Advocacy, Objectivity and Method - WashU Center for the Humanities Forum
YouTube video by WashU Center for the Humanities
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Sheila Liming @seeshespeak.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
IDEA: rehabilitation centers for the modern, digitally ravaged attention span They could feature activities like lectures, seminar-style discussions, and reading. They could be called colleges, or maybe universities.
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Nick Carnes @carnes.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
“inevitable” tech
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