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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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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 3h
It's interesting, the Chronicle right now reads similar to the Wall Street Journal - a relatively normal news section but a very right-wing, clickbait opinion section.
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Shaily Patel @vox-magica.bsky.social · 4h
so tired of this take. ask some conservatives if they want to make adjunct salaries and see how eager they are. gosh, i wonder why lots of left-leaning folks choose professions like teaching, counseling, and care work? must be indoctrination! no, we just give a shit about others and our world.
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Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account) @thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 4h
Meanwhile, there are a fair number of us who've been regular contributors in the teaching and learning section for years (a decade, in my case), and the CHE's editorial staff won't even answer our emails. The editor I worked with got reassigned, and I've been ghosted ever since.
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Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account) @thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 4h
The Chronicle Review is just publishing Quillette's desk rejections now
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 4h
Increasingly indistinguishable from the website of the Manhattan Institute.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 4h
Don't forget their "Featured Interviews"!
Screenshot of "Featured Interviews" on website of Chronicle of Higher Education with interviews with Neil Gross, Ron Daniels, and Tyler Austin Harper
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 4h
Checking in on how things are going over at the Chronicle Against Higher Education:
Screenshot of Chronicle of Higher Education website showing featured articles: "Anthropology Has a Truth Problem"; "The Social Sciences Have a Politics Problem"; "Could AI Be Better at Peer Review Than Humans?"; "Colleges Should Take Linda McMahon's Call to Action Seriously."
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 10h
Wonderful to see the outstanding work that @uncivilcollective.bsky.social has done on the civility industrial complex and the viewpoint diversity push, which endeavors to undermine faculty governance and the humanities. What they've produced is indispensable: www.uncivilcollective.org/civility-files
uncivilcollective.org
UNCIVIL | Civility Files — UNCIVIL Website
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Lisa Siraganian @lsiraganian.bsky.social · 10h
Great stuff from uncivil!
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Benjamin McKean @blmckean.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
People often ask me, "How is it being in Ohio?" knowing the attacks on higher education are acute here. But the fact is, nowhere is safe. Here's a story about senseless and devastating budget cuts in Minnesota. There is no political party that seriously defends higher education in the U.S. today.
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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
“Cutting this much from the university budget will mean that some of the core functions of the university will be lost. It’s not possible to just do more with less — to work smarter, to trim around the edges. We’re going to have to do less with less.” Gift link: www.startribune.com/umn-cuts-sta...
startribune.com
Perry: What we lose if the U cuts $225 million
"Austerity doesn’t work. Instead, it creates a death spiral, where reduction in services leads to reductions in revenue, which lead to reductions in services, which leads to reduction in revenue, whic...
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 01/10/2026
It’s going to be really interesting when the civic center right and the AI right start to go to war against each other over the future of public higher ed. One wants you to misread Edmund Burke; the other doesn‘t want you to read anything, just debate AI Socrates.
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Sarah Osment @smosment.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
no humanities except for grok
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 01/10/2026
Cc @kenmartin.bsky.social
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 01/10/2026
Would love to see @democrats.org get behind this
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 01/10/2026
Interesting to see what Provost Manning is able to find money for amid this supposed "hiring freeze": AI and "viewpoint diversity."
The new hiring focus comes amid broader pushes to reshape faculty hiring at Harvard. Though the AI searches emerged at the FAS divisional level, Harvard Provost John F. Manning ’82 has taken an active role in establishing hiring lines amid the freeze and led an effort to ask donors for $10 million endowed professorships flagged for “viewpoint diversity.”
Faculty have remained divided over those efforts. Not all science faculty fully welcomed the AI focus either.
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"Scholars of colour described overpreparing for presentations, ruthlessly analysing their own results before exposing them to scrutiny, softening their conclusions or avoiding research on race altogether." The level of checks I go through often astounds some colleagues
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
Looking forward to the Report of the Committee on Trust in Yale's Ability to Manage Its Golf Course
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
Ken Griffin is buying up higher ed. He bought the Harvard Grad school: gsas.harvard.edu He also moved to Miami because he thought his kids were being indoctrinated in woke in Chicago
gsas.harvard.edu
The Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
And the campus is in Miami, not Pennsylvania!
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
What about increasing funding for public higher education in Pennsylvania?
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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
"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 · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
Anyway, if you're colleagues raise the issue of the Vanderbilt report or if your institution tries to use the Vanderbilt report to justify denying tenure lines and resources to the humanities and social sciences, I hope you will feel empowered to resist.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
Some of the people I've seen involved are rank opportunists who have long held anti-queer, anti-feminist, pro-colonial, anti-Black views that they want to now advance; but unfortunately there are also many who aren't as Chronically Online who are hearing about it and don't know the context.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
The use of the Vanderbilt report to question/attack/undermine humanities scholarship seems to be happening at multiple institutions, from what I've seen/heard. It's being treated as if it were a legitimate object of discussion and debate, which is very unfortunate and worrying for the future.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
ok but she and everybody else should still get off twitter
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
Funding public higher education is not too expensive if the government stops doing welfare for weapons.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
When people say things like “lower student:faculty ratios aren’t scalable to public higher ed because of cost,” it’s worth reminding them how many trillions the US spends on pointless wars abroad & propping up defense contractors. costsofwar.watson.brown.edu
costsofwar.watson.brown.edu
Costs of War | Brown University
Promoting research and public awareness of the human, economic, social, and environmental costs of U.S. war
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
Amnesia is a helluva drug
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
A return to the pre-Trump federal research funding infrastructure would not be a good thing for the humanities. Better than what we have now, but still woefully inadequate to the scale of humanities research needed to address major social problems from AI to global warming. $1 billion NEH!!
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
Democrats have for decades accepted the idea that public funding for research and education should include very high levels of appropriations for STEM but very low levels of appropriations for the humanities.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
This is where the conversation stops. Nobody wants to spend taxpayer dollars to reduce class sizes, hire faculty, subsidize real books in public higher education. Always “too expensive.” But apparently still worth it to keep corporate tax rates low.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
(None of these talks happened in a public education setting. But public education is always the elephant in the room when it comes to AI and education, not the private university.)
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