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Henry Berlin

@berlihe.bsky.social
397 followers 654 following 24 posts

Associate Professor of Spanish, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University at Buffalo, SUNY. Author of _Alone Together_ (U. of Toronto Press, 2021). Medieval Iberian literature, song, and thought.

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Reposted by Henry Berlin
Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
in retrospect, letting people who hate society and social life run society and dictate the shape of social life was a stupid thing to do
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Henry Berlin @berlihe.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Find answers in my article in the latest issue of New Literary History, "Jordi de Sant Jordi, Ausiàs March, and the Ends of Contradiction"! (2/2) newliteraryhistory.org/current-issue/
newliteraryhistory.org
Current Issue – New Literary History
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Henry Berlin @berlihe.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
You have questions about skepticism toward contradiction as a source of pleasure, knowledge, and salvation in late-medieval poetry. (1/2)
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 04/10/2026
Put differently: how can a conservative movement that has worked diligently for decades to defund public higher ed, commercialize research, undermine the labor movement, and attack the study of culture as "woke" possibly have anything useful to say about the future of the American university?
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 04/10/2026
The Cornell report on the Future of the American University is a disaster, mainstreaming and endorsing profoundly reactionary right-wing diagnoses of higher education that have no business in a serious report on what higher ed is or should become.
Compare, for example, the Progressive Policy Institute’s report on The Distortion of American Studies
with a similar study of American political science from the Goldwater Institute: Richard D. Kahlenberg
and Lief Lin, “The Distortion of American Studies: How the Field’s Leading Journal Has Embraced a
Worldview as Slanted as Donald Trump’s,” Progressive Policy Institute, January 22, 2026,
https://www.progressivepolicy.org/the-distortion-of-american-studies; Timothy K. Minella, “Peer Review
Gone Wild: Flagship Political Science Journal Shows How Academic Gatekeepers Promote Ideology Over
Scholarship,” Goldwater Institute, December 2, 2025, https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/policy-
report/peer-review-gone-wild/.12 Jenna Silber Storey and Benjamin Storey, “Five Reasons Viewpoint Diversity Makes Academic Sense,”
American Enterprise Institute, January 26, 2026, https://cfau.aei.org/five-reasons-viewpoint-diversity-
makes-academic-sense.
13 Richard D. Kahlenberg and Lief Lin, “The Distortion of American Studies: How the Field’s Leading
Journal Has Embraced a Worldview as Slanted as Donald Trump’s,” Progressive Policy Institute, January
22, 2026, https://www.progressivepolicy.org/the-distortion-of-american-studies
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 02/10/2026
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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Henry Berlin @berlihe.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"Faster" is not among my top goals for my teaching
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Sherrod Brown @sherrodbrownoh.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
NEW AD: Listen to this sh*t.
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Elon Green @elongreen.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
“Nazis” still works imo
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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I converted to Catholicism last week. Here’s what the Sermon on the Mount gets wrong.
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drewtoothpaste @drewtoothpaste.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
"you have to admit, AI is useful for--" no i don't. no one needs to hold the devil's pitchfork and think of what it could poke
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
I regret to inform you that these traditional college courses in AI are indistinguishable from the classrooms I sat in at for-profit colleges 15 years ago. Centralized curriculum & branding, technological control, “virtual” libraries, & bureaucratic alienation of labor.
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Liverpool University Press @livunipress.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Celebrating Catalan Review volume 40! 🎉 This issue features the special section "After Literature", exploring contemporary uses of the Catalan canon. Available #OpenAccess via #S2O 🔗 bit.ly/CATR-Vol-40 @wviestenz.bsky.social @berlihe.bsky.social @neuspenalba.bsky.social @hispanists-ahgbi.bsky.social
Announcement that the 40th volume of Catalan Review is open access thanks to LUP Open Languages, showing the journal cover, an open-access badge, and logos for Liverpool University Press and the North American Catalan Society.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
A huge part of being an undergrad is *discovering* ways of thinking and experiencing the world that are outside of all their expectations and understandings. Boiling our offerings down to a homogenous sludge of career-oriented boilerplate is the polar opposite of that.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
We’ve been on a 10 year run of colleges shutting down their most unique and valuable departments in favor of bland templated programs that they offer vacuous, mediocre versions of to students who just assume college has always been vacuous and mediocre in this manner.
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David Leask @leaskyd.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
I am not sure that we appreciate how much hostility there is from the far right to the learning and speaking of languages. 1/2 www.thetimes.com/article/9a33...
thetimes.com
Language centre closes after ‘far-right intimidation’
The director of the Language Hub in Glasgow claimed the premises were no longer safe for staff after a ‘surveillance’ campaign by anti-migration activists
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David J. Bier @davidjbier.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
OMG DHS appears to say that it will apply this rule about changing majors to ADDING a major, telling students who need double majors to "plan ahead and enroll in both at the same time." These people are intent on killing America's university system. They are not this stupid.
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David J. Bier @davidjbier.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
The most anti-legal immigrant administration ever just made it illegal for international students to transfer schools or change majors or shift any "educational objective" in their 1st year and for graduate students **at any point** ever, at all. There is no legal basis for this
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
They are clearly planning on trotting out some kind of AI agents to replace teachers entirely, and need teachers to train their products, but everyone has tech FOMO so we're all doomed anyway
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Liverpool University Press @livunipress.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
🎉 Catalan Review turns 40! Read Editor William Viestenz's reflections on the journal's history and explore a specially selected collection of archive articles, free to read for a limited time. 🔗 bit.ly/CATR-40 @wviestenz.bsky.social @berlihe.bsky.social @hispanists-ahgbi.bsky.social #Catalan
Graphic celebrating the 40th anniversary of Catalan Review (1986–2026). White text on a red banner over a colourful mosaic architectural background reads: “Celebrating 40 years”, “Catalan Review”, “1986–2026”, and “Free-to-read articles from the archive”. The cover of Catalan Review is displayed on the right, with Liverpool University Press and North American Catalan Society logos at the bottom.
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ElieNYC @elienyc.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
With this ruling, the birthright issue is not going away. The right hasn't really begun *organizing* around getting rid of the citizenship clause. Like Roe, this will be their fight for a generation. And if the Democrats just say "we won" and ignore it, like Roe, the Republicans will eventually win.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 12/06/2026
You know how this is going to go at the @nytimes.com, right? Ross Douthat is going to do an "Interesting Times" episode with Appiah and Wilentz; then David French, Ezra Klein, & Bret Stephens will write separate columns telling never-Trumpers, liberals, and neocons to take the report seriously.
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Henry Berlin @berlihe.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
What if DOGE but for the Humanities?
Appiah admits to (brags about?) using AI to find "politicized" Humanities research.
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ceej @ceej.online · 09/06/2026
“having money on the line enforces clarity” I saw the saddest man I’ve ever seen lose $5000 on a single hand of blackjack at a casino in turtle lake, wisconsin
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ceej @ceej.online · 09/06/2026
just from a pure layman’s perspective, the entire concept behind betting markets as an accurate predictor seems stupid as hell. what does the fact that 77% of degenerates were stupid enough to bet on something impossible tell me other than they’re really stupid and/or addicted to gambling
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Grudgie the Wail @grudgie.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
We quite literally have a whites only refugee program and somehow the media won’t call the Administration white supremacists.
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Erin Fogg says Free Link @criminalerin.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Every time we hear about how genAI has pushed another teenager to suicide, another person into committing a mass shooting, or generated CSAM of school girls used to blackmail their schools, remember we were told that what we'd be hearing about is a cure to every cancer, and global poverty itself
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utopia deferred @utopia-defer.red · 11/05/2026
What do you call camps where people keep disappearing and dying
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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
another way to look at it is that if you are indeed the product of the tech installed around you, you are being fashioned to be as devoid of independent intelligence as practicable AI in the classroom is obviously part of this
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 07/05/2026
NEW: ProPublica identified at least 79 children who’ve been left screaming, unable to breathe, or otherwise hurt by tear gas and pepper spray during Trump’s historic immigration crackdown.
propublica.org
Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Has Harmed Scores of Kids With Tear Gas, Pepper Spray
In several cities, judges have chastised federal officers, saying they used excessive force. One former DHS leader called ProPublica’s findings a “bright red flag.”
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I support Somali-Americans @adamrothman.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Oh no, continued
Key Facts
1. August 1619 (Virginia): The first black indentured servants arrive in America, and  twenty are purchased to work on plantations.

2. Gradual Abolition: The majority of the leading intellectuals and statesmen in America during the Revolutionary years were opposed to slavery, but favored gradual abolition and temporary tolerance of it as a necessary evil.

3. Haitian Revolution (1791-1804): A revolt and race war that ended with thousands dead 
on the island.
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CJ Fogler @cjzero.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Via Sportsnet
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Henry Berlin @berlihe.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Aquesta setmana / this week!
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Henry Berlin @berlihe.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
Many thanks to Núria Silleras-Fernández for including me in this special issue of eHumanista on pleasure and pain in the medieval and early modern Iberian world -- and in such good company! www.ehumanista.ucsb.edu/volumes/66
ehumanista.ucsb.edu
eHumanista Volume 66 | eHumanista - UC Santa Barbara
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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Another university getting rid of things you could only ever do at a university and replacing them with stuff a 13-year-old can do on a phone
Post from Andrew A.N. Deloucas
@aandeloucas.com:

In line with discussion about the job market, the latest majors being closed at Syracuse University:

Nine majors "sunsetting":
• Classical civilization
• Classics (Greek and Latin)
• Digital humanities
• Fine arts
• German
• Latino-Latin American studies
• Middle Eastern studies
• Modern Jewish studies
• Russian
ALTThe First University in the Nation to Build a Center Dedicated to the Creator Economy
Syracuse University is creating something that doesn't exist anywhere else in higher education.
The Center for the Creator Economy is the first academic center of its kind on a U.S. college campus. Led jointly by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Martin).
Whitman School of Management, the center reinforces Syracuse University's commitment to bold, forward-looking academic leadership.
By aligning strengths in entrepreneurship, media, communications, athletics and digital infrastructure, the University is charting how higher education can prepare students for the 21st-century economy.
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Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
The way Altman talks about parenting is really revealing I think. Whether it's sales pitch or deep rooted philosophy, the ordinary tasks of living and working are just too unfathomably hard to imagine trying to do. They want you to conceive of the labor that makes you a person as impossible.
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Eunice Cho @eunicehcho.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Concerned about ICE's $45 billion plan to convert warehouses into immigration detention centers? This is what they'll look like inside. From ICE's plan for the Social Circle, GA facility. Each little dot: a person. www.socialcirclega.gov/home/showpub...
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Henry Berlin @berlihe.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
muse.jhu.edu/issue/55472
muse.jhu.edu
Project MUSE - La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures-Volume 52, Number 2, Spring 2024
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Henry Berlin @berlihe.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
I'm very grateful to Emily C. Francomano, Sol Miguel-Prendes, and @albertlloret.bsky.social for their thoughtful responses to _Alone Together_ in the latest issue of La corónica. It's hard to express the feeling of being read with such sensitivity and critical acumen. I learned a lot about my book!
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 15/02/2026
i’ll end this little brainstorm by just asking what it is, exactly, that the MAGA right likes about the United States, since it explicitly rejects those things that make this nation distinctive — its pluralism, its revolutionary heritage and egalitarian aspirations, and its republican institutions
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Paul Kane @pkcapitol.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
The stories weren’t played together on A1, but they probably should’ve been. We’ve come a long way as a planet from the Arab spring days when tech bros touted themselves as harbingers of freedom.
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Cooper River Indivisible @crindivisible.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
Yesterday morning kids were sent running from their bus stop in panic because ICE showed up. This guy at today’s ICE Out of Lindenwold protest is a must watch 😭. @maddow.bsky.social
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Hari Kunzru @harikunzru.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
At this point, we should treat almost all the media coverage about AI consciousness, ethical consequence, personhood etc as downstream from AI corporate marketing and comms efforts. It’s all they have since the gloss wore off the initial excessive claims.
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Same Sad Echo @samesadecho.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
give me the ferments and free my soul I’m only eatin yogurt at the super bowl I’m RFK
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
A desperate plea sent to me by a Minneapolis resident who's been on the front lines since the beginning of the ICE occupation:
Just a quick update from the Twin Cities. (Please forgive the unsolicited message). THINGS ARE NOT BETTER IN MINNEAPOLIS. The media is mostly moving on, Trump is focused on other stuff, BUT NOTHING HAS CHANGED ON THE GROUND. More than 2,000 DHS thugs continue to roam the streets, abducting people 24/7, assaulting legal observers with impunity, and routinely denying 1st, 4th, and 5th amendment rights. Drones and helicopters are overhead every day. Hundreds and hundreds of terrified families have not left their homes since mid-December ... relying on the community to bring them food and help with rent and other necessities. (Those people are NOT violent drug cartel sex offending murderers, as DHS would tell you. Most are legal residents or citizens.)  If anything, things have just become more stressful and intractable (think trench warfare as a suitable metaphor): The resistance is better organized and numerous, but DHS has become more clever and better at disguise... and the county sheriff's office is increasingly supporting them . Do not let anyone tell you that Homans (the new person in charge of the occupation) is making anything better. Do not let anyone tell you that 700 ICE agents leaving the city has made much of a difference; the remaining force (again, ~2,000) is still larger than the entire city's police force (which is legally unable to do anything). Please call your congressional reps ... especially if there is any chance the administration might listen to them.
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John Attridge @johnattridge.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Instead of just outright banning killer robots in the classroom, we should be having discussions about the *ethical use* of killer robots
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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
Unmarked car, no lights or police insignia. Masked armed men leap out. Victim not in the act of committing any crime. This is not how a serious federal law enforcement agency acts in a free society. How is this not supposed to be a “right wing paramilitary force loyal to the regime”?
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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
An entire community of thousands, here legally, having been demonized with deranged lies about eating pets, is about to be arbitrarily DECLARED illegal so they can be forcibly ethnically cleansed. I don’t want to hear one more fucking word about comparisons to Nazi Germany being overwrought.
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