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Chris Hanlon

@chrishanlon.bsky.social
650 followers 192 following 150 posts

Professor of United States literature, Arizona State; co-editor, ALH Review & The Dial; author, America’s England (2013) & Emerson’s Memory Loss (2018); allegedly storied; will bell the cat.

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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Here’s the AI policy my students get today. Prolly won’t be getting any innovation awards this year. youtu.be/YfLmqLlUDvg
youtu.be
Statement on AI
YouTube video by Professor Chris Hanlon
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Anyone else read this?
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Who would have guessed that Ross Douthat, who has used the NYTimes platform to do things like normalize the likes of Doug Wilson, would now be moving to CBS and the post-purge 60 Minutes?
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The Dial @thedial2024.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
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In These Times @inthesetimes.com · 29/05/2026
In Arizona, clean energy candidates beat utility insiders backed by business groups and Turning Point Action. Marjorie Kelly and @thomasmhanna.bsky.social report that advocates for renewable energy and affordability now hold a majority on the Salt River Project board.
inthesetimes.com
The Pro-Democracy and Climate Movements Just Scored a Win In an Unexpected Place
Arizona residents recently won a major fight for democratic public ownership of their electric utility.
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The Dial @thedial2024.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
What better way to celebrate RW Emerson’s 223rd birthday than by joining the @emersonsociety.bsky.social and perusing the latest issue of the Dial? @c19americanists.bsky.social emersonsociety.org thedialjournal.org
emersonsociety.org
Home - Emerson Society
The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society is dedicated to fostering scholarship on and appreciation of the life and writings of one of America’s greatest authors. The
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Emerson Society @emersonsociety.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Happy 223rd birthday to Ralph Waldo Emerson 🎉 Taking this opportunity to remind you all that The Dial’s latest issue (vol. 2, no. 2), edited by @chrishanlon.bsky.social, is available online!
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/u...
nytimes.com
Maker of Canvas Learning Platform Strikes Deal for Hackers to Return Data
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
“Instructure added that it had been informed that none of its customers would face extortion as a result of the theft.”
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
As usual Matt Seybold breaks it down 👇🏻
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
What I wish for everybody to remember when Canvas comes back online: The reason OUR data can be held for ransom is because Instructure, their owners (KKR private equity & Dragoneer venture capital), & our own employers (see ASU Atomic) monetize it. It's Canvas that hacked education & stole our IP.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
The day I first explored Atomic, there was an FAQ page that included this question. The answer posted there was something like “not at present.” I noticed they seem to have taken the question off the FAQ page now.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
OMG this is perfect, Talia. Cry-laughing over this! Thank you!
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
So many misconceptions!
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
I’ve got some thoughts in today’s Chronicle. www.chronicle.com/article/dont... (Sans paywall:) archive.ph/Blzzk
chronicle.com
Opinion | Don’t Let Silicon Valley Turn Education into Slop
Against “academic content assetization.”
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Archived version without paywall: archive.ph/Blzzk
chronicle.com
Opinion | Don’t Let Silicon Valley Turn Education into Slop
Against “academic content assetization.”
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
I’ve got some thoughts in today’s Chronicle. www.chronicle.com/article/dont...
chronicle.com
Opinion | Don’t Let Silicon Valley Turn Education into Slop
Against “academic content assetization.”
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
This isn’t how you pronounce it?
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
@andrewmaynard.net , who helped author the six “design principles” ASU published last year, notes that even given a “transmission” model of education, Atomic flouts the principles’ concern for “the rights of individuals’ privacy and agency in the use of their data, individually and in aggregate.”
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Fantastic. “I think you can master complex subjects in like 20 minutes. Please let me run your university.”
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
ASU’s Faculty Ethics Committee on AI Technology: “We have a responsibility to develop and deploy AI models and applications with attention to the rights of individuals’ privacy and agency in the use of their data, individually and in aggregate.” ai.asu.edu/faculty-ethi...
ai.asu.edu
Faculty Ethics Committee on AI Technology | Artificial Intelligence
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
The Chronicle’s coverage iterrogates the ASU Board of Regents’ assertion—in tension with longstanding faculty exemptions under US Copyright definitions of Works For Hire—that it owns faculty teaching materials. archive.ph/MNJN2
archive.ph
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Cannot wait to see the new Illinois districting map
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Here’s @samleecole.bsky.social describing exactly how awful ASUAtomic makes ASU look: www.kjzz.org/the-show/202...
kjzz.org
Professors blindsided by new ASU AI tool that chops up their lectures and uses them out of context
Atomic is a new ASU platform that creates AI-generated versions of ASU faculty’s lectures cutting down often long videos to short clips for quicker learning.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...
insidehighered.com
Faculty Concerned About ASU’s New AI Course Builder
ASU debuted the web app quietly this month and faculty—whose content the AI pulls from—are concerned about how it works and who can access it.
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Sam Cole @samleecole.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
no credit to the lecturers, no names, no sources, no links or references to outside work. just AI summaries, including built-in errors. this one repeatedly references the "riscus" community as a mistranslation of "riskers"
Governance Alignment: The imperative to establish frameworks and policies that ensure all AI development and deployment reflect human values and priorities, preventing misuse or unintended consequences.
These perspectives set the stage for understanding why AI ethics and responsibility matter—the field emerged precisely because technologists recognized the need to build safeguards into AI systems from the ground up.

🔍 Understanding the Key Idea
The most critical concept to grasp is why the X-Riscus community insists on caution despite AI's tremendous potential. Their argument isn't that AI is inherently evil; rather, they contend that without deliberate alignment with human values during development, powerful systems could produce unintended consequences at scale.

The goal is to make sure that all we do with AI aligns with human values.
This statement encapsulates the ethical foundation of responsible AI development. When AI systems learn from data or operate autonomously, they can amplify biases, make decisions humans didn't anticipate, or optimize for metrics misaligned with broader societal good. The X-Riscus perspective argues that proactive governance—not reactive regulation after problems emerge—is essential.

Progress (in AI context)

The pace of advancement in AI capabilities—how quickly systems become more powerful, autonomous, and capable of handling complex tasks. The debate centers on whether rapid progress is beneficial without accompanying ethical frameworks.

Perspective	Core Belief	Primary Focus
X-Riscus Approach	Cautious acceleration with governance oversight	Alignment with human values, existential risk mitigation
Implied Alternative	Rapid progress with market-driven innovation	Speed to benefit, competitive advantage
Understanding this tension is foundational: ethics in AI isn't about slowing progress but ensuring it happens thoughtfully.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Whatever else doesn’t come of this that should, I very much like that the ASU comms team is currently in a huddle
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
www.404media.co/asu-atomic-a...
404media.co
University Professors Disturbed to Find Their Lectures Chopped Up and Turned Into AI Slop
ASU Atomic, a new tool in beta at Arizona State University, takes faculty lectures and chops them into extremely short clips, that AI then attempts to turn into learning materials.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Would love to see some of that language, Britt.
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
While I realize the landscape is different in Arizona than Pennsylvania, and different now than it was in 2023, I do think there are lessons for ASU faculty to learn from thinking about what happened at Temple a few years back.
lareviewofbooks.org
Jason Wingard’s EdTech Griftopia | Los Angeles Review of Books
Matt Seybold explores the implications of the recent grad student strike at Temple University.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
You’ve been sounding the alarm loudly enough that none of us should be surprised. We just had @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social to ASU and he assigned your Chronicle piece w Eric Hayot for a workshop—many faculty couldn’t quite accept that as you point out, Canvas asserts ownership over our material.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Anything you can do to help publicize, Matt. Hope you’re well.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
atomic.asu.edu
atomic.asu.edu
ATOMIC | Home
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Meet “ASU Atomic,” a subscription platform that claims to offer customized learning modules for fee-paying users. None of the ASU faculty whose course materials were harvested for the module I generated were aware that their image, lectures, lessons, or other teaching materials are being used.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
“The best class we show, is but a mob of fashionably-dressed speculators and vulgarians.” WW, 1871
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Bracing, needed counterpoint to the slop most university admin are pushing. www.oakland.edu/cetl/teachin...
oakland.edu
4: Creating AI-Free Learning Spaces - Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning - Oakland University
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The Dial @thedial2024.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Please circulate! The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society is pleased to announce its 2026 award competitions: the Research Award, Outreach Award, Undergraduate Student Essay Prize, and Graduate Student Essay Award. For more details see: emersonsociety.org/2026-rwes-aw...
emersonsociety.org
2026 RWES Awards - Call for Applications - Emerson Society
The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society is pleased to announce the following awards:
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Ollie doesn’t know what this C19 bullshit is but he’s glad it’s over.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Let’s do it again soon, C19
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The Dial @thedial2024.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Good morning! And welcome to Day 1 in Cincinnati, C19! @c19americanists.bsky.social
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The Dial @thedial2024.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Airplane reading for C19, courtesy of the Emerson Society—our third issue is live! With content by Christina Zwarg, Rachel Banner, Rachel DeWitt, Max Chapnick, Kristin Lacey, Rachael DeWitt, Susan Dunston, Sonia Di Loreto, & Mollie Barnes. thedialjournal.org @c19americanists.bsky.social
thedialjournal.org
The Dial – A Journal of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society
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The Dial @thedial2024.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
The Dial has stickers. See you in Cincinnati. @c19americanists.bsky.social
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
Funny that neither the NYTimes review nor the New Yorker mention that little of the dialogue in “Wuthering Heights” seems actually to come from the novel. Also if this is such an expressionistic rendering would it have killed Fennel to include some puppy-hanging?
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Just passed four armored vehicles on Northern Ave at rush-hour.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
www.mobilize.us/mobilize/eve...
mobilize.us
ICE Out For Good TEMPE · Mobilize
Wednesday, January 7th, an American citizen was killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This killing is part of a broader pattern of unchecked violence, impunity...
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
Very excited! @c19americanists.bsky.social @asuenglish.bluesky.social asuevents.asu.edu/event/save-y...
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
@johnubacon.bsky.social ‘s book on the Edmund Fitzgerald is pretty engaging but loses the plot @jeffreyinsko.bsky.social catches: the ship was part of a whole infrastructure of crazy, ecocidal, midcentury extraction the likes of which we seem to be returning. open.substack.com/pub/thecurre...
open.substack.com
Disaster on Gichigami
What if the most famous disaster on Lake Superior never really ended?
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
@c19americanists.bsky.social @the-ala.bsky.social
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
My co-editors Andrew Taylor, Sarah Ruffing Robbins, and I are so proud of this latest book in the Interventions series published by @edinburghuniversitypress. The Asian American Renaissance: Literary Encounters Across Time by Mai Wang will change the stories we tell about US literary history.
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Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA @arrianna-planey.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Apropos of nothing: "... we find that the number of lynching victims in a county is a positive and significant predictor of Confederate memorializations in that county, even after controlling for relevant covariates." www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
Confederate monuments and the history of lynching in the American South: An empirical examination | PNAS
The present work interrogates the history of Confederate memorializations by examining the relationship between these memorializations and lynching...
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