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Eric Hayot

@ehayot.bsky.social
1.6K followers 864 following 360 posts

Teacher (Penn State), writer of books about China and the West, literary worlds, academic style, history of the humanities. New project on the end of aesthetic history. Arsenal fan, occasional Cassandra.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
getting angry about some relatively minor rhetorical overreach by the people on your side, over and over again, until it becomes your whole personality and you forget who you ever were.
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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
This 🧵 is 👌.
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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Don't worry, students, the line between "using AI to do your thinking for you" (bad!) and "stopping just short of that line so that you stand on your own ground" (good!) will be completely clear to you in every instance, just as it is for Homi Bhabha.
 Comparative Literature and English professor Homi K. Bhabha, who is teaching one undergraduate course this fall, said he would continue having students keep AI logs documenting how they used AI to prepare for class.

But Bhabha drew a line at students using AI to do all the thinking for them — it could not, for example, be used to write students’ essays.

“AI can help you prepare the ground for your thinking, for your preparation. But once the ground is prepared, you have to stand on it with your own voice and your own vision,” he said.
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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Penn State Comp Lit departmental statement on in-class tech use (recommended), posting here in case you are working on one of your own or want to use/copy/edit for yourself.
Research on the use of laptops, phones, and tablets in classrooms consistently shows that students who use those technologies—even if they are taking notes or looking at course slides—learn less in class than those who do not. Students who use such technologies also impact the learning of others, since flashing screens create consistent forms of classroom distraction. Best practices on technology use in classroom suggest that it works best when it is used socially—as when students look together at the slides for the lecture or work in groups on a specific project. Research also shows that students who take notes by hand learn more than those who type them onto a computer. 

As a result, unless you have a specific accommodation request from SDR that requires the use of this kind of technology or are explicitly directed to use a device for a collaborative classroom activity, you are not allowed to use laptops, tablets, phones, recording devices, smart glasses, or any other screens or screen-adjacent technology in this classroom.
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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Penn State comp lit departmental statement on AI (recommended, not required), posting here in case others are drafting their own (or want to copy/use/rework).
Research on unguided GenAI use in pedagogical contexts consistently shows that students who rely on GenAI to complete assignments miss critical opportunities for foundational skill and critical thinking development. Because the goal of this class is to teach you as much as possible, the unauthorized use of Generative AI or LLMs to complete your assignments is banned in this course. This also extends to the use of smart glasses during class or while completing an in-class assignment. 

Use of these technologies is only allowed when you are specifically directed to do so (e.g. in a particular assignment). Unauthorized use of these technologies will be considered a violation of the university’s academic integrity policy.  The Department of Comparative Literature also bars instructors from using GenAI to evaluate, grade, or otherwise respond to student work.
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
utterly patient response to professional misconduct Appiah DOGEd disciplines and fields about which he knows nothing, incinerating his reputation in the process "He just hasn’t done the reading."
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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Great piece by @gabrielh.bsky.social on the recent Vandy/Wash U report on the humanities... www.chronicle.com/article/kwam...
chronicle.com
Opinion | Dear Critics of Literary Studies: Do the Reading
The philosopher’s report on the state of literary studies is a shambles.
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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Sounds great. Now please fund universally.
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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
A really interesting and important piece on the history of literary criticism, and the way it produces an axiology of the aesthetic...
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Matthew J Kuiper @matthewjkuiper.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
Here’s a must read critique of that “report” on the humanities/soc sciences. “But you know how when someone says ‘I don’t want to say X, but,’ the only important part of the sentence is the part that comes after the ‘but’?” @michael-berube.bsky.social @pghreviewofbooks.bsky.social
pghrev.com
Report on the State of a Report (on the Humanities) - Pittsburgh Review of Books
On June 5, 2026, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article in a genre that has unfortunately become all too familiar in that venue titled “Has
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
"This committee’s report would be terrible in the best of times, with its secret evidence and embarrassingly weak arguments compounded by a call for administrative repression. But to make these fantastical claims during the middle of a war against the humanities is a particularly dangerous delusion"
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The Bi of Hormuz @joshstein.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
OK... I wasn't going to do a thread about this, but after trying to draft something short and pithy, I'm going to. It's a thread from my perspective, as someone who was a student of Paul Boghossian, an analytic philosophy acolyte, who abandoned the views of this about 15 years ago. 🧵
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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
This entire thread is really worth reading.
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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 06/06/2026
I thought this was very good. It also got me thinking: I can tell *immediately* when my writing has been edited by someone else, because I know my voice so well. I assume others are the same. I wonder what it means to never gain that ability. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...
insidehighered.com
Writing, Cognitive Offloading and Generative AI (opinion)
Neither paradigm captures what matters when it comes to questions of cognitive offloading.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 06/06/2026
This is a diabolically evil report. That is the only way to put it. Its objective is to reignite the culture wars using the imprimatur of both the university and prominent scholars so as to sow deep epistemic doubt about the humanities and hasten the project of killing us off entirely.
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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
So the Rosenbaum FUTURE OF TRUTH thing is appalling, but let’s not pretend this is an aberration: the over the fence talk I hear is that full on AI is now the norm in trade nonfiction.
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Heather Froehlich @heatherfro.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
I Was a University AI Czar. I'm Not Equipped to Teach in the Age of AI. jgellers.substack.com/p/i-was-a-un...
jgellers.substack.com
I Was a University AI Czar. I'm Not Equipped to Teach in the Age of AI.
Over the past academic year, I served as the Inaugural Faculty Fellow for Artificial Intelligence (AI) at my university, a mid-sized public institution in the South.
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Andrew Whitehead @andrew-whitehead.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Please read and share this story. Grateful to @nbcnews.com for running this series on how cuts to Medicaid will dramatically alter how families care for disabled sons, daughters, and spouses. Great work, @mikehixenbaugh.com, and thank you for reporting. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
nbcnews.com
Families caring for disabled relatives face unthinkable choices as Medicaid cuts loom
President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” state budget turmoil and new attacks on paid family caregiving have people fearing financial ruin as they fight to keep loved ones out of institutions.
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
The best rational for getting off Canvas (or other PE-funded LMS) is forming solidarity with students. For years, several of my colleagues & I have opened each course emphasizing the surveillance & security risks of Canvas. Last week many students realized we weren't just a contingent of paranoids
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Column three is toast, so they will revert to column two.
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Modern Language Association @modernlanguage.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
In the lawsuit by the MLA, @acls1919.bsky.social, & @historians.org, the court has ruled that termination by the NEH of grants to support scholars, research institutions, and humanities organizations was “unlawful, unconstitutional, ultra vires, and without legal effect.” www.mla.org/Resources/Ad...
“In a time when it is increasingly urgent to provide a human context for decisions in science, tech, health, and more, we now have a confirmation that the work our members do is essential.” Paula M. Krebs
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Matthew J Kuiper @matthewjkuiper.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
The whole “restoring trust in higher ed” discussion falters in precisely the same way as Dems’ “if we listen, do good governance, and take the high road, we’ll win them over.” No you won’t. You can’t. You’ve misdiagnosed the nature of their “distrust.” 1/
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J.D. Connor @jdconnor.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Always heartening when my dear colleagues in the Law and Business schools oppose a union because they got theirs and what even is a university? Shouldn't we spin off the high-performing divisions and let the devil take the hindmost in Social Work and Arts & Sciences? docs.google.com/document/d/1...
docs.google.com
Marshall Faculty Position in Opposition to Unionization
We, the undersigned members of the Marshall RTPC faculty, oppose unionization in the proposed bargaining unit under UAW. While we affirm the right of workers to unionize, we believe that inclusion in ...
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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
The always excellent @404media.co is on the ASU/Atomic/Canvas story. 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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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Coming soon to a campus near you.
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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Faculty in CA in the 1990s successfully protested mandatory online components of their classes largely on the grounds of IP and labor intensification. We don’t have to accept this. We can start with abandoning the LMS.
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Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Perfect case of what we termed academic content assetization in a recent paper, where HE institutions use their learning platforms to gather teaching materials from staff to then repurpose as future revenue-generating derivative products
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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
I'm in love with Alan.
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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
This is a very interesting essay, and reminds me of a recent piece by Chris Newfield (link in next post). Newfield argues that humanists must articulate "a new cultural order" that includes economics. Thompson's piece (which I admire) and its facile theory of "facts" and "feelings" exemplifies (1/2)
derekthompson.org
If America's So Rich, How'd It Get So Sad?
Or: How the 2020s broke our brains
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
This rant is GLORIOUS
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Derek Fox @partialobserver.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Absolutely true, conservatives realized universal higher education was turning their children into independent thinkers and they *hated* it. Students were even protesting Democrats for not stopping the war! They started by charging tuition for the UC’s under Reagan…
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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
This is a crucial thread on what's going on with ADA/Canvas and higher ed by @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social . Read/share, please!
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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
For those hereabouts scrambling to remediate course materials in order to meet the end of the month deadline for compliance with new federal ADA Title II standards, here is the endgame as I see it: 🧵
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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
Let's do this one time in good faith: Wealthy private universities in blue states should be bastions of humanistic education (including basic science), fully protected from the anti-education laws being passed in red states that afflict private and public schools alike. But instead .... /1
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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
ICYMI earlier, I've written for the @financialtimes.com today about the boring, empty and unsuccessful 'strategies' being imposed on all our universities. If we go on like this, sooner or later we'll have 'reorganised' them all out of existence. www.ft.com/content/5032...
ft.com
Management consultants are ruining UK universities
Relentless off-the-peg commercial rewiring has undermined British higher education
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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
This is a really important thread on the Canvas/Instructure terms of service, which were quoted in a piece @mattseybold.bsky.social and I wrote, and then were removed from the web three days after the piece was published.
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
So, @ehayo1on9.bsky.social & I have been receiving a wave of questions about a passage from Canvas's terms of use that we quoted in this essay from January. We did get a few questions about it then, but this surge coming months later makes me think somebody is doing some damage control. 1/
chronicle.com
The ‘Crisis of the Humanities’ Is Over. That’s Not a Good Thing.
All of higher ed now suffers the attacks of politics and technology.
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Terrence Peterson @tgpeterson.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
This piece is well worth the read. AI means only more and more annoying work for faculty: sonja-drimmer.squarespace.com/blog-1/2026/...
sonja-drimmer.squarespace.com
One Cool Trick to Increase Your Workload: AI "Literacy" for Faculty — Sonja Drimmer
A refrain among the profiteers of automation is that the technology they’re selling will decrease everyone’s workload. But it has been shown time and again that automation intensifies labor: whether i...
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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
The humanities: weak, contemptible, ineffective, populated mainly by losers, graduates incapable of doing anything but menial service work. Also the humanities: a dangerous, incomprehensibly powerful force whose total destruction is necessary if society is to continue, children are to be born, etc.
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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
If it's so great, why do they keep giving it to you when you haven't asked for it, or forcing you to use it when you don't want to use it? Why are they so invested in creating the conditions in which you (and others) feel you have no choice but to use it, or to "fall behind"? Behind what?
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Critical AI https://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/issue @criticalai-journal.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Nice to see colleagues in college writing recognizing that gen AI in the classroom is neither inevitable nor necessarily beneficial--as the research increasingly shows, quite the reverse! www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
"A department generating high credit-hour production across the university but with few declared majors is not an inefficient department. It is a department whose students are not being counted in the metric being used against it."
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Kate Lowe (she/hers) @kateontransport.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Critical thinking is under serious threat from large language models/AI. Uni administrators are too prone to accept tech hype! (plus it can be wrong, steals IP, has devasting environment/energy impacts). @jessicacalarco.com made a great one-pager I share with students (plus effective model of comms)
https://www.jessicacalarco.com/teaching-resources-1/2025/9/25/ai-isnt-a-ticket-to-an-a
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
GU Students:
thehoya.com
EDITORIAL | Avoid the Institutionalization of AI
Georgetown University professors could very well begin to see the phrases “indelible mark” and “valuable insight” a lot more often. With artificial intelligence (AI) constantly in the news…
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
I'm one of many professors quoted in this report from Alice Speri. I really appreciate The Guardian taking an angle which has basically eluded every other major outlet.
theguardian.com
‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI
As AI has upended the way students learn, academics worry about the future of the humanities - and society at large
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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Excellent piece in @theguardian.com featuring @mattseybold.bsky.social, @dorazhang.bsky.social and others (including a shoutout to against-a-i.com) on AI in the humanities classroom.
theguardian.com
‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI
As AI has upended the way students learn, academics worry about the future of the humanities - and society at large
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James @mayornaise.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Goddamitalltohell 😡 I HATE THESE ASSHOLES
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