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Rachel Fish

@rachelefish.bsky.social
2.8K followers 2.4K following 135 posts

Sociologist studying schools, disability, race, gender. Associate Prof at Smith College. Former elem teacher. Parent. Cycling enthusiast. She/her/hers.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Rachel Fish
Septima P. Snark @drsubini.blacksky.app · 10/09/2026
Hate to break it to many but that late summer cold or September strep throat is likely covid. Please mask up if you can and if you feel sick, test and stay home if you can! And if you don't get covid-YAY-get your covid shot & protect others! New vaccines are available! www.today.com/health/coron...
today.com
Is There a Summer COVID Surge? With Cases Rising in Nearly Every State, Watch for These Symptoms
As summer winds down, COVID-19 activity is increasing nationwide. Here’s where cases are the highest and how to protect yourself.
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
“what we are seeing today sets an extraordinary precedent, one that has the potential of undermining the entire premise of genocide as a crime punishable under post-World War II international law.
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Grim Lessons of Israel’s War in Gaza
Israel has not been held accountable for its actions in Gaza. The nation and the individuals and countries enabling it to escape punishment may only benefit.
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Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
I was born and raised in Northern Ontario and I am absolutely boiling with rage at the ways in which people elsewhere are talking about the forest fires there as though this is a common occurrence. The air thick with smoke for kilometers, entire communities wiped out - this shit is not normal.
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Prof Maja Korica @drkorica.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
A magisterial takedown of "viewpoint diversity". No notes. Full article here: www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wer...
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Megan Goodwin @mpgphd.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
"course work in the social sciences and the humanities actually pays for, or cross-subsidizes, STEM courses" www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/0...
insidehighered.com
Government officials and boards don't always recognize the complexities of public university budgets (opinion)
Administrators must manage a complex set of internal subsidies and cross-subsidies, yet dictates from on high run counter to this reality, argues Michael Martin.
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
White students make up 12.5% of NYC public school students with IEPs, but they are 71% of students receiving public school funding to attend private schools. These inequalities were anecdotally clear before - now we have this staggering data. Excellent reporting by @alexzimmerman.bsky.social.
chalkbeat.org
NYC spent $723 million on private tuition for students with disabilities. White students benefited most.
NYC paid $723 million in private tuition for students with disabilities last year. 71% were white.
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Thinking Person's Guide to Autism @thinkingautism.com · 05/04/2026
“Terms such as ‘profound autism,’ ‘high functioning,’ or ‘levels of autism’ […] maintain systems of categorisation and segregation that prioritise some needs over others, without addressing the structural changes required to support all Autistic people.”
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T. Ryan Gregory 🇨🇦 @tryangregory.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
www.scientificamerican.com/article/covi...
scientificamerican.com
COVID probably killed 150,000 more people in its first two years than official U.S. tolls show
We have severely undercounted the number of COVID deaths, scientists say
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
I'm looking for advice for a friend writing a tenure statement, please. What are best practices for addressing disruptions to research from Covid, attacks on higher education, etc?
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Reposted by Rachel Fish
John Gibbons 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺 @thinkorswim.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
So, any other news yesterday? Anything important?
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Arkansas Advocate @arkansasadvocate.com · 23/02/2026
Trump Education Department outsources more responsibilities, continuing proposed wind-down arkansasadvocate.com/2026/02/23/r...
arkansasadvocate.com
Trump Education Department outsources more responsibilities, continuing proposed wind-down | Arkansas Advocate
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration took more steps Monday to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, announcing two additional interagency agreements with other departments that ...
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 10/02/2026
Friends from Minneapolis reporting to me that things are at the point where folks are being hidden in other people's houses and we are in the "again" part of "never again" which the "never" was supposed to preclude
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
@lauramauldin.bsky.social ‘s book arrived! I am so excited to read this important work illuminating the politics of caregiving in an ableist society.
Photo of a white hand holding the new hardcover book, “In Sickness and in Health,” by Laura Mauldin. Background is a grey couch.
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Reposted by Rachel Fish
awkword @awkword.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
ICYMI: The US is currently holding three times as many people in immigrant detention as were detained in the Nazi concentration camp system in spring 1939 — six years into the Third Reich, and just before the start of World War II.
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 24/01/2026
Call. Your. Senators. Right. Fucking. Now. It’s ok if your voice shakes while you leave the voice mail. If you cry. If you cuss. If you’re inarticulate. Just get the message across. bsky.app/profile/jaso...
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Erin Biba @erinbiba.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
All of the insults that employ intelligence as an insult (stupid, idiot, dumb, r*tarded etc) also have baggage like m*ron because they’re all rooted in the concept that mentally disabled people either shouldn’t exist or are a drain on society and not capable of being productive or useful.
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Laura Mauldin @lauramauldin.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Amid all that is happening, I urge you to pre-order my new book. As our systems further collapse and the state chooses to spend its funds terrorizing communities rather than investing in our collective care, we need to bear witness 1/5 www.harpercollins.com/products/in-...
harpercollins.com
In Sickness and in Health
An urgent and deeply affecting account of America's failure to provide meaningful support to its chronically ill and disabled citizens and our resulting...
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 15/01/2026
"The sweeping study... found that using AI in education can 'undermine children's foundational development' and that 'the damages it has already caused are daunting.'" They include limiting kids' cognitive, social, and emotional developmen, and increasing inequity. www.npr.org/2026/01/14/n...
npr.org
The risks of AI in schools outweigh the benefits, report says
A new report warns that AI poses a serious threat to children's cognitive development and emotional well-being.
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Reposted by Rachel Fish
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field @wrigleyfield.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
I really want ppl w/o Minneapolis connections to understand You might've heard that Mpls public schools went hybrid bc so many families are in hiding. Well, a coworker just told me that today, during his kid's hybrid class, a kid's apt building was raided onscreen *Everyone has stories like this*
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
It would appear I am now a columnist at Inside Higher Ed. My first piece focuses on McCarthyism, censorship, and our current moment in higher education. This is an essay I started nearly 6 months ago so I'm glad to finally share it with y'all. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...
insidehighered.com
Censorship Arrives on Campus
In her debut column, “Echoes in the Quad,” higher education policy scholar Dominique J. Baker explores how the political oppression of the McCarthy era reverberates in the stifling of academic freedom...
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
I also received one of these emails - my paper has been fed into an LLM without consent, and now they want me to evaluate the "ideas" the LLM generated for next projects... "If you find these ideas valuable, you are welcome to pursue them with no obligations — they are our gift to you." Gee, thanks!
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John Gibbons 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺 @thinkorswim.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
Lest anyone for a single moment thinks this latest coup is a somehow a dramatic breach of long-term US foreign policy.
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 28/12/2025
The other thing about normalizing gAI use in higher ed is that we are teaching our students that they cannot trust their own creativity, their own thoughts and brains, their own skills without having it reshaped/shellacked/transmogrified by LLMs. We’re setting them up for failure and dependence.
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
Ive been blocked by some pro-gAI academics on here who think Im "ableist" for refusing to allow gAI in my classrooms, but the thing is I do fundamentally believe that we make a moral statement when we decide to teach students that they must rely on this kind of theft to read, write and think.
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Alex Ip 葉清霖 @alexip718.com · 17/12/2025
Behold: the first-ever list of news outlets that have banned generative AI in their reporting. As of today, this is literally information that you cannot find on Google. My goal is to fill the starter pack, so please send over suggestions with supporting evidence! go.bsky.app/8cn1XfT
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Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 15/12/2025
Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things
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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 13/12/2025
Most daycares and private preschools won’t enroll children with disabilities. Especially for low income families, Head Start is their *only option*.
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 14/12/2025
It’s good to see papers start to address LLMs as structural plagiarism — provenance, more hidden than the original words or training data. www.nature.com/articles/s42...
nature.com
LLM use in scholarly writing poses a provenance problem
Nature Machine Intelligence - LLM use in scholarly writing poses a provenance problem
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MKSongbird @mksongbird.bsky.social · 14/12/2025
so far tonight msnbc has interviewed two students from brown university that are also survivors of separate high school shootings. insanity.
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Sarah Kendzior @sarahkendzior.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
That and the attempts to force AI despite few people wanting it and LOTS of people trying to figure out how to get rid of it. This isn't a desired technology. This isn't like when people lined up in excitement for iphones; it's like when the phones all came loaded with unwanted U2 albums.
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Louise Seamster @louiseseamster.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
I was informed the Department of Education was shutting itself down and yet they have been making a dramatic blockbuster-style preview of their new ideological project? youtu.be/bUNVdCduGKg?...
youtube.com
ANNOUNCING: America 250 Civics Education Coalition
YouTube video by America First Policy Institute
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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
This tech is destructive of human creativity and intellect. It is burning the planet so people can avoid thinking. Administrators who embrace it are hastening their own demise.
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Agreed. Higher levels of accommodations reflect the ways that our schools are not accessible places for many students. Privilege and inequality matter in terms of access to diagnosis, as well as the social and cultural capital to advocate for accommodations.
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
So excited to get @angelafrederick.bsky.social ‘s book in the mail!
Paperback book titled “Disabled Power: A Storm, A Grid, and Embodied Harm on the Age of Disaster” by Angela Frederick. Cover art is a photo of power lines and utility trucks with snow on the road. Book held by a white hand.
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Reposted by Rachel Fish
Brandy Schillace @bschillace.brandyschillace.com · 15/11/2025
I am gutted to learn of @sfdirewolf.bsky.social (Alice Wong’s) passing. She was always a warm friend, a wonderful spirit, and someone who fostered my own growth. She helped me see that, as a #disabled person with chronic illness, I matter—I am whole. I’ll be posting some of Alice’s work. ❤️ forever
A photo of a woman in pink in a wheelchair. She has an intubation for oxygen. She looks up at the viewer. Words:

This is Alice's friend Sandy Ho, posting. Per Alice's wishes, this message is being shared at the time of her passing
Hi everyone, it looks like I ran out of time. I have so many dreams that I wanted to fulfill and plans to create new stories for you. There are a few in progress that might come to fruition in a few years if things work out. I did not ever imagine ! would live to this age and end up a writer, editor, activist, and more. As a kid riddled with insecurity and internalized ableism, I could not see a path forward. It was thanks to friendships and some great teachers who believed in me that I was able to fight my way out of miserable situations into a place where I finally felt comfortable in my skin.
We need more stories about us and our culture.
You all, we all, deserve the everything and more in such a hostile, ableist environment. Our wisdom is incisive and unflinching. I'm honored to be your ancestor and believe disabled oracles like us will light the way to the future. Don't let the bastards grind you down. I love you all.
may her memory
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dr. thrasher, an american writer in ex(archia)(xile) @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
Something everyone needs to know about @sfdirewolf.bsky.social Alice Wong was her commitment to Palestine. Just a year ago, she & I wrote a letter in @literaryhub.bsky.social defending six Palestinian journalists. Sadly, Alice now joins two of them on the other side: Anas al-Sharif & Hossam Shabat
 A literary hub article, with a photo of journalists overlooking dead journalists, with the living and the dead all wearing press vests. The headline reads "A Letter supportring six honorable journalists in Northwern Gaza"
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
Academics: I'm serving as an external letter writer for a tenure case for the first time. Any tips on serving in this role? Any thoughts on roughly how much time I should set aside?
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dr. thrasher, an american writer in ex(archia)(xile) @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
🚨 1/ SCOOP We all know Pamela Paul is not a good journalist. But in her (poorly argued) WSJ screed on the alleged "growing divide" in LGBTQ circles abt trans rights, she reports ESPECIALLY badly—including abt Jose Arango & his boyfriend who dumped him. Paul didn't talk to the boyfriend. I did.
WSJ headline, over a torn LGBTQ BLM pride flag - the growing divide in the rainbow coalitoln
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daniel sieradski @self.agency · 29/10/2025
the adl is no longer, by its own definition, america’s preeminent jewish civil rights organization — because it’s no longer a civil rights organization at all
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
Great work, @lauramauldin.bsky.social . So needed.
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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 25/10/2025
Here is the proposed agreement the Trump admin sent to UCLA, which administrators fought tooth and claw to keep secret ucop.edu/communicatio...
ucop.edu
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 24/10/2025
Yet again, we can't afford to let LLMs become a source of epistemic grounding for society.
bbc.co.uk
Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory
An intensive international study was coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC
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Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
Every once in a while during the 2024 campaign, I'd meet parents of disabled kids who were part of Moms for Liberty or people who taught autistic kids. @slooterman.bsky.social writes how they are afraid right now as Trump targets special education staff. 19thnews.org/2025/10/spec...
19thnews.org
Trump’s attempt to gut special education office has some conservative parents on edge
The president called the layoffs a part of cuts to “Democrat programs,” but children across the nation would be impacted.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
It is not so long ago that disability policy was bipartisan. I taught at the Bush School, and George H.W. Bush would talk about his pride in signing the Americans with Disabilities Act.
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
Montpelier
Montpelier VT capitol building with protestorsProtestors, including one in a unicorn costume
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 18/10/2025
Here’s a block list: bsky.app/profile/did:...
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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
The official White House account has been blocked by over 5,000 accounts since it was created less than two hours ago: clearsky.app/whitehouse-4...
Screenshot showing the White House account on Clearsky which shows Blocked by 5,335
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
A Prelude to Violence
Long-haired orange and white cat sits on a pillow, staring at the camera, while short-haired grey tabby cat lays on the bed below her, on her back, with paws splayed up the pillow toward the long-haired cat.
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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
The end of federal enforcement of special ed laws. Some states - including MN - will likely be ok. But a lot of disabled kids in a lot of states are going to lose the education that federal law and decades of jurisprudence say they are owed.
usatoday.com
Education Department wipes out special ed office in shutdown layoffs, union says
The Education Department laid off nearly everyone at the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.
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