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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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Reposted by Rachel Fish
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
"Last school year, the city made tuition payments on behalf of nearly 7,600 students, which cost roughly $100,000 per child on average, city officials said."
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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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
While I won't say that there's *never* a case for sending a child with an IEP to a private school, it's hard to believe that this money couldn't be used more equitably, more efficiently, and more inclusively by creating better supports in our public schools.
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Think of all the special education teachers, therapists, and other special education staff we could hire to support many more students rather than paying for individuals to go to private schools!
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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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Reposted by Rachel Fish
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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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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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
I recognize that given the availability of “AI” transcription that this model is unlikely to take off more broadly at this moment. But it is a good reminder that we can have nice things! It’s not impossible.
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Her data and analysis suggest the model is helping patients and workers get more of what they need from the important social aspects of medical care, and it’s also more cost effective, than having the MDs do it, and they can still have the benefit of talking with the patient w/out taking notes.
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
In @allisonpugh.bsky.social ‘s book, The Last Human Job, she discusses a clinic for patients with complex care needs that has expanded the role of medical assistants to do a variety of tasks that center connection with the patient, including staying for appts with MDs and scribe in the appt.
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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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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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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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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
Congrats! Can't wait to read!
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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
There are so many things wrong here, but I can't stop thinking about how generating new research project ideas is one of my favorite things I get to do for my job. Why would I want a machine to do that for me?
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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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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
To be fair, choosing correct stories between parents and friends at that age can be tough. When I was about that age, my mom told me a very clinical, physiological explanation of sex. I told my friends, and they claimed she was lying. I believed my friends for years.
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Me too!
20-something white woman in Halloween costume as Ashley Todd, with makeup to create a black eye and a backwards B on my cheek. Holding a knife and wearing a homemade McCain /Palin shirt.
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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
Thank you for the detailed info on your process! It's super helpful.
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
Ooh the examples will be very helpful. I am definitely not yet certain of the tone of these (e.g., glowing letter of recommendation for a student applying for grad school, more balanced and critical discussion of their work, etc. I assume it's in between)
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Rachel Fish @rachelefish.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
Thank you so much for describing your process. This is incredibly helpful!
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