Sign in

Rob Danisch

@robdanisch.bsky.social
179 followers 296 following 460 posts

Professor of Rhetoric and Communication, University of Waterloo, lover and defender of democracy

PostsRepliesMedia
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
How do these people get these jobs? Or do the jobs just make them dumb? www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
theatlantic.com
Why I Want More AI at Dartmouth
Universities that hide from the technology will merely secure their irrelevance.
100
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Yup, my sentiments exactly, which is super depressing: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
theatlantic.com
A Society of Cheats
Students’ use of AI is teaching them to cut corners, disdain rules, and believe that integrity is for suckers and wimps.
094
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
A relief to read while in the process of raising difficult, opinionated and talkative kids:
000
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I don't really know what this even means:
100
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
We are drowning in information and starving for truth. I think that's what the tech bros had in mind, but no one seems to be able to argue that we ought to regulate information so we can have truth.
100
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
What a bar from Gorgias: "Since opinion is slippery and insecure, it casts those employing it into slippery and insecure successes."
000
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Christopher W. Jones @cwjones.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
An exemplary policy at UChicago: - Technology ban in class. - Total AI ban. Students may not use it, instructors may not assign it. Exceptions to the latter for narrow purposes must be approved at the administrator level. - Instructors may not use AI for grading. chicagomaroon.com/53262/news/s...
chicagomaroon.com
Sosc Core to Institute AI Ban, Technology-Free Classrooms This Fall
All social science Core classes will transition to an “analog” approach for the upcoming academic year, restricting in-classroom technology use and banning AI-assisted writing and grading for students...
414338
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Leonore (Lee) Carpenter @leecarpenter.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
In case you are an academic who is currently being gaslit into believing that you're a caveman who wants their students to be jobless if you resist allowing AI in your classrooms... I present to you Berkeley Law's response, which can be summarized as "Fuck off directly into the sun."
law.berkeley.edu
Artificial Intelligence Policy
Effective Summer 2026 Purpose Future lawyers may need to use artificial intelligence (“AI”) fluently. But the current state of the technology requires that AI use be coupled with the cognitive […]
231913802
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
This gets at a lot of my basic teaching philosophy for my whole career. It's nice to see that perhaps that philosophy is now more important than ever. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | I Let My Students Watch Me Struggle With a Masterpiece. It Changed Everything.
Teachers need to model the passion they want to see.
010
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I delete every single email from some ed tech company toting some new tool immediately; I skim right by every mention of how to get students engaged with flashy tech. This coming semester, paper syllabus, pen and paper in class, that's it.
000
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
available now in paperback, an explanation of why we are where we are: www.amazon.com/Rhetorical-D...
amazon.com
Amazon.com
110
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
"one of the surest strategies for amassing autocratic power is what I call deliberate deliteracy: the destruction, restriction, and monopolization of the infrastructures that make mass literacy possible." www.theamericanvandal.com/p/neuroplast...
theamericanvandal.com
Neuroplasticity As A Praxis
We Can Read Our Way Out Of Autocracy
5429184
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-f...
hedgehogreview.com
Artificial Negligence
Faculty sense that AI could make old-fashioned teaching and learning much more difficult to achieve, if not obsolete.
000
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Humanities scholars should be talking a lot about what AI cannot do and building curricula that focus on just those things. Here are some examples: AI cannot build the trust on which cooperation depends. It's use is, instead, eroding trust everywhere.
120
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
This is excellent: www.noemamag.com/why-a-libera...
noemamag.com
How To Future-Proof Your Career In The Age Of AI | NOEMA
The most prized workers will be those who can decode a sea of outputs, spot the meaningful signal and translate it into action that others understand and trust.
000
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Josh Shepperd @joshshepperd.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
I hate to say it, but the colleagues positioning themselves to be pro AI in teaching and curriculum, are probably also positioning themselves to be administrators, and probably aren’t thinking about or don’t care how it will affect teaching, learning, or the careers of those around them.
15763159
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Mallory Moore @sexabolition.blog · 08/06/2026
By far the biggest problem with delegating judgement to machines is the people who own the machines can tune them towards outcomes they prefer but those who don't own anything can't. It's not the technology. It's a transfer of decision making power from rational accountable systems to capital.
52819805
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 03/06/2026
I spent more time on this piece than almost anything else I've written in the last year. Building a better, more decentralized internet is an inherent necessity if you want a functioning democracy. I hope people find it a useful encapsulation of where we're at. www.liberalism.org/p/enshittifi...
liberalism.org
Enshittification, Despotification, and the Open Internet
It’s not about whether technology is inherently good or bad, liberating or oppressive. Architecture shapes incentives; incentives shape outcomes.
291971645
Reposted by Rob Danisch
jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 05/05/2026
If LLMs do indeed presage the end of higher education, it will be because university administrators forced LLMs down the throats of students and instructors, undermining the perception that pedagogy produces skills that are valuable to employers.
1427
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 28/04/2026
"The goal is not to crush your opponents but to change them, to find a way to live together down the road. Reconciliation may not be comfortable, but it does show a way forward. This may be the hardest step to grasp and implement." www.liberalcurrents.com/lessons-in-t...
liberalcurrents.com
Lessons in Training, Strategy, and Discipline From the Civil Rights Movement
Tactical excellence without a strategic understanding is a recipe for failure.
0247
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Nick Davis @ntd.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
I’m officially nuking screens in class this fall. You can take notes by hand or not I don’t really care. But I’m done pretending that screens are anything other than a massive mistake in classrooms.
131158
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
What a surprise, screens in the classroom are bad: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
theatlantic.com
What Happened After a Teacher Ditched Screens
Why one early adopter of computers in classrooms has decided to toss them
000
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
War as a failure of literacy; the inability to understand the meaning of events instead of just information. There's a lot hear to justify attention to humanities education (and the lack of just that in this moment): www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Is It 1914 in America?
100
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Alex Zalben @azalben.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
The annoying gruntwork you’re off-loading to AI is how you learn basic information and skills that help power the logical leaps that lead to creation and innovation. This is why CEOs are all f**king idiots.
5339106
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
What does an academic do when people publish something that basically says exactly what you have said over two books and never even cite you? delibdemjournal.org/article/id/9...
delibdemjournal.org
Reclaiming Civility: Towards Discursive Opening in Dialogue and Deliberation
In the midst of polarization often linked to incivility and a 'call out' culture, this paper re-imagines the role of civility. Moving away from reductionist definitions that claim civility is either o...
100
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Jesspooka Kant 🎃 @jessdkant.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Reposting this because, hilariously, someone running an AI news aggregator just plagiarized the hell out of it and got shared 3x as much as the original post. So you know, here's the actual piece. Where I talk about LLMs making copies of copies of copies of copies and how that drives disinformation.
jessk.org
AI update: replication crisis — Jessica Kant
Regardless of who actually prints a story, it is the merger of social media and machine learning which increasingly drives narratives in the immediate wake of a major event. The next time a catastroph...
4605237
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
This is awesome
000
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Daniel McDowell @danielmcdowell.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
I tell my students that one of the main reasons not to over-rely on AI for research/writing is because--at some point in the future--you're going to have a face-to-face conversation with someone who matters, and if you don't actually know some things, that interaction will not go well for you.
26914
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
yes, absolutely: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | A.I. Companies Are Eating Higher Education
000
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
This is really good, especially the idea to stop somewhere and let them catch up: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
100
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
I wrote several books and spent the better part of my career writing about why this matters for democracy and how to do it. I'm skeptical such a movement will happen. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
theatlantic.com
What Should Americans Do Now?
We need a mass movement for basic decency.
000
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Oh look, a Harvard person discovered the field of communication. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | What Science Tells Us About Arguing With Your Father-in-Law
100
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Jen Mercieca @jenmercieca.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
So many years of using war rhetoric against the US has turned into war against the US. It's a natural progression, which is why we asked people to notice the war rhetoric when it started. You don't use war rhetoric to prepare a nation for war unless you plan to do it 🥹
27313
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
This is excellent: www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
theguardian.com
AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage | Cory Doctorow
AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. A serious fight against it must strike at its roots
000
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Wow. Hey @uwaterloo.ca people in needles hall ought to read this. We need a campus wide ban on AI in classes.
000
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
this is great news
000
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
This is just funny: www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...
thestar.com
I left Trump’s America to teach in Canada. I didn’t expect this from Canadians
During my short time here, I've encountered a shocking level of naïveté about what's happening south of the border.
110
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
I had some stuff to say for this story: www.chch.com/chch-news/th...
chch.com
The most searched topics of 2025 revealed by Google
Google has released its annual search trends, revealing the people, issues, and moments that sent millions racing to their keyboards.
000
Reposted by Rob Danisch
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.
13587164
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 27/12/2025
The decision to recognize the indigenous claim to Canadian land is a misstep, @davidfrum writes. “Just when Canada most urgently needs to jump-start the country’s economic growth, the country’s courts are inventing new obstacles to development”:
100
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
Slop has got to be the word of the year.
010
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 14/12/2025
As I grade my interpersonal communication final exams, I can say that all of this is terrible advice. Sports and movie stars don't make you a sparkling conversationalist: www.thestar.com/life/convers...
thestar.com
Conversation tips from Toronto's social scene stars
From Edward Burtynsky to Adrienne Clarkson, the city's most notable storytellers shared their advice for breaking the ice.
020
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
What an absolute moron.
2174
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 05/12/2025
Remember when the internet wasn't awful? We can go back to that. Some friends and I have released the Resonant Computing Manifesto: a call to bring back such a time, to see if we can bring back a world where technology works for us, rather than against us. resonantcomputing.org
resonantcomputing.org
The Resonant Computing Manifesto
Technology should bring out the best in humanity, not the worst—a manifesto for resonant computing built on five principles that reject hyper-scale extraction for human flourishing.
37917326
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
This gets a lot about AI right too. Good to see so much clear-eyed analysis coming out. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
theatlantic.com
Colleges Are Preparing to Self-Lobotomize
The skills that students will need in an age of automation are precisely those that are eroded by inserting AI into the educational process.
020
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
This feels a bit more extreme compared to my experience at UWaterloo, but only a bit more. There’s much truth here
000
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Sanho Tree @sanho.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
There’s a reason Caesar was forbidden to cross the Rubicon and return to Rome with his army. It’s what separates a relatively free society from a fascist one.
381833351
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
This was lovely to read and reinforces a lot of what I'm trying lately: Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/m...
nytimes.com
I’m a Professor. A.I. Has Changed My Classroom, but Not for the Worse.
010
Rob Danisch @robdanisch.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
After over 25 years of teaching humanities courses at universities and reading thousands of pages of student writing, the idea that I can't immediately tell when something was written by AI is ridiculous. I know because I've spent countless hours of my life reading student work.
110
Reposted by Rob Danisch
Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 24/11/2025
I think it’s pretty clear at this point that one of the main impacts of LLMs is to disrupt thinking: to make it so that far too many people never properly learn how to do it, and then to control the output so there are thoughts that people never learn how to think.
321783493