Emily K.D. Smith
banner
ekds.bsky.social
Emily K.D. Smith
@ekds.bsky.social
Booze Archaeologist, Nubiologist, PhD Candidate, activist, coffee addict. Angry blob that watches too much anime and plays too much D&D.
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
Either you understand that there is an organized campaign to push trans people out of public life with the explicit end goal of "morally mandating us out of existence" that is backed by some of the wealthiest individuals to have ever lived, or you're simply not equipped to grasp what's happening.
December 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
So, an OU student a shitty reaction paper in a psych course, got failed by a grad student TA for not following directions and threatened legal action, while also getting her uni TPUSA chapter to post the essay. Her mother is on X saying trans people must not be allowed to be professors.

This is…
OU puts graduate instructor on leave after student claims discrimination on Bible-based essay grade
OU placed a graduate student instructor on leave after a student publicly contested a grade and filed an illegal discrimination claim after she received a failing grade on an essay
www.oudaily.com
December 1, 2025 at 11:39 AM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
This thread is 💯. Labor precarity in academia means the evisceration of faculty governance and academic freedom, opening the door to administrative purges of the most vulnerable. And faculty-esp tenured faculty and academic leaders-who aren't defending their trans colleagues are enabling it.
So yeah, this is fundamentally about trans people and that cannot be elided, but the ways in which junior faculty are targeted and disposed of, while academic jobs are increasingly precarized, and political grandstanders seek to influence academic governance are fucking terrifying for everyone.
December 1, 2025 at 12:35 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
As I said on the other site: she would have gotten an F from me too.

You need to cite. You need cogent and clear arguments.

I am losing my mind.
This poor graduate student (who was the course instructor), being harassed for doing their job.
OU has put the professor here on administrative leave:
December 1, 2025 at 12:57 AM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
I’m looking forward to asking my university president next week about how much they will protect instructors and TAs from this bullshit. If I can’t even fail a student for literally not following the assignment instructions, or writing a bad paper, then what the hell is the point of a class?
December 1, 2025 at 12:33 AM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
Computer, please summarize everything PG Wodehouse ever wrote in ten seconds
rich dudes got freakier after butlers fell out of fashion, like say what you will about having domestic servants but clearly it was some sort of moderating force on old rich dudes having a fancy man follow you around saying shit like "oh dear sir, that wouldn't be very becoming"
November 29, 2025 at 9:34 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
Hey conference-organizers (sorry for addressing you in one of your professional capacities on a holiday).

I posted this 5 days ago, and 65 artists have already applied. Many of them are PSYCHED, and many of them are extremely qualified.

There's HUGE interest from artists in working w/scientists.
ARTISTS!
I need your help!

In collab. w/the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology, I'm organizing a group of artists to come to our Jan. meeting! We're looking for artists to create based on what they learn at the conference. $1000 stipend.

Application is V short! forms.gle/ah1i8KwNJinZ...
November 27, 2025 at 7:03 PM
I know so many who needed this research grant line to complete their PhDs. With funding options collapsing across the board, this is devastating news.
NEW from me - NSF cancels grant scheme for social science research.

Seems the NSF quietly archived ALL calls for DDRIG grants in the SBE directorate. This is a massive blow for PhD students wanting to do cutting-edge social science research. 🏺🧪
Today's biggest science news: Doomed comet explodes | Comet 3I/ATLAS course alteration | Dark matter detected?
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025: Your daily feed of the biggest discoveries and breakthroughs making headlines.
www.livescience.com
November 27, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
Dear professional society leadership:
People say “believe women”. Until the man is someone they know.
November 27, 2025 at 2:44 AM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
🏺 Again and again - our discipline has been crucial to genocide. Pretending otherwise is complicity.
Israel, which has obliterated most of Palestine’s archeological and heritage sites, including ancient churches, mosques, and temples, has suddenly discovered an urge to protect one from Palestinian ‘neglect’. It just so happens to be in the West Bank.

www.timesofisrael.com/israel-begin...
Israel begins seizing 1,800 dunams of West Bank land to develop archaeological site
Civil Administration says development legal, taking place amid 'neglect' of site by Palestinians; Peace Now: 'Government's lust for dispossession and annexation is insatiable'
www.timesofisrael.com
November 25, 2025 at 12:19 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
This is exactly it. There is also an insidious genre of essay which is “let me write about Sudan once and never again, just so I can say I did it, and then get back to asking why people are obsessed about Palestine“. These people can never discuss Sudan on its own terms.
The people who say "why this obsession with Palestine? why don't you post about Sudan?" never post about Sudan themselves.
What they mean is "it's fine you don't care about Sudan. You should be similarly indifferent to Palestine"

(of course, many people do post about both and other crises)
November 20, 2025 at 11:45 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
"In an era of shrinking research budgets and political pressure to justify public investment, federally funded #digital #archives in #archaeology are delivering measurable, lasting benefits..." Read the blog and #openaccess article here: ➡️ https://cup.org/4nQ7gNS

#Huhugam @saa-aap.bsky.social
National Endowment for the Humanities-Funded Archaeological Archive of Huhugam Archaeology Delivers Lasting Impact in the Southwest « Archaeology# « Cambridge Core Blog
In an era of shrinking research budgets and political pressure to justify public investment, federally funded digital archives in archaeology are delivering measurable, lasting benefits to scholars, l...
www.cambridge.org
November 16, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
NEW: In his first interview since his arrest for protesting outside the Chicago-area ICE facility, @revdrmichaelwoolf.bsky.social tells me he has "bruises all over my body."

Even so, he said, “the cruelty that goes on that facility … must be 100 times worse." religionnews.com/2025/11/15/a...
November 15, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
One thing that's abundantly clear: passing the SAFE Research Act would permanently end the United States' ability to be competitive in any area of advanced technology. Just straight up suicidal policy-making.
This has gotten surprisingly little attention — it's not even on the front page of @science.org right now — but it's really hard to describe what the SAFE Research Act would do to US science and scientists without sounding insane

www.science.org/content/arti...
November 14, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
I believe the purpose of education is to help everyone create a healthy, informed, curious, and compassionate society.
A lot of education discourse is at root an inability to decide whether the purpose of our education system is to 1) teach material and measure learning 2) reward students who work hard 3) separate the smart kids (destined for smart guy jobs) from the dumb kids (destined to serve the smart guys)
November 15, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
Just a note that the US passed landmark civil rights legislation enforcing the rights of disabled students to reasonable accommodation. This is a form of segregation. And segregationists like this also tend to believe in other forms of segregation.
A lot of education discourse is at root an inability to decide whether the purpose of our education system is to 1) teach material and measure learning 2) reward students who work hard 3) separate the smart kids (destined for smart guy jobs) from the dumb kids (destined to serve the smart guys)
November 15, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
I don’t want to formulate words yet, but my friend Alice Wong, @sfdirewolf.bsky.social of the Disability Visibility Project, has passed.

Here are the words she left behind:
www.instagram.com/p/DREMDNBjnq...
Alice Wong on Instagram: "ID: Yellow background with black text "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 ...
423 likes, 73 comments - alicatsamurai on November 14, 2025: "ID: Yellow background with black text "This is Alice's friend Sandy Ho, posting. Per Alice's wishes, this message is being shared at the t...
www.instagram.com
November 15, 2025 at 5:57 AM
My relationship with the UC System as a graduate student is complex, but today I've never been prouder of the faculty and staff of the UCs for standing up and standing firm.
The intro to Judge Rita Lin's 76-page opinion holding that the Trump admin's pressure campaign against the University of California system is coercive and retaliatory in violation of the First Amendment. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
November 15, 2025 at 6:08 AM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
📢📢 OUT NOW: 'Training for Transformation: Rethinking Archaeological Readiness in California and Beyond' - a #blog by Kaitlin Brown to accompany new research in the #SAA journal @saa-aap.bsky.social: ⛏️🎓 https://cup.org/47HcnKE

#archaeology
#openaccess
Training for Transformation: Rethinking Archaeological Readiness in California and Beyond « Archaeology# « Cambridge Core Blog
“You get in, you get out, and you get the job.” That line from a recent The CRM Archaeology Podcast (Ep 315) about academia's responsibility to CRM and vice versa stuck with me. It resonated because it echoes a broader shift happening across higher educ...
www.cambridge.org
November 13, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
Lots of hard, shitty lessons being learned from this presidency. And one of the many I hope you're learning is, white supremacy is incompatible with reality, and cannot exist without historical revisionism.
1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️
November 9, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
Remember when Aaron Swartz downloaded JSTOR archives that he had full legal rights to download and the FBI hounded him literally to death for it? Anyway,
NEW: Common Crawl, the massive archiver of the web, has gotten cozy with AI companies and is providing paywalled articles for training data. They’re also lying to publishers who have asked for material to be removed. “The robots are people too,” CC’s exec director told us when we asked about this.
The Nonprofit Feeding the Entire Internet to AI Companies
Common Crawl claims to provide a public benefit, but it lies to publishers about its activities.
www.theatlantic.com
November 4, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
The Sudan Solidarity Collective is doing a big fundraising push to support our partners in El Fashir to support food distribution, evacuation and medications.

Please help us boost our support. Please share and donate 👇🏾 .

sudansolidarity.com
Home - Sudan Solidarity Collective
Solidarity with Sudan! Support the Emergency Response Rooms doing life saving work in Sudan by donating to the Sudan Solidarity Fund. Workshops4Sudan is a new fundraising initiative of the Sudan Solid...
sudansolidarity.com
October 11, 2025 at 9:17 AM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
The President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, PPFP, has been a jewel in the crown for faculty development and recruitment at the University of California for years and the results have been an expanded faculty with almost 100% tenure rates — unprecedented success.
November 2, 2025 at 11:01 AM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
The humanitarian situation in Al Fasher and other parts of Sudan is nothing less than catastrophic. World leaders must act to end the indiscriminate killing.

Statement attributable to Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross: ms.spr.ly/63323tEZvx
October 31, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Emily K.D. Smith
#Sudan
"I have not seen the velocity & ferocity that we're witnessing... The scale is immense"
-Nathaniel Raymond

Yale report finds evidence of Rapid Support Forces (RSF) mass killing - pools of blood & piles of human bodies visible via satellite

#KeepEyesOnSudan
youtu.be/ieDxeeyYh64?...
Yale report finds evidence of RSF mass killings in Sudan’s el-Fasher
YouTube video by Al Jazeera English
youtu.be
November 2, 2025 at 10:33 AM