Elliott Sturtevant
@elliotts.bsky.social
Historian of architecture, business, and the environment | Assist. Prof. of Architecture | Working in Miami, living in Toronto
"At its best, government bureaucracy can be an instrument for leveling inequality and extending what Franklin D. Roosevelt called “freedom from want” to millions. The work of making freedom from want into a guarantee for everyone is still unfinished."
The case against Graeberism and for Mamdanism dissentmagazine.org/article/the-...
January 12, 2026 at 7:52 PM
"At its best, government bureaucracy can be an instrument for leveling inequality and extending what Franklin D. Roosevelt called “freedom from want” to millions. The work of making freedom from want into a guarantee for everyone is still unfinished."
"In towns like mine, outsourcing and automation consumed jobs. Then purpose. Then people. Now the same forces are climbing the economic ladder." www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/o...
Opinion | When A.I. Took My Job, I Bought a Chain Saw
www.nytimes.com
December 31, 2025 at 10:16 PM
"In towns like mine, outsourcing and automation consumed jobs. Then purpose. Then people. Now the same forces are climbing the economic ladder." www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/o...
"It may make sense to think of the United States as a wealthy Latin American country, rather than an offshoot of Europe mysteriously governed by cowboys." newrepublic.com/article/1920...
What America Can Learn From the Americas
Greg Grandin’s sweeping history of the new world shows how immutably intertwined the United States is with Latin America.
newrepublic.com
December 31, 2025 at 12:45 PM
"It may make sense to think of the United States as a wealthy Latin American country, rather than an offshoot of Europe mysteriously governed by cowboys." newrepublic.com/article/1920...
"The future of federal architecture, if we are going by what is actually being built at scale by the US government, appears to be the prison, the wall, the climate refugee camp." nyra.nyc/articles/wre...
Wrecking Ballroom
Trump is tearing down the White House. Good riddance.
nyra.nyc
December 22, 2025 at 9:59 PM
"The future of federal architecture, if we are going by what is actually being built at scale by the US government, appears to be the prison, the wall, the climate refugee camp." nyra.nyc/articles/wre...
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
A more fitting headline might be: “Smithsonian Resists White-Supremacist Censorship by Fools with Zero Relevant Expertise”
December 22, 2025 at 6:14 PM
A more fitting headline might be: “Smithsonian Resists White-Supremacist Censorship by Fools with Zero Relevant Expertise”
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom
December 12, 2025 at 6:23 PM
There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
Breaking News: Miami voters elected Eileen Higgins as mayor, choosing a Democrat to lead the city for the first time in almost 30 years.
Eileen Higgins Wins Miami Runoff Election to Become City’s First Female Mayor
Eileen Higgins, a former Miami-Dade County commissioner, will also be the city’s first female mayor and the first non-Hispanic mayor since the 1990s.
nyti.ms
December 10, 2025 at 1:00 AM
Breaking News: Miami voters elected Eileen Higgins as mayor, choosing a Democrat to lead the city for the first time in almost 30 years.
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more."
This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular.
pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...
This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular.
pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...
December 9, 2025 at 2:58 PM
"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more."
This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular.
pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...
This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular.
pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
1. Some good news at last. This week’s column is about the amazing thing a couple of us stumbled into three years ago, which we’ve now developed into a global research programme. It doesn’t change everything, of course, but it could help change quite a lot. + 🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Over a pint in Oxford, we may have stumbled upon the holy grail of agriculture | George Monbiot
I knew that a revolution in our understanding of soil could change the world. Then came a eureka moment – and the birth of the Earth Rover Program, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
www.theguardian.com
December 5, 2025 at 6:55 AM
1. Some good news at last. This week’s column is about the amazing thing a couple of us stumbled into three years ago, which we’ve now developed into a global research programme. It doesn’t change everything, of course, but it could help change quite a lot. + 🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
Framing GenAI as a battle between teachers and students is a red herring. Students and educators are on the same side. The real opposition are the data extraction firms and brokerages and their allies among the managerial class.
December 4, 2025 at 11:28 PM
Framing GenAI as a battle between teachers and students is a red herring. Students and educators are on the same side. The real opposition are the data extraction firms and brokerages and their allies among the managerial class.
"In the Chatversity, the roles are just as scripted and cynical. Faculty: 'They pretend to support us, and we pretend to teach.' Students: 'They pretend to educate us, and we pretend to learn.'" www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...
AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself
Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.
www.currentaffairs.org
December 3, 2025 at 9:31 PM
"In the Chatversity, the roles are just as scripted and cynical. Faculty: 'They pretend to support us, and we pretend to teach.' Students: 'They pretend to educate us, and we pretend to learn.'" www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
Including yours truly and a whole lot of great work by others:
Our longest yearly book list ever! Thirty six books by contingent historians for you to read, gift, and request for purchase at your library!
2025 Contingent Book List
When you’re shopping for books this season, consider a contingent scholar.
contingentmagazine.org
December 2, 2025 at 9:05 PM
Including yours truly and a whole lot of great work by others:
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
This is how administration acts whenever faculty tries to enforce standards. It's why most people have just given up and just hand out A's.
OU has put the professor here on administrative leave:
November 30, 2025 at 8:57 PM
This is how administration acts whenever faculty tries to enforce standards. It's why most people have just given up and just hand out A's.
"It seems strange to me that many of my liberal friends and students have never travelled to the South... They appear to have much more interest in places like China or Japan, and ... know more about these places than they do about, say, MS or AR." www.commonwealmagazine.org/fulbright-sc...
Exposure Therapy
What could bridge the gap between the culture of elite higher education and red America? One possibility involves extending the logic of the Fulbright program.
www.commonwealmagazine.org
November 27, 2025 at 4:48 PM
"It seems strange to me that many of my liberal friends and students have never travelled to the South... They appear to have much more interest in places like China or Japan, and ... know more about these places than they do about, say, MS or AR." www.commonwealmagazine.org/fulbright-sc...
This episode of Know Your Enemy with Kate Wagner is fantastic! It’s also a stark reminder of the depressed state of architectural culture and architectural criticism, and how much better off we’d be (I think!) if there were more of it. know-your-enemy-1682b684.simplecast.com/episodes/tru...
Trump's Big, Beautiful Ballroom (w/ Kate Wagner) [Teaser] | Know Your Enemy
Matt and Sam talk to McMansion Hell's Kate Wagner about Trump's White House ballroom.
know-your-enemy-1682b684.simplecast.com
November 17, 2025 at 7:24 PM
This episode of Know Your Enemy with Kate Wagner is fantastic! It’s also a stark reminder of the depressed state of architectural culture and architectural criticism, and how much better off we’d be (I think!) if there were more of it. know-your-enemy-1682b684.simplecast.com/episodes/tru...
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
This may be the best thing ive read yet on AI in higher ed, and its written by a Yale undergrad. Highly recommend.
Inside Yale’s Quiet Reckoning with AI | The New Journal
Amid ChatGPT's rising popularity and a computer science cheating scandal, Yale students, professors, and administrators wrestle privately with the proper role of AI in education. What happens when eve...
thenewjournalatyale.com
November 16, 2025 at 5:56 PM
This may be the best thing ive read yet on AI in higher ed, and its written by a Yale undergrad. Highly recommend.
"The progressive economic message is often something along the lines of 'there’s enough wealth to go around.' But a more winning message, particularly for Latinos who aspire to social mobility, might be: 'there’s enough work to go around.'" dissentmagazine.org/article/por-...
¿Por Qué MAGA? - Dissent Magazine
Progressives will only make lasting progress with Latino voters if they examine not just why Trump was appealing, but also why the left was not.
dissentmagazine.org
November 16, 2025 at 8:19 PM
"The progressive economic message is often something along the lines of 'there’s enough wealth to go around.' But a more winning message, particularly for Latinos who aspire to social mobility, might be: 'there’s enough work to go around.'" dissentmagazine.org/article/por-...
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
I usually don’t like linking to the NYT, but I think it’s important to know that they wrote and published an obituary immediately for Alice Wong. (It selectively left out parts of her disability activism that they didn’t like, of course.)
“One of the things that really gives me joy is the fact that there are so many amazing, brilliant, creative disabled people out there. But part of my rage — and it’s a very real rage — is that most people don’t really know about them.”
Obit:
Obit:
Alice Wong, Writer and Relentless Advocate for Disability Rights, Dies at 51
www.nytimes.com
November 15, 2025 at 10:46 PM
I usually don’t like linking to the NYT, but I think it’s important to know that they wrote and published an obituary immediately for Alice Wong. (It selectively left out parts of her disability activism that they didn’t like, of course.)
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
Oh wow @reuters.com got the photo here:
November 14, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Oh wow @reuters.com got the photo here:
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
This is a grotesque assault on faculty expertise and self-governance. I was fortunate enough to start my academic career as an assistant professor at Montclair State. Solidarity with MSU humanists being buzzworded into a new School of Human Narratives and Creative Expressions none of them want.
academeblog.org/2025/11/13/t...
My colleague has captured what is currently happening at my institution. I have found the chipper rhetoric announcing it particularly depressing.
My colleague has captured what is currently happening at my institution. I have found the chipper rhetoric announcing it particularly depressing.
The Eternal Synergy of the Spotless Mind
BY ADAM RZEPKA A large public university is wiping out all of its humanities departments. It isn’t sure why. As I write this, our Interim Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS…
academeblog.org
November 14, 2025 at 7:07 PM
This is a grotesque assault on faculty expertise and self-governance. I was fortunate enough to start my academic career as an assistant professor at Montclair State. Solidarity with MSU humanists being buzzworded into a new School of Human Narratives and Creative Expressions none of them want.
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
In the US, the only leverage many academics have is threatening to leave. That leverage is growing weaker and weaker as jobs disappear. At this point, beyond a few superstars, it’s effectively nil. There are, of course, other forms of leverage, but they require working in concert.
November 14, 2025 at 2:38 PM
In the US, the only leverage many academics have is threatening to leave. That leverage is growing weaker and weaker as jobs disappear. At this point, beyond a few superstars, it’s effectively nil. There are, of course, other forms of leverage, but they require working in concert.
"DeSantis boasted that he was acting in the name of free choice: students would no longer be required to take sociology. But students have never been required to take sociology. What he did was constrain the freedom to choose sociology..." So much for the "marketplace of ideas."
Commentary: Florida’s education commissioner just fired free thought
Anastasios Kamoutsas’ removal of a sociology professor from a statewide committee is only the latest government attempt to limit the scope of education.
www.orlandosentinel.com
November 11, 2025 at 3:58 PM
"DeSantis boasted that he was acting in the name of free choice: students would no longer be required to take sociology. But students have never been required to take sociology. What he did was constrain the freedom to choose sociology..." So much for the "marketplace of ideas."
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
“woke” is when you acknowledge that black people have contributed to the united states
Two panels commemorating the contribution of Black American soldiers towards the liberation of the Netherlands in World War Two have been quietly removed from a cemetery in Limburg. It follows a complaint by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission.
November 8, 2025 at 9:01 PM
“woke” is when you acknowledge that black people have contributed to the united states
Reposted by Elliott Sturtevant
Shocked to learn that Alison Isenberg has died, far too young. What a terrible loss. A lovely person and an outstanding urban historian. I first met her when we were graduate students at Penn, around 35 years ago. My condolences to her family
Alison Isenberg, distinguished urban historian and co-founder of Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities, dies
A public memorial and celebration of Isenberg’s life will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 6, at the University Chapel.
www.princeton.edu
November 7, 2025 at 11:47 PM
Shocked to learn that Alison Isenberg has died, far too young. What a terrible loss. A lovely person and an outstanding urban historian. I first met her when we were graduate students at Penn, around 35 years ago. My condolences to her family