Julia M. Wright
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juliamwright.bsky.social
Julia M. Wright
@juliamwright.bsky.social

FRSC Professor in Halifax🍁. Member of @dalfaculty.bsky.social . Locked out for 30 days in 2025. Views here mine only. Rebleats≠agreement.

"it is not Air / That from a thousand Lungs reeks back to thine" (Armstrong 1744). Silence=Spread🦠 #COVIDisAirborne .. more

Julia Margaret Wright is a professor in the Department of English and University Research Professor at Dalhousie University. Wright is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. .. more

History 22%
Political science 18%
Pinned
As #cdnpse institutions compete for domestic students after decades of funding cuts and new limits on int'l enrolment, I'm curious to see if we get recruitment campaigns based on pandemic safety: e.g., "Breathe Easier: We Know Your Health Matters to Your Success." theconversation.com/we-can-and-m...
We can, and must, do more to protect students in higher education from the risks of post-COVID condition
Postsecondary students are particularly vulnerable to repeated COVID-19 infections, putting them at risk for post-COVID condition, or long COVID. Campuses can take action to protect them.
theconversation.com

Reposted by Julia M. Wright

i hold no love for Mark Carney but even I've gotta have sympathy for the dude when I imagine his aide being like "sir, the president thinks you own the whole bridge and you're being mean about it" and him having to put down his copy of The Economist to make the dumbest phone call of all time
Bloomington police announce arrests in sex trafficking bust: "Rashad Johnson out of Maple Grove. This is the most disturbing arrest that we've had here. He is a backgrounder for ICE, Homeland Security, and federal agencies."

Townhall at the Halifax Central Library, 23 February (Monday), starting at 6:30 pm: “Protecting Post-Secondary Education in Nova Scotia.” #nspse #nspoli #cdnpse

Reposted by Julia M. Wright

There are US states where professors could be fired for walking their students thru a critical analysis of the Bad Bunny halftime show.

Ugh, yeah, problems with names in my work too, including variant spellings--it will autocorrect Whytt to White and Owenson to Swenson, e.g. (just like Bluesky!). It will also autocorrect specialized terms, though thankfully the MLA Bibliography seems to recognize most literary terms. Most...

Today in enshittification news: the @modernlanguage.bsky.social Bibliography will autocorrect "Tintern" to "intern"; if you ask it to search for "landscape," it will list items with "nature"; similarly, a search for "medicine" will yield items with "pharmaceutical" as well. So much for precision.🙄

This speaks to the imperative to hold univ administrations accountable for their non-academic spending--on travel, on consultants, on lawyers, on PR, etc. Student tuition dollars and public funding should go to academic activities, not making some administrator's day a little easier. #cdnpse #nspse
McGill Spent Over $1 Million Fighting Unionization – The Rover
Union organizers at the university say this is part of a broader trend towards corporatization of the public institution.
therover.ca

Reposted by Julia M. Wright

Ok so I was going to announce that @tjradcliffe.bsky.social had just won the Internet for today but then I saw @rnrkd.bsky.social's post and now I am thinking maybe it's a tie.

What a time to be alive!

They seem to have no sense of public purpose and responsibility. You can’t run a government like a widget maker: sure, numbers matter, but they’re only the means to an end. Health funding, incl for research and education, is a more direct means to that end.

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

What if… we are not here to serve the economy, but the economy matters because it serves us?

A healthy economy helps keep us healthy: supporting healthcare and other services, reducing food insecurity and inequity, etc.

Everyone’s wellbeing is the goal—isn’t it?

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Student research award scrapped due to province's focus on economic outcomes | CBC News
The Scotia Scholars Award supported health-related research at Nova Scotia post-secondary institutions and was administered by Research Nova Scotia.
www.cbc.ca

Reposted by Julia M. Wright

Masking at a meeting
I cannot sufficiently underline how despicable it is that the IOC has required Haitian Olympic athletes to remove an image representing the leader of the Haitian Revolution (against SLAVERY) from their uniforms.

Perhaps, but this isn’t entirely about student experience. Accreditation requirements in some programs could be at risk, and univ reputation could—should—crash. There are structural norms that ensure a credential means something somewhere else, and this puts a number of those at risk.

Further to this point about “softening”: “meta-analyses that combined studies of different designs or included studies at critical risk of bias—served to obscure important aspects of heterogeneity, resulting in bland and unhelpful summary statements” (www.cambridge.org/core/journal...).
Our new paper:

Synthesis challenges in complex evidence: A critical analysis of systematic reviews of face mask efficacy

#episky #healthpolicy #medsky

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Synthesis challenges in complex evidence: A critical analysis of systematic reviews of face mask efficacy | Research Synthesis Methods | Cambridge Core
Synthesis challenges in complex evidence: A critical analysis of systematic reviews of face mask efficacy
www.cambridge.org

Tenure supports long-term planning, incl curricular reform and research projects (which draw funding). It’s bad enough that so many precarious colleagues are in this situation. Entire universities? Why would students go to a university like that? So how would that affect outcome metrics?

The NB government is setting standards others should follow, including requiring ASHRAE 241 for new public buildings.

This is what being responsible looks like. Refreshing, eh?
New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt's Liberal government will no longer use X for "routine" government communications:
New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt's Liberal government will no longer use X for "routine" government communications:

With all of the Bill 12, Schedule H, etc. gibberish and now a university offering to run some government work, it bears repeating: "Universities Are Not Government Departments" (my op-ed in the Cape Breton Post a year ago).

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Reposted by Julia M. Wright

Who is ready for some good news about school IAQ in #NBPoli? 💕 Thanks to @meganmitton.bsky.social !! 🔥 Scroll to 6:41:00 on the webcast: www.legnb.ca/en/webcasts/...
(And the most sincere and never-ending thanks to Ryan Murphy; this would not happen without him and others who have worked so hard.)
Standing Committee on Public Accounts - Feb 3, 2026 - Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick
www.legnb.ca
Our paper modelling transmission risk in schools is published in Nature Communications. **The relative contribution of close-proximity contacts, shared classroom exposure and indoor air quality to respiratory virus transmission in schools** doi.org/10.1038/s414...

This “softening” has been around for a long time, and not just from governments.

The infographic form, bullet points, and sub-sub-headings are all devices for fragmenting information and diluting it so it all seems clear, easy and factual. It takes a paragraph to lay out divergences and debates.
one of my strongest beliefs is that we're in our situation right now bc some of the most prominent talking heads (e.g. joe rogan, andrew schulz) are learning about politics in their 40s and 50s, instead of their teens and early 20s, and we have to go along for the ride as they learn basic things

Reposted by Julia M. Wright

Government used AI to summarize expert reports from its AI consult. I did the same by uploading them to Chat GPT/Perplexity AI to generate new summaries. I found the government consistently softened advice creating an illusion of consensus that isn’t really there.
www.michaelgeist.ca/2026/02/aico...
An Illusion of Consensus: What the Government Isn’t Saying About the Results of its AI Consultation - Michael Geist
The government quietly released a “what we heard” report this week discussing the response to its 30-day sprint AI consultation from last October. Described as the “largest public consultation in the ...
www.michaelgeist.ca
France’s Foreign Ministry owns Elon Musk in this response:

Reposted by Julia M. Wright

<stares in *they're also making it a lot harder for Americans to stay healthy*>

I mean, seriously, we know how to promote health: vaccines, indoor air quality, accurate information on avoiding illness (e.g., N95s in crowded indoor spaces when flu, COVID, etc. are circulating), reducing inequity...
They want us working earlier and til we die to pay for their tax cuts for the rich. Supervillains.
They want us working earlier and til we die to pay for their tax cuts for the rich. Supervillains.

I think the former, but I'd like to work on the latter. :-)