Liat
@liatspiro.bsky.social
Historian of labor, design, dev politics, intellectual property regimes, infrastructure
'So excited for one of my thesis students, history/econ double-major who's working on the history of full employment politics, to hit the UAW archives at Wayne State!! He's done (much of) the reading; I suspect this first-time archival experience will be mind-blowing.
November 29, 2025 at 2:27 AM
'So excited for one of my thesis students, history/econ double-major who's working on the history of full employment politics, to hit the UAW archives at Wayne State!! He's done (much of) the reading; I suspect this first-time archival experience will be mind-blowing.
Reposted by Liat
This is why OpenAI is selling so aggressively to education at all levels—they want to create entire generations of users incapable of reading, writing and thinking without ChatGPT to hold their hands
And teachers and professors should call this out for what it actually is
And teachers and professors should call this out for what it actually is
To bear out this rosy projection, HSBC assumes that OpenAI will become "as ubiquitous [...] as Microsoft 365" (345mm users worldwide) while bringing in 10x the number of users (3bn).
November 25, 2025 at 11:11 PM
This is why OpenAI is selling so aggressively to education at all levels—they want to create entire generations of users incapable of reading, writing and thinking without ChatGPT to hold their hands
And teachers and professors should call this out for what it actually is
And teachers and professors should call this out for what it actually is
Reposted by Liat
A two-year LABOR HISTORY postdoc @brownhist.bsky.social and @watsonschoolbrown.bsky.social
Possible foci: migration/displacement/ human trafficking; automation/technology/processes of global integration; or gender/sexuality/politics of reproductive labor
Please apply!
Possible foci: migration/displacement/ human trafficking; automation/technology/processes of global integration; or gender/sexuality/politics of reproductive labor
Please apply!
Apply - Interfolio
{{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
apply.interfolio.com
November 18, 2025 at 8:12 PM
A two-year LABOR HISTORY postdoc @brownhist.bsky.social and @watsonschoolbrown.bsky.social
Possible foci: migration/displacement/ human trafficking; automation/technology/processes of global integration; or gender/sexuality/politics of reproductive labor
Please apply!
Possible foci: migration/displacement/ human trafficking; automation/technology/processes of global integration; or gender/sexuality/politics of reproductive labor
Please apply!
Reposted by Liat
Alright, team Bluesky: US foodbanks are about to have staggering demand when SNAP ends Nov 1st. We need to help them prepare.
I'll match donations: DM or reply with a receipt showing your own donation to a food bank of your choice, and I'll donate to match, up to a total of $500. 💪🥗🍲🥚🥧🥪🥣🥛
#NoHunger
I'll match donations: DM or reply with a receipt showing your own donation to a food bank of your choice, and I'll donate to match, up to a total of $500. 💪🥗🍲🥚🥧🥪🥣🥛
#NoHunger
October 23, 2025 at 11:13 PM
Alright, team Bluesky: US foodbanks are about to have staggering demand when SNAP ends Nov 1st. We need to help them prepare.
I'll match donations: DM or reply with a receipt showing your own donation to a food bank of your choice, and I'll donate to match, up to a total of $500. 💪🥗🍲🥚🥧🥪🥣🥛
#NoHunger
I'll match donations: DM or reply with a receipt showing your own donation to a food bank of your choice, and I'll donate to match, up to a total of $500. 💪🥗🍲🥚🥧🥪🥣🥛
#NoHunger
Reposted by Liat
We need a bigger national spotlight on this building raid, fam. Agents dropped from helicopters onto the roof. Citizens and non-citizens alike were dragged from their homes in the night. People who weren't kidnapped during the raid had their belongings seized after the fact. This is madness.
"Jones, 27, is among the residents left at 7500 S. South Shore Drive who are trying to piece together what remains after an early morning, high-powered federal immigration raid led to the arrests of dozens of their neighbors at their South Shore apartment building."
Massive immigration raid on Chicago apartment building leaves residents reeling: 'I feel defeated'
The Department of Homeland Security said federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested 37 people in the raid.
chicago.suntimes.com
October 2, 2025 at 4:23 PM
We need a bigger national spotlight on this building raid, fam. Agents dropped from helicopters onto the roof. Citizens and non-citizens alike were dragged from their homes in the night. People who weren't kidnapped during the raid had their belongings seized after the fact. This is madness.
Reposted by Liat
Cool conference alert 🚨: This Friday (Sept. 26), from 12–6:45 PM EST, NOMOS will be holding a conference on Capitalism and Socialism (at Harvard + on Zoom).
Papers and responses by several LPE stalwarts, including David Grewal, Alex Gourevitch, Aziz Rana, Lev Menand.
Papers and responses by several LPE stalwarts, including David Grewal, Alex Gourevitch, Aziz Rana, Lev Menand.
American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy - 2025 Conference: Capitalism and Socialism
www.political-theory.org
September 24, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Cool conference alert 🚨: This Friday (Sept. 26), from 12–6:45 PM EST, NOMOS will be holding a conference on Capitalism and Socialism (at Harvard + on Zoom).
Papers and responses by several LPE stalwarts, including David Grewal, Alex Gourevitch, Aziz Rana, Lev Menand.
Papers and responses by several LPE stalwarts, including David Grewal, Alex Gourevitch, Aziz Rana, Lev Menand.
Reposted by Liat
Don't miss today's conversation with Rickey Laurentiis about Death of the First Idea, 10 years in the making, a book somehow archaic & futuristic, oracular & confessional, mythic & lyric, taking us from Ancient Greece to New Orleans to Palestine
Audio📻: tinhouse.com/podcast/rick...
Audio📻: tinhouse.com/podcast/rick...
Rickey Laurentiis : Death of the First Idea - Tin House
Ten years in the making, poet Rickey Laurentiis joins us to talk about her much-anticipated remarkable new collection Death of the First Idea. “In the past decade, as Laurentiis has transitioned, her ...
tinhouse.com
September 8, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Don't miss today's conversation with Rickey Laurentiis about Death of the First Idea, 10 years in the making, a book somehow archaic & futuristic, oracular & confessional, mythic & lyric, taking us from Ancient Greece to New Orleans to Palestine
Audio📻: tinhouse.com/podcast/rick...
Audio📻: tinhouse.com/podcast/rick...
Reposted by Liat
This is some niche-posting, but it's interesting the degree to which "ex-Google engineer" in the 2010s functioned in a similar fashion to the "ex-NASA systems analyst" in the Great Society era.
September 5, 2025 at 11:23 PM
This is some niche-posting, but it's interesting the degree to which "ex-Google engineer" in the 2010s functioned in a similar fashion to the "ex-NASA systems analyst" in the Great Society era.
Reposted by Liat
Anyone have a favorite book on the history of environmental law?
August 21, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Anyone have a favorite book on the history of environmental law?
Reposted by Liat
US Senator Jon Ossoff has launched an investigation into the abuse of women and children in US immigration detention, citing among other reports, the WIRED story below: www.ossoff.senate.gov/wp-content/u...
August 18, 2025 at 8:53 PM
US Senator Jon Ossoff has launched an investigation into the abuse of women and children in US immigration detention, citing among other reports, the WIRED story below: www.ossoff.senate.gov/wp-content/u...
Reposted by Liat
What's happening in Indiana should be a warning for all of higher ed.
IU sanctioned a Professor--who was previously arrested and sanctioned during a campus protest--for allegedly violating the state's "intellectual diversity" law, based on an anonymous complaint.
www.indystar.com/story/news/e...
IU sanctioned a Professor--who was previously arrested and sanctioned during a campus protest--for allegedly violating the state's "intellectual diversity" law, based on an anonymous complaint.
www.indystar.com/story/news/e...
August 18, 2025 at 2:08 PM
What's happening in Indiana should be a warning for all of higher ed.
IU sanctioned a Professor--who was previously arrested and sanctioned during a campus protest--for allegedly violating the state's "intellectual diversity" law, based on an anonymous complaint.
www.indystar.com/story/news/e...
IU sanctioned a Professor--who was previously arrested and sanctioned during a campus protest--for allegedly violating the state's "intellectual diversity" law, based on an anonymous complaint.
www.indystar.com/story/news/e...
Reposted by Liat
For all of the educators trying to deal with AI, I did a deep dive in early June and these are the four articles I decided to assign to my students.
1. This is the longest of the bunch, but so wonderfully comprehensive.
www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...
1. This is the longest of the bunch, but so wonderfully comprehensive.
www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...
We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.
The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next.
www.technologyreview.com
August 14, 2025 at 10:17 AM
For all of the educators trying to deal with AI, I did a deep dive in early June and these are the four articles I decided to assign to my students.
1. This is the longest of the bunch, but so wonderfully comprehensive.
www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...
1. This is the longest of the bunch, but so wonderfully comprehensive.
www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...
Reposted by Liat
Junior faculty and grad students in political science, history, law, and Native American Studies, come take a class with us at the New York Historical Society (and via Zoom) on Native Peoples, American Colonialism, and the U.S. Constitution.
To apply, Institute for Constitutional History: 1/2
To apply, Institute for Constitutional History: 1/2
August 16, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Junior faculty and grad students in political science, history, law, and Native American Studies, come take a class with us at the New York Historical Society (and via Zoom) on Native Peoples, American Colonialism, and the U.S. Constitution.
To apply, Institute for Constitutional History: 1/2
To apply, Institute for Constitutional History: 1/2
Reposted by Liat
Hello, science has never been apolitical and I wrote a book about one of the ways that USians came to think that it was. Please read it and stop saying stupid shit. www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...
Freedom's Laboratory
The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science
www.press.jhu.edu
August 14, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Hello, science has never been apolitical and I wrote a book about one of the ways that USians came to think that it was. Please read it and stop saying stupid shit. www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...
Reposted by Liat
Everyone wants to attend the liberal arts college where Politics are banned and Thinking is discouraged www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/08...
Barnard to allow students access to Google generative AI tools
Barnard students are now able to access Google’s generative artificial intelligence tools Gemini and NotebookLM using their Barnard emails as of August 1, the college announced in a July 29 email to t...
www.columbiaspectator.com
August 13, 2025 at 12:32 PM
Everyone wants to attend the liberal arts college where Politics are banned and Thinking is discouraged www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/08...
Reposted by Liat
This isn’t an impoverished regional school – this is the University of Chicago. Devastating.
August 13, 2025 at 5:30 PM
This isn’t an impoverished regional school – this is the University of Chicago. Devastating.
Reposted by Liat
To argue that science is non-political at a time when climate change, vaccines, evolution, and countless other forms of scientific research are all under intense assault seems ludicrous. The only way to understand these controversies about science is through the humanities.
In which a Yale prof calls for jettisoning humanities to make way for science-only universities.
“scientists… are being punished for the sins of [humanities scholars] because we all live under one roof. I cannot see a compelling reason for our continued cohabitation.”
“scientists… are being punished for the sins of [humanities scholars] because we all live under one roof. I cannot see a compelling reason for our continued cohabitation.”
Unyoke the Sciences From the Humanities
Arts and sciences typically cohabitate. Should they?
thedispatch.com
August 13, 2025 at 8:12 PM
To argue that science is non-political at a time when climate change, vaccines, evolution, and countless other forms of scientific research are all under intense assault seems ludicrous. The only way to understand these controversies about science is through the humanities.
Reposted by Liat
It is abhorrent that these functionaries, many of whom have never visited a college classroom, can change the context and content of my job without anyone’s consent, least of all mine.
NEW: Senior UCLA and University of California officials say they will negotiate with the Trump administration over lifting $339 million in medical and science grant freezes. No decision has been made about terms of an agreement, including a potential fine www.latimes.com/california/s...
UCLA will negotiate with Trump over $339 million in medical and science grant freezes
UCLA and University of California officials said Monday that it will negotiate with Trump over $339 million in medical and science grant freezes.
www.latimes.com
August 5, 2025 at 2:24 PM
It is abhorrent that these functionaries, many of whom have never visited a college classroom, can change the context and content of my job without anyone’s consent, least of all mine.
Reposted by Liat
Yeah no kidding! Don’t outsource your distinctive human abilities to robots!!! I will be telling my students that in day 1
August 3, 2025 at 2:10 AM
Yeah no kidding! Don’t outsource your distinctive human abilities to robots!!! I will be telling my students that in day 1
Reposted by Liat
The @aaup.org report on AI is so hugely important. Among other key takeaways is the fact that most AI programs have been introduced by administrative fiat and by circumventing meaningful faculty, student, & staff consultation.
shorturl.at/InI5Q
shorturl.at/InI5Q
July 28, 2025 at 5:59 PM
The @aaup.org report on AI is so hugely important. Among other key takeaways is the fact that most AI programs have been introduced by administrative fiat and by circumventing meaningful faculty, student, & staff consultation.
shorturl.at/InI5Q
shorturl.at/InI5Q
Reposted by Liat
“It is impossible to teach this coursein light of Columbia’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition..conflates Jewishness w/Israel, so that any criticism of Israel..becomes a criticism of Jews.”
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi
The university’s draconian policies and new definition of antisemitism make much teaching impossible
www.theguardian.com
August 1, 2025 at 3:55 PM
“It is impossible to teach this coursein light of Columbia’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition..conflates Jewishness w/Israel, so that any criticism of Israel..becomes a criticism of Jews.”
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Reposted by Liat
Incredibly instructive reporting on what appears well on its way to becoming the biggest, most concentrated, most energy- and resource-intensive, and most speculative wave of capital investment ever.
ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...
ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...
July 31, 2025 at 7:13 AM
Incredibly instructive reporting on what appears well on its way to becoming the biggest, most concentrated, most energy- and resource-intensive, and most speculative wave of capital investment ever.
ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...
ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...
Reposted by Liat
@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and @johannawinant.bsky.social edited a whole volume, and Tobias just skeeted it out.
The difficulty with writing anything about anything is that any given thing, on closer inspection, appears to be connected to every thing, and now you’ve gone from writing about anything to writing about everything 😅
July 31, 2025 at 5:09 PM
@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and @johannawinant.bsky.social edited a whole volume, and Tobias just skeeted it out.
Reposted by Liat
Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump.
Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt.
Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:
Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt.
Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:
July 31, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump.
Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt.
Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:
Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt.
Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:
Reposted by Liat
Bingo.
Elites and institutions have not “collapsed.” They have not “changed their tunes.” They have not “failed.” They are not “cowards.”
They were and are simply been focused only on their own self-preservation and profit.
Nothing has changed. They simply made a cost benefit analysis, and fascism wins.
They were and are simply been focused only on their own self-preservation and profit.
Nothing has changed. They simply made a cost benefit analysis, and fascism wins.
July 31, 2025 at 12:59 AM
Bingo.