There is a level of discomfort and cognitive dissonance that keeps growing in me working in HE while scholasticide and ecocide (yes, they are part of the genocide or ethnic cleansing) committed in Gaza for more than half a year, and the deafening silence of Western universities completely ignoring it.
I truly believed that if there is any place in the world when dialogue should and must always be a priority, is in academic fora. Dialogue is the foundation of #academia
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I once peer-reviewed a journal paper and asked for minor revisions, only to find that they had printed the manuscript completely unchanged except for the title. When I told the editors that they had wasted my time, they explained that this author, a woman of about 40, was extremely scary and would get super angry if they made any demands on her.
Friends in #academia, my week: The last day of classes was yesterday, the first day of finals is tomorrow. Of course, there's a school all-hands meeting and a dept faculty meeting today, thus proving that administration absolutely doesn't teach or think about teaching. (I skipped the former, it's always creative numbers and affirmations, but the latter has some important stuff in it, so I'm zooming in while I finish up a final.)
Relieved! I opted out of a conference dinner for the first time in almost 30 years of conferences. They are expensive, service is slow, I never make any useful extra contacts during the meal, and I always leave first of all. I look forward to a really good kebab instead. (I am also massively bored at parties and mostly spend them collecting dishes for washup.)
Isn't it weird that acceptance rate is a thing we look for in a conference/journal?
Publishing a paper should not be competitive like "we take the top 20% paper", it should be "we take all papers that are good enough according to our standards". Sometimes it can be a very low or very high number depending on the quality of the paper submitted.
Just learned that a very promising early career scientist in my discipline has left academia, not seeing a desired career future for herself here. That company is lucky to get her. Yet, it saddens me enormously that it is often the most dynamic, brilliant, curious once, who are challenging status quo, committed to diversity and making our world a better place, who are leaving #academia.
What are we doing wrong to make academic careers so unattractive for the best young minds?
Gotta love the Danes. Last year there was an archaeological conference in Korsør titled: "If you let me see yours, I'll let you see mine… 1st Millennium Weapons and Riding Gear". Somehow I can't really see this happening in the US.
When I was young I had a lot of disagreements with slightly older colleagues about what archaeological research should be like. I don't know who was right, but I do know that almost all of them have long since stopped publishing any research. 😁
Being an #immigrant academic is harder than what people think. I have to be on top of my game while juggling the complex immigration process and making sure that my family abroad and at home are being taken care of.
Finkelstein speaks candidly about his early upbringing in New York City — raised by parents who were both Holocaust survivors — & how it led to his tireless pro-Palestinian solidarity work & “forensic scholarship” of Israeli criminality & the related abuse of Holocaust memory.
If you already know Finkelstein's background, it's still worth tuning in to his comments on the "treason of the intellectuals" (34 mins in)
"Details about oil majors contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to top universities to build relationships that could help the industry avoid taking climate action were inside thousands of pages of documents unveiled Tuesday by Democrats on the House Oversight and Accountability and the Senate Budget committees.
Of the files released Tuesday, many show the extraordinary lengths energy giants have gone to in order to maintain public support for the oil industry — a major employer that’s also one of the nation’s top corporate climate polluters.
Companies have acknowledged, then flat-out ignored, stark warnings about the fate of the planet in relation to their activities."
It covers everything from the history of scicomm to press releases, #SocialMedia, #science shows, risk communication, engaging with policy makers, language, you name it... Highly recommended!
The president of #Barnard College lost a faculty-wide vote of no confidence on Tuesday, as criticism mounts over the school’s response to a pro- #Palestine 🇵🇸 encampment
It is the first no confidence vote against a president in the college’s history.
I wrote an article for Unsustainable Magazine that is based around my dissertation research findings about what it means to wish for systems overhaul. The consequences of that desire are what I consider now in this article. It gets a bit personal; I am embedded within my own specific context and my observations come out of that situation.