Shakespearean writing on postsecondary education, academic freedom, and anything else I find important. Feel free to claim opinions expressed here as your own.
University presidents who fail to defend academic freedom and fail to prevent gross infringements of institutional autonomy by govt should not ask to be re-appointed.
#UAlberta needs brave leadership for the public good if it is to survive as R1 institution.
#cdnpse#abpse
As other faculty members are pointing out, these profiles are also making up fields of expertise. A sociologist is declared to be a specialist in Air Traffic Management, a classicist is supposedly a researcher in organic chemistry.
How did this happen?
@dryiu_verna#UAlberta
The #ualberta admin appears to have had AI generate profiles for faculty members (why?! we all already have profiles on our Department pages). No attempt was made to quality check any of it. Amongst other things these profiles are misgendering faculty.
F for failure
@TheAASUA
It is not “white supremacist” to argue for the hiring of faculty member who teaches Medieval literature. English at #ualberta hasn’t had a scholar who specializes in it for a decade. Medieval lit. covers *centuries.* @UofA_EFS needs someone who specializes in it.
@UAlbertaArts
Alberta has been built by people who can smell bullshit.
https://t.co/HeUFBuzStm
“From farmers and ranchers to energy workers, teachers and nurses, Albertans know the difference between facts and a sales pitch.”
Brilliant work exposing the UCP’s referendum website for what it is — a taxpayer-funded sales pitch dressed up as information. Alberta has been built by people who can smell bullshit. From farmers and ranchers to energy workers, teachers and nurses, we know the difference between real facts and government spin. The facts still matter, and yes, we can smell the BS a mile away. Looking at you, UCP.
The current #UAlberta treats so much as disposable (people, faculty positions, staff expertise, buildings). Please help to get them to reverse this deplorable decision.
https://t.co/FJS7XSmUSb
When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.
The @ualberta senior administration could not have picked a better symbol for showing how much they disrespect students, academic staff, and the Arts all in one go:
They plan to destroy an organ dedicated as a war memorial to students and staff.
https://t.co/FSMtw30QNE
#Peace is not something we must invent: it is something we must embrace by accepting our neighbor as a brother or sister. We do not choose our brothers and sisters: we must simply accept one another! We are one family, inhabiting the same home: this wonderful planet that ancient cultures have cared for over millennia. #ApostolicJourney #Cameroon
Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth. #ApostolicJourney#Cameroon https://t.co/bKteFZ3iWE
Reading the Statement of Claim in this historic Charter challenge against the University of Alberta for suppressing rights of free expression, free association, and free assembly.
Time for accountability.
#UAlberta#cdnpse@CAUT_ACPPU
https://t.co/tFN4NSO1XX
The President of the United States is openly threatening to commit genocide against 90 million people.
Prime Minister Carney: if there was ever a moment to denounce this illegal war, withdraw your support, and call for accountability for war crimes—it’s now.
Why is there no one in the U.S. government stepping up to stop this insanity?
The president of the US is openly threatening genocide against a country of 90 million people, saying “a whole civilization will die tonight.”
No mass resignations and the opposition party is absent. What sick death cult.
Unbelievably and shockingly dangerous.
"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."
Whether this is raving lunacy, deliberate hyperbole, depraved strategy or unabashed criminality, this is beyond war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is, essentially, a threat to commit genocide.
@MarkJCarney & @AnitaAnandMP, Canada must react. And must push every world leader to do so as well. We do not know whether these will remain chilling words or are a terrifying harbinger of what may be or even is to come. Neither can be allowed to stand.
This is not about taking the world as it is. This is about standing up for the most basic principles of humanity.
https://t.co/llO3h9cUKJ
We have to call what the government is doing for what it is. The UCP legislation is *totalitarian.* In a democracy governments should not be able to control what public school teachers say or how public libraries conduct their business.
https://t.co/jhWEM5tE0y
@CFE_TMU#ableg
Make no mistake: destroying world-class universities, like the US just did with Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, isn't just an attack on Iran but it's literally an attack on all of us, on all of humanity.
It's not Iran that "won" when Maryam Mirzakhani made her discoveries that won her a Fields Medal: it's all of mathematics, and everything mathematics is used for. Human progress won, technology won, we all won.
It's the same type of stuff the Mongols did during the sack of Baghdad and their destruction of the House of Wisdom: we ALL lost something irreplaceable back then, entire fields of human knowledge set back.
That's what bombing a university does. It doesn't just destroy buildings. It destroys us, all of us.
In the light of #Easter, let us allow ourselves to be amazed by Christ! Let us allow our hearts to be transformed by his immense love for us! Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them!
Pope Leo XIV at the Stations of the Cross: "Every person in authority will have to answer to God for the way they exercise their power." Jesus says. "Whatever you do to another human being, especially to the small and vulnerable, you do unto me. And it is to me that you will one day give an account."
Image: @vaticannews_it