Lots of people DM'ing me asking why I think Andy did all this. I hate to psychologize AS, but I can point to some theories about society, particularly how colonialism in its US incarnation has led to so many people wanting to use individual justifications for their identity. Lisa Aldred is very important here when she discusses how imperialist nostalgia combined with consumerism means that settlers unable to reconcile their colonial identity will consume Indigenous identity to associate as Native, leading to an I am like, or I am liked identity.

In 1999 I was a graduate student at UCSC and I was learning from and looking up to some of the smartest people I've ever known, many Indigenous. I was doing Indigenous studies as a settler. I was shepherded by the best. Then Andy Smith started at program. She heard of a Native Studies grad reading group that I was in, including other Native and settler students. Andy said a Native person would have to run it. She took the job and disbanded us. She said non-Natives shouldn't be in Native studies. You can agree or disagree.

Teaching college writing this Fall? Haven't figured WTF to do about ChatGPT and it's variants? This thread is for you. I took a deep dive and am distilling my take-aways for this Fall. The good news is you probably have less to worry about than you think. 1/7 #highered #chatgpt I put my previous assignment prompts into ChatGPT and ChatGPT4. I was shocked at how good much of the responses were. But it was fairly easy to see the responses were not articulating more than one author well. 2/7 #writing

What is happening now in Congress is unbelievable. A holographic principle of multi-dimensionality is being proposed to explain how UAP are here. AOC just told that UAP are monitoring our military training, and disrupting. I've taught UFO studies for 20 years. This is huge. 1/10 To be clear, I've been told specifically not to mention in SETI circles that contact of any sort has taken place (despite what I know from my father's top secret work). And now, our U.S. government is discussing, just now, "non-human activity is known." That's contact! 2/10

In 2019, I convinced my department that student evaluations of teaching (SET) were not only unreliable gauges of efficacy, but that they would also put us in legal liability if used to decide merit/promotion. If your promotion depends on SET, please take note. A thread. 1/8 In June of 2018, a Canadian course reviewed expert testimony, peer-reviewed scholarship on SET, and did its own study at Ryerson University and determined that race, gender, accent, age, and attractiveness were assessed more than pedagogy. 2/8
universityaffairs.ca/news/news-arti…

I like to make the hidden aspects of academia more clear in hopes it helps someone. Want to get an essay "out"? Let's talk about peer review publishing and timing. A grad student said last week that he'd try to get a peer review essay out by this Fall's job market. Thread. 1/9 As the Editor in Chief of a peer-review journal, which may not be standard for all, I want to help authors think of timing. If our journal gets a newly submitted essay, it has to be read to determine if it even gets peer-reviewed. That could take a couple weeks. 2/9

If you enjoy critiques of pure reason, then I highly suggest the "Swarm" episode of Netflix's season three of Love + Death + Robots when to counter human hubris we learn that "intelligence is not a winning survival trait." 1/5 I'll use Swarm in my #UCLA class on Aliens this Fall. I ask students to "think with aliens" rather than get stuck on their existence, and to "stay with the trouble" to see that humans are apex predators (so far) who are cannibalizing their own longevity (so not THAT smart). 2/5

A stellar essay in our special issue of AICRJ, coedited with @KimTallBear, is by Suzanne Kite (Oglala Lakota): "What's on the Earth Is in the Stars; And What's in the Stars Is on the Earth: Lakota Relationships with the Stars and American Relationships with the Apocalypse." 1/4 @KimTallBear and I are excited our co-edited Special Issue of American Indian Culture and Research Journal is coming out in weeks! We've been weekly teasing (every Tuesday) an essay along with an original work of art created for us by @joannebarker62 (2/4) society6.com/joannebarker

I hesitated responding to this op ed because I hesitated reading it. I knew well the pillars of colonialism that bolster such views and have seen them before in NAGPRA disputes. But I can't help myself: The #TakeDown 1/10
mercurynews.com/2021/08/31/831… To assert that scientific research is anathema to best practices demonstrates that this "scientist" does not understand methodology: your theories support practices and vice versa. In this case, her methodology shows that for her, Natives are only objects of study. 2/10

My reiki master, Hiroshi Doi Sensei, noted that some patients have weakened immune systems from their ancestors' traumas. But c'mon! Is ancestral trauma "real"? Seems colonialism not only creates structural inequality but health inequalities as well. Here's the evidence. #thread Studies are showing that the cortisol production during stressful times has an effect on not just the body at the moment but leads to statistically higher rates of depression, heart disease, anxiety, and lung disease. California's Surgeon General: kqed.org/forum/20101018…