Look, I genuinely appreciate my university employer sending this out in their daily email, but it would be cool if they also acknowledged how much data they and their various platform partners are collecting on faculty and students. Because it’s a lot.

If these numbers are right, the first (“small”) installment alone could potentially be higher than the total of all my paychecks between being hired at UK and my eventual retirement—and this is just a severance pay package.

My university just parted ways with our football coach for undesirable results despite the investment of millions of dollars, so I wonder if they’ll be willing to do the same for all the AI initiatives they’ve recently announced.

This just makes me want to dig my heels in further.

Appreciate the work the Kernel is doing here.

I am so very tired. So very, very tired.

Honestly trying to figure out whether the reason I see Ellul everywhere is because I’m excited about a new scholar I’ve discovered or because his ideas are so well suited for the current moment. “We can be a leader or we can be left behind” captures the opt-in determinism of Ellul’s technique so dang well.

Of course, how the heck am I going to keep expressing concern about AI (through an Ellulian lens or otherwise) if the university has already decided that we’re all getting on board?

Good reporting from the Kernel on a really disappointing set of changes at the university.

5,000 cameras?! What the heck?

The effect on university budgets is among the least objectionable parts of the Big Beautiful Bill, and it’s still devastating.

I don’t have the whole picture here, and I don’t like passing judgment without having the whole picture, but I don’t know if I like this.

So far, we’ve been told that the General Assembly’s war on DEI doesn’t affect our classroom teaching. Is this legislative bluster, or do we have worries on the horizon?

NIH funding is an important part of my employer’s budget, so I think this kind of advocacy is important. However, it rubs me the wrong way that we’re speaking up publicly about potential funding cuts and being largely silent and “well, gotta follow the law” when our marginalized students are being targeted.

This project is one of my favorite things to come out of the program I teach in, and I’m glad Meghan’s work is getting recognition!

Not only did my e-bike’s battery charger short out but the slow leak in the rear tire also turned into a straight up flat soon thereafter. Thanks to the student-run bike workshop on campus, I still got home in time to pick up kiddo from school, but I remain grumpy.

This is what my employer cut ties with.

50,000 is roughly as much as all students, faculty, and staff at the University of Kentucky. The whole university gone.

On one hand, if the university’s connections are tenuous, I can understand making the easy move to get the administration off our back—especially when I’m confident that UK is pushing back against NIH indirect costs and other issues. On the other, I certainly hope that our response to every attack isn’t going to be to roll over and wash our hands of things.

Been waiting for this email all day: the University of Kentucky estimates that the NIH limits on indirect funding, if maintained, would cost us $40 million over the next year.

I follow higher ed coverage from both The Guardian and my local paper, so when “UK” shows up in my RSS reader, I nearly always have to pause before I can parse whether it refers to the University of Kentucky or the United Kingdom.

I have tried to be open minded about this, and I am always hesitant to take a position on something that I haven’t done all the homework on. I also agree with the point the president’s made that staff, students, and non-tenure-track faculty don’t have enough of a voice, so I’m open to changing what inclusive governance looks like at UK.

This doesn’t seem to me to be it, though. Even without having done all the homework, the president’s arguments don’t land for me, and I don’t see how removing the faculty’s voice gives staff and students more of a voice. Even when the president outlines issues that I can get on board with, the solutions don’t seem to fix those issues. I’m worried about what “nimbleness” might be a euphemism for, and I really don’t want to find out.

I’m all for this, but in line with earlier posts from today, I wish it weren’t just about workplace readiness. Higher ed needs to be more than that.

Some important points in this op-ed from a UK colleague. I was just thinking earlier today how I have trouble getting concerned about the “summer slide” when I know that even K-12 education is increasingly seen as an economic—not democratic—priority.

My unit is currently hiring three new faculty members, which means that we’re right in the middle of nine(!) campus visits. We’re all getting well practiced at talking about the strengths of our unit and why people might want to work here. One thing that we’ve said over and over in meetings and interviews with candidates is that we work together well and get along with each other, too (we also acknowledge that this is not true 100% of the time, but that the exceptions prove the rule).

Need to read more on this before I fully understand what’s being proposed and what the consequences will be. I struggle, however, with the argument that reducing the power of faculty is somehow improving faculty governance.