Hoarder of unread books. WUSTL AB, UMich MA (ABD). Comparative global anglophone lit, 1840–2026. Ethics, power, partswork, & ToM. AuDHD longhauler. He/him enby.
Various (Nova Scotia now?)
Joined January 2012
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David Davison retweeted
So would having an interest in Benjamin be enough to get you declared 4-F in the future draft?
.@SECWAR “The philosophical doctrines of the Frankfurt School – critical theory and the corrosive apparatus of ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ – are fundamentally INCOMPATIBLE with military service and antithetical to the Constitution of the United States.”
David Davison retweeted
FWIW, there's a huge information asymmetry between a guild and apprentices. There's a huge bait and switch between recruitment week and year 6. Depending on your exact department and circumstances, you might be a nearly unpaid intern at a terrible corporation full of hacks.
David Davison retweeted
Bunch of survivors bias complaining that 22 year old children don't have an accurate estimate of conditions with only access to the people who were allowed to and chose to stay.
David Davison retweeted
You're being asked to know whether a guild, department, field, subfield, and specific set of possible advisors are good at their job before you've learned any of the math needed to know. And then assuming those people teach you that math, it still takes years to tell at all.
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David Davison retweeted
At UIC, just organising *adjuncts,* I had a male "Marxist" and "feminist" come up to me and hiss, literally hiss, "If you keep doing this, I'm going to see that you lose your job, understand?"* The fear and anger will emerge from all quarters.
*Not exact quote, but very close.
David Davison retweeted
In my field, grad students are the instructor of record. They teach the class. There is no “assisting.” They may even design the class. It’s a very real job—and fairly scary when first starting
And every university loves the economics of this model.
David Davison retweeted
This also goes beyond a living wage. We are striking for real recourse in cases of sexual assault and harassment and protections for international students.
David Davison retweeted
Estimates of actual cost per grad student per year are about $15k-25k. That's admin, Prof time teaching coursework, and advising. They get to 500k with 50k salary, 6k health insurance, and Disney Bucks tuition waiver amounts.
David Davison retweeted
Since none of those numbers make sense, you have to truly believe the amenities like the gym and the library subscriptions price that Disney Bucks tuition amount beyond the actual labor spent on you. And you have to ignore the value the grad student provides.
David Davison retweeted
like yeah there were definitely areas where he couldve done better but i don't think it's a coincidence that the guy who made a movie where superman is an unapologetic humanitarian and produced a movie where supergirl liberates planet epstein got fired when a maga donor took over
David Davison retweeted
In every single paper with a PI as last-name author; the postdocs and grad students did 100% of the manual labor in completing the research. It’s that simple. You can prove by contradiction: suppose you have no grad students or postdocs, will 80% of stem labs publish? No.
Absolutely agree. And it's not just that they were maximally representing uncertainty either: or LA would have been with MS. Given the significance of raters to coverage and fundraising, having a skew can get to be problematic. Maybe I'm being over-prickly here.
I'll defend Sabato's Crystal Ball, but I do think there's a lot to criticize Cook for.
In the end, they called fully 6 seats pure tossups, which isn't helpful. They're not a quantitative model, so their entire value-add is reading the tea leaves. What leaves were read here?
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David Davison retweeted
More shockingly is that Cook has done no introspection on why they whiffed so many races. They have (as they frequently tout) access to internal polling and yet they had races that weren't close rated as tossup. Many races rated as Solid R ended up being closer.
At some point, we have to talk about @CookPolitical and other “prognosticators” who had me and other southern candidates labeled as solid R for much of the campaign cycle. They made it much more difficult to fundraise and are part of the reason the South has been neglected for so long.
They’re only a reflection of the past and mysteriously avoid any accountability when they’re wrong. One of their “analysts” was extremely condescending to me (not Jessica) when I tried to make my pitch for why they were wrong about my rating like he knew something about MS politics when he’s never been to the Sip. This attitude hurt Jaime Davis & others so much.
David Davison retweeted
It’s true that much of academia can be explained by the cycle of small traumas inflicted through kinds of hazing we call the cost of pursuing our dreams. There’s hardly more joy—& anything more stupidly human—than in the sublimation of trauma into administration of the same. 🧵
David Davison retweeted
“hi i’m a tenured professor and i think PhD students should be paid less” sure is one way to announce to the world you would make a terrible advisor
David Davison retweeted
Kind of insane that we're at a point in time where Democratic Senators are suggesting a guy as a moderate compromise Secretary of Defense as he's actively claiming an election was stolen from him
