Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.

I listened to @jduffyrice.bsky.social’s new podcast The Backfire Effect, and it’s an extraordinary feat of journalism and humanity.

Yay my book Disabled Storytellers in the #GlobalMiddleAges (Cambridge UP) is now available for purchase! Pre-order a hardcopy or get digital access (US $40), plus 20% discount code HSY2026 (apply code upon checkout): doi.org/10.1017/9781... #DisabilitySky #DisHist #CripTheory #DisabilityJustice

Interesting solution for this encroaching problem.

Do this and more. More! prospect.org/2026/10/13/t...

“Living through a global resurgence of fascism, the difficulty has proved to be not arguing against it, but convincing non-fascists that fascism’s adherents really mean it. That they believe what they are telling us they believe—and they will act accordingly.” www.liberalcurrents.com/fascists-rea...

Hey California! Be careful this election because the big money creeps are trying to trick you (again).

Today's tech & disability class was about why disability simulation doesn't work, which became a discussion about how people's projections of & fears about becoming disabled rule their motivation more than even the actual material benefits they thenselves would gain by making a more accessible world

The right wing crash out over asian students celebrating at a UT football game reveals that all along the true goal of reactionary colorblindness was never “meritocracy” but resegregation. (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

Hey, looks like my terminated NEH grant got reinstated. Take that, DOGE!

a little louder for the cheap seats in the back

Edit: blind people notice the pattern just fine, lol. Must be some other explanation.

There was a bloom of stories maybe ten years ago about older professors creating problems for the job market by not retiring, and just checking in now to point out that they’ve since retired and almost none of their jobs continue to exist.

I mean the American right is fully committed to normalizing disability slurs and are finding a fertile audience across the political divide. Because ableism is really popular and easy for people to perform, even though they think they are good people.

This is fantastic

it's important to arrive at sturdy ethical principles that you can't be annoyed out of. people are annoying as shit

Great system, no notes www.propublica.org/article/scho...

It’s so depressing to see how many of my peers have minimal or no employment this academic year, when meanwhile every Classics department I know has more work than can reasonably (or safely) be accomplished by the number of staff they have left.

Yup.

Yup. The left assumes the bipartisan institutions that drifted left over the 1900s (higher education) will do the job for them and they will not. MAGA will capture or destroy those institutions without an active effort by the left/center-left to fund and defend them.

I'm making an online course and I think it's pretty good. Today is the last day to get it for $49, so you should probably do that.

The first session of my new course, The Bible Against Kings, is now up! Today is the last day of pre-sale pricing, so go check it out now if you’re interested in critiques of monarchy and tyranny from the ancient Levant. www.parchmentandclay.com/the-bible-ag... (Edited 9:42 AM via @skeetsapp.com)

pleasant surprise. i would like to read whatever deranged dissent alito and thomas have written. i’m sure it will be some version of “MAIL FRAUD IS REAL AND I SAW IT IN THE CLOSET MAKING A BABY AND THE BABY LOOKED AT ME”

trying to spread the word that fundamentalist stone on the Bible, and that it can be way more fun if you read it without any of these pesky ideas that it has to be correct or all agree with itself. Also, that it contains some absolute Proto-anarchist bangers. 

Realizing the extent to which this is true wildly changed my opinions about how to deal with Trumpism, since they're never going to be satisfied unless they're actively dominating everyone else. You can't give them some concessions and go back to the status quo: they're reactionary revolutionaries.

For the upcoming release of The Bible Against Kings, I'm making Ancient Sayings about the unflattering things that Sumerians had to say about royalty! Ancient Sayings #86: Dangers of the Palace... but for whom? https://youtu.be/uItx1cUtr-U

And you can find presale information about The Bible Against Kings here: https://www.parchmentandclay.com/the-bible-against-kings

This is also wrong. Research is part of the core mission of the university - certainly of all the humanities disciplines in the university - for centuries. What happened was that research came to be oriented toward subsidizing private corporate profit press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Eric is a phenomenal scholar and folks should check this out! Make sure to listen to his ep of Bible Lore Pod as well if you'd like to understand how good he as at this!

Please share and get the word out about our new course! On pre-sale until September 17. 

Join my email list (no spam, I promise) to stay up to date on upcoming happenings, and get a free ten-minute video about what the Hebrew Bible is!

We’re launching our first course soon, and right now it’s available for a sweet presale discount. Sign up to learn about cool anti-monarchic and anti-authoritarian texts from the ancient Levant! https://www.parchmentandclay.com/the-bible-against-kings

I made a neat little video about why I use the term Hebrew Bible instead of Old Testament or Tanakh, but I did that sneaky thing where you have to sign up for my email list to get it. You should sign up for my list anyway, so it’s kind of a win-win. https://www.parchmentandclay.com/

I bet if you were a lamassu in ancient Assyria one of the worst things people could call you was a lame-ass-u.

On paper, I know I’m exactly the perfect demographic to love Terry Pratchett, but I’ve never been able to make it all the way through one of his books until I read Small Gods just now. It was pretty good. 

What We Know About Amargi, An Ancient Sumerian Solution to Debt. My response to Paul Vigna’s @nytimes guest essay: www.nytimes.com/2026/08/22/o...

Mutatis mutandis, if we are going to look to Sumerian amargi as a way to address American debt by benefitting its state workers, we should see what is happening to the debt of America's public servants: www.politico.com/news/2026/08...

When we talk about debt remission, we are usually talking about Old Babylonian mīšarums, a form of redress used by kings such as Hammurabi or Rim-Sin I. Many kings announced them and they were recognized in legal documents. We have one extant copy from the time of Ammi-ṣaduqa (1646-1626 BCE).

they say learning Latin will make you a better speller, meanwhile i am out here writing "litteracy" and "exspenses"

This is why I tell students that AI is the forklift in the gym. There’s a time in a place for a forklift, but it’s not part of your fitness plan. The student who uses a forklift to lift all their weights in a weightlifting class isn’t winning.

Correct. They are being defrauded.