Nigel Caplan

As so many of us often are

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theatlantic.comHi, I’m Your New Press Secretary, and It’s My First Time Reading Words Out LoudA very uncomfortable 14 minutes

Introducing your new WH Press Secretary, Peter Quince. (IYKYK) www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

The NYT finally hits back at Trump by ... misgendering him? www.nytimes.com/2026/10/14/u...

Interviewer: can you explain this gap in your resume? Linguist: descriptively, it's perfectly acceptable

bu.eduNew Learning Outcomes Announced | English

17 Sept

Exactly. But we need a less rejective University to follow suit or we run a risk of exaccerbating unequal access to worthwhile learning and degrees. Which the strategic planning committee I have somehow been assigned to is going to get sick of hearing

Joseph Rezek@rezekjoe.bsky.social

BREAKING: Boston University's English department (my dept) recently voted to approve new learning outcomes for the English major, including an anti-AI provision that requires students to “craft and revise writing that is sustained, original, and generated without the assistance of AI."

15 Sept

Funny. My first reaction is that it's odd to ban such a specific smoking habit, but who am I to judge?

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3 Sept

I'm working more with undergrads now, and one theme screams out from their reflections: they crave human interaction. They enjoy working with pen and paper. And most of their other classes seem to be chalk and talk/screen and screed. It's not that hard, folks.

2 Sept

Hey Delaware, are we going to let NY have all the fun?

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15 July

All while the *students* are sleeping because by making education solipsistic instead of social, there's really no need to bother, is there?

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nytimes.comLindsey Graham, Republican Senator and Trump Ally, Dies From ‘Sudden Illness’He died from “a brief and sudden illness,” his office said. Over more than two decades in the Senate, he consistently pushed for the use of U.S. military power overseas.

12 July

NYT running strong for Correction of the Year: "An earlier version of this obituary misstated the location of Central, S.C., the town where Senator Lindsey Graham was born. It is in the western part of the state, not the eastern part. " www.nytimes.com/2026/07/12/u...

25 June

Nah, that won't happen because the aliens would be caught in the offside trap. Let me explain...

Dexerto@dexerto.bsky.social

A Brazilian psychic teared up while claiming that aliens will invade the Brazil vs Scotland match at the World Cup She says UFOs will abduct players and hundreds of fans from the stadium

22 June

A colleague tried to get two different "AI" products to simplify a task for me today, and they screwed it up in two different ways. Beautiful.

nytimes.comElon Musk’s Feud With Delaware May Transform Corporate America

17 June

Fascinating piece. But mostly props for not burying the Leder with this phrase that describes more than just a building in Wilmington: "so aggressively bland that it almost begs not to be noticed" www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/m...

17 June

*lede. Bloody autocorrect. Burying the Leder is my alt-rock band

12 June

This is the most wonderfully German thing I've seen all year. Herzlich Glückwunsch, Brötchen!

Knoebel@knoebel.bsky.social

The Berlin Zoo named their baby Hippo Brötchen. :) (Bread roll 🥖)

11 June

If I hear one more piece on NPR on whether it's called soccer or football... literally no one cares, and no one gets confused except NPR editors, it seems

9 June

Local friends should absolutely read the News Journal's article about the new statue that "towers over" the UD campus as symbol of, something, and then go find the diminutive bronze chicken that is surrounded by taller buildings and trees. It's ... yeah, whatever.

nytimes.comOpinion | The High Cost of Silent Classrooms

8 June

Exactly - a silent classroom is one where learning is superficial. Toss out the chromebooks and invest in whiteboards, markers, and teachers! www.nytimes.com/2026/06/08/o...

nytimes.comA University System Went All In on A.I. Now It’s Tearing Itself Apart.

1 June

Nice timing for UD's faculty senate special meeting today that's considering a resolution that would hopefully prevent this kind of self-sabotaging disaster scenario. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/m...

nytimes.comOpinion | Writing Is Fundamental to How We Think

27 May

Exactly. What. We. Predicated. But this becomes labeled as "one side" in a "polarized " "debate" rather than the evidence based status quo. It's exhausting to be a good educator www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/o...

nytimes.comOpinion | It’s Becoming Impossible to Know How Your Kid Is Doing in School

Another day, completely ignorant op ed about educational policy written by non educators. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/o...

And, yes, as a parent and educator, I care more about human teachers' evaluations of kids' performance than a "standardized " test.

There's no magic to standardization. It is most a statistical mirage

nytimes.comOpinion | It’s Becoming Impossible to Know How Your Kid Is Doing in School

Another day, completely ignorant op ed about educational policy written by non educators. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/o...

Can someone PLEASE explain to the NYT that NAEP is not a "national trst" and that it gives no information about an individual child's performance because each child does not take the entire test

25 May

If you had "Vatican has clearer AI policy than university IT department ", you won the jackpot

@heatherleslie.bsky.social

22 May

At a faculty meeting today, colleagues bemoaned the "polarization" of opinions on "AI". It's not polarization. It's realization.

Nigel Caplan reposted

Dr. Heather Leslie

21 May

Elitism is always about limiting opportunities for the many

Dr Susan D Blum@susandblum.bsky.social

My latest Substack post, in response to the attempt by Harvard to limit the number of A grades #HigherEd #Assessment #Grades open.substack.com/pub/susandbl...

open.substack.comOh Harvard. Limiting A’s Is Not ItGrade Inflation, Deflation, and Obsession

21 May

Personally, the number of As in my class is always proportional to the number of times lessons are disrupted by the sound of loud motorcycles speeding down Main Street. Quiet semester? Sucks for you. Seems about as reasonable as 20%* (*plus 4 because reasons)

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nytimes.comOpinion | 60 Percent of Grades at Harvard Were A’s. Enough Is Enough.

21 May

Please don't let economists make and explain educational policy. This is a beauty: "We know our answer isn't very good, but at least it's easy to implement and short enough for a headline in the NYT." Sounds like someone wants an easy A. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/o...

20 May

As a professor at what literally nobody calls the Harvard of the upper bit of the Delmarva peninsula, I will give as many damn As as my students merit based on evidence of their learning. That's the job isn't it, not to create artificial rankings?

Josh Eyler@josheyler.bsky.social

Right! Harvard and Yale (which is enacting a different--and worse--policy: to force a median of a B grade in every course) admit only students who have had stellar grades their whole lives and then expect (via forced policy) that some kind of bell curve will emerge? It makes zero sense.

edweek.orgHow AI Complicates Student Well-Being. What Schools Should KnowAI-powered products are becoming increasingly powerful. Existing education tools that incorporate AI are being developed with the intention of helping kids build better social skills and support their mental health. But mental health experts have raised alarms over adolescents’ abilities to tell…

20 May

How lead pipes challenge child development. What schools should know

Education Week@edweek.org

How AI Complicates Student Well-Being. What Schools Should Know

nytimes.comBook on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I.

19 May

The justification? I plagiarized as a warning to others. Lies and laziness. The book should be pulped www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/b...

19 May

My spam folder is unusually on point today.

14 May

Repeat after me: I will not report snapshots of different cohorts as longitudinal trends in student performance on a meaningless test that kids have no incentive to take seriously among all the other inconsequential tests they take. Sigh.

nature.comMeet the academics refusing to use generative AIResearchers say they have their reasons for avoiding AI tools — and they’re sick of arguing about it.

What is that image? Ironically we aren't the ones destroying education, knowledge dissemination, and human endeavor with a great big hammer Meet the academics refusing to use generative AI www.nature.com/articles/d41...

theguardian.comLorry gets stuck in hole it was sent to fix in SomersetLorry left at near 45-degree angle after ground gave way on road near Walton

New meme for higher ed just dropped. Is the lorry Canvas, senior administration, an ad hoc committee, or ...? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

insidehighered.comInstructure Pays Ransom to Canvas HackersAlthough the monetary value of the deal is unknown, Instructure says the cybercriminals have returned the hacked personal data and offered assurance “that no Instructure customers will be extorted as ...

But don't worry: they got an 'assurance “that no Instructure customers will be extorted as a result of this incident, publicly or otherwise.”' If you didn't laugh out loud at that, then I have an AI generated bridge to sell you

Marc Watkins@marcwatkins.bsky.social

So Instructure paid the ransom to unlock Canvas. The precedent this sets . . . www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

nytimes.comMaker of Canvas Learning Platform Strikes Deal for Hackers to Return Data

In other news, Instructure is pushing unis to purchase its anti educational "AI" slop add ons, presumably so it can (a) harvest and sell data, (b) pay ransom for the next inevitable hack, or (c) both. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/u...

9 May

Tell me you've never read the book without ...

7 May

I asked academic technology services about the Canvas hack this morning, our campus site went down this afternoon, and my evening class think I manifested it

7 May

Tired: Last week of the semester. Wired: Last week of the semester, but do it with no access to your LMS because it just got hacked!

404media.coUniversity Professors Disturbed to Find Their Lectures Chopped Up and Turned Into AI SlopASU Atomic, a new tool in beta at Arizona State University, takes faculty lectures and chops them into extremely short clips, that AI then attempts to turn into learning materials.

29 Apr

Meanwhile Instructure is trying to push a suite of "AI" features/products into Canvas - mostly paid, of course - and I'm sure it's entirely because they support teaching and learning and not at all in order to scrape, steal, and monetize faculty and student content. www.404media.co/asu-atomic-a...

However can we know if a majority of faculty support the (unannounced) deployment of an "AI" product? Um, I dunno, ask them? It's not as if the university has never heard of a survey.

Right

Dan McQuillan@danmcquillan.bsky.social

We don’t need to keep a human-in-the-loop, we need to get AI out of the loop altogether! The whole point of AI is to remove the frictions of individual conscience and collective refusal.

newyorker.comWhat Will It Take to Get A.I. Out of Schools?“I find myself speaking with my kids about A.I. in the same terms that we might discuss a creepy neighbor who lives down the block,” Jessica Winter writes. Read her report on the push for A.I. in educ...

This is exactly the illogic from a hearing on my university's "AI" policy. The policy itself has many strengths. But it doesn't matter b/c someone in IT flicked a switch to give the whole campus access to Gemini and Notebook without consent or consultation. www.newyorker.com/culture/prog...

The canards are quacking. "How many people have to consent to an AI *tool [*product] before we turn it on?" But any discussion of anti-AI products... oh no, those have to be piloted. And they don't ask the faculty about "AI" products so they can claim ignorance about sentiment outside the bubble

nytimes.comProposed Lifetime Smoking Ban to Become Law in Britain

22 Apr

For all those who lack the imagination to believe that harmful corporate power is not inevitable: I grew up in England in the 80s and 90s when it was impossible to go anywhere (restaurants, pubs, college campuses, airplanes) without 2nd-hand smoking a pack or two. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/w...

nytimes.comOpinion | You Can’t Game Your Way to a Real Education

19 Apr

This is almost right IMO. Yes, we need to put education on a restrictive tech diet of intentionally selected ethical platforms and replace screens with human interaction. But we can't do so without recognizing the pernicious forces driving ed's tech addiction. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/19/o...

19 Apr

The humanities are leading the way - rejecting "bite-sized" so-called English curricula (if you see "pre-AP English" on your 9th grader's schedule - RUN and SHOUT) and expanding the canon. But the forces are arrayed against us - publishers, ed tech corps, and the Taylorized massification of ed.