Teacher of college writing. WPA. disc golfer. bass fisherman. T1D. disabled academic. I tweet about ableism and academic neoliberalism bc I am fun at parties.
Joined July 2014
- Tweets 69,351
- Following 2,265
- Followers 3,765
- Likes 42,951
1,910 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
16 Aug 2022
Most colleges and universities are not proactively considering the needs of disabled and chronically ill faculty, staff, and students at this point in the pandemic and never ever will because they legally don’t have to until the people they should be considering out themselves.
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Well fuck, Saussure lied to me!
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At no fault of this impressive design, I would trip.
I built this little lightweight plate carrying device, so when the kids ask "can we eat in the yard?" we can always say yes. The whole meal can be carried in one hand in one go.
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The hegemonic mandate to make everything about the hegemonic.
From @TheAthletic: On Pride Night, which was supposed to be dedicated to support and belonging, several San Francisco Giants players chose a different focus, writing Bible verses on their caps. nyti.ms/4ot9H9T
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Liberals rallying around a “literacy crisis” during a deeply authoritarian turn in this country is the most predictable thing ever and, furthermore, is not actually a response to that authoritarian turn but, instead, them explicitly contributing to that authoritarianism.
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The center left never dislikes an opportunity to do their own bad stuff as a light version of the really bad stuff.
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RT @Paula_JKnight: It's my mum's funeral tomorrow and the second parent's funeral I won't be able to attend in person due to severe ME and…
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Matt Dowell retweeted
Jun 13
Try being Type 1 diabetic in the US, where you KNOW you will need medical care through this fucked up system for the rest of your life.
It’s not an “if” or “when” - it’s a daily fucking battle to stay alive and not get bankrupted for profit.
Jun 12
Health Insurance (self employed) is such a joke.
We pay around $3500 a month for 4 people
Son went to the ER after a bike crash, no major tests or scans, basic blood work and exam. There an hour.
They billed $2800 ON TOP on a $500 co-pay and our insurance covered $568
It's so easy to see how medical bills bankrupt people. I am $9,000 OUT OF POCKET PLUS $3500 a month SO FAR in 2026 - maddening
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Matt Dowell retweeted
GOOD.
Your job is literally to teach. To teach the students who arrive at your classroom.
Whoever they are.
The end.
Jun 13
Another Berkeley professor told the author:
“In my second-year engineering class, a student asked me to explain why 1/2 1/3 = 5/6…. The lecture had to stop while I explained fractions.”
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Matt Dowell retweeted
Jun 13
Labs flagged as “abnormal” bc my blood sugar was 111 😂🤣
Able-bodied folks wouldn’t last a damn day as a diabetic!
Jun 12
Time for my annual blood-letting 🤣😂. Wish me luck.
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Matt Dowell retweeted
The university system, for all its institutional conservatism, neoliberalism, and elite capture, has some similarities. Owing to the well-attested liberal bias in reality itself, there is never going to be some kind of 50/50 liberal/conservative split in the professiorate
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Matt Dowell retweeted
This is ridiculous because normatively, public health normatively addresses the interests of disadvantaged people. It’s not a field that is somehow naturally amenable to “viewpoint diversity” that privileges conservative views (though the field of medicine is another story)
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Matt Dowell retweeted
It’s particularly noteworthy that this is taking place in public health, where some powerful figures are advancing a revisionist version of the COVID experience — asserting “public health went too far” and positioning themselves as expiating the field’s (left-coded) sins
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Matt Dowell retweeted
Though they disdain the excesses of MAGA, they sense the opportunities it presents them with — most notably, the chance to appear to be a reasonable, more moderate, and distinguished standard-bearer for anti-intellectualism and anti-universityism, mainstreaming these views
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Matt Dowell retweeted
It’s a timely moment for that class of academics who are, while positioning themselves as Democratic Party members, complete quislings — eager not only to comply in advance, but to throw further-left colleagues, projects, fields under the bus for a bit of power and recognition
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Matt Dowell retweeted
Man, I wish Grant Wahl could have seen this game.
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Actually at NYU non-tenure track faculty teach over half the courses; full-time non-tenure track faculty (us) teach about a quarter. Which is why it's so important that non-tenure track faculty (like us and our adjunct siblings) have enforceable academic freedom protections.
At the largest private university in the country, NYU, non-tenure-track faculty teach 25% of all courses.
Earlier this year, nearly 1,000 of them went on strike & won the highest minimum salaries for unionized full-time non-tenure-track faculty in the US
inthesetimes.com/article/new…
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Matt Dowell retweeted
The discourse of “wokeness went too far in academia” is a bad-faith grievance; it cannot be appeased. I hope that the response will be take academic leftism to such bold and innovative new places that the academic leftism of the past seems as tame as it often actually was
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Jun 12
Faculty are prepared to argue for the value of completing homework, but arguing for the value of intellectual work and then making that argument is a bridge too far, it appears.
(And yet, those prepared to argue for the value of homework oppose education as credentialing, lol.)
The purpose of homework is defeated if students complete it with AI. So what’s an instructor to do? We want to hear from you. chroni.cl/49QKIHO
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Matt Dowell retweeted
If your chancellors are organizing to discredit whole disciplines on your campus, your faculty should get organized too! Joint statement from WashU and Vanderbilt AAUP chapters on the report just dropped:
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