Brandon Zicha

Academics are more useful to society than even most academics understand... ... But any pretense that academics should be telling you how to run your society, design or execute policy, or their new authoritative plan for a juster more humane future should evaporate with any attention paid to the orgs, policies, and communities they do govern. Universities? Schools? Where are academics in charge and they are just killing it, because it isn't here?

@pitsch Totally. The AI panic is just starting attention to a problem that began growing fast far earlier

@ProfBZZZ and: this is no side effect by AI, since it started much earlier, the pandemic had negative side effects, and surely the reward loops of short attention span media formats - and changed school curricula with "light versions" for political reasons.

A student today at my elite university admitted to me today that she took a class so she could work on reading for more than 20 minutes at a time. She can't read. She mainly skims and summarizes, she says and still gets A's. This student is, by professional standards, illiterate. Gonna have high GPA when she graduates. This conversation was had after 6 of 22 students dropped my course because the maximum reading per week in one week was over 100 pages. What people aren't grasping is that this is literally *dangerous*. These people are going to be come doctors, engineers, etc. They are - by any metric - vastly less capable than prior generations. These effects are cumulative over a lifetime. This grade inflation is part of the problem, but not even close to the entirety. And the problem obviously starts in K-12. Students don't know history because, you can't actually become historically literate on the advice of 'never assign more than 30 pages a week'. You can't develop any of the skills that came with literacy. This is, quite honestly, a civilizational catastrophe.

@Fionnindy It's really weird... There also a while host of cognitive and reasoning skills that have atrophied simultaneously. Abit of research suggests 'yup,those are skills related to advanced literacy'

Die gleiche Erfahrung habe ich in Philosophie-Seminaren gemacht: Die Leute haben das Lesen verlernt.

It's actually possible... It just takes an ability to understand the internal logic of other worldviews and not resorting to strawman dismissals. It can be disagreed with easily workout resorting to suggesting the view is just a symptom of a personal pathology. Ironic rhetorical strategy.

It's almost impossible to view these people as anything other than insecure downwardly-mobile losers afraid of competition from more talented immigrants.

@feelsdesperate Perhaps not. But it's been the liberal rhetorical game since at least the 18th century and it's proven markedly effective. Pride and vanity are a hell of a drug.

I feel like this sort of framing always makes libertarians look bad because it’s so obvious they’re refusing to engage with what’s at issue. Labor arbitrage favors employers. An expanded labor pool in general leads to lower wages. You’re not ‘insecure’ or a ‘loser’ for not wanting an expanded labor pool that reduces your earnings. In fact, there’s really nothing more politically legitimate than advocating for your economic interests. Libertarians need to make the case that expanding the labor pool is good for society as a whole, at scale, and it’s something that they’re having an increasingly hard time doing for a number of reasons. However, trying to argue people are somehow deficient for pursuing legitimate interests is completely unpersuasive and isn’t going to win anyone over.

@xtinamagwaza1 It's not just America.

@ProfBZZZ So Americans will become even more stupid than before? We are doomed.

@txgermanbre I remember when that potentiality crossed mind when my wife was having our second. Horrifying moment. Prayers for all experiencing that! My goodness!

Man I just saw the saddest update from my friend. Her friend tragically died in childbirth. Her child didn’t survive. Now her husband is left widowed with their 2 year old alone.

The Liberal Arts are the core of the university. Both left and right have failed in this regard. "The humanities have been converted into vehicles for leftist activism...chilled by fear and subordinated to whatever ideological fad happens to dominate the moment. The right has sought a utilitarian answer that sees the liberally educated generalist as a luxury; a vision of American education begins and ends with workforce alignment." mindingthecampus.org/2026/03/19/lib…

This isn’t true of college. It’s true of what we’ve turned college into on the last 50 years or so. Academics disembodied bureaucratized, commodified, and unmoored their disciplines and intellectual virtues. We’ve largely abandoned the humanizing mission, and have descended into sophistry. Every critique that lands exists because we’ve allowed the academic enterprise to be redefined and repurposed into irrelevance. We let our treasure go. Only a return to a true liberal education tradition in universities will save them. A progressive restorationist movement is needed.

@3rdMoment Well... Define 'actionable' other than 'reestablish norms and remove the incentive structures eroding them'... If it requires a top down plan than I kind of think it isn't a solution despite it's actionability I guess.

@ProfBZZZ OK, so you don't know what do either.... ("address problems at the source" sounds fine but has no actionable content)

I don’t really understand the enthusiasm here. This is just leaning into the collapse of integrity in grading and teaching with no improvement in the integrity but instead a bureaucratic band-aid. Classic corporate bureaucratic uni move. Locks in deprofessionalization.. voted by faculty themselves because they too can’t discipline themselves or expend any effort or work on themselves to address the collapse of academic integrity in teaching. Grades are no longer assessments in this system. They are zero sum rewards handed out arbitrary cut offs. This is a vote for “no, we really can’t be trusted as stewards of much… we need a bureaucracy to tell us how to grade. If we don’t solve this immediately the worlds richest and most powerful employers won’t know of they are getting the most shiny fruit from the ivy tree. Omg, the market signalling.we must save the market signals”😱 And the faculty lounge rejoiced!

Oh, there is a problem. My issue is that this change is the same problem. The integrity of academic standards in the face of contravening incentives is absolutely degraded and has led to grade inflation with declining quality in graduates. The connection between marks and excellence is broken. Unfortunately, this proposal also degrades that integrity... in part by creating a new set of perverse incentives. The problem I see is NOT "Oh, it is a big problem that the companies can't be sure they are getting the very best of the pile of whatever we pump out." That all Harvard grads get A's would be a cause for celebration if all Harvard grads were really producing A level work. The problem is that they aren't. Professors, university appeals boards, and University governors need to get together and decide what they are doing. (A) Are they stewarding and teaching fields of knowledge, evaluating excellence in knowledge, and forming reasoners about that knowledge... so as to form them for advanced vocational employment of students. or... are they can (B) deliver modules, manage competition for prizes, so as to ensure the market-friendly nature of those signals for employers. Capping truly excellent work of 100% at 30% violates all values of A (as does giving 30% As to less than A work, as will any of the various corruptions that will evolve around the borderlands of A's and B's. But, it has the merit of being a quick bureaucratically implimentable fix from the top down. Actually thinking about the incentives and practices that are distorting academic integrity and the teaching of that knowledge, and address those at the source. If you want to have integrity and excellence in all knowledge (and not just instrumentally immediately profitable knowledge), you are going to have to cultivate and work to maintain it. TL;DR: yeah, we will have to do the hard work and discipline ourselves as a community like grown ups who's job it is to steward these things. Literally.. our whole role. Otherwise, we aren't professionals, we are corporate cogs with no actual responsibility or duty of any kind other than to do what is most expedient for us so we can get back to our careerist journey within this corporate structure. It's not like it is impossible. they used to be able to do this at Harvard. I trust they can again without a quota or cap. Or has the professoriate degraded in quality too, and they *are* incapable? Perhaps firing some professors nailed for obvious grade inflation? Changing PhD education?

@ProfBZZZ What is your solution? Or perhaps you believe this is a problem with no good solution? Or perhaps you deny there is a problem at all?

@RodeoProfessor I just finished the week this example would help. Filed for next year.

This is a textbook example of everything that is wrong with globalist wildlife activists and I will use it in my classes going forward, thanks Ben! Ben is a British aristocrat, son of the daughter of the 8th Marquess of Londonderry whose father is a knighted financier and businessman from a prominent banking family, the Goldschmidts. Look at the confidence and swagger he has in weighing in on Montana wildlife policy! Look at the outright contempt and scorn he has for everyday Montanans, ranching families, and our democratically elected leaders! Look at how he threatens and taunts us, saying that no matter what local Montana stakeholders want, it will always be people like him, NGOs bankrolled by global capital and foreign aristocrats, that will get to tell us what to do with our land! This embodies our core of the issue with American Prairie. Contrary to what Ben and other lib panic accounts on here would have you think, Montana locals are not opposed to bison conservation. Montanans have been on the vanguard for some of the greatest bison conservation success stories in human history. Modern bison restoration in Montana has centered heavily on science-based management of the Yellowstone National Park herd, which is the largest continuously wild bison population in the United States. Montana agencies and researchers spent decades on the cutting edge of bison research, monitoring genetics, disease prevalence (brucellosis), population dynamics, and habitat conditions to rebuild and maintain a healthy herd while reducing risks to surrounding livestock. Montana spearheaded many of the most important collaborative research and management institutions for buffalo conservation, research, and restoration to public, tribal, and private land. But Ben wouldn't know or care about this because he's a British aristocrat! LOL! Ben's post references an NGO called American Prairie, which has a bison herd on public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management in northeastern Montana (different from the well-known Yellowstone bison herd many people are familiar with from family trips to Yellowstone National Park). Under the BLM grazing system, permits are not typically auctioned at open-market rates. Instead, grazing privileges are tied to a “preference” system connected to ownership of nearby private land, often referred to as a “base property.” American Prairie entered this system by purchasing deeded ranches adjacent to BLM allotments, thereby acquiring the associated grazing preferences. After obtaining these ranches, the organization requested that the BLM modify existing grazing permits to allow bison rather than cattle. Following an environmental review process, the BLM approved the inclusion of bison in 2022. As referenced in Ben's post, that approval was just revoked following pressure from Montana citizens, lawmakers, and ranching families. Why do Montanans oppose American Prairie? The major issue is that American Prairie’s ability to acquire large ranch holdings is possible through substantial financial backing from wealthy out-of-state and international donors, including Swiss- and German-born billionaires and high-net-worth individuals from places such as New York City and San Francisco (usually tech guys' foundations). A multigenerational Montana ranching family, or a young seventh-generation rancher hasn't the faintest hope in competing for ranch properties that carry BLM grazing preferences. Once those deeded ranches are purchased, the associated federal grazing privileges generally transfer with them, boxing young Montanans out of the livelihood that generations of their forebears have practiced. Montana’s ranching livelihoods and the culture of the cowboy is central to the state’s identity, economy, and history. It is what makes it unique and what brings millions of visitors to the state. If we are going to offshore and strip mine everything in this country to global capital, then be prepared to say goodbye to what makes the American West wild, open, and free.

So yeah of I see you researching open accounts to find personal information to make ad hominem attacks about credibility as you hide all.personal details of yourself, you are garbage anon and a shitty colleague and I'd unfollow. Haven't seen it. If your warning me I guess I can appreciate it and unfollow but I'm hoping my experience with youto date generalizes

@RodeoProfessor @TSHamiltonAstro @SouthernWintrs Ive honestly never known you to personally attack a non anon colleague from some position of presumed moral authority. I've always known you to make arguments build from observations, or deal with facts in evidence. If you do behave like this fellow more I might unfollow.

Lmao 13 papers, 15 citations, h-index of 2 and thinks he can opine on "being an academic". How is he an actual professor?

A Defense of a Liberal Arts Education in the Age of A.I. @DouthatNYT interviews @jennfrey for @nytopinion

My experience with young staff is that they've become normed to the proletarian university and don't even really see much wrong with it because of course metrics and knowledge of publishing is what it's all about. Ask my university strategic plan. It will tell you. It's the 40 and ups that have let the 60 and up get away with this and find themselves sandwiched.

@SouthernWintrs @ProfBZZZ @TSHamiltonAstro Yeah all the boomers I work with who ran the university into the ground with race quotas and drag shows also think anyone under 40 shouldn’t pipe up. I disagree.

The replies offer a deep insight into the psychological trauma of the proletarianization of the professoriate. These people are desperate to turn widget assembly line work we've made much of academia look like something it once was, and which their self image yearns to posess. It's sad what's become of us.

@JimDMiller @mattbencole @zdeborova @giffmana After replying to you, I've got two quote posts of your comment in my feed. Both implying you're arguing hallucinated references are just fine. I don't know if the problem is reading comprehension or bad faith. Again, it's fascinating.

Occasional errors and oversights are part of science. If we lost our driver’s license for a year every time we exceeded the speed limit by 10 km/h, daily life would become unworkable. Many countries instead use point systems, where trust can be rebuilt through good behavior.

@MsVeteranTeach @JimDMiller @mattbencole @zdeborova @giffmana It is. But he's reporting a real well known if unacknowledged thing. The degree academe is compromised is hidden by a great deal of pretense that what been going on for decades isn't going on.

@JimDMiller @mattbencole @zdeborova @giffmana This is so damning. You are admitting that it is "very common" for professors to "just copy citations" without reading them bc "they need a lot of citations to look credible" -so you literally don't care about *being* credible, only *looking* credible. PhD from Chicago!!

Yes. Academic research has degrading ever more into game playing sophistry and much of the research isn't research but paper construction for metric acquisition. There are academics who have not participated much in academic publishing in part for this very reason. Doing so seriously seems to radically reduced research integrity and actual knowledge development in the scholar themselves. Some of the dumbest least educated professors I know are publishing stars. None of it is harmless. It just isn't at all new.

@JimDMiller @zdeborova @giffmana This is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read. The issue is with process - if you’re copy-pasting unchecked sources from an LLM, whatever you’re doing is not research. And the contagion spread of hallucinated sources is already well documented so no it’s not harmless.