Profile avatar
theabsentprofessor.bsky.social
Writer, professor of English, lover of subterranean resistance movements, labor activism, travel, bookstores, kitchen table conversations, reproductive rights, and media that depicts middle-aged women as sexy and intellectual. All opinions mine alone.
38 posts 1,691 followers 3,846 following
Prolific Poster
Conversation Starter
Posts 34 Comments 16

I don't know if it was thinking about the current state of the world or the play's topic--a woman exploring her dead mother's past in the women's movement-but the audience was weeping by the end of the gorgeous Liberation. I guess theater can still do Aristotelian catharsis like no other medium.

submitted 11 hours ago • 1 comment

Hiding from the horrors of higher ed with a short trip to NYC to eat all the oysters and see all the plays like the cosmopolitan Jewess that I am.

submitted 17 hours ago • 0 comments

How do we stay in higher ed and watch our students lose their visa status and face deportation?

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

80s sitcoms, silent film vamps, the Jewish American novel, repro rights, current rage-spiral about the decimation of higher ed (I pretty much talk and think about this every day, all day anyway). Corey Booker is doing a good job though!

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

United States Disappeared Tracker https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/danielleharlow/viz/UnitedStatesDisappearedTracker/Map

submitted 5 days ago • 155 comments

on what it takes

submitted 6 days ago • 2 comments

Please sign if you are a Columbia or Barnard alum and feel as I do: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

I want us to study the history of resistance to slave catchers right now. I want us to study how slave catchers worked, how they were sanctioned, who paid them, and why they did what they did, right now. I want us to study the hyperlocal and networked ways slave catchers were impeded. Right now.

submitted 9 days ago • 87 comments

I feel like this stems from the fundamental mistrust of expertise and education represented by Trump and his supporters. Both the "drain the swamp" and the anti-higher education rhetoric come from the same twisted root. The result: people who do not know how to protect our national security.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

We need these principles even more today than we did in 2016.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

‘I Messed Up At Work Again,’ Crestfallen Michael Waltz Texts Wife, National Geographic Editorial Staff

submitted 10 days ago • 466 comments

Barack Obama finally showing up on Bluesky in order to talk about the ACA rather than the fascist takeover of our country is a little too on point for the Democratic response to the moment

submitted 12 days ago • 78 comments

This is America in 2025. This is who we are.

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

every college, corporate, and nonprofit president right now

submitted 14 days ago • 126 comments

If there's one thing that domestic violence research has taught me, it's that abusers set up no-win scenarios. They punish you whether you cooperate with them or whether you push back. The only way out is to strengthen ties with people outside of the relationship who can create new, better options.

submitted 17 days ago • 66 comments

I feel so much safer from anti-Semitism now. Don't you?

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

This is a PhD student in *epidemiology*

submitted 18 days ago • 187 comments

The Handmaid's Tale is beginning to look like a utopia compared to the U.S.

submitted 18 days ago • 1 comment

The courts are the only thing standing between us and utter tyranny right now. The Dems need to help! Get rid of @schumer.senate.gov, who is so terrified of being called a "Palestinian" by Trump that he will go against his own party's interests.

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

Got a printer? You can start fighting fascism. Here's a thread of things you can print and distribute. 👇 I promise doing something--even this--feels better than raging silently. And maybe it'll show you that standing up is possible and open you up to more things you can do.

submitted 31 days ago • 242 comments

Tarot card deck from Leonara Carrington. Want!

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

Great account of what is going on with the extrajudicial kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil by Marianne Hirsch, the amazing scholar of the Holocaust, memory, and visual culture:

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

If they can target Mahmoud Khalil’s First Amendment rights, they can target yours. The whole point of the First Amendment is that it protects speech – even if it’s unpopular or you don’t like what they have to say.

submitted 25 days ago • 8 comments

Dear fellow Jewish people: Do not let ethnonationalism and a sentimental preoccupation with Israel as synechdochic for all Jewishness lead you to suspend all your values. We cannot let Jewishness be weaponized to support fascism.

submitted 25 days ago • 1 comment

One of my favorites! Happy belated anniversary to Metropolis, one of the greatest silent films made at the edge of the talkie era.

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

Yes, yes, my useless ones, please start turning on each other (*drumming fingertips together with a maniacal cackle*)

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

Using a Black child with brain cancer as a prop...and to promote law enforcement. By far the most vile moment of this hideous evening. The same MAGA that tries to ban DEI and says black people come from "shithole countries" and promotes white supremacist conspiracies. Vile. #StateOfTheUnion

submitted 31 days ago • 82 comments

Next up in the US's downward slide via Drumpf: Widespread blackouts!

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

I’m both dismayed and frankly terrified by the number of well informed and smart people who are witnessing the Nazi-billionaire fascist takeover of their own country yet unable or unwilling to say literally any of these words and call a thing a thing.

submitted 38 days ago • 26 comments

A beautiful, sad, and deeply American story--from the AR-15s to the utter disregard for educators. What if we had a government run for and by the Ms. Schamis' of the world instead of for and by insecure little men who pursue power through violence and terror?

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

Ooh la la! This looks promising.

submitted 41 days ago • 2 comments

This manual is everything. Bartleby as verb! www.france24.com/en/americas/...

submitted 43 days ago • 2 comments

Ohio is going to be next if SB1/HB6 passes...

submitted 44 days ago • 2 comments

it seems one of the stated purposes of capping overhead on NIH grants at 15% by those who champion the cap is to starve PhD programs in the humanities www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

submitted 48 days ago • 14 comments