Leila Walker
Assistant Professor in an academic library. Publishes on British romantic literature, climate change, plant humanities, librarianship, social justice, and pedagogy. Not gay as in happy, queer as in free Palestine.
- Reposted by Leila WalkerI struggle with the reporting on ChatGPT in education because it often confirms society’s negative bias against young people—oh no, this generation is unsaveable!—when it’s possible to just educate people to be less credulous about it. which is why I wrote this: so teachers could print and assign it
- Reposted by Leila WalkerParticipating in this panel impressed me anew with the importance of faculty (especially tenured faculty) having librarians' backs. The ethos of their profession demands that they defend intellectual freedom, but their jobs often aren't secure enough to ensure their safety.
- Excited to speak alongside hotshot librarians @edrabinski.bsky.social, @mkahn.bsky.social, @roxanneshirazi.bsky.social about "Libraries in Higher Education: How Can We Meet the Moment?" Monday, May 12, at 1pm EST/10am PST. litwinbooks.com/libraries-in...
- Reposted by Leila WalkerTo my newborn son: I am absent not out of apathy, but conviction | Mahmoud Khalil
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- Can someone please reshare that post that was going around earlier, that was like a “roses are red” poem ending with a screenshot of “WOKE MARXIST POPE”? I forgot to like it and need to show it to my spouse kthnx
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- Librarians and librarianship have a lot to offer right now.
- So many of these students, when asked why they use ChatGPT to write or code, answer that it helps them get good grades. Meaning, there's an entrenched belief that the purpose of school, of assignments, is the grade. So maybe the first step in eliminating ChatGPT is eliminating grades as assessment.
the technodystopia is here nymag.com/intelligence...
- Reposted by Leila WalkerIf you've read @prisonculture.bsky.social's newsletter and sought out Sarah Stillman's Starved in Jail in The New Yorker, please also have a look at the stunning companion site that tells more stories. starvedforcare.com
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- Large Language Models are an invasive technology.
- Reposted by Leila WalkerThere will be a lot of euphemisms about "voluntary migration" and "humanitarian zones" and whatnot, but this is ultimately a plan for ethnic cleansing www.axios.com/2025/05/05/i...
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- Reposted by Leila WalkerThe cops are defunding every major city.
- Reposted by Leila Walker🌸Plant diversity dynamics over space and time in a warming Arctic 🌸 Our new study @nature.com analysed plant diversity change in >2000 tundra plots over 4 decades. We found that plants changed unevenly, mostly driven by warming and biotic interactions. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵 (1/7) 🌐🧪🌱🌍
- Every bit of this story is horrifying.
- Sending so many emails and knowing that there will be replies, and then more emails, and then meetings.
- Today marks 134 days since we brought Chester home, exactly twice as long as the 67 days he spent in the shelter. He celebrated by taking his medication, yipping at birds, and falling asleep on Renee’s foot. Here is a video of the big reveal.
- Reposted by Leila WalkerERICA to the Rescue! Read about our volunteer efforts to rescue & revive ERIC, Dept of Ed's research repository. www.datarescueproject.org/erica-to-the... Thanks to crizzo, @archive.org & @safeguardingdata.bsky.social for all of the hard work. Check out more rescued data on our Data Rescue Tracker!
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- Seriously, why are people still eating meat.
- Reposted by Leila WalkerThe Cuomo campaign reportedly asked public library union leaders in a recent meeting if they'd considered *charging a fee* for library services, alarming some library workers. Asked about the incident, a Cuomo spokesperson blamed a campaign volunteer. hellgatenyc.com/cuomo-librar...
- One of my favorite things about being an academic librarian is that students seek research help on topics I've never heard of, like an Irish hip-hop trio called Kneecap, and then I get to feel like I'm up on all the cool kid stuff when they end up in the news.
- Oh my god the replies 😂
- Literally taking the MLA International Bibliography out of my recommended databases for research in English literature. The new "streamlined" interface obliterated all functionality. Project Muse and JSTOR aren't as thorough, but at least they're usable.
- Management announced yesterday that they are "pleased" to inform union members that none of us will get the shit-ass raises we ratified in January until AUGUST. No word from union leadership. Did @psc-cuny.org even know this was happening? Did management bypass our reps on this?
- Reposted by Leila WalkerDO NOT RANK CUOMO, WHO WILL LET ICE KIDNAP YOUR FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS, AND MAYBE YOU OFF THE STREET. DO RANK: 1. Zohran Mamdani 2. Brad Lander 3. Jessica Ramos 4. Zellnor Myrie 5. Adrienne Adams
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- Reposted by Leila WalkerIsrael murdered this beautiful soul. Remember Fatima Hassona. Watch and spread the film "Put your soul on your hand and walk". And never stop fighting the mass murdering death machine that is the Israeli state. She was 25.
- Who else is presenting at NASSR in August? And do you want to organize an NYC get-together or group conference viewing?
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- Reposted by Leila WalkerThe law determines what is legal. It does not determine what is true; what is just; what is morally and ethically sound and defensible. The history of law is the history of the legal system being wrong on these grounds. Trans women are women.
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- I know we're all supposed to be like "rah rah Harvard," but why does their method of resistance reinforce the narrative that only STEM research matters?
- Harvard redid its whole homepage to push back against the administration’s demands. I mean, this is just a website but I think it’s kind of a great PR move: www.harvard.edu
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- I urge you all to read Mohammed el-Kurd's "Perfect Victims." When we fall into the trap of arguing that a particular victim of state violence is good or innocent or law-abiding, we implicitly concede that if they were otherwise, they would be deserving of that violence, that it could be justified.
- Support free buses. Vote for @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social
- Reposted by Leila WalkerEnded. Up. Ended. Up. endedup
- Reposted by Leila WalkerHey, just a quiet reminder: it’s not true that people get more conservative as they age. *Populations* get more conservative as they age because poor and marginalized people die sooner. nymag.com/intelligence...
- Kudos to QC IT department for managing to send out an inaccessible PDF to account for our recent website outage. The number of extra steps it takes to produce such a document really demonstrates the department's willingness to go the extra mile to fail extra hard.
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- Reposted by Leila WalkerWhat a grim paragraph www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/u...
- Oh fuck.
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- Excellent advice, not just for folks worried about the federal government, but also for us at CUNY worried about ITS suddenly pulling a platform and leaving everyone scrambling.
- Reposted by Leila WalkerThank you to @theverge.com for posting the full clip of Microsoft's Copilot event - including the moment when Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad protested the company selling AI tools to Israel for the use of murdering families (she was immediately fired) youtu.be/Do6yrtur4AY?...
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- I think about @timmaughan.bsky.social's "Infinite Detail" at least monthly (I recommended it to a friend just yesterday!). In the collapsed society it depicts, a drug kingpin pivots to growing and selling spices because it's more lucrative. Anyway. Just something to think about.
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- In reality, though, the people whose work most influenced the one up for review are 2 professors emerita, 1 independent scholar writing for popular audiences, and 1 person who wrote a top-notch dissertation and promptly left academia. None, that is, who are in a position to write a peer review.
- When you're asked to recommend peers to review your work, and immediately remember all the brilliant scholars you forgot to cite 😬
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- Reposted by Leila WalkerYOU GUYS.
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- Real question: When did folks start creating syllabi in Canva, and why for the love of god do they do it. The format is both annoying as hell and wildly inaccessible.
- When the candidate polling at 2 with a bullet is Muslim, this is a straight up islamophobic dog whistle.
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- Random Tuesday off, no deadlines looming, manuscript submitted, tenure materials in the hands of my department. It feels so good to just enjoy a sunny day.
