Friday: Steven Salaita Link Roundup and More

* Shit and Curses, and Other Updates on the Steven Salaita Affair. Return of the blacklist? Cowardice and censorship at the University of Illinois. Academic Freedom, Except When I Disagree. Bérubé on Salaita. The national AAUP’s statement. Cary Nelson, the AAUP, and the privilege of bestowing academic freedom. Cary Nelson’s Case. John K. Wilson. The definition of academic freedom, for many, does not accommodate dissent. The University of Illinois Is Not an Island. A Love Letter to Twitter. A New Birth of Academic Freedom.

* One of the ironies of college is that the impossibility of reading your way out of the modern predicament is something you learn about, as a student, by reading. Part of the value of a humanistic education has to do with a consciousness of, and a familiarity with, the limits that you’ll spend the rest of your life talking about and pushing against. So it’s probably natural for college students to be a little ironic, a little unsettled. It’s time, meanwhile, to admit that the college years aren’t for figuring out some improvised “sense of purpose.” They’re more like a period of acclimatization—a time when realizations can dawn. If you’re feeling uneasy about life, then you’re doing the reading.

* Matthew Cheney has a call to read Survivor over Octavia Butler’s objections, inspired in part by my recent series at LARoB.

* Princeton Considers End to Limit on Number of As.

* The University of Colorado is moving to fire a tenured faculty member after the Boulder campus paid $825,000 this week to settle a graduate student’s allegations that the philosophy professor retaliated against her for reporting she was sexually assault by a fellow student.

* Watch NJ cop go rogue: Since Obama ‘doesn’t follow Constitution, we don’t have to.’

* Forcing Kids To Stick To Gender Roles Can Actually Be Harmful To Their Health.

* Is Student Debt Harmful to Your Health? Student debt correlated with nagging sense that life is pointless.

* Oh, there’s your problem, your culture produces monsters: Telling white people the criminal justice system is racist makes them like it more.

* On not being cynical enough: LeBron James just leapt from one carefully constructed superteam to another. Of course I’m talking about you; I was always cynical about this. #cynicprivilege

* The painting refers to the old custom of punishing insubordinates by shoving them off a ship and onto an island. But these days, you can also view “Marooned” as a curiously precise description of the Delaware Art Museum. It, too, has been ostracized by its peers. In June, it was formally sanctioned by the Association of Art Museum Directors, which has asked its members not to lend artwork to Delaware or assist with its exhibitions.

* An interview on death and mourning with Thomas Laqueur, from the great TNI issue on mourning I was hyping the other day.

* When stock photography modeling goes wrong.

* Endless Adjunct: The Game! From @readywriting.

* “Ole Miss Struggles to Be a New Miss.” On trying to rebrand.

* The Wonder Years: An Oral History.

* I guess in Obama’s America it’s not always legal to randomly murder people for no reason.

* Run Cruel optimism, Liz, run cruel optimism!

* “Punk archaeologists” explain why they dug out the Atari landfill. I should have been a punk archaeologist.

* Christina Hendrick’s time-travel-centered Mad Men spinoff looks pretty promising. The Mary Poppins one is good too.

* Lost in Lost in La Mancha: Terry Gilliam trying to make Don Quixote again, which is now about trying to make Don Quixote.

* There’s only one thing Disney/Marvel loves more than money, and that’s not making inclusive superhero movies.

* Perhaps most importantly to everyone outside of Broadway, this production basically puts the kibosh on any new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm—at least until it’s over. David said he “hadn’t ruled out” doing more Curb, but that he’s “not going to mentally do that to myself right now.” Also, if he did do another season, “this play would push that schedule back.” So we’d say that if he did do a ninth season, it could be about how Larry David starring in a Broadway show ends up irritating everyone else. But of course, he already did that.

* Everything old is new again: Straczynski bringing sci-fi classic Babylon 5 back to life with movie reboot in 2016. NBC has great idea for family show starring Bill Cosby.

* Slot-machine science: How casinos get you to spend more money. A Good Way to Wreck a Local Economy: Build Casinos.

* The arc of history is long, but bends towards justice: Cops no longer desire photo of teenager’s erection.

* Over the cliff: Almost 20 percent of people near retirement age have no retirement savings.

* The headline reads, “Experts Split If Robots Will Usurp Human Workers By 2025.”

* Google Saved by the Bell Truth. Wake up sheeple.

* My god. The bureaucracy works.

* And SMBC presents: The Darwinist!