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3 weeks ago | 
mercurynews.com | Tressie McMillan Cottom
Behold the decade of mid tech!That is what I want to say every time someone asks me with breathless anticipation, “What about AI?” I’m far from a Luddite. It is precisely because I use new technology that I know mid (average or mediocre) when I see it. Academics are rarely good stand-ins for typical workers. But the mid-technology revolution is an exception. It has come for us first.
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3 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Hazem Saghieh |Sam Menassa |Ghassan Charbel |Tressie McMillan Cottom
Some Lebanese take pleasure in concocting a narrative that presents the pursuit of disarmament that establishes a state monopoly on arms and the fight against corruption in public life as contradictory objectives. Mind you, there is plenty of glaring evidence that impunity for one sustains the impunity of the other.
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3 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Hazem Saghieh |Sam Menassa |Ghassan Charbel |Tressie McMillan Cottom
The Saudi-US relationship is a complex subject. In-depth discussions of their strategic vision for the global economy and Middle Eastern security necessarily branch out in multiple directions. Several books have been written about this strategic alliance that has ebbed and flowed over its eighty-year history. Here, we will focus on this relationship in the post-September 11, 2001, era, since George W. Bush was president.
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3 weeks ago | 
lasvegassun.com | Tressie McMillan Cottom
Behold the decade of mid tech!That is what I want to say every time someone asks me, “What about AI?” with the breathless anticipation of a boy who thinks this is the summer he finally gets to touch a boob. I’m far from a Luddite. It is precisely because I use new technology that I know mid when I see it. Most of us aren’t using AI to save lives faster and better. We are using AI to make mediocre improvements, such as emailing more.
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3 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Hazem Saghieh |Sam Menassa |Ghassan Charbel |Tressie McMillan Cottom
A Turkish lady recently reproached her “Syrian friends,” in a Facebook post, because she had not received “a single message of solidarity” amid the turbulence in Türkiye. She concluded her post by saying that “expressing solidarity is not shameful” but rather “an ethical and political choice.” This woman has every right to voice her disappointment.
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3 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Sam Menassa |Ghassan Charbel |Tressie McMillan Cottom |Eyad Abu Shakra
Last Tuesday, my colleague Nadim Koteich wrote a piece about the Middle East policy of the US under President Donald Trump on these pages, building on an interview that Trump’s envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff, had conducted with journalist Tucker Carlson. Koteich did not endorse a position and was largely focused on Trump’s policies in general and his regional policies in particular.
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3 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Ghassan Charbel |Tressie McMillan Cottom |Eyad Abu Shakra |Mustafa Fahs
Iran is a major and prestigious country that the region has an interest in seeing become stable and prosperous, away from the rhetoric of threats to shut the Hormuz Strait and support Houthi rockets attacks in the Red Sea. The Khomeini revolution was not just a major coup in Iran, but its constitution carried with it a project to upend regional equations.
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3 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Tressie McMillan Cottom |Eyad Abu Shakra |Mustafa Fahs |Amir Taheri
I’m far from a Luddite. It is precisely because I use new technology that I know mid when I see it. Academics are rarely good stand-ins for typical workers. But the mid technology revolution is an exception. It has come for us first. Some of it has even come from us, genuinely exciting academic inventions and research science that could positively contribute to society.
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3 weeks ago | 
nytimes.com | Tressie McMillan Cottom
This isn't the first time institutions pivoted from concern to tech acceptance. The same thing happened in the 2010s with massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Tech evangelists promised that we would not need as many professors, for one expert could teach tens of thousands online! But MOOCs were a mid technology that could barely augment, much less replace, deep expertise. Receiving information is not the same as developing the facility to use it.
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1 month ago | 
nytimes.com | M. Gessen |Tressie McMillan Cottom |Bret Stephens
Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists M. Gessen, Tressie McMillan Cottom and Bret Stephens about Donald Trump's attacks on Columbia University and other elite colleges and how they became vulnerable to a political and ideological reckoning. Patrick Healy: Bret, Tressie, Masha, I spoke on Thursday to a university president who told me he was just advised to hire a bodyguard.
