Farewell and Appreciation from HASTAC Co-Directors Cathy N. Davidson and Shelly Eversley

It is with both sadness and enormous pride that we announce, after 25+ years, that HASTAC’s life as “the world’s first and oldest academic social network” is coming to an end. In the next few months, the interactive HASTAC social network will be turned into an archive on the Knowledge Commons. There will be no further interactive posting or commenting and HASTAC will no longer be registering members. This will also be the final year of the HASTAC Scholars, the vibrant network run by students and for students, and we will cease publication of the HASTAC bi-annual newsletter. Thanks to the generosity of past HASTAC Co-Director Jacqueline Wernimont of Dartmouth College and the expertise and vision of Professor Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Project Director of the Knowledge Commons, and all of our incredible colleagues at the Knowledge Commons, HASTAC will still exist going forward as a searchable archive. Needless to say, we will remain active members of the larger Knowledge Commons–and very much hope that all HASTAC network members also will continue to be part of this invaluable, collaborative, multi-organization resource. It’s been an incredible experience and a deep honor leading HASTAC. It’s a remarkable history. In 2000, Cathy Davidson, David Theo Goldberg, and a number of other eminent scholars and technology experts began talking about creating an online, interactive, international network to address the vast social and technological issues of the interactive World Wide Web. By 2001-02, we already had developed and populated our first website and even launched a HASTAC wiki, a few months ahead of the launching of Wikipedia. Keep in mind that an online social network was a new concept at the time. Facebook began in 2004, its predecessors MySpace and Friendster in 2003. (See “How To Lead an Academic Social Network” for a fuller history). HASTAC’s first funding came from the National Science Foundation’s Cyberinfrastructure Division, directed by Ruzena Bajscy, as part of their “collaboratory” initiative. Thus our name “Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory”: for short, “Haystack.” A number of our original, visionary organizers have remained as HASTAC’s leadership team this entire time—voluntarily, without remuneration, with endless loyalty, energy, and vision. They—and dozens of others at many different institutions in the US and abroad–have hosted full-scale HASTAC conferences. Doctoral students at Duke University, Arizona State University, Dartmouth College, the University of California Humanities Research Institute, and the Graduate Center CUNY have directed the HASTAC Scholars network for somewhere around 2000 undergraduate and graduate students.HASTAC has never had a singular mission but, rather, has grappled with the many different technological and educational twists and turns of the last quarter century, always with a joint and balanced emphasis on equality and innovation. “Difference Is Our Operating System” is one of HASTAC’s first mottos; another is “Learning the Future Together.” HASTAC’s methodology, “collaboration by difference,” focuses on effective ways that people from different disciplines, backgrounds, training, nations, or identity positions can work towards common, shared goals.We cannot thank the HASTAC community enough. With over 18,000 individual network members and 400 institutional affiliates, HASTAC’s reach has been long. Two of HASTAC’s cofounders directed the competitions for the $245 million MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative. A list of past and present executive committee members, advisors, and former HASTAC Scholars is a veritable “who’s who” of the field, including numerous Pulitzer Prize, MacArthur, Guggenheim, and Mellon recipients; journalists at the NYT, NPR, and other major news sources; an advisor to President Biden and the UN; distinguished professors, teachers, artists, computer professionals, social media developers, and others outside academe; and authors of essays, papers, books, and special journal issues galore. A social network is costly and tremendously complex to run and, after more than 25 years, is no longer sustainable. Rather than let HASTAC dwindle and die, we are sunsetting it with dignity and enormous pride in a quarter century of thinking together about, through, with, and sometimes against new technologies and their application in society.The Knowledge Commons tech team has begun to work on the details of archiving HASTAC’s content from 2017 to the present. HASTAC content from 2004-2017 is preserved on a physical Drupal-loaded computer at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University. Unfortunately, the first HASTAC site, originally hosted on a server at Stanford, has been lost. It has been a great honor for the two of us to Co-Direct HASTAC in its final three years, including in our last public webinar “AI and the Future of Higher Education,” with our Interdisciplinary Area Directors Jade Davis (University of Iowa) and Kevin Healey (University of New Hampshire), featuring Cathy Davidson and former HASTAC Board member Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science and director of the Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study, and former adviser to President Biden. It is “very HASTAC” to mark the end of our social network by looking ahead to the future. The comments section on our “Sunsetting the HASTAC Network” blog post will remain open until we finish the technical transition to an archived site. We thank you all for 25+ vibrant years—and wish you the very best for all your futures. Sincerely, Cathy N. Davidson (Co-Founder and Co-Director) and Shelly Eversley (Co-Director) Cathy N. Davidson, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Graduate Center (CUNY) and Duke University; and Shelly Eversley, Professor, Baruch College and Graduate Center (CUNY)