Wikipedia's first sentence called it “current president of the american association of university professors and a prominent scholar-activist”. Today it says “american professor emeritus of english and jubilee professor of liberal arts and sciences at the university of”. The one-line description Wikipedia serves to search engines and AI systems read “Nelson speaking against casualization of academic labor at Yale University”. It now reads “American academic Nelson speaking against casualization of academic labor at Yale University”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2010 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since.Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now.Red text: written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot.1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2010
Nelson speaking against casualization of academic labor at Yale University Cary Nelson (1946), professor of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , is the current president of the American Association of University Professors and a prominent scholar-activist.1He received his Ph.D in English from University of Rochester 1970 and is a 1967 graduate of Antioch College . His scholarship of the 1970s and 80s worked to expand the canon of modern American poetry, and since the 1990s he has increasingly focused on issues in higher education. In the words of Alan Wald , "With the appearance of Manifesto of a Tenured Radical in 1997, Cary became the national exemplar of the committed scholar who conceived of the advance of his own career in the context of the amelioration of the rank-and-file of the academic community; more specifically, graduate students, part-time employees, and campus workers." [1] Nelson has also played an important role in promoting cultural studies in the American academy, and in 1981 he founded the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory . Nelson was elected to a two-year term as president of the AAUP in April 2006. In April 2006 he was arrested, along with over 50 others (including Jane Buck, the outgoing president of the AAUP), as part of a unionization effort by New York University 's graduate teaching assistants.2[2] Nelson has been an outspoken critic of the corporatization of university education in general and has also been involved in various local interventions; he has recently been involved in the widespread academic response to the so-called "Five Year Plan" for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida .3He is the author of twenty five books, including Manifesto of a Tenured Radical and Revolutionary Memory: Recovering the Poetry of the American Left. His academic focus is on modern American poetry.4
This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 364088919.
The opening as it stood in 2015 1 passage from the previous snapshot no longer appear
Nelson speaking against casualization of academic labor at Yale University Cary Nelson (1946), professor of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , was president of the American Association of University Professors between 2006 and 2012. He received his Ph.D in English from the University of Rochester 1970 and is a 1967 graduate of Antioch College . His scholarship of the 1970s and 80s worked to expand the canon of modern American poetry, and since the 1990s he has increasingly focused on issues in higher education. In the words of Alan Wald , "With the appearance of Manifesto of a Tenured Radical in 1997, Cary became an example of the committed scholar who conceived of the advance of his own career in the context of the amelioration of the rank-and-file of the academic community; more specifically, graduate students, part-time employees, and campus workers." Nelson was elected to a two-year term as president of the AAUP in April 2006 and was re-elected until 2012. In April 2006 he was arrested, along with over 50 others (including Jane Buck, the outgoing president of the AAUP), as part of a unionization effort by New York University 's graduate teaching assistants. He has published or edited twenty five books, including Manifesto of a Tenured Radical and Revolutionary Memory: Recovering the Poetry of the American Left. His academic focus is on modern American poetry.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 666784356.
The opening as it stood in 2020 6 passages from the previous snapshot no longer appear
Nelson speaking against casualization of academic labor at Yale University Cary Nelson (1946), is an American professor emeritus of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . He was president of the American Association of University Professors between 2006 and 2012.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 917166384.
The opening as it stood on October 6, 2023
American academic Nelson speaking against casualization of academic labor at Yale University Cary Nelson (1946), is an American professor emeritus of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . He was president of the American Association of University Professors between 2006 and 2012.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 1163576533.
The opening as it stood in 2025
American academic Nelson speaking against casualization of academic labor at Yale University Cary Nelson (born 1946), is an American professor emeritus of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . He was president of the American Association of University Professors between 2006 and 2012.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 1289841505. This is our newest snapshot; the live article may have moved again since.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “current president of the american association of university professors and a prominent scholar-activist”. Today it says “american professor emeritus of english and jubilee professor of liberal arts and sciences at the university of”. The one-line description Wikipedia serves to search engines and AI systems read “Nelson speaking against casualization of academic labor at Yale University”. It now reads “American academic Nelson speaking against casualization of academic labor at Yale University”. Read the current article and compare.
2010
2015
2020
Oct '23
2025
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.
What Wikipedia says this is
Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2010, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.
Then
current president of the american association of university professors and a prominent scholar-activist
Now
american professor emeritus of english and jubilee professor of liberal arts and sciences at the university of
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.
