Quite the choice of words!

Hampshire College’s closure signals more higher ed downsizing under Trump Hampshire College in Massachusetts will close at the end of this year due to declining enrollment and revenue, foreshadowing accelerated downsizing in higher education under the Trump administration.

“Hampshire’s announcement comes after the Huron Consulting Group recently projected that nearly 450 of the nation’s 1,700 private, nonprofit four-year campuses could shutter or merge within the next decade.”
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/ap...

A Genocide Scholar Asks “What Went Wrong” in Israel The Israeli historian Omer Bartov argues in his new book that a “state ideology” of Zionism has led to what he calls genocide in Gaza.

"What happened in Gaza is not the Holocaust. What happened in Gaza is a particular genocide that happened in Gaza. Very different from the Holocaust, but conforming to the definition of genocide by the UN, which... is the only one that matters." - Omer Bartov www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Was just rocked to my soul by the oratory of UBuffalo Professor Henry-Louis Taylor in a keynote on reclaiming urban planning from racial capitalist wealth accumulation and gentrification, and then he mentioned his daughter….. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Now I get it!

Awesome to have Rochester Mayor Malik Evans open our symposium on Climate Havens today at the @urochester.bsky.social Humanities Center!

Next week I'm glad to be responding to Seyla Benhabib's recent book on critical theory and law at NYU's Remarque Institute. RSVP required:
as.nyu.edu/research-cen...

Walter Benjamin’s Fragments from the Deep: An Interview with Peter E. Gordon by Lilia Endter

On the JHI Blog, Lilia Endter interviewed Peter Gordon about his new book, Walter Benjamin: The Pearl Diver, discussing Benjamin's idiosyncratic methodology, the role of identity categories in writing a biography, and Benjamin's "aberrant" use of Marxist concepts. @yalepress.bsky.social

I am broken-hearted at the terrible news that my alma mater, @hampshirecollege.bsky.social, after 56 yrs, is closing. Its death is a victory for conformism, for corporatism, for higher education's dull love of hierarchy & status. It's a grievous defeat for imagination & experimentation.

“There is nothing innocuous left… Even the blossoming tree lies the moment its bloom is seen without the shadow of terror; even the innocent 'How lovely!' becomes an excuse for an existence outrageously unlovely.” - Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia

Dialogue and silence Habermas understood that the possibility for German–Jewish dialogue after the Holocaust depends on commitment to universal law. But when the past demands silence about the present, that possibility is denied. On the contradictions in Habermas’s exemplary cosmopolitan project.

Habermas understood that the possibility for German–Jewish dialogue after the Holocaust depends on commitment to universal law. But when the past demands silence about the present, that possibility is denied, writes Omri Boehm www.eurozine.com/dialogue-and...

Elad Lapidot: "Our problem is that Judaism today has for some groups become an ideology of genocide. We need to face that now; any moral understanding of Judaism needs an immediate response to that. Are you working to stop the genocide? And what are you doing to stop it?"

Elad Lapidot: "What is being paraded around today as anti-antisemitism is basically the new antisemitism....What is being created with this bogus fight against antisemitism is a new wave of antisemitism."
jewishcurrents.org/when-jewishn...

The inimitable @deborahfeldman.bsky.social on Germany today: “Of course we’re headed for disaster. What I can tell you for certain is that we’ll have a chancellor from the far-right party relatively soon, and that we’ll have fascism again.” @blnreview.bsky.social
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

Excited for this event next week on climate havens—zones of refuge for climate migrants as vulnerable places become unlivable—including the Great Lakes region and Western NY. A collaboration between @urochester.bsky.social Humanities Center and RIT. Details here:
events.rochester.edu/event/humani...

Interesting speculation from Stuart Jeffries prompted by Peter Gordon's new biography of Walter Benjamin. Contra Adorno, perhaps Benjamin might have found some "pearls" in American culture worth redeeming. @jewishlives.bsky.social @yalepress.bsky.social @financialtimes.com
www.ft.com/content/8484...

The Consciousness of New World Slaves as Workers: An Interview with David McNally by Aaron Berman

In an interview with Aaron Berman for the blog, David McNally discusses his most recent book, Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History. Their interview centers on the subjectivity and political theories of what McNally terms the "chattel proletariat."
@redprof.bsky.social @ucpress.bsky.social

The Reckoning • EQUATOR Hormuz and the end of American hegemony

"Hormuz has made the end of American hegemony imaginable. It has also shown that, perhaps for the first time, the Global South possesses the political will and ideas needed to build a new international order."

www.equator.org/articles/the...

Oof! www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/hab...

Kind of thing that should be read aloud in front of a tribunal.

Martin Jay’s Habermas - The Ideas Letter Habermas’s legacy endures not only because of his defense of deliberative democracy: He also set an example of the engaged intellectual who treats public argument as a shared, open-ended search…

One intellectual titan remembers another.

There is perhaps no one better placed to write on the passing of philosopher Jürgen Habermas than the preeminent intellectual historian Martin Jay. What an honor to feature Jay's piece on Habermas's passing in Open Society's Ideas Letter.

Not generally the biggest fan of Stanley's "fascism"-mongering, but here his evocation of Soviet totalitarianism to characterize the artificiality of contemporary obedience and consent with regard to Israel seems apt:
substack.com/home/post/p-...

Another powerful line from the final section: “Ideally, adopting a constitution in 1948 would have made Zionism, as an ideology of both liberation and ethno-nationalism, superfluous.”

The conclusion of Omer Bartov’s forthcoming book, Israel: What Went Wrong?: “One can only wish Zionism had been transcended—historicized, liberalized, and universalized—when the time was right, eight decades ago.” @fsgbooks.bsky.social

Shielding Genocide? - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung The Role of Human Shields in the War in Gaza

"The moment Israel invokes international law to frame everything above ground in Gaza as a potential shield, it operationalizes the law itself as a tool legitimizing genocide." Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini for @rosaluxstiftung.bsky.social
www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/5...

The good people @muftah.org had me and
@dbessner.bsky.social on to talk the "Fascism Debate"! Even w/ a lot on the cutting room floor, and so much more to cover, it's a pretty deep dive. I hope generative at addressing this question and why it's important, analytically and politically...

Trump’s revolutionary sense of time is changing politics The US president doesn’t think in terms of long-term strategy but rather in terms of deadlines

Historian Ivan Krastev on Trump’s "revolutionary sense of time" and "radically new temporal ontology"—that of the ephemeral "deadline" vs. Putin's thinking in generations and eternity: "He makes history in the way an indebted businessman negotiates with his creditors."
www.ft.com/content/5813...

Supreme Court rules against Colorado ban on ‘conversion therapy’ for LGBTQ+ kids The Supreme Court has ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ kids in Colorado, one of about two dozen states that banned the discredited practice.

Conversion therapy—a form of torture—is now protected as free speech for homophobic Christians. “Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent that the ruling ‘threatens to impair States' ability to regulate the provision of medical care in any respect.’”
apnews.com/article/supr...

"To equate the Palestinians' situation with apartheid South Africa is misleading not because it exaggerates their predicament but because... it downplays the much more lethal oppression they face at the hands of the Israeli state" – Mark Mazower, On Antisemitism

So much for Wilkommenskultur 😳

Brave piece in the LA Times from David Myers and Joshua Goetz, who research antisemitism as part of the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate.

“We can’t ignore the real prospect that Israel’s actions have led to violent antisemitic attacks and could lead to more.”

www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...