For the cost of one Harvard Professor of the Constitution Only Applies to White People, you could endow 10 professorships of any less commonly taught language at any university in the USA

Forget microplastics, I'm having a hard time keeping my toddler from eating macroplastics

In a decade or two, they're going to put up plaques to them too

I don’t think “why aren’t there as many campus protestors in year 3 of the genocide risking life and limb under a repressive regime for whom protestors are not a relevant constituency” is a particularly interesting question

Fun fact, maintaining the naval blockade through the armistice until the final peace treaty was signed was also what the Allies did to Germany after WWI, so there's real precedent for.

There is no ceasefire in Lebanon. Israel has been bombing Lebanon non-stop since last night. If anything Israel is expanding its war on Lebanon.

You are being lied to

All of these people who have offered bullshit analysis about Iran for the past 10-20 years, should just stay quite. Don’t add more harm to what you have done. Media has to hold these “Iran experts” accountable for ripping up the JCPOA, predicting revolution at every turn, and so much more

Millions of American voters wanted to be villains. They came to believe it’s the key to success, while goodness is weak, woke, loser stuff, done only to signal.

Offered the option of unvarnished villainy, they enthusiastically took it. Seeing others suffer more made them feel big.

And here we are.

University of Washington professor fired from director job after sending email criticizing Iran war Aria Fani of University of Washington’s Middle East Center is latest critic of Israel to lose position at US university

University of Washington professor fired from director job after sending email criticizing Iran war

Support Middle East Research and Information Project on Delco Gives The Middle East Research and Information Project has been supporting critical research and reporting on the Middle East since 1971. We work closely with academics, journalists, analysts and policy pro...

If you think all this stuff is helpful in contextualizing the present catastrophe, help us out with a donation! Every donation of $10 or more before May 7 unlocks more money for MERIP during Delco Gives!

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Today is Trans Day of Visibility. Trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people have always been here — from the hijra of India to the Diné nádleehi to the leaders who built the modern LGBTQIA+ movement here in New York. Your existence is not up for debate. Your lives are not a political issue. We're fighting for a city where every trans New Yorker can live openly, safely, and with joy.

University of Arkansas to fire professor dismissed over criticism of Israel - Arkansas Times UA System President Jay Silveria is moving forward with terminating Shirin Saeidi, former director of UA Fayetteville’s Middle East studies center, ignoring the unanimous recommendation of a faculty c...

The University of Arkansas is moving ahead with terminating Shirin Saeidi, a scholar who literally wrote the book on Women and Politics in Iran, over tweets critical of Israel.

Just colossally stupid in this moment.

arktimes.com/arkansas-blo...

“Can the soul be separated from the body?”: Ottoman poetry, recorded in transliterated Turkish by a seventeenth-century German traveler in an album with Ottoman decorative paper. ÖNB, ms Cod. 10313

Call for Applications: CATS Fellowships 2025/2026 Call for Applications: CATS Fellowships 2025/2026 - The CATS Network aims to strengthen cooperation within the European and Turkish research community to contribute to a more coherent EU policy toward...

CATS is offering fellowships to post-doctoral researchers, think tank members, and practitioners working on Turkey-related issues. For the funding period 2026–2027, please see the call for applications at the link below:

www.cats-network.eu/cats-fellows...

Great to be in such good company thinking together about Julia Elyachar’s concept
of the semicivilized
@jeelyachar.bsky.social @csshjournal.bsky.social

Today in Istanbul... thousands have gathered to demand jailed opposition mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu to be released, exactly a year after his detention. This week he's appeared at court together with more than 400 other defendants, charged of corruption in a trial seen as political by Turkish opposition.

Ilber Ortayli has passed and... I have mixed feelings.

I often hated his public intellectual performances, which often devolved into lumpen nationalism and even racism

At the same time, he wrote some great books of popular history, most notably İmparatorluğun En Uzun Yüzyılı (1983)

Don't miss it! Tues 12 pm ET, 3/17/26 http://dlvr.it/TRP4MY

My latest piece on Turkey and the Iran war:

1️⃣ NATO intercepted a second Iranian missile that entered Turkish airspace. Ankara warned Tehran, while Iranian officials denied responsibility and said they respect Turkish sovereignty. But Iran’s so-called “mosaic defense” strategy, 1/4

Iran Transformed | Arang Keshavarzian On February 28 Israeli warplanes assassinated Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leader, by dropping thirty bombs on his compound in Tehran. It was the opening salvo of

My essay for NYRB maps out how iran got to this point. “But January’s protests werenot just the prelude to a geopolitical contest. They offer a window intothe fortunes of Iran’s citizens, the changing structure of its state, & the trajectory of the regime the US now seeks to obliterate.”

Tweet from Daniel Pipes: "The uprising in Iran in early January suggested an even greater insurgency would then follow on the U.S.-Israeli campaign to erode regime power. Yet, the populace now appears cowed into near-silence. This ranks as the most surprising and disappointing development of the past week. Without a new uprising, the regime will likely remain in power, less powerful but more awful than ever. (The picture below is from Jan. 10 in Tehran.)"

Amazing how quickly "We're fighting this war for freedom of the Iranian people" becomes "The Iranian people are at fault for not rising up."

You could write the history of 21st century US foreign policy disasters in the Middle East as a biography of this one guy.

In NLR 157: an interview with Ervand Abrahamian.

A leading historian of modern Iran on the power structures of the Islamic Republic and the long-incubated American-Israeli assault.

newleftreview.org/issues/ii157...

It's so telling that these people are rushing to condemn "the campus left" at this moment
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/o...

so, torture. they’re torturing them as federal policy. entirely predictable, but that doesn’t make it any less evil

The amount of Western people you can find telling Iranians to not feel any possible emotion they might be having right now, yes they can be devastated, happy, angry, sad, furious, terrified - they have a right to all these and more: their oppressor seems murdered by the hands of their oppressors.

Additionally, I want to speak directly to Iranian New Yorkers: you are part of the fabric of this city — you are our neighbors, small business owners, students, artists, workers, and community leaders. You will be safe here.

Today’s military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression. Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war.

I really am tired of Dems leaders

Not meeting the moment is the understatement of all time. Lead, follow, or get out the way