Holy moly! This is BIG news for folks in #Lesotho and #SouthAfrica.
#Passports will no longer be needed for #border crossing--only National IDs. And you will not have to stop to stamp on both sides!
Also an amnesty for #Basotho who have overstayed.
So much here that ppl have been pushing for!
South Africa and Lesotho have agreed that citizens only need their national identity documents to cross the border.
Read groundup.org.za/article/leso... by Sechaba Mokhethi
My grad-school pal @austinmccoy.bsky.social on the civil rights legacy of Martha and the Vandellas and their contemporaries.
He ran an amazing 2:04:18 for 6th place overall.
Very impressive!
It is a #Lesotho national record by exactly 2 minutes!
Best of luck to #Lesotho's #Tebello #Ramakongoana who is running the #Boston #marathon today.
He is through 10k with the lead pack in 29:05
You can follow him here:
boston.r.mikatiming.com/2026/?conten...
Happy #MarathonMonday to all who celebrate!
(and good luck to my non-social media father who is running)
This is a thoughtful essay by @jamessmurphy.bsky.social on what Hampshire College's closure means (and doesn't mean) for American higher education.
www.msn.com/en-us/money/...
You and your "standards" around movie viewing. Whatever happened to the libertarian dream of a free market where everyone has to watch all movies ever deemed a "classic" without judgement to just learn?!?!
😂😱😜
An excellent point that I did not know (about Monopoly, obviously, as I just read about Jenga within the hour :) )
@ctounsel1.bsky.social has alerted me to the fact that #Jenga is, in fact, from a #Swahili verb meaning "to build" or "to construct." And now I can't unsee that for the world's 2nd-best selling board game ever created!
Backstory here: www.museumofplay.org/blog/block-b...
Finishing up a work day in a long work week in the sun of the backyard is, really, the way to go.
Sure it might be back snowing here on Sunday.
But for today. It is Friday. The sun is shining. And the dog is happily snoozing in the sun next to me.
#AcademicLife
Indeed!
When I was on my Fulbright in Bloemfontein, I would often go and work at a coffee shop that was right across the street from the (unmarked) childhood home of Bram Fischer.
Another real one.
Hey #Alaskasky! Podcast part II with Maria Williams, Ian Hartman, & me- produced by Deb Mole at UAA with KRUA- recorded this morning!
We talk about how we became historians- and what it means to navigate and discover things in the archives. We had a blast! 🗃️🎤🎙️📻
#TalkAboutHumanities
Sanitation in the #Lesotho highlands at communities next to the #Polihali construction do not have access to #toilets at the moment.
#LHDA
#LHWP
#Water
Article from @CijLesotho:
lescij.org/2026/04/16/v...
I really don't know what to tell folks if they think any of these proposed reforms from Yale, or anything that we can possibly do here at UW - Madison, will change the Narrative™️ from the right in American politics about universities. We're a century into this stuff. We're not the problem.
Rising costs didn't erode trust. Technology didn't erode trust. Biased admissions that have existed for a century didn't erode trust suddenly in the last decade. The self-censoring & campus speech stuff starts to get at the problem, but again, the root cause of that is not even mentioned here.
I’m under no illusion that our reports will get more views or reads or headlines than Yale’s. But we really need to rethink what are “leading” universities in the United States. (Of course I’m proud of Stony Brook’s former president. SBU’s new one is a gem!)
president.yale.edu/sites/defaul...
Every media outlet covering the Yale report should pair it with this @aft.org @aaup.org initiative!
(All credit to my colleague Surya Parekh who suggested adding the word “indispensable” to the mantra I’ve been using for years. Now it’s going national! #PublicGoodU)
www.aft.org/ae/spring202...
This analysis is, as far as I am concerned, spot on.
Meyer is the greatest of the "white politicians who truly transformed" (many claimed they did...they did not).
And, really, a savvy appointment by the Ramaphose govt to undercut the brash stupidity of the current USA position on RSA.
Meyer & Ramaphosa came to respect each other during the negotiations & became quite friendly.
The appointment of Meyer, who's an Afrikaner, has been widely applauded. Except by far-right Afrikaners who know he'll undercut the lies they've been spreading about being oppressed. Lies Trump believes.
Interesting news from South Africa. The country has appointed Roelf Meyer to be its new ambassador to the US.
Who?
He was the chief negotiator from the apartheid government in the transition to democracy. The current president, Cyril Ramaphosa was his opposite number for the now-ruling ANC.
@profloumoore.bsky.social @hdichter.bsky.social @minakimes.bsky.social @jaysonst.bsky.social @keithlaw.bsky.social @billsimmons.bsky.social, would love a signal boost on the latest episode about my podcast season about baseball at the Manzanar Japanese incarceration camp!
Lesotho 🇱🇸
📸 Philip Rawlins
The latest issue of @africaneconhist.bsky.social is out now Open Access!
Our first issue with a book reviews section, including a review of Richard Reid's new book by @araujohistorian.bsky.social and of Jody Benjamin's new book by Eguono Lucia Edafioka.
Enjoy! 📚🤓
muse.jhu.edu/issue/56637
Another union recognition at another Big 10 institution!
If you really want to understand the Holocaust, then a must-read is "Ordinary Men" by Christopher Browning.
It is a slim, unassuming volume. And after you read it, you will be changed. It explains how it could happen.
And I deliberately do not use the past tense there.
Go read it.
Woohoo, here's my essay with my fav co-author on 30,000 fellowship wins across the Guggenheim, Stanford CASBS, NAEd, National Humanities Center, RSF visiting scholar, and Harvard Radcliffe.
Spoiler: it's the people working at prestigious universities
www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-gug...
And then there are those who introduced their children to the Claire Danes 'Romeo and Juliet' from the 1990s for the first time tonight. It was amazing (and not always in great ways)!
But it brought back a lot of high school memories!
Amazing, thanks
Man, I learn so much from your social media. I had no idea about FD. Thank you, as ever!