this sounds excellent! Looking forward to reading!

It is publication day!! 🎂 If you want to understand why the white patriarchal family is so central to American conservatism today, take a dive through history with me. And enjoy 30% with code EXH30 #amhistory #polsci #conservatism #legalhistory #oah26 @princetonupress.bsky.social

flipping through a proof of yet another book from a somewhat well known liberal voice diagnosing “where the left went wrong” and i’m struck, again, by the fact that a large part (if not most) of the liberal commentariat simply does not believe that the political right has agency.

First, stop it. We are <constantly> looking in the mirror & if you haven’t done any of the trainings or gone to any of the talks/meeting about that, I can’t help you.

Second, we don’t have time. We’re constantly meeting about how to survive as 25% of our budget is illegally cut off by the fascists.

The Strait of Hormuz is only open during full professor office hours or by appointment.

So we should just cross our fingers & hope whoever we elect will follow through on championing court reform? Which Democratic candidate do you trust to do that without an explicit pledge & intense pressure from their devoted partisans?

If someone gets elected and says on Day 1, “I’m expanding the Court!” after never addressing the issue in their campaign, the question is dead on arrival. The GOP resistance to the idea will be well-funded and fierce. It will take real persuasion during campaign season to build a movement

no, most of the public doesn’t understand the Court.

but that’s why Dem candidates still need to campaign on SCOTUS reform. They need to build political will for the idea *now,* not just after they’re elected. Campaigns must use their platforms to say: *nothing* we do matters if we don’t fix this.

And on the basis of this -- a pure policy disagreement about which he was demonstrably, wildly wrong -- Roberts dreamed up "major questions doctrine" & thereby rendered US law one big game of Calvinball.

You just can't exaggerate how low, how scummy, how dumb, how fraudulent it all was.

What do people actually think Nelson Mandela and Gandhi were demanding, vis-a-vis the South African and British governments, respectively?

Because it wasn't demilitarized quasi-autonomous economic enterprise zones under foreign security supervision.

Do you know what that does to an economy?

I wish Americans understood that cars provide freedom to cover long distances at the expense of not being able to easily get *close* to anything worth visiting

“I’d love to hang out, but I don’t know where I’d leave my 3,500 pound monstrosity of metal, rubber, & glass.”
- common American problem

In the name of “academic parity,” I’ve been assigned far more conservative texts than liberal ones. Which tracks, since conservatives cry suppression at even mild pushback. If anything, hum/soc sci have over-platformed these views to avoid bias accusations - only to be accused anyway 🤷🏻‍♀️

The Yale report on trust in higher education has some good recommendations for reforms in many areas that I hope Yale and other schools implement.

But its diagnosis is oddly silent about what I suspect is the most important force driving the decline in trust in higher education: political attack.

Starmer? When he talks it’s more like Stammer, am I right

Exactly one year ago today:

It’s hard to know how these numbers would shake out in practice. 30 years ago who would’ve expected New Mexico to be this reliably blue, or Missouri this red, or for Georgia to end up in the Democratic column so often? People move around, people change, coalitions shift.

Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity Demands for “viewpoint diversity,” a pillar of the Right’s strategy to remake higher education, collide with the pursuit of truth.

calls for “viewpoint diversity” are little more than demands for a quota system for political conservatives who otherwise could not hack it www.aaup.org/academe/issu...

I don’t see his bumbling campaign as a separate issue from his being a Nazi. He wouldn’t be stepping on so many rakes if he didn’t leave f’ing rakes all over the yard for 40 years

what the rake-stepping communicates to me is a sort of petulance: ‘I’m too obtuse to have anticipated people would care about my past, I’m annoyed anyone’s bothered by it, I don’t care enough to even try to furnish convincing explanations for my behavior. I’m fine with people inferring I’m a Nazi.”

can progressive Mainers seriously not find a candidate less prone to stepping on rakes?

A delightful history (with superb digital sleuthing) of objects so ubiquitous they seem invisible:

my issue with the ‘vibecession’ conclusion: folks are citing it to argue economic hardship claims are illusory / wholly disconnected from reality. Whereas it could also be the case that folks are finally noticing very real indignities & iniquities they didn’t previously attend to. (If so, why now?)

Just confirming that Made by History will now be back up and running in the next few weeks with a new home and new partners at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Exciting! So, if you have pitches, now's the time to start sending them to madebyhistory@inquirer.com 🗃️ #MadebyHistory #HistoryMatters

Shorter SOUTHCOM:

On April 13, the military fired a missile at civilians in international waters who have not been accused of a crime and are not belligerents against the United States. We hope our fancy language distracts you from the fact this is a definitional war crime.

The Overton Window really flew right past Drudge Report like ten years ago

Or maybe she has an opinion but doesn’t want to share it because she knows the exchange will be seen by millions of people (which seems reasonable to me)

My favorite line was “stick to morality” … ummm just exactly what was Pope Leo doing JD ?

the audacity of someone who converted to Catholicism *7 years ago* to think he can lecture the ACTUAL POPE about God’s business is next-level cuckoo bananas