People around the world are looking, and they are learning that the US is not a reliable partner. It isn’t one now, and it wasn’t one with previous administrations either. They are learning that collaborating with the US only leads to death and despair for them and their loved ones.

Just started rereading the Lord of the Rings, because that is what one does when the world is going to shit.

In Trump’s Orbit, Women Aren’t the Only Ones Concerned About Their Looks

They mocked the field of gender studies as meaningless, but I think they really just knew it was onto them.

They're the softest bunch of insecure little manchildren play-acting what they have been told is manly and macho.

(gift link)

Billboard calls for better pay for University of Alabama employees: ‘Where legends aren’t paid’ A billboard and union rally in Tuscaloosa demand better pay and cost-of-living adjustments for UA employees.

Nice campaign by UCWAL in a state where union organizing is pretty hard. www.al.com/news/2026/04...

Every city should do this. Every. Single. City.

Sometimes I feel I don't know what I am doing. Then I talk to a colleague I admire and respect, find out we are on the same page about a lot of things, and it makes me feel so much better.

I still prefer the self-doubt to thinking I am the king of the universe. It keeps me honest.

Edward R. Murrow Broadcast from Buchenwald, April 15, 1945 A digital tool for studying the Holocaust through unique, original sources.

Just had my office full of students, gathered around to listen to the radio, much like Americans on the home front did, absorbing with stunned silence Edward R. Murrow’s 1945 report from the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp.

Listen here: perspectives.ushmm.org/item/edward-...

The Red Historia Venezuela website has added a collection of indexes and guides for the Venezuela documents within the Archivo General de Indias. A huge undertaking in which @gonzalezsilen.bsky.social has played a very important role. You can find it here: redhistoriave.org/real-audienc...

I'm just a simple country doctor and not an economist, but this seems really bad

Apart from the fact it is a public service and is not supposed to make money, let’s compare those numbers with an audit of the US military… Oh that is right. No one has ever done one in recent memory.

My wife got tenure. It’s a good day.

Mayflower hero was secretly sold into slavery, hidden files reveal Crumbling documents discovered in a Malaga archive expose how an English merchant used a legal fiction to sell Squanto and other indigenous captives in 1614

First Nations Mayflower hero was sold into slavery, files in Malaga Archives reveal

www.thetimes.com/article/1306...

A day in the life of a 19-year-old in ICE detention: ‘I feel that this nightmare is not going to end’

Olivia has been detained for months at the sprawling Dilley center in Texas. She has lost 20lb, and wakes up every day with a headache

Gov. Spanberger signs bill to end the renewal of Robert E. Lee license plates in Virginia RICHMOND, Va. (WAVY) — Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed Del. Dan Helmer’s bill to end the renewal of commemorative Robert E. Lee license plates in Virginia Wednesday, according to a press…

Lee defeated again, just in time for the April 9 anniversary of his surrender at Appomattox! www.wavy.com/news/virgini...

And if you are a historian and want the link of the repository for your students, please DM me too. This is a project to benefit a new generation of scholars and the field as a whole.

If you are a colonial Latin Americanist and don’t know what to do with your digital docs from old projects, please consider donating them to the Iberian Colonial Repository, where MA or PhD student can give these docs a second life in their own research projects! DM me for questions.

Thanks Anne! Hello Jacqueline. I started the Iberian colonial Repository precisely to try to bring together archival digital contents historians had used in previous research projects that they no longer need. Those collections could be very useful for MA or PhD students.

Painful.

Dear academic friends: if you have TIAA or similar, don’t look at your latest quarterly statement. You are welcome.

Picture of a row of pink azaleas

Closeup of a bush of pink azaleas

The azaleas are doing amazing all around campus!

$50 million gift to advance UChicago research and support faculty in AI Gift from Rika and Joe Mansueto launches a nearly $200 million initiative to recruit and retain leading scholars across disciplines

They could have bailed out the Division of the Humanities. But no. news.uchicago.edu/story/50-mil...

I think at this point, the one thing that administrators have taught us to do very well is to mistrust their motives when faced with any restructuring plan they come up with (or any plan they have really)

Hard to know w/out the full plan--though one could certainly make some educated guesses-- what's driving this.

What one can say absent any other info is that "student demand"--cited here as the diriving force for the new Syracuse--is an extraordinarily elastic construct no matter how you "measure."

Another classic I use in class, and it’s a primary source: www.beacon.org/Lieutenant-N...

Malintzin's Choices Malintzin was the indigenous woman who translated for Hernando Cortés in his dealings with the Aztec emperor Moctezuma in the days of 1519 to 1521. Malintzi...

This one is fantastic, and a pretty quick read. www.unmpress.com/978082633406...

Sorry! Sarcasm sometimes gets lost in here. Apologies!

I have a few hours to work on my research, and I spend most of my day writing footnotes for the reader. This job is really fascinating sometimes.

Thanks but I am sorry, but that is certainly not it.

Good point. It's a travel narrative from a Spanish peasant dictated in 1704

1704