Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.

Massive Attack / Tom Waits - Boots on the Ground YouTube video by Massive Attack

Tom Waits has released his first new music in 15 years (am I that old?). It's a protest song in collaboration with Massive Attack

youtu.be/L-57FrioeuE?...

ACTION ALERTS:

Urge your senators to support FY27 funding for Title VI and Fulbright-Hays
nhalliance.quorum.us/campaign/160...

Urge your senators to restore funding to FY25 levels for Bureau of Educational and Cultural Exchange
www.languagepolicy.org/take-action

More: tinyurl.com/aseeesaction

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

Brutal night in Kyiv, Odesa, other Ukrainian cities pounded by Russian drone (and probably missile) attacks. 4 killed in Kyiv; 48 wounded; 8 killed in Odesa; 16 wounded.

IMO excellent and v interesting. My thoughts in thread below but key point: “If entrenchment both increases miscalculation risk and makes the autocrat more resilient to the consequences of miscalculation, then we should expect more “self-evidently stupid” decisions from autocrats going forward.” 1/x

Strong agree w this: “The personalism lit focuses on the institutional pathologies & incentives of personalism, but not on the leaders themselves. I don't think you can explain the war without looking at Putin's mentality.” See also Trump or Hitler. And not just bad guys: see also Churchill or FDR.

Putin’s Agency and the Decision for War – Riddle Russia Julian G. Waller revisits the underlying causes of the Russo-Ukrainian War

In a similar vein, also from Riddle Russia, is a May '23 piece from Julian Waller. Waller's argument about the institutional context is similar to Seva's, but also emphasizes "Putin’s growing obsessions and grievances." 3/3

Has Putin Lost It? – Riddle Russia Brian Taylor on the deep-seated mentality behind Putin’s war

The personalism lit focuses on the institutional pathologies & incentives of personalism, but not on the leaders themselves. I don't think you can explain the war without looking at Putin's mentality. Here is my effort from Mar '22 to explain how this fed into the war (I did NOT predict it). 2/3

Another thoughtful piece from Seva. The argument is largely built around the Russian 2022 invasion of Ukraine and why so many experts got it wrong.

My one quibble is that IMO, and this is a more general issue, the literature on personalist autocracies is short on personality. 1/3

It also says a lot about the poverty of this administration's achievements that stopping funding for Ukraine is the one that Vance is most proud of

We need more specialists on Eastern Europe and Eurasia! In an increasingly globalized world, area studies expertise is more important than ever.

This week, ASEEES is joining ACLS to #TalkAboutHumanities and #TalkAboutSocialSciences.

#TalkAboutSocialSciences #TalkAboutHumanities #aseees

"Language learning and capacity building are slow processes and they cannot be improvised in a crisis. A decision not to invest today will produce its consequences years down the line.
The countries that invest in foreign language capabilities will hold significant advantages."

Forgotten here, alas

can't believe how libs are trying to spin this image as blasphemous. here's a breakdown for all the morons who don't instantly see this as the Doctor Trump pic it clearly is.

After Orban’s defeat, the #EU must unblock the €90bn loan to Ukraine and pass the 20th #sanctions on Russia.

#Hungary still imported €297m of Russian fossil fuels in March.

People are still dying every day, and allies must give Ukraine a fighting chance to win.

Orban showing more class and more respect for democracy than Trump did in 2020.

Orban is cooked.

A guy asking ChatGPT to review a series of fart sound effects and getting a serious kiss ass response that calls it atmospheric

I can't stop laughing at this post. It's perfect.

The Supreme Court said Memorial is "clearly anti-Russian in nature & aimed at destroying the basic foundations ​of Russian statehood.. & eroding historical, cultural, spiritual, & moral values."

Which implies that 🇷🇺's values are state violence & repression. IMO it's the Court that is anti-Russian.

Terrorist and former "people's governor of Donbas," Pavel Gubarev, confirmed that the so-called "uprising" in Ukraine's Donbas in 2014 was entirely funded and coordinated by Moscow and carried out with Russia's military involvement.

NATO Did Not Cause Putin’s Imperial War Published in The Washington Quarterly (Vol. 48, No. 4, 2025)

Lacking Jim's modesty, jumping into the replies to promote our article on why NATO did not cause Putin's imperial war, where we discuss his point about how Ukraine was not on track to join NATO prior to 2022 (and thus was not the cause of the war).

Every step NATO has taken with Ukraine since 2008 has been to avoid taking the country into the alliance. So no, it’s not happening anytime soon.

Yes, Trump Administration, please move US bases out of Spain and into Poland, Romania, and Lithuania to punish NATO.

At least at my school, I would cite 2 key issues:
- University admin put anyone involved in organizing the Palestine protests/encampment on probation. 1 more violation and they can be expelled.
- Many of the students involved in organizing those efforts are int'l students, & fear losing their visas.

Henceforth Elbridge Colby will be known as "The Bridge of Avignon," replacing his previous nickname, "The Cheese"

Including who he saw on Fox

He was talking about Iran, of course.

t.me/dimsmirnov17...

Peskov today. Very self-aware.

"We, of course, welcomed the ceasefire news with satisfaction. We welcome the decision not to go further along the road of armed escalation. Even more so not to strike civilian targets and economic infrastructure… We think that is very important, very important."