“Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen."

And here's an audio love letter to CBS Radio News authored by former CBS radio anchor (and my pal), the great @samlitzinger.bsky.social soundcloud.com/user-5655929...

I’ve said it before and will say it a few more times. When Trump 2.0 came for accreditation I knew we had crossed into a different era of white reclamation. Precise, focused, stealth. Anyway, you probably don’t want these reforms.

these four sexy words again TOP MARGINAL TAX RATE "Restore the top marginal ordinary income tax rate to its pre-2017 level of 39.6% — which, but for Trump’s tax cuts, would have applied to income over $546K this year. Raise the (much lower) top capital-gains rate." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/o...

People will point out that Trump is doing this with a fraction of the GOP which is a fraction of the electorate but it’s also the fraction we privilege above all others in our politics by design and culture.

If you're a Democrat and you confirm someone who refuses to unequivocally say "Joe Biden won the 2020 election," you should lose your job.

Finally exited U-Hausvogteiplatz to take a picture of another good memorial—addresses of tailors, textile offices, and pret-a-porter houses, many of them Jewish, that used to huddle around here. Subtle but meaningful and no sentimental kitsch

In claiming to address a crisis moment for universities, the Yale Report never mentions historic levels of government censorship in higher ed and political restrictions on academic freedom. That New McCarthyism simply isn't part of the reality that it describes. 2/5

I really believe the Inquirer is doing the best job of any local newspaper in the country at covering the buildup to the World Cup. As the games draw closer, your subscriptions can help us finish the job. If you aren't a subscriber, it's just $1 for the first 6 months: inquirer.com/tannenwald

Every Democrat needs to hit a microphone right now to say this is gross corruption, we're paying attention to who gets paid off here and we'll do everything we can to claw it back.

For my birthday this year, I had the honor of helping launch Made by History at its new home with the Philadelphia Inquirer. I'm grateful to Carly and the other editors for helping me shape the piece. In short, what we need now are more historical markers, not fewer.

M holds up so well even today. Ironically for a film about a child murderer it’s got a wonderful dark sense of humour about the dysfunctions of the modern city.

What’s frustrating about Obama using the “college seminar” as a foil is that he very obviously means the humanities. Yet ”college seminars” in math or physics are actually completely unintelligible to the layperson and that’s a good thing. Complex ideas and specialized vocabulary are good.

This isn’t like letting kids use a calculator, this is more akin to letting kids smoke. The whole point here is pushing an addictive product and getting kids hooked on it early—not educational best practices. www.newyorker.com/culture/prog...

The Voting Rights Act is essentially dead and it’s quite possible that we will, like when a similar SCOTUS gutted civil rights at the fall of Reconstruction, see a disappearance of much of the Black congressional representation, especially in the most heavily Black states, which are in the South.

Obsessed with these maps of car dependency in various cities. Paris is a little misleading as the city limits (shown) is only part of the larger urban area — but within those city limits, which is "Paris" as people think of it, it truly is easier to get around without a car. arxiv.org/pdf/2604.01019

The United States now has the most government restrictions on academic freedom of any high-income country. www.chemistryworld.com/news/academi... Raw data from @vdeminstitute.bsky.social —> academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...

Perfect case of what we termed academic content assetization in a recent paper, where HE institutions use their learning platforms to gather teaching materials from staff to then repurpose as future revenue-generating derivative products

"A history professor course could not allocate instructional time to the Stonewall riots or the gay rights movement. If a U.S. history textbook includes a chapter on the AIDS crisis, the professor must skip it." www.erininthemorning.com/p/texas-tech...

Remarkable. A powerful meditation on the choices that produce violence—and how we tell them.

A mass shooting that took the lives of eight children should stop this country in its tracks. Instead, the Shreveport tragedy disappeared from the headlines in a day. We cannot allow this level of violence to fade into background noise. Ending America’s gun‑violence epidemic is a moral oblligation.

“That Rümeysa felt she had to return to Turkey to escape the shadow of state violence says everything you need to know about the state of free speech and academic freedom in this country,” said Ramya Krishnan, an attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/04/17/m...

It turns out that when you treat students life consumers and don't even acknowledge the full-throated rightwing attack on higher education, you fail to build trust.

"the colleges that dominate the headlines are not the colleges that most Americans attend their core mission: to serve students from all backgrounds, at a price families can actually afford, prepare graduates for real careers and meaningful lives." www.geneseo.edu/enrollment-m...

It's hard to track amidst all the chaos but there is no combination of words to adequately describe how horrific this mining would be. More here: www.savetheboundarywaters.org

When your model of government imagines the people it ostensibly represents as “customers” rather than the public.

The time spent learning about right-wingers is stolen from us and from everything that could make the world less full of right-wingers. I resent them and reject their all-consuming attention economy and wish more other people would too

The AHR has launched a new project, Authoritarianism 101: A Global History, as part of the #AHRSyllabus series. Explore 30 modules from different contributors and key questions on authoritarianism—each paired with primary sources and teaching resources. The first twelve modules are now live.

Weird question for a future column I want to write but so far utterly stymied. I'm looking for U.S. soccer (football) supporters of Cote d' Ivorie (Ivory Coast), or even better, a group of U.S. supporters. The country plays 2 games in Philly (I am attending one) and faces a Trump travel ban

Magyar won with an emphasis on corruption and the rule of law. Good lessons. It wasn't just "we will improve the economy". It was "these people are stealing from you and we will put them in jail."

I hope more people focus on the import of this turnout last year. Not least bc standing up to bigotry can itself be a rallying cry.

Can Hungarian higher ed hope to come back if Orban is defeated? Andrea Petö had a front row seat 16 years back. She has this to say going forward: verfassungsblog.de/after-collap...

Just launched, a gathering of resources for teaching & thinking the World Cup, featuring contributions from @brendaelsey.bsky.social @seanjacobs.bsky.social, Peter Alegi & Martha Saveedra. worldcupsyllabus.com

I've studied so many concentration camps through history that held vulnerable people in just this kind of crowded squalor. You demonize people, you demand more arrests, this is what you get. It already has its own budget and its own momentum, and is on track to go much further, unless we stop it.

Per WSJ today: "In one conversation with advisers in the dining room next to the Oval Office last year, Trump said he would host a news conference and announce mass pardons before he left office..."

The Founders: “don’t worry, the presidential pardon won’t be misused, because OBVIOUSLY Congress will impeach any POTUS who does so.”

And the remedy for presidents who promise mass pardons to lawbreaking officials to encourage them to break the law is, as it has always been, impeachment and removal.

"Surely Minnesotans won't fight back," racists in 1863 and 2026

Americans like their morally righteous heroes when they are safely dead and no longer a threat to existing power structures.

"In that sense, local journalism is not just another industry — it is civic infrastructure, akin to libraries and schools: a public good that cannot be sustained by the market alone." www.inquirer.com/opinion/comm...

Please share and/or consider applying to the Cambridge Amplifying Grant for underrepresented scholars. Applications are due next Monday, April 13. www.cambridge.org/us/universit.... This is a great opportunity!

As everyone focuses on Trump and the U.S., Israel just continues committing war crimes with impunity.

I'm on the train back to DC – I call on all my colleagues to come back, too. Congress must vote to end this war IMMEDIATELY.

This, exactly.

Donald Trump must be removed from office for threatening war crimes and genocide. Speaker Johnson: bring the House back into session. Invoking the 25th Amendment and impeachment must be on the table, but Congress should also move on a War Powers resolution to stop Trump.