Would really be something if the journos at 60 Minutes sued their EIC for defaming them

The choice by ADL and other legacy institutions, to demonize protest against Israel as antisemitic, created a wide opening for Vance et al to deny that antisemitism exists, while at the same time welcoming anti-semites like Fuentes into their fold.

The most consistently anti-antisemitic demographic in the US is the one that condemns the Israeli genocide against Palestinians because it insists that racism and ethnonationalism are always wrong, no matter who enacts them nor who their victims may be.

This is wrong. There is widespread antisemitism in the US, AND there is also deliberate conflation by Democrats and GOP of criticism of the genocidal, apartheid Israeli government and its occupation of Palestinian lands with antisemitism––itself an ultimately antisemitic move.

Did someone suggest to this guy that the reason he’s almost universally despised is because of his skin tone?

I suspect over-ear headphones playing pop music—if marketed similarly—would yield more or less comparable “results.“ The biotechnization of mental health is going to be an absurd farce that makes billions in profits while further corroding social and psychic life.

There should be more pure research positions in the social sciences and humanities and also more pure teaching positions. These are distinct skill sets. Many are excellent at one and not the other. Each should be valued. A university norm that one excel in both is unnecessary.

A decade ago, as we came out of the Obama era and near-total neoliberal capture of universities, the call among left scholars was increasingly organized around abolition. Now, as we face threats from the far right, liberal consolidation and narrow internalism seems to be the limit of imagination.

Putting aside that this portrait of total surveillance is not in fact a desirable reality, this also entirely overlooks the fact that we as humans depend––for our most basic psychic and social functioning––upon forgetting and oblivion, which is far harder than remembering.

No amount of reform in US medical education can compensate for the fact that US medical students are being trained to perform and succeed in a fundamentally corrupt, profiteering, ethically bankrupt industry organized around maximization of personal status and income.

How the nyt used the Cass report to restart its anti-trans propaganda campaign in the US: Coverage of the report was initially assigned to a nyt UK correspondent, usual practice for a UK report. The story being prepared cited critics who called Cass a shoddy, political document that defied science

There’s an open position for a pro-fascist cop to oversee students at Harvard Medical School and make sure they don’t oppose things like genocide. From what I know of the US medical profession, there will be no dearth of applicants.

Harvard's "expert review" of Mary Bassett's FXB Center for Health & Human Rights produced no written report, only a private verbal summary. Their charge was to "rigorously evaluate" FXB and offer "candid, forthright, and thorough feedback"... with no paper trail. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“On the issues where academic freedom and institutional integrity are most under attack and where genuine resistance matters most, Harvard has increasingly simply capitulated to power.” And Harvard has not just capitulated; it’s eagerly collaborated. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

My top national security targets Housing Food Healthcare If you can do random things in the name of national security without congressional approval, those would be my targets

I was just asked by a journalist for comment on the saga with US academic journals that began after I made this letter public last spring. My comments, which I cannot imagine will be published in full, are pasted below (and are very slightly edited for clarity):

Last week, Alan Garber oversaw the firing of Mary Bassett – long hated by genocide-deniers and Israeli-state advocates Larry Summers and Jeff Flier – for refusing to exclude Palestinians from the work of public health and human rights. Flier is pleased. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

ICE has its own Health Services Corps, which it operates in 17 large detention centers, but an increasingly large majority of people are held in private detention centers where the healthcare is operated by contractor or subcontractor, where ICE basically just manages the insurance claims.

As the discourse makes another loop. archive.is/x3Tk3

Earlier this year, I had to withdraw a publication on genocide hours before it was to be published due to senior Harvard administrators’ threats to my Harvard-employed coauthor. Last week, they fired Mary Bassett for refusing to ignore Palestine. My response: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Harvard is systematically purging scholars who are critical of Netanyahu as a token of appeasement to Jonathan Greenblatt and the ADL. The move starts with human rights advocates who have been targeted by ADL. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Mary Bassett shouldn’t just be reinstated at Harvard. If the TH Chan School of Public Health (or Harvard writ large) is to have any credibility, Dean Andrea Baccarelli should be fired for firing her. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It seems rather obvious to me that Dr Mary Bassett should be the Dean of Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health rather than subject to the racism and cowardice of the current Dean, Provost, and President. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Harvard faculty, students, and alumni should be demanding answers on Harvard’s profound corruption from newly appointed President Alan Garber. But what’s happening at Harvard also has major implications far beyond it. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

As I wrote today for The Guardian, this despicable move coincides with Harvard's firing of Mary Bassett at Larry Summers' behest, after which Alan Garber––who oversaw that––has now been rewarded with an appointment as permanent president of Harvard. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Last week, at Larry Summers’ behest, Harvard oversaw repression of academic freedom, human rights, and global health by firing Mary Bassett for refusing to ignore Palestine. This week, Alan Garber was rewarded with an appointment as permanent president of Harvard. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

When ICE agents raid homes, when Medicaid is stripped from millions, and when unhoused populations are criminalized by Trump or Gavin Newsom, both politicians and media speak of “policy,” not “violence.” In this scheme, “political violence” can’t be what the system itself does. @eric-reinhart.com

Grotesque as Summers has been, including for decades before Epstein emails revealed he was trying to extract sex from a mentee, the fact remains that he's enormously influential among Harvard administrators, including Alan Garber and his decision to fire Mary Bassett. jacobin.com/2025/12/larr...

Lovely Larry. jacobin.com/2025/12/larr...

Making every significant government official’s job contingent upon personal loyalty to the president seems like it might have some downsides for credibility.

If the FBI finds that the person who killed students at Brown was clearly inspired by Trump and JD Vance’s attacks on universities and their declarations that universities are “the enemy of the people,” do we have any reason to believe FBI Director Kash Patel wouldn’t just help him escape detection?

Harvard's ethical guardian––Epstein-mentee Larry Summers––demanded a leadership change at FXB Center for Health & Human Rights because it refused to ignore a genocide. Alan Garber complied. Today, the Harvard Corporation rewards Garber with appointment as permanent president. Scandalous corruption.

Alan Garber has behaved as instructed, dismissing Mary Bassett at Larry Summers‘ behest and today being rewarded for it by the Corporation with an indefinite appointment as Harvard’s president. A grotesque institution designed to serve power over truth or justice.

Is it political violence when students get killed after JD Vance and Trump call universities the enemy of the people? Or is that just "tragedy" while only the murder of far-right advocates of violence like Charlie Kirk qualifies for political recognition? www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

It's quite striking that all people who think they're so clever to say "why are they protesting this genocide but not that genocide?" are themselves protesting nothing at all.

"Jobs including doctors, nurses and support staff," it says. They intend to drive up patient wait times to create dissatisfaction with VA, leading veterans to, presumably, call for privatization. They can't suggest privatization now because veterans love VA. So they intend to turn vets against it.

“Universities are the enemy.” -JD Vance There’s a mass shooting happening at Brown University right now. Vance and Trump are sending thoughts and prayers.

JD Vance has repeatedly said "universities are the enemy" (giving a speech with this title in 2021) and called professors and places like Brown "the enemy of the people." Trump's White House continues to label students who read and protest against war crimes "terrorists." That has consequences.

If we do not have rights to dissent, protest, and free speech when it comes to opposing a genocide in Gaza, then we have no rights to dissent, protest, or free speech in general. If you aren’t fighting for these things when it comes to Gaza, you’re capitulating to and abetting authoritarianism.

The reasons US students and others are especially insistent on protesting genocide in Gaza are obvious and correct: 1) the US bears direct responsibility for it, and 2) US institutions are enforcing intensive repression of dissent, free speech, and truth regarding Gaza, not Sudan or elsewhere.

Harvard's depravity keeps underlining a basic reality: "medical doctors are no less vulnerable than others to being absorbed into violent, nationalistic ideologies and misusing their training and power to inflict suffering rather than to support care and justice." www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

All the US-based 'global health' orgs that made calculated decisions to stay silent regarding a US-backed genocide in Gaza due to fear of upsetting their Zionist donors played a major role in creating the authoritarian conditions under which someone like Mary Bassett can now be fired by Harvard.

By extension, the ones who “made it” during this era will overwhelmingly be the ones who decided crude personal interest mattered more than intellectual or ethical integrity.

If Harvard can take down Mary Bassett—arguably the most credible ethical voice in medicine and global public health—for simply including Palestinians in the work of health and human rights, imagine what they’re doing to young people without nearly the protections Mary had.

There’s a generation of principled scholars, writers, and artists who will never be awarded positions to then be recognized as such because they decided that belonging to institutions that condition rewards on silence and compliance amid a genocide was not worth the cost.

LOL... Pentagon released a new AI military chatbot and it immediately pointed out that Pete Hegseth is a war criminal. abovethelaw.com/2025/12/pent...

White House Refuses to Rule Out Summary Executions of People on Its Secret Domestic Terrorist List The Trump administration ignored questions about whether it would order the killings of those on its NSPM-7 list — even while answering our other queries. theintercept.com/2025/12/12/t...

Harvard University administrators have always been a boot-licking bunch—an especially bad trait amid rising fascism and genocidal Zionism. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

The point of accumulating political power ought to be to do what’s right. Otherwise you’re just hoarding power for its own sake. Stopping the government from sending innocent people to a foreign prison where they were beaten, sexually assaulted, and tortured was the right thing to do.