Happy Publication day to the Church Committee Report! Published for the first time in an abridged format and by a major press for it's depressingly relevant 50th anniversary.

Finally got my author's copies of Brown and Blue! Super proud of this accomplishment.

I think about this basically every day now.

I think about this @bostonreview.bsky.social essay SO frequently. www.bostonreview.net/articles/blu...

"The Minnesota AFL-CIO joins with our many elected officials in calling for ICE to leave Minnesota – they are making our communities less safe." @mnaflcio.org

If we had anything resembling an opposition party, its leaders would demand the dissolution of not just ICE but also DHS, a Department that’s only slightly older than many college students.

From an email to one of our faculty members.... Not even Plato can escape censorship at Texas A&M!

Definitely, UNC Press! The Work of Empire: War, Occupation, and the Making of American Colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines uncpress.org/978146966032...

If you're attending the upcoming @historians.org or @modernlanguage.bsky.social meetings, join sessions related to the Doctoral Futures initiative: https://bit.ly/3YtXXb7

Are you attending #AHA26? Do you have plans for the AHA Business Meeting yet? Want a buddy to come with? Write me and we'll head there together! Sat Jan 10 5:15pm. H4P and HPAD calling for AHA members to challenge recent antidemocratic moves by the outgoing Council. See y'all there!

"the more I explore this topic, the more I realise how important the experience of captivity was to so many intellectual careers and work in the middle of the twentieth century." Great essay. I only learned about Braudel's captivity a few days ago, and I have been thinking about this ever since.

“I do not want to invade Mexico with a military force...I asked your consent to send Texas Rangers, who are peace officers, in pursuit of those who are constantly transgressing our laws.” - Feb 1914, Tex Governor telegrams Sec of State, William Jennings Bryan such a deep history

Well we knew this would happen eventually. After hearing background audio from Disney's Princess and the Frog, an AI generated police report based on body camera audio reported that the officer transformed into a frog.

"The commodification of what should be social goods is insured by prisons and police." re-uppping my @nplusonemag.com subscription because I just discovered an Amna Akbar piece I missed in new-parent haze. www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

"Beautifully written and wonderfully insightful," BLACK EXCELLENCE by @danielle-wiggins.bsky.social offers a provocative new history of modern black liberalism. Order today and save 40% with code PENN-HOLIDAY25 during our Holiday Sale! bit.ly/4rXzDfn

Brown has over 1,200 cameras and it wasn’t enough because cameras are a security blanket we’ve all been sold. They don’t prevent crimes and they barely solve crimes but in the meantime surveillance companies got rich and no one had to address the societal root causes of crime and violence.

"The monument is among eight new monuments funded through a partnership between DCASE and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. A decision on the selection for the monument is slated for January 2026, with fruition expected in 2026-27" www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/12/r... [gift link]

Oscar Winberg, author of ARCHIE BUNKER FOR PRESIDENT, writes about Rob Reiner's legacy and how All in the Family paved the way for shows like Southpark to use humor to criticize those in power in this Time Made by History op-ed ⤵️ time.com/7340699/rob-...

🚨We’ve added three new articles to Issue No. 8! 🚨 Maya Meredith interviews Zohran Mamdani’s political director Afua Atta-Mensah ; Peyton Dix profiles the novelist Angela Flournoy; and five writers discuss Ryan Coogler’s Sinners hammerandhope.org

Being the First in Your Family to attend College Is Not a Deficit—It’s a Distinction www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view... "It means learning how to do college while doing college—a dual curriculum that tests not only intellect but resilience, adaptability and faith." #edusky #firstgen #college

From the Oklahoma U student paper: the school is now saying it will automatically suspend faculty (with pay) in response to student complaints www.oudaily.com/news/ou-poli...

This Day in Labor History: December 11, 1886. The Colored Farmers’ Alliance was established in Lovelady in Houston County, Texas. Let's talk about this brave attempt for Black rural organizing in the Jim Crow South!

UT Austin “solicited a months-old search firm with conservative ties to find candidates for the next dean. It will work with an internal committee that has only one faculty member who is not also an administrative leader, a significant change from past searches.” www.statesman.com/news/educati...

1/ It was the height of the pandemic, but Phoebe Putney Memorial had good news: At 99 years old, Maude Burke was the oldest COVID-19 patient they were discharging. In a video, staff waved balloons, celebrating Burke beating the disease. There was one issue: It wasn’t true. 🧵

Hey folks 👋 I'm the reporter who revealed immigration agents detained 170+ citizens this year My fellowship w/ProPublica has been incredible, but it wraps January. I'm looking for my next gig. Please reach out to share leads & opportunities! [email protected] www.propublica.org/people/nicol...

beautiful “There is limited benefit in viewing the saga as a conspiracy…Though human hands lit those fires, they were set in motion by forces far more impersonal and far-reaching than a mere criminal cabal. The carnage was the bitter fruit of financialization….Less whodunit than whatdunit.”

“I really believe that if I didn’t have [my] birth certificate, I would be somewhere in a facility,” one resident said, recalling that one of the armed federal agents who stopped him on the street aggressively asked if he was from Ethiopia or Ghana. With @mlk50.com

I'm done with teaching for the semester, but I'm in the middle of grading. To procrastinate grading the book reviews that I require for my American Legal History course I'm gonna make a thread of all the books that the students reviewed.

Philly-area grad students (regardless of institution) -- I have 1-2 spots in my spring seminar, Readings in the History of Capitalism. We'll meet on Wednesdays from 2-4:20. Email or DM if you're interested.

Today! All books in @columbiaup.bsky.social Black Lives in the Diaspora series are 50% off, including THE SOUTHS IN HER by @nimojo.bsky.social; AFTERLIVES OF THE PLANTATION by Jarvis McInnis; and SCATTERED & FUGITIVE THINGS by @lehelton.bsky.social. bit.ly/4rupQx9

Who else is up ordering the church committee report

After J. Edgar Hoover cast the civil rights leader as a “liar,” NYPD’s spy unit heeded the call. interc.pt/4pvs8Ko

BOOOOK! BLURBSSSS! uncpress.org/978146968948...

*Mississippi Law* gets The Page 99 Test. I get to tell a little bit about Columbus, Mississippi's amazing activist power couple from the 1950s, Emmett and Flora Stringer page99test.blogspot.com/2025/11/

Toni Morrison: inthesetimes.com/article/toni...

Thanks to proofreader privilege, I got to read this book a couple months ago, and it's SO GOOD. As I said to Beans in my email with the marked-up proofs, "I laughed, I cried, I learned a ton, I feel simultaneously weirder and less weird about identifying as cis."

"It is cruelty & political indoctrination. I'd need to tell my students that ‘What you came here to learn, I’m unable to tell you, because I’m restricted to tell you that information, even though such knowledge is available at every major university in this world.’" — Leonard Bright, AAUP TAMU

In Skrmetti, the Supreme Court put hundreds of thousands of kids in harm's way while inflicting damage on the larger project of sex equality for all. My latest in Harvard Law Review: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

and in this case a VERY sad horse

The Dallas Morning News printed my letter about the TX A&M regents' bad & wasteful rule change. FWIW I think that, in addition to academic freedom, administrative bloat & overreach should be a regular theme in attacking this stuff. It's got a lot of rhetorical advantages and happens to also be true.

We have this fabulous edited volume on hidden histories of unauthorized European immigration to the US, and this afternoon/evening I'll be sharing about my chapter on the Irish. These histories show that illegalization is a CHOICE. Tune in to learn more.

wp.me/pejn4k-1nU Severe restrictions on the teaching of race, gender, and activism being considered tomorrow by the Texas A&M board of regents. They want to control university education the way they control K-12. Our statement ⬇️

“The AAUP urges the Texas A&M Board of Regents to reject the proposal and protect the reputation, integrity, and ability of Texas A&M to perform the functions of higher education and remain an institution dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and committed to safeguarding students’ rights to learn.”

⏰ Please send letters to the A&M Board of Regents today by 11:59 pm as their meeting is scheduled to begin tomorrow‼️ Details are below, and please remember to put in the agenda item you are commenting on in the subject line of the email, which is agenda item no 4.2.

Save 30% on #NewBook "Senghor: Writings on Politics," which brings Léopold Sédar Senghor’s most vital essays, speeches, and political writings to English-language readers for the first time. It's edited & translated by Yohann C. Ripert. buff.ly/lCkuIeY

📢📢 We are proud to stand in solidarity today at this Texas State Employees Union rally for Dr. Tom Alter who was unjustly fired from Texas State University for exercising his right to free speech. The Texas State Board of Regents must reinstate Dr. Alter immediately! ✊

🔔 NEW: “The Texas State University chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-TXST) has issued a formal appeal urging the Texas State University System Board Regents to abide by its own rules and reverse the summary dismissal of tenured history professor Dr. Thomas Alter.”

"no system academic course will teach race…” [and yes it goes on from there]

"The average voter believes a SNAP recipient gets $20/day, more than 3 times the actual amount of $6."

Congratulations to Edda L. Fields-Black, winner of the Tom Watson Brown Book Award for COMBEE. #2025SHA