it's also a fantasy of domination of those they deem to be their social and cultural enemies. and then, among some of this number, a straightforward belief that the proper place of many millions of americans is servile labor

i don't think there's anything more to this than an ignorant and adolescent need to destroy but to the extent that there is, it's that a closed-off country of poor, low-wage workers is easier to control with imposed hierarchies (see: the american south, 1890 to 1965)

A reminder.

Exactly. And let’s be clear that when the right came for mostly Black & Brown women & queer professors, the left & universities didn’t protect us. The right used us as targets before they went to CRT, DEI, universities generally & now broader culture. They let us be harmed & now it’s harming them

The right’s “cancel culture” panic was always a convenient grift. But let’s be real: plenty of elites on the left also acted like speech was more threatened by annoying undergrads than by powerful elites. And truth be told, Obama’s not off the hook here either.

I’m so tired.

💯 yes to this

It was never about free speech. It was always about protecting whiteness and its discursive power. If it were about speech, they wouldn’t ban the 1619 Project, books, and history itself, or punish those who remind us of the bigotry Charlie Kirk proudly espoused. Some of us been tryna tell y’all.

So much of the absurdity in how some elites talk about Charlie Kirk—or navigate the authoritarian politics of this regime—stems from political science’s and the elite class’s fixation on polarization, and the misguided belief that it’s inherently bad and that the “remedy” is civil submission.

When the state can bully organizations to cancel television shows and fire people for speech, we don’t live in anything close to a functioning democracy.

Tonight at 6:30 ET, I will moderate a special Constitution Day conversation featuring Congressman Jamie Raskin, Harvard Law Professor Nikolas Bowie, and Georgetown Law Professor Mary McCord. It is FREE to join but you must register in advance. us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Glad Butler shared this with @thenation.com. You should read it.

Once again without legal justification, Trump ordered a strike that he says summarily killed 3 people in international waters. We still don’t know if the strikes are legal, and why the U.S. is not instead interdicting to get intelligence to disrupt narcotrafficking routes.

this from my piece on charlie kirk is probably the most important takeaway if you want to know why bad faith, right-wing voices in media are treated as just another set of peers

i have said this before but when “getting rid of race in admissions” for the administration means “you can’t even try to reach out to underrepresented communities and encourage them to apply and if you do it is illegal discrimination against white people” then the actual goal here is segregation

Shame on the @washingtonpost.com.

The plot has been completely lost. It feels parodic at this point. Like someone is trying to force a mass delusion. No thank you.

What @jamellebouie.net said.

I have many thoughts about Charlie Kirk—and perhaps even more about the white elites, including some on the left, who insist we can’t hold multiple realities at once. We can. And we must. A brief 🧵

If you’re at APSA, go check out the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute poster session starting at 10am today. Details are below: Poster Session: Ralph Bunche Summer Institute (RBSI) Scholars Saturday, September 13 10:00 am - 12:00 pm PDT Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC) - East Exhibit Hall A

Great news Keep fighting, Professor Cook You're my hero!

Authoritarianism often enters through crime policy & policing bc public so often demands more & tougher policing. Yanilda González shows this in Authoritarian Police in Democracy. A while back I was in conversation w/ her & other policing scholars for @annualreviews.bsky.social. Highly recommend.

All kidding about this nonsense answer aside: The regime is asserting the power to murder without trial a boat full of people suspected of drug trafficking, who easily could have been intercepted and arrested instead. That is unconscionable and horrifying even assuming everyone aboard was guilty.

inject it into my veins

🚨 Job! 🚨 Brown Sociology & the Watson School of International & Public Affairs are hiring a TT assistant professor whose research focuses on social policy (broadly conceived). Apply by 9/15: apply.interfolio.com/172655 Happy to chat about life at Brown, etc!

Precisely. Saturday breakfast in rural South Carolina was often grits and canned sardines or salmon patties—with a nap post.

One thing this moment makes clear is how easy it is for some to justify insanely horrible acts. “They’re illegal.” “We need law & order.” “The president can do what he wants.” “They’re the children of Hamas.” Scary thing: those willing to tolerate these bad acts don’t seem to have a red line.

It’s so good. 😊

Trump’s is an authoritarian project, to be sure. But it is also very much a project motivated by a politics of white grievance, white resentment, and white identity. And this govt will use its power to assert white dominance anyway it can—from brutalizing immigrants to restoring Lee’s portrait.

I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do. Just shut up. Stop peddling bullshit. You should be fired.

I’m very excited to share that my paper “Cleavage theory meets civil society: A framework and research agenda” with @eborbath.bsky.social & Swen Hutter has now been published online in ‪@wepsocial.bsky.social‬ (w/ open access funding thanks to @wzb.bsky.social‬!) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

#Psychjobs My former institution Colby College is hiring a tenure track in intergroup relations, broadly defined & open to many psych areas (not just social). This is my replacement line. I truly enjoyed my time at Colby and it's a great dept! Happy to answer Qs if I can. apply.interfolio.com/172552

Super important thought from Steve Levitsky, co-author of "How Democracy Dies." newrepublic.com/article/1996...

UPDATE: Governor Cook has issued a statement. “President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so. I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022.”

Despite what some Democratic consultants suggest, the pro-democracy party’s first question shouldn’t be, “Does stopping fascism poll well?”

They just decided to torment this man in one way after another for no apparent reason — pure Kafka.

In Trump’s Ideal Picture of America, Diversity Is Taboo www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/u... This is why diverse newsrooms matter. One of the first pieces to really name what Trump is doing—and still not clearly enough. His project is a brazen white identity project. Brazen and racist.

Love how much y’all use this assignment. Keep on keeping on!

Jillian Michaels Whiteness is a credential (@victorerikray.bsky.social 2019) Exhibit 99966437732 journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

This administration’s treatment of immigrants is cruel and inhumane. May we never forget the callousness of those responsible.

man DC statehood seems like it'd be a pretty helpful barrier to authoritarianism

Got my advance reader copies of Living in a DAISY Age yesterday! They look amazing! It’s hard to put into words how I feel holding a physical copy of my book 🤯 Preorder: www.simonandschuster.com/books/Living...

following our anlaysis of moderates and WAR, this new piece (conducted completely independent of what me and mark were doing!) confirms the same finding: very little relationship between WAR and ideology, & more important, completely swamped by uncertainty data4democracy.substack.com/p/do-moderat...

We took a close look at Split Ticket's WAR metric, which has become influential in Democratic circles for suggesting moderates significantly outperform progressives. Our finding: The metric contains systematic biases that overstate the advantage of moderation. A corrected model shows no advantage.🧵

I am very proud to announce that I have minded my business and kept my own counsel throughout all of this.

You can’t think of the Ralph Lauren Oak Bluffs line—or the Black folks who regularly visit Martha’s Vineyard—w/out thinking abt class, respectability, & abt what it means that so many are so eager to lean into this as the public representation of Blackness. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/s...

I could be wrong, but I don’t think we’ve fully reckoned w/how much the Trump agenda is rooted in racial grievance. Every day, we’re seeing the full force of white identity politics in action. Wild how much of it is just taken for granted, at least from where I sit. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/a...

Some good news. ActBlue just announced major updates to crack down on deceptive fundraising. New rules ban impersonation, fake matches, and excessive spam. Big step in the right direction. Shout out to Josh Nelson and everyone who has been advocating for these changes.

On every level, what Israel is doing in Gaza is unconscionable, and people of conscience must say so.

Just under two weeks until I send my book to presses for review! Loads of new theoretical, conceptual, & empirical work on respectability as ingroup policing, & how stigma—via what I call perceptions of collective costs—can disrupt solidarity and encourage punishment. Really excited abt this book!