Are you a @historians.org member? Please make it a priority to vote in this year’s elections: they close July 15. (THREAD: link to vote in #10)

Some reflections on the way the city of Paris has changed over my lifetime, and continues to change: substack.com/home/post/p-...

New column, on self-defeating moralizing: davidabell.substack.com/p/self-defea...

If you are member of the American Historical Association and haven't yet cast your ballot in this year's election, please think about doing so. And please consider voting for the terrific Tobie Meyer-Fong as President-Elect. She will be a wonderful leader for the orgnization.

Brilliant, moving review/memoir on what it takes to make a revolution, why Weatherman failed, and what the left should learn from the failure. (By my cousin). thepointmag.com/criticism/th...

Beating AI in the Classroom davidabell.substack.com/p/beating-ai...

www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl... Nouvelle tribune dans “Le Monde”

New column: "Resistance and Dissent Under Trump" davidabell.substack.com/p/resistance...

My terrific senior thesis student from the class of 2025 making a great journalistic debut in The Nation: www.thenation.com/article/worl...

In my new piece in @theatlantic.com, I argue that the consensus about birthright citizenship extended far beyond elite legal circles to readers of newspaper advice columns and letters to the editor pages for well more than a century. nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

"The nature of democracy is to personify itself in a man"--Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, 1839. "The whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president"--Stephen Miller, 2026.

New column: "Military Arithmetic" substack.com/home/post/p-...

“Most casual visitors to [Notre-Dame] never realize the extent to which what they see is a creation of the nineteenth-century as well as of the Middle Ages.” —@davidavrombell.bsky.social

Brian Willott Farms @BrianWillott They should change the name to "Strait of Schrödinger". It's both open and closed at the same time.

Please send JD Vance to support Nigel Farage, the Rassemblent National and thee AfD!

New essay: "The Life and Death of the Book Review": libertiesjournal.com/articles/the...

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc “was the architect principally responsible for the way Notre-Dame appeared in modern times, and while he adored the Middle Ages, he was anything but a pedantic traditionalist.” —@davidavrombell.bsky.social

Just out: This brilliant, fascinating, beautifully written book by my colleague Yair Mintzker about the legend of the Wandering Jew, the truth behind it, and his own relationship to it. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

David A. Bell (@davidavrombell.bsky.social) on Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and the restoration of his nineteenth-century vision for Notre Dame

“When it comes to enslaved women, the sources can be almost entirely opaque, revealing nothing about where they came from, how they understood their condition, or what opportunities they might have had to improve it.” —@davidavrombell.bsky.social

New column: The failure of “No Kings” and the need for an effective opposition.” open.substack.com/pub/davidabe...

From a colleague at the New School: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRPP...

David A. Bell (@davidavrombell.bsky.social) on the indigenous and enslaved people who built the French empire

Sen. Ossoff doesn't tolerate any of Tulsi Gabbard’s B.S.

A new review of mine, in the New York Review of Books. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

New column: Normandy 1944/2026: open.substack.com/pub/davidabe...

In The Future That Was, @durba.bsky.social offers a pathbreaking account of how Third World women seized the means of knowledge production to fight against rising authoritarianism & imagine a future freer than our present. Out March 17 (12 May UK pub): press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... #History

My newest column: “Anti-Liberal Historians” open.substack.com/pub/davidabe...

Tulsi Gabbard released a fundraising video in 2019 titled "Trump's Path To War With Iran" "We've gotta stop Donald Trump from starting a war with Iran."

This one hits hard.

Student uses AI to summarize readings, then feeds summary back into AI so it can write his term paper. Professor uses AI to grade the paper and then to write the student a recommendation. Employer uses AI to read the recommendation. Student is hired, and then soon replaced by AI. Whee!

Really dangerous. Do you want strangers on the street to look at you and immediately be told your name, profession, employer, religion, party affiliation—maybe your address and tax bracket? Meta claims it will strictly limit the features. Do you believe them? www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

Un #colloque sur le thème "De l’Amérique à la France : Beaumarchais et l’expérience des Révolutions" est organisé du 1er au 4 octobre 2026 au Musée de la Révolution française de Vizille. Un appel à communications a été lancé : archibeau.hypotheses.org/de-lamerique...

New column: On Viewpoint Diversity. davidabell.substack.com/p/on-viewpoi...

My new column on the deteriorating Franco-American relationship: “We Are Not an American Colony.” open.substack.com/pub/davidabe...

New column: "The Dumb-roe Doctrine" davidabell.substack.com/p/the-dumb-r...

“They talk very loud, very fast, and all together. If they ask you a Question, before you can utter 3 Words of your Answer, they will break out upon you, again—and talk away.” John Adams, on New Yorkers, August 23, 1774.

New column. 2025: The Year of Trump? davidabell.substack.com/p/2025-the-y...

Upcoming two-part graduate student conference at Princeton and Sciences-Po on "The French Revolution and the Sacred." Call for papers here: fit.princeton.edu/events/frenc...

A new column of mine in the Chronicle of Higher Education, on the in-fighting at the American Historical Association: www.chronicle.com/article/acad...

How to Celebrate the 250th? open.substack.com/pub/davidabe...

Perhaps the most damning words in this article are the claim that this is "a bitter conservative family fight" over the neo-Nazi, Nick Fuentes. What does this say about the conservative family?

My newest review, of Lynn Hunt's "The Revolutionary Self," in The Nation: www.thenation.com/article/soci...

New column: On grade inflation and university culture today. davidabell.substack.com/p/no-a-for-e...

Sigh www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/o...

A new essay of mine on the situation in France: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

David A. Bell @davidavrombell.bsky.social on the Enlightenment  and race

This is a welcome post about expertise, but even more so about the dangers of total suspicion and the nihilism it encourages. Thinking of societies fueled by total suspicion always gets me back to experiences in Russia recently, but also to close post-Soviet contacts. One story always returns 1/4