mic drop from the brilliant @margaretlitvin.bsky.social co-founder of @concernedjfaculty.bsky.social modeling how we lead with humanness. (no surprise from the humanities). www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

Our co-founder @margaretlitvin.bsky.social on how to combat antisemitism by bringing students together rather than turning them on each other. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

What every humanistic educator knows: you can't stamp out prejudice; you have to melt it. My report from the field.

A moment of pride amid the endless torrent of sludge coming at us: founded just this year, @concernedjfaculty.bsky.social has managed to articulate the Jewish community's deep and wide dismay at simplistic J=Zi conflation. This is not a one-sided story with an asterisk anymore.

“The Resolution states that “protections of Title VI apply to all individuals equally,”…and yet goes on to single out Jewish students for a special, disputed definition of their group membership (“shared ancestry”) and special protections.” This kind of “protection” makes everyone less safe.

Psst... A quien le apetece leer las memorias de un señor palestino muy bien peinado que, entre otras cosas, luchó en el bando republicano? 👀 🙋🏻‍♀️

Ironically, my contribution to this uncontroversial seminar on antisemitism (watch and see) was *about* the need for thoughtful face-to-face discussion: "We need to convene and converse, not record and report." Not everyone got the point. Glad @bostonu.bsky.social and Mass @aaup.org chapters did.

On Nov. 22, Vahid Abedini, an Iranian Studies professor at University of Oklahoma, was boarding a flight to attend the Middle East Studies Assn mtg in Washington, D.C. when he was detained by ICE. OU Prof Joshua Landis says "he has been wrongfully detained because he has a valid H-1B visa."

Because snarky leftist infighting is always in style!

Troubling to see members of the MA Special Commission on Combatting #Antisemitism unable even to abstain, let alone vote no, on a report some of whose provisions made several of them visibly and audibly uncomfortable. Troubling but not surprising, the way this process has gone.

Palestinians have a rich pedigree in anti-colonial struggles, just look at the Spanish Civil War of 1936, and the life of Muhammad Najati Sidqi

Entre ellos destacaría Muhammad Najati Sidqi. Encarcelado y deportado en 1936, llegó con la misión de hacer propaganda antifascista entre los marroquíes en las tropas de Franco. También de alentar una sublevación nacionalista en el Rif. Ninguno de los planes saldría adelante.

‘The Arab “Left” Nationalist Movement’ by Mustafa Sadi (Najati Sidqi) from Communist International. Vol. 7 No. 13. December 1, 1930. Najati Sidqi was a young Palestinian when he spent three years at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East... revolutionsnewsstand.com/2025/02/15/t...

Apparently the communist intellectual Najati Sidqi was born 100 years ago exactly today. I wrote about him and his wife, the rabblerouser Lutka Lorberbaum, a Polish Jew who studied Arabic to preach communism in the Palestinian countryside. ayinpress.org/lutka-and-na...

remember muhammad najati sidqi www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/192942

Palestinians have a rich pedigree in anti-colonial struggles, just look at the Spanish Civil War and the life of Muhammad Najati Sidqi, writes Vijay Prashad ⬇

In a number of cases, anonymous single-paragraph complaints, with no supporting evidence provided, spurred full-scale Title VI investigations. “Government civil rights enforcement is now being driven by the equivalent of a YouTube comment section.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

The AAUP and MESA continue their important work:

So glad #NajatiSidqi is having a moment! Read his funny short story "The Millionaire Communist," translated by my former student Hadeel Abu Ktaish, at bsky.app/profile/arab.... Cover art from the original collection (this was the title story).

Najati Sidqi: ‘The Millionaire Communist’ This sharply satirical short story, published in Sidqi's 1962 short-story collection of the same name, is a satire that follows the story of a real-life fellow Arab Communist from Haifa who returned from Russia and got rich profiteering off a war-relief…

An excerpt of Najati's memoir is out in the fall Jewish Currents, online now. Looks like a great issue overall. Subscribe if you haven't!

Looks like they raised the goal because more signatures keep coming in.

The DHS/State lawyers' case was so incoherent. Argued that writing an op-ed was action not speech. Claimed that "preventing a hostile campus environment for Jewish students" (by repressing protected speech) was vital to US *foreign* policy. Glad Judge Young wasn't having it.

However, cozying up to right-wing antisemites invites some unpleasant surprises. aje.io/s4bccs

If you or your kids have been ostracized, bullied, censored, discriminated against, excluded from campus Jewish life, or fired for Israel-critical views: let the Special Commission on Antisemitism hear it. They claim that victims will be believed, not gaslit.

Surely Massachusetts lawmakers must be starting to realize that this Special Commission is a political liability.

State Sen. Pat Jehlen testified! Then Alain Jehlen: “Your proposal would punish comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, but Israel's actions have much in common with the Nazis. … The Nazis killed my uncles, my aunts and my grandmother. My father escaped from a concentration camp."

"Unless state lawmakers step in with some oversight, this antisemitism commission will actually make Jews less safe." Why @concernedjfaculty.bsky.social is calling for a course correction on the Mass Special Commission on Combatting Antisemitism.

"Massachusetts Democrats have a choice. They can resist Trump, or they can help the ADL. They cannot do both."

Thanks, Akhbar al-Adab, for republishing my 2022 conversation with Tugrul Mende about the great but humble Sonallah Ibrahim (RIP), whose novels add up to an alternative global history of postcolonial Egypt. شكراً لتغرل مندي وللأصدقاء في جريدة أخبار الأدب. في ذكرى صنع الله ابراهيم، رحمه الله

My little contribution @arablit.bsky.social with translators on Sonallah Ibrahim

NYT reads and remembers Sonallah Ibrahim:

RIP Sonallah Ibrahim, one of the most unpretentious people I have met. Luminous personality, sparkly dry wit. His novels are a people's history of post-1952 Egypt. Super gracious to translate. If you don't know where to start: Zaat; That Smell and Notes from Prison; Stealth; The Committee. Small🧵.

National context for what's happening on pretextual #antisemitism at the Massachusetts State House, and soon our Dept of Elementary and Secondary Ed.

This has nothing to do with combatting campus antisemitism. This is a shakedown and an effort to bring the best public university system in the country to its knees: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/u...

Even the Boston Herald sees the irony.

Over 2100. The Commission continues to ignore broad public input. Hope the state legislature will do better.

Coming this fall! I'm so proud of this co-translation. Najati Sidqi is a fun writer, curious about everything. Plus, brave at a terrible time. Participated in the Spanish Civil War; booted from the Communist Party in 1940 for writing against fascism during the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact.

As the Ivies scramble to (re)cover their asse(t)s, they are handing the mafia state all the keys. Under the "agreement" Brown signed this week, even anonymous student course evaluations will now be combed for “reports of antisemitism.” What could possibly go wrong? www.brown.edu/sites/defaul...