“This report underscores how the Civil Rights Act of 1964—which passed in response to years of nonviolent civil disobedience against racial injustice—is being misused to squash political dissent & speech that advocates for the human rights of Palestinians.” — Veena Dubal, AAUP General Counsel

It should come as no surprise that the UK has effectively instituted a Gulf-style kafala system for low-paid foreign workers.

A modest proposal from my brilliant colleagues www.michigandaily.com/opinion/op-e...

You've likely seen the new $100,000 penalty on high-skill immigrant workers. Here's the next, separate bomb the White House is dropping on high skill immigration, to be officially published *tomorrow*. tl;dr: Most H-1Bs now inaccessible for entry-level jobs, e.g. new grads from US universities.

#Employment The Department of Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan invites applications for the James A. Bellamy Professorship, with an anticipated start date of August 25, 2026. mesana.org/resources-an...

Historians of medicine (yes, you #histmed): what are the top 3 articles/books that people should be reading right now to understand the significance of the violent attack this weekend on the CDC? #OpenAccess, please, so people can actually get these in their hands.

Went to the Tripoli derby at an empty stadium in Milan. Didn’t initially understand why it required such a massive police presence. It quickly became obvious. Piece on how strange and chaotic 6 team playoff in Italy mirrors Libya’s current fault lines. ⚽️ 👮 🇱🇾 💰 www.nytimes.com/2025/08/09/s...

Trans Technologies is available now! My book examines how technology creates new possibilities for transgender people, and how trans experiences, in turn, create new possibilities for technology. "An absolute must-read for anyone that cares about technology and trans liberation." - Alex Hanna

Appreciate the historical contextualisation and the importance of Abu Dhabi’s move to buy into Manchester City (in Part 2) is clearly explained & understood because of it

“In response to receiving this document, I did what the FA clearly haven’t: I actually spoke to trans men and transmasculine people Every single one said they disagreed with the way the declaration was worded.” I wrote about the FA banning trans men on the sly 👇 transwrites.world/fa-trans-men/

My latest @theguardian.com "The IOC handed LA the 2028 Olympics. Now Trump is weaponizing them." Trump has a secret weapon to turn the Games into a national-security crackdown—the National Special Security Event designation, (NSSE)—& we need to be talking about it www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/j...

So, here it is. Thanks to a new state law that was NEVER DEBATED, Indiana University has committed itself to abolishing majors in African-American/African Diaspora Studies: American Studies; Art History; French; Italian; Religious Studies etc. DOZENS of majors. www.ipm.org/news-section...

⚽️🧨💰Fit and proper person? Profile of Manchester City owner, coddler of warlords and named co-conspirator in US’s ‘largest kleptocracy’ case Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al-Nahyan Months long investigation with @declanwalsh.bsky.social Free to read on link below: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/w...

Join the Playtest here! store.steampowered.com/app/3119540/...

This is very, very bad. A new state law will likely force the closure of hundreds of low-enrollment programs at Indiana University. The cutoff is 15 graduates/year for undergrad majors, 7 for Masters programs, and 3 for PhD programs, averaged over 3 years. wfiunews.wordpress.com/2025/06/24/h...

Folks -- We've updated this piece, with a new headline too, to more accurately get at how dangerous this bill is re: letting Trump skirt the courts. The contempt provision is gone, but the GOP is now trying to price ppl out of being able to sue the govt at all. www.huffpost.com/entry/senate...

Josimar is on life support. Kindly consider subscribing to help us survive and allow us to investigate the dark side of the game. Subscribe. Share. Keep us alive.

NEW POST 🗞️ A Timeline of Political Football Matches "Football and politics shouldn't mix," they say - yet they inevitably do and always have done Here's a chronology of significant political football matches and events 👇 Ping my suggestions for any missing #Skystorians bit.ly/4dHe63W

In 2025 I’ve been outpublished by someone who has been dead since 2019. So that’s how productive I’ve been

Oh this is the best news I’ve seen all day!

BREAKING: In a sudden about-face, a DOJ attorney saiys ICE will be RESTORING the status of thousands of foreign students whose SEVIS records were terminated w/o notice earlier this month. The move comes amid mounting losses in courts around the country. www.wusa9.com/article/news...

Our latest episode is now out where we talk to the @sepad.bsky.social team at @lancasteruni.bsky.social about their new report on politics and identity and football in the Middle East. Do have a listen! www.buzzsprout.com/2253650/epis...

My husband has taught human reproduction and development to the Cambridge medics for over three decades. When people start banging on about "only two biological sexes" he starts with "which sex: genetic, hormonal, or gonadal"? Biological sex is not binary. www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-...

🎙️ New Podcast: Power Players This week, we’re joined by journalist and author Ronny Blaschke to dive into the relationship between football, colonialism and power. Power manifests itself within football in different ways. Listen here ⬇️ open.spotify.com/episode/76Qr...

Teaching a bit on the history & difficulties of women’s football today and was shocked by the number of students who didn’t recognise the iconic Brandi Chastain photo or understand the significance. Then remembered none of them were alive in 1999.

@yaelrice.bsky.social and I co-authored this piece precisely to combat misguided work like this so people don't have to constantly rehearse the arguments about why it's specious. We laid it all out here for you! hyperallergic.com/604897/how-s...

Cuneiform was a writing system used from ~3000 BCE to ~100 CE in ancient Mesopotamia. Like the characters in this post can be used to write other languages (e.g., French), cuneiform was also used to write many languages. Here are some open access resources for learning cuneiform and its languages.

The goddess Nanshe was a patron deity of the Sumerian temple's internal auditing system, but we don't hear about that side of her all too often. This aspect speaks to her role as a boundary protector, ensuring that there was institutional autonomy unaffected by state overreach.

Now we’re big time. There’s a whole book about this goddess (it’s way more than that of course), called Nanše and the Birds written by my teacher N. Veldhuis in 2004.

WORLD-FIRST: Ground-breaking research published today in the Ornithologist Journal has, for the first time, translated common UK bird vocalisations into equivalent phrases in the human language. The results tell us a lot! Extracts below... 🧵

The history of ancient Mesopotamia is typically missing from school curricula, so its sources, time periods, people and places understandably sound unfamiliar. I decided early in my career I wanted to share this stuff widely because it’s just SO interesting. That was not without its challenges.

Everyone’s favourite Babylonian copper merchant got a write-up in National Geographic though no one can beat the thread by @aandeloucas.com www.nationalgeographic.com/history/arti...

Not even the most loved Assyriologist in my own house @moudhy.bsky.social

When Harvard, on its own accord, dismisses the faculty responsible for leading its Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

NEW: The University of Michigan will end its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives campus wide, the president said in an email

My new book “Engulfed: How Saudi Arabia Bought Sport, and the World” is out today! www.amazon.co.uk/Engulfed-Sau...

Tired of witnessing the complicit silence and ongoing coloniality of disciplinary associations, from the AHA to the SCS and AIA? Us too! That's why we founded the @socstudyofthepast.bsky.social: JOIN US! societyforthestudyofthepast.com

Sport & Soft Power ranking 2025 Our full ranking & accompanying report are now available via publika.skema.edu/sport-soft-p... On 14th May, we will be staging a webinar in which we will discuss the ranking. Register via publika.skema.edu/evenement/sk... @paulwiddop.bsky.social

The canary is choking to death in front of our eyes.

‘Spreadsheets of empire’: red tape goes back 4,000 years, say scientists after Iraq finds

Getting informal reports that as part of the mass layoffs at the Department of Education, the International and Foreign Language Education (IFLE) Office has been "abolished." IFLE administers Title VI and Fulbright-Hays grant and fellowship programs. A disaster. www.ed.gov/about/ed-off...

In my book, Between Two Rivers, I take you through what it was like to go to school in ancient Babylonia. Discarded clay tablets from schools preserve the many stages of education and also just…kids being kids. Like one who did this little doodle of (maybe) the teacher

Free download of this book on heritage and the Iraq War from the fantastic Zainab Bahrani! uclpress.co.uk/book/war-ess...

The State Department has also been forced to freeze the Fulbright Program and and Critical Languages Scholarships, among other exchange programs, because nothing says "America First" like "we don't care about understanding other places anymore"

Oh, and you can hear @moudhy.bsky.social and the comedian Phil Wang chat to me about Cuneiform on You’re Dead To Me this Friday on BBC SOUNDS, and on BBC RADIO 4 at 10am on Saturday morning

New Evidence Suggests Humans Developed Written Language To Avoid Breaking Up In Person theonion.com/new-evi...

Who's sport washing whom? Debate about the phenomenon is important, but the basis upon which we are having it is a stunted one substack.com/home/post/p-... @paulwiddop.bsky.social #Geosport

Stansbury says her understanding is the Trump admin "has been running drills for the last couple of weeks, planning for this." She also said she expects that "the Department of Education is going to potentially be dissolved in the coming days." And yes, this is illegal.

Just got off the phone with Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), who said Elon Musk's DOGE team is "actively dismantling" federal Department of Education programs today. "They are in the building, on the 6th floor, canceling grants and contracts."