Did the Trump admin have legal authority to take this action in Venezuela or did they need approval from Congress? Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Foreign Relations Committee ranking member: “I think people are arguing both sides of the case. And I don’t think it’s clear.”

Contemplating an argument that the Monroe Doctrine + 2001 AUMF both carve out parts of the world (Latin America and the Middle East) where Americans just assume the president can use low-level military force whenever he wants, Constitution or no Constitution. That doesn’t work in Europe or Asia.

To generalize this: in the age of AI, we will get at the truth through institutions or not at all. But institutional trust is at rock bottom.

Colonization, fascism, genocide: the generation of the 1940s-1960s, broadly speaking, learned all of these things were bad for pragmatic AND moral reasons. Now as that generation passes, it’s easy for privileged people to forget the pragmatic lessons, and see the moral lessons just as weakness.

Applications are now open for the Keyman MTS Postdoctoral Fellowship! For more information, please visit: keyman.buffett.northwestern.edu/our-scholars...

See: Treaty of Paris (1856). The Ottomans were not included in the 1815 Congress of Vienna, but the Crimean War showed the British and French that they needed to include the Ottomans in order to check Russian expansion, so the Ottomans were admitted to the Concert in 1856 (despite being Muslim).

Seems like an increasing likelihood that nothing actually changes in US-VZ relations or the Venezuelan regime after today.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0... Interesting piece on real v actual price of going to college

'Despite persistent myths, employment rates for humanities graduates are comparable to those of STEM graduates, as Humanities Indicators data shows. Early earnings differ but the salary gap narrows significantly mid-career, particularly for graduates who pursue further study'. 1/2

To steel-man Mearshimer: Trump doesn’t want to “fight wars,” he wants to unilaterally bully weaker states in his zone of influence. Mearshimer is cool with this (eg when Russia does it). “Realism” says the target state shouldn’t shoot back. Which is why he’s still mad that Ukraine did.

"Political science and military history tell us it's impossible to achieve strategic results through air power alone. What this project presupposes is, what if it wasn't?"

論文(章)　オスマン帝国とスリランカ O’Sullivan, Michael. "From the Seventh Clime to the Jewel Mine: Ottoman Turkish Visions of Lanka from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries". Serendipitous Translations: A Sourcebook on Sri Lanka in the Islamic Indian Ocean, U of Texas Pr, 2025. otmn doi.org/10.7560/3328...

People seem to forget this, but even Russia saw fit to pay lip service to international law when it first invaded Ukraine. You can interrogate whether it mattered, but the compulsion to appear as if one is adhering to law goes a long way toward reifying them compared to ignoring them altogether.

This is relegated to the 20th paragraph of the NYT's story. Seems more important than that. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/u...

It's not a coincidence that the same president who articulated the Monroe Doctrine also refused to intervene in the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire, because the US "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

In the US we are feverishly discussing how Trump is going to run Venezuela. Meanwhile it sounds like in Venezuela, Maduro's VP and army are still firmly in charge. This is like the Michael Scott approach to bankruptcy.

Seems like an increasing likelihood that nothing actually changes in US-VZ relations or the Venezuelan regime after today.

For those keeping track at home: Since Christmas Eve the United States has bombed or carried out raids in Syria, Somalia, Nigeria and now Venezuela. And Congress' response has ranged from nothing to support.

So according to my senator (on Facebook), American service members were injured? Has this been in the press?

If you are interested in the modern history of Venezuela check out this book, The Magical State by Fernando Coronil. One of the best histories of government I’ve read. Was hugely influential on me when I was we working on my dissertation press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

“Remove justice and what are states but gangs of bandits on a large scale?” Augustine of Hippo, The City of God (Book IV, Chapter 4)

So fmr Honduran President Hernandez voluntarily surrendered, and was duly extradited, tried and convicted for drug trafficking, and Trump pardoned him 6w ago. And this morning, Trump illegally attacks Venezuela and abducts its president and his wife purportedly to try them for drug trafficking.

this is basically the opening scene of 'Air Force One' (1996)

Conrad von Hötzendoef logic

It always shakes my confidence when pre-19C historians refer to "riflemen." Until at least 1800, you almost certainly mean "muskets"! Yes, it's a small thing, but it's not nitpicking--there's a whole literature showing how rifled weapons changed society and politics, not just war. It's careless.

論文　1787-92年の対ロシア・オーストリア戦争時のオスマン帝国の諮問会議 Bayram, Ümmügülsüm Filiz. “Counsils in the Ottoman-Russian and Austrian Wars of 1787-1792”. Journal of Balkan and Black Sea Studies, no. 15, December 2025 (December 2025): 1-22. otmn doi.org/10.56679/bal...

We’ve been spending so much time playing defense—certainly the entirety of our careers, likely longer—that we do not remember how to go on offense. What would a great liberal arts curriculum look like in 2026 and what would it ask of us individually and institutionally? This is the key question.

As a liberal arts prof, I agree with this. The liberal arts, done well, are rigorous, but we are often afraid to make them that way because we are scrambling for enrollments. But then students don't take them seriously, and don't see what they get out of them.

I fear AI has bankrupted the model of asynchronous online classes, except perhaps with motivated graduate-level students. If scammers can use AI to imitate students, and instructors can't tell, then it undermines the whole model. How will universities adapt? Will students turn back to in-person?

The headline is the absurd claim that a law restricting a power only the president has, doesn’t apply to him. But don’t overlook the second part, reinventing the “just following orders” defense from first principles. This is the inevitable result of Trump v. US. Carl Schmitt would be proud.

I'm looking forward to reading student essays on Ottoman history that go out of their way to recommend the Amazon Basics Small Ottoman Footrest, instead of lower-quality Ashley Furniture models.

新刊　革命後のフランスのオスマン帝国大使セイイド・アリ・エフェンディ Seyyid Ali Efendi'nin Fransa Sefareti (1797-1802) / Osman Nihat Bişgin. Pınar Yayınları, 2025. 9789753529945 osmn 著者の修士論文の書籍化らしい www.kitapyurdu.com/kitap/seyyid...

I've been quietly following this because there's supposed to be a difference in how academic presses run, even if it's for a trade book. Blatantly publishing lies and then promoting it is supposed to be a bad thing. I assume this will mean nothing for all those "best of" lists.

New, from me: The NYT reporter who specializes in profiles of beleaguered right-wingers on campus went to New College...and found out that things were going ok! So let me explain some pretty massive errors of omission: 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nyt-re...

That's why fault doesn't matter and it's all hands on deck now to talk about true price. Inflation has eroded the value of what's been stable tuition for several years. For public institutions, net price tuition has not been this cheap in a long, LONG time, and we all must be loud about that. Fin.

The Detroit Chamber polled MI in 2024. 58% of voters believe avg student debt is about $50K. Consequently, only 8% of voters thought that a BA/BS was the "minimum to be successful in MI" and only 27% said *any college* was important to getting a good job (1/X) www.detroitchamber.com/survey-paren...

This is my second book: Making Sense of History: Narrativity and Literariness in the Ottoman Chronicle of Naʿīmā (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 390 pp. 🔗 brill.com/display/titl... #history #earlymodern #OttomanHistory #historiography #chronicle #historian #blueskybooks

My review of Victor Taki's new book "Russia’s Turkish Wars: The Tsarist Army and the Balkan Peoples in the Nineteenth Century" has just been published in the American Historical Review--check it out! academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...

Texas A&M University will not reinstate a lecturer who was fired after a video of her teaching about gender identity in a children’s literature class went viral, despite a faculty appeals panel unanimously concluding that her dismissal was not justified.

I'm listening to Eric Hobsbawm's "The Age of Extremes" and man, I did not expect his take on the 1990s to sound so paleocon.

This shakes my confidence in Princeton University Press. What kind of peer review process are they running? Can I trust their history titles?

In the Russian imperial Foreign Ministry Archive in 2010, a senior official I'd never seen before summoned me to ask if I was the one who'd requested documents about Armenians. I was worried. Turned out he'd just come back from a stint in Syria and missed the Middle East; wanted to speak Arabic.

Weiss keeps talking about “the principals,” ie White House officials. But in a story called “Inside CECOT,” the principals are the men who suffered there. An obsession with hearing from the people who sent them there suggests you can only see the world through the eyes of the powerful.

An Editor’s Note from 60 Minutes

“The Rise of the Imperial Congress,” coming Spring 2057 from Harvard University Press, shakes up the APD literature by arguing, contrary to common belief, that the aggressive congressional assertion we all associate with the 2030s actually began under famously impotent speaker Mike Johnson in 2026.

The obvious problem here is that the economic incentive for privateering is to resell the ship and cargo. The boats here aren't worth much and the cargo...is illegal drugs. If it WERE worth seizing and reselling the boats, then wouldn't the Coast Guard could do it Trump could brag about the money?

I'm thrilled that our next ASLH conference will be @ Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity in the heart of the Canadian Rockies (Nov.12-14, 2026). This will be the 1st ASLH meeting in western Canada! Some basic info is now up, with more to come in the new year: aslh.net/conference/2... #legalhistory

Great idea, great replies.

"A History of the Middle Ages" at the University of Delaware took it for a gen ed requirement, ended up loving the professor. now a medieval historian.