Indexing... 👀

Not really a podcast guy but I always enjoy Drafting the Past. Andrew Edwards and Rick Bell were both on great episodes recently with their American Revolution books. (Seriously, you should tune in for Rick's voice alone!) draftingthepast.com

What happened to Mayar Yahia Square? Read John's thread on the shady tactics and ongoing grip of British and Birmingham car culture.

The UK betrays the promise of a university: that students will be mentored in scholarship by people who are actively engaged in it. Unlike a secondary school, in a university the frontier between what is known and what is not is moving, and students can see that movement and participate in it.

Listings for *Empire Ablaze* now include some very kind comments from brilliant fellow historians. www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...

How to park (Porsche drivers' edition).

The 1780s, truly the awkward unwanted stepchild of the American Revolution! (And of course, the most interesting bit...)

I gave a talk about the English Revolution, the Atlantic World, and the midlands-born Puritan, Edward Winslow. Normal eighteenth-century service will resume shortly! buttondown.com/cutterham/ar...

Here's a question in my university's AI-in-teaching survey which is going to force everyone who doesn't use it in their classrooms to say they have no more than a "basic" understanding of it. What's the betting the analysis will conclude, "people who don't like AI also don't understand it?"

What do presidential rankings measure? Overall "Great Man" fame, expansion of the office, and success in war and imperialism. What if we reoriented US history around its greatest legislative accomplishments that did the most for the nation's people? Presidents should serve those legislative goals.

"Historians often act as if they’re simply providing background for other people... to make normative arguments. But I think it’s OK for historians to sometimes be more vigorous in making arguments themselves about how to think." www.thenation.com/article/cult...

One week until our exciting event with Eliga Gould! Please do come along if you’re on campus!

A **new** and **permanent** job in US Politics at the RAI. An exciting opportunity to help design and launch a new one year Master’s program in US politics, and join our intellectually vibrant (and fun) multidisciplinary dept dedicated to the study of the US and its place in the wider world.

The danger to my job from AI isn't that AI can do my job, it's that my job is made even more precarious by the way AI is shaping ideas of the value of work. It can't do my job, but it can be part of convincing people (incorrectly) that my job isn't necessary.

The Dispatch is hiring a staff writer! We're looking for a third writer to join Kate and Madeleine at our HQ in the Jewellery Quarter. If you love high quality writing and value local news with no ads or clickbait, consider applying. Click for more:

This is antiwar infrastructure.

Students without A‑levels are more likely to be working‑class, care‑experienced, disabled, mature and racially minoritised, often via BTECs, access courses and foundation years. Restricting loans by qualification route would hard‑wire existing inequalities into who gets to go to university.

Thank you to Verso for letting me write a 50,000 word little book about the American Revolution. It's like an antidote to those Dad-history-book doorstops! www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...

The work your unique mind does while reading sources is the whole point of reading sources--primary and secondary alike.

In October 1972, almost exactly a year before the start of the 1973 Oil Crisis, former Secretary of the Interior, Stewart L. Udall, wrote an essay for 'The Atlantic' (@theatlantic.com) titled, "The Last Traffic Jam" that 54 years later speaks directly to our current moment. A 🧵:

Spotted this nice combo of stickers after I voted just now, which pretty much capture where I’m at. Vote Love and Anti-Reform. When Labour offers nothing but more hatred and division, it has to be Hannah Spencer and the Greens this time.

I can still fix it.

Laugh all you like but this is also long-standing British government policy! 🤪

Love to be in a department meeting and have colleagues tell me, "So, I inputted your report into ChatGPT and here's what it said..."

In the 1760s, John Erskine preached to his Edinburgh flock about the rights of colonists in North America. In 1776, one of the schoolboys who had heard him set out on a drastic course in support of the revolution. (This is the latest issue of my newsletter!) buttondown.com/cutterham/ar...

In the 1760s, John Erskine preached to his Edinburgh flock about the rights of colonists in North America. In 1776, one of the schoolboys who had heard him set out on a drastic course in support of the revolution. (This is the latest issue of my newsletter!) buttondown.com/cutterham/ar...

#skystorians A rare permanent job at Warwick - Assistant Prof in Early Modern British History www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO295/a...

The rollback of Tory anti-union legislation, and restoration of workers' rights, is happening incrementally. For #UCU, the really big change is going to be this one in August. That's going to make it even more important for members to engage in internal union democracy!

Publication day! My book Keeping Hold: A Cultural and Social History of Possession in Eighteenth-Century Britain is out now. 20% discount code KEHO2026. www.cambridge.org/core/books/k...

Applications open for the Keasbey Isaac Newton Fellowship in American Studies at Selwyn College, Cambridge. This is a 3yr postdoc/JRF for a scholar of US culture, society, politics or history from any discipline. Closes March 19 Please spread the word www.sel.cam.ac.uk/jobs/Keasbey...

Rev. Jesse Jackson's "I *am* somebody..." remains one of the all-time great pieces of 20th century rhetoric / agitprop And he could deliver it at a Black separatist meeting, the Democratic National Convention, or on god-blessed Sesame Street (see below 🥹) RIP to the Voice of the Voiceless

I love this - Landlord puts up Labour supporting poster and the tenants put up Green Party ones. Perfect way to sum up the country and who the parties work for: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/excl-l...

Chilling piece by my friend and college classmate (vice dean for AI initiatives at Columbia)

Wow! Palestine Action win judicial review - Guardian report. This is a *big* legal win. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Friends, can I ask you to spread the word that we have a THREE-YEAR postdoc in American history at Cambridge up for grabs - ANY field, but applications are due March 1 so don't delay - apply, apply, apply! networks.h-net.org/jobs/69790/u...

Last time I had my recycling collected, Joe Biden was still president

“The combined tuition fees of the entire Question Time panel would not cover my cost for 1 year of uni. Is that fair?” Oli Dugmore It’s absolutely NOT fair. This outrageous scandal must end

250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence update: the State Department is apparently using it "to fund Maga-aligned think-tanks and charities across Europe to disseminate Washington’s policy positions."

Morgan McSweeney's Labour Party: low-energy Trumpism.

Heroic activists, heroic jurors. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Students in my class "Land, Law, and Violence in the American West" spent yesterday morning analysing some of Walt Whitman's pro-war journalism for the Brooklyn Eagle. Like the one where he says the battle of Monterey was "clinching proof of the indomitable energy of the Anglo-Saxon character" (1/2)

Meanwhile, at a school and university near you, AI tools that have yet to be tested on the types of students and subjects you teach are being rolled out to/in them without robust discussion and analysis. It's a major, shameful failing of the management of education systems.

"In France, they say, the revolution was so revolutionary that it revolutionised the very concept of revolution." buttondown.com/cutterham/ar...

A huge win for Dutch higher education and the Netherlands as a whole - the new coalition cabinet has announced it wants to reverse all cuts to higher education planned by the previous government. What targeted activism, electoral politics, and a bit of luck can do...🎉🇳🇱

Was the French Revolution the first modern revolution? Some scholars say "yes, and in a bad way."

Rachel Reeves: "It is not right that people who don't go to university bear the cost for others to." I don't use local leisure centres and I don't drive, so will I be made exempt for taxation that pays for all that stuff? Or is it only education we'll be going after

Great thread. Predictably depressing.

literally thousands of people with unique expert knowledge and skills being made redundant, universities in the brink of closure, but sure, let's publicly fund the bullshit machine

I’m organising a graduate conference in July on Early America! Please see the CfP and circulate wherever you can 🥳

All the things we could have fixed about our society with all those resources. Gone now, on the whims of the rich and their institutions, no possibility of our society deciding on any collective good to put them towards. The existence of billionaires diminishes our ability to build a society.