Just Out: My @nytimes.com op ed on how AI companies are eating higher education. As educators, we have a duty to defend — and advance — human intelligence. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/o...

A brilliant essay on what graduate historical research can be. Reminds me of the late great Adam McKeown and what might have been. Luckily the title is hyperbolic. The Last Intellectual www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

Columbia’s History Lab just launched History Lab AI — the world’s largest AI-powered archive. It's built on top of +5M declassified govt docs, and was unveiled just now at the Federal Depository Library Conference. Explore: lab.history.columbia.edu/history-lab-...

I'm having a hard time deciding: Is the problem that some of our young people might be taking humanitities courses, or is it that they are spending thousands of hours playing first-person shooter games?

Columbia students showing what real leadership looks like. They are displaying more maturity than many professors. www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/04...

Thank you for asking! Appointing someone to rethink our regional and global centers – much as other universities have been doing since the end of the Cold War – is not a “receivership.”

I thought his case was really bad. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/o...

Yes, faculty could do this, but it would be dumb: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/o...

From 2010 to 2016 (latest data I have ), NIH research contributed to EVERY drug approved by the FDA

A friend drove two hours today for her breast cancer chemotherapy only to learn it was canceled due to NIH cuts. Clinical trial ended midstream. No treatment, no restart, no plan, no information. Her bro-in-law's chemo was also canceled.

This moment in our country's history is depressing, but it's also illuminating. We're finding out, in real time, whom among those in power will hedge their bets, trade complicity for personal preservation, and retreat into cowardice in the hopes they'll be spared. And we will remember their names.

Meta pirated at least 101 of my books and articles, and tens of millions of others. open.substack.com/pub/garymarc...

No one could have predicted that this would happen. www.thebulwark.com/p/maga-broca...

Among the material devastation to everyday people, Senate Dems have now blown a hole in their ability to work with the House. We had an agreed upon plan, House took immense risk, then Senate turned around midway and destroyed it w/ a fear-based, inexplicable abdication. They own what happens next.

The Cruiser USS Columbia didn't back down even after taking heavy damage, and neither will we. @columbiauniversity.bsky.social is firing back—defending academic freedom, open inquiry, and the pursuit of knowledge. Who else will join the fight?

have been wondering a lot at what point we have to conclude that Americans don’t care about our Republic as much as South Koreans, or today Hungarians — big dif being that Koreans rushed at once into the streets en masse & resisted the troops, whereas Orban has got away with it for a long time

The CFPB has survived, so far. For military history buffs, it's a bit like the Battle of Coral Sea. WE HAVE TO START CELEBRATING VICTORIES, even partial victories www.nytimes.com/2025/03/15/b...

My colleagues at Columbia and I are waiting for more of our friends to start showing some solidarity. That does not mean attacking our administration, based on partial or incorrect information. It means organizing and lobbying to support us. Thank you @ryanenos.bsky.social for stepping up.

Damn right. People doing nothing to help and can’t even get their facts straight: “Columbia University has been given the names of other individuals who have engaged in pro-Hamas activity, and they are refusing to help DHS identify those individuals on campus.” (WH statement)

Look, folks, this is it. The entire ballgame. Either we're a Republic of laws & the Constitution, or we have a dictator. This is fascism, & the impeachment vote should be happening today. Every single university president in the country should be out, in front of microphones, condemning this.

There is a lot of misinformation about what is happening at Columbia. But I agree that everyone who cares about the First Amendment needs to tell their own institution's leaders, scholarly societies, and elected representatives to show solidarity and resist.

Who could have seen this coming, RFK, who?

There are rallies across the country (and the world) tomorrow: standupforscience2025.org

Gerardine's right -- It's masterful.

Don’t F*ck with the Catholic F*cking Church

Say something to your representatives

Five years ago today Trump toured the CDC and said "Anyone Who Wants a Test Can Get a Test." His bungled rollout of Covid testing meant we were flying blind about where it was spreading, couldn't take a targeted approach, leading to national lockdowns (that helped Trump get reelected).

Diplomatic malpractice. www.wsj.com/world/americ...

For the first time, Trump is underwater according to @fivethirtyeight.universeodon.com.ap.brid.gy. America, what took you so long?

CNN: Foreign adversaries including Russia and China have recently directed their intelligence services to ramp up recruiting of US federal employees working in national security, targeting those who have been fired or feel they could be soon. www.cnn.com/2025/02/28/p...

I’ve been suggesting on TV and podcasts—without actual evidence(!)—that it may turn out that DOJ will wind up not having enough lawyers to defend all the lawsuits challenging this administration’s illegal conduct. Turns out it seems already to be true. 👉

Trump and Vance wanted Zelensky to thank them for an aid package that Vance voted against and Trump opposed.

I'm thinking of starting a "today in (recent) history" feature, reminding everyone of all Trump's idiot moves during the one major crisis of his first administration. But then I already missed February 27, 2020, when he said "it's like a miracle, it will disappear"

Find out more about our MPhil in Global Risk & Resilience here: www.cser.ac.uk/education/mp...

I’m somehow on a Heritage Foundation mailing list (😂) and they sent a survey to see what we think of DOGE. Who wants to offer some m-fing feedback?!? secured.heritage.org/the-heritage... Please share with a friend or a thousand :)

Every sentence here is made possible ONLY by the careful & consistent collection & publication by government agencies of public health information. But since RFK & Trump want to impose anti-vax policies that these statistics reveal to be literally lethal, they will aim to kill these gov’t agencies.

My father fought to desegregate the lily white fire departments of Long Island. He was arrested in Mississippi during Freedom Summer. Most of his family at the time thought he was a fool, or crazy. We need that kind of courage now.

No, but if you’re looking for one, I am aware of a guy you work with that was indicted four times and convicted of thirty-four felonies.

I just don’t understand how this already horrible timeline keeps finding a way, literally every single day, to get worse.

If we were watching Casablanca, instead of this crappy movie, this would be the part when Humphrey Bogart gives permission to resistance hero Victor Laszlo to lead everyone in singing La Marseillaise.

If we were watching Casablanca, instead of this crappy movie, this would be the part when Humphrey Bogart gives permission to resistance hero Victor Laszlo to lead everyone in singing La Marseillaise.

And there it is

Profile in courage www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/...

You’ll have to pry congestion pricing out of this New Yorker’s cold dead fingers

The nuclear nonproliferation regime is one of the great international relations policy success stories of the postwar order. In mid-1950s, CIA analysts expected there would be 40-50 nuclear-armed countries in the world by the 1970s. Today there are still only 9. That world may be coming to an end.

Damn right

This is exactly what I found when I got into The Vatican Secret Archives (it's really called the Vatican Secret Archives). They saw Margaret Sanger as the enemy because, after losing Catholic men to trade unionism, bishops worried about losing the women too. The "natural law" crap was a coverup.

The culmination of more than a decade of work. We are making available the world's largest corpus of declassified documents for data science research. If you want to be a conspiracy empiricist, and not just a theorist, this is the place to start

Five employees at the JFK Library in Boston were laid off today in connection with a Trump administration overhaul of federal workers. "Without them, we are unable to stay open," a source tells @gbhnews.bsky.social. "It has been chaotic and we are seeking clarity."

Sometimes we couldn't afford both soap AND toilet paper. Sometimes we lived in people's living rooms. & sometimes we didn't all live together. I went to community college & transferred to the UW. The $1000 NSF summer stipend in 1999 allowed me to complete my undergraduate honors thesis.