really interesting that the vice president cites as a key intellectual influence a guy who thinks black people are natural slaves

Just received news that 27 people have been arrested in Parliament Square under the Terrorism Act 2000 for holding signs saying "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action". This is real police state behaviour.

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Save the Date: the inaugural Association of Law and Political Economy conference will be taking place *February 5-7, 2026* at the University of Richmond School of Law. And keep an eye out for the CFP this later this summer!

This is especially important: “We call upon our fellow institutions of higher education in the United States to declare their willingness to facilitate the immediate co-enrollment of Harvard’s international students, including formal acceptance of transfer for immigration purposes.”

Harvard obviously needs to seek a preliminary injunction and I’m optimistic they’d get it quickly. But if that fails, it’s essential for other universities—as many as possible—to offer help in the form of formally enrolling students, and letting them substantively continue at Harvard uninterrupted.

On Tuesday 5/13 at 12:30pm, LPE@HLS is excited to host a special virtual event ft. Vijayashri Sripati and Aziz Rana on Prof. Sripati’s book, "Making Globalization Happen: The Untold Story of Power, Profits, Privilege" (OUP, 2024). Full details (w/ Zoom link) at: lpe.law.harvard.edu/events/sripa...

"The postmodern form of class war is that of finance capital against both labor and industry." Compelling (and succinct) analysis from Michael Hudson on Trump tariffs, US economic history, class politics, and geoeconomics. www.democracycollaborative.org/whatwethink/...

Today, a group of legal scholars explain how universities are being weaponized against their own members through allegations of “support for” or “alignment with” terrorism. Universities must prepare for this, and refuse to operate on the basis of fear rather than legal necessity or moral principle.

PPP is organizing working groups of law students & lawyers who are committed to ensuring our profession is on the right side of history. If you are interested in being part of this effort, please fill out this form and our team will be in touch with you shortly: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... (4/4)

another vitally important resource on defending out campuses from @aaup.bsky.social and @aftunion.bsky.social 👀 www.defendingourcampuses.org

"My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law."

Seven of my colleagues and friends at Columbia Law have written a compelling (and, in my view unanswerable) response to the unprecedented Title VI demand letter that the Trump administration recently sent to Columbia University: balkin.blogspot.com/2025/03/a-ti...

The library and the post office are the only two systems we have that circulate things widely and to everyone, no matter who they are or what they believe. The library is the only one that, for now, is not forced to pay for itself at point of sale. Attacks on IMLS are attacks on every one of us.

This is white supremacist, great replacement Nazi shit coming out of the mouth of the U.S. vice president.

What they're doing to Helyeh not only violates her freedoms of conscience and expression, it threatens EVERYONE who dares to speak out and agitate against militarism, fascism, and imperialism at a moment when this work has never been more pressing.

The Red Scare reshaped every institution in American life: Hollywood, labor unions, churches, universities, elementary schools—and, above all, the national-security state.

We need new leadership across the Board. In the Democratic party. In our universities. In our state & cities. Time to hand the baton to not only the next generation but to people who will know what to stand for and how to stand up for it. Who won't abandon us, collectively, at this critical moment.

If the government can do this to universities, we don't live in a free society. Five alarm fire.

No one should *ever* be targeted for speaking out in solidarity with Palestine, including my brilliant colleague @helyehdoutaghi.bsky.social. These are terrifying times, and we must all stand together against repression. lpeproject.org/blog/stateme...

Disentangling from the US is an urgent priority for the rest of the world. Your stuff—bank accounts, data, revenue streams—is here even if it doesn’t look like it’s here. And increasingly that’s like having your stuff stored in the personal residence of a mob boss.

a democratic senator and members of the board at the university aided and abetted mahmoud khalil's arrest

This makes clear, in case there was any doubt, that Mr. Khalil is a political prisoner.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — who headlined an event at Columbia right before Mahmoud Khalil was detained — just joked at a Harvard event that he would give exploding pagers to students protesting his visit

Universities are clearly not going to save themselves by further cracking down on protesters and dissidents. The actions against Columbia last week show as much. We have to defend students and workers against an increasingly lawless government that is coming for us all.

There is a real, genuine 1st Amendment crisis in the United States right now. The government is openly retaliating against anyone with a viewpoint it doesn't like: Pro-Palestinian protesters, law schools teaching Black History, pro-immigration public service loan forgiveness seekers.

This extreme escalation is an egregious violation of first amendment rights. Now is the moment to speak out and oppose this as fiercely and loudly as possible.

From "Class Struggle and the Global Overaccumulation of Capital," published by the late Marxist sociologist Simon Clarke in 2001. I read that paper a decade ago and have returned to this passage regularly since then

This is so profoundly strange from @slotkin.senate.gov. The Harris campaign ran one of the most aggressive outreach efforts to moderates, independents, and soft Republicans in recent memory!

This "immediate cancellation" violates the law. If the Admin thinks Columbia has violated Title VI by being deliberately indifferent to antisemitic harassment, it has to give Columbia a chance for a hearing first, make findings on the record, & wait 30 days. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/03...

I've posted 'Governing the Company Town' (my job market paper; now revised), which contextualizes contemporary enclaves—like Elon Musk's TX municipal incorporations, Disney's FL special district, & global private city movements—within a longer history of capital-governed communities: bit.ly/4hi449O

The fact that there is four votes for the government to decide to not to pay its bills means that four votes is probably the floor for a lot of unitary executive tests to follow.

This piece really clarifies (even for me personally!) How anti-Palestinian racism, anti-Blackness, and the assault on any surviving institutional democratic forms (in this case in the university) are coming together harowingly in the Age of Trump--here aided & abetted by the heads of universities.

one thing this demonstrates is the extent to which racial, gender, and sexual discrimination has been an important cause and substance of worker organizing, rather than (as is too often claimed) some kind of HR-driven distraction

Yes, it is entirely correct to point out that ICE officers do not have any legal authority to break into somebody’s home unless they get a judicial warrant; which they generally cannot do, because judges only issue warrants for probable cause of crimes, not immigration law violations.

Editor Commentary: Who does this to other people? To doctors, nurses, farmers, teachers, professors, scientists, veterans, working families, people with disabilities, children with special needs, poor people? What twisted, unnatural men.

How? (Not asking for a play by play or even a strategy, just the broad strokes of a theory)

winning the new Cold War by not accidentally firing all your public servants

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

Meet the disabled vets, cancer researchers, and nuclear techs fired by the worlds richest man

This new paper is about economic warfare, Trump, and Carl Schmitt. It's different from the other papers about Trump & Schmitt, though, I promise. Eternally indebted to @ajbauer.bsky.social and, through him, to the work of @bonniehonig.bsky.social. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Not surprising given how federal hiring works, but it's striking how many of the posters are military veterans. At this point, any Dem official feigning impotence when called to act needs to resign immediately.

Nobody takes liberalism less seriously than liberals.

these are segregationists.

Read @quinnslobodian.com in @nybooks.com on the "three strains of politics" converging in DOGE

Yet again, lowly neighborhood Blog publishes analysis that is approximately 400x more persuasive than country's largest newspaper. Also, very strange that Wurman doesn't reference the "entire literature" supporting his position. It's almost as if that literature was entirely fabricated 🧐