Hundreds of immigrant detainees held at Alligator Alcatraz are missing. The Trump Administration keeps us in the dark because they don't want us to see how they’re violating our rights, tearing our families apart, and attacking our communities. We need answers! Where are our neighbors?

Like everyone else, I've deleted my academia. edu page and I'm in the process of shifting over to Knowledge Commons. I'm still figuring out how it works, but my articles and book can all be found there and on my personal website. hcommons.org/members/aman...

"Compared to the first year of the first Trump administration, arrests of noncriminals have increased 500 percent." www.justsecurity.org/121122/us-de...

The destruction of the Gaza city mosque is a devastating loss to humanity as a whole. A part of our global medieval heritage destroyed in furtherance to a genocide. I despair.

“AI has always been a marketing phrase that erodes scientific inquiry and scholarly discussion by de- sign, leaving the door open to pseudoscience, exclusion, and surveillance.” zenodo.org/records/1706... 6/🧵

Netanyahu officially approved a settlement plan last week and announced his intentions to greenlight other settlements just like it. Together, these plans would end the West Bank as a geographic and political entity. mondoweiss.net/2025/09/if-i... #Palestine #Israel

Pious Labor (@ucpress.bsky.social ) reviewed in the AHR by @farinamir.bsky.social . I've been fortunate that the book has been read by several thoughtful and generous reviewers, and I'm especially thrilled to see this one. academic.oup.com/ahr/article-... 🗃️

If we’re mourning a victim of political violence in the US this weekend, it should be Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez.

BREAKING in Chicago: "ICE Abducts Man Suing Off-Duty Police for Abusing Day Laborers" by @sarahlazare.bsky.social & @bloomekatz.bsky.social “The Department of Homeland Security has become the department of state terror,” @ramirez.house.gov said Saturday.

What a thoughtful man Mahmoud Khalil is. A must read. Was moved to know that while in detention he was reading Edward Said and Viktor E. Frankl www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

My next book, Out of Empire, is now under contract with @uncpress.bsky.social! The book provides a social historical perspective on the hijrat of 1920, during which tens of thousands of Indians left their homeland in search of freer lives in an independent, Muslim-ruled territory: Afghanistan.

An early example of testimonials in Urdu advertising! For the homeopathic treatment Amrat Dhara, which will help you with "any struggle in life," in a 1931 edition of Sadaqat (Kanpur). The advertisement features "a few letters of the 36,000" that they claim to have received from users 👀. 🗃️

You could house Chicago's homeless four times over with the money Trump's occupation of the city will cost PER DAY. Read more: interc.pt/4mEgE6q ✍️ @nickturse.bsky.social 📹 @jordanuhl.com

"Since the 1950s, area studies programs have quietly informed disciplinary practices across the humanities and social sciences." 2024 ACLS Fellow @amandazillo.bsky.social shares why area studies matter in @insidehighered.com: bit.ly/4lXw5p5

SEPT 15 JOB DEADLINE: Assistant Professor in South/Southeast Asian Religions (w/ focus on Hindu Traditions, defined BROADLY) in my department at the University of San Diego (PLEASE SHARE WIDELY). jobs.sandiego.edu/cw/en-us/job...

Brilliant - and sadly necessary - defense of the value of area studies from @amandazillo.bsky.social www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

In @insidehighered.com I explore how area studies have positively reshaped the humanities & social sciences in the US since the 1950s. Their loss would impoverish knowledge production across our universities, and our universities must step up to defend them. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

Our students and colleagues keep disappearing, and most of us don't seem to care.

My op-ed in the @chicagomaroon.bsky.social on the University of Chicago’s appalling plans to gut the humanities and possibly eliminate the South Asian studies department chicagomaroon.com/48353/viewpo...

The Israeli military carried out a double-tap strike on Nasser hospital in Gaza. Among those targeted and killed: at least five journalists that worked with Al Jazeera, Reuters, NBC News, and the Associated Press.

Seeking a Sindhi translator (paid) for work on a short text! If you have any leads, please have them email me (my name @ uchicago. edu).

‘Brave reporting by the likes of Anas al-Sharif, an al-Jazeera journalist killed by Israel on 10 August with five of his colleagues, is systematically dismissed and discredited.’ Stefan Tarnowski on Palestinian journalists: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/au...

In the conservative states, they cut languages because "useless" and "indoctrination." In the progressive states, they cut languages because "budget cuts" and "restructuring." In all states: languages do need to be cut. (Hint: They don't, actually. This is a bipartisan ideological project.)

There a one-year Assistant Instructional Professor in Hindi position in my department at Chicago open, for a visiting role from Jan-December 2026. Tell your Hindi teaching friends! networks.h-net.org/jobs/68970/u...

It's really hard to handle everything around you being guided by the imaginary vibes of people who are afraid of subways and writing their own emails.

The 1st prof to be officially sanctioned under IN’s “intellectual diversity” law. IU doesn’t bother trying to claim the prof violated anyone’s rights - merely that he included “personal opinions” a student disagreed with, and is known to be a vocal critic of Israel on campus

Now updated with more links (thanks to everyone who suggested new material!) and with the years that each article was published. catherinedenial.org/blog/uncateg...

Five days in Chicago, and I have to say I joyously ADORE this city when I commute by bike 🚲 (from home in Pilsen to work in Hyde Park), and feel nothing but despair and misery when I drive the car. I also reserve the right to revise this opinion in the winter 🥶.

Looking for readings related to copying and specifically forgery as a skill and/or its role within craft practice and knowledge. Any suggestions? #HistSTM 🗃️

"Last year there were ten murders in the NYC subway system, with well over a billion total rides taken. During the same time period, there were 253 traffic fatalities in New York City. One person dead every day and a half. Cars? Those things are fucking dangerous."

Project “get my doggo to Chicago” has commenced!

If I have to explain to you why it's a bad idea to use a machine that makes shit up 15-80% of the time AND destroys the environment AND contributes to rising fascism and genocide AND puts brilliant skillful creatives out of work by stealing their work, then we're already speaking different languages

Have been back in the US one week, and my primary hobby is now gesturing toward oversized trucks and SUVs, shaking my head and muttering wearily, “should be illegal.” So, uh, it’s an adjustment.

I hope that faculty across the country read this report from the AAUP on AI & the Academic Professions, share it with their university administrators,& collectivize to create communities that use this document as a roadmap towards gaining agency over higher education. www.aaup.org/reports-publ...

"One detainee was beaten unconscious. Others emerged from the dark isolation room covered in bruises... vomiting blood. Another returned to his cell in tears, telling fellow detainees he’d just been sexually assaulted."

Movers at my flat today, which meant a day long adventure in keeping the doggo out from underfoot. We covered a good chunk of Southwark!

I took a short blacksmithing class with Ms Caitlin (the author/subject of this beautifully illustrated article) several years back when I was trying to get a better sense of the material practices described in some smithing texts. Made a simple hook on which I still hang my keys. 😍

I’ll be back in the classroom for the first time in 1.5 yrs in Sept. Nervous re: AI, but considering a weekly in-class “writing workshop” where students work through different components of their final project, present them to each other, get/give feedback, etc. Anyone tried something like this?

Absolutely dystopian juxtaposition from the Guardian front page. Difficult to understand how anyone of decency and conscience can defend this government at this point. Just sheer moral degeneracy to arm a state that does this and arrest people for objecting. Wtf are we doing as a country?

Going through some of my lithos as I begin to pack. Here’s a cover of a Gramophone Guide: Payam-e Dil (Karachi, c.1935). 😍

100%. Though I do question these framings of the liberal arts as “our inherited [Western] intellectual traditions.” While we’re defending the liberal arts, can we also embrace them as bigger, messier, more global and contradictory than the supposed “classical Western canon”?

The solidarity that Rümeysa Öztürk and her fellow detainees showed each other in a for-profit ICE center is stunningly moving (& I love that she wrote this to fulfill a promise to her new Armenian aunty). The treatment they received is completely horrifying.

‘When a person dies, there are mourning rituals to help us, and people who can guide us in grieving for those we have lost. But what do you do when an entire village is erased, when a whole way of life is destroyed?’ Yigal Bronner in the West Bank, from the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ju...

“Sanitising language like “Indian handicrafts” has allowed an urban elite to wax eloquent about the beauty of these crafts while ignoring or sidelining the difficulties that are faced by the communities involved in every stage of production.” m.thewire.in/article/cast...

Philosophy professor & US Citizen Jonathan Caravello has been brutally detained & effectively disappeared for trying to help a legal observer remove a teargas canister from under their wheelchair during an ICE raid on a California farm. …is a sentence I've now had to write. What… in the actual fuck

Impressed with the People’s History Museum in Manchester, not least for opening with cleared-eyed statements like “Empire, enslaved people, and cotton made Britain wealthy in the 19th century…” Here are a few of my fave union banners and posters from the exhibits.

How did hawkers shape the image and idea of the landscape of hunger in Malay(sia)? Chin Kar Yern explores how hawkers carved out new routes in the use of public space: www.historyworkshop....

Took my doggo (and my family) up to Scotland. Walked in the rain.