“Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, said the court has once again allowed a Trump administration policy to go ahead on an interim basis "in a manner that permits harm to be inflicted on the most vulnerable party."

The Herbert G. Gutman Prize for Outstanding Dissertation in U.S. Labor and Working-Class History is now open for submissions! Full details here: go.illinois.edu/UIPGutmanPrize cc: @laborlawchajournal.bsky.social

Video’s Day in Court, the inaugural report by @visualevidencelab.bsky.social, maps the challenges with video evidence (access and retrieval, interpretation, and AI) and proposed ways forward because civil rights and human rights are at stake. Read and/or download via link below.

BREAKING: Colorado voters approved a ballot measure that would raise state income taxes on higher-earning households to fund free meals for all public school students. Follow AP for live updates.

Historic victory for Democratic Socialism and, frankly, the good of the country.

This is my new favorite short story 😂🤣

Time to get to writing. I am so excited! #bookcontract

Dinner in DC, food doesn’t get any better.

“The Coalition for Action in Higher Education and AAUP Local 6741 are delighted to announce: ‘Mapping Anti-Palestinian Discrimination, Harassment, and Misinformation in U.S. Higher Education.’ This series of five webinars takes place from October to December.”

I am beyond excited (and nervous!) to announce that my first book, "The House Archives Built and Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities" is available for sale! This series of essay includes reworked talks, new reflections, and a lot of my heart weherespace.myshopify.com/products/the...

My yearly invited talk at the Library of Congress was just canceled. Not objectively important, but probably tells us how long our friends in the public sector think that the shutdown is going to last.

I'm donating to food banks starting today. Barely a bandaid but this is going to be a serious situation.

Crab pretzel in Baltimore. Been dreaming about this all year.

Only in Baltimore could you find a staple in your Italian sandwich, and it makes you love the city more.

Wow, public media research is really in demand right now. Look at the price of my book the lower left corner.

Merkley: "What we've seen is that democracies no longer die bc men w/guns go in and take it over. Instead, it's electeds who erode the separation of power. If you have a rubber-stamp Congress & courts that deliver more power to the executive, suddenly you have an authoritarian state. It's here now."

I'm giving the talk "The Ends of US Public Media" at the University of Québec at Montreal on where NPR and PBS came from, and what's going to happen next for US public media. This one's on Zoom, free registration - next time in person I hope because I love visiting Montreal!

Fried artichokes, in Monterey, American artichoke country. Best I’ve ever had.

Today’s Monterey Bay view

I’m supposed to travel to Washington DC to give University of Colorado students tours of the FCC and Library of Congress. If everything is closed due to the shutdown, we are just going to go to Ben’s Chili Bowl and Baltimore to eat some crabcakes.

Thanks to American Campus, the podcast about the history of higher education, for featuring my book. We talk about how NPR and PBS emerged from equal access to education discourses. And how Media Studies originated as a strategy of public media activism.

There are so few academic jobs, and thousands of excellent scholars are all trying to move at the same time due to location. 

Annie Hall is one of the three realist and best romantic comedies in US cinema history. RIP Diane Keaton.

Midweek reminder to check out our latest episode on the history of American public media (NPR, PBS) with @joshshepperd.bsky.social. As these institutions continue to be under attack, it is important to look at where they came from and what they mean to our society. shows.acast.com/the-history-...

Sorry, but desecrating Chicago is an unforgivable moral and spiritual transgression.

I make fun of Denver, but the smothered green chile burrito at Taco de Mexico might well be one of the top ten dishes under $12 in the entire country.

"Many American Jews sharply disapprove of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, with 61 percent saying Israel has committed war crimes and about 4 in 10 saying the country is guilty of genocide against the Palestinians."

Today’s mountain view

also, in keeping with Vance’s view of american identity, only white people are fully American with the right to critique or dissent. nonwhites must show proper gratitude (supporting Trump or marrying JD Vance) before they can speak critically of the country (in approved ways, of course)

KEYNOTE ANNOUNCEMENT: Join me at the Access Amplified Digital Equity Symposium as we bring together 200+ community members to close the digital divide in Cook County. www.ticketfalcon.com/e/accessampl...

I’m in Chicago right now, and it is delightful, thriving, and has some of the best food in the country.

Delighted to have joined the History of Film podcast to discuss why public media matters.

Thanks to Kathryn J. McGarr (Wisconsin) for this excellent and thorough review of my book on the origins of US public media, in "Reviews in American History." muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

One of genealogies of Media Studies is that many early methods began as advocacy strategies of 1940s media reform, in the attempt to change broadcast regulation to allow for more educational channels. Put differently, Media Studies originated as a research movement to build US Public Media.

One more very exciting thing in the world of Sound Studies! Yun Emily Wang, Darci Sprengel, Ian MacMillen and I are co-editing a volume (with @dukepress.bsky.social) called "Quiet Relations," for which we're holding a (public!!) symposium next month at Duke University. See the attached poster!!

Thanks to Alex Sayf Cummings and "Tropics of Meta" for featuring my book on the origins of US public media today.

Colorado mountain lake view, about 9600 feet altitude.

I see a lot of utility for AI, but I’ve stopped using it entirely. It gets things wrong. It’s glib. And AI sorts information and people into preset hierarchies. It’s this latter point that’s giving me the most pause. The current iteration of AI is also a social engineering project.

Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are asking Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for answers after more than a dozen people died in immigration detention, as the department rushes to expand.

Many thanks to Tona Hangen for this review in the Journal of American History of LFTU, which highlights the central tensions of the book: academic.oup.com/jah/article/...

An over abundance of things to do, some of it quite interesting, but all I actually want is to sit down and read German hermeneutical philosophy and pre-war social theory for the next six months.

I don’t really understand why I live out here, but walking around in Colorado nature is pretty remarkable.

Feels like this week signaled the permanent reorientation of legacy media industries. There's no sustainable business model to "fire successful talent to obtain ephemeral political points with no tangible dividend."

There’s a delicious cookie calked Leibniz that I brought back from Europe. Next time I go, I’m gonna keep an eye out for Spinoza rugelach.

Thinking tonight about how PBS preemptively fired its DEI staff to appease Trump, and they still lost their money. 

Feels like a good historical juncture for Bluesky to allow users to make their content “private.”

Major new piece from David Ben-Merre (Buffalo State) and Manu Chander @profchander.bsky.social (Georgetown), in epilogue of David's excellent new book "O: Apostrophic Ghosts and the Disappearing Acts of Lyric Poetry."

In the wake of massive federal funding cuts to #publicbroadcasting by the #Trump administration, guest host Dr. Ben Zdencanovic is joined by Professor Josh Shepperd in this episode of then & now to discuss the complex historical development of #NPR and #PBS. Listen here! tinyurl.com/4j6jt9cn

I talked with @joshshepperd.bsky.social recently about how public media developed and the role it filled especially in its early years. Became more relevant more quickly than I hoped.

Hurt my back today so I ate a chip burger and you know what? My back feels a little better.