The Met live stream of Fidelio was excellent (esp Davidsen as Lenore. Peter Gelb intro focused on Ukraine, but the striking example is right in NY, is Mahmoud Khalil and his imprisonment for political speech. @metopera.bsky.social

Excellent article that highlights the current state/elite adaptation to changing market/geopolitical context.

In this article we place the growth of tech in China and the reshaping of class forces and the state. We move away from a focus on tech policy or elites to place developments in the US and China in the broader context of capitalist crisis. madeinchinajournal.com/2025/03/20/e...

In this article we place the growth of tech in China and the reshaping of class forces and the state. We move away from a focus on tech policy or elites to place developments in the US and China in the broader context of capitalist crisis. madeinchinajournal.com/2025/03/20/e...

I would substitute 'totality' instead 😘

The AHA strongly opposes Minister Jason Clare's call for the ARC to investigate Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah's grant. Such political interference, which the Minister promised to end, undermines the integrity of the ARC and its independent, peer-review processes.

This is partly to do with the reclamation of the status of 'native', once doled out to colonized peoples all the better to govern them, but now repatriated back home under an altered and positive sign. This too is a kind of imperial boomerang.

Academic freedom is further curtailed in Singapore and at the National University of Singapore. On this US Ivy League universities and NUS seem to be converging www.academia.sg/editorials/o...

I have a big ask. My 9yo son is autistic and he’s been raising a betta fish he named Kevin. Yesterday He asked if he could “share a photo of Kevin with the whole world“. I don’t know if this will work, but a dad’s gotta try. Like and share if that’s your thing. Kevin says hi! 🐟👋

The ADL steps in to explain that it’s not a Nazi Salute unless it comes from the Nazi Salute region of France.

Mark Beeson in good form here : johnmenadue.com/with-friends...

FForget about Greenland or Canada—the defining feature of the Trump administration is the crisis of social reproduction—as the LA fires vividly demonstrate—alongside the ongoing political crisis.

This is sharp on identity politics particularly on the politics of identity by the right. But we should be asking: why now ? how this shift relates to the hollowing out of mass politics and the intensification of crises of social reproduction. novaramedia.com/2024/12/30/i...

I don’t really feel like Han’s impeachment (appoint the CC judges, already) is the story of the day, but rather the details dripping out of the investigations into various figures that reveal the extent of martial law plotting over the last 8 months and the dangers it would imply if successful.

The de facto co-president and speaker of the house endorses Germany’s neonazi party. www.reuters.com/world/europe...

the Hitler meme posting white guy from South Africa who routinely boosts neo-Nazis and white supremacists on his twitter feed and worries about white population declines openly supports Germany's far right party? Quelle surprise

Two reading recommendations for today: first, @sophiagoodfriend.bsky.social with a book review which makes some very incisive points on the tech sector's recent incursion into security and military matters here: www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

This will be the story of the next decade: increased fiscal pressure alongside a growing crisis of social reproduction, including ecological disasters and militarised neoliberalism. And in both the global North and South. www.ft.com/content/1c67...

Crypto and its political imaginaries of the authoritarian neoliberalism of the far right. www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpre...

New article accepted at CPS. @denis-cohen.bsky.social @thmskrr.bsky.social and I analyze how rental market risk affects radical right support. Combining data on local rent increases with the SOEP, we find that individuals facing increasing local rents become more likely to support the AfD. 🧵

💯 My current thinking is that the portion of the field that I inhabit has been so shaped by the 30+ years of post-Cold War liberal democratic politics that we have lost the vocabulary to describe its alternatives

A lot of the problem is that these accounts valorise institutional failure without addressing the social forces that shape these failures. This might seem obvious, but the failure has to do with the marginalisation of structural theories and debates ( Weber and Marx ) in comparative politics.

In Capital vol. 3, Marx writes that he wants to examine capitalism in its "idealen Durchschnitt." This is usually translated as "ideal average," but I believe a more accurate translation would be "ideal cross-section." I think this is a geological metaphor rather than a mathematical one. 1/5

NEW: The Biden administration has separated around 300 children from their parents or legal guardians — most at the southwestern border — in the past year, according to government sources. propub.li/3ZPTwsT By @micarosenberg.bsky.social

It is emblematic of deeper issue: the way liberal professional and academic institutions seem to articulate an explicit set of different standards for such issues as scholasticide or the media in Gaza.

I’ve reported on homelessness for years and met many, many people who have found themselves in awful situations Every single one of them had more decency and integrity than this privileged plutocrat

What's with all the spy shows on streaming servics?

This is an interesting article on the rise of HR department. Still, it has broader relevance to Universities where HR has been at the centre of neoliberalisation of the University and increasing crucial site of power within the University. www.newstatesman.com/business/202...

It is good to see this in the Guardian - showing the complexities of class, caste and minority status within the Indian Diaspora and the surveillance of the diaspora. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

The conservative attack on social science is in full swing Florida Board of Governors eliminates Principles of Sociology from the core requirements The education commissioner said sociology had “been hijacked by left-wing activists” www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/u...

Make no mistake, colleagues: the exclusion of humanities & social science research from national competitive funding could easily happen here in Australia. The signs & actors are already clear. We let it happen at our collective peril.

Jamie Doucette’s book on Korea is very useful contextualising the current crisis in Korea. here is my review essay on the book and pointing to the broader crisis of social reproduction in Korea. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

With Bluesky user numbers rocketing, more official news accounts are arriving. Here is a starter pack of major media outlets. Feel free to repost, I’ll keep this updated as more arrive.

For colleagues curious about what is happening at the Australian National University www.afr.com/work-and-car...

My new word to be added to my list of 'weasel words' ( cf Don Watson ) is 'thought leader' - everyone seems to be a 'thought leader these days.

Florida State University had to cancel 432 courses because the state won't allow teaching about gender theory or post-colonialism, and the University of Texas system is restricting teaching about critical race theory and queer theory, and yet we're still doing this sort of story?

Excellent on the demise of the old political parties but also the complex political and social terrain on which the NPP has to operate.The key is the politics of austerity that has been imposed on Sri Lanka and the social forces and state agencies that underpin it. 1 jacobin.com/2024/11/sri-...

On the COP29 outcome, I'm comparing the rosy, technocratic press releases of corporate Western NGOs ("ripe opportunity"; "a hard-won victory for multilateralism") with the absolutely furious statements from the Global South and oh boy does it feel like we're being gaslit.

prospect.org/politics/202...

Sharing 3 of my most recent works as a way of saying hello on this platform! First, an article on 'Populism and foreign policy: India's refugee policy towards the Rohingya' co-authored with the brilliant Shweta Singh (SouthAsianUniversity) in International Affairs: academic.oup.com/ia/article-a...

To those prepping 2026 Discovery Projects EOIs while still waiting on 2025 outcomes: I don't know when they'll be released. I'm sorry. Remember, ARC *planned* this. Planned outcomes for 20–29Nov & 13Dec EOI deadline. They knew ~500 teams would now be wasting time prepping EOIs.

Relieved to hear the Dems will be moving away from such abstruse faculty-lounge idioms as, "if you drink the coffee, please contribute to the coffee fund" and "milk for personal use - DO NOT TOUCH!"

Giving Benny Tai 10 years really sends a chilling message to Hong Kong and HK academics. www.nytimes.com/2024/11/18/w...

The redemptive narrative of perpetrator trauma is my new pet peeve - from My Lai to 'American Sniper', it's incredibly pervasive. Here are some of the books that I've found useful to think about what happens when perpetrators are turned into victims, and the real victims are rendered invisible:

Those who are excited by Netflix live streaming a 'sporting' event let me tell you about the dim distant past where we had this thing called live free-to-air events on live TV.

Interesting but unsatisfactory reading of 18B and Trump. The most useful way to think about 18B is as a method and how ebbs and flows of the 'political scene' relate in a complex way to structural changes in accumulation. www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

What fucking genius authorised this?

Brilliant