This is good from The New School’s Jeremy Varon: jacobin.com/2026/03/vide...

Even if it is a "mistake," it can still be a war crime. A person who acts recklessly in causing disproportionate civilian deaths can be found to have acted “wilfully” and thus responsible for a war crime. Read "'Mistakes' in War": papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/w...

NYT catching up… so nearly there! www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/o...

Btw, Fascism: -Emphasizes the threat to the nation from within and without; -Proposes to cleanse the nation of “enemy/ other”; -Glorifies an imagined “lost” past of national greatness; -Seeks an anti-democratic one-party state; -Demands control of media/culture/universities;

Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump. Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt. Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:

I need a couple books on the origins of the New Deal. Is there much on tha…

🗃️Read Elizabeth R. Varon on why J.D. Vance is wrong about the Civil War, immigration, and “real” Americans. www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/elev...

Still waiting

Graduation speeches in the 1930s were 🔥

A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope

Unhappy to confirm that the entire Historical Advisory Committee at the State Department received termination notices this afternoon (myself included). The HAC, set up by Congress, oversees the office that produces the FRUS series. history.state.gov/about/hac/in... 1/

I am fortunate to be part of this great group of colleagues and phd students in our (entirely voluntary and casual) seminar on 20th C international history. Great discussion on Berlin as a site of decolonization!

“Almost the first freedom to be destroyed, as dictators take control, is the freedom of learning. Tyranny hates and fears nothing more than the free exchange of ideas.” Franklin Roosevelt, Oct 5, 1940.

In 1940, the presidents of Yale, Columbia, and Harvard urged the government and country to fight fascism. It was national news.

Lovely convo with my grad students this week, riffing with them about how to plot a book on decolonization and the Cold War. Dreadful chalk scribbles but fun intellectual exercise.

Sometimes old books can suddenly seem new again.

Fortune mag, March 1940. 65% say government should care for needy even if it means more taxes or higher prices.

Look, it was never about prices. Sure, millions of people spoke those words but this is how ideology operates: it provides you with believable nonsense so you can hide your racism, sexism, and xenophobia behind happy stories about egg prices.

Word of the moment, used during the Nazi merging of the party w the state in 1933-35: *Gleichschaltung* gleich (same) schaltung (circuit): All switches are put on the same circuit, allowing them all to be activated by throwing a single master switch. encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/a...

Happy birthday FDR! Your New Deal state survived almost a century but some very bad people you would call “economic royalists” are going to destroy it from within.

History doesn’t repeat itself but sometimes it rhymes with Mussolini. Read up on Italy from 1922 to 1926 for a preview of coming attractions.

Now do History.

My colleague and podcast cohost @sivav.bsky.social has written an excellent piece here about the global rejection of liberal democracy. Brief and insightful! Have a look: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Reading about the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany? This sheet pan Black Forest cake will make you feel like you were there.

We're just 48 hours from the special elections that will decide whether Dems keep their majorities in the Virginia Senate & Virginia House boltsmag.org/legislative-...

So far, my university’s policy discourages *faculty* from using any AI detector tool on student papers because the tools can be inaccurate. So the official policy message on AI is… 🤷‍♂️

Just saying, Denzel’s expression in his final scene in Galdiator 2 is me watching this movie

Writing is hard; and writing a book is agony, until suddenly there’s a moment when you look up and realize you’re finishing it, and it’s not terrible, and maybe you haven’t wasted years … and your heart beats a little faster. Worth bottling that feeling for use in future emergencies

Go see “A Complete Unknown”! Bring your fam! It’s lovely, a sentimental, beautifully acted film, a tribute to youthful genius, and generational conflict. Plus the clothes! The hair! The music!

Guys, please, this isn’t an anomaly, a surprise, a mistake, a gaffe. Applauding Nazi violence is the whole point! Like, it’s not a secret!

On Sept 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland, Hitler gave a shrieking, grievance-filled speech to the Reichstag. The great columnist Dorothy Thompson heard it, and on NBC radio she reflected back to January 1933. Anyone from Charlottesville will know exactly what she is talking about here.

FYI, wealthy people have liked fascism from 1922 until today. Usually the argument is: “fascism is good for the unruly slobs who need discipline;” but it has also been seen as a cure-all to economic woes, race/gender panics, etc. A billionaire endorsing a neo-Nazi party is 100% on brand.

The interval of time between grades being posted and students complaining about said grades is best measured in: hours minutes seconds nanoseconds

I'm very indebted to the work of @brianbeutler.bsky.social and @jamellebouie.net in formulating this line of questioning. I hope more Dems are pushed on this going forward:

A record 47.8 million immigrants lived in the U.S. in 2023, up from 46.2 million in 2022. While the number of immigrants in the U.S. reached a new record high last year, their share of the population (14.3%) remained below the all-time peak (14.8% in 1890). www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

There are still a few weeks left in the year (though December is generally a quiet month for book proposals), but it looks like I’m going to close out 2024 with around 80% of total book proposals coming from men, 18% from women, and 2% from persons whose gender was not apparent/obvious.

Wrapped another semester of Global Cold War history w/ 120 great students. This year, the CW feels closer than ever. Russia, Ukraine, the fate of NATO, nuclear weapons, Taiwan, Korea, Iran… all the current crises are tied to the CW, and one of these could erupt into a massive conflict. 😬

Things are going to suck for a long time so taking pleasure in the occasional sunset seems like a good idea. Central Va.

May I ask when in god’s name did young people begin calling all written works including non-fiction books “novels” 😭

“Bluesky is getting 20 times the engagement or more than Twitter. Seeing a social media platform that doesn’t throttle links really makes it clear how badly we were being limited.” - @ashtonpittman.bsky.social. www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-...

A delicious example of how easy it will be for foreign intelligence services to penetrate the US security world. The French are clinking glasses over this one. More serious breaches to come, of course. At least the French are notional allies.

In 1940, a terrible experiment unfolded in France. Under unusual circumstances, a small number of mostly discredited elites imposed a political order with the following features: The suppression of democracy and a cult of personality around a leader of the right; 1/

Just fyi, Gym Jordan is rested and ready for DOJ, so don’t break out the bubbly.

Anyway Morroco is amazing.

In the last few hours, two affluent white people told me a) that colonialism was a blessing for Africa and b) “benevolent dictators” are better than democracy. It’s just an anecdote… but no amount of campaigning w Liz Cheney was going to change these minds. They’re unreachable.

Hello! I’m very late to the show here— so many familiar faces! I’m finishing a book on why fascism has always been rather popular in America and how some very courageous people fought it all the way. In case that’s of interest!

Can confirm! (I’m in it.)