This doesn't mean we are going to win. It could be this ex-DOJ prosecutor will be on the losing side with us.

My favorite part of NYS tax filing. "Are you a resident of Yonkers?" "No." "Are you sure?" "Yes" "Did you maybe earn a dollar in Yonkers?"

Me watching a popular history documentary for the first time since starting a PhD: "I know this guy. He's a 20th century Americanist. What does he know about the Spanish Inquisition??"

Maybe Isaac Herzog is a head of state for individual Australian Jews who also hold Israeli citizenship, but as far as I know that is not the case for most. Hard to overstate how regressive this statement by Albanese is. It regards all Jewish citizens as potential foreigners.

the suggestion that the libertarian movement has always been anti trump is infuriating, but also a sign that people may have a sense of which way the wind is blowing

Keir Starmer and the Labour Party leadership have really exhibited some of the worst political judgment imaginable. The American equivalent would be something like Joe Biden naming Lanny Davis to lead the Federal Trade Commission. What did you think would happen?

Whatever respiratory virus is going around NYC at the moment, I have it and it's bad.

A surprisingly underemphasized piece of the Epstein story: Many of the people you consider elites in business, media, and academia? You can find their email address and write to them. They write back more often than you would think. They don't get the mail volume of sports or movie stars.

Shaul Magid, via Neusner, on the cultivation of "negative Judaism" through anti-antisemitism.

AIPAC used to not directly intervene in campaigns (indirectly is another story). It was a point of pride for a "public affairs committee" that hosted an annual and well-attended policy conference. It was the trump card played whenever anyone complained about AIPAC.

It's gross but the statement says essentially nothing. It does not name Phylisa or say what their "serious concerns" are beyond the baseless, disgraceful insinuation that the city might not protect some Jews. Jonathan Greenblatt has been doing this since Mamdani won the Democratic primary. Same old.

This is a bummer because YIVO is such a fantastic institution.

Important and insightful work by my colleague in History-HJS at NYU, @yaelmiz.bsky.social, a historian of the settlement movement. "Any effective opposition to settlements must start by targeting Israeli state support."

I see no reason for the @nyu.edu Library to continue carrying the print edition of The Washington Post in its periodical reading room. It is no longer a newspaper of serious inter/national repute. Maybe let's get The Philadelphia Inquirer instead?

"Equality and the exercise of citizenship were and are, always and everywhere, fragile, subject to substantial infringement if not outright abrogation. The process of emancipation continues into the twenty-first century." — David Sorkin, "Jewish Emancipation" (2019)

"The worst Trump can do is once again, as he did in January, dangle the promise of help when none is actually coming."

An excellent choice.

It's not great that the former US Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism is sharing Islamophobic conspiracy theories written by a "digital marketing professional." I left a polite reply asking her to reconsider disseminating this self-published article.

Lot of people saying “can’t believe QAnon was right” instead of “can’t believe the feminists were right about rape culture”, which feels suspicious tbqh.

Excited to learn that my proposal was accepted for the American Political History Conference in June! Apparently one of the most interesting and dynamic gatherings in the field.

Finkelstein's intense dislike of Dershowitz and general indifference to money really saved him—for once.

Is there any evidence for this rather inflammatory claim by Harvey Klehr? Not interested in "effectively" stretches. ideas.tikvah.org/mosaic/essay...

“Shame isn’t a pleasant emotion, but any honest reckoning with what my country has become has to start with it.”

One of the essential texts written in US History over the last 20 years. A must-read if you want to understand the dynamic at play here, which is not recent.

I sense that Laurence Tribe's own faith in the Constitution is shaken, despite this wholly ungenerous review of Jill Lepore's new book. His citation of an Amy Coney Barrett interview on the role of the Ninth Amendment (post-Dobbs!) smacks of real desperation.

"The White House is caught in a spiral of its own making. The more it tries to repress and dominate its opponents, the more it loses ground with the public, and the more it loses ground, the more it leans on force and threats of force to save face."

Increasingly appears that signing up to the Trump protection racket might not be the best way to protect American Jews from antisemitism.

Stellar essay by Nathan Shields on classical music's doomed search for a heroic and redemptive liberalism.

"New Yorkers can amass in astonishing numbers, their worries and passions never becoming populism. Fairly or not, they are assumed to read books."

Good. With Vernikov at the head, this task force was never going to do anything remotely constructive. Now they won’t be able to waste anyone else’s time.

Gordon Brown was solid in office. The UK and the continent would have been much better off had Labour won the 2010 election under his leadership.

This is one of my old bugbears, but it's really unacceptable that a single passenger on the NYC subway has the ability to throw entire train lines into disarray by pulling the emergency breaks. This does not happen in London, Paris, or Berlin. There must be an alternative to this madness.

“The refrigerators and the cemeteries are full to the brim with the [Palestinian] dead, each one of whom has parents and children who long to give them a proper burial. But Israel is adamant: Only we have feelings. Only we are human beings.”

It's Candace Owens so obviously you can't rule out AI. But if it is genuine, I can't think of a better way to honor Charlie Kirk's legacy. At the most innocent and basic level, he was a merchandise salesman. His widow is ensuring the murderer did not succeed in stopping the work.

An interesting essay but with confused targets. It is not so much political science that has gotten Trump wrong but political scientists who have sought to become political horserace commentators, as well as pundits who (mis)use political science.

I was just assaulted on the street in New York for the first time in my 31 years living here. I'm okay. A big drunk (I think) person shoving me and my older brother while we were waiting for a delivery outside our building. Thankfully this experience was only bizarre and not injurious.

Yes, but that's not what Republicans were saying during the Obama administration. It was definitely not the message they were sending out over their propaganda networks.

I read both the FT and NYT, and I appreciate that the former does not bend over backwards to accommodate Republicans and reflexive supporters of Israel. It pointedly did not join the American upper-class hysteria over Mamdani. It's been a tonic for the soul over the last year.

Hopefully future Democratic presidents are watching and, to quote some of our unfriendlier critics, "you will never be enough."

For whatever my view is worth, I think Phylisa Wisdom would be an excellent choice to lead the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism. She is someone the mayor can trust on politically sensitive issues and who can talk to almost anyone in the Jewish community.

The "new direction" is just Bari Weiss hiring a bunch of her friends, who are all (like Weiss) right-wing pseudo-centrist grifters.

wouldn't necessarily assume inside information, but weiss is a reliable weathervane because she's a pure careerist and there has been a shift.

"As governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem launched an anti-drug campaign with the tagline: 'Meth: We’re on it.' Noem’s message control has not obviously sharpened as Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary."

lol www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/n...

Also ironic given that the vast majority of Columbia's undergraduate population comes from outside New York. Mamdani graduated from a NYC public high school.

incredible that the ADL just added an evangelical war criminal to their board

Salt Lake City

Heroes who treated children amidst the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

It is more likely they will lose and propagate another stolen election myth. Though maybe Trump will be less inclined to do that as he's not on the ballot. (I don't remember him saying the 2018 midterms were stolen).

There are a dozen ways that you can easily tell that the FDD and WINEP are little more than pro Israel megaphones in Washington DC, but one of the funniest is to look at how they did a complete 180 on Saudi Arabia and MBS once it became clear that the Crown Prince was serious about Palestine