Anti-immigration demonstration in the Netherlands escalates. This is exactly what happens when far-right ideas are tolerated and normalised over an extended period of time. The far right gains confidence and grows, both at the ballot box and in the streets. nos.nl/artikel/2583...

here is the job ad in English: vacatures.knaw.nl/job/Amsterda...

Peer reviewers are exhausted. It's common to spend *months* inviting reviewers, getting refusals, inviting more, maybe 12 or more, then 2 agree but 1 doesn't complete, so you go again. That's why your paper is in limbo. I'm very sorry, it's awful, but it's also an untenable academic labour issue.

"“If we stop producing people who are trained or educated to help undergraduates understand the most important things thought or written or painted in human history,” the renowned philosopher Robert Pippin said, “we might not be able to recover that.”"

Waterstones opens 10 new stores a year as younger adults embrace reading

“keeping the humans in humanities” 💯

Anders dan de BBB beweert is noaberschap (burenhulp) geen typisch regionale deugd. Ook andere politieke actoren maken goede sier met de term, veelal om impopulaire maatregelen met de mantel der liefde te bedekken (‘participatiemaatschappij’). 👉 buff.ly/fuqPT86

When we talk about "real life" in rural areas, what does the word "real" actually mean? Check out our chapter in this great new volume edited by @estherpeeren.bsky.social and Tjalling Valdés Olmos! brill.com/display/titl... @soc-muni.bsky.social

My latest on “The New Artificial Intelligentsia,” part of the Legacies of Eugenics series in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Thanks to all who read + share! lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...

En die onnozele Wilders en Yesilgoz, die zogenaamd opkomen voor de gewone “hardwerkende” man/vrouw, laten het allemaal gebeuren. Gevolg: grote agro bedrijven krijgen het leeuwendeel vd subsidies, en wij krijgen stikstof, woningnood, slechtste water van Europa enz. En BBB blokkeert verandering.

New edited volume on rural imagi nations - out now, fully open access (thanks to the ERC)!

On the upside, this doesn’t even come close to the top-10 most embarrassing things Mark Rutte has done in his career.

“As you read, a line might hit you. You feel struck. You pause. Here’s where close reading happens. Hold up. Linger with that line. Read it again, a few more times. What gives it its force here in its immediate moment? Work out its power. Does it reveal something about the text’s project?”

I talked to Jia Zhangke about CAUGHT BY THE TIDES for @nextbestpicture.bsky.social, talking his grand, abstracted mosaic of this century's constant change. One of my favorite conversations I've done with a filmmaker in ages, proud of this one! Read here: nextbestpicture.com/the-next-bes...

It is time to remember the ones who never abandoned the way to care for the dead the ones who said not only my dead and not only the official dead matter amidst all the matter. ‘The Historians’, a poem by Maureen N. McLane: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

#jobvacancy Kunstinstituut Melly is Looking for a Curator of Collective Learning. Bring your expertise in (un)learning, interdisciplinary collaboration, and dialogue to shape innovative public programs that engage diverse audiences www.kunstinstituutmelly.nl/en/pages/836...

As a Chicago Pope, he’ll be weighed down by footnotes.

Waited all day for a delivery supposed to come between 8:00 and 18:00 and of course it came at 18:45…

“There is this myth of the digital native, that because some people have grown up with digital devices, they are well equipped to make sense of the information that those devices provide.” The startling reality: The most online generation is the worst at discerning fact from fiction on the internet.

Wij zeggen: Er is wél een rode lijn. Onze advertentie, vandaag in het AD, Trouw en de Volkskrant. Deel dit statement en help ons om meer partijen te overtuigen.

Binnenkort – op 1 mei 2025 – is het 30 jaar geleden dat de Nederlandse muziektelevisiezender The Music Factory (TMF) werd gelanceerd. Wil je hier meer over weten, lees dan mijn boek De muziekfabriek: TMF en de Nederlandse popcultuur.

Het lijkt er toch steeds meer op dat Eppo Bruins de meest incompetente en opportunistische minister van OCW is die Nederland in mensenheugenis heeft gehad. Eerst een sector helemaal in crisis storten, en dan, terwijl er een miljard bezuinigd wordt, >

Why do so many bikes in Amsterdam now have these incredibly bright, blinding lights, some of which also flicker?

On Monday 17 March, I will go on strike. Not just to protest these unprecedented budget cuts that will severely damage academic education and teaching, but also because they are clearly motivated by a growing resentment and distrust of academic institutions and the academic freedom they uphold.

For @truthout.org , @hebagowayed.bsky.social and I wrote about how universities have opened the door to Trump’s authoritarianism by suppressing pro-Palestine voices and how they must commit to the principles of academic freedom and free expression before it is too late.

„The rapid implementation of this new Trump doctrine requires Americans to join together with people across the world not only to oppose reactionary measures – but also to remain steadfast in their joint commitment to internationalism that enhances wellbeing.“

Almost all Dutch universities will go on strike next week, against the budget cuts. Join us! 10 March: Leiden 11 March: Utrecht 13 March: Nijmegen 17 March: Amsterdam 18 March: Groningen 25 March: Twente 8 April: Rotterdam 10 April: Tilburg 14 April: Wageningen 15 April: Maastricht

I am pretty tired of this argument. Journal articles and books are sometimes not widely accessible (although some are), but academics speak much more often to the public now, through the media, op eds, trade books, and public lectures, than in the past and anti-intellectualism has grown.

This:

De Eppocalyps raast door Nederland! Eerst ontslagen aan de Universiteit Twente, toen de Open Universiteit, vervolgens de Vrije Universiteit,en nu het University College Roosevelt in Middelburg. Kom in opstand en doe mee aan de stakingen in het WO! www.pzc.nl/middelburg/u...

How performances of tactical imperceptibility—or "stealth"—have become a key political practice in digital culture as a means of escaping surveillance & tracking technologies. "Aesthetics of Stealth" by Toni Pape is #openaccess: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262549783/the-aesthetics-of-stealth/

Mooi essay van @stinej.bsky.social in @nrcnl.bsky.social over of we het nu ook cultureel “uit” moeten maken met “Amerika.” Met een kleine bijdrage van mijzelf… @uvahumanities.bsky.social

The call for papers for the ASCA Workshop 2025 “Re-Imagining Universality in the Pluriverse” (26-28 May) is now online.

We are going on strike against the unprecedented cuts in academic teaching and research because these cuts are not based on any reasonable motivation, but are the result of the resentment of the anti-intellectual far-right government taking revenge on the so-called elite.

On repeat: het is crucial dat we begrijpen dat de drastische bezuiningen in het hoger onderwijs een politieke aanval zijn, vanuit een extreem rechtse ideologie. Anders kunnen we onze instituties niet goed verdedigen. Belangrijk stuk van @leoniedejonge.bsky.social www.groene.nl/artikel/wete...

Yesterday we had a great launch of the edited volume 'The Dutch Slave Trade: New Methods, Perspectives and Sources'. Authors gave very insightful presentations of findings and reflections of the main theme. Great work! https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789048560493/the-dutch-transatlantic-slave-trade

Please just let me reuse my password. Please I am begging you. Please I don’t care if someone hacks my Barnes and Noble account. Please I have no new passwords left. Please you have taken them all from me.

Appalling.

Christmas is well and truly over at Geneva airport.

Bakhtin’s oeuvre is what I return to again and again (although I’ll probably never read the whole of the Rabelais book again…).

Great exhibition of a Gaza photography studio archive in Geneva: blackmovie.ch/2025/eng/gaz.... Brings home how much life has been destroyed, not just in the past 15 months but over all the decades since 1948.

One of my favorite independent bookstores - Literati in Ann Arbor; been there, done that, bought the t-shirt!

i feel like you should be allowed to talk about & promote your book for at least as long as it took you to write it

Thank you New York Times for this radical reframing: There is no dirt in my home, just “seasoning”!

Moment of recognition: the scene in Triangle of Sadness where a character cannot find a way to turn off all the lights in his hotel room.

My students think I’m a dinosaur for still buying DVDs, but this is why I’ll keep doing it: