We were just starting to reckon with how media treated women in the 90s (Spears, Lewinsky, etc), but it appears we didn't learn anything. The piling on (from the Goop boss no less) disgusts me, & the privacy implications are truly disturbing. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/s...

NEW: The Trump administration is stepping up its battle against NYC's immigrants—stopping their asylum cases and instead filing motions to send them to other countries across the world. One Latin American woman was told this week she'd be sent to Uganda. hellgatenyc.com/trump-asylum...

My electrician is a green card holder who's been here since he was a kid. He got married to a citizen, applied for citizenship, went to court for the papers and when he got there ICE kidnapped him and he's been locked up for a month.

utterly incapable of grace

The Times reports the immigration status of the parents of Brown student: "Rukhsora Umurzokova, 22, and Samara Umurzokova, 15, described their brother, a scholarship student, as “gentle” and “extroverted.” He and his family are naturalized citizens from Uzbekistan who now live in Virginia."

Well, there's a photo I never expected to see in my life. Noam Chomsky palling around with Steve Bannon.

My 1990s semester is complete

Swoon! Jarvis Cocker is going to be a Booker prize judge next year…

The life and times of a uniquely American testament. The Jefferson Bible by @petermanseau.bsky.social is now available in #paperback! Check out a free sample and save 30% with code PUP30 : press.princeton.edu/books/paperb... #ThomasJefferson #History

Men's soccer fans: my kid loves women's soccer & can't wait to attend the World Cup in a few years. To tide her over, for Xmas, we were thinking of getting her tix to a USMNT "send off game" in Charlotte fat the end of May. Will this game be cool? Have a good roster? We can't get WC tix, so...

I just taught a second-year university Global Studies class where students had to read 5 novels. No complaints. If you can't read a novel-which is far easier because many are narrative-driven-then how can a student be expected to read a nonfiction book, whether about policy, politics, or history?

This seems like yet another example of the "Arendt effect" the author accuses others of ("Yet even Moyn and Panovka could not resist the urge to enlist Arendt for their purposes.") It's essentially a bio & light summary. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/b...

As Summers fills my feed…

A family member, who works at a hospital, told me about young girl who was admitted: she was contemplating suicide over fears of losing her undocumented parents. The fear and terror is everywhere right now. Let it sink in and don’t look away.

Surprised to not see much discussion of Chomsky’s involvement with Epstein. He’s elderly and not really active, but his legacy/career has to be just as upset by knowledge of his involvement with Epstein as Summers?

Thank you, Rebecca. There is no finer gift than that having one’s work read with critical attention. Can’t wait to read this -

The Denmark way… www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/w...

Why don’t lit fields use the workshop model like law and history? I get so much more, and I think the audience does as well, from the workshop experience than from talking for 45 minutes and taking 10 minutes of random questions. Just had a fantastic experience at Duke Law and want to replicate.

I’m actually of the mindset that I wish Hollywood et al would find some new muses.

My new project is on the history of a concept rather than the law per se, but nonetheless delighted (nervous, too) to workshop some of it with a very legal crowd.

lol, I guess folks i follow on here haven‘t read much in this way. Fair enough!

Poll: best book on Thomas Jefferson, in your opinion? Research on him is consuming my days, and I’ve read plenty of the scholarly stuff, but I’m genuinely curious which books people most enjoyed, academic or popular alike. Drop your pick below ⬇️

You can get pumpkin beverages, pecan beverages, protein cold foam beverages (???), but no black tea…

Thank you, Minnesota Law, for hosting me during my (very unlikely) founding father era. I came to talk about my new book and ended up in great conversations with brilliant history and law students. Also: a basement coffee bar and a rare legal books library…Peak academic midlife crisis fantasy!

The refugee caps have been very low for a long time. What is happening here is of a more ideological nature. The humanitarian world post-1967 is over: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/u...

Reading request! If you could recommend one text that explored the history of an idea/concept in a riveting and surprising way what would it be? Please re-skeet if you can. I know this is a niche ask.

Wonderful to see my colleague (and occasional bus stop companion) as a finalist for the poetry section of National Book Award!!! www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/b...

Saw that thing about how much critics read and how they can do it upside down, anywhere and then saw this, which is really truly where our game is heading: www.thetimes.com/uk/education...

And just like that we return the word "refugee" to its original meaning: White European Protestant www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/u...

This is correct. Klein is wrong. Liberal & left parties in the US & Europe have not been reacted by defending immigration. This is an area they are willing to let go. The leader of the social democrat party in Denmark, for ex, has called on European leaders to veer right on immigration for years…

My institution had 43 faculty H-1B visas approved in 2024. "To maintain the current level of hiring of foreign talent under new Trump administration policies, the institution must pay an H-1B fee equivalent to 2.85% of its annual federally funded research and development expenditures."

Awful news: someone appears to have shot up the Dallas ICE Field Office. The shooter is dead of a self-inflicted gunshot and three other people are "critically wounded." www.wfaa.com/article/news...

Oh my GOD. This is the first official confirmation that the new H-1B entry ban does not apply to people with current visas (despite the text not containing ANY exception for people with current visas), and it’s not even something on an official website, it’s a passive aggressive tweet!

To recap, Trump signed a proclamation saying that after midnight tonight, no one with an H-1B visa may enter the US unless they have paid $100,000. However, anonymous White House officials are saying it doesn't apply to people with current H-1B visas — yet there is NO official guidance! None!

The Trump Administration has announced measures to gut longstanding pathways based on exceptional ability, national interest, & merit in favor of pay-to-play immigration. @urbanviewradio.bsky.social This sends a signal to the world’s top talent that the U.S. is closing its doors. bit.ly/4nz1XBE

I have started just outright blocking people who respond to “that’s illegal” with nihilism. It is not helpful, it is not useful, it is not productive.

Why is this horrible for Universities? Just about everyone who isn't a citizen or green card holder already who's hired for a tenure track faculty position is hired through an H1B and then, after 3-5 years, applies for a green card. This is literally "No more foreign professors can be hired"

@nickmark.bsky.social apnews.com/article/h1b-...

Critical part of the President's new $100,000 charge for H1-B visas: The Administration can also offer a $100,000 discount to any person, company, or industry that it wants. Replacing rules with arbitrary discretion. Want visas? You know who to call and who to flatter.

Microsoft is apparently commenting - bsky.app/profile/rive...

i don’t think people on bluesky understand the severity of this situation. i woke up to literally hundreds of texts from friends and family thinking about either moving back home to india or applying to other countries for jobs. this includes me.

Deleted the below posts out of an abundance of caution. Despite the words of the Proclamation, an unnamed White House official told New York Times that they intend to apply the $100,000 only to new applicants only. If that is correct, the implications are not as urgent.

We are still learning what this means, but it is massive. I was hired at my 1st position on an H1B visa. There is no way my university could have paid 100k & I seriously doubt other universities can. So research is going to be severely impacted by this move. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/u...

I can’t be the only one who is deeply, deeply unsettled about the rise of internet crowd sharing to expose and shame bad actors caught on camera, whether they be wife cheaters, hat grabbers, or ball-wanters? The internet is cheating us…

1) Academic press friends, help: The press of my book *Before Borders* has sent me emails asking me to allow my book to help train AI. These emails are full of pressure:

Why is it impossible to watch *Ernest Goes to Camp* anywhere?

I get it: AI is having a moment in higher Ed and literature faculty see openings. There are new funding initiatives and centers to be apart of. But the amount of born yesterday expertise I’m seeing is as concerning as the rise of AI itself.