Borna Izadpanah on 'Printing the Qur’an across Empires' All welcome to our final event of the academic year - in person in Oxford, or online (email [email protected]).

So happy to see my article out and part of this amazing series on Gender in Islamic Architecture. I’m so grateful for all the support from my amazing friends, partner, and advisors that guided me through this process. intellectdiscover.com/content/jour...

This Friday, May 29! Register: ucdavis.zoom.us/.../register...

In case anyone outside Turkey still cares, today marks another turning point for Turkish “democracy.” A major threshold has been crossed.

Man this sucks. Saad’s is to West Philly what John’s Roast Pork is to South Philly.

There has been this steady stream of legacy media bs about higher ed in general and the humanities in particular that, while part of a long culture war against universities, really accelerated after 2020-2021. The New York Times became a genteel version of Dinesh D'Souza & David Horowitz.

Lurking underneath the accelerating yet enduring repression against the CHP is the transformation of the logic of party system: from representing citizens to elite bargain over resources. This transformation, in my opinion, is also the biggest obstacle to winning an election without major fraud.

I'm sure everyone's heard about the Bosnian tattoos by now. I explored the story for the @newlinesmag.bsky.social, and if you’re curious about Ottoman Bosnia, Catholic women, and the stakes of turning complicated histories into myths, take a look: newlinesmag.com/essays/the-o...

📢Translation Attached is delighted to announce the publication of Captives: A Play and the Collected Poems by Sabahattin Ali. The book brings together Ali’s only known play with a wide selection of his poetry. Available worldwide on Amazon: amzn.to/4d22V7a #sabahattinali

What makes a Rashid Khalidi or an Edward Said unpalatable to these people despite them being anti-socialist anti-radical etcetera? It's that they take liberalism to the logical conclusion of unlimited and non-exceptional racial equality, which these people despise.

youtu.be/pvcYm6dKKHI?... Such a brilliant set of episodes!!! I’ve been in overlapping Egyptian history and civ7 holes recently and this is such a gift. Thank you @paisley-trees.bsky.social I have been just chewing through your vids!!!

NEW: Our latest issue features a roundtable with faculty organizers Lisa Hajjar @lisahajjar.bsky.social, Lara Deeb, Darryl Li, Andrew Ross, Meera Shah on the experience of fighting against repression on their campuses since October 7, 2023.

My interview with @sciam.bsky.social and @jackiefmogensen.bsky.social on desalination, environmental risk, Iran, and war in the Gulf.

For the cost of one Harvard Professor of the Constitution Only Applies to White People, you could endow 10 professorships of any less commonly taught language at any university in the USA

Forget microplastics, I'm having a hard time keeping my toddler from eating macroplastics

In a decade or two, they're going to put up plaques to them too

I don’t think “why aren’t there as many campus protestors in year 3 of the genocide risking life and limb under a repressive regime for whom protestors are not a relevant constituency” is a particularly interesting question

Fun fact, maintaining the naval blockade through the armistice until the final peace treaty was signed was also what the Allies did to Germany after WWI, so there's real precedent for.

There is no ceasefire in Lebanon. Israel has been bombing Lebanon non-stop since last night. If anything Israel is expanding its war on Lebanon. You are being lied to

All of these people who have offered bullshit analysis about Iran for the past 10-20 years, should just stay quite. Don’t add more harm to what you have done. Media has to hold these “Iran experts” accountable for ripping up the JCPOA, predicting revolution at every turn, and so much more

Millions of American voters wanted to be villains. They came to believe it’s the key to success, while goodness is weak, woke, loser stuff, done only to signal. Offered the option of unvarnished villainy, they enthusiastically took it. Seeing others suffer more made them feel big. And here we are.

University of Washington professor fired from director job after sending email criticizing Iran war

If you think all this stuff is helpful in contextualizing the present catastrophe, help us out with a donation! Every donation of $10 or more before May 7 unlocks more money for MERIP during Delco Gives! www.delcogives.org/organization...

The University of Arkansas is moving ahead with terminating Shirin Saeidi, a scholar who literally wrote the book on Women and Politics in Iran, over tweets critical of Israel. Just colossally stupid in this moment. arktimes.com/arkansas-blo...

“Can the soul be separated from the body?”: Ottoman poetry, recorded in transliterated Turkish by a seventeenth-century German traveler in an album with Ottoman decorative paper. ÖNB, ms Cod. 10313

CATS is offering fellowships to post-doctoral researchers, think tank members, and practitioners working on Turkey-related issues. For the funding period 2026–2027, please see the call for applications at the link below: www.cats-network.eu/cats-fellows...

Great to be in such good company thinking together about Julia Elyachar’s concept of the semicivilized @jeelyachar.bsky.social @csshjournal.bsky.social

Today in Istanbul... thousands have gathered to demand jailed opposition mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu to be released, exactly a year after his detention. This week he's appeared at court together with more than 400 other defendants, charged of corruption in a trial seen as political by Turkish opposition.

Ilber Ortayli has passed and... I have mixed feelings. I often hated his public intellectual performances, which often devolved into lumpen nationalism and even racism At the same time, he wrote some great books of popular history, most notably İmparatorluğun En Uzun Yüzyılı (1983)

Don't miss it! Tues 12 pm ET, 3/17/26 http://dlvr.it/TRP4MY

My latest piece on Turkey and the Iran war: 1️⃣ NATO intercepted a second Iranian missile that entered Turkish airspace. Ankara warned Tehran, while Iranian officials denied responsibility and said they respect Turkish sovereignty. But Iran’s so-called “mosaic defense” strategy, 1/4

My essay for NYRB maps out how iran got to this point. “But January’s protests werenot just the prelude to a geopolitical contest. They offer a window intothe fortunes of Iran’s citizens, the changing structure of its state, & the trajectory of the regime the US now seeks to obliterate.”

Amazing how quickly "We're fighting this war for freedom of the Iranian people" becomes "The Iranian people are at fault for not rising up."

You could write the history of 21st century US foreign policy disasters in the Middle East as a biography of this one guy.

In NLR 157: an interview with Ervand Abrahamian. A leading historian of modern Iran on the power structures of the Islamic Republic and the long-incubated American-Israeli assault. newleftreview.org/issues/ii157...

It's so telling that these people are rushing to condemn "the campus left" at this moment www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/o...

so, torture. they’re torturing them as federal policy. entirely predictable, but that doesn’t make it any less evil

The amount of Western people you can find telling Iranians to not feel any possible emotion they might be having right now, yes they can be devastated, happy, angry, sad, furious, terrified - they have a right to all these and more: their oppressor seems murdered by the hands of their oppressors.

Additionally, I want to speak directly to Iranian New Yorkers: you are part of the fabric of this city — you are our neighbors, small business owners, students, artists, workers, and community leaders. You will be safe here.

Today’s military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression. Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war.

I really am tired of Dems leaders Not meeting the moment is the understatement of all time. Lead, follow, or get out the way

I promise you that the government that murdered Alex Pretti and Renee Good does not give a flying fuck about the protests in Iran.

The first deaths announced from the US-Israeli strikes on Iran: dozens of school girls. They hit an elementary school in Hormozgan.

People should stop and consider that it actually might be *more difficult* to consolidate power, as a matter of politics, in a place like Turkey than in the US.

Our hybrid lecture series brings together an outstanding international lineup exploring musical cultures across interconnected regions, from Central Asia to the South Caucasus and the Ottoman world. For further details: orientalistik.univie.ac.at/fachrichtung...

Latest episode, from last week 📢📢 Murat C. Yildiz on “The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul” (@utexaspress.bsky.social) 👇👇 turkeybooktalk.com/2026/02/17/m...

So it's ok to start a war illegally against a nation of 92 million, for whom you have "no sympathy" as long as the purpose is clear? The Big Dem line that Trump is a demented fascist domestically while simultaneously agreeing his foreign policy decisions just isn't gonna cut it anymore.