What if freedom during the Revolution meant leaving America? This week at @bfworld.bsky.social I interview @gogogomalley.bsky.social about the extraordinary story of David George. #America250 #Revolution250 #podcasts benfranklinsworld.com/441

Early modernists working at the intersection of specialized humanities scholarship and applied public research: check out this CFP for a conference at The Huntington in April 2027-abstracts due 6/1/26🗃️ files.constantcontact.com/6a30e5a9101/...

TODAY! Join us as The Revolution Is News continues with a discussion about Rights with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jack Rakove! Sign up for the webinar here: brown.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

It is publication day for my book, White Power: Policing American Slavery. Here’s the unboxing, with a trip down memory lane. Thanks so much to those who helped make this a reality, esp. my amazing agent Dani Segelbaum, @dgershenowitz.bsky.social @uncpress.bsky.social @sonyabonczek.bsky.social

Don't write your manuscript reviews using AI. DEFINITELY do not feed someone else's manuscript into AI and have it write the review for you.

I stayed in my seat to watch the bottom of the 12th because I legit wasn’t sure Craig Kimbrel could hold a 10-run lead. #LGM

Greed and chaos, get rich quick schemes meet corruption. The (South Sea) BUBBLERS bubbl'd (c 1720). I swear I wasn't looking for it I just opened a drawer @jcblibrary.bsky.social.

ReadUP on America250: Discover Revolutionary-era history, plus insights into the American experiment, 250 years along. Here's a curated collection of more than 100 books from our member presses & their expert authors to explore. https://bit.ly/3Pnwgjt

It all seems like a joke when I see a story like this and then remember that I could get fired if I were to accept an Olive Garden gift card from a student.

DC area friends please join me for my book launch event at People's Book in Takoma Park MD (@peoplesbooktakoma.com) Tuesday, May 19 6:30 pm! The brilliant Ryan Reft of the Library of Congress will lead a brief discussion before mingling and book signing! peoplesbooktakoma.com/event/polici...

I'm a proud @shearites.bsky.social as it debuts the Civics Exchange, part of a multi-pronged outreach at a moment when good history is a critical component of our civic discourse. Please circulate widely, & if you're a journalist or from an organization looking for experts, dig in! civics.shear.org

I noticed during the pandemic that people most likely to mask, distance, etc. were those people who were already comfortable with discomfort. They'd learned to grieve, or live with a disability, or been marginalised in some way. The people who didn't know how to process discomfort screamed.

the overwhelming message the AI industry has sent to young people is “this will ruin any chance you have at a stable career”, of course college grads are booing it regardless of the reality of the claims, the way this technology has been sold is one of the greatest self-inflicted PR disasters ever

The "return on investment" with tenured faculty is having accomplished experts who are experienced teachers there to teach the students. It's sort of a basic point about colleges, you'd think the people on a board of trustees would get that.

After seven years of editing pieces for @contingent-mag.bsky.social I’ve identified one moment when a scholar’s ability to write for the public is often at its lowest. It’s when they’re finishing their dissertation and have not taught in several semesters, if ever. And it’s still always fixable!

What I find so weird about the whole discourse is that I, a college professor, spend most of my time explaining complex ideas to 18-year-old novices. There’s a lot to mock academics for, but most of us couldn’t do our jobs at all if we didn’t know how to communicate with non-experts

A great way to spoil a sunny spring morning walk is to spend the whole time thinking about zoning.

In the next few weeks, expect many selfies of me and @jmadelman.bsky.social

Funny things still happen over at the bad place This guy put a prompt in his LinkedIn and now AI recruiters are writing him in Old English and calling him "my lord"

I wasn't planning to buy a Jeep Grand Cherokee but now that they're running ads with an AI-generated jingoistic bald eagle that makes unironic references to the Apocalypse Now line about napalm I'm REALLY not planning to buy one.

Ah yes, a nearly three-decade old FDA-approved drug, already regulated to the max under REMS, is part of a criminal enterprise and should be subject to a 150-year-plus obscenity law dreamt up by a guy (Comstock) who really just needed therapy. 🙄

My book makes clear that Comstock never meant his law to serve as a total ban on abortion anyway and Thomas is a fatuous, ahistorical blowhard who ought to be ashamed of himself but isn't.

If a Croque Madame talked to another Croque Madame about anything other than a Croque Monsieur Would they have passed the Béchamel test?

If I title a class session on facial recognition ALL YOUR FACE ARE BELONG TO US not a single student will get the joke which is why I am posting it here. Please clap.

The Comstock Act is a horrifying piece of legislation, including its enactment. Congress passed the law in the waning hours of a session on March 2,1873, after weeks of lobbying by Comstock — including a display of sex toys in the Capitol rotunda that he brought to frighten Congressmen. /1

It can’t be said enough how infuriating it is that Comstock continues to haunt us from the 1870s

Some peeps have asked why I chose the cover design of my book and what I meant to convey by the image. Short post of what guided my choice including what I did NOT want on the cover.

Everybody wants their rights, but not their responsibilites.

Exciting day! We have our first MBH piece up @inquirer.com! Cory James Young writes about George Washington's deep entanglements with slavery in Pennsylvania, beyond the president's house site, centering what historians know about these individuals. Please read and share! 🎁 share.inquirer.com/1BSWa8

The relevant portion of the Jason Collins discussion

To be very clear, I'm not trying to use the AI — I'm just trying to read the court documents. It's clear that the AI is programmed to replace offensive language. But what does that mean when it's being used to summarize historical documents? What happens when people rely on the summary?

Recently, FamilySearch digitized and uploaded tons of microfilmed records, including many from 18th-century Massachsuetts. They're using some sort of AI to transcribe/summarize the handwritten documents. I've noticed that the AI strips out references to race and enslavement in 18thc documents.

Students, if you’re thinking about dropping a note to that teacher or professor about what their class/project/mentorship has meant to you, but you worry it will be cringe or cheesy, let me just tell you they will coast on the fuzzy feelings prompted by that note for months, if not years

Cartoon from Postal Life magazine, published by the US Post Office Department, Mar/Apr 1968 issue. #postoffice #stamps

Stories like this imply that the elements happy to use government this way have been in place for a long time. And therefore make me wonder whether it's worth reframing questions about the Biden administration around the idea that he needed to restrain these impulses rather than failing to reform.

George Lucas’s Amélie

okay, so, to begin, let's model the Strait of Hormuz as a frictionless sphere in a vacuum

History might offer us some lessons for the present, but only if we're honest about it. The "Hayes Tilden Compromise" is a myth. Reconstruction remained strong in some southern areas well after 1877 while, in others, white violence had effectively choked Black political success well before then.

Okay, Smith alums, have received a request for a Bluesky list of Smith alums. Creating now; please share!

In this week's newsletter, my interview with @lollardfish.bsky.social about THE PUBLIC SCHOLAR (@hopkinspress.bsky.social), along with a couple of my other favorite resources for pitching freelance writing: buttondown.com/draftingthep...

At this point, I’m fed up with telling people why I think using GAI to read write or think is bad. Fine, then. Just tell me when you use it. Put a label on gAI writing. So I know to avoid it. But you won’t do that either, will you? Because you KNOW what you’re doing is sketchy.

Tomorrow! The Revolution Is News continues with a conversation with Lindsay Chervinsky on Presidencies. Register for the webinar at shorturl.at/2413G.

Oh absolutely. #Footnotes

Slightly increase a band: Ten for Misconduct

this graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive. when you're inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. but everybody isn't.

The rage of the American Mom starts with the receipts she has to upload for her to for her FSA/HSA accounts, or the 15 Wufoos to sign to get her kid to the Zoo, or 17 emails that needed to refill a prescription. I work for Tech Lords as their clerk, www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/o....

"This will transform historical research!" Cool but it's already being transformed out of existence by the same forces pushing these transformative technologies. Forgive us if we're skeptical of a moment that's telling us "This will help you do your work--which we despise--faster and better."

What historians (and other scholars do) is create knowledge. We should use that phrase more and talk about what it means. I think we don't, and it's part of why AI enthusiasts are confused when we don't readily agree that our work can be replicated/replaced by their products.

I'm excited this is out! We spent countless hours building the database in a way that will hopefully be usable for other scholars and students of fugitivity in the Caribbean. scholarlypublishingcollective.org/msup/jsdp/ar...