Got to my office to find a treat for the archives fellow from @stuartjones.bsky.social on James Bryce: the first nonconformist student @trinityoxford.bsky.social who went on to be jurist, politician, diplomat, and is now in the dining hall as well as on this cover. Congratulations Stuart!

Foucault’s Christmas - "a Christmas day without writing, that was impossible! ... a day when, as he said, 'nothing has happened for several thousand years' " progressivegeographies.com/2024/12/25/f...

On Locke's 'illogical' liberalism (according to Bertrand Russell, Sabine, and Laski, etc.), and some comments on methods of anachronism with shout out to @duncanbell.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Three avenues toward Bonapartism in Lincoln, Laski, and Natasha Piano open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

On the Twentieth Century rediscovery of Smith as a Political Theorist open.substack.com/pub/digressi... With shout out to Glory Liu

My new book is now out in print: POLITICIANS AND MASS MEDIA IN THE AGE OF EMPIRE Examines how an expanding mass media created a new type of politician and system of transnational media politics between 1890 and World War I. www.cambridge.org/core/books/p...

Vacancies: Post-doc in Disinformation & European Democracy: vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric... Ass. Prof European Political History since 1900: vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric... Ass. Prof Political and Social Philosophy: www.academictransfer.com/nl/jobs/3566...

On Natasha Piano on Burnham's Machiavellians. open.substack.com/pub/digressi... With a shout out to @rbellamy.bsky.social @hdrochon.bsky.social

Maybe of interest: docs.google.com/document/d/1... @thecambridgeschool.bsky.social

🗣️ JOB! Professor of Political Theory and the History of Political Thought at Friedrich Schiller University Jena 📅 Deadline - 11 December 2025 berufungsportal.uni-jena.de?showProcedur...

On Karl Polanyi and Adam Smith on Imperialism, and its effects. open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

The De-politicization and naturalization of twentieth Century Adam Smith (traced to Halévy) open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Carl Schmitt, State Composition and Collapse of the Second Reich: The Victory of the Bourgeois Citizen over the Soldier - trans Samuel Garrett Zeitlin, @politybooks.bsky.social, December 2025 www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

On Berlin's reading of Bacon on Machiavelli--with some excitement over Lucian. open.substack.com/pub/digressi... @jcherniss.bsky.social

I'm looking forward to presenting at the Yale Political Theory workshop next week. My paper: "Socialism and Telepathy: Collective Intelligence, Freedom, and Individuality, in Interwar Britain" politicaltheory.yale.edu/fall-2025-sc... @thecambridgeschool.bsky.social

On the Pull of Transitional Despotism on the Plebeian Left. McCormick and Isaiah Berlin on Machiavelli, Agathocles & Glory (with a shout out to @jcherniss.bsky.social) open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

What Paul is describing is scandalous. But I am also weirdly cheered up by seeing pics of him since the accident. So much willpower, such determination to rebuild a meaningful life. Unchanged is his ridiculous articulacy and humour. His substack is very good too, subscribe!

On Hobhouse and Hirst on Adam Smith open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Paul Sagar recently presented his paper on Aristotle, Williams, and Rawls to the #MondaySeminar. Here he is in today's Guardian, on the business of wheelchairs:

Out in January. cambridgeblog.org/2025/11/back...

Shklar, Althusser, and Montesquieu's purported Liberalism open.substack.com/pub/digressi... with a passing shout out to @duncanbell.bsky.social

On Pompey's Bonapartism according to Montesquieu. open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Join us tomorrow!

In my little corner of the academic world Larry Summers soiled himself many years ago when he vetoed the appointment of István Hont to a tenured post at Harvard. #nemesis

Visiting Cambridge next week and, as in the old joke about my lectures, muttering about Augustine and death.

Call for Papers: "The World in 1776/2026." 250 years after Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations blasted monopolists, mercantilists and enslavers as the scourges of a free society, what light can his ideas shed on the world today? Abstracts due December 15th. Details: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Out today (in USA) press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

On Imperial Boomerangs in Montesquieu open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Next week! Join @jacobtlevy.bsky.social’s talk at Jesus College, Cambridge.

Tom Arnold-Foster (Oxford) replies to Anton Jäger (also Oxford) on the political theory of the American Populists at the #MondaySeminar #Neo-RomanCounter-Revisionism

On Smith and Montesquieu and that sleeping Sentinel (with a touch of Machiavelli) open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Foucault's Multiple Plans for his History of Sexuality progressivegeographies.com/2025/11/16/f... - building on earlier work, and discussing a couple of other bits of evidence about the changing nature of Foucault's plans for this series from the mid-1970s until his 1984 death

Congratulations to Dr Marc Palen @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social, following the award of the Elise M. Boulding Prize in Peace History to his book, Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World (Princeton University Press, 2024). peacehistorysociety.org/phs2025/awards.php

Join us next Friday 21 for a roundtable on John McCormick's excellent new book The People's Princes at King's College London w/ comments by David Wootton (York), Lawrence Hamilton (Cambridge) & myself. There will be wine & great conversation on leadership & politics Register here 👇 shorturl.at/XmAsZ

Congratulations to @brunoleipold.com, whose book #Citizen #Marx has been awarded the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize which is given "for a book which exemplifies the best and most innovative new writing in or about the Marxist tradition". www.deutscherprize.org.uk/wp/

On Montesquieu and the enemies of truth. open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Deme Kasimis responds to Paul Sagar's paper, "The Macedonianism of Fear: Aristotle vs Rawls" here at the #MondaySeminar.

Now online! Laura André Lombard (Université Panthéon Assas) reviews "The Political Thought of Anacharsis Cloots: A Proponent of Cosmopolitan Republicanism in the French Revolution (@degruyterbrill.bsky.social, 2023) by @fepoulsen.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Nathaniel Boyd (York) introduces his paper on "Hegel & German public law" as his commentator, Chris Meckstroth, makes notes. #MondaySeminar

A request - does anyone have access to the original 1977 German translation of Foucault's History of Sexuality Vol 1 - Der Wille zum Wissen, Sexualität und Wahrheit? I'd really appreciate a copy of the Vorwort zur deutschen Ausgabe. It has to be the 1st edition (and not the various translations).

On Our Post-Constitutional Moment, PT 5; Some Wilson; some Ostrom, and the Threat of Despotism open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Hugo Drochon *so* enjoyed speaking at the #MondaySeminar on, um, Monday that he has joined BlueSky and everything: @hdrochon.bsky.social.

On Lippmann and Oakeshott on the art of governing well; with some Bergson and Foucault thrown in Shout out to @jcherniss.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

At the University of Milan, lecture series on the “Annales school”, from November 2025 to March 2026, with great speakers such as Müller, Rubin, Calafat, Burke and Abulafia! @thecambridgeschool.bsky.social @camhistory.bsky.social @qmul.bsky.social @cnrs.fr @historysorbonne.bsky.social

Neapolitans!

A happy change: my article on Rousseau’s three general wills is now open access at the Review of Politics. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Lippmann, Rawls, Locke and the Social Contract as Public Philosophy open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

A characteristic hand gesture from Hugo Drochon, as he starts to explain what it is that he is up to.

Today's #MondaySeminar will host Hugo Drochon (Nottingham) talking about "Gaetano Mosca & the Ruling Class", with commentary from Richard Bourke. Bateman Auditorium, Gonville & Caius, 5pm. Be there, or be somewhere else.

What happens when the philosophy of love meets a neo-Roman sense of liberty as independence? Are lovers doomed to be "made Slaves to Venus"? Read my essay on érōs as an enslaving and emancipatory power in the first close analysis of Algernon Sidney's "Of Love": classiques-garnier.com/le-republica...