Over the past two days, @kaoutarghi.bsky.social and I hosted a workshop at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, to rethink the concepts of 'state' and 'regime' in the Middle East and North Africa.

Are you a researcher working at a EU university? Are you fed up with our institutions turning a blind eye to genocide? Consider signing this. uppsaladeclaration.se/europe/

Something about the algorithm here feels off. Sure, it’s better than the racist sexist shithole Twitter has become. But it somehow manages to be consistently boring, keeping the spicy and interesting bits that do exist away from me. (Or is it me who hasn’t “trained” the algorithm to know me enough?)

Wow, hunger really went rogue in Gaza. And that food! So rude of it to stop going in. If only someone would kindly tell it to go in and the dying to stop!

New online from @contemplevant.bsky.social: @karimeltaki.bsky.social reviews A lost peace: great power politics and the Arab-Israeli dispute, 1967–1979 by Galen Jackson: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Job alert! Fully-funded PhD @facultyofartsug.bsky.social, with myself, @karimeltaki.bsky.social and @bherborth.bsky.social on post-imperial geopolitical imaginations in/of the Arab world. Please help spread the word among interested candidates! Full details here: karimeltaki.com/phd-position...

Last few days to send us your abstracts! More below 👇

📢 CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Together with @kaoutarghi.bsky.social, we are curating a special issue for Middle East Critique that seeks to address a fundamental challenge in Middle Eastern and North African politics scholarship: the persistent conceptual confusion surrounding ‘state’ and ‘regime.’

رحل بشار الأسد ولم يأتِ بعد المكان والزمان المناسبان.

Putin has sold out Assad. The price will be paid in Ukraine.

A week was the answer. Thinking of all the Syrians, Palestinians, Lebanese, and others who have suffered under this brutal regime. I think we’re allowed to rejoice for a bit, though only a bit, before panicking about what comes next with the jihadis-turned-freedom-fighters controlling much of Syria.

How long until the Assad regime collapses? Just days after Netanyahu's threat to the Syrian regime, Turkish-backed jihadis have taken Aleppo and Hama, with rumours of a coup attempt in Damascus. I’ve written on the need to see regional order as a continuous process of ordering—and…

🚨 New article alert: I surveyed the methods and source selection of articles on Saudi Arabia that were published in area studies journals. What do we study when we study Saudi Arabia? open access link to the article 👇 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Menasky

A war criminal with no principles agreeing to a ceasefire in principle. Pending reservations on 'details'.

The rule of law, liberalism, and the LIO altogether are antisemitic.

Thank God the left is in charge for now in the US. Can’t imagine how bad and inhumane things will become when the Republicans take the helm in two months 🥲

Nothing says ‘rules-based international order’ like ignoring the rules when you and your allies break them.

Since there is more interaction here, I'd like to take this opportunity to share my article 'A Brotherhood of Nations: Imagining the Nation-Based Order during the Springtime of Nations (1848), published a few days ago in @risjnl.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal... (1/8)

I am compiling a starter pack with some of the most exciting people writing about MENA. If you want to be added, please reply to this post.

I'm building a Gulf Studies starter pack! Send me relevant handles! #menasky go.bsky.app/RM9Y7Rm

Historically speaking, Israel is, in fact, Egypt; the area is filled with evidence of the presence of Egyptians. (We can keep doing this forever).

You watch Al Jazeera and Al Araby, and you hear that Hezbollah is reinvigorated and strong and making great strides. You zap to Sky News Arabia and Al Arabiya, and you learn that it’s actually the end of Hezbollah. What a schizophrenic Arab public sphere.

I’ve started dreading receiving WhatsApp messages from my family in Beirut. Every message now seems to inform me of an ever-closer airstrike by the IOF. This utter disregard for human lives continues and expands, with horror and terror everywhere in the capital and beyond.

A Starter Pack for History/IR folks - just to make this space more useful more quickly. It’s super improvised & I’m sure I forgot to include many, so please lmk! 👇 go.bsky.app/CUyrrn3

During the 2017-21 Gulf Crisis, when Qatar 🇶🇦 faced severe sanctions by the so-called Anti-Terror Quartet, it affirmed its "sovereignty." Yet it also sought to expand and make permanent the 🇺🇸 al-Udeid airbase, hardly a marker of sovereignty. How can we make sense of that? 📲 doi.org/10.1080/1943...

The end of the Cold War sparked debates about the decline of sovereignty, but today, this norm is increasingly invoked on a global scale. How can we understand this fall and rise of sovereignty? 📲 doi.org/10.1177/1369...