Forcing AI on students will create a generation of functionally illiterate and innumerate adults.

Christmas came early! I’m blown away by the endorsements for I Will Not Abandon You. It’s a gift to have such generous colleagues.

Grades are DONE

I read American Canto and I think it’s wonderful. haha jk

Anyone who promises to actually enforce traffic laws as DC mayor gets my vote. I’m sick and tired of having to worry as a pedestrian and cyclist if some crazed driver is going to blast through a red light.

I give monthly. It's a treasure.

This has been a journey! @christopherewing.bsky.social and I are proud to announce the forthcoming publication (with Palgrave) of "Reading Queer Media in the German Speaking World" bringing together the work of brilliant historians and German studies scholars working on queer 🇦🇹🇩🇪🇨🇭 printed media

I’ve actually experienced the opposite over the last year or so — students being very diligent about showing up, asking questions, studying for exams, and so forth. It’s still a struggle to get them to read much for class, but in my experience it’s not worse now than it was five years ago.

From a student essay: “After World War I, Germany was a hot mess.” Yes, yes it was.

Really important to stress that the Crown Jewels of the US higher education system were never the Ivies or elite SLACs (other countries have equivalents of these) but the well-funded, large, cheap, and excellently staffed public state university systems bringing high quality education to the masses.

Irrelevant detail given the grotesqueries they reveal, but it is sending me that every single one of these Epstein emails is marked high impotence

I’ve just officially signed to become one of the next co-editors of Journal of Social history!

Contemporary European History is looking to hire a new managing editor — come work with us! 🌟 Deadline is November 30. @conteurohistory.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I'm always delighted to hear from @schuneke.bsky.social whose research remains alarmingly pertinent. Thanks to him for writing about Weimar with nuance, political violence, and the portents to pay attention to these days. time.com/7321664/poli...

I wrote about what the Weimar Republic tell us about political violence: time.com/7321664/poli...

excellent placement 😬

The book is here! This morning the UPS delivered fresh off the press my second monograph, People Without History Are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust, published by @uoftpress.bsky.social translated by @williamrossjones.bsky.social and with a foreword by @jennifervevans.bsky.social

Come listen to @ankahajkova.bsky.social and me discuss her new book on queer people in the Holocaust!

My next book has a cover! I Will Not Abandon You is a new history of queer women under Nazism that calls for us to rethink how we understand fascist persecution as well as the very foundations of progressive politics today. You can preorder it anywhere you buy books bookshop.org/p/books/i-wi...

Sex and the Church, by @schuneke.bsky.social

I had a great conversation with @schuneke.bsky.social yesterday about his recent article in The Baffler "The Fruits of Rank." It is baffling, but historical. AND, it leads to a huge opportunity for the Left. Give it a watch. thebaffler.com/latest/the-f... youtu.be/NPQIObgpYYs?...

For @fxnewsletter.bsky.social I got to review Diarmaid MacCulloch’s monumental new history of sex and Christianity!

The proofs have landed 🎉

My review essay for Archiv für Sozialgeschichte is out!! 20k words taking stock of where queer German history is and where it is going. DM if you’d like the pdf (it will be available open access only after a year).

If you rolled your eyes at the New York Times’s reporting on the GOP gays of Washington, DC, you’ll love my take in @thebaffler.com thebaffler.com/latest/the-f...

If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.

The Journal of the History of Sexuality is looking for new editor(s) networks.h-net.org/group/announ... 🌈🎓

We took a DEEP dive into fascism yesterday on the show with @schuneke.bsky.social. How do we even describe MAGA? And given US LGBTQ history, is it accurate to describe MAGA as a *return* to a fascism? I could talk to Sam for days. podfollow.com/the-gaily-show www.youtube.com/live/Qe_ffkv...

It’s worth pointing out that the (grand) jury system was enshrined in our constitution precisely so that citizens could serve as a check on prosecutorial overreach

My university is shutting down our humanities center, but at least we hired a chief AI officer smdh

What is he talking about? Both WWI and WWII ended with unconditional surrenders. Germany’s government was presented with a peace treaty it had no hand in negotiating in 1919 and there wasn’t even a German government left with which to negotiate in 1945.

NEW: Video shared with me from a bystander in DC shows multiple masked federal agents (at least one of whom appears to have an ICE badge) violently attacking and handcuffing a delivery worker in the street outside Bluestone Lane cafe near Logan Circle this morning. Please take care when watching.

Yes!!

Liberalism be liberaling tbh

Zu Susan Neiman übrigens sehr lesenswert: @schuneke.bsky.social's Review ihres Buches “Left Is Not Woke: lareviewofbooks.org/article/crit...

Classic NYT

If we found anyone submitting a piece to POMEPS that used ChatGPT or other AI it would be rejected and the author would go on our do not publish redlist. It’s not something that any serious academic or intellectual should do. It shouldn’t be legitimated or normalized.

Proofs are here!!! Watch out for this chunky review essay in this year’s Archiv für Sozialgeschichte

If you think that humanities degrees are useless, you've adopted a falsehood: "It is a well-kept secret of US higher education that undergraduate students who have earned a degree in the humanities fare quite well on the job market." #Edusky #HigherEducation www.mellon.org/voices/human...

In case anyone is wondering how things are going, we in the Mason Faculty Senate passed a non-binding resolution expressing support for our President and the DOJ announced they’re investigating us. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...

I’ve not been teaching nearly as long but have noticed the same thing. Getting students to consistently read even page-long texts every week can be a struggle.

So crazy proud of my mom for being awarded ASEES’s Distinguished Contributions to Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Award for a remarkable career including 16 books, edited volumes, and special issues; directing a major area studies center; and mentoring countless students.

At least Carnegie had the good grace to build libraries

Going through copy edits of my history of lesbians in Nazi Germany, and this sentence that I first wrote years ago hits hard today.

Historian friends, be sure to vote in the AHA elections! There’s a great slate of candidates running against the establishment picks.

This is unfortunately reminiscent of early camps in Nazi Germany, which were also widely lauded by politicians (they were by no means a secret), treated as tourist curiosities, and featured in glossy magazine spreads. It’s unfathomable to me how so many people can take such joy in human suffering.

Also insane to see a historian of technology describe a new technology as a natural inevitability to which me must adapt ourselves rather than what it is — an imperfect human invention that is being force on us for profit and politics

Which headshot should I go with?