Join the fun with @serenekhader.bsky.social

I am over 2/3rd in. If hiring and working conditions in the Humanities (and adjacent areas) had not collapsed during the last few decades a lot of folk discussed in it would have been faculty somewhere taking betting odds on college football bowls while quoting Homer. #expandtenure2preventrevolution

I am very proud to be featured twice on this list, and in such great company

It was a good first week

Jaffa's Crisis of House Divided is singularly gripping. In many ways it reminds me a lot of the merits of black jacobins in the way it mixes appreciation for political necessity and intellectual clarity. About as good a book on the role of ideas in political life as I have read. 1/2

I really admired this one by jemisin.

This brief epistolary novella combines philosophy and politics with a few plot twists I won't reveal. But if you are gripped by it, then worth rereading.

This is a splendid book which I enjoyed reading. Because of my recent research, i have some nitpicking criticisms (which i may blog about), but overall delightful and instructive. It's worth putting alongside Daniel Layman's Locke among the radicals if you teach it. Ht Glory Liu

Where we send you if we catch you inferring future events on the basis of resemblance to past occurrences. Or, at least, where we've sent people so far.

Is the eighteenth-century idea of 'happiness' a translation of *salus populi*? #asking4apatriot

This is an odd book because it ends with an incredibly helpful and interesting lenghty literature survey of strauss inspired scholarship across many ahh 'fields' ((which goes against the spirit of the argument of the first few chapters). 1/2

On Teaching in the context of Misconduct; With some Ring of Gyges thrown in. open.substack.com/pub/digressi... Come for a picture by @erikangner.com stay for the ring of Gyges

HT Bernard W. Kobes This LRb piece by Amia Srinivasan has a really gem of a comparison between Lacan and Rawls. It's full of provocative observations, so worth your time (although I also <am resistant to> demur from quite a bit in it). www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

This was an odd book because the critics of Jaffa collected therein often have the better argument, and he comes off as self-indulgent and cantankerous. Yet, his defense of Lincoln is often moving, and I have to admit I am now wholly baffled by the evolution of the Claremont school since.

I am not sure there is much of an audience for Alasdair Macintyre on Adam Smith

#philsky #ethics

Alasdair MacIntyre on Adam Smith 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

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

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

Fascinating new piece from @nescio13.bsky.social doi.org/10.1017/S026...

Sometimes I suspect the pundits really lack the time to think about the concepts they use and to read the works they mention.

One of the biggest moments of my career: USCIS canceled my client’s naturalization oath ceremony. We filed a lawsuit, went to trial, and the judge swore him in right there in the courtroom!

Preach it!

My second Kant and my first Bentham paper, "Federalism and the Unity of Early Liberalism: Bentham’s and Kant’s Reception of Adam Smith’s “New Imperialism.”" *Social Philosophy and Policy.* 2025;42(2):474-494 (Link in first comment)

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...

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...

One of the interesting contradictions of our time is how, on the one hand, the politicians are terrified of the right-wing press but, on the other hand, nobody reads the right-wing papers anymore. (One in a hundred people buys a copy of the Mail every day. It *so* doesn't matter what it says.)

The Impact of Adam Smith on the Growth of American liberalism as presented by Parrington open.substack.com/pub/digressi... with shout outs to @duncanbell.bsky.social and others

I like Cory Doctorow's approach to these issues. FFIW When I wrote my piece I was thinking of and more influenced by @jacobtlevy.bsky.social and Chandran Kukathas' arguments relating to immigration policy.

A vital point here, first driven home to me by Cory Doctorow in the context of copyright policy, is that many forms of tech regulation that strike lots of folks as appealing and commonsensical would in practice require a fairly massive surveillance apparatus to meaningfully enforce.

"Adam Smith describes most of our attitudes nicely: we would be 'much better pleased that the public business were well managed by some other person, than that [we] should have the trouble, and incur the responsibility, of managing it' all the time." www.liberalcurrents.com/ezra-klein-s...

“the digital and online policies & regulations Klein entertains would involve near-constant monitoring of children & young adults. The data-mining and policing powers involved facilitate not just predictable invasions of privacy, but also foreseeable abuses by authorities against minors & adults.”

It would be amazing, but uplifting, if the last institution to hold out against the new authoritarianism stateside is the grand jury and the jury of one's peers.

This may be the first time anyone has associated my writing with the words 'British' and 'understatement' or the concept, 'British understatement'! #hurrah

Reading this, from @nescio13.bsky.social, is like watching British understatement walk around with a flamethrower. (This is an endorsement.)

"...we would educate our young not into the old republican or its rival liberal public philosophy, but into something more dystopian. In the effort to eliminate harm, we risk turning ourselves into coddled, obedient sheep." Great piece by @nescio13.bsky.social

Eric @nescio13.bsky.social is brutal sometimes: “Public republicanism is not wholly anachronistic because it finds its continued use in the Occupy movement, the vegetarian co-op, and the department meeting.” www.liberalcurrents.com/ezra-klein-s...

Come for the excellent cartoon, and stay for the public philosophy

My latest pet peeve is office lighting that turn off automatically even though you are working at your desk, and that will not turn on automatically at all.

All you’ve got to do is shrink the economy enough first and then it’s a piece of cake

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

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

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

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

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

PPE GRANT opportunities!!! open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

A Digressive, Digression on Karl Polanyi and Adam Smith open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

I was asked to referee a paper for a major journal that seems to engage with my work in substantive fashion. (That's a flutter of excitement.) All the citations to my 'work' are hallucinatory in character.; and quite a few other invented citations. Meh. meh. meh. #upsideidonthavetowriteareport