I gave my first keynote last week at the #BIAPT2026 conference in Edinburgh. My title was “Enlightenment Emancipation and its Abolitionist Critics.” I had the post-dinner slot so it was like delivering a wedding speech. Although such speeches don’t usually involve a handout or contain an argument…

So. What are best strategies for us as researchers? How do we divert this sewage, what infrastructural elements help drain it out of the system? What are best—and by that I mean efficient, least effortful—practices whenever we encounter this kind of crap? We need public education in info hygiene.

My forthcoming book— For which I began research in 2006. Is now posted on the website for Princeton University Press. Cover will be added soon. The King’s Slaves: The British Empire & the Origins of American Slavery

It was fun to write on ‘Humour as Political Opposition’ for this volume. The punchline is that humour can be subversive in certain contexts but that doesn’t mean it’s an effective tool of political opposition. Indeed, it is best not thought of as a ‘tool’ at all. www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/han...

Really looking forward to this!

Very nice also to get the chance to chat to @rosscarroll.bsky.social @turnstone.bsky.social @jjjlacey.bsky.social and others not on Bluesky! Very nice to see you all, and many thanks for coming along despite the storm outside!

"The destruction of Gaza is Israeli policy" @irishtimes.com : Slaughtered journalists, medics and starving children will not sway public opinion here in Israel 👉 www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

Wonderful video from #CleanCoasts about Sally and her human Tony who litter pick on Sandymount Strand in Dublin every day Latest Irish Business Against Litter survey has shown great improvements on beaches. It's not come about by magic, but by the heroic efforts of so many like Sally and Tony 👏

This is amongst the most impactful two minutes of broadcasting I’ve ever seen. By Emma Murphy, International Editor, ITV News. #Gaza

Extraordinary & disturbing court case unfolding. UN rapporteur @michelforst.bsky.social warns State of 'directly assisting' a private company to sue an environmental activist. 'I am deeply concerned at the significant wider public interest imperilled by this case' www.independent.ie/irish-news/u...

‘This is about how we as a community stand together & resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working ppl, & members of our family & our community are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice’ www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

“There is a pollution in the touch, in the principle of that Governor who makes nothing but money his object.” Edmund Burke on Hastings, but could be better applied to Trump.

An AI exec describes how his company’s corporate strategy is rooted in “our lived experience.” Can we now finally declare that this phrase has been utterly emptied of meaning? www.irishtimes.com/business/202...

We're delighted to launch our CfP for our next conference, our first in Scotland. Join us in lovely Edinburgh, January 7th-9th. Submissions are open until July 17th. Full details below! 👇 www.associationforpoliticalthought.ac.uk/biapt-2026-i...

The deadline for nominations for the Early and Mid-career prizes has been extended to June 6th. So there's still time to submit!

We are accepting a new round of book proposals for this new Routledge series on "Identity, Ideology, and Worldviews in Global Politics" that Stephane Baele (UCLouvain), Beverley Loke (Australian National University), and I edit. #IR Send us your great ideas!

This was one of the most enjoyable, useful, and well organized conferences I have attended in years. Huge thanks to the organizers!

My very talented wife has been talking about the history of papal conclaves. Interested in the time the cardinals were taking so long the locals removed the roof they were under to hurry them along (or ..em… “let the Holy Spirit in”)? Give this listen.

Why are biofuels being so heavily pushed despite their obvious, MASSIVE inefficiencies? Because they're a fig leaf for continuing to burn stuff, above all fossil fuels.

Terrific new handbook on International Political Sociology, a what's what and who's who in the field: "The Oxford Handbook of International Political Sociology" eds. Stacie E. Goddard, George Lawson, and Ole Jacob Sending global.oup.com/academic/pro...

My Burke book has been reviewed in a French publication. It’s a delightfully odd feeling to see your own words translated. The concept is great. They review books written in languages other than French for a franchophone readership. Burke would approve! www.books.fr/edmund-burke...

We’re eliminating programs that save millions of people from disease And ending a lot of research that has cured diseases and will cure more Because we need to funnel resources into AI Because someday it may be able to figure out cures for disease Do I have that right?

Get the Zuck Off Our Books: the authors taking on Meta's thieving - our @samblakebooks.bsky.social pictured open.spotify.com/episode/4llE...

In case you missed it.

Our Professor in Politics @jonathanpjwhite.bsky.social has published a new paper in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social, “The Future as a Democratic Resource," which explores the relationship between democracy and the expected world to come. Discover it here 👇 cambridge.org/core/journal...

Nasty work. www.vanityfair.com/news/story/m...

If, like many of us, you’ve been impressed by @jowolff.bsky.social’s contributions to public philosophy over the years, then be sure to sign up for this event at @blavatnikschool.bsky.social in June. Details 👇 www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/events/publi...

This is what happens when a very 19th century belief (that manufacturing is the key to national greatness) clashes with a very 21st-century fondness for creature comforts and consumerism.

The use of defense purchases is one way foreign govts could quickly offset trade surpluses with the US, as opposed to the kinds of piecemeal forced purchases seen in the US-China Phase One deal. Both entail what amounts to US industrial policy, with the Trump admin picking the domestic winners.

Looking forward to it Randal!

Having my book stolen by Meta to train their large language models doesn't feel great. But it does present me with another opportunity to declare how much, and how vehemently, I hate everything that Big AI's snake-oil peddling hypemen stand for. www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...

If the government wants to appoint a Housing Czar, I think it is only fair that we let the opposition appoint a Housing Lenin

I was recently told by some US profs, distraught by what’s happening, that it’s “very hard” for academics to organise cuz there’s not a trade union movement in the US (even tho “grad students are doing it”) and cuz apparently high US prof salaries are not conducive to solidarity yada-yada-yada.

Sound advice, I’d say.

I haven’t looked forward to a conference this much in ages.

I had seven of my books stolen by one of the richest men in the world, all to create something that doesn't work, that nobody wants, and that will fold in a few years, taking a lot of trees and oxygen with it. It's a fruitless, embarrassing ego trip, and the sooner its stymied the better.

Tapping the sign.

When you use the free version of ChatGPT to make trade policy.

You know there’s a sound economic mind at work when they are slapping tariffs on uninhabited islands. 🤦‍♂️

Palestinian paramedics shot by Israeli forces had hands tied, eyewitnesses say - yet another war crime committed by the IDF, to add to the ever growing list. #endthegenocide #gaza www.irishtimes.com/world/middle...

@penguinbooksusa.bsky.social are you going to publish the Declaration of Independence or Douglass’s Fourth of July address or Langston Hughes’s Freedom’s Plow as “the Glory of Revolution”?

I just searched for this title, fearing either that it was an AI hallucination in a student essay, or that there was somehow a book by Burke I hadn’t heard of. Turns out it’s neither and that @penguinbooksusa.bsky.social are just making stuff up.

A very nice review of my Burke in the Oxford Political Review. oxfordpoliticalreview.com/2025/03/24/r...

"we are abolishing refugee and asylum claims, and doing our best to abolish legal immigration, except for Afrikaner farmers alleging discrimination" is so impossibly on the nose that it's hard to believe it's real even once you've set your expectations to what you thought was as low as possible.

Reminds me of this quote by Ignazio Silone: “Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place.”

“the only true reason for producing books in the first place is to bind us to our fellow human beings beyond our final breath, and thereby defend ourselves against those implacable adversaries of the life of every one of us – transience and oblivion.” Stefan Zweig, from the story Buchmendel

It’s 40 years this month since access to contraception was liberalised in Ireland, but that was far from the end of the story! @rtebrainstorm.bsky.social article from myself and Jennifer Redmond - love Gaybo explaining how to use a condom (that was 1987!!) #speirgorm www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...