This widespread ”AI” conflation has set back the push for sound digital policy by over a decade. In our book about the shift to a digitized society, @ntusikov.bsky.social and I deliberately chose to avoid the term as much as possible precisely because it sows such confusion.

The “free speech” and “cancel culture” panics have led to overt state censorship because that was always their purpose. (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Propaganda: what Xi and Trump have in common. www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

Researching on women & #Buddhism in #HongKong; history indeed looks entirely different if we centre women instead. The earliest Buddhist community, school, hospital, chaplaincy… were all founded by women, monastic or lay, during the war, the Cold War, social upheavals, famines, pandemics, and more.

We've got more new scholarship on our website! Today, it's a can't-miss conversation between Fred Cooper and Krishan Kumar about #decolonization and what might come next: “The location of sovereignty is still in question.” #AcademicSky #History #AcademicChatter sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2025/12...

They're just Doing It lol Moreover, ICE must be destroyed

“At Texas A&M, internal emails show staff are using AI software to search syllabi and course descriptions for words that could raise concerns under new system policies restricting how faculty teach about race and gender.” www.texastribune.org/2025/12/15/t...

The Introduction, “What is the Future We Yearn For?,” to my book, *The Future That Was*, is now live and freely available to all on the book’s @princetonupress.bsky.social website press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Trying to imagine me five years ago fathoming an insane headline like this www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

When the AI child safety story is also a China influence story, lol ‘Asked whether Taiwan is a country, it would repeatedly lower its voice and insist that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. That is an established fact” or a variation of that sentiment.‘ www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

HEARTBREAKING: This toddler’s Furby is completely misreading the work of Evelyn Rawski

Zhang Yadi's plight illustrates the risk of going home for Chinese nationals who displease the state, as it increasingly tightens control over issues it considers sensitive -- such as that of Tibet. In full: buff.ly/EfBmfWe

And this is one reason why Hongkongers have fought so hard against the "bamboo scaffolding is at fault" narrative.

The arrests in Hong Kong right now are déjà vu for mainlanders like me who were active in civil society in the 2000s: citizens demanding investigations and accountability after public disasters are met not with answers, but arrests and intimidation. #mainlandization #香港加速内地化

I don’t know how much it must be said and why so-called international media seems to be so bad at it even now, but talk to Hongkongers about what is happening Hong Kong, not “experts” thousands of miles away

"If you’re an instructor at Texas Tech, you can extol fascism; but you cannot wonder aloud whether a mutation to the SRY gene on the Y chromosome makes a person neither male nor female." www.dallasnews.com/opinion/comm...

My friend Jake (that’s Dr. Beck to you!) on the crisis in Texas universities. www.dallasnews.com/opinion/comm...

The authorities said flammable netting and foam boards may have fueled Hong Kong's deadliest blaze in nearly 70 years, killing at least 75 people.

The @the-independent.com particularly bad. A commentary by an editor (in Delhi?) calling for a ban on bamboo scaffolding and article interviewing experts in Australia. HK media reporting widely about the use of sub-standard plastic netting, and officials have mentioned styrofoam boards on windows.

This 2024 post from the DAB’s Peggy Wong is quickly becoming infamous. In it, the pro-Beijing district councillor dismisses fire safety concerns about the Wang Fuk work as malicious rumours misleading the public, and accuses the Democratic Party of “provocatively live-streaming “ from the scene.

Further political context: In the 2019 District Council elections, all 19 of the elected seats of Tai Po District Council were won by "yellow" (i.e., Hong Kong pro-democracy) candidates. The pro-Beijing camp was completely wiped out bar for the two ex officio members of the 21 person strong body.

International media, you can do better than this. "Bamboo" is maybe exotic and a compelling hook but it is too easy. The real story here is the growing culture of corruption, including a lack of accountability and oversight, that enabled a chain of human errors that led to this disaster.

The numbers vary from study to study but hundreds of thousands of people have died because of Elon Musk and Marco Rubio illegally disbanding USAID — a body count on par with the first eight years of the Syrian civil war — In just seven months. It’s mass death that is simply unfathomable in scale.

Taking a moment from #aarsbl25 to celebrate this recently award-winning #hongkong film #Queerpanorama 眾生相. #Queer and #Buddhist at the same time (each trans-boundary encounter contributes to the making of the protagonist’s sense of identity). #goldenhorse #filmsky #moviesky #buddhism

I did a Q&A with Violet Feng on her new film:

Under the Trump administration, many NEH programs have been ended, 2/3 of the staff along with the scholarly council fired, and most of the money that has been given out as noncompetitive awards given to handpicked recipients... 🗃️

MAGA’s ongoing war on academic freedom, reflected in headlines from the last 24 hours.

This is academic censorship, full stop.

Delighted that our Decolonizing Chinese History Roundtable is now available in Chinese translation as a book! Thanks to the wonderful team at Uli books and for my brilliant co-authors @jimmillward.bsky.social @catielila.bsky.social Taomo Zhou, and James Evans www.bookrep.com.tw?md=gwindex&c...

Super excited to see #Decolonzing Chinese History published in Taiwan! Congratulations @dgtam86.bsky.social @catielila.bsky.social!!

good morning specifically to the FBI agent who introduced Mamdani’s dad to Marx

It's impossible to know exactly how this decision was made right now, but this is both a sad loss for Texas students and another piece of evidence that critical gender and racial analysis at universities is precarious, dangerous, and becoming more so every day. www.star-telegram.com/news/local/e...

No Kings-San. Antonio, TX

Ideas for the @madeinchinajournal.com piece were partly spurred by an earlier conversation I had with @dgtam86.bsky.social and Abigail Coplin on gender and STEM in China, hosted by @ncuscr.bsky.social on the 30th anniversary of the UN's Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in fall 1995:

Some thoughts on Zhongyuan Mandarin - from someone growing up internalizing the stigma associated with our native dialect chenchenzhang.net/2025/10/05/s...

A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration violated the First Amendment by deporting noncitizen student activists. nyti.ms/4mG1pck

i am seriously begging democrats to bring the same smoke to this story that they brought to jimmy kimmel being indefinitely suspended

“I’m emotionally shellshocked right now,” said one professor in the Texas Tech system. “What does it say about academic freedom? It says we don’t have it.” The professor spoke by phone from the inside of a car to avoid being overheard by colleagues. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/u...

All my best to this FEMA employee, and may they succeed in their mission:

"Faculty are afraid to carry out their jobs faithfully in what they view to be your interest, and there is little evidence that the administration will shield them from outside pressures. Missing in this equation is you. What kind of education do you want?" thebatt.com/news/anonymo...

A mensch. I learned so much from him, and I feel honored too the three of us were able to have that conversation, and Jerry lives on in this as in countless projects, writings, students, cases.

En route from Beijing, and I see the news that Professor Cohen has passed away. Still teach his enduring study History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, Myth -and thinking back on how much I learned from Paul over many informal chats and gatherings in Cambridge. Safe travels, laoshi.

RIP to Jerome Cohen, a truly inspiration and fascinating longtime China scholar. I'm genuinely honored I got the opportunity to chat with him once alongside @johndelury.bsky.social about American Sinology in the Cold War. www.ncuscr.org/event/agents...

"the most important anticolonial intellectuals may not use the language of decolonization and may not be in unis, but on the streets, with social movements, and in prison" Alpa Shah. not the state-affiliated think tanks talking deco, not the deco big names talking multipolar civilizational order

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

My head is actually spinning at how many current and future colleagues, both in the China field and beyond it, we are about to lose because of this

Now is the time to contact your employers and rally to protect vulnerable colleagues. The administration is demanding that any valid H1-B visa holders outside the U.S. (or their employers) pay $100,000 for them to reenter the country, as of Sunday. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

I often talk about DC being an oral rather than a literate culture and this also applies to punditry in general: they base their opinions largely on what they've *heard* and on the vibes among their peers, not on what they've read or thought about

For Americans who want a play-by-play of what an authoritarian transition looks like in the 2020s, I strongly recommend catching up on what’s been happening in national security-era Hong Kong. One of the first shots fired in the ongoing crackdown was cancelling a comedy show for “insulting police.”