Now would be a good time for anyone who wants to learn about recent Iranian history to read this. It is well worth your time and money (I am sure your local library has it if you don’t want to purchase it).

It does not escape me that this illustrates the Trump/GOP/neo-Nazi apparatus working precisely as China is assumed to work. It’s a little more complicated in China, and it’s a little more complicated here—but the distinction used to be obvious and, if this pattern holds, that is no longer true.

Y'all blew up an elementary girls school.

Need people to stop being weird about Alysa Liu and Eileen Gu. And also to understand what an athlete representing China can and cannot do, versus what an athlete representing US - for now - can and cannot do.

hello bsky, new person to follow! On #japan and beyond.

4/ I’ve started a second project on “An Extractivist History of the Nintendo Game Boy.” It explores the environmental costs of abstracting nature into digital worlds, linking the electronics industry in postwar Japan to intensive mining and drilling practices at home and abroad.

3/ ”Territorial Natures” argues that the fraught and urgent question of autonomous regions in the People’s Republic of China originate not only from Soviet internationalism, but also from Japanese fascism, which cultivated rural landscapes as authentic markers of ethnic identity in Inner Mongolia.

2/ My first book, “Territorial Natures: Imperial Japan and the Mongolian Question,” is coming out with @uchicagopress.bsky.social this August 2026. You can find it here: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Bluesky #historians! Make sure you follow my brilliant friend Sakura (and pre-order her amazing book!)

So when thousands of women (and children) were being duplicated--including in non-consensual AI porn--it was no big deal. But it took "only a 15-sec clip" of these two famous white men to draw outrage and fear. Gotcha. Cool cool.

Look what I got in the mail! @catielila.bsky.social @jimmillward.bsky.social @jagevans.bsky.social and Taomo Zhou

Btw, decolonization was an explicit part of the HK pro-democracy discourse and not a lens that a leftist scholar decided to use after the fact

Eliminating gender studies courses helps to ensure that universities and other institutions will continue to protect men who benefit from the abuse of women and girls, either directly or through their connections to those who exploit girls and women for profit. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

honestly tired of trying to convince people that trump's immigration policy is not really about violent undocumented immigrants or even just undocumented immigrants, but immigrants in general and even non-white people more broadly.

WHAT

This is AWFUL. Univ of Texas is consolidating 4 depts into 1: African and African Diaspora Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, American Studies, and Mexican American and Latino Studies will become "a Social and Cultural Analysis department." www.texastribune.org/2026/02/12/t...

Domination is the only principle guiding the Trump movement, so the paradigmatic case of domination—gender violence—will inevitably arise as Trumpism’s core expression.

Called it out when it was evidence-free statements that all data went straight to the MSS. Gotta call it out when it’s equally evidence-free in another direction.

Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy former Hong Kong media tycoon and a fierce critic of Beijing, was sentenced on Monday to 20 years in prison in the longest punishment given so far under a China-imposed national security law that has virtually silenced the city's dissent. n.pr/4rza6YL

Buried in this piece is a throwaway line about how actually her real hustle is selling online courses to aspiring AI hacks, marking an extraordinary symbiosis of my two most hated internet poisons

More than ever, we need investigative reporting on China—work that takes time and resources to produce—not commentaries from YouTubers speculating about imminent economic collapse or elite political infighting in China.

the Epstein files are really devastating because they remind me of how many girls and women miss out on professional opportunities, mentorship and careers because of how many powerful, rich and influential men only view girls and women — and interactions with them — through the lens of sex

Breaking: Guan Heng has just been released from detention and is now reunited with his mother, a long-awaited and joyful reunion. DHS has not yet decided whether to appeal his asylum. We extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who stood by him and helped make today possible.

Two books on civil society & how change will likely happen in China, and why advocates for human rights and democracy shouldn't lose hope. Imprisoned organizer of the Citizens Movement, Xu Zhiyong, is an eloquent writer whose book will soon be released in English. chinachange.org/2026/01/31/o...

I genuinely have no idea how to convey this to the American people, but I think the biggest impediment to any kind of immigration reform is that people are convinced that "legal" and "illegal" are immutable, intrinsic categories instead of a rapidly-shifting arbitrary constellation of regulations.

Please make it your new resolution to visit AskHistorians once a week, because we've never been this invested in overtaking another community.

Yesterday, five-year-old Liam and his dad Adrian were released from Dilley detention center. I picked them up last night and escorted them back to Minnesota this morning. Liam is now home. With his hat and his backpack.

If this is true we're getting into some rarified air of PRC elite politics upheaval. Nothing will ever beat the Cultural Revolution, but even there Mao didn't purge the entire PLA top leadership at once.

I kinda think people are crashing out on @whstancil.bsky.social because it’s easier to yell at each other than to acknowledge that the fash have some terrifying tools at their disposal

Next Tuesday (Feb 3), I will be talking to @yilingliu95.bsky.social in New York about her new book: The Wall Dancers. It is a great chronology of how individuals in China grow up with the internet and end up shaping or being engulfed in it. Come join us & RSVP here! yuandmebooks.com/products/boo...

I've been lucky to get an early peek at this book, and it's wonderful. Rare insight into how diverse Chinese lives play out online and off. Stories of actually existing China tech life, and people navigating the margins and the mainstream. Check it out!

Hoo boy this article is good. As one of ana’s chauffeurs on a boring commute this captures it perfectly

There's a saying in Chinese, repeated often during the 2019 HK protest: 世上沒有從天而降的英雄, 只有挺身而出的凡人 "There are no heaven-sent heroes in this world. There are only ordinary people who choose to show extraordinary courage." That's Minnesota today. And Iran.

“I like fish, I also like bear’s paw. If I cannot have both, I will forgo fish and choose bear’s paw. I like life, I also like righteousness. If I cannot have both I will forgo life and choose righteousness.” (Mencius, 6A:10, Goldin trans.)

It's been slowly happening for a few years now but China's official multiculturalism is functionally dead, living on only on banknotes and some shells of ethnic state offices dominated and now mostly staffed by Han madeinchinajournal.com/2026/01/20/r...

I know no one is looking for scorching hot PLA takes on Bluesky rn, but I would caution against thinking the unprecedented purge we're seeing materially lowers the risk for Taiwan.

@josephtorigian.bsky.social asks a key question. We know Xi thinks in terms of hardening systems against risk, but is also a student of Maoist politics. Putting the fear of God into the PLA could be both. In a world where 2027 is a key year, Xi may see it as a final forging of the sword.

The news coming out of Minneapolis right now reminds me of nothing so much as the central government crackdown on Hong Kong pro-democracy protests in 2020. Not a coincidence that Trump and Xi get along.

This is an excellent analogy, because my recollection from grade school is that the pen on the right looks fun and exciting, and then you play with it for a few minutes and realize it's not actually useful for anything and in fact makes some tasks more cumbersome, and never think about it again.

Delighted to see my chapter on Historical Memory in Hong Kong in The Sage Handbook of Interpreting Chinese History in print! Truly honored to have my essay published alongside such fantastic authors, and extremely grateful to the brilliant editors for their hard work uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/th...

Heated Rivalry but it’s Jurassic Park

the thing is these are good things for their own sake but they do not actually work to increase the birthrate, as the European experience largely shows. pretty much nothing increases the birthrate that we've found so far, whether good welfare state stuff or natalist nationalism and anti-choice shit.

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...