If anything is broken with academia, it might be allowing rich donors to run the place

Your turn, UVA

#JustIn: Democrats in the state Senate say "future budget considerations" could impact UVA if it signs onto the Trump administration's education compact.

Some thoughts I've shared with the Board of Visitors at UVA

"Any university leader who signs on to this compact would betray everything good and solid about the university and would do deep and permanent harm to the United States and the world." @sivav.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/2013...

"No institution that is committed to the free pursuit of knowledge should submit to the degradation of autonomy and academic freedom contained in it." @acls1919.bsky.social statement on the White House "compact" proposed to universities. www.acls.org/news/acls-st...

The other key point here is that the Trump strategy for higher ed is failing. They are losing in court. Harvard has not caved as they had hoped. It would be madness to throw them a lifeline now by voluntarily turning the university into an arm of the DOJ

Must-read by Joseph Fishkin: the Trump higher ed "compact" demands "a near-complete surrender of core academic freedoms" and lets DOJ pull "federal benefits to which the university and its faculty and students are entitled under federal law." A deal for suckers balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

I'm very pleased to announce that the call for proposed Special Issues of the Historical Journal is now live, with a deadline of 12th December. Please do spread widely among your networks — @saracaputo.bsky.social and I look forward to reading your submissions! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The president of our university has formed a committee to advise on collaborating with the Trump administration? Is it too much to ask who is on it? Or why we are only learning about it from the New York Times? www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...

This is all kinds of crazy. But the enforcement mechanism? Universities would hire an auditor to "conduct anonymous polling among faculty, students and staff to evaluate the university’s performance against the agreement" w/ results made public and reviewed by the Justice Dept.

Can't decide what's more contemptible: trading the university's most precious assets, its institutional integrity and intellectual freedom, for cash, or selling out the rest of higher education by rewarding the divide-and-rule tactics of a corrupt government

once again noting that the first priority of the newly seated Virginia legislature come January absolutely must be the dramatic reform of the UVA Board of Visitors in both current membership and composition.

it is utterly humiliating to be on this administration’s list of presumed “good actors” & imperative on us to show them that judgment was mistaken

UVA invited to join select group of collaborationist universities

The Board of Visitors at UVA, which has no legal quorum to do business, is mysteriously meeting anyway. A cop tried to push off a peaceful student protester who has every right to be there.

Students are trying just to wait outside the board meeting, which is being illegally constituted, and the admins are ordering the cops to clear them. One officer already put his hands on a student to push him off the rotunda steps

JICH will now award two annual prizes: The Stockwell-Burroughs Prize for Best Article; & the Murphy-Howe Prize for Best Postgrad Article. Winners will be announced each Feb & receive £200 in book vouchers from @tandfresearch.bsky.social. Winning articles will become free access for 12 months.

UVA's wall-to wall union, UCWVA at UVA has joined the Faculty Senate, Student Council, Wahoos4UVA, Emeritus faculty, and others in expressing No Confidence in the Board of Visitors. ucwva.org/who-we-are/u...

A draconian clampdown on research at the BBC Written Archives: no access to previously unvetted files, no photocopy orders, and instead a "new model" of "releasing archival content" that sounds suspiciously commercial. I couldn't have written my last book with these rules in place.

Calling historians and researchers. The BBC Written Archives Centre has changed its access rules without consultation. This means an end to proper independent research into the BBC's rich history. 178 have already signed the open letter. Please join the campaign: tinyurl.com/bbcwaccampaign

4-6 months is not a serious timeline for a presidential search. They’re rushing to announce a name before VA gets a new governor. The faculty lacks confidence in the board and the process. So does the legislature. What candidate would take the job under those circumstances?

I wrote about Cecil Rhodes, Donald Trump, and the perils of imperialist biography for History Today www.historytoday.com/archive/revi...

I wrote about Cecil Rhodes, Donald Trump, and the perils of imperialist biography for History Today www.historytoday.com/archive/revi...

On the search committee for a new president at UVA: There are more Olympic swimmers than humanities professors. There are more money managers than humanities professors. There are, in fact, zero humanities professors (and only one from the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences).

Every governor (realistically, every Democratic governor) should be doing this www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/u...

Seems clear that the Columbia capitulation crosses the red line of academic freedom, if what Rashid Khalidi says here is accurate (and I have no reason to think it is not)

Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump. Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt. Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:

The previous two presidential search committees looked MUCH different. The current Rector’s disrespect for shared governance is staggering.

There are 28 members on the committee to select a new president at UVA. There's exactly one faculty member from Arts & Sciences, the biggest school and the heart of undergraduate education. There are 10 members from a discredited board news.virginia.edu/content/uva-...

So the deal appears to be: accept the imposition of a pro-Israel agenda on Middle Eastern studies in exchange for keeping the science $$$ flowing

The current administration's systematic dismantling of our research infrastructure—402 documented attacks in just 6 months—represents more than policy disagreement. It's an abandonment of the principle that knowledge should serve the common good and expand opportunity for all communities.

There are so many shallow, cynical, and self-serving abuses of history today. This is a reminder that histories of the present can be different. Powerful and clear-eyed by Omer Bartov

Nine years after Ruling Minds came out, I keep hearing from artists and writers who are doing interesting things with the history of dream research in the empire. The latest is Kinnari Saraiya's exhibition In the Eye of a Dream at Brighton. So wish I could see it in person!

The UVA Faculty Senate has overwhelmingly voted to express no confidence in the Board of Visitors "for not protecting the university and its president from outside interference and for not consulting with the Faculty Senate in a time of crisis"

Spotted in LA

NEW: More than 400 UVA faculty demand an independent investigation of the circumstances leading to President Ryan's ouster before a new presidential search is launched www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025...

Further misadventures in research with AI: I'm trying to get Claude to create an index of proper names from my research notes. It's not going great

There will now be 10,000 new ICE agents & 100,000 new detention beds--and few safeguards protecting people from constitutional violations by the feds. Time for states to pass laws allowing people to sue fed agents. Read about it these "converse-1983" statutes here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

State-sponsored vandalism

One lesson from what happened at UVA today: our governance model (each governor gets to appoint the entire board) is a disaster. We need reform so that faculty, alumni, higher ed experts, and students are properly represented. Patronage invites politicization.

“I doubt Jefferson ever imagined the university he dreamed up and built in the last years of his life would be the site of a demagogic assault committed to crushing scientific inquiry.” @sivav.bsky.social being brilliant on deadline. newrepublic.com/article/1973...

More than 100 UVA faculty (and counting) have signed an open letter condemning political interference in the university. The forced installation of a new president under these circumstances will cast a shadow on teaching and research. Read here: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

UVA grads with axes to grind are abusing the authority of the federal government to install a university president more to their liking. It's a bid for an ideological takeover while there's a Republican majority on the UVA board. Please stay put, President Ryan www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/u...

Nice review of The Truth About Empire from @drrscully.bsky.social: ‘Use it to inform or to reinforce your knowledge … of the British Empire in all its complexity … a volume of such diversity & lucidity should certainly be hailed as the landmark it is’. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Absolutely blown away by my early experiments with AI. This is going to change everything. Let's shut down the universities now

Absolutely blown away by my early experiments with AI. This is going to change everything. Let's shut down the universities now

This is a smart, short piece on the limitations of "victim" and "perpetrator" as categories in the history of British imperial violence. It's a reminder of how underdeveloped the field still is (and how much can be learned from other fields, including, yes, Holocaust studies) @jich.bsky.social