Yes, Biden Should Call Out Trump’s Lawlessness

We can’t ignore it. We must face it head-on

Joe Biden is full of surprises. After the Electoral College met Monday to finalize the results of the election, the President-Elect delivered a speech I never thought he’d deliver. He did not say you’re with us or against us, but that’s what he righteously implied. And by implication, Biden gave a ...
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Yes, Biden Should Call Out Trump’s Lawlessness

Disqualifying Instability

On the selective application of rule of law principles

It’s not that difficult Particularly politicians from Hungary and Poland oppose the conditionality mechanism, arguing that the concept of the rule of law is too vague and has no basis in the treaties. However, it is not true that this mechanism has no treaty basis. It has a basis in Article 322 of the ...
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Disqualifying Instability

Worse Than Betsy DeVos? Outside Money Swamps 2020 School Board Elections

A national campaign to privatize public schools continues regardless of who is president

When a Biden victory in the 2020 presidential election became certain, supporters of public education gleefully took to social media to say good riddance to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. DeVos came into office with an agenda to further the privatization of public education by expanding charter schools and ...
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Worse Than Betsy DeVos? Outside Money Swamps 2020 School Board Elections

Stoking the Flames

The Trump wing of the Republican Party continues its attacks on American democracy as the COVID-19 death toll continues to rise

Today’s big story remains the loss of our neighbors to COVID-19. On Wednesday, the official United States death count for 24 hours passed the number of those killed in the 9/11 attacks. On that horrific day in 2001, we lost 2,977 people to four terrorist attacks. On Wednesday, December 9, ...
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Stoking the Flames

Trump Lied His Way In and Is Lying His Way Out

What 20th-century fascists can teach us about the need for truth in the 21st-century

In a bizarre 46-minute address, given from the White House and posted to social media on December 2, Donald Trump gave (in his words) “the most important speech I’ve ever made.” Intended to describe the means by which the 2020 election was “stolen” from him, and supplemented with graphs that ...
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Trump Lied His Way In and Is Lying His Way Out

How Should We Acknowledge the Sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples?

An ethical and aesthetic defense of Indigenous sovereignty

It has become fashionable for some academics at some universities in North America to place at the end of their email signatures a nod to the Indigenous land that their institutions now occupy. Some concerned faculty write a statement of their own. Others—I think this is a better option—compose their statements ...
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How Should We Acknowledge the Sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples?

On Repression and Resistance

I would like to start by thanking the New University in Exile Consortium, particularly the Consortium's marvelous director, Prof. Arien Mack. Thanks to Arien's persistent efforts, uprooted academics from all over the world find their voice in a new community of like-minded scholars. I would also like to thank Prof. ...
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On Repression and Resistance

Donald Trump’s Lies

Why presidential falsehoods are part of United States political history

Do Americans think presidential lying no longer matters? Perhaps a better question, journalist and historian Eric Alterman asks in his new book, Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie—and Why Trump is Worse (Basic Books, 2020), is whether it ever mattered to voters. Following in the tradition of Isadore F. “Izzy” ...
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QAnon Will Outlast Trumpism

How a conspiracy theory was born in the Great War and made its way into the 21st century

For the past three years, someone using the alias “Q” has been posting updates to internet forums, supposedly from within the so-called “deep state.” The posts allege a conspiracy: Donald Trump, they say, is fighting a secret war against a cabal of pedophiles and Satanists entrenched in the government. Soon, ...
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QAnon Will Outlast Trumpism

Migration as a Claim for Reparations

The connections between political agency and migration

In October 2016, Hussein and I met over coffee at a Tunisian pastry shop in the north of Paris to follow up on his administrative battle with the French government. We had spent months filing paperwork together, building the strongest possible case for his asylum application. Hussein had fled Sudan ...
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Migration as a Claim for Reparations