Matt Hartley

Screenshot of the White House Instagram post with a picture of Mahmoud Khalil and in all caps over it says SHALOM MAHMOUD with the White House logo under it Text reads whitehouse SHALOM, MAHMOUD: "ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of @Columbia University. This is the first arrest of many to come." -President Donald J. Trump 2 days ago

I missed this and I don’t wanna dredge up the trauma again but I have to say my piece, which is:

The White House using Jewish/Hebrew words to taunt this man is a violent example of what I'm always telling you: Jews are used as tools by the US govt. We are weaponized.

This is the real antisemitism

Department of Education laying off half its employees

www.ed.gov/about/news/p...

Trump allies target Jewish judge — and his wife — after ruling on Palestinian activist Laura Loomer, Charlie Kirk and others attacked Judge Jesse Furman and his wife, Ariela Dubler, head of the Abraham Joshua Heschel School.

Just in case you still thought that the crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters was about protecting Jews, Laura Loomer et al. have just made the entire Heschel School, PK-12, a target because its admin is married to the judge who halted Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation. forward.com/fast-forward...

Schumer here insinuates—twice!—that Mahmoud Khalil is an antisemite, without making that allegation directly.

(There is, as I've noted previously, no evidence in the public record of Khalil engaging in antisemitic speech or actions.)

the subtext here is “liberal jews are bad for us and bad for you, so when we come for them, don’t get mad at us”

I have watched "thinkers" in my own field play this game of "Maybe they have a point about DEI". Immensely foolish to align themselves with those who are maliciously attempting to dismantle social progress, while they attack their own allies. Guess which side you've ended up on!

Reports like this presume there is a good faith debate among those attacking DEI. That is largely not the case, and especially not in the Trump White House or the State Houses attacking DEI. It is a culture war against Blackness, LGBTQ identity, and anyone who works toward social justice.

Speaking as a victim of the DEI purge in Florida universities, you do not need to give anti-DEI actors any credit. They're not looking for good faith debate. They're simply trying to destroy progress on racism, LGBTQ inclusion, etc. They really are motivated by malice. Nothing to praise or debate

Ninety-one disabled kids in one county in Virginia, and their five teachers, cut loose, just like that, at one of the most complicated and stressful moments in their and their parents' lives.

Image of galaxies and stars.

Euclid unveils breathtaking Einstein ring. Astronomy Now article. Image: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi, T. Li. 🔭 🧪 astronomynow.com/2025/02/13/e...

When the very institutions that provided safety, education, and health are under attack, we need to put our love into acts of resistance.

There can be no sitting on the sidelines.

What will your acts of love look like in public? How will you help return love to the public square?

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya's family inform that he suffered torture and isolation in Israeli prisons. He is not fed properly (one meal per day) and is in bad health.
He has yet to be charged with anything.

Pope Francis rebukes Trump over mass deportations, warns policy ‘will end badly’ Francis also appeared to take aim at Vice President JD Vance’s recent use of a medieval Catholic concept to justify the administration’s deportation policy.

Pope Francis sharply rebuked President Donald Trump’s policy of mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and urged American Catholics not to lean into anti-immigrant sentiment in an open letter to U.S. Catholic bishops Tuesday.

You can't be any geek off the street!

Opinion | The Political Future of Palestinians, According to Palestinians (Gift Article) Times Opinion spoke to five Palestinian scholars and analysts about what they believe the future holds for their people.

I was interviewed alongside Palestinian scholars in the west bank, Gaza, and the US about where Palestinians go from here

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/o...

Under fascism, no one is safe.

Universities stayed quiet as the admin targeted DEI & foreign aid, censored research, etc.

Now, they face devastating cuts to indirect cost rates, threatening research & operations.

Silence won’t protect institutions. It won’t protect people; it never does.

I take encouragement rooted in deep time from Myles Horton: “The future is ready to be changed, malleable. There's nothing fixed that you can't unfix. But to unfix things that appear to be fixed, you have to be not only creative and imaginative, but courageously dedicated to the long haul."

Speaking from experience, 2 suggestions for your professional radar:
-look for opportunities to build new roles especially locally with people and orgs you already know and trust.
-don’t be ashamed to ask far and wide in your network - at some point someone may see a role that is just right for you.

Do what you need to take care of yourself and those you care for - but if and when you are ready, we need you, your gifts and skills, to build new institutions, to help in new ways, to strengthen resistance to the forces of dissolution.

We always have opportunities to rethink and re-envision how we do our work, but I hope you won’t doubt the good that you’ve done - the hostile cabal and chorus with the levers of power cannot take that from you.

To those purged from government for working humanitarian/DEI areas from a Florida man who has been there: What you built doesn't go away with your job. This is a traumatic upheaval but you have skills & there are answers in community. Not magic wands but
love
solidarity
seeds
for healing & regrowth

If antisemitism is core to Palestinian identity, and to the struggle for Palestinian rights, then eliminating Palestinians is a justified form of fighting antisemitism.

This is the warped and racist logic that leads people to acquiesce and support starvation, mass murder and collective destruction.

Great to be at Montreat College Conference and hear @kaitlincurtice.bsky.social share indigenous wisdom on kinship and the power of story, taking in deep breaths and hope for the new year, despite it all.

News being among most crucial examples of this but a reality across variety of social institutions is we need models resistant to capitalism, to counter ever more clever and rapacious technologies of financial capitalism. Democratic ideals can only be achieved by democratic means. People over profit

Belicheck will turn them around!

Score is Williams remix! First the Smallville/Farm theme then the main theme

Read the books you already have Challenge @ me

it has always been a long reaction to the New Deal. from then to now, capital had seen the New Deal as the sin that must be purged so that the rest of us understand our place as grist for their mills

The Bad Guys Don’t Really Care What Kind of Leftist You Are Infighting is a waste of energy.

A good thing I read today by @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
"A better show of our political identity is how we make changes in the world around us, not our slogans and mission statements."

www.teenvogue.com/story/trump-...

Same! Immediately added to my physical media collection and recommended it to everyone