Andrew M Leber

The image Saudi Arabia hopes to achieve beyond the comedy festival Saudi Arabia is working to reshape its global cultural image, but controversies over several acts in its comedy festival tied to the country's human rights record are underscoring the tension between ...

Initiatives like the Riyadh Comedy Festival aren’t helping Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman “clean up” his image abroad. But the kingdom’s international reputation isn’t its main priority here.

@andrewleber.bsky.social, on @npr.org: www.npr.org/2025/10/04/n...

Wind River --> state capacity

Motherless Brooklyn has a thinly fictionalized version of Robert Moses in NY city government

Two especially good bits ⬇️

What @andrewleber.bsky.social’s analysis captures, that much discourse around “-washing” events in the Gulf & beyond often neglects, are these domestic drivers.

Not everything is done solely, or mainly, for an international gaze. Some risks are taken despite that gaze.

Dwayne has his job back because we organized for it. We fight or we die. Join AAUP today www.aaup.org/join

The Riyadh Comedy Festival Isn’t Trying to Change Your Opinion of Saudi Arabia The driving forces are domestic.

I looked at the domestic drivers of the Riyadh Comedy Festival for @carnegieendowment.org

carnegieendowment.org/emissary/202...

🚨🚨 My dear friend and fellow academic, the Palestinian American sociologist @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social has been taken by the Cook County Sheriff near Chicago. They have not mirandized her. Please signal boost. All eyes on Broadview for Eman and the community she was defending 🚨🚨

Giga-Projects: Envisioned Communities in the Age of Saudi Arabia’s “Vision 2030” The webinar hosted by Elias Muhanna, director of the Center for Middle East Studies, will be focused on megaprojects like NEOM, the Red Sea Project...

Speaking tomorrow with Elias Muhanna at Brown University on a panel about Gulf-monarchy "giga-projects," for anybody interested in stopping by.

events.brown.edu/middle-east/...

Battle of the Sexes | Jasper Craven Pete Hegseth has used his many perches—from Princeton to the Pentagon—to agitate for a kind of trickle-down masculinity.

"Perhaps the most ghastly piece printed during Hegseth’s reign as publisher was an assertion that Princeton’s characterization of sex with an unconscious person as nonconsensual was an effort to “indoctrinate” students."

thebaffler.com/salvos/battl...

it's a great interview, and what's striking is that at the end of the day both klein and coates believe in winning people over. the difference is that coates thinks you do this by telling them the truth, and klein thinks you do it by empathizing with them and recognizing their concerns as Real

ChatGPT Is Blowing Up Marriages as Spouses Use AI to Attack Their Partners Across the world, marriages are being destroyed as spouses use AI like OpenAI's ChatGPT to attack their partners.

"As AI bots like ChatGPT become inextricably tangled with people’s private and public lives, it’s causing unpredictable new crises."

futurism.com/chatgpt-marr...

Left-Wing Terrorism Is on the Rise For the first time in more than 30 years, attacks by the far left outnumber those by the far right.

With due respect to the authors, this article further affirms the bankruptcy of terrorism studies in being a) value-neutral on "the state" and b) drawing artificial divisions with other forms of political violence.

www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Critical part of the President's new $100,000 charge for H1-B visas: The Administration can also offer a $100,000 discount to any person, company, or industry that it wants. Replacing rules with arbitrary discretion.

Want visas? You know who to call and who to flatter.

Across the Middle East, Israel’s strikes on Qatar have raised questions– among them whether the region can rely on the U.S. for protection.

Amr Hamzawy, Sarah Yerkes, @andrewleber.bsky.social, and Marwan Muasher share more: carnegieendowment.org/emissary/202...

🔝 This is the most-read story on FT right now >>

The Widespread Fallout of Israel’s Qatar Strikes The operation against Hamas in Doha has eliminated the notion that the Middle East can rely on America for protection of its lands.

I joined Carnegie colleagues Amr Hamzawy, Marwan Muasher, and Sarah Yerkes in assessing the regional fallout of Israel's recent strikes on Doha.

carnegieendowment.org/emissary/202...

The Spin on Gaza Those who resigned in protest over the war say its enablers are rewriting history.

'“They don’t want to go down in history as the people who facilitated either a genocide or the pathway to a genocide,” he says; they want jobs in the next White House.'

nymag.com/intelligence...

.@tulanepolisci.bsky.social is "seek to hire an Assistant Professor (tenure-track) in Comparative Political Economy." Open area focus, but looking especially for:
energy transitions
natural resources governance
domestic environmental/climate politics

apply.interfolio.com/172989

R.F.K., Jr., Brings More Chaos to COVID Policy and the C.D.C. When MAGA met MAHA, Donald Trump vowed that Kennedy would “go wild on health.” Promises made, promises kept.

"A headline in “Intelligencer” captured Cassidy’s posture: “Key Republican Almost Annoyed Enough at RFK Jr. to Act.”"

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

U.S. Democratic Backsliding in Comparative Perspective The erosion of U.S. democracy under President Donald Trump shares many features with other prominent cases of democratic backsliding. Yet a close comparative look highlights important distinctive elem...

A good look at US democratic backsliding in comparative perspective from McKenzie Carrier and Thomas Carothers.

Via @carnegieendowment.org

carnegieendowment.org/research/202...

20 Years After Katrina, New Orleans Is ‘at a Tipping Point’

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/u...

Colleges brace for a harsh new reality as higher ed recession — or depression — looms Higher education institutions like Clark University are rethinking how they operate as enrollment slips, costs climb, and politics threaten international students, research funding, and financial aid.

Sadly a feature, not a bug, for a Trump administration bent on destroying "liberal" institutions.

www.marketplace.org/story/2025/0...

3 The Saints open next week in the Caesars Superdome, a building named after a casino in a world more dominated by MLMs, crypto, and assorted scams than ever before. Fans will spend a lot of their time watching while also placing bets on apps designed to bleed money from them all day.

The decline in three Superdomes.

1 Katrina ripped the roof off the Louisiana Superdome, a place where Louisiana citizens expected to feel safe

2 The Saints won a championship playing on the Mercedes Benz Superdome, a more expensive, corporate sponsored, literally gilded version of the old building

Have also come across "made-up quote from a real publication"

'Starvation is everywhere': Virtual tours of Gaza clinics expose the scale of the horror ***

An absolutely harrowing account of the reality of starvation in Gaza's medical clinics from Haaretz. The pictures are haunting. Those commentators and journalists who have sought to minimise this in recent weeks are complicit in these horrors. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

Student Arrivals to US Continue to Plummet, With Asia Hit Especially Hard Visitors to the US arriving on student visas plunged in July, falling year-on-year for a fourth straight month.

Your occasional reminder -- as arrivals on student visas decrease 28% -- that tuition from foreign students counts as an export, which means that every rejected student visa is going to contribute to the US trade deficit.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

A ‘Great Defection’ threatens to empty universities and colleges of top teaching talent Political attacks and other problems appear to be driving an exodus of Ph.D.s and faculty from higher education, threatening a diminished experience for undergraduates.

"An exodus appears to be under way of Ph.D.s and faculty generally, who are leaving academia in the face of political, financial and enrollment crises."

hechingerreport.org/a-great-defe...

Individual Mobilization by Victims of Human Rights Abuse: Who Files Petitions in the United Nations? Abstract. Who files petitions against repressive regimes in the United Nations? Victims of human rights abuse face high personal costs of participation, in

Assistant Professor @rjschoner.bsky.social has published her article "Individual Mobilization by Victims of Human Rights Abuse: Who Files Petitions in the United Nations?" in International Studies Quarterly: academic.oup.com/isq/article/...

CPJ calls for Anas Al-Sharif’s protection in face of Israeli smears - Committee to Protect Journalists New York, July 24, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely worried about the safety of Al Jazeera Arabic’s Gaza correspondent Anas Al-Sharif, who is being targeted by an Israeli military ...

This is from only *17 days* ago: a CPJ warning that Israel's smear campaign against Anas al-Sharif was a precursor to his assassination.