New from me in Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour! Social theorists have trouble explaining how intersubjectivity is possible if norms are open-ended. I contrast two proposed solutions (offered by Talcott Parsons and Harold Garfinkel), both ultimately unsatisfying. #EMCA 1/4
In NLR 157: an interview with Ervand Abrahamian.
A leading historian of modern Iran on the power structures of the Islamic Republic and the long-incubated American-Israeli assault.
newleftreview.org/issues/ii157...
New sun Ra doc streaming free for one month on PBS. Extras (outtakes and essays) on the site. www.pbs.org/wnet/america...
A blog about corruption and our new edited volume from Cambridge UP! (As always, couldn't have done this without my co-editors, Marina Zaloznaya and Marco Garrido!)
cambridgeblog.org/2026/01/seei...
A huge district court victory for the University of California.
District courts find facts. This one found "overwhelming evidence" that the Trump administration has pervasively violated the First Amendment in its efforts to coerce and intimidate the University of California.
News story here—
I am shocked and abhorred by the arrest of Parviz Sedaghat and the interrogation of Mohammad Maljoo by the Iranian authorities. They are two of Iran's finest independent scholars who have relentlessly analyzed and criticized the repressive politics of akhbar-rooz.com/1404/08/12/3...
I am happy to announce the publication of my latest book
The Iraq Wars: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press).
amazon.com/Iraq-Wars-Shor…
An audio-book version is scheduled for release in December.
Coming from @stanfordpress.bsky.social in the summer of 2026! @lisablaydes.bsky.social and I edited a book "Ba'thist Iraq through Archives" with a star studded list of contributors!
Deadline extended! POMEPS is pleased to call for proposals for the POMEPS Junior Scholar Book Development Workshops to be held in a virtual format throughout the academic year 2025-2026. The deadline to apply is Sept. 22. More info: pomeps.org/pomeps-junio...
POMEPS is pleased to call for proposals for the POMEPS Junior Scholar Book Development Workshops to be held in a virtual format throughout the academic year 2025-2026. The deadline to apply is Sept. 15. More info:
pomeps.org/pomeps-junio...
A good read by Kheder Khaddour on the recent fighting between the STG and Druze armed groups in Suwayda, the regional repercussions, and the need for negotiated conflict management.
carnegieendowment.org/middle-east/...
New preprint with @cmparreira.bsky.social and Lindsay Walsh posted to @socarxiv.bsky.social: "From Protest to Parliament: Lebanon’s October Revolution and the Rise of Movement Parties." Link: osf.io/preprints/so...
I love everything about @andrewroberts.bsky.social’s review of four recent books on the postcommunist transition. We know a LOT about the 90s that goes beyond facile references to “neoliberalism” or the “Washington Consensus.” Anyone tempted to work on the period would do well to start with this 👇.
How did Marxist scholars of the Middle East make sense of the Islamic revival? My article "The 'Discovery' of Modern Islam in East Germany after 1979: Iran, the Resurgence of Religion, and the Coming Crisis of Dependent Capitalism" is out (open access):
doi.org/10.1163/1570...
Even with a low bar, economic journalism of Iran was getting pretty lazy in the last few years. Muddling through does not a headline make, but "in the months before the war was doing neither: not collapsing, not booming — just recovering from the shock of Trump..." djavadsalehi.com/2025/06/25/i...
Wise words by Faribah Adelkhah in Le Monde - there is no op-ed in any US paper which even gets close to this level of analysis.
www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl...
Two pertinent graphs from me tonight...
First, U.S. support for bombing Iran is very low — much lower than support was at the time for the American military attacking Afghanistan, Iraq, and ISIS.
Link: www.gelliottmorris.com/p/polls-amer...
Great brief by @davidpatel.bsky.social on applying the demographer's toolkit to MENA studies. I'd wager the conflation of age, period, and cohort effects plagues almost all of Iranian studies to date. Don't get me started on the "youth" as the unit of analysis. zenodo.org/records/1538...
The Doha Institute is hiring a post-doc with experience in network analysis, statistics, and information technology. Link: www.dohainstitute.edu.qa/en/Careers/P...
Our article on legislative cooptation and opposition in the Kuwait National Assembly is finally out at @bjpols.bsky.social!
Key findings: bsky.app/profile/dani...
Article link: doi.org/10.1017/S000...
Egypt’s Second Republic: “The regime is strong and cohesive at the top, however, its inability to achieve social and political hegemony and its overreliance on coercion leave the Second Republic at permanent risk of unravelling.” Must read by Yezid Sayigh.
carnegieendowment.org/research/202...
My book, Dust That Never Settles: Literary Afterlives of the Iran-Iraq War is now available for purchase. Please encourage your university or local library to get a copy. You can get a 20% discount from the publisher, Stanford University Press: shorturl.at/ZRGyw. The code is on the attached flyer.
Bill Luers was a fundamentally optimistic diplomat and I admired him for it.
He once told me that optimism is what kept him in his profession "for so many decades." It is also what drove his remarkable work on US-Iran relations.
He will be missed.
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/u...
Recently published in @jpube.bsky.social:
"Declining earnings inequality, rising income inequality: What explains discordant inequality trends in the United States?"
By @zparolin.bsky.social, @lukaslehner.bsky.social, & @natewilmers.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#econsky
Fred Block reviewed The Master's Tools for @dissentmag.bsky.social. He contrasts my book, which identifies radical forms of economic democracy as the solution to our political crisis, with another, which argues such democracy is an impossibility. In typical form, he has interesting things to say!
Should citizens vote in authoritarian elections? In a recent @apsrjournal article, Turkuler Isiksel and Thomas Pepinsky (@tompepinsky) make the case for the democratic value of voting under authoritarianism.
Loaf hedge
Hunting for foreign students, Spring of 1980 edition (NYT, April 18, 1980, p. A 16).
