Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

The statement cautions that "Current history educators have a responsibility to model appropriate engagement with generative AI" and then lists several unwise and/or inefficient uses for generative AI as acceptable.

It's pretty incredible to me that the AHA's statement on using generative AI in education rather decisively notes this fundamental problem with the technology, but nonetheless goes on to say that generative AI "can be a valuable partner in the classroom."

a post which says "Bush wasn't taking rights away nor was he trying to cheat elections. The most harm caused under him was the Great Recession."

it must be hard to run a country when the whole population gets hit with the men in black memory erasing device every 4 years

Rest of the world: China is the future

Chinese millennials and zoomers: this fucking garbage age of history, let me just curl up over here, don't wake me up for work because I don't have a job and if I do I hate it

On Sinopessimism, or Junkies of Futility | Made in China Journal This essay is written precisely so that it could be dismissed. —Paul Mann (1991: 141)   Gary Gexi Zhang (2021) first coined the term ‘Sinopessimism’ as a speculative counterpart to Afropessimism, imag...

What is Sinopessimism? From lying flat to runology, Dino Ge Zhang explores a grassroots lexicon of disillusionment in China. Not just youth disengagement but a low theory of coping, refusing, and imagining alternatives amid economic and social pressures.

Just a reminder this list is drawn from a piece written by four researchers for MICROSOFT (data scientists, CS people, economists) who have never stepped foot in an archive/never taken an oral history/studied material culture, by their CVs.
Unlike them, I do my research, and don't talk out my ass.

Wrote about some of the dilemmas of solidarity--it is, unfortunately, impossible to know every place in the world and that can lead to mistaking enemies for allies. And what does it mean to care for a place you may, in fact, have no connections to, which is inherently abstraction?

Faculty Support of George Mason’s President Draws Federal Investigation

Faculty who wrote to defend their president and object to a DOJ investigation of their university...are now being investigated by the DOJ.
The most banal defense of free speech and academic freedom will trigger the full wrath of the US government now.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...

Korean American PhD student Tae Heung Kim, legal resident with valid green card, was vanished by ICE and detained incommunicado for a week coming back from a wedding in Korea.

If you think it’s just Latinos or “only illegals” you’re fooling yourself. All of our immigrant communities are at risk.

Holy - and I cannot emphasize this enough - shit.

Also, this guy was a senior project 2025 organizer.

A little louder for those in the back:

“Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die” - AFP.

International media is barred from entering Gaza by Israel. The only ones who have borne witness are local reporters, 185 of whom are now dead.

The last remaining, like all Gazans, are being systematically starved.

In retrospect this feels like the logical conclusion when you remember a lot of surveillance state in XJ was set up under the excuse of China’s War On Terror which - surprise! - was a copycat of the US War on Terror

By high school, I'd convinced myself that historians could only teach, if even that, and simply couldn't see myself as a teacher.

Did an odyssey tour of social sciences instead, only to find I kept looking for ways to scratch the history itch more or less the entire time.

“Even God Cannot Hear Us Here”: What I Witnessed Inside an ICE Women’s Prison Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk opens up about her 45 days in a South Louisiana processing facility—and the generous and compassionate women she met.

Stop what you're doing and read this extraordinary essay by Rümeysa Öztürk: "I am free, but my true freedom is interlinked with the freedom of many women I lived alongside in ICE prison."

Former military personnel call for recall vote support - Taipei Times Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan

This is a noteworthy development because this has never, ever happened before. Even as the Sunflower Movement was sometimes hailed as the first social movement that truly overcame the waisheng/bensheng divide, that was only among young people

www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/...

AI is a tool (sorry!) that people who are bad at their jobs will use badly and that people who are good at their jobs will maybe, possibly find some uses for. People who are terrible at their jobs (many executives), will tell their employees that they “need” to use AI, that their jobs depend on it, that they must become more productive, and that becoming an AI-first company is the strategy that will save them from the old failed strategy, which itself was the new strategy after other failed business models. The only journalism business strategy that works, and that will ever work in a sustainable way, is if you create something of value that people (human beings, not bots) want to read or watch or listen to, and that they cannot find anywhere else.

This is very good.

www.404media.co/the-medias-p...

George Mason Is the Latest University Under Fire From Trump. Its President Fears an “Orchestrated” Campaign. When university president Gregory Washington received notice that the Trump administration had opened an investigation into complaints of antisemitism, he was “perplexed.” But there are signs it may…

NEW: When university president Gregory Washington received notice that the Trump administration had opened an investigation into complaints of antisemitism, he was “perplexed.”

But there are signs it may be part of a coordinated campaign to oust him.

2/ Spend a year, starting Oct. 1, working on a project in partnership with ProPublica & your local newsroom.

We’ll provide up to $75k of salary coverage plus a benefits allowance. You’ll have guidance from a senior editor and our specialty reporting teams.

Crafting a Tibetan Terroir: A Conversation with Brendan Galipeau | Made in China Journal In Crafting a Tibetan Terroir: Winemaking in Shangri-La (University of Washington Press, 2025), Brendan Galipeau takes readers to the Sino-Tibetan border region rebranded as ‘Shangri-La’ by the Chines...

In 'Crafting a Tibetan Terroir', Brendan Galipeau explores how wine is reshaping landscapes and livelihoods in the Sino-Tibetan border region known as Shangri-La. From missionary vines to luxury tourism, it is a story of modernity, identity, and global capitalism. A conversation with Dechen Pemba.

Secret police” got the name because they do surveillance and are often plain-clothed (or in ICE’s case masked). But the thing that has defined them since the 18th century was that they operate independently of civil police with a goal of maintaining social and political control.

Again, that’s ICE.

Armstrong went on to say that a call for institutional divestment from Israel, an arms embargo against Israel or an end to military aid to Israel could all be problematic. He added that calling the country an “apartheid state” would “probably” be considered anti-Israel activity. However, Armstrong said, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza would not be held against a visa applicant. “The president has called for a ceasefire. So no,” said Armstrong, who is scheduled to testify at the trial on Friday.

In order to study in the U.S., students need to use the same words and hold the same beliefs as the fascist President of the U.S.:
www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

During the 2019 Hong Kong protests, various factions that ranged from clergy to suburban moms, lawyers to anarchists, coalesced on the four-part slogan:
不篤灰 (no snitching)
不割席 (no severing ties)
不分化 (no forming of cliques)
不指責 (no scolding)

Seems like new American anti-fascists are (re)learning!

[REVIEW] “Taiwan’s Political Evolution and the Study of Comparative Politics as seen in 𝑇𝑎𝑖𝑤𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝐷𝑦𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑐 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛” by Eric D. de Roulet 📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Ryan Dunch and Ashley Esarey (editors), Taiwan in Dynamic Transition: Nation Building and Democratization,…

I have a little book review out in @asiancha.bsky.social on Taiwan in Dynamic Transition by Ryan Dunch and Ashley Esarey (eds.), mainly on how the anthology treats Taiwan as a country worth understanding in its own right and not merely as a subject of great powers conflict.

And just to be clear as this moves outside our usual circles: when we say we're looking for contingent scholars, we mean any trained scholars working off the tenure track, even if they aren't affiliated with a university in any way.

May I suggest:

For President
_______________________
Write-in

Nor is there a single reference to any specific policy that Japan has implemented. Swap out the few proper nouns here and this letter could be addressed to any country's leadership.