Hakeem Jefferson

Just insane cruelty.

Hell yeah!

Edsall asked me to quote but mine weren’t included so I’ll poast my response here.

Turnout matters, but isn’t mentioned in the piece. It’s not the same group of voters.

Also see @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social on how black and white people define “I identify as conservative” differently

Insanely good. I want to eat it again right now!

Delicious crispy chicken

I can’t tell you how f’ing good it was!

And no flour involved. Crispy af! And so moist.

“I am somebody!”

I grew up obsessed with the sound of Black orators whose voices alone felt like they could open heaven, even as they fought to help Black folks find peace here on earth.

Knowing how much Jesse Jackson loved our people taught me to love and struggle for us too.

A true legend.

So easy!

Pound and dry chicken, salt + pepper + garlic powder. Dip in egg and mustard mix, press into crushed pork rinds, rest 5 min.

Pan fry in shallow oil over medium heat, 2–3 min per side. Lemon squeeze.

We used BBQ chicharrón but any works. Smash steamed potatoes in the pan after w/butter.

One flex I remain quite proud of: even after a v long workday, we can still make a restaurant-quality meal at home.

Tonight: chicharrón-encrusted chicken schnitzel, crispy smashed potatoes, & lemon-zested broccoli. Absolutely delicious.

You’ve got to find a way to hold on to joy amidst all this.

Abstract Academic freedom is an unusual and complex set of norms and practices. It arises out of the combination of the corporate self-governance of medieval universities and the spirit of disciplinary scientific inquiry in modern research universities. It combines a principle of antiorthodoxy as to conclusions with the robust associational self-governance of scholarly communities whose members evaluate one another as participants in that shared enterprise. It has never been easily or wholly embraced by wider societies; today it is under wholesale attack. This article combines conceptual, normative, and historical analyses of academic freedom as a general norm with attention to conflicts over it in the mid-to-late 2010s and early 2020s. Some genuinely hard cases and questions tested the meaning of academic freedom and university values well before the current crisis.

Now posted ahead of print:

"Conceptualizing Academic Freedom," forthcoming, Annual Review of Political Science.

(Uncorrected proofs, so a few minor edits different from the version that will be published in June.)

doi.org/10.1146/annu...

Just the motivation I needed to keep my ass in the desk chair revising today!

It’s now official. I’ll be publishing my first book, Respectability Politics, w/ @uchicagopress.bsky.social!

Proud to join a press w/ a strong lineage in Black studies & Black politics, including Cohen’s Boundaries of Blackness, which has deeply inspired my work.

Now to get these revisions done.

The think pieces write themselves. My contribution: this is fucking beautiful, and we should keep fighting for more of this! Everywhere.

This is my America.

crickets from the free speech crowd, of course

I’ve seen commentators ask if two halftime shows mean we’re that polarized. As is often true, this polarization focus misses the mark. It papers over a fight over power, including cultural power, and whether it’s shared w/ppl who look & sound like Bad Bunny or monopolized by folks like Kid Rock.

100% this.

It turns out racists do racist things.

How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism Moderation used to help Democrats win, but its advantages now have been greatly exaggerated.

This is an excellent, accessible, if long, piece by @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social & @adambonica.bsky.social. Drawing on scientific evidence and ground-truth logic, they dismantle calls for Democratic moderation and prescribe a path that is pragmatic and courageous.

www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...

The evolution of immigration politics over the past year illustrates the Strategist's Fallacy with particular clarity. Early last year, Matthew Yglesias and others counseled Democrats to avoid talking about immigration. Their reasoning was straightforward: immigration represented Trump's strongest issue, and Democratic activists drawing attention to cases like Kilmar Abrego Garcia's -a Maryland father unlawfully deported to El Salvador —were increasing the "salience" of a topic that allegedly damaged the party's electoral position. Democrats should redirect attention elsewhere, they said. This strategic advice assumed voters' preferences on immigration were so rigid that Democratic messaging could not influence them. It treated public opinion as a fixed fact of political reality, not an object that was going to move in the short term or that could be moved. And it ascribed too much influence over voting decisions to issue attitudes.

@gelliottmorris.com continues to have been right about immigration as an electoral issue

www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...

This set of essays, led by @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social and @adambonica.bsky.social, is really important. Folks should spend time with them.

And their response to the responses reads like two scholars tired of bringing loads of evidence to a fight where some folks are just bringing vibes.

What do we think the GPT prompt for this was?

I also try to impart to students that the goal is not to transcribe texts or seminar discussions but to build a capacity for isolating critical aspects of each.

First day a student asked, “So, you really mean notebooks—like notebooks?”

I said yes, and there has been no mention of it again.

Part of students’ seminar grade is sharing a sample of their notebook so I can see how they’re engaging the material.

Others may have different pedagogical priorities, but I care a lot about developing the capacity to think well and this helps me see how that’s happening.

My pedagogical concern has always been teaching students to be slow, careful thinkers. Early feedback suggests this approach is helping. It’s also doing important work in showing students that thinking is messy, and that messiness is part of the process.

To keep AI out of her classroom, this high school English teacher went analog Forth Worth teacher Chanea Bond says sticking with pen and paper keeps generative artificial intelligence out of her American literature classes.

I’ve also gone analog in my advanced undergrad seminar on identity this quarter. Students keep reading/seminar notebooks—questions, confusions, insights—and complete several field exercises, including a “seeing identity in the world” task.

www.npr.org/2026/01/28/n...

I agree. Talk to lawmakers!

Slow down. Deep breath.

Slow down, my friend.

Slow down, my friend.