Christopher Fariss

US withdraws from key UN human rights report, draws criticism from rights advocates The United States will not participate in a U.N. review of its human rights record, officials said, a move that rights advocates called a worrying retreat from Washington's global engagement on rights and justice issues.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a peer-to-peer evaluation of a country's rights record. All 193 UN member states are expected to participate, and even states like Russia and China do.

Today, the US took the unprecedented step of withdrawing from the UPR www.reuters.com/world/europe...

Rubio recasts long-held beliefs with cuts to U.S. human rights reports The State Department’s annual human rights reports arrive a half-year late with significant cuts and little fanfare from America’s top diplomat.

May infamy follow him for the rest of his days. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

As of today, Elon Musk is thought to be responsible for the death of 300,000 adults and kids due to the illegal closure of USAID (source: www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?vi...)

That's a 103 deaths per hour, each day. And it will get worse.

His legacy is one of death, destruction, and failure.

On Friday, my son stayed home from school because he had a sore throat and wasn’t feeling well. He went with my husband to his office for the morning while I handled our daughter. When he came back at lunch, he was not interested in eating, saying his throat hurt too much. 1/n

If we know where they were sent, but it isn’t to detention: exile.

If we know where they are & it’s in detention: extraordinary rendition.

If we don’t know where they are, but we know someone’s holding them: kidnapping.

Otherwise, if we don’t know where they are: disappearance.

Heparin is just like an iPhone, except it's a bit more compact and you use it to prevent blood clots instead.

The only way forward, that I can see, requires both courage and collective action. If we’re not going to fight for our students and our scholarship, then what the hell are we doing anyway?

A good reminder to follow everything Eunji Kim does. She is so smart and just has an intuitive understanding of how people engage with entertainment media. She’s also hilarious. oh and her new book is coming out in a month:
press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

As someone educated outside the elite doctoral programs, EITM was huge for me.

If you want to be good enough at finding stuff out (i.e., "research") to be paid to do it, there's no substitute for being around the best of the best and trying to learn from them.

This year we will be in Michigan in August. Apply if you are midway through your PhD program in the social sciences to learn from the best in the discipline how theory and empirical methods come together!

This segment from @maryannefranks.bsky.social is an incredibly tight argument that captures the breadth of the Trump assault on free speech perfectly and in less than a minute.

Spread it far and wide.

I knew Dan Drezner when his headings were like "Sanctions work somewhat better than you think."

A competent Democratic Party would have this clip all over the airwaves and social media inside of 24 hours.

Current and Historical Challenges to Birthright Citizenship The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow restrictions on birthright citizenship to partly take effect, even as the initial executive order is blocked nationwide by three federal a...

I'll be moderating a panel on Birth Right Citizenship at @umfordschool.bsky.social (and try to bring a comparative perspective). The panel includes legal scholars and historians (see below), join us on FRIDAY March 28th!

fordschool.umich.edu/event/2025/c...

The people Attorney General Bondi is calling “terrorists” have had no trial and no chance to defend themselves. We do not know who they are. Ignoring the Constitution does not make us safe. It puts us all in peril.

Ex-Facebook Employee Is Blocked From Promoting Tell-All Memoir Meta has forcefully denied the allegations in a new memoir, “Careless People.” Now, an arbitrator has prohibited the author from distributing it.

Great way to advertise the book 👍🏼 I didn't know about it but now I do and immediately bought the book.

www.vanityfair.com/news/story/m...

They will not stop until Americans stand up to them. Today, the Senate Democrats failed that test. Tomorrow, I hope that the rest of us come together to defend our values and principles.

vote your vote, but don't lie to constituents. have some fucking dignity.

...topics such as the Civil War..."???

It literally became a national cemetery *because of the Civil War.

We're not a serious country. Or, more accurately, this isn't a serious government

Trump and Republicans set this up as an unprecedented power grab so they can slash and burn government services on their terms.

I’m a firm NO — on cloture and final passage — on this ‘CR’

Again, if university presidents/leaders want to shape public opinion & the politics of the moment, rather than idly sitting by why Trump destroys free speech & dismantles the entire business model of 🇺🇸 higher education, here is the opportunity to do that. Loudly. Collectively. Publicly. Immediately.

Last week, I presented at my final Conflict & Change PhD Workshop @uclspp.bsky.social. Once again, ECRs from around the world shared their projects. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have been involved as both an organizer and a presenter from the beginning of my PhD! Hope to come back someday. 🙂

We find similar evidence from residence of Texas across two different types of natural disasters: doi.org/10.1016/j.gl...

Another paper showing climate shocks lead to support for climate action among conservatives. Analyzing data collected in Florida, the paper finds Republican positions change after personally experiencing loss from climate-exacerbated extreme events.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Tyranny requires your fear, your silence, and your compliance.

Democracy requires your courage.

📢 “He’s trying to steal Medicaid to enrich himself. He’s gutting NASA to line his pockets with SpaceX. He’s looting everything good in America for private profit.” - @aoc.bsky.social at today’s #SaveOurServices NYC rally.

The fight isn’t over. Join us: go.savepublicservices.com

This event is happening this Wednesday at the #Umich Ann Arbor campus, come and please share!

You are referring to them criticizing what you’ve done around U.S.A.I.D. by saying foreign aid is not good territory for Democrats to fight for? Yeah. And you think I don’t know that foreign aid is not as popular as Medicaid? Of course I know that. But there are going to be mass deaths from malaria and H.I.V./aids and other preventable diseases and conditions because of what the United States is doing. So do I have to be thoughtful and sometimes clever about how we go about communicating that? Yes. Am I going to wait for a more popular program? No, because what they are doing here is ignoring a federal law. Which federal law are you talking about? The Foreign Assistance Act, and then, of course, every appropriations bill that funds the State Department and foreign-ops budget. They’re ignoring multiple federal laws. And I’m just—excuse me for being quaint about this—but I’m not going to just gloss over that and wait until they touch the Affordable Care Act. That’s the kind of pundit-brain, poll-tested bullshit that got us into this mess. We are constantly being told that something isn’t polling well enough yet. And one of the things that Republicans do well is not allow their pollsters to tell them everything. They invent whole stories and then the polling follows.

Senator Schatz, @schatz.bsky.social, rejects idea that Dems should wait for Trump to touch 'most popular' programs to fight.

"I'm not going to just wait until they touch the ACA. That's the kind of pundit-brain, poll-tested bullshit that got us into this mess."

www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...