Adam Matvya

Decolonizing Afghanistan Book Launch Join us for the book launch of Decolonizing Afghanistan: Countering Imperial Knowledge and Power (Duke University Press; edited by Wazhmah Osman and Robert D. Crews). The first comprehensive volume to explore the impact of empire on Afghanistan's past and present, it features cross-disciplinary, ground-up perspectives on colonial projects in Afghanistan and paths to decolonial futures. With a particular focus on the US intervention that began in 2001, the collection marks a decolonial turn in Afghanistan and American studies. NYU MCC 5:00-6:30PM NOVEMBER 6, 2025 239 GREENE STREET FLOOR 8 MATTHIEU AIKINS Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist WAZHMAH OSMAN Temple ZOHRA SAED Macaulay Honors College & CUNY Graduate Center MORWARI ZAFAR Georgetown PAULA CHAKRAVARTTY NYU, CRACS Co-Lab with discussants: MANAN AHMED Columbia OLA GALAL NYU

today, 11/06! Book launch at NYU *Decolonizing Afghanistan* (@dukepress.bsky.social, 2025 )with MATTHIEU AIKINS, WAZHMAH OSMAN, ZOHRA SAED, MORWARI ZAFAR! Come thru! docs.google.com/forms/d/19ZG...

‘He’s an African Leader’ • Articles • EQUATOR Why my Ethiopian relatives voted for Trump

'Abundance' folks and data wonks won't like this analysis, but, that's the point—this is excellent from Adom Getachew. The knee-jerk 'tack right, tack left' style of commentary misses how broader structures of material power & human complexity shapes political life.

www.equator.org/articles/he-...

EQUATOR Equator is a magazine of politics, culture and art.

Equator is live today. Read about our mission and our first pieces, which include works of reportage, essays, memoirs, poetry, and fiction from around the world: www.equator.org

Lost grave of daughter of Black abolitionist Olaudah Equiano found by A-level student Fitzwilliam Museum has uncovered student’s work from 1977 that revealed Cambridgeshire location of child’s burial place An A-level pupil found the lost grave of the Black abolitionist Olaudah Equiano’s daughter, revealing a story of love and solidarity in 18th-century rural England. Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), also known as Gustavus Vassa, escaped enslavement to become a celebrated author and campaigner in Georgian England. His memoir, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, was a bestseller. Continue reading...

Lost grave of daughter of Black abolitionist Olaudah Equiano found by A-level student

uh, that’s not “reimagining” the novel. that’s…the novel.

Thank you, Chicago.

This is a fabulous and important essay.

"In the end, generative AI might be a blip in tech history, over-promising and under-delivering until finally the cash runs out. But it seems it’s arrived just in time to shove universities over a cliff edge they’d already walked themselves up to."

London museum identifies black Waterloo veteran in rare 1821 painting ‘Honourable’ bandsman Thomas James will feature in display at National Army Museum highlighting service of black soldiers in Napoleonic wars

National Army Museum identifies portrait of Black Waterloo veteran:

www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

#Hstory #BlackHistory 🗃️

That Enoch Powell went from imperialist and aspiring viceroy of India to ‘England-first’ nationalist with some liberal social views and conservative proto-Thatcherite economics should warn us against all the dominant frameworks for studying the contemporary far-right.

Why Did UChicago Destroy the Humanities? The answer is simple: to spend untold sums on useless buildings by starchitects.

wrote briefly about architecture and the situation at u Chicago www.thenation.com/article/cult...

While the perpetrators of Gaza’s genocide pose as its saviours, survivors return home – to a wasteland | Nesrine Malik Western leaders attending the Sharm el-Sheikh summit have enabled and sponsored this slaughter. They are in no position to build a Palestinian future, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

"If the ceasefire holds, this language is an augur of the future. One where there is no reckoning, no addressing of root causes. Only a hurtling into the imperatives of cleanings-up and workings-out. All the while illegal occupation continues..."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A truly model club

Philly activists rally to save exhibits depicting slavery at President’s House The Trump administration has given a Sept. 17 deadline for federal agencies to remove materials that highlight the darker parts of American history.

Historians, community leaders, activists and Philadelphians gathered Saturday at The President’s House, located at 6th and Market streets, to oppose potential changes to the historic site’s exhibit on slavery during George Washington’s presidency. whyy.org/articles/sla...

YouTube video by Portishead ‘Roads’ 2025 – Together For Palestine

A special treat from the Together for Palestine event last night in London.

Frozen to myself
I got nobody on my side
And surely that ain't right
Surely that ain't right

The words cut deeper than ever before.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Am...

Why I’m hosting a concert for Palestine at Wembley Arena | Brian Eno I hope tonight’s gig will have the same galvanising effect as the 1988 Nelson Mandela concert – and give people courage to speak out about Gaza, says music producer Brian Eno

"One foundation of that wall of fear has been the association of the words “Palestine” and “terror” – the result of a deliberate, decades-long campaign to conflate the two. That same conflation was made in the 1980s with Nelson Mandela."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Terrible. Most of the Post's left-leaning columnists had departed, as it became clear it would be harder to publish our views under the new mandate for the Opinion section and/or we were encouraged to go. Karen stayed. But it seems clear the Post was not open to that and found a way to fire her.

Getting back into a rhythm. His first game back. Some cobwebs, but active and involved. In Don Antonio we trust.

Early days. But he brings a lot of energy, smooth with the ball, and seems to process the game in slow motion.

Deossa is very good. Betis have a real talent on their hands. He might be too good to leave out even once Isco returns.

bari is a very familiar figure for anyone with experience in authoritarian states; the most sophisticated and careerist variety of informer.

The play that changed my life: Janet Suzman on staging Othello in apartheid South Africa Putting on Shakespeare’s tragedy at Johannesburg’s Market theatre was a risky endeavour and caused an astonishing reaction

Today, I showed my students in "Britain and the Muslim World" a clip from the 1987 production of Othello in apartheid South Africa. Here’s an interview with the director, reflecting on John Kani’s performance and the charged political stakes of staging Othello. www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/n...

Very excited that the Asian Legal History Association will be formally launched at 2 events in March 2026--at Chinese University of Hong Kong (March 17-18, 2026) + Oxford (March 23)! Here's the Call for Papers for "Legal History in Asia and Beyond" (due Oct31): www.law.cuhk.edu.hk/app/events/c...

The British Library as a Global Archive Thiago Nascimento Krause is a 2025 Eccles Institute Visiting Fellow based at Wayne State University. Black and white picture of Add. Mss. 14,037, fl. 10, 14 August 1645: an English plan to export ensl...

My blog talking about British Library holdings after my experience as a 2025 Eccles Institute Visiting Fellow. TLDR: Do apply to the Visiting Fellowship!

Opening page of RHS blog post: 'Peter J. Marshall and the Royal Historical Society: an appreciation'.

Peter J. Marshall (1933-2025) and the Royal Historical Society: an appreciation bit.ly/4mSADyn

We are very grateful to @petermandler.bsky.social for his reflections on Peter Marshall, former President of the Society (1996-2000), which are published today on the RHS blog #Skystorians

Iñigo Pérez really has picked up exactly where Iraola left off. This Rayo side is simply mouthwatering.

🚢 The Global Sumud Flotilla—the largest civilian mission to break Gaza’s siege—launches today, with 50+ ships from 44 countries. Drop Site editor Alex Colston is on board and will be reporting live as it sails from Barcelona toward Gaza.

Arundhati Roy on How to Survive in a ‘Culture of Fear’

Wow--incredible interview with Arundhati Roy on her mother, rising authoritarianism in India and the US, and other things: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/m...

Writers Explore the Long Shadow of Partition in South Asia Decades after the painful ruptures of 1947, novelists and historians are capturing the fragmented lives, displaced communities and intergenerational stories that continue to define the region and its ...

Contemporary writers across South Asia and its diaspora show that the Partition of 1947 is not just history but continues to shape lives and identities, writes @surbhigupta.bsky.social in @newlinesmag.bsky.social

newlinesmag.com/review/write...