Erik Baker

Higher Ed's Bad Bargain To salvage academic freedom amid Trump’s attacks, universities must break from their Cold War compromise with US militarism.

Great stuff in @jewishcurrents.bsky.social

“Accommodating militarism in higher education for the sake of fighting Trump will not do anything to prepare the academic profession to eventually confront its complicity in American-sponsored atrocities.”

jewishcurrents.org/higher-eds-b...

a screenshot of google maps of what appears to be a giant snake in the ocean

a not insignificant number of people on Threads seem to believe the snow storm was The Government's attempt to refreeze the Leviathan, the world-eating serpent, which was getting loose (to eat the world, I assume)

The argument against ICE isn't an especially difficult one to make politically in this moment. The issue is that people who substantively disagree with abolishing ICE prefer having a proxy fight about strategy to discussing that stance. Many such cases.

Thanks so much, Dan!

Higher Ed's Bad Bargain To salvage academic freedom amid Trump’s attacks, universities must break from their Cold War compromise with US militarism.

Terrific essay by @erikmbaker.bsky.social in Jewish Currents
"Accommodating militarism in higher education for the sake of fighting Trump will not do anything to prepare the academic profession to eventually confront its complicity in American-sponsored atrocities" jewishcurrents.org/higher-eds-b...

"To those currently in power, the U.S. doesn’t even need to claim to uphold higher principles — they would be wasted on the ungrateful." - @seamus-malekafzali.com thedriftmag.com/be-grateful/

Cannot believe people on here seriously believe the western European military powers will go to war with the United States over Greenland. Sorry, folks, the US is protected but not bound by NATO, and the other signatories are bound but not protected from the US! You got fooled!

Statement on Ford Plant Visit from VP Laura Dickerson, Ford Department Director

🧵 The autoworker at the Dearborn Truck Plant is a proud member of a strong and fighting union—the UAW. He believes in freedom of speech, a principle we wholeheartedly embrace, and we stand with our membership in protecting their voice on the job.

I will be reading from this piece this evening! Come join us. www.thedriftmag.com/how-i-learne...

"Ordinary people fall short in recognizable ways" A Q&A with Madeline Cash

Drift contributor Madeline Cash’s hilarious and tender debut novel Lost Lambs is out today. Our Associate Fiction Editor Livia Wood spoke with her about the book.

newsletter.thedriftmag.com/p/ordinary-p...

Higher Ed's Bad Bargain To salvage academic freedom amid Trump’s attacks, universities must break from their Cold War compromise with US militarism.

“Where once [universities] shook their heads at the naivete of the students whose chants asked them how many kids they’d killed today, now they are practically submitting their tallies to the DOD, one last desperate gambit to maintain the status quo.” jewishcurrents.org/higher-eds-b...

Thank you!

Higher Ed's Bad Bargain To salvage academic freedom amid Trump’s attacks, universities must break from their Cold War compromise with US militarism.

A wonderful essay by @erikmbaker.bsky.social that situates academic organizing against Trump and genocide in a long history that includes Science for the People and early 20th-century predecessors: jewishcurrents.org/higher-eds-b...

It’s pretty fucked up to sack Aaron Rodgers instead of debating his ideas

An old tweet of mine from 2021 saying “We used to have Gingerbread Men in this country. Nowadays all we have is Gingerbread Them. Retweet if you support nuclear war with China”

Government accounts just post like this now and that’s how policy is made

"Where admin once they shook their heads at the naivete of students asking them how many kids they’d killed today, now they are practically submitting their tallies to the DOD."

Historian Erik Baker on universities' doomed compromise with American militarism:

jewishcurrents.org/higher-eds-b...

Thank you Ben!

I'm so glad we have this essay by @erikmbaker.bsky.social, who argues convincingly that we should not restore US govt connections with academic science without attending to the inherent militarism of those connections. As he notes below, academic freedom has always been at stake.

Higher Ed's Bad Bargain To salvage academic freedom amid Trump’s attacks, universities must break from their Cold War compromise with US militarism.

Online today @JewishCurrents: my examination of how nearly a century of cooperation between American universities and the military-industrial complex has made a mockery of the concept of academic freedom jewishcurrents.org/higher-eds-b...

The need to respond to Trump's attacks on higher ed can't allow us to lose sight of the aspects of academia's relationship to the federal government that desperately deserve sustained opposition

Higher Ed's Bad Bargain To salvage academic freedom amid Trump’s attacks, universities must break from their Cold War compromise with US militarism.

Online today @JewishCurrents: my examination of how nearly a century of cooperation between American universities and the military-industrial complex has made a mockery of the concept of academic freedom jewishcurrents.org/higher-eds-b...

The Year That Was and Wasn’t We asked some of our favorite journalists, writers, and thinkers: What were the most important events of 2025, and what were the least?

“Since peace was declared, Israel has killed more than 400 Palestinians and wounded over 1,000 more, while its de-facto annexation of the West Bank has only accelerated.” ← @erikmbaker.bsky.social on 2025 themorningnews.org/2025-the-yea...

In your mailbox and in bookstores imminently!

When the media is less honest than Trump On coverage of the Maduro kidnapping

Great piece in the newsletter today by the one and only @seamus-malekafzali.com on media cowardice in the aftermath of the American power grab in Venezuela

newsletter.thedriftmag.com/p/when-the-m...

Clearer than ever that the right regards queerness as a crime punishable by death

It is now confirmed from multiple sources that ICE shot a legal observer dead on Portland in Minneapolis between 34th and 33rd street. The victim is dead

Hope to see you in New York next week!

The Bleak History of the American Work Ethic In Make Your Own Job, Erik Baker shows just how long Americans have scrambled to pile work on top of work—and at what cost.

Thanks to Nick Juravich and @thenation.com for this wonderful review of Make Your Own Job! www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Domme Song 10 Poetry

And read Robbins’s “Domme Song 10” today as well.

www.thedriftmag.com/domme-song-10/

Domme Song 5 Poetry

“Aphrodite’s like sigh what now / Sappho, what’s your crazy heart / want now?”

Read “Domme Song 5” by @alienvsrobbins.bsky.social in Issue Sixteen.

www.thedriftmag.com/domme-song-5/