David Avrom Bell

Opinion | A.I. Is Not a 21st-Century Enlightenment

My newest piece for the @nytimes, on the similarities and differences between the AI revolution and the Enlightenment, and what the latter shows about the dangers of the former: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/o...

She is the close-minded one, of course. And simple-minded, as well.

From @davidavrombell.bsky.social substack. There's a price not just Columbia, or Harvard, pays for buckling - all Americans do when illegal means of enforcement are by them legitimized

Government by Extortion Six months in, the contours of Trump 2.0 are coming into sharper relief.

That’s his method. See here: “Government by Extortion”

open.substack.com/pub/davidabe...

Government by Extortion Six months in, the contours of Trump 2.0 are coming into sharper relief.

My take on Trump 2.0 at six months: neither fascism nor business-as-usual but government by extortion.

open.substack.com/pub/davidabe...

Alert: The Trump administration is quietly slashing new NIH grant awards, and it's not via the budget NIH’s sudden move to multiyear grant funding is forcing shocking cuts in the number of grants funded. This is an effective budget cut. It's bad, folks.

New, from an anonymous NIH insider: Trump is being pushed to spend more NIH money. The White House is ordering NIH to do multi-year budgets for awards. This budget trick means fewer awards, fewer labs funded, and lower paylines for researchers. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/alert-the-...

The ignorance shown by Vought here is breathtaking m, if not surprising.

Derangement Twenty-two years ago, the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome” to describe what he saw as the left’s unthinking, hysterical hatred of President George...

"The universities have… in effect, declared war on millions of Americans." On the Manhattan Institute's appalling "Statement on Higher Education": davidabell.substack.com/p/derangement

Derangement Twenty-two years ago, the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome” to describe what he saw as the left’s unthinking, hysterical hatred of President George...

On "university derangement syndrome":
davidabell.substack.com/p/derangement

What should Jewish New Yorkers make of Zohran Mamdani? | Beth Miller and Jo-Ann Mort Jo-Ann Mort and Beth Miller go head to head on Zohran Mamdani

Jo Ann Mort gets it right on Mamdani and the Middle East.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

YouTube video by Bruxelles Mobilité - Brussel Mobiliteit Les Pieds

Belgian engineers have discovered a powerful, transformative technology for transportation over short distances. Revolutionary.

youtu.be/EAkm773d7RQ?...

The problem is it’s a lot more than $400m. They have billions more in federal funding frozen, and if they can’t get that back the university will collapse. They are really between a rock and a hard place.

Houses Divided Five years ago, amidst the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, three hundred of my Princeton colleagues signed a remarkable letter, addressed to the university’s top officials.

New newsletter:

davidabell.substack.com/p/houses-div...

Rank in order of importance:
* Trump bombing Iran
* Continuing horror in Gaza
* Gutting of US welfare state
* Destruction of American science
* Uncontrolled global warming
* Mamdani's college application
* Massively exploding federal deficits
* Massively expanding inequality

Shameful capitulation by Penn. Just gross.

I’m having a fun vacation so far have I missed anyth— oh, right.

On Academic Productivity Over the next few months, anxious professors in the United States will compile tenure and promotion dossiers.

New newsletter: On Academic Productivity:

davidabell.substack.com/p/on-academi...

Negotiation or Capitulation? How Columbia Got Off Trump’s Hot Seat.

@nytimes.com: Columbia University is NOT “off the hot seat.” Try reporting what is actually going on there with federal funding!

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/n...

archive.is/2025.06.18-2...

David A. Bell, historien américain : « Avec Donald Trump, le show est devenu dangereusement réel » TRIBUNE. Toute personne qui s’oppose à Donald Trump devient illégitime aux yeux du président des Etats-Unis, explique, dans une tribune au « Monde », l’historien américain, ce qui crée une situation d...

My op-ed about the perilous political situation in the US, in Le Monde: www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl...

Double.

As the US Army celebrates it 250th birthday, Trump is celebrating the enemy that tried to defeat it.

And don’t forget that Gibbon fellow who wrote the classic Decline and Fall of the Empire State Building.

The End of the Affair In Costa-Gavras’s classic 1969 film Z, a reporter shouts a question at a Greek police general being taken into custody for the murder of a left-wing politician: “Is your arrest a new Dreyfus Affair?” ...

New newsletter: The End of "The Affair":
davidabell.substack.com/p/the-end-of...

Among other things, if funding is cut 50% there literally won’t be any money to fund new grants.

I worry that not enough of a big deal is being made about how long-term the devastation of these budget cuts to our scientific and health agencies will be, beyond the absolute ruin they will cause in the acute period.

Opinion | Are International Students Good for American Universities?

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/o...

Beauty of the English language: "in sync" is so much crisper and more elegant than Gleichschaltung.

Astérix et Ozempix

Has anyone pointed out to President Trump that in the higher education sector, the US is running a massive trade surplus with the rest of the world, including especially China, and that kicking out foreign students will threaten that?