David Avrom Bell

Thank you!

Anti-Liberal Historians Liberals can’t catch a break.

My newest column: “Anti-Liberal Historians”

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

Tulsi Gabbard released a fundraising video in 2019 titled "Trump's Path To War With Iran"

"We've gotta stop Donald Trump from starting a war with Iran."

This one hits hard.

Student uses AI to summarize readings, then feeds summary back into AI so it can write his term paper. Professor uses AI to grade the paper and then to write the student a recommendation. Employer uses AI to read the recommendation. Student is hired, and then soon replaced by AI. Whee!

Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses

Really dangerous. Do you want strangers on the street to look at you and immediately be told your name, profession, employer, religion, party affiliation—maybe your address and tax bracket? Meta claims it will strictly limit the features. Do you believe them?

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

De l’Amérique à la France Beaumarchais et l’expérience des Révolutions Appel à communications    Du 1er au 4 octobre 2026 Colloque international Lieux : Musée de la Révolution française (Vizille) Archives départementales de l’Isère (Saint-Martin-d’Hères)   Comité d’organ...

Un #colloque sur le thème "De l’Amérique à la France : Beaumarchais et l’expérience des Révolutions" est organisé du 1er au 4 octobre 2026 au Musée de la Révolution française de Vizille.
Un appel à communications a été lancé : archibeau.hypotheses.org/de-lamerique...

On Viewpoint Diversity For many years now, conservative and centrist critics have claimed that elite American universities suffer from a lack of “viewpoint diversity.” Even as these institutions made recruiting women and un...

New column: On Viewpoint Diversity.
davidabell.substack.com/p/on-viewpoi...

Thank you Jack.

My new column on the deteriorating Franco-American relationship: “We Are Not an American Colony.”

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

The Dumb-roe Doctrine In 2004, The New York Times Magazine quoted an unnamed advisor to President George W.

New column: "The Dumb-roe Doctrine"
davidabell.substack.com/p/the-dumb-r...

"I got up at 7.30, and while I breakfasted I read through a volume I had to review. By 10.30 the review was written — three-quarters of a column of the Evening Budget.” From a character in George Gissing's New Grub Street.

“They talk very loud, very fast, and all together. If they ask you a Question, before you can utter 3 Words of your Answer, they will break out upon you, again—and talk away.” John Adams, on New Yorkers, August 23, 1774.

2025: The Year of Trump? Many years ago, I asked a friend what label he thought future historians would give to the period we were living through.

New column. 2025: The Year of Trump?
davidabell.substack.com/p/2025-the-y...

The French Revolution and the Sacred “Revolution continues Christianity, and it contradicts it. It is, at the same time, its heir and its adversary.” – Jules Michelet (1848)In the years leading up to the bicentenary commemorations of 198...

Upcoming two-part graduate student conference at Princeton and Sciences-Po on "The French Revolution and the Sacred." Call for papers here:
fit.princeton.edu/events/frenc...

Opinion | Academic Politics at Their Most Counterproductive The American Historical Association is being torn apart over members’ views on Israel.

A new column of mine in the Chronicle of Higher Education, on the in-fighting at the American Historical Association:
www.chronicle.com/article/acad...

How to Celebrate the 250th? Historians of the United States are in a bind.

How to Celebrate the 250th?

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

A few days before that, Mr. Roberts had appeared to throw the full weight of the Heritage Foundation onto one side of a bitter conservative family fight over the rise of the white nationalist Nick Fuentes. After the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson conducted a friendly interview with Mr. Fuentes, Mr. Roberts posted a video on social media that defended Mr. Carlson and called his critics “the globalist class” and a “venomous coalition.”

Perhaps the most damning words in this article are the claim that this is "a bitter conservative family fight" over the neo-Nazi, Nick Fuentes.
What does this say about the conservative family?

The Invention of the Modern Self How did the idea of the individual come into being?

My newest review, of Lynn Hunt's "The Revolutionary Self," in The Nation:
www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Opinion | Why Harvard Students Are Afraid of B’s For many students at elite colleges, anything less than excellence feels like failure.

www.chronicle.com/article/why-...

No A for Effort A friend of mine once told me that on his first day at Stanford Law School, the dean greeted the incoming students with an unsettling remark: “I’m sorry to tell you this, but half of you are about to ...

New column: On grade inflation and university culture today.

davidabell.substack.com/p/no-a-for-e...

Opinion | Resistance to Trump Isn’t Enough

Sigh www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/o...

France has survived revolutions and wars: its crisis now is deep, but not terminal | David A Bell From the raid on the Louvre to the spectacle of Sarkozy in jail, it is tempting to think France is on a downward spiral. But history tells the tale of its resilience, says historian David A Bell

A new essay of mine on the situation in France: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A Baleful Legacy | David A. Bell Enlightenment writers who proposed ways of improving and even perfecting the human species laid the theoretical foundations of modern racism.

David A. Bell @davidavrombell.bsky.social on the Enlightenment  and race

This is a welcome post about expertise, but even more so about the dangers of total suspicion and the nihilism it encourages. Thinking of societies fueled by total suspicion always gets me back to experiences in Russia recently, but also to close post-Soviet contacts. One story always returns 1/4

“Expertise is… a process, driven by trial and error. ʼBelieving in the scienceʼ doesn’t mean taking what scientists say at any moment as holy writ—the scientists themselves don’t do this. It means believing in the process and accepting that what is seen as truth today may look like error tomorrow.”

Do We Need to "Stop Trusting the Experts"? (As RFK, Jr. Urges)

Do we need to "stop trusting the experts"?
davidabell.substack.com/p/do-we-need...

A Baleful Legacy | David A. Bell Enlightenment writers who proposed ways of improving and even perfecting the human species laid the theoretical foundations of modern racism.

My newest piece for the NYRB, on William Max Nelson's excellent book on Enlightenment biopolitics:
www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

YouTube video by More Perfect Union I Tracked Down The Company Ruining Restaurants

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

France and America: Twin Crises, Different Trajectories Both the United States and France are in the midst of paralytic political crises.

My new column, on the political crises in France and the US.

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