Monica Heilman

What's missing? The public. Decisions about whether AI can surveil American citizens or autonomously deploy lethal force are being settled in a contract dispute. No Congress. No democratic deliberation. No accountability. We've outsourced questions about the use of force to a corporate negotiation.

Thank you! I didn't realize Bluesky (& maybe Twitter before) was partly how I recognized your name either!

She’s been released 🙏🏽

Abolishing ICE isn’t enough – it’s time to center people’s humanity | Heba Gowayed and Victor Ray It’s far from radical to reject a system predicated on violence – despite what thinktanks might claim

There is no reform, there's no body cams, there's no amount of anything that is going to fix this. Abolition is the BARE MINIMUM.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Darn, I liked the resisting authoritarianism take.
bsky.app/profile/donm...

The secret to higher birth rates? Vigorously opposing authoritarianism

Critical Mixed Race Studies Visit the post for more.

Feeling beyond fortunate to have spent the last few days at the 8th Critical Mixed Race Studies Association Conference in L.A.

This was my 3rd CMRS (though my 1st was virtual). It's only gotten better each year!

An appreciation 🧵 for #CMRS #CMRS2026

criticalmixedracestudies.com

Muttering "ugh yeah" followed by a deep sigh as I repost

This is a terrific article full of useful information and actionable ideas for literally anyone, anywhere who cares about their community.

He did! And the women's team declined.

How to stop a dictator I spent months studying how authoritarians like Trump lose. The answer is shockingly simple.

I have spent the past several months studying the cutting-edge research on modern democracies that have defeated authoritarian leaders.

I've learned that the conventional wisdom on the topic is wrong — in ways that have clear implications for the US going forward

THREAD www.vox.com/politics/479...

When Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in December 2024, thousands of ordinary Koreans familiar with the country's history immediately perceived an acute threat of democratic collapse. Their spontaneous protests played a critical role in ending the emergency.

I found that this is wrong. Democracy actually is a powerful motivating force for a critical slice of the population *if they perceive a real threat*.

I call this the "legibility" theory of democratic backsliding: the more legible the threat, the more likely it is to prompt effective pushback.

Rest in Power!

Sadly, if not for one of the killers (they were convicted, thus the label) releasing a video thinking it exonerated them, we may not have gotten the truth.

Night aerial view of LA from an airplane window. Yellow tinted lights cover the landscape beneath an airpline wing with a single light at the tip.

Thank you so much to the conference organizers, executive board, staff, and volunteers. Each new crew creates something amazing. I'm already looking forward to 2028.

A reframe that came out of my preparation for this conference: siblings as co-conspirators in addressing parents' racism.

I'm excited to get back to writing. It's been a minute since I've felt this way.

Powerpoint title slide reading: Multiracial Children's Resistance Strategies in the Face of Familial Racism Monica Heilman Lafayette College Critical Mixed Race Studies Association Conference February 21, 2026

I suppose I should also say something about my research. I presented on how multiracial children respond to racism in their own families. Grateful for the conference theme (Critical Healing) that gave me space to think about this topic differently.

#CMRS #CMRS2026

Three paintings of Indigenous women overlaid bright orange in the shape of poppy flowers.

An art installation with paper poppies hanging from the ceiling over an orange cushion. The lighting is dim and leaves poppy shadows on the walls.

And as a scholar-artist / arts-based researcher / scholar trying to bring arts into research, or something like that, you know I'm thrilled to be in a space with not only academics, but artists and community members.

A non-exhaustive shout-out list of people I could find on here:
@kaimitsuru.bsky.social @auroratsai.bsky.social @kevinwongla.bsky.social @marcjguerrero.bsky.social
@keishacornelius.bsky.social
@corinnenicol.bsky.social

It was wonderful to meet &/or reconnect!

CMRS is also interdisciplinary and international. I'm always energized to connect with fellow sociologists. But it's uniquely generative to engage with psychologists, linguists, education scholars, & many others. From the silos of a large university to this. Fresh air.

A small but consistent #CMRS dilemma: at other conferences, we attend all the multiracial/mixed sessions. (There's 1 or maybe 2.) What do you mean we have SEVERAL choices during each time slot?

(I say "we" after having this conversation multiple times.)

Many of us cite the same statistics on growing multiracial populations to justify our studies.

A small but consistent #CMRS delight: watching presenters realize in real time that here, we already know. Boy do we all know.

Three speakers on stage for a keynote dialogue.

There's something so incredible about being in a space where your work is inherently recognized as valuable. Perhaps even more so in today's climate.

This year's theme was "Critical Healing: Honoring Resilience and Disrupting Power through Diverse Critical Mixed Race Perspectives."

Critical Mixed Race Studies Visit the post for more.

Feeling beyond fortunate to have spent the last few days at the 8th Critical Mixed Race Studies Association Conference in L.A.

This was my 3rd CMRS (though my 1st was virtual). It's only gotten better each year!

An appreciation 🧵 for #CMRS #CMRS2026

criticalmixedracestudies.com

Uphill battle to post something nice on this app before getting distracted by the latest dystopian developments

What this technology is going to do is not end higher education, but it is going to undo so much of the baseline work on accessibility by pushing overworked professors to take things back to offline modalities, in person timed exams, keeping tech out of the classroom, etc.

Married women who took their partners’ names — around 69 million of them — will be especially impacted by a citizenship requirement. Their current names don’t match the names on their birth certificate–and only about half of women have a valid passport. In practice, it will be far more complicated for these women to ‘prove’ their citizenship. The surest option–a passport or a paper trail reconciling their married name with the name on their birth certificate–requires significant investments of time and money.

The SAVE Act requires citizenship ID to vote. It may be that some Republicans truly believe that lots of non-citizens are voting, but that is just not the reality.
So who will the law impact? People without ID docs and people whose ID docs are not current - which is mostly women.

The Business of Racism Labor and Environment in Brazil's Racial Capitalism IAN CARRILLO In The Business of Racism, Ian Carrillo employs a case study from Brazil’s sugarcane industry to show how racial capitalism is promulgated and maintained through politics and business. As Carrillo recounts, in the mid-2000s, Brazil embarked on a state-led project to improve environmental and labor conditions in sugarcane production. He describes how, seeing increased government regulation of their worksite as a threat to their power, the elites of Brazil’s sugar-ethanol industry repurposed long-standing racial ideologies to undermine progressive institutions and elevate their own leaders. Carrillo’s extensive ethnographic fieldwork in mills and plantations, as well as interviews with federal labor regulators and sugar-ethanol industry elites in Brazil, weaves together an account of how Brazil’s labor and environmental regulations are forged through racial and class struggles at worksites and within the state. The Business of Racism contributes to ongoing sociological debates about race, development, and the environment while highlighting future pathways for achieving racial justice, labor equality, and climate sustainability. dukeupress.edu/the-business-of-racism May 2026 | 278 pages, 4 illustrations 978-1-4780-3315-8 | $29.95 paperback $20.96 with discount Special offer: Use coupon code E26CRLLO to save 30% when you order from dukeupress.edu.

My book is now available for pre-order!

Use the code E26CRLLO to get 30% off the paperback edition.

www.dukeupress.edu/the-business...

I fear I would just become very good at accumulating unwieldy to-do lists and ignoring reminders

Wow. Better if you read for the full context, but this section, describing the damage as a bomb, hit hard:

"One colleague who lost everything told me that he thought I actually had it worse,” she said. “Because, you know, if you’re going to die, it’s probably better to do it quickly."