Scott W. Stern

in just the past few years, the bay area has welcomed three fantastic new outlets: @oaklandside.org @oaklandreviewofbooks.org AND @bayareacurrent.bsky.social

they are wonderful and we should support them !!

Thank you!!! That’s really kind!

Never ceases to amaze and inspire me that @scottwstern.bsky.social writes like he does on top of working full-time as an environmental lawyer

This from @andreapitzer.bsky.social is key.

“nobody sane now thinks the answer to abuses at Dachau was to give the guards more training.”

SHAKESPEARE'S MARGARET, the book i wrote with my co-conspirator / husband @scottwstern.bsky.social, is coming out 2 june 2026 from @wwnorton.com!

take a look at the book page linked below and place those preorders!

we're traveling in june to promote the book; hope to see some of you on the road 😎

Y'all, @charlesomalley.bsky.social and my book, SHAKESPEARE'S MARGARET, comes out on June 2!!!

Please please please consider preordering - it honestly makes a huge difference!! wwnorton.com/books/978132...

Earth, Bound | Scott W. Stern The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972 marked the birth of international environmental law. It was moribund from the start.

International environmental law has floundered in the face of the global climate crisis and cannot hold our worst actors to account. In our new issue, @scottwstern.bsky.social traces the problems back to the 1972 UN Conference that put us on this trajectory.

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...

Earth, Bound | Scott W. Stern The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972 marked the birth of international environmental law. It was moribund from the start.

Check out my latest in @thebaffler.com!

A deep, deep dive into the tragic history of international environmental law - and why it "offers a singularly straightforward parable for the tragic limitations of the law." thebaffler.com/salvos/earth...

Check out my latest in The Baffler!!! On the "tragedy of international environmental law" (a subject that, tragically, is only growing more relevant by the day...)

Thanks, as always, to @lauramarsh.bsky.social for the astute edits!!!

How the Heartland Responded to AIDS and Shaped Queer Politics Histories of the epidemic tend to focus on coastal cities, but the response was very different in the middle of the country.

Check out my latest in @newrepublic.com - a double review of two incisive new books (AIDS IN THE HEARTLAND and FROM VICE TO NICE, both @uncpress.bsky.social) chronicling the histories of HIV/AIDS far from NYC or SF - in places like Kansas and Minneapolis. newrepublic.com/article/2004...

"The United States and its satellites, having taken the centre stage of history to great fanfare after the fall of the Soviet Union, are now exiting in disgrace." This looks like a promising new publication.

www.equator.org

Mass protests and strikes for Gaza bring Italy to a standstill Roads and ports were blocked and schools closed after unions called for general strike over Israel’s war on Gaza.

This is a massive story that the U.S. press is almost entirely ignoring.

A week ago, union dockworkers warned this would happen: “If we lose contact with the boats, even for twenty minutes, we’ll shut down all of Europe.”

www.politico.eu/article/ital...

Thrilled to see this review of EXTRACTION by @scottwstern.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com. A very thorough essay that situates the book in broader debates about mining, the energy transition, the history of global capitalism, and the possible green futures ahead www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

The Costs of the Green Transition A new book argues that simply replacing fossil-fuel extraction with critical-mineral mining is no way out of the climate crisis.

Check out my latest in @theatlantic.com, wherein I review EXTRACTION (@wwnorton.com), a dazzling new book by @triofrancos.bsky.social.

I argue that it is "by far the most clear-eyed of mining’s many recent chronicles." www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

Large Language Muddle | The Editors The AI upheaval is unique in its ability to metabolize any number of dread-inducing transformations. The university is becoming more corporate, more politically oppressive, and all but hostile to the ...

"A literature which is made by machines, which are owned by corporations, which are run by sociopaths, can only be a 'stereotype' — a simplification, a facsimile, an insult, a fake — of real literature. It should be smashed, and can." www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

Writing Their Prison’s History | Scott W. Stern A recent study by a group of incarcerated scholars at Indiana Women’s Prison reveals how progressive reforms turned into profitable abuse.

“Of all the women incarcerated worldwide, one in four is imprisoned in the US. Over the past four decades, the number of women in state prisons has grown by almost 600 percent.” — @scottwstern.bsky.social

Writing Their Prison’s History | Scott W. Stern A recent study by a group of incarcerated scholars at Indiana Women’s Prison reveals how progressive reforms turned into profitable abuse.

“The members of the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project demolish many of the myths surrounding the institution, proving that its founders…were far more abusive than conventional accounts suggest.” — @scottwstern.bsky.social

Writing Their Prison’s History | Scott W. Stern A recent study by a group of incarcerated scholars at Indiana Women’s Prison reveals how progressive reforms turned into profitable abuse.

Scott W. Stern @scottwstern.bsky.social on how a group of incarcerated women rewrote the history of their prison

check out scott's latest in @nybooks.com -- reviewing a history of a women's prison in indiana written by those currently incarcerated there. beautifully written and devastating.

in the oct. 9 print edition!

Writing Their Prison’s History | Scott W. Stern A recent study by a group of incarcerated scholars at Indiana Women’s Prison reveals how progressive reforms turned into profitable abuse.

Writing Their Prison’s History:

A recent study by a group of incarcerated scholars at Indiana Women’s Prison reveals how progressive reforms turned into profitable abuse. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Check out my latest in @nybooks.com! It's a review of a brilliant book - a history of the nation's oldest women's prison, written by inmates in that same prison. It was a true privilege to engage with their scholarship. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

The Gaza Breaking Point Political consensus is rapidly shifting as famine looms and Israel escalates.

"It seems western leaders have summoned precisely enough political will to fail to stop a world-historic crime." nymag.com/intelligence...

Is the Supreme Court the Best Way to Get Justice?

I'm still walking on air hours later - this @nytimes.com review so perfectly and concisely gets the point of THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS (@yalepress.bsky.social)

Check it out - the Times calls the book "powerful new history"!! www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/b...

Is the Supreme Court the Best Way to Get Justice?

Beyond thrilled to receive a glowing review in today's @nytimes.com!!! THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS is a "powerful new history"!

An enormous thanks to @alexiscoe.bsky.social for her deep engagement with my work! www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/b...

Pack the Court. If we are serious about the defense of these rights, we pack the Court. Simple as that. They pack it back, we pack it again. We do it until we reach consensus on long-term reforms to the judiciary. I don't know what it's going to take for people to get it.

How Slow Motion Became Cinema’s Dominant Special Effect The turbulent late ‘60s saw the technique’s popularity explode—and it’s been helping moviemakers (and literary artists) engage with the unsettling tempos of modern life ever since.

Check out my latest in @newrepublic.com - a review of "Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion" by @goblemark.bsky.social!

The review asks why this one particular special effect resonates - and concludes it's because "our world is, obviously, ending" newrepublic.com/article/1962...

as for the upshot of the decision, the republican court has put the citizen children of non-citizens in a position similar to that of free blacks during the antebellum period. their right to enjoy the privileges and immunities of american citizenship will vary according to state borders

The left better start figuring out how to weaponize today's decision rather than just (rightfully) criticizing it.

- Go back into Judge Kaczmaryk's court to dissolve all of his nationwide orders.

- Pass gun bans and insist any order applies only to plaintiffs.