Gaiutra Bahadur

Book Review: ‘Indian Country,’ by Shobha Rao Shobha Rao’s new novel, “Indian Country,” is a crime story as well as a multilayered saga of white empire in India and America.

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By: Gaiutra Bahadur on Thursday, August 7, 2025

This is why birthright citizenship is such a thing in the western hemisphere. We're not old enough to have Jus sanguinis.

The last day to register for the PREE Writing Studio is April 30. As a tutor at the 4-day residential workshop for emerging writers, I'll lead a workshop “Object Lesson”, where we'll write creative nonfiction as a response to objects. Learn more at preewritingstudio.com or preeeditors@gmail.com

It was great to meet you finally, Mimosa. Thank you for coming! Next time, let’s get coffee.

Thanks, Mariam. Good to meet you here.

Shameful, Jeff Bezos. Shameful. Teaching my students about the United Farm Workers boycott of grapes to protest the use of pesticides. A boycott seems an appropriate exercise of personal liberty… and of the free market.

JD Vance’s Debacle in Germany Exposes MAGA’s Sinister Global Endgame Did you know that the United States is joining an international fascist network?

"I never could have imagined, none of us could, that the government of the United States of America would openly ally itself with a fascist political party. In the heart of Europe. In Germany, for God’s sake."

Object Lesson GAIUTRA BAHADUR In this craft studio, we’ll read together short excerpts from writing that puts objects to work. And you’ll produce a piece of creative nonfiction in which you write thr…

Can’t wait to be in community in Jamaica in late May at the Pree Writing Studio, where I’ll be teaching a class on writing through objects. Many thanks to Annie Paul for the invitation. preewritingstudio.com/2025/02/07/c...

For those of you who've never been to Guantanamo, I want to emphasize how isolated it is, how isolated even separate parts of it are from one another, and how restricted access is. Yes, parts of it are like almost any Navy base, but there are many other places that most people there can never go.

Boston, see you soon.

Ravi Ragbir, the Trinidad-born director of the New Sanctuary Coalition, is among several immigrant rights activists put in deportation proceedings under the last Trump presidency. Supporters are calling for a presidential pardon before Biden leaves office. secure.ngpvan.com/QWikiDar30OW...

Gaza war toll likely significantly undercounts deaths, says study An official Palestinian tally of direct deaths in the Israel-Hamas war likely undercounted the number of casualties by 41% through the middle of 2024 as the Gaza Strip's healthcare infrastructure unravelled, according to the study.

A peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet estimates more than 64,000 deaths in Gaza due to traumatic injury between Oct. 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024 — a figure 41% higher than the Gaza Health Ministry’s official count. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

AAUP condemns Faculty Arrests at NYU

Geopolitics, in First Person - Nieman Reports When The New York Times sent me to report on a transformative oil discovery in my birthplace, Guyana, they asked for, and got, a first-person narrative. The opening scene places me at the gates of an ...

And here is my piece for @niemanreports.org on the ethical imperative to report it in first person: niemanreports.org/geopolitics-...

Is Guyana’s Oil a Blessing or a Curse? More than any single country, Guyana demonstrates the struggle between the consequences of climate change and the lure of the oil economy.

I’m rebuilding on higher ground. I’m an essayist, literary critic, journalist + prof doing work on the afterlives of empire, Afro-Asia, the Global South and creative nonfiction. Here is my most recent piece, on how the discovery of oil is reshaping my home country. www.nytimes.com/2024/03/30/h...

Democrats Lost the Propaganda War The party used up about $5 billion on political ads in 2024. There’s a better way.

Trump won in 91 percent of news desert counties: “In a large chunk of the country, there is no local paper even available, and in a much larger chunk the few papers that remain are private equity–gutted carcasses with little aside from Associated Press reprints.” prospect.org/politics/202...

An Encroaching Sea Cambridge Core - Asian Studies - An Encroaching Sea

It is publication month for Devika Shankar's pathbreaking book An Encroaching Sea, bringing legal history, environmental history and histories of infrastructure - read the glowing endorsements from Debjani Bhattacharyya and Sunil Amrith! #History #LegalHistory

www.cambridge.org/core/books/a...

Our #Hinduism101 resource guide is LIVE! 🕉️ Explore several topics related to #ProgressiveHinduism, from sacred texts to resisting caste.

Our full guide is available under the 'Hinduism 101' dropdown on our website, but for now, you can get started here: https://buff.ly/4iutUJh

the Niger Delta already knows the answer to this question unfortunately - would be nice to have a political movement capable of forcing a different one

Happy to be in NJ but also can’t believe we live in a world in which this needs to be a consideration

Lower Manhattan stabbing leaves teen dead, another wounded because victims did not speak English: sources | amNewYork One teenager is dead and another was seriously injured in a Lower Manhattan stabbing on Thursday night carried out by a group of attackers allegedly angered

I am devastated. A 17 year old boy was just stabbed to death outside our building because he didn’t speak English. An 18 year old was also stabbed for the same reason but survived. They have not captured the men who did this yet. I am shaking.

www.amny.com/new-york/man...

Republican higher ed overhaul could get House vote The wide-ranging legislation likely won’t move forward in the Senate but serves as a marker for Republicans’ higher ed priorities in the next Congress.

This is the beginning of the end of higher education in the US if this kind of thing passes. Colleges will become trade schools. Make no mistake, this is part of the fascism playbook.

www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

“It was Maxine who started it, who liked to make words out of the silence of the long field they crossed and she rattled on like a broken wheel on a shopping cart until they reached the water pipe in the center of the labor camp.” -Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus

These Women Tried to Warn Us About AI Rumman Chowdhury, Timnit Gebru, Safiya Noble, Seeta Peña Gangadharan, and Joy Buolamwini open up about their artificial intelligence fears

“…these systems interact differently with people of color …they’re a fun-house-style distorted mirror magnifying biases and stripping out the context from which their information comes; … and will wipe out the jobs of some marginalized communities.” www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

Call for papers for a workshop on "Travels of Expertise in Modern South Asia and Beyond" at South Asian Studies at Yale
on May 8-9, 2025. Proposals due Jan 6. Link Below

macmillan.yale.edu/southasia/wo...

Telling Hard Stories: 2024 Dart Awards Event & Winners' Roundtable The Dart Center will host a reception, awards presentation and winners’ roundtable on December 3rd at Columbia Journalism School featuring the 2024 Dart Award honorees. The roundtable discussion will ...

Join me Tuesday for the 2024 Dart Awards winners' roundtable with Adrian Walker of the Boston Globe, Jennifer Gonnerman of the New Yorker, Hannah Dreier of the NYT and Maurice Chammah of the Marshall Project. All highest-order truth tellers! In person at Columbia or online.

“The traffic swelled and cars lined up on the curving off-ramp of the freeway until the cars yanked loose like a broken necklace and the beads scattered across the asphalt rolling, rolling…” - Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus #ecolit #environmentaljustice (Posting here, language that sparks.)

Environmental Defenders Office to pay $9m in costs to Santos over failed challenge to Barossa gas project The case, brought by the EDO on behalf of three Tiwi Island traditional owners, was dismissed in January in a scathing judgment

Big blow for EDO:
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

My Life As a Homeless Man in America An extraordinary firsthand account.

This is the best, most damning, most sobering, most moving piece I have read in a while. Wishing its talented writer, Patrick Fealey, a sustainable way forward into a kinder world. www.esquire.com/news-politic...

Organized by PhD and Postdoc fellows @annenbergcargc.bsky.social, a conf. focused on the role of media and communication scholarship in times of global crises: www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/.... Please spread the word! Also, we're lucky to have Nabil Echchaibi as our keynote speaker!