Working hard creating an interactive map of Texas that visualizes the forced migration of enslaved people into Texas from 1800 to 1865. Check us out at enslavedtexas.org We are about halfway in this initial stage, so visit us often for updates! debbie@enslavedtexas.org

Permit less carry rapidly spread over the last decade and a half. Because of its recency, there’s been little systemic research on its effects. This new paper finds that it makes society meaningfully worse off.

Rockefeller Institute of Government@rockefellerinst.bsky.social · last wk.

Since 2013, 29 states have passed permitless carry laws, which allow concealed carry of a firearm without a license or a background check. In our latest RGVRC blog, Susan T. Parker highlights findings from her recently published study examining the effects. rockinst.org/blog/guns-in...

The issue is out! Once it’s available online (it’ll be open access for thirty days!), I’ll post about the forum on the Dickinson documents discovery that I was so excited to help organize.

Gautham Rao (pronounced: Knicks in 5)@gauthamrao.bsky.social · 2w ago

An incredible forum in the latest William and Mary Quarterly, spearheaded by Jane E. Calvert and @jgienapp.bsky.social. The contingency of the revolutionary moment can’t be clearer.

Breaking News: The nation’s largest group of scholars of U.S. history denounced a White House report attacking the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Historians Reject Trump Administration’s Criticism of Smithsonian Museum

The nation’s largest group of scholars of U.S. history denounced a White House report attacking the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

nyti.ms

I recently wrote an article for the Alabama Law Review in which I argue that in the 18th and 19th century mass violence was generally not committed by individuals, but instead by armed groups who collectively would commit horrific acts of mass violence. law.ua.edu/wp-content/u...

The real headline from the birthright‑citizenship case isn’t the outcome. It’s that four Supreme Court justices signaled they believe a president can effectively rewrite the Constitution through executive order.

Please read and share widely this first ever interview between two writers with non-speaking autism. (One is my son, the other is his good friend Woody Brown, a Columbia MFA and the author of the best-selling UPWARD BOUND.) lareviewofbooks.org/article/wood...

Nonspeakers Speaking Out | Los Angeles Review of Books

Woody Brown discusses his debut novel and the challenges those with nonspeaking autism face today.

lareviewofbooks.org

Lovely to see this review of The Firearm Revolution in the WSJ

‘The Firearm Revolution’ Review: Shots Heard Around the World

On 16th-century battlefields, formidable mounted cavalry were overwhelmed by a military innovation: lines of foot soldiers armed with long-barreled guns.

wsj.com

His first book was fundamental to everything I have done since I started grad school--indeed the first thing Bud Bailyn had me do in his grad seminar in the fall of 1969 was to go to the Widener archives to read his dissertation. Fortunately I was too young to grasp what a profound project it was.

A giant. Gordon Wood spent decades arguing productively & provoking productive argument in response. If you haven't read him yet, "Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality & Deceit in the Eighteenth Century" is a marvelous place to start: www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1... RIP

PBS News@pbsnews.org · 2mo ago

Gordon S. Wood, the scholar who forged an influential and sharply debated narrative of the country's early years of independence through such works as "The Creation of the American Republic" and "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," has died. He was 92. https://to.pbs.org/4vvI1n9

My friend & colleague Francisco Barbosa died too young. Thanks to the tireless Erika Blum, Francisco's wonderful book is finally being published. INSURGENT YOUTH is an inspired history of the young people who powered the Nicaraguan Revolution. 40% discount code: BARB26. #@lasabluesky.bsky.social

Insurgent Youth

Insurgent Youth

upcolorado.com

THREAD 🧵 An Al Jazeera investigation has found that military goods from at least 51 countries were sent to Israel, even after the ICJ warned in January 2024 of a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and ordered states to help prevent it. 🔗: aje.news/2f90pn | #Infograph

UC Berkeley Law creates new AI policy that bans AI for "conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit" or exams because "thinking remains the sine qua non of good lawyering (and of a quality legal education)." That's what I'm talking about.

So excited to see FREEDOM ROUND THE GLOBE out in the world, by my brilliant friend Sarah Pearsall. It's *really* good. But don't take my word for it...

Delighted to be able to share a first teaching and research resource relating to The Firearm Revolution: a compilation of links to primary sources - visual, objects and translations of texts that I cite in the book #academia #earlymodern #skystorians

Primary sources for The Firearm Revolution

Are you teaching with The Firearm Revolution? Or perhaps you’re an independent researcher with an interest in the history of firearms. With the help of my PhD student Guy Reynolds, I’ve …

catherinefletcher.info

"The Premier [Lord North] has advanced too far to recede with safety...In common life, to retract an error, even in the beginning, is no easy task; perseverance confirms us in it, & rivets the difficulty. But in a public station, to have been in an error & to have persisted in it when it is detected

Historians: The Trump administration wants to issue oil and gas leases across the greater Chaco landscape. They've given the public ONE WEEK (till 4/7) to weigh in on the future of this immensely important place. Please tell them what you think: eplanning.blm.gov/Participate-...

Listen to the Ideas Podcast with Emilie Connolly and Miranda Melcher, @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social host. They discuss the long history of Native land dispossession and unequal dividends of colonialism in the US. press.princeton.edu/ideas/ideas-... #history #podcast

Varieties of Democracy is out with its annual global report. Here's their index for "Liberal Democracy" in the United States, 1789-2025. (h/t Pippa Norris on Twitter). In 2025 the US is back to the liberal democracy score it had in 1963. That's what Trump meant by Make America Great Again.

The borderland arms dealer "scrolled through listings of weapons for sale on WhatsApp and fielded requests like a call-center operator, dispatching orders in real time: Kalashnikovs, AR-15-style rifles and lots of ammunition." He's a high-school student in Phoenix, handling around 20 gun orders/week

Inside the Supply Line Delivering American Guns to Mexican Cartels

nytimes.com

A total collapse. The National Institutes of Health went from 756 funding announcements published to 14 in two years. One example of the effects: emerging threats will become harder to address quickly. Response to future health emergencies (like Covid) will be slower and less coordinated.

Megan Ranney MD MPH@meganranney.bsky.social · 5mo ago

On top of the slowdown in grantmaking I wrote about last week - this is another deeply worrisome trend for scientists, physicians, patients, families, and basically anyone who wants new treatments and new tools to promote health. 🆘🧪🥼 open.substack.com/pub/elizabet...

"The footage appears to contradict US President Donald Trump’s claim that it was an Iranian missile that hit the school on Feb. 28." - @bellingcat.com

Video Shows US Tomahawk Missile Strike Next to Girls’ School in Iran - bellingcat

New video footage shows a US Tomahawk missile hitting an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) facility in Minab, Iran, on Feb 28, showing for the first time that the US struck the area. The footag...

bellingcat.com

For the first time since @projectsaltbox.bsky.social launched their DHS warehouse acquisition tracker, the number of canceled sales is higher than any of the other warehouse-related figures. We've reached a tipping point, folks. lookerstudio.google.com/reporting/b0...

As a faculty member of UT's distinguished African and African Diaspora Studies Department, I am angry at the disingenuous way UT is characterzing us and our scholarship. But as an alum of UT (MA, JD, PhD) I am sad to see my alma mater debase itself to curry favor with the ignorance of the right.

Texas Observer@texasobserver.org · 6mo ago

Scholarship that challenges white supremacy, colonialism, or state violence is labeled as divisive. Programs rooted in Indigenous, Latinx, and Black knowledge are consolidated, put under review, or dismantled. The result is not balance—it is containment.

This is a genuinely huge, sweeping victory today for the University of California—or rather, for us, its faculty, acting through our faculty associations, while the UC itself maintained a strict policy of deer-in-headlights silence. The Trump admin has given up its appeal of a powerful injunction:

Trump administration drops appeal of court order blocking $1.2-billion UCLA settlement

The Trump administration dropped its appeal of a major higher education case in which a federal judge blocked its $1.2-billion settlement proposal to UCLA over alleged civil rights violations. It will...

latimes.com

It’s a great time to study the US from an ocean away. So apply for the 3-year Mellon postdoc in American History at Cambridge. Closes March 1. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/mellon-...

In 1765, people across the 13 colonies (minus Georgia🙁) organized to prevent neighbors from working as collectors for Parliament's hated new Stamp Act. It worked. Today, people across the US are organizing to stop concentration camps going up in their backyards. It's....working?

Proposed ICE Warehouse Locations - Google My Maps

Proposed sites for industrial warehouses to be used as mass detention centers by the US Department of Homeland Security. Descriptions include current status of each site, and any response from local...

google.com

@thetrace.org continues to do indispensable work on guns in America

The Trace@thetrace.org · 6mo ago

On Monday, we published an investigation about the loosely regulated world of gun manufacturing. Champe Barton tracked 30 years of growth at SIG Sauer, a gunmaker that’s risen to the top of the market while battling allegations that its flagship pistol has a life-threatening safety defect.

Now online and accepting applications. The 2026 AAS Summer Seminar in the History of the Book— “Paper Relations: Hisrories and Futures of Indigenous Print Cultures” Led by Katie Walkiewicz and Kelly Wisecup. Deadline to apply is April 3!