David Avrom Bell
@davidavrombell.bsky.social
Historian, writer, New Yorker
My thoughts on why the crisis of academia goes far beyond the immediate political challenges, and also far beyond current financial pressures. davidabell.substack.com/p/the-future...
The Future of Academia
The tumultuous events of the past year and a half have made it all too easy to imagine that American academia is not going through fundamental structural changes, but only an exceptional, irrational, ...
davidabell.substack.com
The corruption with politicians like RFK, Jr is not monetary. It’s intellectual. He routinely lies about facts and science to support a dangerous, deadly narrative; preying on desperate people who want to believe those they’ve been told to hate are responsible for their woes MAGA at its worst
Dr. Lucky Tran@luckytran.com · 3d agoI worked for New York’s largest medical center at the start of the pandemic. There were morgue trucks on the streets. They set up emergency medical tents in Central Park. Healthcare worker colleagues died. It is horrific that RFK Jr is on national TV lying that ICUs were empty.
Art Goldhammer in great form (as usual) on French politics: tocqueville21.com/art-goldhamm...
Will Édouard Philippe Be the Alternative to Le Pen?
tocqueville21.com
Are you a @historians.org member? Please make it a priority to vote in this year’s elections: they close July 15. (THREAD: link to vote in #10)
Some reflections on the way the city of Paris has changed over my lifetime, and continues to change: substack.com/home/post/p-...
Paris Transformed (Again)
“Old Paris is no more.
substack.com
If you are member of the American Historical Association and haven't yet cast your ballot in this year's election, please think about doing so. And please consider voting for the terrific Tobie Meyer-Fong as President-Elect. She will be a wonderful leader for the orgnization.
Brilliant, moving review/memoir on what it takes to make a revolution, why Weatherman failed, and what the left should learn from the failure. (By my cousin). thepointmag.com/criticism/th...
The Way the Wind Blows | The Point Magazine
“The duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution.” Every New Leftist in the late 1960s was familiar with that axiom, attributed to Fidel Castro, and most took it to heart.
thepointmag.com
Beating AI in the Classroom davidabell.substack.com/p/beating-ai...
Beating AI in the Classroom
Last Monday, the faculty of Princeton University, where I teach, voted to reinstitute the proctoring of exams after more than 130 years of reliance on an honor code to prevent cheating.
davidabell.substack.com
www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl... Nouvelle tribune dans “Le Monde”
« Aux Etats-Unis et en France, des magnats comme Ellison et Bolloré n’ont aucun scrupule à mettre leur pouvoir au service d’une idéologie d’extrême droite »
TRIBUNE. Dans une tribune au « Monde », l’historien américain David Bell commente l’affaire Grasset et l’interventionnisme « préoccupant » du milliardaire français. Il juge toutefois « la situation am...
lemonde.fr
New column: "Resistance and Dissent Under Trump" davidabell.substack.com/p/resistance...
Resistance and Dissent Under Trump
When M.
davidabell.substack.com
My terrific senior thesis student from the class of 2025 making a great journalistic debut in The Nation: www.thenation.com/article/worl...
I Partied With the Next Generation of the British Right
UK conservatism is changing dramatically, as I discovered when I hung out with some of the right’s youngest, drunkest up-and-comers.
thenation.com
In my new piece in @theatlantic.com, I argue that the consensus about birthright citizenship extended far beyond elite legal circles to readers of newspaper advice columns and letters to the editor pages for well more than a century. nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...
Americans Once Understood Birthright Citizenship
Newspaper columnists instructed generations of citizens about the Fourteenth Amendment. Today, the country seems to have forgotten how clear the law is.
nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com
"The nature of democracy is to personify itself in a man"--Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, 1839. "The whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president"--Stephen Miller, 2026.
“Most casual visitors to [Notre-Dame] never realize the extent to which what they see is a creation of the nineteenth-century as well as of the Middle Ages.” —@davidavrombell.bsky.social
‘A Vast Symphony of Stone’ | David A. Bell
In his renovation of Notre-Dame, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc projected his own Romantic vision of the Middle Ages onto the Gothic cathedral.
nybooks.com
Brian Willott Farms @BrianWillott They should change the name to "Strait of Schrödinger". It's both open and closed at the same time.
Please send JD Vance to support Nigel Farage, the Rassemblent National and thee AfD!
New essay: "The Life and Death of the Book Review": libertiesjournal.com/articles/the...
The Life and Death of the Book Review - Liberties
Book reviewing, it would seem, has been in crisis from the start. As early as 1757, a contributor to Britain’s Literary Magazine complained that “critic is no longer an appellation of dignity,” becaus...
libertiesjournal.com
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc “was the architect principally responsible for the way Notre-Dame appeared in modern times, and while he adored the Middle Ages, he was anything but a pedantic traditionalist.” —@davidavrombell.bsky.social
‘A Vast Symphony of Stone’ | David A. Bell
In his renovation of Notre-Dame, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc projected his own Romantic vision of the Middle Ages onto the Gothic cathedral.
nybooks.com
Just out: This brilliant, fascinating, beautifully written book by my colleague Yair Mintzker about the legend of the Wandering Jew, the truth behind it, and his own relationship to it. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
I, Wandering Jew
Combining history, detective story, and memoir, a surprising and revealing account of the antisemitic myth of “the Wandering Jew”
press.princeton.edu
David A. Bell (@davidavrombell.bsky.social) on Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and the restoration of his nineteenth-century vision for Notre Dame
‘A Vast Symphony of Stone’ | David A. Bell
In his renovation of Notre-Dame, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc projected his own Romantic vision of the Middle Ages onto the Gothic cathedral.
nybooks.com
“When it comes to enslaved women, the sources can be almost entirely opaque, revealing nothing about where they came from, how they understood their condition, or what opportunities they might have had to improve it.” —@davidavrombell.bsky.social
Who Built France? | David A. Bell
A new history explores France’s empire from the perspective of the indigenous and enslaved people who participated, willingly or not, in its creation.
nybooks.com
New column: The failure of “No Kings” and the need for an effective opposition.” open.substack.com/pub/davidabe...
America in 2026
In this season of ruin, I think from time to time of Shelley’s brilliantly savage sonnet “England in 1819” (see below), written in white-hot anger against his country’s corrupt elite in the aftermath ...
open.substack.com
David A. Bell (@davidavrombell.bsky.social) on the indigenous and enslaved people who built the French empire
Who Built France? | David A. Bell
A new history explores France’s empire from the perspective of the indigenous and enslaved people who participated, willingly or not, in its creation.
nybooks.com
Sen. Ossoff doesn't tolerate any of Tulsi Gabbard’s B.S.
