The signatories to this letter start with Stiglitz and Rodrik and go on to encompass pretty much everyone brilliant and decent in the economics field worldwide. Prof. Reddy’s scholarship is deeply grounded in human dignity and wellbeing — in the direct lineage of his teacher, the great Amartya Sen.

Open Letter Concerning Academic Freedom, Tenure, and the Future of the New School

Open Letter Concerning Academic Freedom, Tenure, and the Future of the New School We, the undersigned, write to express our concern regarding recent restructuring decisions at the New School, includin...

docs.google.com

Sarang Shah@sarangshah.com · 6h ago

An urgent and important read on the unjust circumstances regarding the dismissal of my dear colleague and friend Sanjay Reddy. I hope our takeaway, in part, is a redoubling of our efforts to protect social inquiry and academic freedom against what's coming. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/n...

An urgent and important read on the unjust circumstances regarding the dismissal of my dear colleague and friend Sanjay Reddy. I hope our takeaway, in part, is a redoubling of our efforts to protect social inquiry and academic freedom against what's coming. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/n...

He Had Tenure. The New School Laid Him Off Anyway. (Gift Article)

The professor, a longtime critic of the university, was among 19 educators who lost their positions as the institution navigated financial woes.

nytimes.com

Universities “are increasingly acting like other employers, finding “complicated and sometimes pretextual reasons” to fire employees, even those with tenure. “What we’re seeing at the New School is emblematic of the rising pressures on higher education as a labor market and as an industry”

He Had Tenure. The New School Laid Him Off Anyway.

The professor, a longtime critic of the university, was among 19 educators who lost their positions as the institution navigated financial woes.

nytimes.com

When we need it the most

Paul Byrne@theplanetaryguy.com · 22h ago

Here's a picture of some Mars dirt for you.

one reason it'd be worthwhile to revitalize all parties in 50 states is because it's very hard to find good bench material otherwise

Zoomer Antimillenarian@surcomplicated.bsky.social · 14h ago

While the gap between Dem and GOP talent keeps snowballing hard in favor of Dems, there has been an absolute decline in Dem talent, as a delayed effect of the local and state-level wipeouts under Obama.

I have little to add to the chat, but I will say this: Those of us who spend a lot of time talking about politics overestimate how much other people care about, or are even familiar with, the labels we use to describe, denigrate, or celebrate candidates. Sometimes we’re high on our own supply.

Unironically this is a good thing. Because outside of party sources going “we have a good feeling here” you don’t get to legitimate a particular result until you have every single data point. Like imagining a count in Makerfield for Burnham last month counted like this primary is maddening

Josh Fruhlinger@jfruh.bsky.social · 14h ago

it's only possible bc their constituency populations are so strong but i genuinely think the UK does it right by not announcing any results until they've counted everything

Looks like a 10-15 point polling miss in Michigan regardless of who wins. And people have been writing a lot of electability takes using this data. It’s dangerous out there folks be safe

I get disappointed whenever white-collar YIMBYs/urbanists take broad-brush swipes at blue-collar workers, including unionized members. Light up execs & lobbyists but don't peddle bs about typical workers getting "rich" off your disfavored industry. Do these wages👇 scream "barrons of labor" at you?

there actually isn't an infinite supply of charismatic people willing to have the most miserable year of their lives running for office, you have to actually find those people

Not surprised to read this, but I think others might be. I really don't see this issue on my timeline to the extent & in the way I see it in real life.

Unwelcome news indeed

Phoebe ↙↙↙@pcberry.bsky.social · 15h ago

Receiving word from my lawyers that 2010 was not in fact a decade ago

*1850s (calling all northerners abolitionists and --> self-radicalizing to the point that --> northerners become supportive of anti-slavery candidates and numb to accusations of abolitionismi) intensifies*

honestly, the fact that we have made it through the atomic age *without* another use of nuclear weapons since 1945 is a miracle we don't fully appreciate

Rebecca R Helm@rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · 19h ago

Today is the day the story There Will Come Soft Rain is set. An amazing and heartbreaking work of fiction for our modern age. Read it here:

Fellow administrative politics scholars attending APSA, please share this widely: I co-organized an unofficial happy hour for scholars of administrative politics, broadly construed, at the upcoming APSA 2025 Annual Meeting with Maraam A. Dwidar, Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown.

once again: shell companies ruin everything around me

Senator Ron Wyden@wyden.senate.gov · yesterday

Top JPMorgan Chase execs coached Epstein on how to withdraw cash through shell companies instead of his personal accounts, helping him conceal information from compliance personnel and government regulators.

can’t believe our current all-ages literacy crisis is making me a little nostalgic for the pretentious “we publish experimental poetry chapbooks and have strong opinions on Melville and the 1800s fur trade” Literature Boys of my college years in the late 2000s/early 2010s.

In the late 19th century century, socialist parties were generally pro free trade too, because it lowered grain prices. Rural conservatives were against for the same reason.

‘In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunny side up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk. "Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling’

You expect me to do political science under *these conditions*?!

Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈@josephpolitano.bsky.social · yesterday

DSA-aligned Democrats are now the most pro-free-trade voting bloc in the United States, in an incredible turn of events www.theargumentmag.com/p/who-suppor...

DSA-aligned Democrats are now the most pro-free-trade voting bloc in the United States, in an incredible turn of events www.theargumentmag.com/p/who-suppor...

The most terrifying enshittification I've discovered has been learning that Microsoft Word documents no longer auto-save if you are not saving them to one of their own proprietary cloud services. I'm slapping control-S like it's 1999.

My thoughts on Bluesky not being welcoming to Republicans is Trump blocks disaster relief to states voting blue, & is also legally codifying anyone who opposes him as a terrorist deserving violence, & his kidnapping brute gangs terrorize the streets, & there's much more but I'm out of characters

Ciara | Ciaraíoch 🎨@ciaraioch.bsky.social · yesterday

"Bluesky is a political echo chamber" okay but I'm mostly here to chat with fun internet people and post art and make jokes, I cannot stress how much I don't care

"don't make enough money" is a fig leaf All those degree programs--social work, art, etc.--have disproportionately female student bodies. This is designed to make it harder for women to attend college--college education being a key factor in women's autonomy from men & left-leaning voting pattern.

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d ago

President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v

That was a fun detail of Sperber’s Marx biography, that he lived just long enough to meet some marxists and found the experience annoying bsky.app/profile/saba...

❀°。Der Siebenschläfer *.ﾟ✿ ⋆@sababausa.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I'm very fascinated with how mythologized human beings stand up next to their own iconography I like how in the final couple years of his life Marx was beginning to confront being a political icon, and both noticed that it had little to do with his own ideas, and found it very annoying

It's because, quite frankly, part of the midwestern cultural lag means that Woke 1 is still Partially In Effect in these parts

Sam@samd.bsky.social · 2d ago

one thing that I appreciated about Zohran was his willingness to backtrack from some of the Woke 1.0 era posts that didn’t age well and were posted in a different context. I do not understand why Hong is incapable of doing that, especially since she is running in a swing state instead of NYC

We can at least see how "being a person" resonates with other people in irrational, or perhaps, irreducible ways.But to get to the point, say, where one can raise the massive funds to be viable for office seems to involve a lot of suppressing one's personness

A watershed piece. America will have have a very hard time becoming less imperialist as long as combat service is sentimentalized and fetishized, when it actually tends to turn men into broken, hateful people, and helps make things like like Trumpism happen. www.newyorker.com/news/the-pol...

The Complications of Graham Platner’s Veteran Identity

How much of Graham Platner’s behavior should be read through the lens of what combat did to him, and how much of it is simply who he is, independent of war?

newyorker.com

This maybe gets at something I've been trying to put my finger on for à while. That there's this whole world of feeling and éros, of the ineffable and even unspeakable, in which the construct of reason is embedded as a useful, but limited genre of performance. Yet we elite continue to ignore it.

Matt@tiredgenerally.bsky.social · 2d ago

yeah, the issue with viewing elections as a linear algebra problem where you solve for the optimal policy platform is that you tend to generate candidates that cant credibly signal that they believe any of this

yeah, the issue with viewing elections as a linear algebra problem where you solve for the optimal policy platform is that you tend to generate candidates that cant credibly signal that they believe any of this

LOWρUFO 🇺🇦🇵🇸🌍@lowrhoufo.bsky.social · 3d ago

I don't think there's some silent progressive majority out there in waiting, but I do think running candidates who are a lot less apollonian can move a significant number of feet, and the center is very bad at producing those