Tessera

Sara Morell

@smorell93.bsky.social

Assistant Professor at The College of New Jersey. UMich Polisci PhD. Gender, Candidates, and Political Behavior. https://www.sarahillarymorell.com/

46 Posts745 Follower 856 Folgt

Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 7mo ago

So all colleges and universities will bring back the DEI stuff they cut when obeying in advance right...............................................................................................................................................right?

W. Carson Byrd@wcbyrdphd.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Re the February Dear Colleagues letter that threatened funding for schools & universities over DEI-related efforts: ‘[Ed Dept]…moved to dismiss its appeal. It leaves in place a federal judge’s August decision finding that the anti-DEI effort violated the First Amendment & federal procedural rules.’

Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 7mo ago

Best thing I’ve read this morning, from a human rights lawyer in Mexico. Translation is in the ALT-text.

Twitter thread in Spanish by José Mario de la Garza, a human rights lawyer in Mexico, translated using Google Translate:

1. Overthrowing a dictator sounds morally right. No one mourns a tyrant. But international law wasn't built to protect the good, but to restrain the powerful. That's why it prohibits force almost without exception: not because it ignores injustice, but because it knows that if each country decides whom to "liberate" by force, the world reverts to the law of the strongest.

2. The problem is not Maduro. The problem is the precedent. When military force is used to change governments without clear rules, sovereignty ceases to be a limit and becomes an obstacle. Today it is “overthrowing a dictator”; tomorrow it will be “correcting an election,” “protecting interests,” “restoring order.” The law does not absolve dictatorships, but neither does it legitimize unilateral crusades.

Cont’d:

3. The uncomfortable question is not whether a tyrant deserves to fall, but who decides when and how. Because history teaches something brutal: removing a dictator is easy; building justice afterward is not. And when legality is broken in the name of good, what almost always follows is not freedom, but chaos, violence, and new victims. The law exists to remind us of this, even when it makes us uncomfortable.

Maduro isn't the problem: he's the face of the problem. Removing him from power would be merely opening the door. Behind him is the machine: Rodríguez, Cabello, the military command, the operators of repression and plunder. If you only change the person at the top and leave the system intact, what follows isn't democracy: it's a reshuffling.

And there's something even more difficult: Chavismo didn't just capture institutions, it captured daily life. Economy, media, bureaucracy, employment, fear, favors, blackmail. A country can't be "de-Chavistaized" by decree or by an electoral miracle. The real transition begins when that network is broken without setting the country ablaze.

The challenge is enormous, and it's also a moral one: to unite without vengeance, but without impunity. Targeted justice for those most responsible, truth for the victims, guarantees that the rest will dismantle the system, and a plan for people to live again—not just survive. Because freedom doesn't come with a new president: it comes when the state ceases to be a threat.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 7mo ago

an “inherent power” to respond to an “imminent” attack is just a license for aggressive war on the president’s whim

Reconstructionist@unavaleable.bsky.social · 7mo ago

How does launching air strikes and a commando raid fall under the remit of self defense for an arrest operation

Hakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Texas A&M Tightens Rules on Talking About Race and Gender in Classes www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/u... “The policy defines race ideology as, among other things, ‘a concept that attempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity.’” These GOP-led efforts will ruin their states’ public universities. Sad!

Texas A&M Tightens Rules on Talking About Race and Gender in Classes

nytimes.com

Sara Morell @smorell93.bsky.social · 9mo ago

An important reminder that we shouldn't make confident election takes too quickly after an election, especially when generalizing about large groups of voters.

Post nicht verfügbar.

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 9mo ago

(And there's a real question about whether he'll comply)

Brendan Nyhan@brendannyhan.bsky.social · 9mo ago

America in 2025: A judge has to tell a Border Patrol officer to only tear gas adults after warning them, not kids who are out on Halloween

Eric Umansky @ericumansky.bsky.social · 10mo ago

BREAKING from PP We found immigration agents have held more than 170 *citizens* The govt doesn't track citizens held. So we did. We tallied: Nearly 20 kids, two w/ cancer More than 20 citizens held for day or more, incommunicado www.propublica.org/article/immi... by @nicolefoy.bsky.social

More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days.

The government does not track how often immigration agents grab citizens. So ProPublica did. Our tally — almost certainly incomplete — includes people who were held for days without a lawyer. And near...

propublica.org

Sara Morell @smorell93.bsky.social · 10mo ago

This somehow managed to be even worse than what I was expecting.

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 10mo ago

POLITICO: “.. They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies .. and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery. @politico.com www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 10mo ago

JUST IN: A new class action lawsuit challenges ICE's warrantless immigration arrests in Washington, D.C., which they say are occuring without probable cause and based largely on perceived ethnicity. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

Justin Zimmerman @jztidecat.bsky.social · 11mo ago

A reminder that the DOJ wants to investigate the issue. The DOJ wasting time investigating our classrooms is an open invitation for any frivolous complaint from any student, anywhere with too much time on their hands.

Post nicht verfügbar.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 12mo ago

The justification for the occupation of DC is that a DOGE employee was carjacked. What does this look like?

Raider@iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social · 12mo ago

WTF 🤬 This is happening in Washington, DC

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Immediately after his "segregation forever!" line in his inaugural address, George Wallace asserted that the federal troops at Ole Miss -- sent there after a racist riot killed two and injured hundreds -- were needed more in Washington, DC. This is a very old, very obvious play from racists.

Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

The Washington D.C. school riot report is disgusting and revealing. We will not sacrifice our children to any such type school system, and you can write that down. The federal troops in Mississippi could be better used guarding the safety of the citizens of Washington D.C., where it is even unsafe to walk or go to a ballgame, and that is the nation's capitol. I was safer in a B-29 bomber over Japan during the war in an air raid, than the people of Washington are walking to the White House neighborhood. A closer example is Atlanta. The city officials fawn for political reasons over school integration and then build barricades to stop residential integration, what hypocrisy!

Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · last yr.

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

What’s a technology that you think is overhyped?

I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry.

Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto.

It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.

Sara Morell @smorell93.bsky.social · last yr.

I have never wanted a piece of sports memorabilia more in my life. Obsessed.

Hunter Walker@hunterw.bsky.social · last yr.

Here is an actual t-shirt that FIFA is selling for the World Cup. It very well may be the worst t-shirt of all time.

A tshirt that actually says "WE ARE NEW YORK NEW JERSEY"

Sara Morell @smorell93.bsky.social · last yr.

It’s a complete misunderstanding of the causes of backlash to civil rights. Anti-discrimination ordinances were followed by Anita Bryant. Baehr v Miike — the first state court ruling about gay marriage — was followed by DOMA. Blaming minorities for the backlash to efforts to advance their rights...

Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com · last yr.

This is like the third story put out by the New York Times since Skrmetti rubbing transgender people's faces in it. The paper got the ruling it asked for.

Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · last yr.

Brutal account of what it’s like to teach at the University of Florida right now in the NYT—extraordinary climate of fear. People afraid to say intersectional and talk about lynchings. Fake students trying to entrap Muslim faculty or just making things up altogether. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/o...

In the three years since Ron DeSantis set out to rid Florida’s universities of woke ideology, my campus changed significantly. Professors suddenly worried about what they could say and teach. Some started avoiding terms like “racism.” One student recently told me that when someone used “intersectional” in class, the instructor told her not to use that word.

One colleague told me that he stopped assigning an article about lynching and white evangelicalism for fear that those terms could raise red flags. Another said she was censoring her language not just in class and on campus but also on personal social media.

Several professors have been subjected to efforts at entrapment. Last year a man posing as a student tried to encourage Muslim faculty members to criticize Mr. DeSantis and Israel. A similar incident happened to me. In October 2024 my department chair called me into his office to tell me that someone claiming to be a student in my Religion and Science class had complained that I spent 20 minutes talking about specific candidates, including who I was voting for and why. I was stunned. That never happened in that class or any other; it is antithetical to the way I teach. Fortunately

Hakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · last yr.

A colleague at Stanford’s business school used The Stanford Daily to argue—poorly—against DEI. The piece was riddled with historical errors and left one searching for fact, so I broke my public writing hiatus to respond. I hope you’ll read and share the piece. stanforddaily.com/2025/04/22/w...

What DEI threatens isn’t merit. It’s monopoly.

Political science professor Hakeem Jefferson argues for DEI's importance to de-monopolizing universities.

stanforddaily.com

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · last yr.

the question to ask about a certain prominent pollster who has the ear of influential figures in media is whether he's trying to inform the public or whether he's trying to win new clients tufts-pol.medium.com/have-young-v...

Have young voters really abandoned the Democrats?

by Caroline Soler, Brian Schaffner, and Stephen Ansolabehere

tufts-pol.medium.com

News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · last yr.

This, from the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

There are three key facts in the Holocaust Encyclopedia produced by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is the second key fact:

What distinguishes a concentration camp from a prison (in the modern sense) is that it functions outside of a judicial system. The prisoners are not indicted or convicted of any crime by judicial process.

Jonathan Blitzer @jonathanblitzer.bsky.social · last yr.

“The customs official canceled Ms. Petrova’s visa on the spot and began deportation proceedings.” One way to understand Trump effect in govt: an ever widening circle of people, like low-level customs officials, get to make categorical decisions abt lives of others. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/s...

She Worked in a Harvard Lab to Reverse Aging, Until ICE Jailed Her

President Trump’s immigration crackdown ensnared Kseniia Petrova, a scientist who fled Russia after protesting its invasion of Ukraine. She fears arrest if she is deported there.

nytimes.com

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · last yr.

"those who credit manufacturing jobs for a glorious past mistake correlation for causation. They think their grandparents had the 'good life' because of jobs in manufacturing. In reality, it was unions, pensions, high marginal tax rates, and strong social policies—with racism and sexism thrown in"

Opinion | The manufactured nostalgia of Trump’s tariffs

Those who credit manufacturing jobs for a glorious past America mistake correlation for causation.

msnbc.com

MS NOW@ms.now · last yr.

OPINION by sociologist Jessica Calarco: Jessica warns “those who are betting on Trump and his promise to bring back manufacturing risk putting us all in a more precarious position—pushing us back to Gilded Age levels of inequality…” READ MORE: www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

IndivisiblePHL ❌👑@indivisiblephl.bsky.social · last yr.

American Democracy started here in Philly. Today 15,000+ told Trump-Musk #HandsOffPhilly 📸Credit: @pt74.bsky.social @50501philadelphia.bsky.social @newpennsylvania.bsky.social @phlscienceaction.bsky.social @pftlocal3.bsky.social @indivisible.org @maddow.msnbc.com @maddowblog.msnbc.com

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · last yr.

jesus christ they want her dead

Mark Chadbourn@chadbourn.bsky.social · last yr.

Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist at Harvard Medical School, was detained at Logan Airport after returning from France and sent to an ICE detention in Louisiana, The Insider reports. A big critic of Putin and the war in Ukraine, she may now be deported to Russia.

Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · last yr.

The (peaceful, First Amendment-protected) scene at Columbia, 3 days after the nearby ICE arrest of a recent alum.

Philadelphia Inquirer @inquirer.com · last yr.

“Don’t turn away. Keep reading. You need to know this,” writes Inquirer columnist @jenicearmstrong.bsky.social. “The following is a real-life example of how the lives of three local residents have been upended by the presidency of Donald Trump." 🔗 inquirer.com/opinion/fede...

Sara Morell @smorell93.bsky.social · last yr.

Really proud of my mom, Cantor Sandy Horowitz, for participating in this ad! <3

Josh Gondelman@joshgondelman.bsky.social · last yr.

I am probably on some government lists now but at least I am in good company.

NYT full page ad signed by 350 rabbis and several other Jewish people. Text: Trump has called for the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza. Jewish people say NO to ethnic cleansing. (Photo stolen from James Schamus’s Twitter! Thank you, James!)

Gabe Ortíz @tusk81.bsky.social · last yr.

Trump can’t move group of three trans women to men’s prisons or deny them gender-affirming care, judge rules. “Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump’s sweeping order as a likely violation of Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.” www.the-independent.com/news/world/a...

Trump can’t move trans women to men’s prisons or deny affirming care, judge rules

Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump’s sweeping order as a likely violation of Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment

the-independent.com

Sara Morell @smorell93.bsky.social · last yr.

It's really jarring trying to teach undergrads the power and limitations of executive power when we're 10 steps past a Constitutional crisis and only two weeks into the administration. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/o...

Opinion | There Is No Going Back

The president’s opponents, whoever they are, cannot expect a return to the Constitution as it was.

nytimes.com