"Sentenced to the Galleys: Manpower as a Challenge for the Ottoman Navy" in: Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 33/2. Online publication date: July 31, 2026. 👉https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/303/article/996937/pdf #maritimehistory #navy #galley #rowers
Will Smiley
@will-smiley.bsky.social
History (Ottoman and Russian Empires) and international law. Author, "From Slaves to Prisoners of War" (Oxford, 2018) and co-author, "To Save the Country" (Yale, 2019). All views strictly my own.
Changing the lake is one thing, but to delete the name *even as the result of a direct search* is an extra level of collaboration.
Will Smiley@will-smiley.bsky.social · yesterdayI was wrong.
"Here’s an opportunity to move past the job-training consensus that has left our universities stripped threadbare and too driven by trends and vibes. But I promise you, students want real educations and will come for them, rather than be forced to listen to a CEO tell them that capitalism rocks."
Perry: Republicans fought ‘indoctrination.’ Now they’re telling students what to study.
The conservative attack on higher education in states like Iowa is hard to watch. But it also provides an opportunity for blue states like Minnesota.
startribune.com
Red State Universities: we believe in indoctrination and job training Students: we hate that is there another option? Blue State Universities: we promise to have no values except job training. It ain’t enough. My latest. Gift link.
Perry: Republicans fought ‘indoctrination.’ Now they’re telling students what to study.
The conservative attack on higher education in states like Iowa is hard to watch. But it also provides an opportunity for blue states like Minnesota.
startribune.com
Leadership at The New School has declared war on its own workforce, fired tenured professors, and shuttered whole departments. But what’s happening to the progressive university is an increasingly common story across all of higher education.
What’s Left of The New School? - Dissent Magazine
Leadership at the iconic progressive university has declared war on its own workforce, fired tenured professors, and shuttered whole departments. But what’s happening to the school is an increasingly common story across all of higher education.
dissentmagazine.org
📚New books in the Ottoman Empire series📚: Kate Dannies on breadwinner soldiers in WW1, Yakoob Ahmed on the ulema and the Ottoman Constitution, and Yavuz Sezer on the rise of libraries, published posthumously thanks to a team of his colleagues and friends❤️ edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-edinb...
Google going along with Trump purporting to rename the Gulf of Mexico was an early sign of elite collaboration. I suspect the response to him trying to rename Lake Ontario is going to be the opposite, underlining his power's erosion. Nice historical bookends in someone's book on his presidency.
the tradeoff for comparatively low salaries & high workloads in academia is flexibility to work how & when you want, & freedom to pursue inquires that matter to you. Take away flexibility & freedom & you’ve got people making less than those in private industry while still working quite hard
Nick Kapur@nickkapur.bsky.social · 5d agoMaking university faculty sit in their offices from 8 am to 5 pm every day, 5 days a week, is insane and serves no conceivable academic purpose. The fact that admins and even *staff* are exempt from this absurd requirement shows the real goal is to make tenured faculty quit.
From a historical standpoint, since the invention of the submarine, law of war issues have more often gotten into domestic courts through disputes over people (captivity) than through disputes over property (prizes). This is a break from that trend.
Brian Finucane@bcfinucane.bsky.social · 5d agoI've been waiting for this since Trump announced the blockade of Iran. Litigation in a prize court could be one of the few ways to challenge Trump's legal authority for the Iran War in court. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Exciting conference news for the summer after next: the next Legal Histories of Empire conference (V) will be at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) in Bengaluru, July 13-15, *2028.* Save the date: lhbe.org #legalhistory
Legal Histories of Empire
scholarship - legal history - empire - conference - 2021
lhbe.org
Texas A&M's Victoria campus swiftly implemented a requirement that faculty be on campus 40 hours per week, while also increasing teaching from 3/3 to 4/4. Now they're struggling to find people to teach classes. Faculty pay is relatively modest in part because of job flexibility.
Faculty Quit as Texas University Orders Them Back to Campus
The new policy, announced in June, is a response to a Texas law restricting remote work for public university faculty. The Texas AAUP says it has prompted chaos and tears.
insidehighered.com
I thought the "double tap" issue would end this spree. Congress seemed to care about jus in bello violations (even when there's no bello) much more than jus ad bellum. But now it seems like this may vindicate Moyn's argument in "Humane" that (pretending to) follow JIB *enables* JAB violations.
Brian Finucane@bcfinucane.bsky.social · last wk.The Trump administration's lawless killing spree at sea resumes with a strike reportedly killing two supposed "narco-terrorists" in the eastern Pacific.
I took Logic at Hillsdale. It was in the Math Department. Prof. Watson. We learned Polish Notation and using letters as operators and I won extra credit for the longest sentence that makes a valid argument, something like CANCERTREATMENTCENTERSCITECANCEREASILYANDEFFECTIVELY. This…is not that.
Josh Marshall@joshtpm.bsky.social · last wk.Download or no? Normally I'd probably have to pay a lot for an online logic course, right?
This piece approaching the Mahdi movement as anti-Ottoman--specifically, anti-LATE-Ottoman, seems like it would pair nicely with Ussama Makdisi's "Ottoman Orientalism" for teaching.
Jun Akiba@jun-naibzade.bsky.social · last wk.論文 トルコ人が異教徒になる時：末期オスマン帝国に対するスーダン・マフディー派による批判 Hengameh Ziai, "When Turks Became Infidels: A Mahdist Critique of Late Ottoman Order." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, (2026). otmn doi.org/10.1215/1089...
論文 トルコ人が異教徒になる時：末期オスマン帝国に対するスーダン・マフディー派による批判 Hengameh Ziai, "When Turks Became Infidels: A Mahdist Critique of Late Ottoman Order." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, (2026). otmn doi.org/10.1215/1089...
When Turks Became Infidels: A Mahdist Critique of Late Ottoman Order
Abstract. The Mahdist uprising in late Ottoman Sudan has generally been described in either economic or religious terms—as either an economic backlash against harsh taxation and Sudan's incorporation ...
doi.org
論文 末期オスマン帝国における世俗的トルコ人の形成と人種 Daniel Kolland. "Porous Whiteness: Race, Europeanized Sensitivities, and the Making of Secularist Turkishness in the Late Ottoman Empire." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, (2026). otmn doi.org/10.1215/1089...
Porous Whiteness: Race, Europeanized Sensitivities, and the Making of Secularist Turkishness in the Late Ottoman Empire
Abstract. This article challenges the prevailing view that race played no role in Ottoman history. It shows how Turkish-speaking intellectuals used the race episteme to position themselves within the ...
doi.org
An interesting piece on Ottoman neutrality during Napoleon's return to power. It dovetails nicely with Ozan Ozavci's finding that the Ottomans were invited to the Congress of Vienna, but declined to attend. In both cases, Sultan Mahmud and his officials saw themselves as avoiding damaging rivalries.
Jun Akiba@jun-naibzade.bsky.social · last wk.論文 不安定な中立を維持する：オスマン帝国とナポレオンの百日天下 Palabıyık, Mustafa Serdar. 2026. “Preserving A Precarious Neutrality: The Ottoman Empire and the Hundred Days Crisis”. BELLETEN 90 (318): 487-518. otmn doi.org/10.37879/bel...
Delighted to announce that my new article, “Tipu and the Tabur: South Asian Influence on Ottoman Military Reform,” has just been published in CSSAAME! I argue that an embassy from Tipu Sultan of Mysore catalyzed the first steps toward the Ottoman Nizam-ı Cedid reforms.
Tipu and the Tabur: South Asian Influence on Ottoman Military Reform
Abstract. This article examines connections and influences between Muslim polities across the Indian Ocean in the eighteenth century through the legacy of an embassy sent by Tipu Sultan of Mysore to t...
nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com
www.chronicle.com/article/educ... At the heart of the department’s findings are concerns that the accreditation arm was not sufficiently independent of the broader professional association.
Education Department Takes First Step to Revoke Recognition of Law-Schools Accreditor
Even if the American Bar Association prevails, the initial recommendation could be a significant reputational blow.
chronicle.com
I've been emailing like crazy to spread the word about the Central European History Convention (CEHC) July 2027 to those not on social media. Will you help through your networks? Submission deadline Sept. 13; we're fundraising to find subsidies for who needs it. ceh-c.univie.ac.at/news/call-fo...
Call for 2027
Call for 2027
ceh-c.univie.ac.at
I’m in love with this issue. It’s a product of our open call, which received a boggling number of submissions. It features great interviews, visual essays and our stock and trade reporting and analysis from all over the region. And this cover, with Manal Mahamid’s “48 Cacti” is 🤩
Middle East Research and Information Project@merip.bsky.social · 2w agoNEW ISSUE: Art at Work--People, Power and Cultural Production Issue 319 of Middle East Report explores culture not as an escape from politics, but as a space where struggles over power, identity and belonging are continually negotiated. READ NOW buff.ly/Iq7N4yV
The draft program is now out for the upcoming ASLH conference in Banff (Nov.12-14, 2026): aslh.net/wp-content/u... #legalhistory
aslh.net
Delighted to announce that my new article, “Tipu and the Tabur: South Asian Influence on Ottoman Military Reform,” has just been published in CSSAAME! I argue that an embassy from Tipu Sultan of Mysore catalyzed the first steps toward the Ottoman Nizam-ı Cedid reforms.
Tipu and the Tabur: South Asian Influence on Ottoman Military Reform
Abstract. This article examines connections and influences between Muslim polities across the Indian Ocean in the eighteenth century through the legacy of an embassy sent by Tipu Sultan of Mysore to t...
nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com
My contribution to the CSSAME roundtable on the 25th anniversary of Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet’s seminal book, Frontier Fictions, is now freely available, as are the other contributions from some dear friends and colleagues. read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/arti...
Building Nationalism from the Zamin Up | Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East | Duke University Press
read.dukeupress.edu
Every this comes up, people act like it’s the end of histor(iograph)y. But the point isn’t efficiently producing research papers. It’s humans thinking and communicating meaningful insights into the past. Whatever machines can do, the field of history will by definition be one step beyond that.
Jim Clifford@jimclifford.bsky.social · 3w agoAre we ready for machine written history? When given access to a well structured large historical dataset, Claude’s Fable 5 can identify a topic, complete the research and write a strong and original draft research paper. This has the potential to break peer review, graduate school, & job searches.
Speaking of this, in spring 2025 Trump appointed a certain Second Lady (who wrote her Cambridge dissertation on 17th century print culture) to the Kennedy Center board. But I no longer see her on the list of board members. What happened?
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 3w agoThey invented the word "lickspittle" for people like this.
📚New books in the Edinburgh Historical Studies of Iran and the Persian World series!: Amir Parsa on state formation in 18thC Iran, and Touraj Atabaki & Lana Ravandi-Fadai on Iranian political exiles and migrant workers during Stalin's Great Terror📚 edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-edinb...
Two key points here: 1) Pangram is the real deal, an accurate AI text (but not image) detector. It's a breakthrough. 2) Ultimately it's not enough, and we will need to re-learn that institutions built on expertise, while flawed, are still the best means we have to access truth on a large scale.
I Tested a Popular A.I. Slop Detector. It Felt Empowering. (Gift Article)
Pangram excels at distinguishing chatbot-generated words from human writing. But it’s not reliable for spotting artificial images.
nytimes.com