Diana B. Greenwald

Russia is providing Iran intelligence to target U.S. forces, officials say The targeting information has included the locations of American warships and aircraft in the Middle East, the officials said.

Ho-hum. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

An illuminating study of the spatial, social, economic, and political history of Jabalya, featuring archival and ethnographic work by a Palestinian scholar who is himself a refugee who grew up near the camp. It was written in 2020; it is now a very difficult read. online.ucpress.edu/caa/article-...

“being confusing and problematic at a critical moment” belongs in the AJC bio

and decent polity often implicitly or explicitly land on some form of democratization of policymaking (or war-making, specifically) as the path forward. But I am simply not convinced that such a path will incapacitate today's tyrants, or prevent tomorrow's tyrants, from coming to power. /8

is a perfectly "democratic" institution, but a majority of our elected members, for example, will not even vote to grant themselves the ability to oversee or monitor this war. The popular protests against this war, e.g., have been minimal. "Institutional design" approaches to constructing a moral /7

because of either selection effects or effects of "the office." But, when we consider the "institutional failure" stories, it is not even clear that, for example, were these decisions further democratized in the US, we would have less war-making and less suffering. Not to suggest that Congress /6

An aspect of this that I also find very difficult to process is that I used to believe those aforementioned pathologies were somehow overrepresented among elites, or among political and military decisionmakers - the cold willingness, if not eagerness, to devastate hundreds or thousands of lives - /5

There's an argument to be made that, for any of us (not sure whether I am in that "us" or not, although I think I am) who still have some hope for institutions, these judicial, prosecutorial, and enforcement institutions are really the only ones worth investing energy in. /4

Or, the only imaginable institutions that would potentially constrain such individuals are those that would mete out justice and enforce punishments with some certainty or near certainty. /3

But perhaps some of us (I will include myself here) have been in denial about a deeper reality, which is that *no* institutions, *no* laws, will constrain those who are just pathologically gleeful about causing human suffering. /2

"Our institutions have failed us" is by now a completely banal observation, whether referring to domestic checks on executive war-making or international legal constraints on how those wars must be conducted... /1

I was just bringing up this contradiction with someone today. Like, what happened to Davos Mark?

But also just extremely clear evidence that Trump does not have the attention span for regime change.

This…is…insane.

One thing I can say about being in my 40s is that I have (re)discovered nuts, and I am really a fan of just traveling with a bag of pecans or whatever on my person.

Husband: What’s your ETA tonight?
Me: I need a sabbatical

This is…a lot of snow

Ok NYers, you have to pick up your dog‘s shit this time because, as you have now seen, snow is not a magical dog shit composter.

Like the whole "ethnic food" thing...

Trenchant critique by Barbara Savage (2021) here on the "rediscovery" and oversimplified categorization of Merze Tate's scholarly work on international relations, geopolitics, (dis)armament, race, and empire. Source: www.cambridge.org/core/books/a...

Excerpt from assignment instructions: "Now, do some web-based research and consult at least three (3) additional sources to begin answering the questions below. Your responses do not need to be polished; just jot down some ideas. Please use the space at the end of the questionnaire to list the sources you consulted. You will also be asked to describe in a couple of sentences why you chose each source. If you are copying and pasting wording from a source, you must place quotation marks around it (“...”) and clarify the original source for the quote. Please, I beg of you, do not copy and paste AI-generated output for your answers below. The expectation with this exercise is that you are trying to identify sources that represent actual human (or organizational) perspectives on the interaction that you are studying."

Instructors, I hear you about all those great AI-detection hacks you've developed but have you considered adding begging to your toolbox

Photo of Rabbi Emily Cohen speaking at the mayor’s interfaith breakfast

“Religion is often characterized as a home for the right, but I am continually inspired by the religious left, by ordinary people who wear their faith not as a suit of armor guarding against the ‘other’ but as a big coat warming us as we navigate an icy world.”
- @thatrabbicohen.bsky.social

HISTORICAL INSTITUTIONALISM IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS ▪ Abstract This article provides an overview of recent developments in historical institutionalism. First, it reviews some distinctions that are commonly drawn between the “historical” and the “ration...

This is still such a masterful review essay. #sorrynotsorry www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

"Knowing how institutions were constructed provides insights into how they might come apart," (Thelen 1999, p. 400).

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Educational Freedom in Palestine. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. In this special event, Palestinian scholars and activists working on the ground throughout Palestine and their international allies foreground the centrality of education to Palestinian life, identity...

Starting in half an hour: zoom.us/webinar/regi...

An excerpt from the article, describing some of the most frequent "resistance keywords" in Arabic identified in the dataset, which includes algorithm-defying spellings of the Arabic words for flood, Palestine, Gaza, Zionism, bombardment, Israel, resistance, and Hamas.

"despite these obstacles, Arab users benefit from the peculiar nature of the Arabic language and continue to resist oppressive practices through creative strategies that challenge the power and accuracy of algorithmic systems."

"current NLP tools (Alotaiby et al., 2009; Al-Shaibani and Ahmed, 2023). These challenges complicate the development and implementation of algorithms for content moderation, translation and other linguistic applications, often leading to errors and biases in automated systems. On the other hand...

"Lexical algorithmic resistance" in >10k pro-Palestine Arabic-language Facebook posts Oct 7 2023-Apr 27 2024: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

"As a cursive writing system, written from right to left with a dense morphological framework, the Arabic script presents significant challenges for...

"List of aid groups working in Gaza that Israel is suspending":

1. Action Against Hunger
2. ActionAid
3. Alianza por la Solidaridad
4. Campaign for the Children of Palestine
5. CARE
6. DanChurchAid
7. Danish Refugee Council
8. Handicap International: Humanity & Inclusion
(cont)

If your recipe calls for a jalapeño “seeds removed“, just no.