Expertos en el pensamiento o el derecho español medieval, ¡favor de ayudarme! — Busco ayuda de algunos historiadores de España, del derecho y/o el pensamiento del español medieval, para investigar la historia del concepto de “gente de razón,” que ya existía cuando Hernan Cortés escribió sus cartas de relación. Supongo que sigue de una categoría legal/teológico, gens rationalis. Me interesa esta idea de…

Sarah Maza’s Thinking About History is a smart, accessible overview of some of the problems and promises of historical scholarship today — Sarah Maza’s brief volume, Thinking About History (U Chicago, 2017), is a serviceable overview of current practices and problems in historical scholarship. This work of historiography — that is, a historical account of some significant developments in how historical accounts are written — would make a useful and accessible introduction…

Rage at the overturning of Roe V. Wade — I have spent a good part of yesterday and today on Twitter, scrolling through my timeline. No matter how long I scroll, no matter how far down the feed I look, I will not reach the end of the rage that my fellow citizens and I feel about the Supreme…

Unpacking the allegations against prominent Princeton historian Kevin Kruse — Many things can be true at once. In this essay, I hope to distinguish what is arguably true — what can be reasonably asserted using the evidence at hand — from what is either insufficiently-supported speculation, flawed interpretation, or intentional misrepresentation. It would be both lovely and rare for polemicists…

On Johnson, Boswell, and Macleod’s Books of Vancouver — Samuel Johnson is one of those writers I read about but never read in college. He was the gleaming pole star in a constellation of eighteenth-century London “wits” who collectively created the persona of the literary man (as opposed to the scholar). …

Getting my library sorted and organized is going to help my writing — I moved across state lines less than a year ago, and I am only just now getting my library organized to suit me. I’m still in the middle of the process, and there’s a great deal of work ahead, but the hard physical labor is done. …

The newspaper of record has beclowned itself with yet another execrable editorial about “cancel culture,” but if we point this out, then we are obviously part of the problem — It is time to state the obvious: free speech is not a threat to free speech. Speech about the rights guaranteed us under the First Amendment is not a threat to the rights guaranteed us under the First Amendment. Similarly, what people say about college professors, or the classroom, or…

More words of my badly written sh*tty first draft that you probably shouldn’t even be reading — Not sure what is misfiring in my writerly brain, but my current drastic re-set / fix involves just publishing my random thougths in no particular order without revision. This is the stage of writing I call “puke on a page,” and no one ever sees this stage of the process…

Part 1 of ? — Dear reader, forgive me, but I am desperate, and you are my help. Let me explain: I am to give a talk in just a few days on the topic of the current state of free speech in higher education…or the need for free speech in higher education…or threats to…