davidavrombell.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

submitted 3 days ago • 260 comments

New newsletter: The End of "The Affair": davidabell.substack.com/p/the-end-of...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Among other things, if funding is cut 50% there literally won’t be any money to fund new grants.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

I worry that not enough of a big deal is being made about how long-term the devastation of these budget cuts to our scientific and health agencies will be, beyond the absolute ruin they will cause in the acute period.

submitted 6 days ago • 49 comments

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/o...

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Beauty of the English language: "in sync" is so much crisper and more elegant than Gleichschaltung.

submitted 12 days ago • 6 comments

Astérix et Ozempix

submitted 13 days ago • 20 comments

Has anyone pointed out to President Trump that in the higher education sector, the US is running a massive trade surplus with the rest of the world, including especially China, and that kicking out foreign students will threaten that?

submitted 17 days ago • 8 comments

Does anyone know if the suspension of Harvard's participation in the Student and Visitor Exchange Program includes postdocs?

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

To Fight Anti-semitism at Harvard, Trump Bans Israeli Students www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/u...

submitted 18 days ago • 23 comments

Zealots like Kristi Noem will keep coming for universities unless or until they stake everything on fighting back: you cannot negotiate or compromise with fanatics, you just have to hope that the rule of law isn't entirely dead in America

submitted 18 days ago • 2 comments

Just utter lawlessness from the Trump Administration, with no goal other than to punish institutions for refusing to bend the knee. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/u...

submitted 18 days ago • 68 comments

In early modern Europe, people who didn’t know Latin and thought of the Catholic mass as magic turned the phrase “hoc est corpus” (“this is the body [of Christ]”) into “hocus pocus.” Kristi “Noem nothing” seems to be at that level…

submitted 20 days ago • 1 comment

The dog-killer is not qualified for her job.

submitted 20 days ago • 31 comments

Why This Assault on the Universities is More Serious than Earlier Ones davidabell.substack.com/p/why-this-a...

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

This is the right approach — speak to them as you would an especially stupid child, spell out their crimes and your contempt clearly.

submitted 31 days ago • 426 comments

Trump has a real dilemma. How can he top the appointments of Casey Means and Jeanine Pirro? Can he possibly find someone even loonier for a position of great responsibility? Why, yes! And there’s a vacancy, too. Laura Loomer for National Security Advisor. Remember, you heard it here first.

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

New column: On public knowledge and the Collège de France. davidabell.substack.com/p/public-kno...

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

On Amtrak’s “high speed” train, which is currently in danger of being left in the dust by an elderly arthritic sloth.

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments

New column: On the humanities and AI davidabell.substack.com/p/the-humani...

submitted 42 days ago • 0 comments

Call for Papers: A Tocqueville Society interdisciplinary conference on 250 Years of Franco-American Relations (Paris, May 2026). www.davidavrombell.com/tocqueville/

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

Statement signed by the presidents of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Brown, U. Penn. Where the hell is Columbia’s acting president Clare Shipman? www.aacu.org/newsroom/a-c...

submitted 48 days ago • 0 comments

Universities should be paying close attention to the story. There’s nobody really in charge on the gov’t side. Not in any of the agencies.There is chaos, punctuated by occasional blasts from on high. So no guarantee whatsoever that any deal reached will be respected. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/b...

submitted 51 days ago • 0 comments

A publication of the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service: "Eurofascism, like 80 years ago, the common enemy of Moscow and Washington." Presenting the EU as "fascist."

submitted 51 days ago • 1 comment

Between all the actual and proposed cuts to NIH and the assault on the universities, fair to say that the administration will wipe out serious cancer research in the USA. A victory for malignancy in every possible sense.

submitted 53 days ago • 3 comments

Reposting this, which explains why the demands the administration made to Harvard are illegal. Put simply, the executive branch does not have the legal authority to cut off congressionally allocated research funding to private universities. open.substack.com/pub/davidabe...

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

Trump wants to go back to the McKinley era. To the extent that means going back to a time when the presidency was far weaker than today, and Congress had not abdicated so much of its power to the executive branch, then maybe not so bad an idea.

submitted 57 days ago • 2 comments

Are private universities trying to have it both ways? davidabell.substack.com/p/short-post...

submitted 57 days ago • 0 comments

CFP: 250 Years of Franco-American Relations. Tocqueville Review Conference, AUP Paris, May 29-30, 2026 with @davidavrombell.bsky.social and Steve Sawyer tocqueville21.com/blog-info/ca...

submitted 58 days ago • 0 comments

A vivid account of what the freezing of federal research funds to Columbia has meant to one researcher. (And it hits home very hard, since I happen to be married to her). www.chronicle.com/article/all-...

submitted 58 days ago • 1 comment

I'm seeing grown-ass adults marvel at how high stocks jumped today - they must think their mom actually vanished when she played "peek-a-boo."

submitted 60 days ago • 234 comments

www.science.org/content/arti...

submitted 60 days ago • 0 comments

It has been 52 years since my father, Daniel Bell, published “The Coming of Post-Industrial Society.” It didn’t get everything right by any means. But it shows very clearly that American “deindustrialization” has not been a product of “neoliberalism” or specific trade policies…

submitted 63 days ago • 1 comment

New newsletter: davidabell.substack.com/p/the-ideolo...

submitted 64 days ago • 0 comments

unherd.com/2025/04/will...

submitted 67 days ago • 0 comments

When "nearby" means 17 billion light years... www.msn.com/en-us/news/t...

submitted 67 days ago • 0 comments

Proud of Princeton's Christopher Eisgruber for taking the right, principled stand: www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025...

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

If you are in Paris this Saturday, come to protest the authoritarians trying to hijack American democracy! Place de la République, 3:30 pm. Si vous êtes à Paris samedi, venez manifester contre les forces autoritaires qui menacent la démocratie américaine! Place de la République 15h30.

submitted 68 days ago • 1 comment

Some observations about the Marine Le Pen verdict: 1) WOW. They really went for it: prison term (w/electronic tag) and 5 years of ineligibility. That's almost exactly what the prosecutors asked for, so she's seriously guilty. 2) Will this halt the progress of the far-right in France? No. But... 1/

submitted 70 days ago • 18 comments