Adam Harris
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adamhsays.com
Adam Harris
@adamhsays.com
5.1K followers 630 following 560 posts
Writer exploring education, history, politics, and the South. Author of The State Must Provide. Writing Is This America? | Senior Fellow, New America. Occasionally sharing poems. Work in The Atlantic, NYT, Guardian, and more.

www.harrisadam.com
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Reposted by Adam Harris
adamhsays.com
The thing I've loved the most about the team this season--Wemby aside--is that, quite importantly, it's all the other guys doing their jobs well. And I keep thinking about the fact that while drafting Timmy set the dynasty in motion structurally, the Memorial Day miracle did it emotionally.
It’s Memorial Day, May 31, 1999, and the Spurs are in the Western Conference finals—one series away from the big dance. There are 12 seconds left in the fourth quarter. The Spurs, down 18 points in the third, have clawed their way back to within two. Sean Elliott, the Spurs forward, doesn’t so much as pirouette as look like someone just bumped into his shoulder on the street. His pinkie toe is practically hugging the sideline as he catches the ball. Somehow—divine intervention, maybe—Elliott composes himself with a hop and one dribble while orienting his body toward the hoop. His heels hang out-of-bounds, the balls of his feet planted firmly inside the line. Rasheed Wallace, the Portland Trail Blazers power forward, uses every bit of his 7-foot-4-inch wingspan to try to get a hand on the ball. It is no use. Elliott’s eyes lock on to what he can see of the rim as he rises with the picturesque form of basketball-shooting manuals. “He fires the three,” Bob Costas, the NBC announcer, says. “And he hits it!” The Alamodome erupts—logically, some Trail Blazers fans must be there, but it seems like all 35,000 people in the arena have joined in an ebullient chorus. About 20 miles away, at our home on Randolph Air Force Base, my living room erupts in screams as well.
December 26, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Reposted by Adam Harris
adamhsays.com
I wrote this to publish on draft day in 2023 about Wemby, Timmy, Spurs culture, playing hard in meaningless games, hope, and luck--or divine intervention, if you're so inclined. After the game yesterday, I read it with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
San Antonio, the Spurs, and Me
With the first-overall pick in the NBA draft, the team has a shot at becoming one of the league’s perennial winners once again.
www.theatlantic.com
December 26, 2025 at 5:55 PM
adamhsays.com
An eight-game winning streak with seven different leading scorers. Beautiful team ball.
buckrawheat.bsky.social Weyland-Yutani Yule Log™ @buckrawheat.bsky.social · 11h
It's this. Obviously Wemby warps the floor in unbelievable ways the minute he's on, but the story of the last 2 games has been how good they've been as a unit. The Tuesday game had the 3 headed guard monster rack up a combined 22 assists on all of 2 turnovers. That's ideal team basketball.
December 26, 2025 at 6:26 PM
adamhsays.com
I wrote this to publish on draft day in 2023 about Wemby, Timmy, Spurs culture, playing hard in meaningless games, hope, and luck--or divine intervention, if you're so inclined. After the game yesterday, I read it with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
San Antonio, the Spurs, and Me
With the first-overall pick in the NBA draft, the team has a shot at becoming one of the league’s perennial winners once again.
www.theatlantic.com
December 26, 2025 at 5:55 PM
adamhsays.com
“The basin is trying to lure data centers with cheap land and energy and has plans to become a hub for burying carbon dioxide captured at industrial plants and sucked out of the air.“
December 26, 2025 at 2:49 PM
adamhsays.com
adamhsays.substack.com/p/on-time
Heritage, an entreaty to repose I saw what my ancestors saw last night, just after we laid the kids down to sleep. A cloudless sky - so clear; the pale moon - light casts shadows of crepes right upon my feet. I once said a prayer on a night Like this: That the Lord of my granddaddy keep us! Staring up at the black, speckled abyss
December 25, 2025 at 4:08 AM
Reposted by Adam Harris
adamserwer.bsky.social
The people who profited most from the cancel culture/free speech panic were less interested in actual freedom of speech than establishing their own control over public discourse. You don't even have to take my word for it. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
Every society that has ever existed has had views that are mainstream and views that are fringe. The free-speech frauds who captured the discourse over the past decade understood this, but their true objection was that they did not unilaterally have the power to define which was which. For example, in a 2018 Times column, Weiss complained that “leftists” were engaged in a “concerted attempt to significantly redraw the bounds of acceptable thought and speech.” This was meant to sound sinister, menacing. In fact, this is politics. Every faction is always trying to “redraw the bounds of acceptable thought and speech.” In a free society, the government allows people to have those arguments. Such disputes are not a threat to free speech; they are free speech. When I say that CBS News’s Bari Weiss understood this, you needn’t take my word for it. In November, shortly after being given the reins to one of the oldest broadcast-news organizations in the country, Weiss used identical language to describe her own project: “I think it’s about redrawing the lines of what falls in the 40-yard lines of acceptable debate and acceptable American politics and culture,” Weiss said at the Jewish Leadership Conference. “And I don’t mean that in, like, a censorious, gatekeeping way.” What’s the difference between her “redrawing the lines” of acceptable speech and other people doing it? What makes one “censorious” and “gatekeeping” and the other not? Well, because she gets to decide. That’s what so much of the free-speech panic was ever about: making sure the right people were in charge of what you see, hear, and read. Notably, this has very little to do with reporting the news, which is supposed to be what CBS News does. But if the point of installing Weiss was to ensure that she would gatekeep on behalf of right-wing interests, that is precisely what she appears to be doing.
December 23, 2025 at 6:17 PM
Reposted by Adam Harris
polgreen.bsky.social
I am sure the 60 Minutes report on CECOT was very well done, but what makes the decision to kill it even more damning is that CBS was hardly out on a limb on this story. It has been extremely well documented and reported by many journalists.
December 22, 2025 at 2:17 PM
adamhsays.com
reminded of a “no comment” moment a few years ago when I was writing about a school district secession in Louisiana: www.theatlantic.com/education/ar...
(Browning did not respond to a request for comment from The Atlantic on LinkedIn. When I called his office, I was put on hold for 30 minutes before the line went dead. Each subsequent call was sent directly to voicemail.) "What I do is I let my actions speak, and how I conduct myself and how I treat people speak."
December 22, 2025 at 2:27 PM
adamhsays.com
“The Constitution of the Roberts Court is not color-blind. It is a Constitution that permits discrimination on the basis of race, but forbids alleviating discrimination on the basis of race.”

Read @adamserwer.bsky.social:
www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
The Return of the Antebellum Constitution
The Supreme Court and the president are undermining the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
www.theatlantic.com
December 21, 2025 at 2:46 PM
adamhsays.com
In all sincerity, Anthony Joshua’s knockout was a victory for truth and that’s all I’ll say for now. Happy weekend.
December 20, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by Adam Harris
brianlyman.bsky.social
My column from Monday. On Tommy Tuberville; the Alabama State Board of Education's struggle to adopt a new social studies textbook, and the difference between loving one's country and demanding unquestioning pride in it.
The past keeps seeping into Alabama's present. No wonder leaders fear it | Alabama Reflector
And that fear means we're seeing terrible things from Alabama's past start to repeat themselves. Particularly with minorities.
alabamareflector.com
December 20, 2025 at 2:31 PM
Reposted by Adam Harris
matthewtynan.bsky.social
Even as we’ve seen their consistent growth throughout the season, it’s still wild to me to watch the Spurs just thoroughly dominate a quality opponent on their home floor like this. They’ve improved so much, so quickly.
December 20, 2025 at 2:14 AM
adamhsays.com
“Of the 138 cases in South Carolina, 90 are in children ages 5 to 17, with the outbreak taking hold in elementary schools that had low vaccination rates earlier this fall.” www.cidrap.umn.edu/measles/us-h...
US hot spots see more measles cases as national total nears 2,000
www.cidrap.umn.edu
December 20, 2025 at 12:21 AM
Reposted by Adam Harris
nhannahjones.bsky.social
The facts that Black people are experiencing double digit unemployment and data and research shows Black Americans face discrimination at every level of the job market is irrelevant — they focus on elite positions because the aim is not to purge Black workers, it’s to solidify caste.
December 19, 2025 at 1:47 PM
adamhsays.com
“‘Real investigations are very infrequent now‘ said Jason Langberg, who was an OCR attorney in Denver until this summer. ‘With more than half the workforce gone, pauses for various reasons, a shutdown — this is what you get.’

www.propublica.org/article/trum...
Monkey Sounds, “White Power” and the N-Word: Racial Harassment Against Black Students Ignored Under Trump
Since Trump returned to office, the Education Department’s civil rights office has not resolved a single racial harassment investigation. It sends a message that “people impacted by racial discriminat...
www.propublica.org
December 19, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Adam Harris
adamrothman.bsky.social
An often-overlooked part of this letter is Lincoln's description of the operation of the Fugitive Slave law: "I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes, and unrewarded toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet."
December 17, 2025 at 12:42 PM
Reposted by Adam Harris
scottsandage.bsky.social
RIP dear Thea
December 18, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Adam Harris
adamhsays.com
Thinking of Thea Hunter today www.theatlantic.com/education/ar...
The Death of an Adjunct
Thea Hunter was a promising, brilliant scholar. And then she got trapped in academia’s permanent underclass.
www.theatlantic.com
December 17, 2025 at 4:15 PM
adamhsays.com
“after reviewing this with supervisors and the leadership team, the Black History 101 Mobile Museum was not approved to be on campus … due to SB -17, the current climate of our State, and certain topics covered as part of the museum” www.statesman.com/news/educati...
Texas State cancels Black history exhibit, citing anti-DEI climate
Civil rights organizations say the move to uninvite the Black history museum is viewpoint discrimination that is part of a pattern of silencing diverse voices.
www.statesman.com
December 17, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by Adam Harris
andreasuozzo.com
Charities are rewriting their mission statements to remove or minimize language tied to race, inequity and historically disadvantaged communities. Great nonprofit data reporting from @emsimani.bsky.social, gorgeous design by @zisiga.bsky.social www.propublica.org/article/dele...
Under Trump, More Than 1,000 Nonprofits Strip DEI Language From Tax Forms
As the Trump administration ordered agencies to eradicate “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, we identified more than 1,000 nonprofits that removed such language from the mission statem...
www.propublica.org
December 17, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Reposted by Adam Harris
brownepoints.bsky.social
Today's lead story @chronicle.com shows how secret recordings of classes — spurred on by a well-funded right-wing media apparatus — are changing the relationship between professors and students.
The Classroom, Caught on Camera
Professors and students are increasingly worried what they say in class could end up on the internet.
www.chronicle.com
December 17, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Adam Harris
lisalsong.bsky.social
Don’t let the robots take our jobs
propublicaguild.org ProPublica Guild @propublicaguild.org · 9d
1/ At bargaining yesterday, @propublica.org management said that they should have 100% discretion to replace workers with AI and would not commit to labeling future AI-generated content.
Headline: ProPublica management wants 100% discretion over when and how to use AI Supplementary text: The organization rejected our proposal that ensures staff will not be replaced by AI and requires labeling AI-generated content
December 17, 2025 at 5:58 PM
adamhsays.com
a reminder about how it ended w/ Tuberville at Tech www.usatoday.com/story/gameon...
December 17, 2025 at 5:56 PM
adamhsays.com
Thinking of Thea Hunter today www.theatlantic.com/education/ar...
The Death of an Adjunct
Thea Hunter was a promising, brilliant scholar. And then she got trapped in academia’s permanent underclass.
www.theatlantic.com
December 17, 2025 at 4:15 PM