Alexandra Steinlight
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asteinlight.bsky.social
Alexandra Steinlight
@asteinlight.bsky.social
Historian of France’s archives, memory, secrecy, aftermath of war. Contingent lecturer and exhausted parent.
Reposted by Alexandra Steinlight
The ADL has decided to treat fascists as allies and progressives as enemies. For a group that is tasked with protecting American Jews, that is a world historic fuck up.

I will never forgive these people for their moral decrepitude.
November 5, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Kid at kindergarten drop-off this morning with monogrammed backpack with initials “WMD.” Tell me your political consciousness wasn’t formed in 2003 without telling me
September 12, 2025 at 12:51 PM
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One like, one Presses universitaires de France book cover from the 1990s
August 4, 2025 at 6:40 AM
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Thing I am an absolute complete total reactionary about: there has not actually been invented a better model of conveying information in a learning environment than the basic structure of a traditional lecture. A speaker standing in some sort of unique focal point for the attention of listeners...
July 12, 2025 at 11:47 AM
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As a historian, I have been curious (and appalled) by this choice of pseudo. The interpretation below is quite common, but not in fact correct. It was an 1865 law (sénatus-consulte) that made “Muslim Algerians” (a racial category divorced from actual faith) French nationals without citizenship 1/
The name “Crémieux” that Jordan Lasker uses is a specific, deeply anti-Muslim dog whistle: a reference to the Crémieux Decree — the official anti-Islam policy of colonial France, making Muslims in Algeria second-class citizens. Who the fuck even *knows* that, let alone makes it their _name_? Bigots.
July 5, 2025 at 12:16 PM
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'“I don't think that people appreciate how few people are working to keep these collections online, even at huge institutions,” Weinberg told me. “It's usually an incredibly small team, one person, half a person, half a person, plus, like their web person who is sympathetic to what's going on.'
AI Scraping Bots Are Breaking Open Libraries, Archives, and Museums
"This is a moment where that community feels collectively under threat and isn't sure what the process is for solving the problem.”
www.404media.co
June 17, 2025 at 2:14 PM
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found out tonight through some slightly random googling that Charlemagne is known as "Karl der Große" in German, a fact I find to be hateful and undignified
June 7, 2025 at 10:18 PM
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“The Left controls universities”
The University of Michigan spent $800,000 hiring private investigators--one of whom FAKED A DISABILITY--to surveil anti-genocide protesting students. I'm speechless.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
June 6, 2025 at 1:55 PM
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🗃️ Sad news of Pierre Nora’s passing away.
June 2, 2025 at 9:02 PM
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Watch out bosses, the 5 year old has turned his attention to labor organizing
May 31, 2025 at 2:04 PM
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The tragic landslide in Blatten gives me the excuse to tell you the story of how we found out Ice Ages existed. It's a cool story and the most important bit is rather similar to what's happening now.
Aerial view westward over the Blatten deposit and the newly formed lake upstream! 🧊🌊

📷Via Christian Petit/Linkedin
May 29, 2025 at 7:49 PM
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very cool that for ten years people at the heights of political commentary insisted to the point of rage that the paramount threat to free speech was “censorious” college students
after announcing that foreign students are being banned from Havard, Noem warns "this should be a warning to every other university to get your act together."
May 22, 2025 at 9:44 PM
Reposted by Alexandra Steinlight
say it again:

4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities

ROI for NIH and NSF for local economies is conservatively 4x, often close to 10x

demolishing higher education is economic sabotage
There is a false dichotomy drawn between "the ivory tower" and "the real world," and I'm here to report that in a post-industrial society, your real-world economy absolutely hinges on the university.

University towns are factory towns. Universities drive economic activity, not the other way around.
May 18, 2025 at 1:45 PM
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN was mediocre if entertaining, but it did afford me the opportunity to learn that @jamesfeigenbaum.bsky.social thought “threw the bums a dime in your prime” was “do the Bumpsy Grind”
May 18, 2025 at 1:52 PM
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“has let too many people leave their sticky fingerprints on her book”

wtf?

i finally read pedersen’s review of sasson’s ‘the solidarity economy’ and i just think there’s just a fundamental disagreement about scholarship, community, and gratitude here

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
May 16, 2025 at 7:05 AM
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Outrageous behavior from the chief of Harvard University Press and kudos to the Crimson for exposing this.
May 3, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Thrilled to share this very special issue of French Politics, Culture & Society in honor of Herrick Chapman that I co-edited with Nicole Rudolph. The intro is open access: www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journal...
May 1, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Help, my child is reading royalist propaganda
April 27, 2025 at 1:46 PM
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among other things, this is literally and explicitly an affirmative action program for conservatives - galling to announce this at a time when any efforts to support and encourage research by women and students of color is branded illegal DEI
April 27, 2025 at 10:49 AM
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"His son spent days crying...and has now stopped speaking."

This is our Georgetown colleague, whose office is down the hall from where I teach. The mind can't assimilate how the University has mounted no public response; I had thought the usual institutional cowardice might have some moral limit
For almost 2 weeks, Badar Khan Suri was kept in a room without a bed & with TV blaring 21 hrs/day.

He was given used underwear & red uniform "usually reserved" for "high security" detainees.

Not allowed to spend more than 2 hrs/week outside dorm.

His little son has stopped talking in his absence.
April 9, 2025 at 1:44 PM
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"Prime, but with human beings"
April 9, 2025 at 1:46 PM
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Shadow docket edging into the night and fog docket...
April 7, 2025 at 11:10 PM
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I am so angry that so many people, here and elsewhere, were willing to pretend they thought that protests against genocide were antisemitic. That playacting allowed them to get here.
I cannot understate how appalling and helpless it feels as a Jew that this is being done under the guise of fighting antisemitism.
Breaking News: The Trump administration intends to block $510 million in federal contracts and grants for Brown University.
April 3, 2025 at 11:44 PM