Jacob T. Levy
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jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy
@jacobtlevy.bsky.social
62K followers 1.1K following 15K posts

Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory, Associate member of Philosophy, Coordinator of Research Group on Constitutional Studies, McGill.
Posts here speak only for myself.
Americo-Canadian; liberaltarian; aging geek.
http://jacobtlevy.com .. more

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Jacob T. Levy is an American political theorist and Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University. Levy is the Chair of the Department of Political Science at McGill, as well as the coordinator of McGill's Research Group on Constitutional Studies and the founding director of McGill's Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds. Levy is also a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and the Institute for Humane Studies. He is known for his expertise on multiculturalism, liberalism, and pluralism. .. more

Political science 68%
Law 8%
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jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 4h
[guffawsnort]

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 4h
seconded, or rather thirded.

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 4h
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/o...
Opinion | One Last Chat With David Brooks
www.nytimes.com

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 4h
I'm criticizing the lack of knowledge of the actual PBS NewsHour talking head and about-to-be Yale instructor, and you're accusing me of elitism by comparing me to people who watch NewsHour and complaining that I'm not paying attention to all those people who don't go to college at all.

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 5h
This is a B- student who fed the Cliff Notes of the Himmelfarb book into chatGPT ten minutes before class because he didn’t actually read the book. Yes, that book is in the background of this utterance, but no, I don’t think the book gets the blame.

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 5h
Exactly.

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 5h
Goddamn, how do you *do* that?

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 5h
Over and over and over again for decades!

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 5h
Did I piss in your corn flakes?

Reposted by Norbert Schwarz, Guy Grossman, Paul Goldstein , and 11 more

brendannyhan.bsky.social
Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 6h
Utterly unacceptable in a democracy. In a sane world, House Republicans would be drafting impeachment articles today and Senate Republicans would be preparing for a trial to convict and remove him from office

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

jcherniss.bsky.social
Joshua Cherniss @jcherniss.bsky.social · 6h
Reminds me of Brooks' off-made comment that his career has been one long attempt "to be less shallow than maybe I naturally am."
Must try harder.

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

chrisbrooke.bsky.social
Chris Brooke @chrisbrooke.bsky.social · 6h
My excellent PhD student @uncanonical.net is working in this area--mostly on C18th authors like Hume, Rousseau, Smith, and Grouchy, but also with attention to the recent explosion of scientitic literature on empathy, and the current right-wing attack on the whole idea.

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 7h
RIGHT

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

louisevans.bsky.social
Louis @louisevans.bsky.social · 7h
“conservatism, which certain enlightened, heroic intellectuals bravely invented”

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 8h
That’s what he’s *trying* to rely on, but he doesn’t understand Himmelfarb or the theorists.

Himmelfarb did not think the Scottish Enlightenment theorists *decided to found a society* based on sentiment.

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

libankerdc.bsky.social
Elisabeth R. Anker @libankerdc.bsky.social · 8h
But also best use of a Schitt’s Creek meme I’ve seen all year

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 8h
"decided to base their society on the sentiments" is going to make me angry all weekend.

Reposted by Kim L. Scheppele, Ben H. Ansell, Tom Clark , and 2 more

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 8h
The kind of utter confusion Brooks is going to inflict on Yale undergrads.

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 8h
the timeline in which Edith Keeler lives…

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 8h
I would've thought we were looking at a lot more than that, given the constantly changing dates for WW3 and the Eugenics Wars, the time screwiness in Enterprise, the branching in Picard s2, etc, even if we discount minor hiccups like Trials & Tribblations, Time's Arrow, Yesterday's Enterprise...

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 10h
Starfleet Academy:

Well, that was a startling shift in tone! And a welcome one, though I'd been mostly enjoying the show already. Now I'm getting impressed with it.

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 11h
In that second shot, he's sitting— but he's supposed to be sitting *up* on a barstool.

jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 11h
I was pretty delighted by Blue Moon.

But Lorenz Hart was said to be 5 feet tall. What Hawke has referred to as the "old timey stagecraft" they did (lowered seats, "standing" on his knees, etc) resulted in his looking noticeably shorter than that, and by a noticeably inconsistent margin.

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Jacob T. Levy

fishkin.bsky.social
Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 20h
What's even better about this victory is that it means the federal government no longer contests that Judge Lin was right about their strategy of weaponizing Title VI.

They had a playbook, Judge Lin identified it, it's ugly, and the government no longer appeals an injunction ordering them to stop.
1 That language is as follows: “At stage one, a Task Force Agency announces investigations or plannedenforcement actions related to alleged civil rights violations at a school. At stage two, Funding Agenciescancel the school’s federal grants en masse without following Title VI and IX procedural requirementsor limiting the scope of the terminations to non-compliant programs. At stage three, DOJ demands thepayment of millions or billions of dollars—a penalty that Title VI and IX do not authorize—and requiresa wide range of policy changes as a condition for restoring funding and avoiding further fundingdisruptions.”

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Jacob T. Levy

fishkin.bsky.social
Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 20h
That strategy is dangerous. But UCLA no longer has to worry about it, w/regard to any grant cancellations ostensibly based on a Title VI violation, or any of the wave cancellations from last July.

UCLA can respond to any grant cancellations/refusals by suing the govt for violating the injunction.

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Jacob T. Levy

fishkin.bsky.social
Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 20h
The administration has busily been building the case for stopping universities from pursuing their claims about the (blatant, extreme) procedural violations involved since the start of the DOGE grant cancellations by rerouting these claims to the Court of Claims.

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Jacob T. Levy

fishkin.bsky.social
Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 20h
...they go through all the considerable procedural and substantive steps laid out in the relevant statutes.

Now you might say, wtf, this injunction just says "we promise to obey the law next time" so what good is that?

Actually it's great.

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Jacob T. Levy, Greg Linden

fishkin.bsky.social
Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 20h
And this injunction has an unusual character. It is forward-looking as well as backward-looking. It says the Trump administration agrees, first, not to suspend or block or "refuse to grant" any type of grants to the UCs based on allegations of supposed violations of Title VI, unless...
1. Defendants are ENJOINED and/or STAYED from refusing to grant, non-renewing,withholding, freezing, suspending, terminating, conditioning, or otherwise restricting use of federalfunds, or threatening to do so, to the University of California (“UC”), defined to include any of itscampuses, laboratories, and affiliated medical centers, based on alleged discrimination on the basis ofrace, color, national origin, or sex, until after full compliance with all of the required steps, consistentwith all procedural and substantive requirements governing the termination of federal financialassistance under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §2000d et seq., and Title IX of theEducation Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. §1681 et seq., and all procedural and substantiverequirements governing the termination of federal financial assistance under the applicable Title VI andTitle IX implementing regulations, and all procedural and substantive requirements under theAdministrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. §§551-559, 701-706 (“APA”), including but not limited to thefollowing:

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Marc Lynch, Ben H. Ansell , and 22 more

fishkin.bsky.social
Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 20h
This is a genuinely huge, sweeping victory today for the University of California—or rather, for us, its faculty, acting through our faculty associations, while the UC itself maintained a strict policy of deer-in-headlights silence.

The Trump admin has given up its appeal of a powerful injunction:
Trump administration drops appeal of court order blocking $1.2-billion UCLA settlement
The Trump administration dropped its appeal of a major higher education case in which a federal judge blocked its $1.2-billion settlement proposal to UCLA over alleged civil rights violations. It will...
www.latimes.com

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Philip N. Cohen, Richard Waite , and 4 more

dieworkwear.bsky.social
derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 23h
if you're an older person who finds words like mogg and maxxing annoying, just starting using them. people over the age of 30 have the superpower to end trends by simply adopting them