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Reposted by Arthur Asseraf

Dr Rashmee Roshan Lall @rashmee.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

The curious case of the missing #couscous: @arthurasseraf.bsky.social is very droll in this @vittles.bsky.social piece ..."let me make a very specific threat: I will come to your house, make a Yorkshire pudding from a packet...eat it cold & call it a Sunday roast ” open.substack.com/pub/vittles/...

open.substack.com

The curious case of the missing couscous

Why, in a city that has everything from tacos to tteokbokki, is it hard to find couscous? Arthur Asseraf investigates. Illustration by Sing Yun Lee.

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Reposted by Arthur Asseraf

Katherine Ibbett @eparpillee.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Historian-as-investigator: here's @arthurasseraf.bsky.social on the problem of couscous in London and, beautifully, on the toxic sauces of nostalgia. An essay that makes you want to eat, read, gather. www.vittlesmagazine.com/p/the-curiou...

vittlesmagazine.com

The curious case of the missing couscous

Why, in a city that has everything from tacos to tteokbokki, is it hard to find couscous? Arthur Asseraf investigates. Illustration by Sing Yun Lee.

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

@brettrushforth.bsky.social says 'Colonisations' is 'among the most innovative contributions to French colonial scholarship for the pre-revolutionary period'. But that was just a warm-up for co-editor Mélanie Lamotte's upcoming BY FLESH AND TOIL out this month!! www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

hup.harvard.edu

By Flesh and Toil — Harvard University Press

A richly detailed transoceanic history of the early French Empire, illuminating how it became bound by a common legal culture of race—as well as how enslaved and free people critically shaped the deve...

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Glad to see this roundtable on Colonisations Notre Histoire out! It was great to read Rose Ndengue, Robert Aldrich, Jennifer Boittin and Brett Rushforth look at the volume from different perspectives, and to have the opportunity to respond to what such a project can and cannot do

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Thank you, I’m glad the end hit, it was fun to write and respond to colleagues!

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Reposted by Arthur Asseraf

Cambridge University History Faculty @camhistory.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

A successful fieldtrip to the National Radio Centre at Bletchley Park, staffed by the enthusiastic NRC volunteers 🙌 Dr Arthur Asseraf and his Special Subject students left inspired by the history, development and future of radio communications. @arthurasseraf.bsky.social @pembroke1347.bsky.social

Dr Arthur Asseraf, Associate Professor in the History of France and the Francophone World, takes his Special Subject students on a fieldtrip to the National Radio Centre in Bletchley Park

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

Can I ask for help? I’m not sure how to use this platform (or any social media) anymore. I’ve been away bc it all feels a bit useless with the world right now. But when I was on Twitter a lot, it gave my work meaning - since then I feel in a bit of a crisis professionally, and stuck. Tips welcome!

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

JOB!!! Four-year full-time job in Modern European History (Social/Economic) at Cambridge. By today's standards, it's pretty good! Split between Trinity Hall College and History Faculty. It's also widely defined so do apply, deadline July 27. @camhistory.bsky.social www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNR005/s...

jobs.ac.uk

Senior Teaching Associate [Temporary Cover] at University of Cambridge

Searching for an academic job? Explore this Senior Teaching Associate [Temporary Cover] opening on jobs.ac.uk! Click to view more details and browse other academic jobs.

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Reposted by Arthur Asseraf

Tess Stenson-Childs @tessstenson.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

No trans people were consulted on this decision that only affects trans people. In fact trans people were actively barred from consulting on this decision that only affects trans people. But transphobic bigots? Oh they got consulted for days. Fucking grim. I'm absolutely fuming.

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

That institution obviously no longer exists. This unforgivable university administration that has targeted students and staff, and has restricted the freedoms of all students including Jewish ones. I trust those people that taught me more than my degree - they can have it back.

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

So Columbia at the time was a rare place for the young Jewish man that I was to learn a language that my ancestors had stopped speaking. I was taught by the best Palestinian scholars in a way that could only happen in New York City. It was an environment that was both safe and exciting 3/

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Columbia was also where I had the first opportunity to take classes in Middle East Studies. In a class on Islamic Law, the most essential participant was a lawyer who had a deep knowledge of Jewish Halakhic law and kept comparing the two systems 2/

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

I want to send a very sincere Fuck You to Columbia University, let me be specific: Columbia was where I started learning Arabic, and in my class were at least three Orthodox Jewish women who consistently bodied everyone else due to their excellent Hebrew grammar. 1/

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Reposted by Arthur Asseraf

Camille Lefebvre @camillelefebvre.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Podcast indispensable dont 1 phrase résonne avec ce qui se joue ces dernières années autour de la place des legs coloniaux dans notre présent du Sahel à Mayotte, de l’Algérie à la Kanaky-Nouvelle Calédonie « On a jamais aussi bien connu le phénomène colonial et on ne l’a jamais aussi peu reconnu »

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Thank you this was a great read :)

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

As things are getting worse for Palestinians, our ability to protest this abroad is shrinking. Some UK universities (like mine) are trying to ban demonstrations for 🇵🇸 please consider donating to legal costs to resist this, esp. if you’re based at a university/in the UK donorbox.org/studentprote...

donorbox.org

DEFEND THE RIGHT TO PROTEST: SUPPORT SOAS & CAMBRIDGE STUDENT ENCAMPMENTS FOR PALESTINE | European Legal Support Center (Powered by Donorbox)

Help us defend the right to protest on our campuses! We are witnessing intensified repression and criminalisation of student-led protests, and your support is as crucial as ever to fight back. ...

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

PSA: I’m sorry I didn’t answer your email. Yes, all of you. I have a very heavy admin job atm and cannot respond to as many requests for media, conferences or writing projects as I would like this year (especially if they’re far away). But keep bothering me and I’ll do my best!

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

We did not pay anyone for this review I promise

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

A surprise to find that our book “Colonisations: notre histoire” which came out in 2023 is in this week’s @londonreview.bsky.social Especially great because of how seldom books in foreign languages get reviewed in English 👇🏼 www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

lrb.co.uk

Rahmane Idrissa · The Time of the Whites: The Will to Colonise

The will to colonise has not disappeared. Colonisation may be gone from much of what used to be the French empire, but...

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

The Fr government spent a vast amount of money compensating settlers for their property, which they then invested in France. No reparations have been paid to Algerians. So this exodus in 1962 cannot be separated from the status of people in an unequal society before + after

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

And finally on seizure of property: the most significant consequence of this was land redistribution. For those who lost property, this was obviously terrible but interestingly they sought redress from the French government - not the Algerian one, and that’s who compensated them -

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

It is a remarkable achievement of colonialism to not only dispossess people but then give them lessons on how they are meant to end this. If Palestinians had been listened to rather than told they need to come up with betters plans we would not be here in the first place

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Do I wish things had happened differently? Sure. Do I find the FLN’s lack of an articulation of what an Algeria for different people might mean frustrating? Absolutely. Does that mean that I attribute the events to that and think that it was a failure? Absolutely not

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

This mainstream view, which is also that of the French government, has no historical understanding of colonialism, and of their state’s responsibility in generating that situation in the first place. The settlers were encouraged by the state and supported by its army

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

The mainstream view in France is that Algerian independence was a disaster. It goes from the center (or even center left) to far right, with different nuances. The argument is that 1962 was terrible and could have been avoided and that the FLN is dreadful

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Ok, for me, the best way to explain this is to describe who the people are who make the argument you are making when it comes to Algeria, and why I disagree with them:

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Yair, I truly do not see how you can read my essay and believe that I think it was ‘less bad’ or that lives were not destroyed. I don’t know what you’re implying by positionality but that can cut several ways.

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

The whole point is that it is easy to look back and say ‘well they were always going to choose to leave’. No. There is nothing fundamentally different about them compared to Australians or Israelis. And Algeria is no more or less paradigmatic a case than either. They all have something to teach us

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

I would warmly encourage you to read more about the different kinds of people who left Algeria: where they came from, their relationship to that land, and to France. What you’re writing glosses over a huge amount of pain and human experience to prove a point about categorization /

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

I am well aware of the similarities you’re describing and in fact that’s why I wrote them into the article bc I thought it would make it more powerful. But I think we fundamentally disagree about what colonialism is and how it operates

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Because Algerians inherited in 1962 a state and society broken by colonialism - they tried to repair it, some things worked some did not. But comparing this to Zionists arriving and creating this problem is not helpful

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

I’m glad that my emphasis on developments in 1963 in Algeria, which I did mean to evoke developments with the Israeli constitution and absentee property law, came through to you. But there is a reason why I didn’t explicitly compare them which we keep returning to:

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

New record: not once but twice in one day have I received mail and email intended for Assef Ashraf (my taller, more attractive colleague who works on a different continent)

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

I include myself in this certain kind of person, otherwise I wouldn’t be in this job

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

… looking at all the different things that have been called settler colonialism by those doing it (which is my definition, not the fact that there happen to be settlers) shows that the category is messy anyways, and doesn’t predict outcomes

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

I take your point on the ability of this kind of analysis to reveal things. But I have noticed a huge amount of intellectual and political energy going into defining to what extent Zionism does or does not meet that theoretical model that seems (to me) misspent…

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Most African settler colonies, whether Algeria, Angola, Zimbabwe, Kenya, or Mozambique, offer more complex models than what he suggests. There were interesting discussions in the Algerian Revolution in the 1950s about whether the form of colonialism they were fighting was distinctive or not

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

But really, this comparative stuff is like an intellectual hard drug for a certain kind of person: if I can find the real comparison for you then boom it will all make sense - resist the temptation

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

I agree! And he is, I think, very wrong and too concerned about Australia being very different

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Algeria and Palestine are both paradigmatic cases of settler colonialism, and were discussed as such by the historical actors involved in the early 20th century. That does not say much about the possible political futures available 3/

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

There is no hard boundary between settler colonies and other colonies. From Zimbabwe to Australia, there is a whole spectrum of demographics and institutional arrangements. There’s not much point creating hard definitions of THIS IS A REAL ONE 2/

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

me: trying to fit Palestine into one model colony or another does not help us politically people: but you’ve never heard my perfect model An explanation of why this doesn’t work 👇🏼 1/

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

And here for more discussion 👇🏼

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

The crisis in leadership and vision of the Palestinian national movement is a problem for Palestinians, and that’s for them to resolve and not two Jews online. It is not the main problem.

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Treasures and oceans of Palestinian political thinking in the 20th century have not been able to convince most Israelis that Palestinians are equal human beings

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

… yes settler colonialism is dynamic and relational, and the same was true in Algeria. But it’s obviously an unequal relationship. The history of how Algerians and Palestinians thought of a future independent state is very interesting. But it does not explain the continuation of colonialism

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

But WHO has to imagine the future place of settlers? It is wild to look at Palestine now and say that the problem is that Palestinians haven’t thought enough about how to accommodate settlers in the future. The problem is settlement. It is Israelis, who have power now, who must do the imagining…

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Arthur Asseraf @arthurasseraf.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

And it does matter that the Algerian war of independence was started to end over a century of colonial rule, and that the Nakba was an acceleration of colonialism. The contingency of events that led to departure matters, but it’s meaningless without deeper context 4/

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