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John Harris

@drjohnaeharris.bsky.social
3.7K followers 1.2K following 665 posts

Historian, professor, author of The Last Slave Ships (Yale Press). ✍️ new book, Spying on The Slave Trade. Rep’d by Deirdre Mullane N. Irish immigrant to U.S. www.johnaeharris.com

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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 9h
Giving my students extra credit for registering to vote. Small class, they are all U.S. citizens, only one had voted before.
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 15h
Speaking of Hawks, Hawkeyes, etc, I would like read a history of how American sports teams got animal names. Any suggestions?
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Thiago Krause @thiagokrause.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Call for proposals for a workshop, my people! Slavery and transimperial trade next March at William & Mary. Please spread it far and wide: I want to read your many great proposals!
atlanticexchanges.wm.edu
2027 Workshop Call for Proposals - Atlantic Exchanges Workshop
Atlantic Exchanges 2027 Slavery and the Commercial Machinery of Empires The Atlantic Exchanges Workshop invites proposals for its second edition, […]
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Keri Leigh Merritt @kerileighmerritt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Today is book release day!!! So thrilled that An Inconvenient Woman is finally out after years of research & writing. Thanks to everyone who has ordered or told their library to order - I truly appreciate you!♥️♥️♥️ @stmartinspress.bsky.social us.macmillan.com/books/978125...
us.macmillan.com
An Inconvenient Woman
A revelatory and immersive biography of a white Southern woman who was a key figure in the early civil rights movement, devoting her life to ending segregati...
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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I give up. I’m moving into a cave.
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Drew Gilpin Faust reviews Moving Toward Freedom: The Political Education of Enslaved Americans by Susan Eva O’Donovan And A Terrible Intimacy: Interracial Life in the Slaveholding South by Melvin Patrick Ely
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Anna O. Law @unlawfulentries.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Had bookmarked this and just now listened. Fantastic episode. The enslavement of Native Americans was based on *where* they were. They were on land that settler Americans wanted. It was qualitatively distinct from the enslavement of African Americans and those differences need to be understood.
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
In the mess that is federal funding I just learned my department got a grant to teach teachers about the history of technology, which everyone seems to agree is important right now
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Andrés Pertierra @andrespertierra.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Pretty astounding scoop from independent cuban media site El Toque; we now have granular details of financial workings of Cuban embassy in DC. In 6 years it made over $250 million USD sending most of it home while workers lived on a few hundred a month eltoque.com/las-cuentas-...
eltoque.com
Las cuentas secretas de la Embajada cubana en Washington: esta es la cantidad de dinero que recaudan en Estados Unidos
Documentos internos filtrados revelan que el Gobierno cubano convirtió sus servicios consulares en Estados Unidos en una fuente multimillonaria de ingresos, con metas anuales de recaudación que llegar...
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Andrea Woo @andreawoo.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
* timeline cleanse * Please enjoy this adorable CBC video of a preschool class in Baltimore taking an imaginary trip to Canada 🥹🇨🇦
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Jacqueline Antonovich @jackiantonovich.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
We also looked at some FSA primary sources and this one really grabbed students' attention. It's a diagram that shows the arrangement of members of the Boston Anti-Man-Hunting League as they would surround a man-hunter, concealing him until he consented to release the person he was trying to kidnap
This diagram, explained by a note written by Henry I. Bowditch, shows the arrangement of members of the Boston Anti-Man-Hunting League as they would surround a man-hunter, concealing him until he consented to release the person he was attempting to kidnap. The League was a secret society founded in Boston in 1854 to resist the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. The diagram, in pencil and watercolor on brown paper, places the slave hunter in the center (SH), surrounded by the speaker of the committee (S), a member to take hold of the hunter's head (C), two members to take hold of the arms (A1 and A2) and two for the feet (F1 and F2), and twelve additional members to form an outer circle to ward off intruders while the committee conveyed the victim to safety. Bowditch's note continues, "One plagued in this way would not invite others to come & run the same risk of annoyance."
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
So true
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David Veevers @davidveevers.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
My old boss has asked me to give his new book a social media bump, because he has wisely chosen never to set up his own account! So I’m happy to announce that ‘Britain’s Slave Traders: A Hidden History’ is available today in all good bookshops! www.penguin.co.uk/books/460026...
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Greg O’Malley @gogogomalley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Amazing job opportunity the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for a curator of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery: nypl.pinpointhq.com/en/postings/...
nypl.pinpointhq.com
Curator, Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery - Schomburg Center
Job Opening: Curator, Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery - Schomburg Center at The New York Public Library in Schomburg Center.
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
This looks like an incredible book
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Popping in to say the Abigail Adams, John Adams, Mercy Otis Warren "remember the ladies" letters remain brilliant for classroom discussion
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elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
💯 this. Yesterday in my history class we pulled our tables into a circle and discussed a book about Pocahontas. Old school. Book in hand stuff. The conversation went all over, in a good way. It was dynamic, challenging, fun, unexpected. Students ate it up.
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Ok this was pretty good
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Kudos to Nick Radburn, Will Pettigrew and others for putting this together. Very important resource on the British slave trade.
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Adam Chapman @adamchapman.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This is a very interesting new resource, The Register of British Slave-Traders. 'The Register focusses on the individuals who sought to profit from the enslavement of over 3 million African men, women, and children, whose identity was – for the most part – erased from the historical record.' 🗃️
britishslavetraders.org
The Register of British Slave-Traders
The Register of British Slave-traders compiles and presents information on all known slave-traders in Britain who invested in the trafficking of captive Africans from 1563 to 1807.
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Karin Wulf @kawulf.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Teaching is the very thing that’s been degraded and underfunded and is the very thing that we know across k-16 is the most important aspect of student learning and outcomes – well beyond the classroom. Yes, this is now my checklist for any essay/ pod abt "higher ed." 10/
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Karin Wulf @kawulf.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Students in discussion of uncurated materials is not teaching. Students hanging out together is not teaching. Good teaching is the thing that AI cannot do, while it can mimic a role in the first two. 9/
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Karin Wulf @kawulf.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I have listened to and read lots and lots of What AI will Mean for College and the one big thing that gets skips all the time is TEACHING. Information provided is not teaching. 8/
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Professor Claire Jowitt @clairejowitt.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Please do get in touch with ideas for #maritime books - our @degruyterbrill.bsky.social series 'Early Modern Maritime Humanities 1400-1800: Oceans in History and Culture', ed. by me & John Mcaleer is keen to hear from you! Contact me or @erikagaffney.bsky.social here or via brill.com/page/forthco...
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
My dear fellow millennials: I was having a perfectly fine evening introducing my kid to Beauty and the Beast only to learn it was made in 1991 … 35 years ago.
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Una Mullally @unamullally.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
“Trump is a bully and a braggart, a self-confessed sexual predator and a purveyor of racial slurs... Most people would not welcome such a man into their home, and the majority of Irish people will not welcome this visit.” Irish Times editorial on Trump in Ireland.
irishtimes.com
The Irish Times view on Trump’s visit: a less than welcome guest
Most people would not welcome such a man into their home but political leaders must make a different calculation
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Rebecca Spang @rlspang.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Sounds like a great new book by Alan Taylor: "They knew slavery was morally wrong and dangerously unstable, but repressing that knowledge seemed easier than addressing it. Monstrous cruelty became a “tradition” worth loving.: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/b...
nytimes.com
Piercing the Delusions of a ‘Humane’ Plantation (Gift Article)
In “Tower Hill,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar Alan Taylor pulls apart the twisted logic of a Virginia slave owner and his descendants.
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McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 10/09/2026
"To establish that AI did not write your book, we will upload it to an AI detector. The detector will retain your words, learn from your distinct syntax and semicolon placement, and use them to improve the technology that will eventually produce more books resembling yours." buff.ly/FYVr6Zx
mcsweeneys.net
A Note from Your Editor Regarding the Entirely Routine Authentication of Your Humanity
“To establish that AI did not write your book, we will upload it to an AI detector. The detector will retain your words, learn from your distinct syntax and ...
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Karin Wulf @kawulf.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Relatedly, how I wish this little post wasn't relevant / necessary. karinwulf.com/tidbits/cove...
karinwulf.com
Coverture, Now More than Ever - Karin Wulf
Coverture is a legal principle in which a married woman's legal identity and capacity is subsumed under her husband's.
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
My oddest job: I was in police line ups while I was in college, Belfast, c2006.
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King Algamemnon @adamrothman.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Harriet Tubman lived into the 20th century, and late in her life, she founded a nursing home for elderly black people, where she lived out her days in a dormitory named John Brown Hall. www.nps.gov/places/tubma...
nps.gov
Harriet Tubman Home for Aged & Indigent Negroes (U.S. National Park Service)
Harriet Tubman Home for Aged & Indigent Negroes
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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
we hear (rightly!) a lot of moaning about peer review but occasionally, as editor, I read a review which is just such an impressive piece of scholarship in its own right, such an act of generosity towards the original author, that I wish the review itself would be published and read more widely
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Kevin M. Levin @civilwarmemory.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
My new book finally arrived. Say hello to A GLORIOUS FATE: THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF COLONEL ROBERT GOULD SHAW. #booksky #CivilWarMemory cc: @uncpress.bsky.social
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Teaching Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson never fails. Walking through the Hemings family tree with students gathered round a table - and filling in the world they lived in as we go - is a simple but effective strategy. Jaws drop. As ever, a salute to @agordonreed.bsky.social.
Hemings family tree
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
My sweet colleagues and students decorated my office door to celebrate my manuscript submission
Decorated office door
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Casey Schmitt @csschmitt.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
It is such an incredible honor to have my book included as a finalist alongside the excellent scholarship of Kim Hall and Daniel Lord Smail. I haven't stopped smiling since they made the announcement! 🗃️ macmillan.yale.edu/glc/stories/...
macmillan.yale.edu
Yale Announces 2026 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Finalists
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Brilliant
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Stephen West @stephenwest.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
still my favorite Civil War soldier's letter and it's not even close
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Instead of asking your colleagues to read your manuscript, host a “roast my chapter titles” event with food and drink in your office. They will come, and it will be helpful. Trust me.
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Just submitted my manuscript to Yale Press. Spying on the Slave Trade - a bio of the most important abolitionist you never heard of - coming to you in 2027!
Book submission
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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 02/09/2026
Huge thanks and congrats to the @aimoratoriumnyc.bsky.social @comixaction.com and everyone who answered the call to demand @mayor.nyc.gov establish a moratorium on "A.i." in the public schools. We got a PARTIAL win today, thanks to you! But more needs to be done... 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/n...
nytimes.com
A.I. Is to Be Banned in N.Y.C. Elementary and Middle Schools
A new policy to be announced by the Department of Education bars younger students from using artificial intelligence, but stops short of a moratorium.
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Just submitted my manuscript to Yale Press. Spying on the Slave Trade - a bio of the most important abolitionist you never heard of - coming to you in 2027!
Book submission
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David Veevers @davidveevers.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Transcribing a 1660 treaty that, amongst other things, forced the English and French into agreeing to abolish the slave trade in Indigenous Caribbeans in exchange for peace. Quite remarkable, and I'm happy to stand corrected if anyone has ever come across a treaty like this.
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I am submitting my manuscript tomorrow and I’m reading it over—and I’m delighted to say it is NOT BAD!
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Russell Brown @publicaddress.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
I bumped into my Hungarian buddy on Friday, fresh back from a visit home. He said it's hard now to find anyone who'll cop to having been an Orban supporter. The regime is very rapidly disappearing into history. This how quickly things can turn. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
The Guardian view on the new Hungary: de-Orbánising at pace | Editorial
Editorial: As a Brussels deadline looms with over €10bn at stake, Péter Magyar’s first three months have been transformative in addressing a corrupt legacy
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Holly Brewer @earlymodjustice.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Slaves were the collateral for that debt. There are crucial structural issues here we should be paying more attention to. Book link below. Note eg praise from Peter Onuf. I’m curious to see what others will think—
press.princeton.edu
The King's Slaves
A provocative account of how empire and absolutism institutionalized slavery in America
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Carly Goodman @carlygoodman.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
What a story in the NYT real estate section 😭
Nestled on the Upper West Side, and Still Surviving

By D.W. GIBSON
Ira Goetz has lost much of his sight. *I can see people, he said. But only shapes any colors. I can't recognize the faces." Keeping his remaining vision requires getting regu-
ar injections in his cy
His hearing is almost gone too. For Mr.
Goetz, a conversation is possible only with those who speak in a loud, deliberate voice, directly into his left ear, where he can still pick up sounds through a hearing aid.
Even with these challenges,
Mr. Goetz,
who turns 98 in December, still lives in his own apartment
"My friends all died out," he said. "I'm the
one left."
In many ways, Mr. Goetz has been a sur-
vivor since age le Indes when ever one tr his immediate family was killed by German soldiers in the town of Biecz, Poland.
Mr. Goetz, the oldest boy in the family, recalled his mother telling, him to run. town was being liquidated," he said. *We knew the Germans were killing off every-oody. I was the only one wno managed Lo get away."
He ran into the countryside and slept in caves. "I didn't eat for three or four days," he said.
Mr. Goetz managed to connect with an uncle and a lew cousins, our eventually all of them, including Ira, were put into concen-
Mr. Goetz said his ability to quickly mas. ter German was an important part of why he survived. He was able to communicate with soldiers and they assigned him a job, giving him a key so he could open and close a secured bathroom for them.
After liberation, Mr. Goetz moved to New York. "I had an aunt and an uncle here," he said. "They took me to James Monroe High School to register. Thad no idea what high school was. I had no idea about English." He found good teachers, put his proclivity for languages to work and earned his high school diploma in less than two years. He went on to attend college and graduate school, eventually earning a master's degree in foreign languages from Columbia University.
His first years on his own in Manhattan were marked by f…
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John Harris @drjohnaeharris.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
@willdalrymple.bsky.social brings a historian’s perspective to the problem of monster corporations - and how to tame them. Brilliant essay.
nytimes.com
Opinion | What It Took to Dismantle the Most Powerful Company in the World (Gift Article)
A playbook to curb the growing power of Big Tech.
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