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Devadas Moodley

@historydev.bsky.social
960 followers 1.5K following 689 posts

Historian etc retired academic. South Asia, Africa, Empire. Museums, Art history

PostsRepliesMedia
Devadas Moodley @historydev.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
The Way We Were (And Are) timothyburke.substack.com/p/the-way-we... Complex but very useful thoughts on Cold War progressives, CIA funding and the divisiveness today.
timothyburke.substack.com
The Way We Were (And Are)
How To Remember Lives, and How Not To
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Remember: no judge or jury has found these boats were trafficking drugs. We're simply taking Trump's word for it. This is a danger to us all.
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Otto English @ottoenglish.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
It's explosive. It's also completely predictable. To see Reform say on camera that Electoral Commission is useless and toothless wasn't shocking... it's plain to see.
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Jenna @stay-a-spell.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I think it's worth noting that nothing is being done now. Johnson has kept congress home for most of the year over the Epstien files. The two year average is 284 stand alone bills passed. This congress has passed 38....they hold all 3 branches. These are not serious people.
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
American workers are taking home their smallest share of the nation's wealth since 1947 — even as corporate profits soar. Why? This chart has the answer.
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William Owen @wdowen.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
The life of Eliza Ogilvy opens up rabbit holes I sometimes run down gratefully. This is a deep one, concerning the granddaughters of the Congress leader Dadabhai Naoroji and their leading role in the Indian liberation movement in Mumbai in the 1920s and ‘30s. eaho.substack.com/p/the-captai...
eaho.substack.com
The Captain sisters in Bombay, organising women's resistance to British rule in India
Dadabhai Naoroji paid for his granddaughters to have the very best education at Oxford & the Sorbonne; they used it wisely, to lead the women's Satyagraha movement and the boycott campaign in Bombay.
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Devadas Moodley @historydev.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The killing of a black man broligarchy.substack.com/p/the-killin... Terrifying and saddening analysis of the orchestrated campaign against Dr. Jason Arday.
broligarchy.substack.com
The killing of a black man
A French researcher exposes the network of “race realists” who hunted Jason Arday like prey and the media who fell into their trap
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Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
""Everyone can’t be Dolly, and I don’t think everyone should be Dolly. But everyone can be inspired by a public figure who figured out her path and used it to do so much good."
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Simon Wren-Lewis @sjwrenlewis.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
This week's post: Media regulation is partly about protecting individuals and groups from powerful organisations and the wealthy, but it is also about protecting democracy. mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2026/08/medi... The imbalance of power between the media and an individual also applies to groups.
mainlymacro.blogspot.com
Media regulation is partly about protecting individuals and groups from powerful organisations and the wealthy, but it is also about protecting democracy.
Are pile-ons by the media on individuals acceptable? It depends on the individual. If it’s a politician then probably yes, in that the pol...
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Simon Wren-Lewis @sjwrenlewis.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Y'days post: Media regulation is partly about protecting individuals and groups from powerful organisations and the wealthy, but it is also about protecting democracy. mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2026/08/medi... Why should newspapers be unaccountable for what they do?
mainlymacro.blogspot.com
Media regulation is partly about protecting individuals and groups from powerful organisations and the wealthy, but it is also about protecting democracy.
Are pile-ons by the media on individuals acceptable? It depends on the individual. If it’s a politician then probably yes, in that the pol...
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Alex Zalben @azalben.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Here's the official announcement of Parton's passing from her reps, along with the request that in lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to be made to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library at www.imaginationlibrary.com
NASHVILLE, TN (August 25, 2026) – Global icon and humanitarian, Dolly Parton, known to the world as a beloved singer, songwriter, philanthropist, actress, playwright, and author died peacefully today in Nashville, Tennessee. She was 80 years old.

 

Dolly is preceded in death by her beloved husband of 59 years Carl Thomas Dean (1942 – 2025), her mother Avie Lee Caroline Owens (1923 – 2003), and father, Robert Lee Parton, Sr. (1921 – 2000). 

 

A rhinestone life that shone bright enough for the world to see, Dolly will forever stand as an inspiration not only through her timeless music and prolific songwriting, but also her wit, warmth, and kindness that made us all feel like family. Dolly Parton’s legacy is one of love, compassion, and resilience. With a seven-decade career, she inspired multiple generations of artists and fans with her music and an unwavering commitment to making the world a better place. Her songs will continue to resonate with people of all ages, and her philanthropic work will have a lasting impact.

 

At Dolly’s request, a small, private service will be held for immediate family. Dolly’s fans and friends from around the world are encouraged to pay tribute to Dolly on social media by tagging @DollyParton or by leaving a message at www.dollyparton.com.         

 

In lieu of flowers the family asks for donations to be made to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library at www.imaginationlibrary.com.
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Amy Sater @amysater.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
THIS. Every Sociology 101 student learns this before the second midterm. Every life science major should hear this in Intro Bio and Genetics, at minimum.
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Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
NEW: I can't get this story out of my head. And I know I'm not alone. The attempt to cover up the complicity of the UK media's role in Jason Arday's death may be its sickest move yet. broligarchy.substack.com/p/the-jason-...
broligarchy.substack.com
The Jason Arday Reckoning
The attempts to cover up the complicity of the UK media’s role in his death may be its sickest move yet
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Allison Gill @muellershewrote.com · 21/08/2026
The GOP spends billions on the war, tax cuts for the wealthy, and ICE/CBP, but they want you to think it's the National Endowment for the Arts and SNAP that are the problems.
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Peter Jukes @peterjukes.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Of the 33 peer reviewed and highly successful papers Jason Arday produced, only two have been challenged. They were cleared once. They will be cleared again. But of those two only 3% has been cited as problematic. So 3% of 7% of his output. Can anyone do the math that makes Arday a plagiarist?
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black.girl.historian, phd @blkgrlhistorian.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
a. tool. is. a. tool. also, read through the replies.
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@GottaLaff @gottalaff.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
+ 100s of 1000s, mostly children, have died because of Musk's cuts to USAID
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George Eaton @georgeeaton.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Ulez has delivered remarkable public health gains in a short period. Sadiq deserves more credit than he’s had for defying Labour pressure to U-turn after Uxbridge. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
Ulez led to better lung size and function among London children, study finds
Researchers find capacity stunted by pollution restored after introduction of ultra-low emission zone
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Devadas Moodley @historydev.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
A Digital Lynching broligarchy.substack.com/p/a-digital-... Practical advice from Carol Cadwallader on how to support targets before it's too late.
broligarchy.substack.com
A Digital Lynching
A practical guide for individuals and organisations when the mobs gather
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Chris Dillow @chrisdillow.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
The hounding to death of Jason Arday should raise the importance of the qn: how can we repair our degraded public sphere? Without this, a rational politics is difficult. And yet there's little interest in the issue. Here's one I wrote earlier: chrisdillow.substack.com/p/repairing-...
chrisdillow.substack.com
Repairing the public sphere
An overlooked issue in politics is how to improve public forums.
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Prem Sikka @premnsikka.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
JP Morgan CEO warns UK chancellor not to hike taxes on banks, could raise £19bn. Says it would lose jobs From an industry that has closed bank branches, profiteered, taken bailouts, sold dud financial products, engaged in frauds, facilitated illicit financial flows. People must prevail over banks
theguardian.com
JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon warns UK chancellor not to hike taxes on banks
Billionaire CEO of world’s biggest bank says any windfall tax on sector’s bumper profits could harm jobs in City
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
'The request, made on July 27 by Guinea's minister of culture, Moussa Moïse Sylla, was made possible after the French Parliament passed a law in 2023 on the restitution of human remains.'
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Andrew McCabe @andrewahala.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
The Program of African Studies was founded by American anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits in 1948 as the first formal program on African and African Diaspora studies in American academia. The Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies is among the world's best, below some highlights.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Plenty to reflect about re: the Arday affair, but I'm going to repeat this one thing. The playbook the right used here is effective even though it's not especially sophisticated, as it relies on the audience to do the dirty work. I've been calling it "Trojan horse propaganda", let's go with that. 1/
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Marcus Rediker @marcusrediker.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Sad to hear of the passing of Sumit Sarkar, one of India’s greatest historians. It was an honor to meet him when I visited Kolkata and Delhi in 2008. He was a brilliant, gentle, altogether lovely man. The world is poorer today. frontline.thehindu.com/other/obitua...
frontline.thehindu.com
Sumit Sarkar: The Historian Who Changed Modern India
Historian Sumit Sarkar taught generations to question neat narratives, recover subaltern voices and connect class, caste and power in modern India.
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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Ok, some thoughts, as an olde tyme academic, on the Arday tragedy. First, allegations about causes. We don't know what was in his mind, but many people are keen to blame him, or woke lefties/academia, or the media. Some people are absolutely certain that the media are faultless. 1/
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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 16/08/2026
A former director of BBC News speaks:
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 13/08/2026
Shame liars out of public life; prosecute white-collar crime; regulate away all the business practices built on cheating people. Or just let society decay into incurable anomie and cynicism.
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Count Binface @countbinface.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
A brief note for Nadhim Zahawi.
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Devadas Moodley @historydev.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Very important thread here.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
When people were told "syphilis and tuberculosis are more prevalent among Black people", they didn't hear "immunity rates are lower in populations where the diseases are more novel" (what Woodson regards as the correct explanation), they heard confirmation of stereotypes already in circulation 5/
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Philosophers often bring up the "principle of charity": a willingness to assume good faith in an interlocutor and treat them accordingly. It's good to do in many circumstances. But it is worth formulating a principle of not being a fucking mark. If not during the rise of fascism, then when? 12/
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Jo Grady @drjogrady.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
I want to pay tribute to the firefighters in Stourbridge and across the UK who are bravely tacking dangerous fires. Given the impact of climate change their role has never been more important. We need investment in fire services not cuts. Solidarity to the FBU.
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Brad Heath @bradheath.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
President Trump administration's pledged to crack down on sex trafficking. Instead, investigations have stalled and prosecutions declined because of staffing shortages, funding cuts, immigration enforcement and growing distrust of the government among victims. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
I find the discourse around "wokeness" to be dishonest and tedious, but this is what I wrote about it a couple of years ago and I think it remains correct: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
I could go on, but I think you get the point. These things are real; they happened. To believe that the disadvantages of race, class, and gender imposed lawfully over centuries never occurred or entirely disappeared in just a few decades is genuinely “radical” in a negative way; to believe that creating those disadvantages was wrong and that they should be rectified is not. The idea that no one ever succeeds based on advantages unrelated to their personal abilities is likewise radical, and also ludicrous. But you can, perhaps, understand why one of the richest men in the world would consider the opposing idea—that where many people end up in life is the result of unearned advantages—to be a “woke mind virus” that should be eradicated. That kind of thinking leads to higher marginal tax rates for people with private planes.

Some people so deeply resent the implication that they possess any unearned advantage that, in Republican-run states all over the country, the same folks who were recently shrieking about free speech and oversensitive snowflakes are busy using the power of the state to ban discussions about factual matters that might hurt their feelings, such as descriptions of racial segregation in the story of Rosa Parks. The irony here is that by framing everything they don’t like as a symptom of pervasive oppression against white people or Christians that must be rectified by the state, they have themselves adopted the inverse of the logic they decry as “wokeness.” They believe that America’s demographic majorities are the targets of broad institutional discrimination, which is unjust not because such discrimination is morally abhorrent but because it is targeted at the wrong people.
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Charlotte Clymer @charlotteclymer.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
This story is a bit wild. After Elon Musk's DOGE erased decades of USAID data, it was assumed to be lost. But a Canadian college student had previously downloaded much of it in high school for a project. 4,000 PDFs. Thanks again, Canada. Yet again. www.aiddata.org/blog/before-...
aiddata.org
Before reimagining development data, remember what we’ve learned
Why we’re publishing a free, searchable, and ungated archive featuring a quarter-century of USAID evaluation reports.
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Daniel Gilmore @gilmored85.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
I've hit on this before, but one of my biggest beefs with Whats The Matter With Kansas? and the strain of political thought its help popularize is that it refused to take white voters at their own word for why they were voting for Republicans now—making it both obtuse & also condescending
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Jackmerius Tacktheritrix @j-tacktheritrix.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
During my time at ORR, I visited these kids' shelters and worked on projects to improve their care and speed their release. Work worthy of our government. What our tax dollars are doing here is an atrocity that should be shocking to all, even after everything this admin has done. (6/6)
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Simon Wren-Lewis @sjwrenlewis.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
This week's post: Unpicking the legacy of neoliberalism mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2026/08/unpi... The focus is now on the form of interventions that the government can make, rather than whether any intervention is necessary, or the type of industrial policy, rather than whether to have one.
mainlymacro.blogspot.com
Unpicking the legacy of neoliberalism
Neoliberalism as an overarching ideology for UK government died with the Brexit referendum in 2016, just as it did in the US with Trump’s ...
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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
MoJo ties the disasters in Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran to Kushner's corruption. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Dmitriev is now steeped in negotiations to end the fighting in Ukraine on Russia’s terms, with his old pal Kushner representing the United States. The Kremlin is dangling potential deals for US invest­ors that are reportedly worth trillions of dollars, if only America would lift its sanctions and welcome Russia back in from the cold. Kushner, meanwhile, has proved willing to peddle pro-Kremlin talking points time and again. In late 2025, he and special envoy Witkoff—whose family and the Trumps co-founded World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm in which a top UAE official would later purchase a 49 percent stake—publicized a “peace plan” for Ukraine. But its provisions, from capping Ukraine’s military to forcing Kyiv to cede territory that Russia hadn’t even conquered, were conspicuously pro-Moscow.

A Kremlin-friendly push by a US president with a mysterious Putin affinity might be unsurprising, but the details are galling. As investigative journalism site the Insider revealed, Kushner’s peace plan was in no way original. “Many of its most controversial conditions were contained” in a months-old Kremlin document the outlet had obtained. The plan was “at its core a recycled Russian document,” the Insider wrote, with “specific language that appeared almost exactly word-for-word in an earlier text—one drafted solely by Dmitriev.”
[snip]
On September 16, 2025, a UN commission officially declared Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide.

That same day, Forbes declared Kushner a billionaire.
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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Not to be some wild-eyed innocent, but I think it should be slightly bigger news that The Lancet have crunched the numbers and found that Musk's USAID cuts will kill 14 million people. And that's just by 2030. That's 9,600 people a day, every day, until the next world cup rolls around.
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Cheryl Rofer @cherylrofer.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Bret is angry. So am I. The war was started because Trump wanted another dopamine high after Venezuela and is totally ignorant of warfighting. Please don't try to make it sound like more than that.
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Chris Dillow @chrisdillow.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
"Defending neoliberalism today is too hard an ask. So many of the claims made under the banner of neoliberalism thirty years ago are questionable at best and in some cases clearly untrue." mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2026/08/unpi...
mainlymacro.blogspot.com
Unpicking the legacy of neoliberalism
Neoliberalism as an overarching ideology for UK government died with the Brexit referendum in 2016, just as it did in the US with Trump’s ...
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Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
They had contracted Blue Angels for 43 years; 43 years The owner says she never received a personal notice that Hegseth was canceling her or any reminder that her contract renewal was coming up This is how the Trump administration treats people, especially Black people
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Giles MacDonogh @gilesmacdonogh.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Death of Sir Anthony Kenny: www.msn.com/en-gb/money/...
msn.com
MSN
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Patrick Cosmos @veryimportant.lawyer · 06/08/2026
Aaron Swartz deserves more justice and reconsideration than almost anybody in this century
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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
This is such a good piece by @jaseokundaye.bsky.social. Excuse the long extract in the screenshot, but these points are really important.
But what happens when an academic’s story is sold through him being the “youngest black ever” (sitting alongside familiar monikers such as “the first black” or “black excellence”) and asterisked by a tale of hardship? You are not encouraged or invited to engage with the substance of their scholarship; instead, you are invited to clap. Instead of his appointment conjuring the question “what new opportunities for research will this lead to?”, it was “doesn’t this make you feel good?”

What this means is that Arday was treated not as a scholar but as a mascot, one who was particularly expedient for an institution that had been regularly embarrassed by its historic record on race: too few black students (in my cohort at Cambridge matriculating in 2015 there were only 15 black males out of 3,449 students); single-figure black academics (which is still the case); allegations of institutional racism. Independent of the merits or pitfalls of his own scholarship, what success looked like for Arday in this role was limited; what accountability could look like if misconduct occurred was constrained by him being a vehicle for Cambridge to signal its institutional progress.
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Medieval and Early Modern Orients (MEMOs) @memorients.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
The Nawab, the Surgeon, and the Parrot: guest contributor Dr Kristof Szitar traces the journey of a Persian manuscript from South India to Hungary (via an English surgeon) in today's new blog post. memorients.com/articles/the...
memorients.com
The Nawab, the Surgeon, and the Parrot: A Persian Manuscript Between Arcot and Northumbria | MEMOs
The manuscript reveals the overlooked role played by colonial intermediaries, such as surgeons, in moving Persianate objects into European collections.
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Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
The law firm started working with Wall Street and that transformed its organizational identity and moral commitments. This is a case I would teach in an orgs or economic sociology course.
"The shift had begun when Mr. Karp decided years earlier to develop a more robust corporate practice alongside Paul Weiss’s litigation work. The wealthy firm became even wealthier, partly by riding the growth of private equity and the lucrative legal work generated by the rapid buying and selling of companies.

But the Times reporting, based on extensive interviews with current and former lawyers at the firm, access to internal documents and communications, and detailed accounts of firm meetings, shows there was a cost. The pursuit of Wall Street business in service of higher profits per partner — a key metric for law firms — was at odds with its social justice principles. When Mr. Trump took aim at Paul Weiss, in part because of its activist history, the firm’s long-simmering identity crisis became an existential crisis."
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