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Sara Silverstein

@sarasilverstein.bsky.social
4.2K followers 459 following 160 posts

Historian. Writer. Public & global health, rights, internationalism, migration, citizenship & statelessness, Modern & Eastern Europe. Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut, Department of History and Human Rights Institute. Views my own.

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Reposted by Sara Silverstein
The Intercept @theintercept.com · 30/09/2026
ICE briefly posted eight of its 2025 death reviews online. Most of them raised issues of substandard and “inappropriate” care of ill detainees. theintercept.com/2026/09/30/i...
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Reposted by Sara Silverstein
NIH Vigils @nihvigils.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
We were thrilled to have @sarasilverstein.bsky.social join us today, and I want to share her essay that I had missed when it first came out in February. It takes a historical perspective to explain why MAHA is all about the grift, and it is most excellent.
snyder.substack.com
Consumptive Capitalism
On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Neglecting medical care is dehumanizing. Historically, neglecting standards and policies to protect health and provide healthcare has been one way in which concentration camps or the gulag became spaces where the law did not apply. www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...
usatoday.com
Another detainee dies at controversial NYC-area ICE facility
Edwin Lopez Cornejo died Aug. 1, his family said. Cornejo's mother blamed her son's death on him not receiving medications needed to treat his diabetes.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet— And yet must be—the land where everyone is free. O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be! ~ Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again”
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Reposted by Sara Silverstein
Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
I’m delighted to be reading proofs of my book: “For Your Health and Ours: An Eastern European History of Global Health.” Do you ever wonder about how our politics of health took shape? Then this book is for you global.oup.com/academic/pro... Related essay I wrote snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...
Image of book cover. Text reads:
"Sara Silverstein"
"For Your Health and Ours: An Eastern European History of Global Health"
There is a photograph of a group of employees from the League of Nations Health Organization. There are seven women and five men. They are dressed in clothes of the 1920s. They all face the camera with serious expressions.
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Reposted by Sara Silverstein
Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
A book I’m excited to see. I have learned a great deal about the history and politics of health from @sarasilverstein.bsky.social. global.oup.com/academic/pro...
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
I’m delighted to be reading proofs of my book: “For Your Health and Ours: An Eastern European History of Global Health.” Do you ever wonder about how our politics of health took shape? Then this book is for you global.oup.com/academic/pro... Related essay I wrote snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...
Image of book cover. Text reads:
"Sara Silverstein"
"For Your Health and Ours: An Eastern European History of Global Health"
There is a photograph of a group of employees from the League of Nations Health Organization. There are seven women and five men. They are dressed in clothes of the 1920s. They all face the camera with serious expressions.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Another night in Kyiv. In the fifth year of war.
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Reposted by Sara Silverstein
Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
This morning scrolling Bluesky, there is nothing at all in my feed about Putin’s barbaric attack on the Ukraine’s holiest site, the UNESCO protected Lavra so I’m posting this here.
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Reposted by Sara Silverstein
Anat Shenker-Osorio @anatosaurus.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
As we await Hungary's election both for the liberation of its people and as portent for our own, let us recall the role that ridicule, resistance and refusal has played. Yes, elections can be turning points but only if movements make them so.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
#NoKings Montpelier, VT
No Kings event in front of the Vermont State Capitol building in Montpelier. Clear sunny sky, with a few clouds floating in it. Classical style government building with columns and a golden dome. A large crowd, bundled up against the cold, carrying signs. One sign has a hand-drawn pig with Trump's hair and says "Make Orwell Fiction Again." A sign on the columns of the Capitol says "Resistance Works! Keep going!" and there is a huge American flag under the sign.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
"Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed — Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above." ~ Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again” #NoKings
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
"rapidly deteriorating conditions at hospitals and clinics across Cuba were causing deaths that would otherwise be preventable. ...The blockade’s effects are cascading through the system." www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/w...
nytimes.com
Cuban Patients Are Dying Because of U.S. Blockade, Doctors Say
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Reposted by Sara Silverstein
Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
Iran’s people were facing a horrible shortage of water before the war began. If we are destroying desalination plants and setting fire to Teheran we are committing unfathomable crimes.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
"MAHA, were it a serious movement, would criticize capitalism, or at least the bloated 'health sector' of the American economy. And that would be the right target. But MAHA... diverts profits from one set of businesses to another." snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...
snyder.substack.com
Consumptive Capitalism
On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
"MAHA leadership criticizes the pharmaceutical industry’s profit motives in order to promote the wellness industry, which of course also operates according to the profit motive." Here I situate the American health drama in a history of health care. snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...
snyder.substack.com
Consumptive Capitalism
On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Failure to seriously critique capitalism and commercial medicine will make us all sicker. MAHA instead criticizes pharma's profit motives in order to promote the wellness industry, with its own profit motive. Here I situate this drama in a history of health care. snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...
snyder.substack.com
Consumptive Capitalism
On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein
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Reposted by Sara Silverstein
Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
One way concentration camps become zones where law doesn't apply is by neglecting policies & standards that would protect health & provide healthcare. You deny laws & norms & dehumanize your victim. Read "Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag" by Alexopoulos www.texastribune.org/2026/02/07/i...
texastribune.org
Two tuberculosis cases detected at Camp East Montana ICE facility
Eighteen cases of COVID-19 were also identified. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar on Friday visited the 5,000-bed tent facility on the Fort Bliss Army base and said she saw many "chronic issues."
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Reposted by Sara Silverstein
Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
“For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh. We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick.” Conditions in a San Diego concentration camp, via message hurled out in a bottle.
“Good afternoon. My name is [redacted] and my wife and I have been at OMDC since April 15 2025,” reads a handwritten note, wrapped around a lotion bottle that was thrown by a man held captive inside the Otay Mesa Detention Center (OMDC) on Sunday.

“It’s cold here all the time and the food is poor,” the missive continues. “For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh. We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick.”
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Jesspooka Kant 🎃 @jessdkant.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
I feel so sick reading this. She dedicated her life to helping her immigrant trans siblings, finally got the medical care she sought her whole life, and then a year later ICE tricked her, kidnapped her and used her postoperative status as a weapon to destroy her health. CW for basically everything
huffpost.com
She Was Honored With A Human Rights Award. Then She Says ICE Tricked And Arrested Her.
A HuffPost investigation found how the Trump administration systematically destroyed safeguards for detainees, subjecting them to abuse and neglect.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
One way concentration camps become zones where law doesn't apply is by neglecting policies & standards that would protect health & provide healthcare. You deny laws & norms & dehumanize your victim. Read "Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag" by Alexopoulos www.texastribune.org/2026/02/07/i...
texastribune.org
Two tuberculosis cases detected at Camp East Montana ICE facility
Eighteen cases of COVID-19 were also identified. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar on Friday visited the 5,000-bed tent facility on the Fort Bliss Army base and said she saw many "chronic issues."
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
"this your mountanish inhumanity" Shakespeare of course had the words to describe attacks on immigrants, writing 400 years ago. (1/7) www.tiktok.com/@colbertlate...
tiktok.com
Leave it to Shakespeare and Ian McKellen to so eloquently speak of man's mountainish inhumanity. See Ian McKellan in AN ARK, a new play for mixed reality, at @The Shed now! #Colbert #IanMcKellen #Sh...
TikTok video by colbertlateshow
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Reposted by Sara Silverstein
ProPublica @propublica.org · 29/12/2025
Expectant mothers were left so hungry after the U.S. cut foreign food aid that one woman ate clay and charcoal. Her baby struggled to gain weight after being born prematurely. By @annamaria.bsky.social, photos by @storitellah.com & illustrations by Phoebe Ouma
propublica.org
What I Saw at a Maternity Ward in Kenya After the U.S. Cut Off Food and Foreign Aid
Photographs tell a story of two mothers determined to help their babies gain enough weight to leave the hospital — only to face little to no food again.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
"Trump officials celebrated with cake after slashing aid. Then people died of cholera."
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
The Soviet gulag is one important comparison. I also keep thinking of the classic question of World War II history: "Did people know?" Did Germans know about concentration camps? Did people living next to the camps and death facilities know? How could they go about their lives if they knew? We know.
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Reposted by Sara Silverstein
Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
For an excellent study of medicalizing euphemisms please see Golfo Alexopolous’s history of the Gulag, entitled "Illness and Inhumanity."
Text reading: ICE Detainee Dies After Being Held at a Troubled Jailhouse in Newark. Jean Wilson Brutus, 41, was one of four migrants to die in the past week after medical emergencies in detention centers in New Jersey, Michigan, Mississippi and Pennsylvania.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
“We should be just as outraged by the deaths that take place out of sight” @willbunch.bsky.social
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
Journalists and media: stop bothsidesing attacks on childhood vaccines. We look to you to report what is happening and what the effects will be, not repeat the administration’s rhetoric. The effects will be more sickness and more death. That is not something to bothsides. Hold power accountable.
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Reposted by Sara Silverstein
Steve Brusatte @stevebrusatte.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
Heartbreaking. The University of Nebraska will terminate its entire Earth science department. One of the country's most successful and respected geology & climate programs: gone. When ideologues & politicians are threatened by the very act of studying climate change, I wonder: who of us is next?
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
I’m honored to be part of Ukrainian History Global Initiative’s project. I’m contributing on state forms and statelessness. It’s a privilege to be welcomed into the vibrant community of scholars committed to the humanities and knowledge in the midst of war. I have learned so much from my colleagues.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
Journalists and media: stop bothsidesing attacks on childhood vaccines. We look to you to report what is happening and what the effects will be, not repeat the administration’s rhetoric. The effects will be more sickness and more death. That is not something to bothsides. Hold power accountable.
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Reposted by Sara Silverstein
Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Hugely proud of and happy for Prof David Petruccelli, whose history of Interpol is published by OUP today. It provides a complete revision of a major chapter of the history of international policing & is full of amazing anecdotes from the history of international crime global.oup.com/academic/pro...
global.oup.com
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
They are pro-disease and pro-death — for our children.
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Human Rights Watch @hrw.org · 05/12/2025
Georgian authorities have adopted a series of laws that unjustifiably interfere with the right to peaceful assembly and are being used to suppress dissent. People are being detained or slapped with ruinous fines for exercising their fundamental rights.
hrw.org
Georgia: Repressive Laws Effectively Criminalize Peaceful Protests
(Berlin, December 4, 2025) – Georgian authorities have adopted a series of laws that unjustifiably interfere with the right to peaceful assembly and are being used to suppress dissent, Human Rights Wa...
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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 04/12/2025
This fetid landmark, this historical stain on humanity is primarily due to the stunningly reckless obliteration of America's foreign assistance agency earlier this year. Led by the richest man on earth. In secret, on a weekend. With zero analysis or discussion of its catastrophic impacts.
wsj.com
For First Time in Decades, Child Deaths Will Rise This Year
Almost a quarter of a million more children around the world are projected to die in 2025 than in 2024.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
While we're reacting to Prasad's anti-vax proclamations, it's helpful to read of responses to shared challenges in other places. Romania's anti-vax is tied up in memories of authoritarianism, an underfunded health system, & disinformation. Rebuilding trust in politics and public health go together.
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Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
This is the most important op-ed you'll read this week. The Trump administration is about to get rid of the birth-dose of hepatitis B vaccine. That is a deadly choice for many families. @helenouyang.bsky.social tells her story. Now call your member of Congress. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | My Father Died of Hepatitis B Before the Vaccine. We Must Not Go Back.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
While we're reacting to Prasad's anti-vax proclamations, it's helpful to read of responses to shared challenges in other places. Romania's anti-vax is tied up in memories of authoritarianism, an underfunded health system, & disinformation. Rebuilding trust in politics and public health go together.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
A year of protests for democracy and the rule of law in Georgia.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
In his racist screed, Trump threatens to strip people of their American citizenship for disrupting his regime’s “domestic tranquility.” Violating the rights, safety, and dignity of any migrant makes all Americans vulnerable.
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Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 19/11/2025
"WHO to lose nearly a quarter of its workforce – 2,000 jobs – due to US withdrawing funding" www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
theguardian.com
WHO to lose nearly a quarter of its workforce – 2,000 jobs – due to US withdrawing funding
Donald Trump’s administration withdrew from the World Health Organization in January, prompting the agency to scale back its work
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Their essay is one way of explaining that only the “fit” will survive and we should not be investing money in protecting the “unfit.” #eugenics
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Alt CDC (they/them) @altcdc.altgov.info · 14/11/2025
Under new administration guidance, if you’re overweight or diabetic, you can be denied a visa to live in the U.S. all in the name of “protecting the taxpayer.” Newsflash: immigrants are not the problem. They’re the ones helping to build our economy and communities. 🇺🇸 www.npr.org/2025/11/12/n...
npr.org
Immigrants with obesity, diabetes and other health problems may be denied visas
New guidance from the Trump administration directs visa officers to consider common health ailments, including obesity and diabetes, when would-be immigrants seek to enter the U.S.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Academics who have advised a graduate student from China over the past years would be banned from federal funding. This would give the federal government one more lever to attack scientists. And how long before they expand the list of "hostile foreign" countries?
The Securing American Funding and Expertise from Adversarial Research Exploitation (SAFE) Act would deny federal funding to any U.S. scientist who collaborates with anyone “affiliated with a hostile foreign entity,” a category that includes four countries: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The prohibited activities would include joint research, co-authorship on papers, and advising a foreign graduate student or postdoctoral fellow. The language is retroactive, meaning any interactions during the previous 5 years could make a scientist ineligible for future federal funding.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
They’re erasing the history because this administration doesn’t want evidence of public health successes or memory of a functioning CDC.
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Politically motivated removals and political appointments are reminiscent of “science” under Soviet and other authoritarian regimes.
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Rosa Lafer-Sousa @rosalafersousa.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
🚨🚨 @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social is a force. Her voice carries power, truth, and courage—threats to the regime. The only thing authoritarians fear more than a voice they cannot control is a chorus. So let’s give them one: speak up, speak loudly, and don’t stop. Stand with Jenna. ✊🇺🇸
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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
According to a source, Jenna Norton, who led a letter criticizing Trump's decimation of the NIH (see below), has been placed on administrative leave. She's the first at NIH to be put on leave, joining EPA officials who criticized Trump policies. www.pbs.org/newshour/nat...
pbs.org
NIH scientists publish letter criticizing Trump's deep cuts in public health research
The letter addresses the termination of 2,100 research grants valued at more than $12 billion and some of the human costs that have resulted, such as cutting off medication regimens to participants in...
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Sara Silverstein @sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
They’re erasing the history because this administration doesn’t want evidence of public health successes or memory of a functioning CDC.
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