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W.B. Harper

@wbharper.bsky.social
113 followers 517 following 90 posts

From Aotearoa, living in Utah (Sihivigoi). Minor academic bureaucrat. Classical music, cricket, books.

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Reposted by W.B. Harper
Guillaume A.W. Attia @gawattia.bsky.social · 6h
“By virtue of its size, bureaucratic sophistication, and technological might, China stands apart from competing autocracies as the world’s premier illiberal state.” Read my new @liberalcurrents.com article here. www.liberalcurrents.com/china-accord...
liberalcurrents.com
China According to China
The Pax Sinica to which Xi Jinping aspires will be no imperialism-free paradise, but a world made safe for autocracy and domestic terror.
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Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 23h
Being GenX/Millennial is such a trip. In our lifetimes, we saw people our age getting wild criminal penalties for pirating music and now have to sit and watch as companies gobble up our work with impunity.
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Someone mentioned a while back that the ideal of Trump et al. is a backward, belligerent, and increasingly impotent axis (US-Saudi Arabia-Russia) of authoritarian petrostates. Freedom to enrich an ever-smaller elite marked by their own racial/sexual/religious obsessions.
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Adam Schwarz @adamjschwarz.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Ukrainian presidential advisor Serhiy Beskrestnov confirms Elon Musk's Space X crippled Ukrainian capabilities last night. In other words, the US deliberately sabotaged European defence operations mid-mission. Every country in the world should move away from buying American hardware ASAP.
"I can confirm that tonight SpaceX has implemented a speed limit on Starlink terminals while in motion.

The limit currently applies to the StarShield “military package” and is set at 100 mph.

Our defense forces were not given notice of this limit, and this has resulted in the disruption of a number of missions.

It is clear that this action cannot be a coincidence and is related to the current political situation."
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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Per the Middle East Studies Association, since October 7, 76 North American academics have been fired for speaking out against the genocide in Palestine. Two-thirds of those people are non-white. 16.5% are Jewish. afi.mesana.org/resource/les...
Retaliation goes far beyond firing. Of 196 recorded incidents of employer retaliation against employees speaking out on Palestine, nearly 40% (76) resulted in termination. Retaliation that does not rise to the level of termination is an even larger phenomenon.
All categories of academic workers are at risk. Of the 162 individuals whose employment status was disclosed, 30% involved non-tenure track faculty or instructors, and 36% were tenured.
People of color are disproportionately affected. Of the 134 cases recorded in the AFI database in which respondents’ identification is known, two-thirds were people of color: 30% SWANA; 10.5% Black; and 27% other POC. Additionally, 16.5% identify as Jewish. More than half of those targeted whose gender is known are women. Such retaliation compounds the abuse of already racist and sexist work environments.
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
"on balance"..."probably"..."may" - someone's pulled out his Roget's.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
I do not think an exec branch led by a man who thinks he is entitled to treat federal agents as an arm of his firm, refers to Somali Americans as “garbage” and has said racist things specifically about Omar is capable of neutrally applying the law to her, to put it mildly apnews.com/article/ilha...
apnews.com
Federal agents search Rep. Ilhan Omar's home as part of a criminal investigation, AP sources say
Federal agents have searched Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home as part of a criminal investigation. That's according to people familiar with the matter.
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Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Honestly, I do think comparisons with the Tuskegee experiment are valid; here, the Danish researchers will knowingly inflict harm on half the babies, & they know that ethicists worldwide have condemned the study yet they have simply dismissed the ethical concerns & want to take RFK Jr’s 💰 & push on
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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
they did the thing
an october 11 2025 post from me reading: every single tech idea is like “soon our robots will be capable of playing catch with your kid, freeing you up to spend more time working on your employers’ spreadsheets”
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Jack Mirkinson @jackmirkinson.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Read @mohamhawish.bsky.social on 10/7. www.thenation.com/article/worl...
A day on which entire bloodlines were erased from the civil registry should not be an anniversary.
A day our mothers were crushed beneath the concrete of their own kitchens should not be an anniversary.
A day newborns suffocated in dark, unpowered incubators should not be an anniversary.
A day flour sacks were soaked in the blood of men standing in line for bread should not be an anniversary.
A day children had their limbs amputated without anesthesia on blood-slicked hospital floors should not be an anniversary.
A day thousands of tons of explosives flattened every school, university, hospital, and library should not be an anniversary.
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Serdar Berdimuhamedow would never.
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Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 06/10/2026
Another politician who can't see any value in education or university beyond 'economic return'. If it doesn't make you money then she concludes that it provides 'no real benefits'. For good measure, she adds a bunch of lazy right-wing tropes about the humanities.
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
And it ain't like she's a Wagner-level talent.
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
"No, no, no, it's EPHEBOphilia"
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
It's truly remarkable that every researcher who believes that people can be ranked by genetics has concluded that their own type of person is at the top.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 02/10/2026
not that you should expect anything more than rank idiocy from this pair of racists, but the idea that whiteness means a "high trust" society of "social cohesion" is some of the stupidest shit i have ever heard. these people live in a fantasy land that you could dispel by simply opening a book.
talkingpointsmemo.com
Chris Rufo — Known For ‘DEI’ and ‘CRT’ Panics — Tries to Make ‘the Indian Question’ a Thing
To the degree that a “respectable” or “moderate” right exists today in...
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Aaron Huertas @aaronhuertas.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
One knock on effect of Musk buying out Twitter is that the “respectable” racists have lost their sense of how many layers of kayfabe they have to slap on their bigotry.
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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Christa Pike was tortured yesterday by the state of TN in every single USians name and the fact is that this is a country that is mostly OK with this. This says everything about all of us. We are all implicated in this barbaric practice. It's sickening.
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Brandy Jensen @brandyjensen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Sarah Hagi writing about the Daily Wire movie 🚨
defector.com
Finally, A Shitty Movie Where Muslims Are The Bad Guys | Defector
I can’t think of a time in my life when the idea of a Muslim terrorist was not the most acceptable societal enemy. As someone who came of age in the wake of 9/11 and the invasions of both Iraq and Afg...
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
"Do drop in" is charming, as well.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Read this: is is from the chair of outside advisors of the Iowa civics center imposed on campus. He thinks he is describing current faculty but he is perfectly describing himself and his fellow travelers
"I think there's a fundamental tension," Lowery told Inside Higher Ed. "We've had a sort of ideological takeover of the universities where you have ideological administrators hiring ideological faculty and they will do everything they can to prevent other ideas from being represented on campus."
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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The British right has now descended to the point where 'the England team are not English' is becoming the consensus position
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Seth D. Michaels @sethdmichaels.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
this shit Bret makes up to get mad about in the literary world is *actually happening* to the entire scientific/medical/basic-tech-research enterprise right now, at the hands of the executive branch, in direct violation of the Constitution bsky.app/profile/kevi...
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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Note that in two articles today, WaPo describes a "sale" of bombs to Israel. This is extremely misleading. The reported $2.bn package is 100% funded by US taxpayers via the Foreign Military Financing grants for Israel to buy US weapons.
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David Veevers @davidveevers.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Think of the combined CENTURIES of expertise lost here, the creativity, the knowledge, the depth and breadth of cultural learning and understanding, the generations of minds enriched and enlightened, the sheer weight of history that led to the establishment of these programmes. Purged. Destroyed.
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amanda moore 🐢 @noturtlesoup17.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
“The worst place ever I’ve been in my life," Sakariye Abdi Mohamed, a Somali asylum seeker, told me over the phone from Guantanamo Bay last week. Sakariye is one of 7 or 8 Somalis who are being held at Gitmo. They say guards tell them the order to keep Somalis at the facility comes from DC.
motherjones.com
The Trump administration is imprisoning Somali immigrants in Gitmo
“Nobody tell us that we’re going to Guantanamo Bay.”
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
"I have Prince Franz lined up to take over - utopia is just around the corner!"
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Trump's attacks on US higher ed, and Chinese scholars in particular, has been a gift to China's efforts to surge past the US on science and innovation. One report from Renmin University summed it up: "Thank Trump." 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/china-than...
donmoynihan.substack.com
China: “Thank Trump”
The big winner of Trump’s assault on higher ed is America’s chief geopolitical rival
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
It's not the important thing, but you could not make up a better name for this racist, pompous little village so worried about its "way of life" than Piddington. Straight out of Midsomer.
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
"Seem" - sums it up (integral to her argument, as it were).
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
The news media seems to exist to convert observations into accusations.
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
"You’ve got to be fit to be an FBI agent" after all
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Ian Miles Schlong @tedcruznipples.com · 10/09/2026
Some of those that work forces Are the same that fuck horses
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 14/09/2026
Cis people do not understand how much trans people's rights have regressed in just 5 years. 5 years ago, there were none of these restrictions. 19 states banned legal recognition 21 states have bathroom bans 8 states ban gender marker changes on DLs 25 ban gender affirming care for trans youth
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
the lesson from the right is not that their obsessions with trans volleyball, anti Haitian blood libel, or reversing the change in teen pregnancy rate are actually the well framed kitchen table issues of the volk but simply that political discourse becomes about things people say often and loudly
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
"Chat, come up with some better analogies"
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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
a lot of people want to believe that right-wing beliefs are rooted in some legitimate material grievance. that makes it easier to imagine that if we simply solved the material problem, they’d deradicalize. but they won’t, because they aren’t disillusioned, they’re just morons.
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Tom Stevenson @tomstevenson.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Trump more than any of his predecessors has consistently launched airstrikes on a country he purports to care nothing about and without any obvious goal. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/se...
lrb.co.uk
Tom Stevenson | Why is Trump bombing Somalia?
Over the past twenty months, the US has launched airstrikes in Somalia using MQ-9 Reaper drones and sometimes manned...
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scwiba @scwiba.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
This man won his primary by 30 points.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 11/09/2026
Is there any other field besides education in which the people who get to make the substantive decisions about its governance absolutely hate the people and institutions in the field?
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I Scare You Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 10/09/2026
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, we won’t be able to address mass deportation without addressing policing.
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Stephen Moran. @moranstephen1000.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
And if he didn't attend, they'd be working themselves into a similar indignant froth.
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Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
No, you can’t. The line on immigration is exactly what fuels the fascists. The line is ‘immigrants are bad’. That’s a fascist line.
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Patrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Realizing the extent to which this is true wildly changed my opinions about how to deal with Trumpism, since they're never going to be satisfied unless they're actively dominating everyone else. You can't give them some concessions and go back to the status quo: they're reactionary revolutionaries.
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Sarah Szalavitz💡 @dearsarah.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
UN votes to adopt new world map that shows Africa’s true scale Togo-sponsored resolution called to phase out traditional map that depicts continent as similar size to Greenland www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s... it’s 2026 & for the first time, the UN voted to allow Africa to be accurately scaled.
theguardian.com
UN votes to adopt new world map that shows Africa’s true scale
Togo-sponsored resolution called to phase out traditional map that depicts continent as similar size to Greenland
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W.B. Harper @wbharper.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
"Chat, what's one divided by zero?"
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