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Will Smiley

@will-smiley.bsky.social
1.2K followers 319 following 1.9K posts

History (Ottoman and Russian Empires) and international law. Author, "From Slaves to Prisoners of War" (Oxford, 2018) and co-author, "To Save the Country" (Yale, 2019). All views strictly my own.

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Reposted by Will Smiley
Justin F Jackson, Ph.D. @justinfdjackson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Should be required reading in every college humanities course. The Id, the Ego and the Superintelligence www.nytimes.com/2026/09/27/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Id, the Ego and the Superintelligence
Artificial intelligence isn’t coming for philosophers’ jobs — it needs philosophers, and always will.
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
A lot of universities will be facing big deficits and looking to cure what ails them. I just want them to be thoughtful about it.
Screenshot of article which reads: At the same time, new job-focused majors may not be sustainable — and can even backfire. Dominique Baker, an associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware, pointed to the rise in computer-science degrees in the 2010s. At the time, they seemed like the best way to secure a high-paying salary after graduation, she said. But with the rise of generative artificial intelligence, computer-science jobs are increasingly hard to find, and enrollment in such programs is falling significantly.
“When you tie the viability, the financial viability in particular, of an institution really tightly to jobs creation on that scale,” especially as a four-year institution, she said, “you have to be really careful, because you can find that in 10 years that program that you poured all your money into — worthless.”
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Just got my first AI slop paper to review & am totally ripshit per @novosad.bsky.social - what a waste of time! AI is amazing but can destroy science while revolutionizing it. Editors: We are looking for journal partners to study how to use AI to make scientific publishing better (not worse). LMK!
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Ran Blekhman @blekhman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
We have to stop using "paper count" as a useful scientific metric. More writing output no longer means more knowledge gained www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...
washingtonpost.com
One professor’s AI-assisted output: 200 papers and 14 books this year
An online platform removed 257 papers written or co-written by the University of Chicago’s Nicholas Polson after other academics raised questions.
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Nabil Al-Tikriti @nabilal-tikriti.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
www.markkoyama.com/p/the-new-ag...
markkoyama.com
The New Age of Academic Fraud
Or the Ottoman Election that Never was
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AAUP @aaup.org · 22/09/2026
"The elimination of entire departments to achieve relatively modest short-term savings risks long-term damage to research capacity, student enrollment, and institutional reputation." – Todd Wolfson, AAUP President
journalstar.com
Faculty group urges AAU to deny UNL readmission over budget cuts
The American Association of University Professors called the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's push to gain readmission to the AAU into question following last year's program and position eliminations.
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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The provost of Dartmouth, at which I teach, has been using AI to write both academic papers & national op-eds, according to brave reporting by @thedartmouth.bsky.social. Many students are already bitter about AI. This leaves us as faculty no ground to stand on. www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026...
thedartmouth.com
Op-eds, academic articles by Provost Santiago Schnell flagged as ‘AI-written’ by ‘near-zero error’ AI detector Pangram
Schnell said he used artificial intelligence for “making writing processes more efficient,” but that AI was not a “substitute” for his own “intellectual judgment or authorship.”
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
There's a lot in this but I'm mainly confused by what the Provost's area of expertise is. From catholic education to biochemistry! www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026...
thedartmouth.com
Op-eds, academic articles by Provost Santiago Schnell flagged as ‘AI-written’ by ‘near-zero error’ AI detector Pangram
Schnell said he used artificial intelligence for “making writing processes more efficient,” but that AI was not a “substitute” for his own “intellectual judgment or authorship.”
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Got to say, enjoying that Pangram (acknowledging its flaws) helps expose how much the Trump admin uses LLMs to draft its groyper nonsense social media content.
@Pangram. We believe that this entire text is AI.

https://pangram.com/history/62dda1a1-a45a-44ee-811e-22c1e13e2571

Homeland Security
@DHSgov
The ACLU wants the country to believe that enforcing immigration law makes Americans poorer. That is a globalist lie dressed up as economics.

A nation that will not control who enters its labor market, its housing stock, and its public treasury is not running an economy for its own people. Illegal immigration is a labor-supply shock aimed at the bottom. When millions of people come here illegally to compete —the workers who lose are the Americans with the least bargaining power.

A smaller illegal population means a smaller workforce and fewer households. Calling that “job destruction for Americans” is like calling a smaller city a recession. Studies consistently show that illegal aliens are a net federal burden, with the net annual cost of illegal immigration around $151 billion after taxes paid.
 
This report waves construction crews around like a matador in a bullfight and ignores the American citizens bidding for apartments and homes. Extra households in a tight market raise rents. 

This country exists to raise the condition of its own people. An immigration system that suppresses pay at the bottom, loads local budgets, bids up rents, and then demands amnesty as “the affordability agenda” is not confused, it is on the other side.
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Liz Shuler
@LizShuler
·
Sep 17
Trump’s mass deportation agenda is killing jobs, driving up prices and making it easier for employers to exploit workers. Our new report from @AFLCIO and @ACLU shows why a broad path to citizenship would raise wages and strengthen our economy.
https://aclu.org/publications/citizenship-and-the-affordability-agenda-a-path-to-better-jobs-higher-wages-and-prosperity-for-all
6:16 PM · Sep 17, 2026
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
It sure is weird that Congress passed a law saying the president can't RENAME the Kennedy Center, but somehow they never thought of saying he can't DESTROY it. Almost as if they assumed he didn't have that power to begin with, because why would he? Thanks, unitary executive theory!
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I'm currently in the middle of reading Tara Zahra's "Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics between the World Wars," and man, is it relevant. (This is not accidental: she started writing the book in 2016, seeing the contemporary resonances)
A picture of the cover of Tara Zahra's book "Against the World"
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Just published: my thoughts on Mustafa Aksakal's new book "The War that Made the Middle East," about WW1 and the destruction of the Ottoman Empire. The book can be seen as a story about disillusionment with law--constitutional and international--and the rise of authoritarianism.
legalhist.jotwell.com
War, Empire, and Authoritarianism in the Middle East - Legal History
Mustafa Aksakal, The War That Made the Middle East: World War I and the End of the Ottoman Empire (2026).William SmileyMustafa Aksakal’s new book, The War that Made the Middle East, offers a pointed a...
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Classic A/B test here: Nadir Shah burned the Safavid archives in the 18C to liquidate the old bureaucratic class. When Istanbul finally got occupied, in 1918, the Brits then Mustafa Kemal preserved the Ottoman archives. This profoundly affects historiography and memory.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 15/09/2026
Colleges could subsidize books for students rather than paying for premium versions of ChatGPT
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 15/09/2026
College students are digital natives who have been deprived exposure to analog media forms like printed books and paper. The challenge for them is to learn to make sense of these media forms, not learn how to use digital technology. They already know. It’s the printed book and paper that‘s strange.
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Eric Kelderman @erickelderman.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
www.chronicle.com/article/high... Since President Trump’s inauguration, a single institution, Harvard, with a student body of just over 30,000, got 251 media mentions in major news outlets. The country’s 15 largest colleges, with nearly 944,000 students between them, received 297 combined.
chronicle.com
Higher Ed’s Harvard Problem
An exclusive club of colleges commands the public narrative. Does that come at a cost?
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Judge Saylor calls out DHS for a totally irrational response to comments on the notice of proposed rulemaking: “To the extent DHS engaged at all on substantive issues, its responses were largely disconnected from academic or practical realities.”
To the extent DHS engaged at all on substantive issues, its responses were largely
disconnected from academic or practical realities. For example, in response to concerns that the rule would impair the ability of the American universities to attract the brightest available students from around the world, the government simply offered this: "DHS expects that U.S. educational institutions may attract other students who are not dissuaded by the requirements of this rule. U.S. universities and colleges may be able to fill vacancies left by nonimmigrant students who choose not to enroll with other qualified applicants, which could reduce the overall impact on enrollment numbers such that the net impact is difficult to estimate." 91 Fed. Reg. at 45088. The proposition that graduate students in science or technology at MIT or Harvard could simply be replaced by "other qualified applicants"- because DHS believes that such students are fungible-is not a rational response to a legitimate concern.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Just published: my thoughts on Mustafa Aksakal's new book "The War that Made the Middle East," about WW1 and the destruction of the Ottoman Empire. The book can be seen as a story about disillusionment with law--constitutional and international--and the rise of authoritarianism.
legalhist.jotwell.com
War, Empire, and Authoritarianism in the Middle East - Legal History
Mustafa Aksakal, The War That Made the Middle East: World War I and the End of the Ottoman Empire (2026).William SmileyMustafa Aksakal’s new book, The War that Made the Middle East, offers a pointed a...
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Karin Wulf @kawulf.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
After reading some of the recent pubs and discourse around US higher ed.… I should just stop right here. But here are the three major fallacies of much of what’s out there, three contexts that are missing, and the one big thing that is driving me around the bend (actually already there, but). 1/
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AAUP @aaup.org · 13/09/2026
“You have people who are furthest from the classroom, curriculum design, and the subject area of a subject saying all students must take this thing. How is that good for students? How does that suggest they will get the best education?” #academicsky
al.com
Protesters speak out against ‘climate of fear’ after Auburn University dissolves faculty senate
Auburn’s decision came after the Alabama Legislature put limits on the powers of faculty senates.
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Aaron Littman @aaronlittman.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Profoundly disappointed in our Chancellor, as a member of the UCLA law faculty and a Jew, for so quickly forgetting the lesson Justice Jackson and others taught us at Nuremberg: the rule of law demands that everyone be provided a robust defense.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
"[Y]our time and money are best spent on studies that force you to think critically and understand people because those abilities can help you adapt to change." Nice to see this message in the WSJ. www.wsj.com/lifestyle/ca...
wsj.com
Want to Succeed in an AI World? Study Anthropology
College students and workers alike are finding a new set of skills is needed for a rapidly changing workplace.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
An interesting data point for anyone following New Hampshire politics: in my town, Durham (a Democratic stronghold), more people turned out for the state Democratic primary than at any time since at least 2016. Meanwhile fewer Republicans turned out than in any race over the same time period.
VOTES CAST TODAY
A total of votes were cast over the course of the day in Durham: 2622 (Democratic: 2319; Republican: 303)

 
VOTES CAST AT PRIOR STATE PRIMARY ELECTIONS
2024 - Democratic: 1768 Republican: 336 = 2104
2022 - Democratic: 1530 Republican: 456 = 1986
2020 - Democratic: 2273 Republican: 438 = 2,521
2018 - Democratic: 2009 Republican: 379 = 2,388
2016 - Democratic: 937 Republican: 361 = 1,298
5 Year Average = 2,059
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
An interesting data point for anyone following New Hampshire politics: in my town, Durham (a Democratic stronghold), more people turned out for the state Democratic primary than at any time since at least 2016. Meanwhile fewer Republicans turned out than in any race over the same time period.
VOTES CAST TODAY
A total of votes were cast over the course of the day in Durham: 2622 (Democratic: 2319; Republican: 303)

 
VOTES CAST AT PRIOR STATE PRIMARY ELECTIONS
2024 - Democratic: 1768 Republican: 336 = 2104
2022 - Democratic: 1530 Republican: 456 = 1986
2020 - Democratic: 2273 Republican: 438 = 2,521
2018 - Democratic: 2009 Republican: 379 = 2,388
2016 - Democratic: 937 Republican: 361 = 1,298
5 Year Average = 2,059
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I assume no one outside DoJ has standing to enforce that statute. But if these kinds of ethics statutes could be enforced by any taxpayer, through qui tam suits where the relator gets a cut of the illicit money, like the False Claims Act? Maybe treble damages.
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Jun Akiba @jun-naibzade.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
論文 オスマン帝国・モンテネグロ辺境における反乱、虜囚、戦争の法 Vladislav Lilić. "‘Sever not their heads’: Rebellion, Captivity and the Laws of War on the Ottoman-Montenegrin Frontier, 1853–1862." Slavonic and East European Review 104, no. 3, (July 2026):466-498. otmn muse.jhu.edu/pub/427/arti...
muse.jhu.edu
Project MUSE -- Verification required!
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The US mainstream consensus for quite a while has been that certain parts of international law aren’t real, and can be ignored, while other parts (eg freedom of navigation) are fundamentally different, basically laws of nature, and are never at risk. Well.
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Jun Akiba @jun-naibzade.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
論文 オスマン帝国のファトワーにおける借用とオリジナリティ Ergene, Boğaç A., and Atabey Kaygun. "Borrowing and (Mis-)Attribution in Ottoman Fatwas: A Computational Investigation", Islamic Law and Society (2026). otmn doi.org/10.1163/1568...
doi.org
Borrowing and (Mis-)Attribution in Ottoman Fatwas: A Computational Investigation
Abstract This article combines “distant” (computational) and “close” (human) reading techniques to investigate jurisprudential continuity, borrowing, and attribution within the fatwa compilations of O...
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Jun Akiba @jun-naibzade.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
論文 1875-78年ボスニア・ヘルツェゴヴィナの難民、反乱、人道主義 Manasek, Jared. "Philanthropy of Violence: Refugees, Rebellion and Humanitarianism in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1875–78." Slavonic and East European Review 104, no. 3 (2026): 532-563. otmn muse.jhu.edu/article/1000...
muse.jhu.edu
Project MUSE -- Verification required!
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
'The need to outsource services following redundancy programmes may be increasing universities’ costs rather than lowering them, as well as impacting staff productivity, a report warns.'
timeshighereducation.com
Restructuring ‘too often adding cost rather than removing it’
Universities are ‘underestimating’ the challenges caused by outsourcing services amid major professional services staff redundancies, report warns
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Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
SPECIAL REPORT Last month, Alpha School invited people to follow student social media accounts "if curious about life in our high schools." I accepted their offer. What I've found shocks me. Forget the AI and ask instead: Is Alpha Schools a cult? Follow along for a summary of my findings.
buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com
SPECIAL REPORT: My So-Called Alpha School
What is it like to be a student in Alpha School’s high school boot camp?
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Northumbria UCU Branch @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
>Cutting Jobs >Fewer staff to teach students >Rising workloads for lower paid staff >But Senior management get pay rises. They don’t teach. They don’t research. What’s the pay rise for ?
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
A passage I think about a lot lately (Fukuyama).
The end of history will be a very sad time.
The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and ide-alism, will be replaced by economic calcula-tion, the endless solving of technical prob-lems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer de-mands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed. Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the post-historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again.
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Kim Lane Scheppele @kimlanelaw.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Leah Litman has it exactly right. SCOTUS isn't just creating a unitary executive but allowing the executive to amass all power that the Constitution gives to Congress. SCOTUS does so by eliminating the legal routes for enforcing the laws that Congress has passed. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
theatlantic.com
The Court’s Ballroom Decision Is a Sign of Deeper Problems
The conservative justices have separation of powers exactly backwards.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
“I've chosen less money so that I have the freedom to explore and think,” Quaini said. “Now, after I've made that choice, they're asking me to accept a corporate structure without a corporate pay. So why would I do that?” www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...
houstonchronicle.com
They built careers at UH. Now this professor family is leaving Texas.
After 17 years at UH, Annalisa Quaini said she did not leave UH lightly. But political and institutional conflict changed how she saw her future in Texas.
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Marinos Sariyannis @sariyannis.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Just read that Hans Georg Majer (1937-2026), one of the last of his generation (of the golden era of German Ottomanist scholarship), known for his work on Uşakîzade and other Ottoman ulema, passed away a few days ago. RIP
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Bestami S. Bilgic @bsbilgic.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
The hard copy is now out, too! Available @bloomsburybooksus.bsky.social 's website 👇 www.bloomsbury.com/us/postimper...
bloomsbury.com
The Post-Imperial Turkish State and Islam, 1923-1950
The period between 1923-1950 is seen as the golden age of secularism in the Turkish Republic, but how true is this? The Post-Imperial Turkish State and Islam, 1…
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Politico @politico.com · 02/09/2026
NYC school system to ban AI for elementary, middle school students
dlvr.it
NYC school system to ban AI for elementary, middle school students
The Department of Education is unveiling new guidelines following backlash.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
The media obsession with sticker price at top private colleges is so odd. It's like if MotorTrend constantly published "Cars Reach $500,000 Price Tag" referring to a fully loaded Lambo at sticker price. (Yes, cars ARE too expensive at $50k average. And so are REAL college prices--but not THIS bad)
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Driscoll and Vance are law school buddies. This seems like the first 2028 proxy fight between JD and Pete Hegseth, and Vance has lost. Trump either couldn't or wouldn't side with him.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
When was the last time Roberts joined the liberals in a dissent? Not even writing separately!
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AAUP @aaup.org · 31/08/2026
"No institutional representation about curriculum, faculty status or academic standards should be published without first being shaped by faculty governance." We agree. #academicsky
insidehighered.com
Faculty Should Lead in Responding to Compact 2.0 (opinion)
No university should respond to Secretary McMahon’s letter without significant faculty involvement.
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Dr Gul Sen @guel-sen.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
"Sentenced to the Galleys: Manpower as a Challenge for the Ottoman Navy" in: Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 33/2. Online publication date: July 31, 2026. 👉https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/303/article/996937/pdf #maritimehistory #navy #galley #rowers
The first page of the article "Sentenced to the Galleys: Manpower as a Challenge for the Ottoman Navy"
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Changing the lake is one thing, but to delete the name *even as the result of a direct search* is an extra level of collaboration.
A screenshot showing that in a search for "Lake Ontario," Google maps does not identify the correct lake, instead highlighting 7 possible results, the first of which is labeled only as "Lake America" with no hint that its true name is Lake Ontario.
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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
"Here’s an opportunity to move past the job-training consensus that has left our universities stripped threadbare and too driven by trends and vibes. But I promise you, students want real educations and will come for them, rather than be forced to listen to a CEO tell them that capitalism rocks."
startribune.com
Perry: Republicans fought ‘indoctrination.’ Now they’re telling students what to study.
The conservative attack on higher education in states like Iowa is hard to watch. But it also provides an opportunity for blue states like Minnesota.
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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Red State Universities: we believe in indoctrination and job training Students: we hate that is there another option? Blue State Universities: we promise to have no values except job training. It ain’t enough. My latest. Gift link.
startribune.com
Perry: Republicans fought ‘indoctrination.’ Now they’re telling students what to study.
The conservative attack on higher education in states like Iowa is hard to watch. But it also provides an opportunity for blue states like Minnesota.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
I was wrong.
A screenshot of Google Maps showing Lake Ontario labelled as “Lake America”
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Leadership at The New School has declared war on its own workforce, fired tenured professors, and shuttered whole departments. But what’s happening to the progressive university is an increasingly common story across all of higher education.
dissentmagazine.org
What’s Left of The New School? - Dissent Magazine
Leadership at the iconic progressive university has declared war on its own workforce, fired tenured professors, and shuttered whole departments. But what’s happening to the school is an increasingly common story across all of higher education.
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Rachel Bridgewater @rachelbridgewater.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
📚New books in the Ottoman Empire series📚: Kate Dannies on breadwinner soldiers in WW1, Yakoob Ahmed on the ulema and the Ottoman Constitution, and Yavuz Sezer on the rise of libraries, published posthumously thanks to a team of his colleagues and friends❤️ edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-edinb...
3 books covers: Conscripting Breadwinner Soldiers in the Late Ottoman Empire, by Kate Dannies; The Ottoman Ulema and the Quest for an Islamic Constitution, by Yakoob Ahmed; and The Architecture of Bibliophilia, by Yavuz Sezer
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