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Will Smiley

@will-smiley.bsky.social
1.2K followers 320 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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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Tucker’s answer is probably “Britain, by inserting itself into Germany’s sphere of influence by opposing the Reich’s legitimate claim on Danzig.”
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Goodhart’s Law. Managerialism is ruining the university’s long-term potential for transformative research.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Echoes of this 2015 story which seemed totally incoherent at the time but, in retrospect, completely foretold our current politics: “People around here are saying, ‘After what they did to us, let’s worry about our own instead of somebody’s right to put up art.’ ”
nytimes.com
In Brooklyn, a Protest Mural Draws Its Own Protest (Published 2015)
A mural painted to protest the jailing of an Iranian illustrator was vandalized after some thought it disrespectful of 9/11 victims.
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Rachel Bridgewater @rachelbridgewater.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
📖Just published! The first English translation of Samipaşazade Sezai's Ottoman anti-slavery novel, translated by Iclal Vanwesenbeeck and Burcu Karahan. Available in paperback for £14.99/19.95 USD📖 edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-adv...
Book cover: Adventures of a Slave Girl: An Ottoman Novel. Edited and translated by Burcu Karahan and Iclal Vanwesenbeeck.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Good news! www.bostonglobe.com/2026/10/01/m...
bostonglobe.com
Families earning up to $100,000 per year will be eligible for free in-state tuition at public N.H. universities - The Boston Globe
The new program follows similar moves elsewhere as schools grapple with the sticker shock of postsecondary education.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The Ottomans and Russians tried this after 1722 and all they got for it was Nadir Shah.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
oh LOL I did know him, he was in my class.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
awww, are Eliot Gaiser and Josh Craddock afraid of anyone checking their homework?
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The NY Times at least sometimes called him "Papen" www.nytimes.com/search?endDa...
nytimes.com
The New York Times - Search
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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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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
My question is, are you Kara Mustafa or Jan Sobieski in this analogy?
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
So the executive is unitary, but HOW DARE YOU say the president’s mouthpieces might not be independent!
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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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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I still remember the gem from “the tire guy” explaining why one Ukrainian civilian car carrying weapons made all of them legitimate targets. And prominent think-tankers were fawning over him.
Trent Telenko @Trent... • 3/13/22
What this choice by Ukraine does is make every Ukrainian civilian car a legitimate target of war in the Russian occupied zones, check points and AFV sweeps like the one...
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Not the main point, but I hate the creep of terms like “lawful citizen” or “legal citizen” from uninformed Facebook posts into the NYT. There’s no such thing as an “unlawful citizen.” A citizen is a citizen. It’s not contingent.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I have an Excel spreadsheet, and they get back marked assignments. I thought the Canvas scoreboard gamified things too much. But I may need to open up grade access more as the semester goes on.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I don’t think I’m required to, but I want it always accessible to students and it seems asking too much for them to search their email or hold onto the paper copy all semester.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I now just post the syllabus to Canvas, as an attachment. Everything else is analog.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Odd choice by WotR to use the Black Prince as an illustration of raiding when the Ukrainian and Don Cossacks are, like, right there
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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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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Love paying consultants to assess performance by administrators whose main job is to hire other consultants to assess performance by other administrators whose main job…
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Well we know Google and Apple have to change their usage, based on the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario precedents…
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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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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
they don't seem to have realized that with Pangram, it's about to become fully transparent. Soon there will be browser plugins to run stuff through Pangram. I got ads for a Gmail plugin. I'm reminded of the Warren Buffet line, "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked"
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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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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
“To allow for appellate review, the district court should administratively stay its permanent injunction until September 28, 2026, at 5 p.m. Central Daylight Time.” Sounds like they are anticipating SCOTUS may not agree with them.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I miss the days when war games were made to push the limits of simulation and modeling, even if they weren’t playable. I’ve never played CNA but NATO Division Commander and MechWar2 were of the same design philosophy. They’re so much fun to learn from.
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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.
Quote
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 · 18/09/2026
like in Scotland or Catalunya, EU membership can be desirable for some minority nationalities. Spreading sovereignty upward and downward
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
And her time at FIU might actually outlast the lettuce
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
oh so the account is blocked. But it's being used for expenditures. Including paying a US firm. Sounds great.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
cf Ussama Makdisi, "Ottoman Orientalism," The American Historical Review 107:3 (2002): 768–796. www.scribd.com/document/566...
scribd.com
Client Challenge
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Oh I have!
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
haha we got this too and now I can't use the automated stapling function on our expensive multifunction printer. Of course I'm not paid by the hour, so why does the university care that I'm stapling by hand instead of doing research or writing lesson plans?
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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
"It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces but let us judge not that we be not judged." -- that is a line for the ages, so many Biblical callouts put together into an absolutely stone-cold putdown
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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
Definitely, and this way too early for me to know the difference!
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I can’t say for sure but my sense is those documents were used to inform tapu registers (land surveys) and kanunnames (local law codes) but probably not kept after that. I am sure it varies from place to place! In any case few Ottoman documents survive from before the late 1400a
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The Republic also tried to sell some collections as pulp but were stopped when a page blew off the train at Sirkeci Station in front of Bulgarian Orientalist who was passing through. So those collections are now in Sofia.
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The Brits doing that was not a forgone conclusion—the Italians dumped the Benghazi archives in the sea a few years earlier! And to be fair the Turkish Republic did some pruning, probably mostly around Armenians and WW1.
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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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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Right up there with “realists” who say “Russia naturally lashes out when its pride is threatened too much” All solid ideologies melt into air, and man is at last compelled to see them all as what they are, proxies for gender
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Will Smiley @will-smiley.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
The first impeachment motion ever over jus in bello? Amazing precedent
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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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