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William Sturkey

@william-sturkey.bsky.social
1.1K followers 1.4K following 317 posts

History Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Writing a book on the 1960s. Last book a bio of Roy Benavidez: www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/wi…

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Reposted by William Sturkey
Chokely Carmichael🥋 @stewartcoles.bsky.social · 10h
This is one reason why you shouldn’t upload work into LLMs during the peer review and grading processes. That work is confidential, and you have no right to share it without permission. You are taking someone’s intellectual property and giving it to the entire world without their consent.
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Tajja Isen @tajjaisen.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
You may have heard that nonfiction's having a rough time. I investigated for @thewalrus.ca. And it's very true, but not for the reasons you might think. thewalrus.ca/nonfiction-i...
An image of a big red book that says "FICTION" on the cover. Behind it, a smaller book that says "NON-FICTION" tries to peek out.
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Honestly, one of the most exciting things about him to me is his capacity for growth, just politically speaking. Some possibilities feel fully formed. He's getting stronger. He's getting better, even while a Senator.
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
I cannot imagine a better allegory for the GOP basically since 1964
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Yeah, the Obama model is done and gone
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
it's not a 1 out of 100,000 math problem. That's my only point We know precisely where they will concentrate limited force
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Sure, but there is no need to pretend we have no idea where they're going. We have a lot of history that suggests the type of vote they want to eliminate
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
OK, let me be more direct: remove all white-majority districts. Now remove all solidly blue and red states. Then remove all suburbs. Keep playing this game. Now, the number is getting smaller.
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
True as that may be, some particular election sites will be of much more interest than others.
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
A great political imbalance in higher ed: Conservative center fires guy for political reasons, and he keeps his mouth shut for the core mission Lib Arts guy gets sabattical and parental leave and uses that time to build a new career by trashing the school: www.theassemblync.com/news/educati...
theassemblync.com
Fired UNC Civics Associate Dean Breaks His Silence on Investigation
David Decosimo objected to a Wall Street Journal editorial. The paper didn’t publish his response—which he says is part of the problem.
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The Chi. Easy answer for me
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 04/10/2026
remarkable piece of journalism. really worth reading.
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Dustin A. Chacón @lingdustin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:
Screenshot of a Tweet from Pope Leo XIV. It reads: 

"In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgen to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
some descriptive statistics here on the civility industrial complex on college campuses that I haven’t seen analyzed before www.uncivilcollective.org/resources
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
One of the craziest things about Chris Rufo coverage over these past years is that everybody buys the Italian dad thing without looking into his mother’s side at all
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Ian Rapoport @rapsheet.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The Browns are 3-1.
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Lmao
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祖思薪 Eugenia Zuroski @zugenia.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Student newspapers are keeping journalistic integrity alive
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Judith Weisenfeld @jlweisenfeld.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Job: Princeton's Effron Center for the Study of America is conducting an open-rank search in Native American and Indigenous Studies in any field in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Review of applications begins November 1.
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Time for this classic again.
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Drafting the Past @draftingthepast.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Pssst...our first book reviews drop two weeks from today. Are you subscribed yet? www.draftingthepast.com
draftingthepast.com
Drafting the Past
Reviews, craft essays, news and more for readers and writers of history.
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
💯Cannot be said enough
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
When they get back in power, Democrats need to go all-in on higher education. We need a campaign of reinvestment in public universities across the country that makes the Morrill Land-Grant Act look like nothing by comparison *and* a GI Bill of Rights-style program of tuition grants.
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Don't forget the Negro Question of the late-19th century
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KEW @kidadaewilliams.com · 27/09/2026
Harvard Law School Acquires Oral History Collection on the Legacy of TransAfrica jbhe.com/2026/09/harv...
jbhe.com
Harvard Law School Acquires Oral History Collection on the Legacy of TransAfrica | The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
The new collection at Harvard features more than 120 oral histories recorded by Ronald Williams II for his forthcoming book on this history of TransAfrica, a former foreign policy advocacy organizatio...
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Dana R. Fisher (aka the Apocalyptic Optimist) @fisherdanar.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Important read about the corporate capture of universities (and how it's been a long time coming) 👇
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Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This story brought me back to Kara, one of the mothers in my book, There Is No Place for Us. She was homeless with her four kids while driving for DoorDash. They had to pee in bottles so bathroom stops wouldn't make her late. After gas, she earned $6.50 an hour—75 cents less than the minimum wage.
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
There is no reason to think America would elect a woman president. It's as true today as it was in 2024.
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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I am the Director of this program. Many of you might recall that we have been paused for two years. It’s very exciting we are re-opening. Feel free to write to me with any questions, and check out our program here
bu.edu
American Studies
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Rachel Shelden @rachelshelden.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Terrific review of SUPREMACY by @nikobowie.bsky.social and @daphnarenan.bsky.social alongside my book, THE POLITICAL SUPREME COURT: 
Picture of this quotation from Pema Levy’s article “How the Supreme Court seized power to rule over the rest of us”:

“As Bowie, Renan, and Shelden show, this is not how its always been, or how it's supposed to be. To take back their power, the people must simply demand it.”
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Ordinary Notes @hystericalblkns.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
www.theguardian.com/news/2026/se...
theguardian.com
Nearly 4m records of enslaved people in 20 former British colonies now searchable online
Exclusive: Collection’s 300,000 pages record lives of enslaved people in countries including the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Mauritius, South Africa and Trinidad
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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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Kevin M. Levin @civilwarmemory.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Another reminder for my Charlottesville friends that I will be in town on Wednesday night to talk about my new biography of Robert Gould Shaw. Come on out. There will be door prizes. naucenter.as.virginia.edu/2026-27-croz...
naucenter.as.virginia.edu
2026-27 Crozer Lecture with Kevin M. Levin
On Wednesday, September 23, historian Kevin M. Levin will deliver our annual Crozer Lecture. He will discuss his forthcoming book, A Glorious Fate: The
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Well, this was a shocking number to see: "Between 2020 and 2024...Black faculty members on the tenure track at Bates fell from three to two...Hispanic tenure-track faculty..dropped from four to two...white tenure-track faculty members increased from 20 to 22" www.chronicle.com/article/how-...
chronicle.com
How Bates College’s Curriculum Became a National Argument
After years of debate, a proposal to embed race in every major remains in limbo.
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Seth Rockman @sethrockman.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This is a big one: Brown University is searching for the next director of the Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Please help us identify excellent candidates to lead this signature program into the future. Please write me with ideas; please share in your networks; please apply.
networks.h-net.org
Brown University - Professor and Director of the Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice | H-Net
1. Academic Accomplishment. We seek a scholar with a strong scholarly record, including excellence in both research and teaching, appropriate for appointment at the level of full professor in a social science, humanities, or arts department at Brown.
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
This rhetoric has existed since WW2. You could publish a book of it about Vietnam alone.
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
every single thing you just said is true of nearly every city at any point, including now
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Plus the no-bid thing Bad choice.
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rickypo.bsky.social @rickypo.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Who governs Princeton? Austerity and the need for democratization www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2026...
dailyprincetonian.com
Who governs Princeton? Austerity and the need for democratization
Faculty in all positions, staff, and students need to organize across the University around the costs and consequences of austerity, and demand elected representation with authority over how Princeton...
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
No
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
The Iran war has cost US consumers $100 billion in higher fuel prices, a Brown University study shows. The average household has paid more than $760 extra. Texas has absorbed the biggest total hit at about $11 billion, followed by California at $8 billion and Florida at $5 billion.
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Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
A Labor Day reminder: having a job is no longer enough to protect millions of Americans from homelessness. For many workers, the greatest threat isn't losing their job. It's that their job will never pay enough, never provide enough hours, never offer enough stability to keep them housed.
nytimes.com
Opinion | America Is Pushing Its Workers Into Homelessness (Gift Article)
The working homeless are casualties of our prosperity.
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elizabethginexi.bsky.social @elizabethginexi.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
1/3 of young scientists planning careers in academic research changed their minds in the spring of 2025, according to a new survey, with fewer expecting to remain in higher education and in the U.S. to work or feeling that pursuing a Ph.D. was the right decision. news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...
news.harvard.edu
Survey of young researchers raises concerns over future of science in U.S. — Harvard Gazette
Fewer planning careers in academy, nation, and more doubt value of Ph.D. amid policy shifts in funding, international students
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
So few of their opinion authors actually teach or even work in Higher Ed It’s like if ESPN let the commissioner of my fantasy league publish an op-ed on RBs
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I Scare You Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 05/09/2026
Playing football and betting on football is seen as *the* path to stability for so many people that demands to abolish it without addressing the material conditions driving it are always going to be fruitless.
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William Sturkey @william-sturkey.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
The dumbest thing about this is that football is as wildly popular as ever. You might as well publish an op-ed arguing we should wave the flag on the 4th of July
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Gautham Rao (pronounced: Knicks in 5) @gauthamrao.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Here’s my op-ed on Chief Justice John Roberts whitewashed history of President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft. Roberts adoration of Taft’s “restraint” conveniently omits Taft’s racism, refusal to condemn lynching, and embrace of Lost Causism. That’s no accident. share.inquirer.com/IcPlmx
share.inquirer.com
Will the real William Howard Taft please stand up?
Chief Justice John Roberts penned an incomplete, but revealing, tribute to former President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft.
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Joe Stieb @joestieb.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
foreignpolicy.com/2026/09/04/w... For those who may be interested, I've got a retrospective piece seeking historical precision for the War on Terror. My main claim is that the War on Terror, as a period of US foreign policy history, is over. It had 3 essential traits: 1. Terrorism was treated/
google.com
What Was the War on Terror?
A defining period in U.S. foreign policy has ended, but it remains misunderstood.
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Carly Goodman @carlygoodman.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Hard to imagine a greater dream team than Bryant Simon and Ben Talton talking about toilets and inequality—in Washington DC at politics & prose, 10/7: politics-prose.com/bryant-simon...
politics-prose.com
Bryant Simon — For Customers Only: Public Bathrooms and the Making of American Inequality - with Benjamin Talton — at the Wharf
Americans have nowhere to go. Nationwide, countless public spaces lack one crucial thing: bathrooms, never mind ones that are safe and functional. Yet in the past, political leaders celebrated the opening of public bathrooms with boisterous press conferences and showy ribbon-cutting ceremonies.
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