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Melvin Rogers

@prorogers.bsky.social

6.6K followers 1.3K following 100 posts

Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor Political Science Department @ Brown University Teaches Political Theory Book: The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought (PUP)

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Dec 19

Hello, New Followers. I am a political theorist at Brown University. I'm often thinking, writing, or reading about the ethical basis of democracy. Quotes from my favorite thinkers reflect my concerns. I will often post books or articles I'm reading. Thanks for being in community with me. 😀

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · 11d

Well, I tried to explain that universities already traffic in disagreement. That is how disciplines work. I pointed out that once you turn inquiry into a balance sheet of political leanings, you will quickly betray the standards of academic work. I tried to say something about those standards.

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · 11d

Was asked about “viewpoint diversity.” It may sound like pluralism, but it means auditing faculty for ideological balance—confusing scholarship with partisan accounting. Pluralism rests on rigorous debate and critique, not political mandates, and rarely welcomes every opinion under the sun.

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Bonnie Honig @bonniehonig.bsky.social · 12d

My contribution to this is to say as often as possible “nothing worth studying at a university level has (only) two sides”

Jonathan Ladd @jonmladd.bsky.social · 13d

Inviting pundits to give "talks" is just not what professors/departments do. Some schools have "institutes of politics" that do this, like @gupolitics.bsky.social at Georgetown, which invites conservatives regularly. Departments invite scholars for talks, and I rarely know their personal politics.

James Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social · 13d

More than anything, they want to be patted on the head and told they're a good boy by the liberal elites

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Aug 18

What I'm working on these days.

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Aug 18

😀

Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Aug 17

Also have a look at Keidrick Roy's American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism.

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Jul 10

This is now out. I love working on this series.

Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · Jul 9

This is of interest to me! Hat tip to @prorogers.bsky.social.

Book cover for Seizing Citizenship: Frederick Douglass's Abolitionist Republicanism, by Philip Yaure. Cover is black and includes a portrait of Douglass.

Back cover for Seizing Citizenship, Oxford University Press. "In the years leading up to the U.S. Civil War, former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass maintained that enslaved Black Americans were already American citizens. Through a systematic analysis of his political writings from the 1840s through the 1890s, Philip Yaure shows that Douglass' declaration of Black Americans' citizenship is the locus of a profound innovation in republican political philosophy. Seizing Citizenship argues that Frederick Douglass reimagined the republican concept of citizenship, on which persons are citizens because they contribute to the polity, to cast the everyday resistance of Black Americans against slavery and white supremacy as activity that constitutes them as American citizens. The resistance of Black Americans forged them into a people with the collective power to remake America's civic ethos in a racially just and inclusive fashion. Douglass advanced an abolitionist republicanism, on which persons seize standing as free citizens of a free polity through the struggle to dismantle the oppressive institutions that dominate and exploit them. Douglass's republican politics strives not to overcome our vulnerability to one another, but instead to deepen such vulnerability on terms conducive to our shared emancipation and collective flourishing."

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Jun 11

"If you campaign to move university faculty to the right in the name of institutional pluralism, why not—with the same vociferousness—call for greater economic and ideological diversity among university trustees, university presidents, corporate boardrooms...?"
www.commondreams.org/opinion/univ...

What Must Universities Become Today in Face of Trump? | Common Dreams

In sliding too close to the regime that now attacks them, too many universities have lost much of the leverage needed to marshal wider public support for their most noble agendas.

www.commondreams.org

Reposted by Melvin Rogers

Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson @verena-erlenbusch.bsky.social · May 18

Two new book reviews are out in Political Theory:
Nick Brommell reviews The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and African American Political Thought, by @prorogers.bsky.social

Book Review: The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and African American Political Thought, by Melvin L. Rogers - Nick Bromell, 2025

journals.sagepub.com

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Princeton Audio @princetonaudio.bsky.social · May 7

@prorogers.bsky.social's The Darkened Light of Faith is a powerful new account of what a group of 19th- and 20th-century African American activists, intellectuals, and artists can teach us about democracy.

🎧📘 Save 50% on this #audiobook with code BLOOM50: press.princeton.edu/books/audio/...

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Apr 23

My god!

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Apr 23

"the prospect of successful opposition to authoritarianism lies primarily in civil society. Many more businesses, law firms, and media organizations will need to step up in opposition, together with many more colleges." www.chronicle.com/article/we-h...

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Apr 21

I am late in seeing this!!

Jack El-Hai @jackelhai.bsky.social · Apr 16

"Baldwin wrestled with this anxiety."

Today's article pick from Damn History, a free monthly newsletter for readers/writers of #popularhistory. Congrats to writer @prorogers.bsky.social & @liberalcurrents.com!

Read/subscribe to Damn History: buff.ly/3CqxZ0z

www.liberalcurrents.com/existential-...

Existential Liberalism: James Baldwin and the Problem of Freedom

The burden of freedom has always been heavy, and Baldwin forces us to confront whether we are willing to bear it.

www.liberalcurrents.com

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Apr 8

When things seem dark, I say paint. It will put a smile on your face. Here are some of my pieces. Enjoy 😀

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Derek Gottlieb @derekgottlieb.bsky.social · Apr 5

Reminded of @prorogers.bsky.social on Baldwin:

he calls moral monsters. Similar to Wells’s use of “barbaric,” he does not deploy the term as determinative of who and what white Americans are fated to be. This is why, as he says, it is a terrible indictment because he thinks (and we ought not to think otherwise) his listeners can recognize the offense his claim represents—the offense to their character and way of being in the world. He demands that citizens be discursively agile—that they see the figurative use of the language as getting as close as possible to a terrible transformation of the self. What makes it a terrible indictment in another sense is the implication: many white Americans have shut off in themselves that part of them that responds to the pain of others, in particular civic others. To be a moral monster is to betray, we might say, the demand of thick relationships that define our shared political lives. This is the price of innocence and what makes it a crime.

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Mar 31

"Objections brought against liberalism ignore that the only alternatives to dependence upon intelligence are either drift and casual improvisation, or the use of coercive force stimulated by unintelligent emotion and fanatical dogmatism--the latter being intolerant by its very constitution." J.Dewey

Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Mar 28

Thank you!

Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Mar 27

let me know your thoughts

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Mar 27

www.thriftbooks.com/w/notes-of-a...

Notes of a Native Son book by James Baldwin

Buy a cheap copy of Notes of a Native Son book by James Baldwin. #26 on The Guardian's list of 100 best nonfiction books of all time, the essays explore what it means to be Black in America In an age ...

www.thriftbooks.com

Reposted by Melvin Rogers

Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · Mar 27

Freedom isn't a passive inheritance, but a struggle to live responsibly with one another. That is hard work when it seems to be our inescapable nature to construct myths and ideologies of inequality and exclusion.

I love this essay on Baldwin by @prorogers.bsky.social.

Existential Liberalism: James Baldwin and the Problem of Freedom

The burden of freedom has always been heavy, and Baldwin forces us to confront whether we are willing to bear it.

www.liberalcurrents.com

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Mar 27

@bonniehonig.bsky.social @democracyprof.bsky.social @juliethooker.bsky.social

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Mar 27

James Baldwin is a figure many of us have turned to in recent years. I am no exception. In my latest piece for @liberalcurrents.com I offer my thoughts on what Baldwin offers us and why we ought to heed his words. Have a read and let me know what you think.

Adam Gurri @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com · Mar 27

He never gave his audience platitudes. He always demanded you dig deep and confront uncomfortable truths. His treatment of freedom is no exception, and @prorogers.bsky.social nails it www.liberalcurrents.com/existential-...

Existential Liberalism: James Baldwin and the Problem of Freedom

The burden of freedom has always been heavy, and Baldwin forces us to confront whether we are willing to bear it.

www.liberalcurrents.com

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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · Mar 26

Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · Mar 26

Video of the international student at Tufts being arrested by "federal authorities" in Massachusetts has been released and it's terrifying.

They're not even uniformed officers. Just secret police thugs in hoodies and masks.

From WCVB: youtu.be/PuFIs7OkzYY

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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · Mar 19

Excellent excellent excellent from Princeton president and constitutional/ political theorist Chris Eisgruber. There's been far too little of this kind of thing; here's hoping others follow his good example.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The Cost of the Government’s Attack on Columbia

American universities have given the country prosperity and security. The Trump administration’s attack on academic freedom endangers all of that.

www.theatlantic.com

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Melvin Rogers @prorogers.bsky.social · Mar 19

"The attack on Columbia is a radical threat to scholarly excellence and to America’s leadership in research. Universities and their leaders should speak up and litigate forcefully to protect their rights."