Victor Ray
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victorerikray.bsky.social
Victor Ray
@victorerikray.bsky.social
Sociologist, UIowa Associate Professor and author of On Critical Race Theory. Vice-President American Sociological Association. Former BIGS Racial Equity Fellow at Harvard Business School.
Reposted by Victor Ray
Happy to share the news that Dr. Vahid Abedini has been released.

www.oudaily.com/news/ou-prof...
November 25, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
there’s this constant mythology about the elusive centrist voter who isn’t represented by the media but whenever they use examples of people not represented by the media it’s always people like alan dershowitz who are still represented in the media and almost exclusively so!
Bari Weiss says she wants to use her new perch at CBS News to “redraw the lines of what falls in the 40 yards of acceptable debate” in American political and cultural life. She says the aim is to sideline voices like Hasan Piker, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, and elevate “charismatic”...
November 26, 2025 at 4:33 AM
Reposted by Victor Ray
"A woman with a family connection to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Revere, Massachusetts."

www.wcvb.com/article/karo...
November 26, 2025 at 4:07 AM
Reposted by Victor Ray
Photos from St. Paul today captured by MPR photojournalist Kerem Yücel. He filed them even after being hospitalized after being injured by a less lethal munition.
November 26, 2025 at 3:30 AM
Reposted by Victor Ray
Being among the first interrogated and ultimately fired by DOGE, I certainly felt we were facing the business end of a right-wing conspiracy theory 🧵
DOGE was not a money-saving effort. It was an effort to chase down and prove right-wing conspiracy theories. They went after USAID to prove conspiracy theories about foreign aid. Then they went after SSA to, again, pursue conspiracy theories about Dems paying "illegals" to vote. 1/2
All DOGE accomplished was purging critical government staff, handing private data to outsiders, and sentencing thousands in developing countries to death by gutting USAID.

I don’t say this lightly: if there were any justice in this world, the people responsible for this devastation would be in jail
November 26, 2025 at 2:31 AM
Reposted by Victor Ray
Clearly the nation that tried to sell Democracy to nations around the world failed at home.
November 25, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
Brasil's top court to Bolsonaro... GO TO JAIL NOW. Start that 27 years son, we don't care if you were hallucinating! WOW. Look at what a functioning democracy can do.
SIGH. Meanwhile, our supreme court just upholds everything the 38 count felon wants.
November 25, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
I can't think of something less controversial to say about US presidents than that Trump is the most openly corrupt president in US history. Shame on the BBC.
NEWS --> BBC confirms to me that they did edit a line out of historian @rutgerbregman.com's speech. It called Trump "the most openly corrupt president in US history."

BBC also confirms this was done on the advice of lawyers. So Trump's threats worked.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/2036...
Trump’s Fury at BBC Gets Unnerving Results with Pro-MAGA Edit Stunner
First, British Broadcasting Corporation execs resigned after Trump complained about a segment. Now the BBC edited out a line from a historian that was critical of Trump. Where does this end?
newrepublic.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
This one means a lot: just woke up to find that THERE IS NO PLACE FOR US has been named a New York Times Notable Book of 2025.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/b...
November 25, 2025 at 1:33 PM
You truly love to see it.
Honored to serve on Mayor-elect @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social Transition Committee on Technology. For too long, too many New Yorkers have been left behind. NYC deserves governance that centers affordability, equity, and the public good-looking forward to the work ahead. www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news...
NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announces transition committees
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani​ announced Monday the creation of 17 transition advisory committees made up of more than 400 people.
www.cbsnews.com
November 25, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
Honored to serve on Mayor-elect @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social Transition Committee on Technology. For too long, too many New Yorkers have been left behind. NYC deserves governance that centers affordability, equity, and the public good-looking forward to the work ahead. www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news...
NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announces transition committees
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani​ announced Monday the creation of 17 transition advisory committees made up of more than 400 people.
www.cbsnews.com
November 24, 2025 at 10:52 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
Nuzzi made an epic romance, to the extent her limited writing ability allowed, out of what delusions she constructed as her love affair with RFK, whether it was truly a great love to her or not, for the purpose of state propaganda, as part of efforts to sanitize RFK when he’s patently objectionable.
November 25, 2025 at 4:49 PM
November 25, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
My first piece for @theguardian.com on MBS’s visit to the U.S., seven years after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.

Trump’s America is beginning to look like MBS’s Saudi Arabia— which Jamal warned me about.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The Saudification of America is under way | Karen Attiah
Jamal Khashoggi’s plight and murder was a warning sign for the US, of the impending loss of freedom and censorship that would sweep the country
www.theguardian.com
November 18, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
Once again: the next $28,000 will get matched by one of our donors. Hitting $70,000 in GoFundMe will mean hitting $105,000 in fact, with his generous matched donation. That will put us well on the way to doing projects like The Reconstruction Papers on a regular basis. gofund.me/29ce4ead3
November 25, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
Another exciting tidbit: it will be our first ever print run. The Reconstruction Papers will be a sleek, professionally designed print offering, alongside a more widely distributed PDF. This is the kind of thing we'd like to do a lot more of, and need your help to achieve. gofund.me/29ce4ead3
November 25, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
This will be different from our usual fare. It will be a big batch, drawing from subject matter experts discussing ambitious reforms in areas ranging from political accountability and responsiveness, to administrative effectiveness, to higher education, and more. gofund.me/29ce4ead3
November 25, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
I want to talk a bit about one specific project we will get off the ground if we're able to meet our goal and hire full time staff. We have been calling it The Reconstruction Papers. It will be a collection of essays focused on a positive, practical vision for the country gofund.me/29ce4ead3
November 25, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
We’re accepting applications for our (paid! remote!) summer internship! professors who follow me please share with any students interested in writing
Would You Like To Be Defector’s Sixth-Ever Editorial Intern? | Defector
Big news: Defector is looking to hire editorial interns for the summer of 2026. Wow! That could be you! How could it be you? I am here to answer that question, and many more. What will a Defector inte...
defector.com
November 25, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
"Black women are disproportionately working-class. So if it was really about class, explain to me why Black women understood exactly what he [Trump] was going to do, which is make life harder for working-class people," says Kimberlé Crenshaw. newrepublic.com/article/2036...
November 25, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
November 25, 2025 at 9:26 AM
Reposted by Victor Ray
I’ve been running around asking tech execs and academics if language was the same as intelligence for over a year now - and, well, it isn’t. @benjaminjriley.bsky.social explains how the bubble is built on ignoring cutting-edge research into the science of thought www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
November 25, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Victor Ray
The Civil Rights Movement.

EYES ON THE PRIZE is solid, but over forty years old. There's been a lot of great work on the movement since then. And while EYES leaned heavily on interviews with participants, a new series could make use of that scholarship to get beyond the Montgomery-to-Memphis arc.
I figure Ken Burns has one, maybe two big documentary series in him before he fully retires. What do you think they should be? My votes include Football, Hip-Hop, World War 1, Reconstruction (though Skip Gates did this one well), Iraq/Afghanistan, 19th Century Expansionism.
November 25, 2025 at 12:25 AM
Reposted by Victor Ray
“You know what sucks? Having customers. Surely we can put an end to that.”
November 25, 2025 at 2:00 PM