Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · 2d

Gabriel Winant just under a year ago, in November 2024: www.dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

In our time, there are entrenched institutional liberal forces, not only in formal politics but in the universities, the press, the legal system, the nonprofit sector, and even the corporate world, that intone the threat Trumpism poses to democracy and the rule of law, yet work every day to defeat their own internal left-wing challengers: student protests, labor struggles, "woke excesses." When they raid encampments (student or unhoused) or bust unions, they do Trump's work for him, remaking Americans in authoritarian ways. The phenomenon that Trump represents can only be defeated when liberal institutionalists cease trying to quash the insurgent left in the name of protecting democracy, and instead look to it as an ally and a source of strength. This is not because the ideas of the left already represent a suppressed silent majority—a fantastical, self-flattering delusion-but because it is only the left that has a coherent vision to offer against the ideas of the right.

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · 2d

👇🏽

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 3d

Pretty incredible own goal by liberal institutions and many Democratic electeds to crush the exact type of protests in 2024 that would’ve been the most effective way to slow or stop ICE incursions into American cities in 2025

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Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 3d

I visited the apartment building ICE raided on Tuesday today. Story to come, but you can walk right in. Half of the apartments have no doors on them. Children's stuff abandoned in some flats. *Citizen* residents told me they were arrested and held for hours in zipties. This is America

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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 6d

Chicago, Illinois, 2025:

"They had the Black people in one van, and the immigrants in another van."

"They was bringing the kids down, had them zip-tied to each other."

"I kept asking, 'What is the morality?' One of them laughed. He said, 'Fuck them kids.'"

abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chi...

ICE agents raid South Shore apartments; Trump says Chicago could become military training ground

ICE agents raided a South Shore apartment building overnight as the city braces for a possible military deployment.

abc7chicago.com

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Michael Paarlberg @mpaarlberg.bsky.social · 9d

I think the Trump admin assumed no one would try to find out who the people on the boats they blew up really were

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · 18d

♥️

Lots of little boxes of microfilm reels of Arabic-language newspapers from the mid to late twentieth century stacked on dense library shelving

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · 18d

The greatest strength of the University of Washington is our people bsky.app/profile/absh...

Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · Sep 4

this article quotes one of my UW colleagues as saying that he used ChatGPT to come up with his AI usage policy (it’s allowed in his classes, of course) www.chronicle.com/article/how-...

How Are Instructors Talking About AI in Their Syllabi?

Most colleges don’t have a campuswide policy, leaving the crafting of such statements up to individual faculty members.

www.chronicle.com

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · 18d

well

A message written by the president and provost of the University of Washington to the campus community that, when run through an AI detector, comes back as almost entirely AI generated

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Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal @jayapal.house.gov · 18d

The Israeli government continues to violate international law — this time, killing 31 journalists in a strike on Yemen in the second deadliest attack on the press ever recorded.

The U.S. cannot keep funding and supplying weapons for this destruction. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

Israel killed 31 journalists in Yemen strike, press freedom group says

Last week’s attack was “the deadliest strike on journalists in the Middle East” ever documented by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · 19d

I’m hoping to do something like this but in combination with an assignment. I just can’t figure out what the assignment should be

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · 19d

Historians et al: have you ever taught primary source management (how to organize and analyze archival photos, scans, etc. for a major research project) to grad students or advanced undergrads as a class subject? How? What did you assign them to do?

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Winnipeg Free Press @winnipegfreepress.com · 19d

CAIRO (AP) — A Sudanese paramilitary group reportedly killed 43 civilians while praying inside a mosque early Friday in the besieged city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, said a local medical group.

Sudanese paramilitary group reportedly kills 43 in mosque drone strike, says a local medical group

CAIRO (AP) — A Sudanese paramilitary group reportedly killed 43 civilians while praying inside a mosque early Friday in the besieged city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, said a local medical group.

www.winnipegfreepress.com

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · 27d

👇🏽 bsky.app/profile/nkal...

Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · Jul 3

American contractors are murdering Palestinians at ‘aid’ sites and they are treating it like a fucking game.

“I think you hit one.”

“Hell, yeah, boy!”

Monstrous.

apnews.com/article/pale...

In one video, what appear to be heavily armed American security contractors at one of the sites in Gaza discuss how to disperse Palestinians nearby. One is heard saying he has arranged for a “show of force” by Israeli tanks.

“I don’t want this to be too aggressive,” he adds, “because this is calming down.”

At that moment, bursts of gunfire erupt close by, at least 15 shots. “Whoo! Whoo!” one contractor yelps.

“I think you hit one,” one says.

Then comes a shout: “Hell, yeah, boy!”

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · 27d

In light of this reporting, the story from a couple months ago about American contractors in Gaza celebrating whenever they shoot a starving aid seeker comes into focus

Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 27d

Remember the Gaza Humanitarian Fund? The shady American nonprofit run by a Christian Nationalist that was given full control of food aid distribution sites in Gaza?

Its parent organization GH solutions hired members of an American white supremacist biker gang to run security for the all the sites.

Anti-Islamic US biker gang members run security at deadly Gaza aid sites

BBC identifies members of Infidels MC gang hired as armed security at US and Israel-backed aid sites.

www.bbc.com

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · 28d

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

The Gaza family torn apart by IDF snipers from Chicago and Munich
Five-month investigation reveals how four members of one family were shot and killed in a single day and highlights a pattern in which Israeli troops target unarmed civilians

"They're thinking: 'Oh I don't think [I'll get shot] because I'm wearing civilian clothes and I am not carrying a weapon and all that, but they were wrong," said Raab, who majored in biology at the University of Illinois before joining the Israel Defense Forces.
"That's what you have snipers for."
After Salem was shot, his father, Montasser, 51, rushed to the site, and tried to collect his sons' bodies for burial, but was also fatally injured by a sniper.
The need for a dignified funeral for loved ones is a core human instinct, protected in law and explored in art for millennia. It is at the emotional heart of Homer's Iliad, one of the earliest surviving works of literature.
But on that day, Raab treated love and grief as cause to kill. "They just kept on coming to try and take these bodies," he said.
The video of Salem's killing, and footage of other attacks on unarmed Palestinians, was posted online five months after his death, part of a montage made by a soldier called Shalom Gilbert to celebrate a deployment in Gaza.

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Faisal فيصل @faisalhamadah.bsky.social · 29d

www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

A vital interview that will serve as a testament against our fucked reality.

Mahmoud Khalil on exile, liberation and Ice detention: ‘It was a clear act of cruelty’

His grandparents survived the Nakba and he fled Assad’s Syria. Khalil is no stranger to political persecution, but not even Trump’s crackdown can silence him

www.theguardian.com

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · 29d

So how many fake names are there in this clown car?

(Dartafiwijhak from Kharatuz is definitely fake, the one right above it looks fake too though I don’t get the joke)

Heading of Gaza genocide denial letter from “scholars for truth about genocide dot com”

Signature 427 is Prof. Ali Bouzeghba of Bouzeghba University, 428 is Slobodan Dartafiwijzhak of University of Kharatuz

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · Sep 4

so cooked, etc. bsky.app/profile/absh...

Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · May 15

My UW colleague just straight-up says to NYT (after admitting she has a bot auto-generate feedback for students): “Is there going to be a point in the foreseeable future that much of what graduate student teaching assistants do can be done by A.I.?…Yeah, absolutely.” www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/t...

The Professors Are Using ChatGPT, and Some Students Aren’t Happy About It

www.nytimes.com

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · Sep 4

this article quotes one of my UW colleagues as saying that he used ChatGPT to come up with his AI usage policy (it’s allowed in his classes, of course) www.chronicle.com/article/how-...

How Are Instructors Talking About AI in Their Syllabi?

Most colleges don’t have a campuswide policy, leaving the crafting of such statements up to individual faculty members.

www.chronicle.com

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Eli Valley @elivalley.bsky.social · Sep 4

Such an odd thing to read in the newspaper
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/u...

Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · Sep 3

There are even visual exhibits to give a sense of the difference between administrative warrants (which do not give immigration officers the ability to access private spaces) and judicial warrants

2. What kind of a warrant does an immigration officer require to enter restricted access campus spaces?
To enter a restricted access campus space, a federal officer must have a judicial warrant.
Immigration officers may have either an administrative warrant or a judicial warrant.
Administrative warrants do not authorize a federal officer to enter homes and other restricted access spaces on university campuses.
Judicial warrants authorize them to enter restricted spaces without consent.
Because most of the work conducted by immigration officers is not reviewed in advance by federal judges, more often than not immigration agents have administrative warrants, not judicial warrants. Accordingly, in most cases, immigration officers will not have a warrant that authorizes entry to restricted access spaces without the university's consent.

Exhibit 1: Department of Homeland Security
Administrative Warrant
This type of warrant does not authorize a federal officer to enter a restricted access space on campus. Note that it states "Department of Homeland Security" at the top, and that it is signed by an immigration officer or immigration judge, and not by a federal or state judge.
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
WARRANT OF REMOVAL/DEPORTATION
not a
To any immigration olicer of the United States Department of Homeland Secur
name at anen
who endered the United States at
is subject to removal/deportation from the Unted States, based upon a final order by an immigration judge in anclution, deportation, or remeval prol a denigrated official
Board ef immigration Appeals a Unted Sates District or Magistrate Court Jusge
• folowing peousions of the immigr
ecretary of Homel
e hor direction…you to take into custody…

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon @abshlimon.bsky.social · Sep 3

The Middle East Studies Association of North America has published a very helpful “know your rights” FAQ on how and when to interact, or not interact, with immigration or law enforcement officers on campus mesana.org/advocacy/tas...

Middle East Studies Association

MESA's Task Force on Civil and Human Rights has created this resource to answer frequently-asked questions and to inform members regarding immigration enforcement on campus.

mesana.org

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Jonathan Fine @jonathanbfine.bsky.social · Sep 2

they’re so close

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · Aug 28

I am just … livid that this is what children are doing. From Minnesota to Gaza. Shielding each other. Facing snipers. It is obscene.

NPR @npr.org · Aug 28

Two children were killed, and 18 children between the ages 6 and 15 were injured by a shooter. Middle schoolers acted heroically to protect others, a parent said.

Middle schoolers are lauded for protecting younger kids during church shooting

Two children were killed, and 18 children between the ages 6 and 15 were injured by a shooter. Middle schoolers acted heroically to protect others, a parent said.

n.pr

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Kristian Ulrichsen @kristianulrichsen.bsky.social · Aug 24

Another example.

Danyel Reiche is the purported author of ‘Qatar’s World Cup and the Challenge of Sports-Washing’ (Third World Quarterly, 44/2, 2023, 245-64)

No such article exists (I checked the library catalog and with Danyel too). But if I google it, I get an AI summary of its probable content!

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