Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Amanda Lanzillo

Jared Holt @jaredlholt.bsky.social · 2d

This really makes it sound like a Border Patrol agent tried to kill an anti-ICE activist in Chicago and DHS lied to cover for him

Chicago Sun-Times @chicago.suntimes.com · 2d

Body-camera video appears to contradict the government’s claim that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire at her late Saturday morning in Brighton Park, her attorney claimed.
trib.al/9Sxu9IN

Attorney for woman shot by Border Patrol claims officer said 'Do something b-----' before shooting

Body-camera video appears to contradict the government's claim that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire at her late Saturday morning in Brighton Park, her attorney claimed. A judge ordered Martinez and a co-defendant released pending trial.

trib.al

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Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 3d

I have a full day today, but I woke up early to put this edition of my newsletter together because I need you all to have this rundown of what we've been up against this week in Chicago as the federal assault on our city continues. To ignore these developments would be a damning mistake for us all.

Must-Reads and the War on Chicago

"Chicagoans will not be a conquered people."

organizingmythoughts.org

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Heba Gowayed هبة جويد @hebagowayed.bsky.social · 5d

This is who @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social is. Brilliant. Fearless. I fucking hate typing this shit out: Free Eman.

Amplify amplify amplify please.

Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 5d

@emanabdelhadi.bsky.social tells these cops about themselves.

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 6d

ICE out of Chicago NOW.

Anjali Enjeti @anjalienjeti.bsky.social · 6d

My god.

“Watson said she saw agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans. Kids were separated from their mothers…’It was heartbreaking to watch…seeing kids coming out buck naked and taken from their mothers, it was horrible.’”

Massive immigration raid on Chicago apartment building leaves residents reeling: 'I feel defeated'

The Department of Homeland Security said federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested 37 people in the raid.

chicago.suntimes.com

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Mark Elliott @profmarkelliott.bsky.social · 6d

Excellent (but depressing) analysis by @gsoh31.bsky.social on the fragile state of higher education in the UK. This passage particularly struck me. politicalquarterly.org.uk/blog/where-n...

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 9d

“A masked ICE agent inside the fencing shot a pepper ball from about 50 feet away, hitting Rezai’s truck, which had its driver’s side window down, ‘causing the chemical agents to engulf the inside.’”

Block Club Chicago @blockclubchi.bsky.social · 9d

ICE fired a chemical weapon at a TV reporter in Broadview. The "unprovoked" attack is now under investigation. blockclubchi.co/4mHRQd8

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 10d

My first Chicago half marathon to mark the start of the new academic year!

1 hr 55 min 42 sec time; not bad for being pretty undertrained (an international move will do that 🤷‍♀️).

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Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez @ramirez.house.gov · 15d

Hundreds of immigrant detainees held at Alligator Alcatraz are missing.

The Trump Administration keeps us in the dark because they don't want us to see how they’re violating our rights, tearing our families apart, and attacking our communities.

We need answers! Where are our neighbors?

Democracy Now! @democracynow.org · 15d

Miami Herald: Two-Thirds of Immigrants Held at “Alligator Alcatraz” in July Have Disappeared

In immigration news, hundreds of people who were once detained at the troubled immigration jail in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” have disappeared.

www.democracynow.org

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 16d

Like everyone else, I've deleted my academia. edu page and I'm in the process of shifting over to Knowledge Commons. I'm still figuring out how it works, but my articles and book can all be found there and on my personal website.

hcommons.org/members/aman...

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Reposted by Amanda Lanzillo

Anirvan Chatterjee @chatterjee.net · 16d

"Compared to the first year of the first Trump administration, arrests of noncriminals have increased 500 percent."

www.justsecurity.org/121122/us-de...

The Deportation Industrial Complex: Arrest and Detention Numbers

Detaining citizens & immigrants without a public safety rationale is inconsistent with American values and wastes of taxpayer money.

www.justsecurity.org

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Reposted by Amanda Lanzillo

Dr Eleanor Janega @goingmedieval.bsky.social · 21d

The destruction of the Gaza city mosque is a devastating loss to humanity as a whole. A part of our global medieval heritage destroyed in furtherance to a genocide. I despair.

Andy Khouri @andykhouri.bsky.social · 21d

Built in the 13th century. So that mosque stood for 800 years with every sort of person from every place and every religion in the world passing through Gaza century after century, only for it to be blown up by some shithead loser sitting behind a computer that we probably paid for.

🏳️‍⚧️ Josephine Riesman @josie.zone · 21d

My rage knows no bounds

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 19d

“AI has always been a marketing phrase that erodes scientific inquiry and scholarly discussion by de- sign, leaving the door open to pseudoscience, exclusion, and surveillance.”

zenodo.org/records/1706...

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Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia

Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these col...

zenodo.org

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Reposted by Amanda Lanzillo

Mondoweiss @mondoweiss.net · 21d

Netanyahu officially approved a settlement plan last week and announced his intentions to greenlight other settlements just like it. Together, these plans would end the West Bank as a geographic and political entity.

mondoweiss.net/2025/09/if-i...

#Palestine #Israel

If Israel’s settlement plan goes through, the West Bank will soon cease to exist

Netanyahu officially approved a settlement plan last week and announced his intentions to greenlight other settlements just like it. Together, these plans would end the West Bank as a geographic and political...

mondoweiss.net

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 24d

Pious Labor (@ucpress.bsky.social ) reviewed in the AHR by @farinamir.bsky.social . I've been fortunate that the book has been read by several thoughtful and generous reviewers, and I'm especially thrilled to see this one.

academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...
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Lanzillo is keen to see labor history as a site for Islamic history. Pious Labor does so admirably through both method and content. As Lanzillo rightly underscores, the history of Islam in colonial India has largely been written through “an insistence on the primacy of canonical thinkers and texts” (17). Pious Labor elegantly portrays how artisans anchored their labor in Islamic pasts. Woodworkers traced their skills to the prophet Nuh (Noah); tailors to Idris (Enoch); blacksmiths to Dawud (David). Artisans often connected their trade and/or skill to Sufi pirs (guides/saints), as was the case with scribes and metalsmiths. By showing us an “artisanal Islam” in a range of contexts, the book effectively makes working- and lower-class histories integral to an understanding of Islam in South Asia.

Pious Labor is refreshingly original in bringing histories of economy, labor, technology, and Islam into dialogue with one another, and it makes contributions to each of these fields of history. Additionally, by highlighting how Muslim artisans emphasized the Islamic origins of their trades and the pious nature of their labor and rendered new technologies as sources for their accumulation of social and cultural capital, Lanzillo makes a valuable contribution to the history of late colonial India.

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 25d

If we’re mourning a victim of political violence in the US this weekend, it should be Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez.

unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 25d

New, w/ @mulchy.bsky.social & @djbyrnes1.bsky.social:

ICE shot & killed an immigrant in the Chicago suburbs yesterday.

Then they immediately gave a misleading account of events.

Chicago erupted in chaos and a father who lived here for decades is dead. This is what really happened:

What happened to Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez

Immigration agents shot and killed an unarmed 38-year-old father outside Chicago on Friday—and their initial narrative of events was quickly disproven by videos captured by witnesses.

unraveledpress.com

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Reposted by Amanda Lanzillo

In These Times @inthesetimes.com · 25d

BREAKING in Chicago: "ICE Abducts Man Suing Off-Duty Police for Abusing Day Laborers" by
@sarahlazare.bsky.social & @bloomekatz.bsky.social

“The Department of Homeland Security has become the department of state terror,” @ramirez.house.gov said Saturday.

ICE Abducts Man Suing Off-Duty Police for Abusing Day Laborers

“The Department of Homeland Security has become the department of state terror,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez.

inthesetimes.com

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 25d

What a thoughtful man Mahmoud Khalil is. A must read.

Was moved to know that while in detention he was reading Edward Said and Viktor E. Frankl

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

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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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 26d

My next book, Out of Empire, is now under contract with @uncpress.bsky.social! The book provides a social historical perspective on the hijrat of 1920, during which tens of thousands of Indians left their homeland in search of freer lives in an independent, Muslim-ruled territory: Afghanistan.

A black and white photograph showing a parade of migrants and their supporters during the 1920 hijrat from India to Afghanistan.

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 27d

An early example of testimonials in Urdu advertising! For the homeopathic treatment Amrat Dhara, which will help you with "any struggle in life," in a 1931 edition of Sadaqat (Kanpur). The advertisement features "a few letters of the 36,000" that they claim to have received from users 👀.

🗃️

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The Intercept @theintercept.com · Sep 8

You could house Chicago's homeless four times over with the money Trump's occupation of the city will cost PER DAY.

Read more: interc.pt/4mEgE6q

✍️ @nickturse.bsky.social 📹 @jordanuhl.com

Trump’s Chicago Occupation May Cost 4X More Than Housing City Homeless #politics #trump #chicago

YouTube video by The Intercept

youtube.com

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American Council of Learned Societies @acls1919.bsky.social · Sep 8

"Since the 1950s, area studies programs have quietly informed disciplinary practices across the humanities and social sciences."

2024 ACLS Fellow @amandazillo.bsky.social shares why area studies matter in @insidehighered.com: bit.ly/4lXw5p5

Why Area Studies Matters (opinion)

If we are to save area studies programs, it will fall to universities to recognize their value, Amanda Lanzillo writes.

bit.ly

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Nicholas Witkowski @nwitkowski.bsky.social · Sep 3

SEPT 15 JOB DEADLINE: Assistant Professor in South/Southeast Asian Religions (w/ focus on Hindu Traditions, defined BROADLY) in my department at the University of San Diego (PLEASE SHARE WIDELY).

jobs.sandiego.edu/cw/en-us/job...

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · Sep 4

Agree 100%. I wrote it from a US perspective because the history of the funding and discourses around national security are somewhat distinct, but on a broader level I see US universities falling into the same austerity traps that I witnessed while working in the UK and know exist elsewhere…

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · Sep 3

Thanks for sharing it!

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Daniel Jacobius Morgan @jacobius.bsky.social · Sep 3

Brilliant - and sadly necessary - defense of the value of area studies from @amandazillo.bsky.social

www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

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