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Ted McCormick

@tedmccormick.bsky.social

15K followers 2.2K following 4.7K posts

Historian of scientific, economic and colonial projects in early modern Britain, Ireland, and the Atlantic; books http://bit.ly/3HYwNiA & http://bit.ly/3rKdAvt; http://memoriousblog.com; views mine; he/him. Montrealer in Philly, except when I’m in Montreal

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 1h

No university that signs the compact will be a university, in the accepted sense, anymore. They will be mere Trump Institutes, teaching only what subjects Trump doesn't bar them from teaching -- and only until he does. Signing is an abdication of responsibility and an act of great moral cowardice.

Benjamin Nathans | Autonomy or obedience

Guest Columnist Benjamin Nathans urges Penn’s leadership to resist the White House’s demands in its “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”

www.thedp.com

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 54m

There's a horror that comes wth recognizing where you are, the things you've already let pass: invasions of rights, perversions of mission. I think few parts of this society, and few corners of academia -- either here or elsewhere in the West -- are free of it. But it has to be faced to be stopped.

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 1h

Consider that you're not only surrendering your autonomy and your trust to a state that publicly despises both, in order to win some money and some favour for a while. Consider that, for anyone uninterested in your personal self-justifications, you're making yourself an accessory to this, and more.

Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 12h

Good reporting on the South Shore raid from South Side weekly here.

Confirms one thing I was told but didn't put in my own piece because I didn't have a second source and it seemed too insane: border agents segregated arrested residents by race

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...

Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children

Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes. Days later, neighbors are still searching for the missing.

southsideweekly.com

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 1h

If you are the sort of person who cares about how your actions are remembered -- I can't think many today are -- consider that you are abetting the takeover of places of learning by the same fascists who at this moment are using troops to suppress your fellow citizens' rights to speech and assembly.

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LadyGiada @ladygiada.bsky.social · 1h

Call for Papers📣: Gender, Violence and the Early Moderns. Join us in Florence. We look forward to hosting you in May 2026😎☀️ @eui-history.bsky.social #skystorians #academicsky #earlymodern

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 1h

Benjamin Nathans | Autonomy or obedience

Guest Columnist Benjamin Nathans urges Penn’s leadership to resist the White House’s demands in its “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”

www.thedp.com

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Reposted by Ted McCormick

Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 2d

If you are a supporter and reader of @contingent-mag.bsky.social one of the biggest things you can do to help us at the moment is get this CFP to the NTT folks in your life. The fracturing of social media has made it very difficult to get the word out esp. to adjuncts and VAPs.

CFP: A Time of Monsters

The monster has been here all along. It is a historical constant that manifests in wildly different ways across time, place, and culture. Whatever form it takes, the monster claws at categories; it un...

contingentmagazine.org

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Will Bunch @willbunch.bsky.social · 21h

No troops, or no deal to reopen the government

With masked goons running wild in Chicago and the president murdering people on boats, Democrats must seize the shutdown crisis as an opportunity to wage the fight against fascism we need to happen NOW

My new column www.inquirer.com/columnists/a...

Dems must say: No troops, or no shutdown deal | Will Bunch Newsletter

Plus, billionaire saved by Penn wants to wreck it.

www.inquirer.com

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Reposted by Ted McCormick

John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 11h

Um, ICE just coldly shot an unarmed PRIEST in the head w a pepper ball when he (and everyone around him) clearly posed no threat.

For the crime of … complaining about government policy.

Core 1A speech.

With cameras rolling, they’re sniping priests for sport.

Kurt @flglchicago.bsky.social · 12h

Here’s video of the incident

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 15h

big actant energy

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 16h

queuing it up for the holidays

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 16h

wow. infantilizing

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 16h

But thanks to AI I might get to

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 16h

when you call things “things,” that’s violence. those things are somebody’s unhealthy obsession, probably

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 16h

do you express radical hatred towards toasters? ahem hem NOT OK

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 16h

If you find yourself saying things about machines that you would never say about people, I have to assume that it’s because machines aren’t people

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 20h

Bing Crosby plays softly as Bill Shirer, Stephen Ambrose, and JD Vance rub shoulders on the Gifts for Dad sale table. Somewhere overhead, the sound of helicopters heading for a poor neighborhood

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 20h

this fact alone should kill the idea that learning is a function of how much information is available

Kate Carpenter @katecarp.bsky.social · 20h

How are there so many WWII books?

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Reposted by Ted McCormick

Rachel Herrmann @raherrmann.bsky.social · 22h

Yesterday I submitted the proofs for Claiming Land, Claiming Water: Borders and the People Who Crossed Them in the Early Modern Atlantic. This volume I’m editing with Jessica Roney is out next spring with @pennpress.bsky.social, but here’s a peek now at our table of contents!

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 21h

These are Charlie Kirk’s politics; this is his legacy

Rutgers professor moving to Europe after threats over antifa accusations

Mark Bray says threats intensified after a Turning Point USA petition accused him of promoting political violence

www.theguardian.com

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 21h

fwiw I’ve been an occasional reader/admirer of Moxon’s essays but this made me subscribe

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 21h

Can’t resist adding this, which has been the not-so-secret recipe of mainstream (North) American punditry for at least as long as I’ve been able to read

And I cannot get over the degree to which Klein's response is emblematic of the politically-empowered white liberal response to this age of autocratic fascist abuse and violence, in his predictable rightward instinct and in his seemingly impenetrable assumption that, even though he admits he has no idea what the solution to our present situation might be, he is still just the person to deliver a solution.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 21h

Much good stuff in here but this is the heart of it

This is the grain of sand at the center of the pearl of my ire, because "we are going to have to live here with each other" is the
exact premise that Republicans do not agree with any of us about, and while Klein in his remarks pays lip service to some of the recent proofs of this clear fact, his analysis of what to do about it he excises this reality entirely. In his mind, he and Kirk were just two guys, both trying to change the country for what they thought was good. It's a bond. Never mind that what Kirk thought was good was the American military in the streets of Chicago, and mass kidnapping in service of a white ethnostate, and the end of bodily autonomy for women and queer people, and so forth. In the Klein world, moral clarity about abuse is polarizing, and polarization, not abuse, is the problem to solve.

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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 3d

I wrote about why the regrettable conclusions of Ezra Klein pissed me off so badly in the last couple weeks.

On moral cowardice in an era that calls for clarity, and a popular political instinct to try to solve divisions of abuse by ignoring causes. www.the-reframe.com/eventually-y...

Eventually You're Going to Have to Stand for Something

On accepting the fascist offer and being better than Ezra.

www.the-reframe.com

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 22h

Just had a vision of myself rambling around the office in a leather apron with a t-square hanging from my belt and the works of Joan Thirsk poking out of various pockets

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 22h

I’m out here forging bespoke lectures and publications, each unique and artisanally crafted by brain and hand

Posts @porgus.bsky.social · 23h

At this rate, companies that don't use AI (or at least keep it locked in the basement to do its sinister work far, far away from finished products) will be able to charge a huge premium.

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