Authoritarianism and Fascism Alerts
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Russian Aristotle scholar Svetlana Mesiats put under house arrest (UPDATED)
From Oxford historian Georgy Kantor on Twitter: The best Russian expert (and genuinely important scholar) on Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, Svetlana Mesiats, has been put under house arrest in the investigation of ‘fraudulent translations of Aristotle’. https://iphras.ru/messiats.htm He explains: About 10 people been called for interrogation, there are searches in the Institute of Philosophy building.…
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The climate change catastrophe: India edition
All 50 of the hottest cities in the world were in India recently (temperatures of 110 degrees farenheit and up are not uncommon right now). Ghastly. And Modi is still pretending… (Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)
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This is why Republican officials are such craven cowards…
…because Trump has a grip on the votes of tens of millions of diehard Republican voters. And it’s that devoted minority of the electorate that is leading the country to ruin. (As a reminder, Thomas Massie, who occasionally bucked the Republican herd, is also a nut.)
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With Trump, there is no bottom to the corruption
Just the latest. If this criminal and his political movement is ever defeated, the government will need to undertake legal proceedings to disgorge millions if not billions of ill-gotten gains. UPDATE: As if to prove the point, Trump and his family are now given immunity for their tax cheating by the Department of Justice. What…
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No more Marx or Spinoza in the secondary school philosophy curriculum in Italy…
…but students will read Gentile, the philosopher of fascism.
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The imbecile strikes again! RFK Jr’s Health Department suppresses research…
…finding that the Covid and shingles vaccines are safe.
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A blueprint for how Trump will try to steal the 2026 midterm elections
Here: In an April 29 essay in The Washington Spectator, “Emergency Planning: The President Is Preparing to Challenge 2026 Midterms. The Country Can Still Act to Protect Them,” Jonathan Winer, a former U.S. special envoy for Libya and a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement during the Clinton presidency, described the following…
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Another casualty of the Texas war on academic freedom
Philosopher Christy Mag Uidhir, whose earlier objections to the new intrusive policies we noted, writes: I have notified the University of Houston that I will be resigning my position as Professor of Philosophy effective June 1st, 2026. Not sure what I’ll be doing next, but I do know that whatever it is, I won’t be…
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The United States was not really a country in which votes counted for most of its history…
…since many people couldn’t vote, but now its about to go back to that totally due to gerry-mandering. Everyone can thank the super-legislature.
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Of all the malign actions of the right-wing super-legislature posing as a court…
…gutting the Voting Rights Act–one of the most decent and successful pieces of legislation aimed at counteracting the sorry history of American apartheid–on the basis of a “race neutrality” detached from reality may be among the worst. Justice Kagan’s dissent makes a lot of the correct points. What a disgrace. UPDATE: A useful critique by…
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Todd Blanche disbarment watch: the new Comey indictment
Even the Fox “News” [sic] legal commentator thinks it is absurd.
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Collapse of academic freedom in the U.S.
The 2026 Academic Freedom Index documents it clearly: Of course, there are differences between private and public universities in the U.S. in terms of the collapse of academic freedom, and also differences among public schools depending on whether they are in “blue” or “red” states. One might quibble with aspects of how the report characterizes…
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The Republican war on academic freedom and freedom of expression: a survey of faculty
From CHE: Academic researchers’ self-censorship occurred across nearly all disciplines, the survey found. Twenty-nine percent of respondents who lived in states with a [prohibition on] “divisive concepts” law said they had altered their research, and 10 percent said they were looking for a job in a different state because of the political climate. Researchers in…
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The absurd indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center by Trump’s corrupt DOJ
A solid explanation of how beyond the pale this is. Todd Blanche, the acting AG, should be disbarred.
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A useful catalogue of the casualties of Trump’s reign of malevolent buffoonery
Here. Mr. Edsall notes many lives that have been or will be loss because of his policies, without even mentioning the many victims of his reckless use of U.S. military power, most recently, in Iran. UPDATE: And more on the most corrupt President in the history of the U.S.
I first met Tom around 2002. I was a graduate student in Philosophy at UVA and dating someone who was…