Ed Gitre

I've been paying attention BC of my DH site. This threat to the internet's pervasive infrastructure feels near crisis level. "This activity demonstrates how threat actors are integrating agentic AI into existing offensive security workflows and allows them to scale their operations exponentially."

The countdown has begun! Humanities Week is only one week away! Visit our website for a full list of events and details! liberalarts.vt.edu/humanities-w...

An estimated 81 U.S. military aircraft and drones have been destroyed or damaged during the conflict with Iran at a cost of up to $3.3 billion.

A million Black Americans served in WWII. Know who talked a lot about fighting for democracy? They did.

My new book is out this month! “Troop Movements: Labor, Race, and Global Freedom Struggles in America’s World War II” — by Tejasvi Nagaraja Buy it! Get in touch with me — if you have any ideas?: * book review * book-tour event * assigning it to teach * interview or podcast Thanks — Stay tuned!

Exciting news (well we think so)! We are looking for new people to regularly contribute to our archive! We accept applications from anyone based in the UK who has an interest in sending us their thoughts and opinions about life in the UK. #Skystorians massobs.org.uk/write-for-th...

Please enjoy this piece I wrote for @currentaffairs.bsky.social about the history of defending Black history, and the lessons it offers today: www.currentaffairs.org/news/black-h...

If you've not read the "Federal Relations Strategy Quarterly Report" prepared for the AHA by Thorn Run Partners you really ought to. I found it an illuminating if also bracing read. 🗃️

This is very true, though our history shows that White folks can go too far themselves. Violent White resistance to any form of integration in the 1940s backfired, ultimately, making it all but impossible for the federal gov't to continue supporting Jim Crow. White supremacists don't always win.

I recently learned that FDR's administration also used tax incentives on high corporate taxes to achieve policy aims, using amortization to underwrite the staggering expansion of physical facilities needed to prepare for and wage WWII.

The accumulation of failures, I would add, is making a full-scale ground invasion all the more improbable. There was lots of chatter in MAGA circles about reviving a draft. Tellingly, not anymore.

True. Still WWII provides a counterpoint. The service vote in '42 was negligible, est. 0.5% of the eligible vote. MS Sen. Eastland rightly viewed the military absentee ballot plan in '44 a threat to white supremacy in the South. In the pres. election 2.8 million service votes were cast that year. 🗃️

www.cambridge.org/core/books/c... So our Cambridge History of War and Society is out and available! My co-editor Jennifer Keene and I are so appreciative of all our authors—see list in the image. We’re very proud of this volume and it’s because of all the incredible scholars who contributed.

Time hasn't run out quite yet. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Congratulations 🎊 @zooniverse.bsky.social on reachng this monumental milestone!

Despite my feelings about the @nytimes.com, this is refreshing perspective on the animalistic impulses juicing America's techno-military imperialism. Thank you @scottsandage.bsky.social for spreading the word. Jackson is again in fine form.

"LEDO, ASSAI, INDIA-1st It Robert F. Higgins of Newton Highland, Texas, voting officer for the QM battalion (Mob) delivering federal ballots to men of that battalion, while S/Sgt Dennis Smith of Jacksonville, Florida casts his vote. (U.S. Signal Corps Photo from Bureau of Public Relations) 11-10-44"

See the new issue of History of Social Science, just published! Half the articles are free, including @brad.bolman.com’s account of Bruno Latour’s blocked appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study and Chas Camic’s short bio of Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class muse.jhu.edu/issue/56614

Listen to this episode. I am biased, but judge for yourself.

I'm so pleased our article on combat stress in WWII is now out, using data from americansoldierww2.org. One key finding: 62% of surveyed combat veterans in the Pacific Theater exhibited enough psychological distress that they would have been disqualified from induction. doi.org/10.1177/2156...

Does World War II -- the "lessons," the institutions, the commitments, the sacrifices, the people who served, endured and died--matter anymore?

This guy steals all Nixon’s ideas. His threats are straight out of the Nixon’s “Madman Theory.” It did not work with Vietnam. It will not work with Iran. It’s like none of the lessons from the past 60 years of American war are ever learned.

And so it goes

Another great pair of papers from @abbyswhitlock.bsky.social and @edgitre.bsky.social at #SMH2026, on Army Talks and GI Roundtables, and segregation and desegregation in the SWW respectively.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, New York.

Astute summation from @vermontgmg.bsky.social. "Instead, we have a government that has been repeatedly surprised by the most basic and foreseeable consequences of its own actions." I keep thinking of Eisenhower as well, and of Marshall.

The US will pay the price. Some families have paid the ultimate price already.

Reporting from two weeks ago said that only about half of these expeditionary units were sufficiently prepared to forward deploy.

Indeed a lesson hardly if ever learned. Certain WWII British officials urged the carpet bombing of German population centers because, they opined, it would break civilian morale. They asserted this after the German blitz had failed to break the morale of ... you got it... the British populace.

With this war, POTUS is breaking decisively with the anti-interventionist America First tradition. Certain movement leaders were convinced at the outset of WWII that wealthy Jewish internationalists were behind the drive to get the US into the war. Hard to imagine how MAGA reconciles this cleavage.

"GODSPEED"

Unconditional surrender = defeat & occupation. No diplomacy. Only military action. This was the Allied plan & objective for WWII Germany & Japan. We are going to need so many body bags.

On Presidents’ Day 2026, a 77-year-old federal judge in Philadelphia issued a ruling that blocks the Trump administration’s efforts to take down or otherwise excise information from Independence National Historical Park relating to George Washington’s ownership of slaves. Law Dork:

So true. Carnegie Foundation funding of Gunnar Myrdal's study of race in the US wasn't a problem until the Supreme Court used it in support of Brown vs Board of Education.

The most commented on characteristic of the first draft selectees in 1940 was the diversity of ethnicities. The ignorance of US history is remarkable.

McCarthy-era congressmen accused foundations of being captured by Communists. coxcommitteereport.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/.... They tore into Carnegie for funding Gunnar Myrdal's *An American Dilemma* after the landmark study of race in the US was cited in Brown vs Board. Mellon is in good company.

I am speechless. "The National Park Service has removed visitor brochures from the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument. Among the anticipated changes? No longer calling his murderer a 'racist.'" 🗃️ mississippitoday.org/2026/02/05/m...

I was looking forward to reading Shake's book. I find the history of civilian-military relations to be far more lively, overflowing with drama, conflict, politics, passion, and negotiation.

This is a bit rich, isn't it? Moyn and his crew chastised anyone who dared make a historical comparison of precisely this sort, simply with a different political figure.

"Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned."

Someone else might need to see this as much as I did.

Homan "in theatre." ... Can't say we weren't warned. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

“Freedom is not free. We have to work at it. Nurture it. Protect it. Even sacrifice for it.”

Agreed. I've argued that the "crisis" of the humanities is not about its "irrelevance." Historical memory & scholarship is a threat precisely because of their social & cultural power. That is why history must be suppressed, erased & replaced with politically useful myths: it's too dangerous.