William M. Cavert

my colleague @maxnesterak.bsky.social on what a flanagan win would mean for minnesota's native communities — and the tension of working within a federal government that has historically been an enemy to tribes

Not only a vital defeat of the far right, but also a win of inestimable value for the planet.

You're thinking of capital accumulation all wrong, as if I had the money back in a safe. The money's not in yachts or jewelry, why your money's in Joe's house, that's right next to yours, and in the Kennedy house, and Mrs Maitland's house, and a hundred others.

Unidos/Monarca, known for providing some of the backbone infrastructure of this winter's resistance to ICE in Minnesota, has shifted to election protection. The Trump administration has unsuccessfully pushed for access to state voter rolls and will send DOJ observers. www.mprnews.org/story/2026/1...

In Minnesota a sitting senator, Amy Klobuchar, is running for governor by stressing that she prosecuted a corrupt judge 25 years ago. I wonder if criticizing our currently pro-dictatorship, pro-war crime foreign policy might offer her an even better opportunity.

Two wonderful people, both dedicated teachers, need help during a medical emergency. Please help if you can and share. gofund.me/84608470a

Looking forward to a trade being available on polymarket so that I can bet all of my money and house on this not happening.

Two wonderful people, both dedicated teachers, need help during a medical emergency. Please help if you can and share. gofund.me/84608470a

The problem with transit spending in America isn't that we don't spend enough, it's that we completely squander the giant budget we have.

Today I read, for the first time, Senator Charles Sumner's 1856 speech "The Crime Against Kansas," in which he quotes poets and Roman historians and calls slavery a harlot. It was a 5-hr masterpiece of rhetoric. This speech does not remind me of it.

Why does the Chronicle endlessly insist on quoting people like Lepore - a public intellectual, a high-volume writer - as if they can speak about American higher ed in general? If you want to talk about teaching ask the people who do the teaching.

An important bit of immigration law which is relevant here; there is already a waiver process — Section 212(k) of the INA — by which immigrants who obtain status through fraud that they didn't know about can avoid consequences like losing a green card. So this is *even weaker* than it already seems.

I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.

"Reshaped."

90% of how Rubio described “the West” while in Athens (e.g., "fierce individuality,” “relentless ambition”) is just a rehashing of ideas plucked from Ayn Rand. Encouraging people to “ethical egoism” is how we got this level of inequality—which now sits at a higher level than Ancient Athens ever had.

Presumably implementing such laws would entail US courts deciding what counts as sharia. So to keep islamic law out of American courts, American courts would have to pronounce on islamic law. It'll be interesting to see whether the Roberts court leans more Maliki or Hanafi.

every time someone says "low-key" they have to pay 25 cents to the National Endowment for the Humanities and now our research funding problems are solved

On shared governance of universities. Which, it's worth remembering, is how European universities began: as self-governing organizations of scholars, who students could pay to learn from. Not as employees of anyone else, not as servants to a board of regents or CEO.

Soccer fans will remember Todd Boehly as the guy who bought Chelsea FC from Roman "Putin-Who's-He-I-Don't-Know-Him" Abramovich, and proceeded to spend over a billion dollars on mediocre players who did not work out.

My new book, Imprisonment in Early Modern England: Politics, Debt and the Origins of a Carceral Society, is (sort of) out now! Currently available online for anyone with institutional access: www.cambridge.org/core/books/i...

One of the absurdities of this is how many mission statements there are, at the level of institution, college, and department. Such statements get painstakingly crafted and then routinely ignored by the people in who are most entrusted with following them.

This is the Stolen Neighbors Quilt. Each of the 11,000 squares represents a person taken by ICE in Minnesota.

This is kind of amazing, it's like the least funny a person can be while telling a joke.

Austin City Council Member Mike Siegel said he has been briefed with preliminary information and that ICE appears to have shot a man in the back.

"People are really mad and however mad you are, it’s not enough. Because there is something so profound about no longer believing in the future, about seeing no value in our shared home, in the natural world. They’re traitors to creation.” www.theguardian.com/books/2026/s...

Liberal coastal elites, leave your ivory silos and get out there and understand these people. They are concerned about the decline of the white working class.

Please read my first book, "Yes, It Is!" Also, please read my second book, "But Sometimes, No It Isn't."

Our refugee program, created under law by our Congress, no longer exists. The Administration is illegally using it as a visa for exclusively white people from a single country (South Africa), which has zero relation to Congress's intent and design. Congress could end this perversion tomorrow.

Thank god someone finally writes about Oberlin. For too long we've ignored the school attended by over .01% of America's college students. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Spoiler alert! Lord of the Rings is about some hobbits who live peacefully because the hard men of Gondor successfully maintain law and order.

There are multiple ways the conversation can go when a scholar is asked how their discipline teaches skills needed for the job market. Leaning towards:

Every. day. Everyday one of these ICE charter planes has to abort takeoff, or do an emergency return, or has a decompression, or gets stuck somewhere for 20+ hours with shackled immigrant passengers trapped onboard. And we never find out why. There is no transparency.

The director of the shuttered "Center for Advanced Hindsight," who is in the Epstein files hundreds of times, appears to have fabricated data.

The cruelty is the point. Shame on this administration and shame on the people who voted for this. www.springfieldnewssun.com/local/spring...

Looking forward to Dem leadership examining what kinds of tax deductions to grant for end-times related expenses: "When the sun becomes black as sackcloth made of goat hair and the moon becomes as blood, hardworking family farmers deserve a little help."

I'm not saying I support everything he did, but that Iago had some interesting ideas and I think if we really, really took the time to . . .

It feels like there’s a particular theme developing in the academics this magazine is targeting, but I can’t quite put my finger on it