1/Thread: Why we should be very troubled about the hasty deployment of police to put down campus protests: a) police response is disproportionate b) campus raids accelerate disruption & distrust, reduce safety c) use of force legitimates future authoritarian responses to dissent. 2/ Let's begin with proportionality. Case: @NYUniversity, 5/3/24. The massive influx of riot-gear clad police, who far outnumbered the protestors, was unwarranted. The arrest of nonviolent protestors is absurdly disproportionate to any harms they are alleged to have perpetrated.

Thread: I don’t get outraged easily, but @Columbia’s decision to call NYPD to arrest 108 protestors was unconscionable. It raises troubling questions about the university's leadership and even more important moral questions: How should we deal with dissent and disagreement? 2/I entered @Columbia in 1980. The campus was still in the long shadow of 1968, still traumatized by the memory of the police raid that year but nonetheless a hotbed of student activism.

1/ I have a lot to say about AHA president John Sweet's criticism of "presentism," but it is perhaps best summed up in the title of my 1998 article, "Responsibility to the Past, Engagement with the Present." tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108… 2/ I wrote: "Historians are in a unique position to throw a wrench into public policy debates--many of which rest on simplistic, often erroneous assumptions about the past."

1/ #Redlining is in the news: in today's @NYTimes, columnist John McWhorter challenges what he sees as conventional wisdom on racially discriminatory housing by reporting that 82% of residents of redlined neighborhoods in ten large cities were white. nytimes.com/2021/09/28/opi… 2/To the untutored, this might be shocking, but historians have long known that ethnicity and immigration status were sometimes factors in redlining. Dig a bit for references to white “aliens” and “immigrants,” including Italians, Poles, and Jews here: dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redli…

Another tiresome and utterly predictable jeremiad about the history profession that misses the innovation that has remade the field in recent decades. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… One reason that more American universities don't have "War Studies" departments is that the study of war is integrated into the subfields of political, social, economic, and cultural history in ways unimaginable forty or fifty years ago.

1/ NYC data on demographics of those who have received COVID-19 vaccines to date. The picture isn't pretty. 29.2% of city residents are Latino. They are overrepresented among essential workers, most vulnerable to infection, but make up only 15% of those vaccinated. 2/ Only 11% of African Americans--24.3 percent of New Yorkers--have received vaccines. Predominantly African American neighborhoods in the city have been hit especially hard by the pandemic.

@dynarski @KevinMKruse 1. Detroit's long history of organized white resistance to African Americans in the housing market and on the shop floor, which I write about in Origins of the Urban Crisis, is definitely part of the story. That resistance found serious support among key political figures... @dynarski @KevinMKruse 2. Major figures who abetted and legitimized white resistance include Detroit mayor Albert Cobo (1950-1957), Dearborn mayor Orville Hubbard (1942-1978), and Oakland County executive L. Brooks Patterson (1992-2019).

1/ Over the last few months, Trump has tried to rile up white suburbanites by speaking out against #AFFH (affirmatively furthering fair housing), a requirement first included in the 1968 Fair Housing Act (aka Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act.) 2/He has pledged to protect the "Suburban Lifestyle Dream," namely keeping affordable housing out of the suburbs by forbidding the implementation of AFFH.

1/ The Trump family business was built on housing discrimination

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1278136326647406593

2/ I trace the troubled history of Trump, real estate, and race here: publicbooks.org/the-big-pictur…

1/The fiscal implications of COVID are profound. Coming after decades of state-level austerity and tax cuts, the collapse in revenue will have devastating effects on infrastructure, education, and public services.

https://twitter.com/adam_tooze/status/1273129244911173632

2/ Many states are hamstrung by balanced budget requirements, which will force deep cuts.

1/The history of protests for racial equality is intertwined with global history from post-WWII decolonization and civil rights to national self-determination and black power. Then and now, these are global movements, not simply local or national. nytimes.com/2020/06/06/wor… 2/ In 1930s, US black newspapers covered anti colonial struggles in Ethiopia. In 1940s: India. They had correspondents in Berlin, London, Delhi.

Thread: It's time to rethink facile 1968 = 2020 comparisons. 2/ Similarities: As in the 1960s, today’s protestors are enraged by the still unresolved problem of police violence.

1/ Newsday has just published a damning account of persistent housing discrimination on Long Island, using matched white and non-white customers, a time-honored practice. This is must-reading for everyone who wants to understand race and segregation today. projects.newsday.com/long-island/re… 2/ Listen to this real estate broker steering white customers: “What I say is always to women, follow the school bus. You know, that’s what I always say. Follow the school bus, see the moms that are hanging out on the corners.”

As a historian of race, civil rights, and education, I can sadly predict the response of white, ostensibly progressive New Yorkers to proposed school desegregation plans. Expect a lot of anger couched (nearly always) in race neutral language. Let's begin with the guiding assumption--ignorant but widely held--that "ability" tests are inherently race-neutral, and that measures of "giftedness" and "talent" are objective and fair...even when parents pay for test prep for little kids.

1/Thought-provoking interview with Jill Lepore in the @chronicle, but I just can't buy her argument that we historians have left public engagement to the journalists and the non-academic presidential historians. chronicle.com/article/The-Ac… 2/ I've made this argument before, and I will again: if you look at the pages of our major newspapers, including @nytimes and @washingtonpost, it's a veritable golden age for historians engaging the wide public.

Thread: 1/ Geoffrey Kabaservice @RuleandRuin whose scholarship on moderate Republicanism and internal GOP debates is excellent, has launched a sharp critique of histories of conservatism in Politico. politico.com/magazine/story… 2/ He begins with an ad hominem critique of "liberals writing about a movement with which they have no personal experience." This invalidates the work of the vast majority of historians who write about topics outside of their life experience...

1/ Trump rips off taxpayers. @washingtonpost reports Mar-a-Lago billed "rack rate" of $546/night to gov't employee. wapo.st/2y3C9VB?tid=ss… 2/ Per diem rate for hotel Palm Beach in March is $182. Trump bills $546. gsa.gov/travel/plan-bo…