Bruce Robbins
@BruceRobbins6
The Times finds something useful to say about Mamdani. nytimes.com/2025/07/03/opi…
The defense of academic freedom, which Columbia ignored when questioned in Congress about pro-Palestine protesters, was the principle it upheld, in 2015, when it rejected calls for the removal of Dr. Oz on the grounds of his “disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine.”
Psari after the Germans burned it in July 1944. I can still see some blackened stones in our walls.
Leslie Moonves, with whom I went to high school, was cancelled after he tried to wrest control of Paramount from Shari Redstone. Would he have done what Paramount has: pay $16 million to Trump to settle a case that it could have won, then fire Stephen Colbert? Just wondering.
Does anyone believe that Paramount's decision to cancel Colbert is really for "purely financial reasons"? Anyone?
Orwell alert: Shipman's letter said Columbia "has not, and will not, recognize or meet with... “Columbia University Apartheid Divest" Why? "Organizations that promote violence ... are not welcome on our campuses." So supporters of the bombing of Gaza don't "promote violence"?
You've almost certainly read this already. You almost certainly agree with it already. But there must be someone you know who still needs to hear it--who does not believe that what Israel is committing in Gaza is indeed, very exactly, genocide. thefrontierpost.com/80-years-after…
Dwight MacDonald on the New Yorker: "It can be read aloud in mixed company without calling a blush to the cheek of the most virtuous banker.’
An interesting new collection, especially with regard to the Middle East.
Does anyone expect intellectual seriousness from Adam Kirsch or from "The Atlantic"? jewishcurrents.org/newsletter/his…
Katherine Franke tells it like it is, as usual. I'm glad I'm not in the General Counsel's office. or on the Board of Trustees. Unforced errors. A Very Bad Week For Columbia University youtu.be/N-QlR5tg1mg?si… via @YouTube
Columbia interim president Claire Shipman has apologizes to the MAGA-ites for telling a bit of the truth about anti-semitism and about our most embarrassing member of the Board of Trustees, the one charged with securities fraud.
The Board of Trustees of Columbia University should resign. nytimes.com/2025/07/01/nyr…
In these post-literate times, is anyone interested in what literature has done, and not done, with atrocity? LitHub bets there are folks out there. But it remains to be seen. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/711…
A superb appreciation by one very fine critic of another very fine critic. politicsslashletters.org/commentary/the…