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Alexandru Volacu

@volacu

Associate Professor at the University of Bucharest; Political theorist/Political scientist

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Latest posts by Alexandru Volacu @volacu

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Beware of ‘anti-woke’ liberals: they attacked the left and helped Trump win | Jan-Werner Müller So-called ‘reactionary centrist’ pundits proclaimed that there was a global ‘vibe shift’ in favor of the right. They were wrong

"The other iron law of reactionary centrism – beyond the asymmetry that is hiding behind the seeming evenhandedness – is that only the left and liberals really have agency."

Brilliant column by @jwmueller-pu.bsky.social

03.02.2026 19:46 👍 57 🔁 18 💬 1 📌 1

All the Reich is asking for is for a place called the Pomeranian Corridor. Sorry, the Sudetenland.

21.01.2026 15:46 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

ah well at least we restructured the entire contemporary university, the product of many centuries of slowly accumulating human ingenuity, to boost this

20.01.2026 03:24 👍 481 🔁 185 💬 5 📌 1

I'd be surprised if it wasn't. In a few years school day will probably open with hymns dedicated to Trump, Thiel and Ellison, followed by 10 hours of AI brainwashing. This is in line with the current course the US is on.

18.10.2025 15:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

As a former Fellow myself I'll be happy to respond to any inquiries one might have.

16.10.2025 22:03 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Apply for a fellowship : NEC NEC Institute for Advanced Study

Application period for New Europe College (Bucharest) fellowships in humanities and social sciences:
nec.ro/fellowships/...

Especially if you recently got your PhD and are looking for a 1-year fellowship it is a wonderful place to work, with a scholarship that will completely cover expenses here

16.10.2025 22:02 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

“Where are we now with AI?”

“Well, we’re eating up the whole world in order to put a few million middle-ranking white collar workers out of work.”

“Ah, progress is a wonderful thing!”

19.09.2025 05:41 👍 75 🔁 17 💬 3 📌 0

There aren't any free speech warriors in MAGA. They were always Cancel Culture Warriors that were just
waiting for their side to get into power. Maybe some genuine libertarians might have unwittingly bought into the scam, but they're probably too entrenched in trumpism by now to reverse course.

18.09.2025 14:55 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Exclusive: Leaked Messages from Charlie Kirk Assassin Accused shooter’s “politics” is not what government and media say

New Tyler Robinson posts leaked to me tell a very different story than you've heard before:
www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-...

16.09.2025 17:30 👍 5161 🔁 1625 💬 187 📌 351

Sure😀You seem to be strongly gripped by consuming years of MAGA propaganda so there's not much point in wasting both our time further. Might want to question your assumptions and beliefs once in a while though, it's helpful.

15.09.2025 13:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Third, the narrative that he is a left winger was being pushed seconds after the shooting, so it's not like anyone on the right will ever back down from it, no matter what comes out. Sorry if I'll be skeptical on what the republican governor of Utah says, or his gun-crazed republican family members

15.09.2025 12:25 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Second, I never said he was a white nationalist, I said gropyer troll, and there are good reasons to believe he belongs to this group by the markings on the casings (which you know).

15.09.2025 12:22 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0

First, you missed the first question, who are "they", when there is one shooter? When far-right extremists commit mass shootings or political assassinations (far more frequently than left-wingers), notice how democratic leaders don't blame the entire political right and talk about violent revenge.

15.09.2025 12:21 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 3 📌 0

Who is "they" though? All evidence points to it being one guy, who most likely was a groyper troll.

15.09.2025 11:42 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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Can Our Current Academic Model Go On in the Age of AI? It has been almost three years since ChatGPT was released in the public arena amid great hopes, worries, and, perhaps more than anything, hype. While artificial intelligence tools, including of the…

Here are my more elaborate thoughts on the topic: justice-everywhere.org/general/can-...

08.09.2025 14:43 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Can Our Current Academic Model Go On in the Age of AI? It has been almost three years since ChatGPT was released in the public arena amid great hopes, worries, and, perhaps more than anything, hype. While artificial intelligence tools, including of the…

My latest piece on Justice Everywhere, about the current and expected impact of Generative AI on an academic environment which puts research outputs at the heart of performance evaluation. Briefly, I think it's no longer sustainable, even in the near future.

justice-everywhere.org/general/can-...

08.09.2025 14:41 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Part of the idea is also that these problems, people writing bits of articles (prb grant proposals) with AI/reviews with AI is a transitional problem. We see it as such since we can still detect AI writing, but soon we won't be able, so this problem will go away to be replaced by a much bigger one.

26.08.2025 23:34 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

But if we can't really trust that those research outputs are authentically produced by A, how can we continue to make any career-relevant decisions based on these criteria? It's likely that we'll have to think of alternative ways to judge academic performance, no?

26.08.2025 23:28 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

So much of the current academic model is built on the idea that one's academic value is to a significant extent given by the quality of their research outputs (PhDs, job hirings, promotions, research grants etc).

26.08.2025 23:25 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

To the point where full articles can be written by AI in a way that is indistinguishable from a human author. I don't think now we are at that point yet (maybe I'm wrong), but that point will come soon.

26.08.2025 23:23 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

So briefly, LLMs are getting better (more sophisticated, less hallucinations) and in the near future there will likely be AI agents that can autonomously do tasks (including browsing the literature, generate data, generate ideas, develop them, object to them, re-write them etc)...

26.08.2025 23:21 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

That being said, the problem will only massively amplify from now on if we stick to our current academic practices (I hope to write something more detailed on this in a couple of weeks)

24.08.2025 20:49 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

Reviewed a paper for a very good political theory journal last week, parts of it were clearly written with AI. A friend received reviewer reports from another one a couple of days ago. One report, clearly written with AI. I think editors also must do a much better job of screening articles/reviews.

24.08.2025 20:47 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

Definitely yes.

12.08.2025 23:08 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

In favour of all of that. But right now Israel is doing much to destabilize the Middle East. You can hold the view that the Iranian regime is horrible and criminal and still oppose unilateral military action against it based on the words of a radical right-wing warmonger.

16.06.2025 23:43 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

You do know Bernie Sanders is Jewish right? What a strange thing to think, that if someone criticizes the government of a country, he hates the people of that country. By the same token, an American criticizing Trump is espousing hatred of Americans?

16.06.2025 19:55 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

This is giving me serious Putin-Prigozhin vibes

11.06.2025 11:18 👍 13 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

So it would be two birds with one stone, then.

26.05.2025 20:42 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

You need to stop looking at the world through the eyes of the US. The Romanian elections had nothing to do with the America, trumpism, MAGA or anything of this kind.

20.05.2025 20:36 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

As a Romanian political scientist working on democratic studies, let me tell you very directly that there is a surpisingly high number of countries beating you at democracy😀 (if you are from the US)

20.05.2025 20:34 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0