Jeremy Menchik

For the record, Leading Jewish Group JFREJ is very much in favor of Mayor Mamdani hosting Mahmoud Khalil and his family for Iftar.

1: Tucker Carlson is spewing antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish power.

2: Netanyahu absolutely helped drag Trump into a needless war that benefits Israel more than the US.

We can distinguish between #1 and 2. it’s not hard. Conflating them helps the fascists. Don’t help the fascists.

Bibi redux

Antonio Guterres is up first at this Security Council meeting. He condemns this morning’s strikes by Israel and the US on Iran, and the return strikes by Iran on countries in the region. There is, he says, no alternative to the peaceful settlement of disputes

Exclusive: Prior to Iran attacks, CIA assessed Khamenei would be replaced by hardline IRGC elements if killed, sources say In the run-up to the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Saturday, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency assessed that even if Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the operation, he would likely be replaced by hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), two sources briefed on the intelligence said.

Exclusive: Prior to Iran attacks, CIA assessed Khamenei would be replaced by hardline IRGC elements if killed, sources say reut.rs/4l9SCAs

In the absence of material, strategic, or institutional incentives for war we must admit the ideological ones: Netanyahu and Trump are religious extremists, their power built on coalitions of Jewish and Christian supremacists. This is not just imperial power. It’s religious imperialism.

It’s time to grow up about the link between Epstein and this administration’s wars. I have lived through Republican administrations starting wars in the Middle East for 40 years. There’s no secret story, no conspiracy. The story in public is the story. It is a war for power over the Middle East.

Beyond Zionism: After Gaza, the American Jewish left rethinks Jewish identity A Boston Conference Last Week Highlighted American Jews' Internal Divisions Over Israel Since October 7 and the Gaza War, but Also Their Intensified Commitment, and Even Hope. 'People Are Hungry – Des...

People are hungry – desperate, even – for a place to be Jewish' outside of Zionism.

@haaretzcom.bsky.social @concernedjfaculty.bsky.social

Beyond Zionism: After Gaza, the American Jewish left rethinks Jewish identity A Boston Conference Last Week Highlighted American Jews' Internal Divisions Over Israel Since October 7 and the Gaza War, but Also Their Intensified Commitment, and Even Hope. 'People Are Hungry – Des...

So proud to work with @menchik.bsky.social and my other visionary colleagues at @bostonu.bsky.social: www.haaretz.com/jewish/2026-...

Tomorrow. 1,408 registered. SEE YOU THEN! www.bu.edu/cura/recent-...

'The underreported silent war: record levels of violence in the occupied West Bank since October 2023. More than 1,000 Palestinians — almost a quarter of them children — have been killed.'

www.unrwa.org/newsroom/off...

Voting in Authoritarian Elections Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025 TURKULER ISIKSEL Open the ORCID record for TURKULER ISIKSEL [Opens in a new window] and THOMAS B. PEPINSKY Open the ORCID record for THOMAS B. PEPINSKY [Opens in a new window] Show author details Article Figures Supplementary materials Comments Metrics Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window] Abstract Democratic theorists hold that voting contributes to some political good: individual and collective autonomy, equality, justice, pluralism, stability, better policies, and many others. But elections are common under authoritarianism, and empirical research finds that holding elections can stabilize authoritarian regimes. This creates what we term the democrat’s dilemma, where citizens who vote in authoritarian elections may bolster the regimes they wish to unseat, even when they cast a vote for the opposition. We identify three major ways of thinking about the democratic value of electoral participation—justice-based, epistemic, and proceduralist approaches—and use them to examine the complex moral considerations that confront voters in authoritarian regimes. We contend that authoritarian elections’ residual democratic value can justify voting, even when doing so could further entrench the autocrat. Our argument also implies that the democratic principles that justify voting in authoritarian elections oblige citizens to choose the most democratic alternative.

Alarmingly relevant new paper out in @apsrjournal.bsky.social by Turku Isiksel and @tompepinsky.com. They take on the question of whether citizens of authoritarian states should vote in their often unfair elections, & find reason to do so.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

📢 New on First View!

Andrei Mamolea (@andreimamolea.bsky.social) shows that a Latin American bloc with a common agenda emerged in Geneva in the 1920s.

#LeagueofNations #LatinAmerica #internationallaw #smallstates #transatlantic

Read Open Access here: doi.org/10.1017/S174...

Markets and Mobility: How Employers Structure Economic Opportunity

Intergenerational mobility, measuring the ability to achieve economic success regardless of family background, is a critical reflection of a society’s commitment to equality of opportunity. Rising income inequality has raised concerns about the potential erosion of upward mobility. While education has traditionally been viewed as the path to mobility, its transformative power is facing challenges in a rapidly evolving job market. This project reorients the focus of intergenerational mobility research by highlighting the labor market as an arena for the reproduction of advantage. It employs a comparative approach, using administrative data from four countries: Sweden, Austria, England, and the United States. It also incorporates evidence from a broader set of nations through cross-national surveys, longitudinal household surveys, labor force surveys, secondary data, and digital trace data. The project employs cutting-edge empirical methods, including quasi- experimental designs, event studies, within-family comparisons, decomposition analyses, counterfactual simulations, and diagnostic checks to rigorously assess the extent of inequalities in the labor market. The research investigates how family background influences the sorting of individuals to employers and workplaces, accounting for education and occupation, and explores variations in career progression within and between employers. It comprehensively catalogues and assesses mechanisms shaping workplace inequality, contributing to the development of social closure theory. Additionally, the project evaluates intervention strategies, encompassing both employer practices and government actions, to promote fair opportunity in the labor market.

JOB! I'm hiring a postdoc for 2 years on my ERC MaMo project.

Looking for someone with strong quant methods, ongoing work close to the project's aims, and a desire to publish in sociology. Start flexible in the next 12 months.

Formal call out shortly, but contact me first.

Opinion | I’m the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. This Is Something I Thought I’d Never Have to Write.

Secretary General of the Council of Europe says “International law is either universal or meaningless. Greenland will show which one we choose.” Yes, well. Did Gaza show which one we choose?

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/o...

Agree. I think our ability to talk about the severity of antisemitism is limited by binary categories. Maybe we need a scale.

Christian Zionism is 2 alarm fire antisemitism. White Nationalism is 5 alarm. The end of CZ may mean a return to WN. And that’s definitely worse for Jews.

This is a really thoughtful thread. But I do think you’re understating the antisemitic aspects of Christian Zionism. I’ve spent a lot of time around Southern Baptists, and they looooove Jews. But not real Jews. Not American Jews. Certainly not secular Jews. not me. Their love is 100% antisemitic.

Iran report says 16,500 dead in ‘genocide under digital darkness’ Witnesses tell of the brutality inflicted on those taking part in anti-regime protests

If you read one thing today, it should be this

Iran report says 16,500 dead in ‘genocide under digital darkness’

www.thetimes.com/article/01ba...

🎉 Vol 51(6) is out!🎉

This SPECIAL ISSUE includes 8️⃣ new research articles as well as an introduction from the special issue editors, @jelenasubotic.bsky.social & @elifkalay.bsky.social. The articles are all free to read this month, so be sure to take a look and enjoy 👇

📚Read Here ➡️ buff.ly/WxL7JlR

Third annual Conference on the Jewish Left, featuring Peter Beinart, Prof Marjorie Feld, Arielle Angel, Ian Lustick, Zol Zayn, Dove Kent, Liana Krupp, Fadi Quran, Prof Michael Zank, and 16 workshops led by scholars, faith leaders, and national orgs like the SPLC. Join us!

www.bit.ly/jewishleft

This has been the default imperialist position for centuries, so really the oddity was that brief period of comfortable unipolar hegemony where it seemed gauche to say it out loud. No clearer sign of late imperial anxiety than the contemporary return of this old ass monocle and pith helmet blather

American imperialism hasn’t changed

Some thoughts on what Trump has done in Venezuela and what it might mean for US national security. Caveat: not a Latin America scholar so this is focused on US policy. Clearly huge consequences for Venezuela that others can address.

First, despite the buildup, I didn't think Trump would do it.

1/

Woodrow Wilson and the Spirit of Liberal Internationalism Woodrow Wilson is among most influential presidents in U.S. foreign policy history, and the most pious. The challenge for scholars is joining Wilson's faith and his foreign policies. What was the r...

1st is on the spirit of Wilsonianism: doi.org/10.1080/2156....

3rd is a R&R on democracy promotion (forthcoming soon inshallah)

And the book manuscript is under review. Fingers crossed for a 2026 publication date🤞🏼🙏📗

Explicating American political science's entanglement with liberal Protestantism helps to explain longstanding gaps in knowledge and systematic exclusions.

Want to learn more? This is the 2nd of 3 articles related to my project on the missionary impulse in world politics.

For example, American political science's continued entanglement with liberal Protestantism has made the discipline's emphasis on liberal democracy appear natural and given rather than particularistic.

We are born of liberal Protestantism and we are still infatuated with the dependent variables entangled with that religious tradition. This entanglement has weakened over time, but remains influential on our concepts, questions, and emphases.

The Spirit and/of Political Science Abstract. The word “spirit” appears in discipline's leading journals more often than other expressions associated with religion like “Christianity,” “relig

My spiciest publication from 2025 is this article on religion in political science: academic.oup.com/psq/article-...

Ours is a liberal Protestant discipline.

Crater and clouds atop a mountain in Kauai

View from atop Haleakalā National Park Park

Haleakalā National Park. Surreal. And feels a lot like Mount Bromo in East Java.