anjali dassarma

Two copies of a black, white and red book cover. The cover reads UNCORRECTED PROOF NOT For SALE SECOND SIGHT: HOW THE WONDER AND VISION OF BLACK MEDIAMAKERS PUSH AMERICA TOWARD FREEDOM SARAH J. JACKSON My light brownish hand with chipped purple glitter nail polish holds the books

Thrilled to have galleys of my book in hand! Final corrections & index pending. Please consider preordering, gifting, & teaching. Via the archive, interviews & more I show how the crisis we face now reflects failure to listen & act on the democracy Black folks have envisioned, but we still can.

ICE Agents Assault Group of Reporters Documenting Arrests at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan A journalist was hospitalized after masked federal agents assaulted a group of reporters documenting ICE arrests outside immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan. Video footage of Tuesday's attack…

ICE Agents Assault Group of Reporters Documenting Arrests at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan

Introducing “The Refounding” from the 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy Far too many Americans still do not know about the promise and potential power of the 14th Amendment, or its role in transforming America

BIG NEWS this morning!

medium.com/@TheRefoundi...

This is why we need @baltimorebeat.bsky.social.

How US Universities Can Survive State Terrorism BY CATHERINE D’IGNAZIO As a professor at MIT, I find myself navigating strange waters these days. Last semester, I advised the thesis of a student who left the country because she did not fee…

📣 In this short essay, I describe how actions of the current administration constitute ➡️ state terrorism ⬅️ and outline how US universities (and professors and students and staff) can survive state terrorism, as people before us have survived.

academeblog.org/2025/08/05/h...

Missouri’s oldest Black bookstore just closed. The Kansas City Defender plans to reopen it as a newsroom and public archive. “The thought of losing that history, particularly in this political moment, was devastating.”

“The thought of losing that history, particularly in this political moment, was devastating.” www.niemanlab.org/2025/07/miss...

The “deal” that Brown made with the Trump admin is much more extreme than is being reported. It includes government oversight of course evaluations and no barrier to government interference in faculty hiring.

Read it for yourself here:

www.brown.edu/sites/defaul...

"ChatGPT is great for brainstorming!"

Actually we have a tool for that already! It's called thinking. We use our brain. It's called brainstorming! Clue is in the name.

going to keep saying: important for a society that would like to keep functioning to discourage baldfaced lying, especially by authorities

Super proud of this pub with an excellent mentor and collaborator
@sjjphd.bsky.social

Read this, and then make sure to read "News Inside" from @themarshallproject.org, too!

“I Do Solemnly Swear”: Audio Series Highlights Federal Workers’ Voices on Trump’s Unraveling of Gov’t A new audio series published by the group Federal Workers Against DOGE looks at the plight of fired federal workers whose jobs and careers were cut short by the Trump administration’s systematic defunding...

"I Do Solemnly Swear": Audio Series Highlights Federal Workers' Voices on Trump's Unraveling of Gov't

AFP journalists in Gaza at risk of starvation, warns journalists' association 'We have lost journalists in conflicts, we have had wounded, prisoners in our ranks, but none of us can recall seeing colleague die of hunger,' says French news agency's journalists' association - Ana...

"I don't have the power to cover media anymore. My body is lean and I no longer have the ability to walk” www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-ea...

EPA Employees Still in the Dark as Agency Dismantles Scientific Research Office On Monday, some employees at ORD, the largest office in the agency, began receiving emails detailing that they had been assigned new positions within the EPA. "There is no action you need to take the ...

NEW from me: after EPA announced it would officially do away with its scientific research arm Friday, officials at the Office of Research and Development had few answers for employees on a Monday call about how many of them will be reassigned to other offices—and how many will lose their jobs

Reckoning with the Federal Communications Commission’s history of structural racism Since the agency’s inception, FCC policies have undermined the 14th Amendment rights of Black people and Black communities.

Here's a new @media2070.bsky.social essay published by The Objective‬ that provides an overview of the role the FCC has played in undermining the 14th Amendment/equal protection rights of Black/marginalized communities since its inception, reinforcing racial hierarchy. @freepress.bsky.social

ICE memo outlines plan to deport migrants to countries where they are not citizens The dramatic shift in policy could result in thousands of immigrants being deported to places where they lack family ties or even a common language.

Breaking news: Federal immigration officers may deport immigrants with as little as six hours’ notice to countries other than their own, even without assurances that the arrivals will be safe from persecution or torture, a top official said.

i am only through the first section of this (highly anticipated!) paper by my dear friend Anj but wow i wanna make all y'all read this!!!!! modern journalism centers whiteness above all else bc it *always* has!!!!!!

📚📖 my newest article, entitled “truth-making, slavery and advertising in anglo-american newspapering” is now available from the journal of alternative and community media! @asc.upenn.edu
intellectdiscover.com/content/jour...

What looks like an amazing book by a brilliant Indigenous scholar is on sale through the link below (and blurbed by the greats @hiokinai.bsky.social Hi'i Hobart and @brdemuth.bsky.social Bathsheba Demuth). Arctic governance and colonial administration are the most fascinating topics!

it’s absurd that NYT forced him to delete these skeets, which … convey the factual information that Zohran Mamdani is, in fact, a man of South Asian descent who was born and raised in Africa, and that the pseudonymous source of the hacked material is a white supremacist eugenicist.

With this vote, Congress makes ICE the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in history, with more money per year at its disposal over the next four years than the budgets of the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals, and Bureau of Prisons combined.

If you think trans people are a danger to anyone and not fascists and patriarchs and billionaires and bullies and zealots, or think universities don’t have power to resist, you are being manipulated by the bad guys or you are choosing the wrong side of history, that’s it.

In light of the news on my first day of sabbatical: gender is a social construct, trans women are women, no amount of complying with authoritarians who pretend they will only strip some people but not you of rights will keep you safe. And in 2025 university administrators should know all of that.

Driven to starvation, Sudanese people eat weeds and plants to survive as war rages Amid battles and food insecurity across Sudan, many people are turning to weeds and wild plants to sustain them.

"...24.6 million people in Sudan facing acute food insecurity —nearly half the population, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. Aid workers say the war spiked market prices, limited aid delivery, and shrunk agricultural lands"

apnews.com/article/suda...

City’s crisis response system under scrutiny after three police-involved deaths in eight days Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen is calling for a hearing to examine the city’s crisis response systems after three Baltimore residents died or were killed during interactions with police o...

“It is critical that police officers be better prepared for such contacts, so that the individuals in crisis and the officers, family members, and other individuals responding to it are not at risk of further traumatization from the act of seeking help."
baltimorebeat.com/citys-crisis...

Israel closes the most direct route for aid to Palestinians in Gaza Blockade will increase diplomatic pressure on Israel as Spain PM Pedro Sánchez describes situation as ‘genocide’ Israel has closed crossings into northern Gaza, cutting the most direct route for aid to reach hundreds of thousands of people at risk of famine, as airstrikes and shelling killed dozens more people in the devastated Palestinian territory. The move to close the crossings on Thursday will increase diplomatic pressure on Israel as attention shifts from its brief conflict with Iran, back to the violence and grave humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Continue reading...

Israel closes the most direct route for aid to Palestinians in Gaza

It’s Primary Day, New York. Here’s What to Know Before Heading to the Polls. Remember a water bottle and don’t hold your breath for results tonight.

I wrote this, the procrastinator’s delight. enjoy and go VOTE:

A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.

Rümeysa Öztürk wrote an op-ed critical of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. She was arrested by ICE and was in detention for six weeks. This white nationalist student wrote a paper that argued the Constitution applies only to white people. He won an award.

A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.

Words fail me.

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/u...

"i asked chatgpt" yeah well i went to the doctor, i went to the mountains, i looked to the children, i drank from the fountains there's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line and the less I seek my source for some definitive closer I am to fine