Intellectual history, German & Jewish studies, climate catastrophe. Visiting Assistant Professor @UofR. PhD from @PrincetonHist. Edits @JHIdeas Blog. 🏳️🌈
Berlin
Joined December 2018
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Happy to share my chapter, "History as Permanent Catastrophe: A Conceptual Collaboration between Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno," in "Concepts of Culture: New Directions in Conceptual History," eds. Mattias Pirholt & Michael Lipkin. DM for a PDF!
jstor.org/stable/jj.38271401
It’s an idyllic autumn day at Denison University, where I just gave a paper at the Critical Theory Roundtable on the the neglected philosopher Günther Anders and his still-relevant critique of humanity’s “apocalypse blindness” in the face of ecological, nuclear, and AI threats
Due to brand toxicity, AIPAC will stop endorsing political candidates. Instead, it’ll operate as a dark money Super PAC—not unlike what conspiracies about Jewish power & money have long alleged. Rising antisemitism is real & this will be terrible for Jews.
haaretz.com/us-news/2026-10-…
Jonathon Catlin retweeted
“I’m not sure, at age ninety, that I’m going to rewrite the theory. But if I write on this issue, I’ll have to express that anxiety—that gross misconduct, war crimes, could reach a point where we are obligated to oppose the war itself.”
New Yorker profile of Michael Walzer: "Michael Walzer wrote “Just and Unjust Wars” half a century ago. The war in Gaza made him rethink one of its fundamental." newyorker.com/culture/person…
Samuel Huneke on Susan Neiman’s new book on evil in the Trump era: “Disdain for cruelty is precisely what has gone missing in the Trump era… What, after all, is ‘owning the libs’ if not an indulgence in cruelty for cruelty’s sake?” @newrepublic @wwnorton
newrepublic.com/article/2163…
Jonathon Catlin retweeted
We're just barely beginning to see the 2020-2022 cuts here. My guess would be that the US currently has fewer humanities PhD students than it did in 1960.
The entire Golden Age of Academia — *poof*
Jonathon Catlin retweeted
Fukuyama on the reception of postmodernism at Cornell: "French postmodernism hit Cornell University like a freight train in the early 1970s. We had a series of visitors—Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Tzvetan Todorov—who were all part of the movement. Foucault stayed at Telluride House during his visit. While I didn’t attend his lecture, I do have a memory of him disappearing upstairs to his room one weekend with a group of young men in tow."
Jonathon Catlin retweeted
The real end of history
"The University of Oregon is considering phasing out ... some or all of the master’s and doctoral programs offered in History, Romance Languages, Folklore, Comparative Literature, Classics, and German and Scandinavian" bit.ly/4eCYxvx
Jonathon Catlin retweeted
"The University of Oregon is considering phasing out ... some or all of the master’s and doctoral programs offered in History, Romance Languages, Folklore, Comparative Literature, Classics, and German and Scandinavian" bit.ly/4eCYxvx
Jonathon Catlin retweeted
I was so appalled at the dreadful hot-takes circulating about the protests in France that I spontaneously wrote an op-ed yesterday. @ForeignPolicy were kind enough to publish it this evening. It starts by asking *why* there are so many bad hot-takes...
foreignpolicy.com/2026/10/19…
More trouble over at @AHAhistorians. “AHA executives had decided to respond to reporting that they’d used a corporate lobbyist to manage their members’ speech by hiring a corporate law firm to uncover whoever had spoken about the lobbyist.” @chronicle
chronicle.com/article/the-ah…
Jonathon Catlin retweeted
Today would have been Michel Foucault's 100th birthday. In honor of his Centennial, and our own, we're offering a wide variety of free content related to him on our blog. Books, chapters, & articles will be open access until Dec. 15, 2026. #Foucault buff.ly/H2nyiVZ
ALT Black and white photo of Michel Foucault, a bald white man with glasses, wearing a dark suit, holding a sheaf of papers in his hand and looking to the right.
Michelle Goldberg quotes Arendt on Trump’s attempt to denaturalize Ilhan Omar: “Mass cancellation of naturalizations, such as the one introduced by Nazi Germany in 1933 against [Jews] usually preceded denationalization of citizens by birth.”
nytimes.com/2026/10/16/opini…
Jonathon Catlin retweeted
My latest interview is with the intellectual historian Michael Behrent and concerns the centenary of Foucault’s birth which is today. We discuss Foucault’s Catholic upbringing, what distinguishes his thought, and what remains relevant today: commonwealmagazine.org/stein…
Jonathon Catlin retweeted
Grindr is training its AI on your photos, your age, and your taps by default, without asking. I looked into the company’s record with user data, and where they put the off switch.
