Jacob T. Levy
jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy
@jacobtlevy.bsky.social

Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory, Associate member of Philosophy, Coordinator of Research Group on Constitutional Studies, McGill.
Posts here speak only for myself.
Americo-Canadian; liberaltarian; aging geek.
http://jacobtlevy.com .. more

Jacob T. Levy is an American political theorist and Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University. Levy is the Chair of the Department of Political Science at McGill, as well as the coordinator of McGill's Research Group on Constitutional Studies and the founding director of McGill's Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds. Levy is also a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and the Institute for Humane Studies. He is known for his expertise on multiculturalism, liberalism, and pluralism. .. more

Political science 68%
Law 8%

Wait I switched fake names halfway through

LOL

The TV dialogue will have gone
“Where were you last night?”
“Hopswell Circus.”
“OH! Say no more!”

And then it turns out Hopscotch Circus is a real place and you change underground lines there and remain none the wiser. (Though presumably there’s not a circus there, because there never is.)

To be an American travelling around London by tube or the country by train is to encounter lots of place names one vaguely knows from books/ movies/ TV shows in which the place name is meant to immediately evoke some highly particular class/ culture/ accent/ norms matrix, understanding none of it.

Only in the Amalgam universe; otherwise you’re these two separate people.

Adding another “papers, please” moment to the American experience.

www.theringer.com/2025/11/25/n...

“What if Nuzzi isn’t a good writer after all? What if, as a friend texted me this week, the true hero of this 15-act opera is whoever was editing her pieces at New York?”
The Olivia Nuzzi and RFK Jr. Affair Is Messier Than We Ever Could Have Imagined
Inside the most important, and also least important, story of our time
www.theringer.com

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

NPR @npr.org · 58m
The National Park Service says it is going to start charging international tourists an extra $100 to enter popular parks. They will be left out of fee-free days, reserved for American residents. n.pr/48CbbII
National Parks to raise fees by $100 for international tourists to popular U.S. parks
The National Park Service says it is going to start charging international tourists an extra $100 to enter popular parks. They will be left out of fee-free days, reserved for American residents.
n.pr

On the bad site in the old days I pressed Yoram Hazony on the antisemitism of the NatCons and he was NOT having it. The blindness was real but/and absolutely willful.

religiondispatches.org/yoram-hazony...
Yoram Hazony is Surprised by Blatant Antisemitism in the MAGA Coalition — But Antisemitism is Second Nature for Nationalists
On November 20, Israeli nationalist Yoram Hazony sat down for an interview with conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat to offer an explanation for the rise of antisemitism on the MAGA Righ...
religiondispatches.org

My pattern of agreement with post-2016 Bill Kristol continues.

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41277108/

Now available:

"From Birth to Death: The Marital Consequences of Child Loss for Unmarried Mothers"

Stud Fam Plann 2025 Nov 23. doi:10.1111/sifp.70041. Online ahead of print.

Criticism. The "too" is implied.

He am what he am and he ain't what he ain't.

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

What even is this timeline?
Trump Is Now Using His Presidential Sway To Pressure Studio Into Making 'Rush Hour 4'—And, Huh?
www.comicsands.com

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

The problem is that food is adjacent to a lot of important stuff (cultural significance, disordered eating, and more) and as a result it's the online discourse topic that goes too far the most often

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

I'm probably out of it (as usual) but who are the folks involved in Liberal Currents? Founders? Staff?

Genuine question...

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

this is also why it was great to have slapfights about Star Wars rankings yesterday, that's the kind of shit that makes Online worth it

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

my take on Food Discourse is that it's always ridiculous but it's also nice to be fighting about dumb internet shit again instead of dealing with Oppressive Despair all the time so please keep posting your bad takes

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

How can ordinary people come together to protect immigrants from unjust deportation?

Throughout the 1980s & early 90s, the Sanctuary Movement illustrated one way to do this.

In a newly published paper, Karla Segovia, Molly Rovinski & I analyze this movement. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Collective action in the sanctuary movement: polycentric protection of central American asylum seekers - Constitutional Political Economy
In the 1980s and early 1990s, civil wars contributed to significant waves of migration from Central American countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States federal government, specific...
link.springer.com

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

Thank you as always, Jacob. Your work was an early inspiration for the project and we are always grateful for your support :)

I donated to help @liberalcurrents.com hit its fundraising threshold to unlock a major matching funds contribution, and you should too.

www.gofundme.com/f/the-libera...
Donate to The Liberal Currents Startup Fund, organized by Adam Gurri
To fight fascism we need opposition media with a backbone. Liberal Currents is that. Help… Adam Gurri needs your support for The Liberal Currents Startup Fund
www.gofundme.com

There are many things in this world I don’t understand but I’m not sure there’s anything I don’t understand quite as thoroughly as I don’t understand this.

I haven’t heard anything about the market in digital pictures of beanie baby apes in a while. Are people still spending millions of dollars on those things?

OK, delighted to hear it, will delete my snark. "Anything but theory" searches have become distressingly common and are not usually accompanied by that good news.

Reposted by Robert C. Richards

Today:
Art. I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to make rules and regulations for the armed forces — including codes of discipline and strictures against following illegal orders. You can’t punish members of Congress for articulating those rules. Also protected by Speech and Debate Clause.
This has happened against my wishes, and I’m genuinely dismayed by it.

Not because people can’t disagree with my words, but because self-censorship driven by fear (Trump threatening to sue the BBC) should concern all of us. /3
This sentence was taken out of a lecture they commissioned, reviewed through the full editorial process, and recorded four weeks ago in front of 500 people in the BBC Radio Theatre.

I was told the decision came from the highest levels within the BBC. /2
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1