Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 3d

“On the question of intent, much fudged and fettered by those legal minds who wish to keep the high standards for genocide untainted by Palestinian blood…”

💯.

The only way to deny genocide in Palestine is to believe that Palestinians aren’t equally human.

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 3d

‘It is peculiar, to say the least, that Israel is being given, in a “peace deal”, land that it has not managed to capture militarily.’

@selmadabbagh.bsky.social on Gaza, from the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

Selma Dabbagh | Knowledge of the Relevant Facts

Israel has assassinated a record number of Palestinian journalists, refused to allow international reporters to enter...

www.lrb.co.uk

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Reposted by Amanda Lanzillo

Emissary Of Night | ليلى @diplomatofnight.com · 6d

“The alleged underground Hamas command center at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, used to justify an unprecedented assault on the biggest medical center in Gaza, was actually an animation the IDF had used the previous year, saying at the time it was a tunnel beneath a UN school.”

Jack Sapoch @jacksapoch.bsky.social · 7d

NEW: Since October 2023, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has released dozens of 3D animations illustrating alleged Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian sites

The style is now unmistakable: satellite zoom-ins, black & white wireframes, and red-textured houses - a new visual language of war

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Rob von Thaden @rvontha.bsky.social · 6d

h/t @fiona-webster22.bsky.social

Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 6d

Trump's secret police. With $75 billion and thousands of masked agents, ICE is just getting started. Mother Jones takes a look at ICE's skyrocketing expansion, the agency's failing standards, and where Trump is planning to build his new concentration camps. bit.ly/4nIoFrB

The vast, terrifying scale of Trump’s detention state

With $75 billion and thousands of masked agents, ICE is just getting started.

bit.ly

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Reposted by Amanda Lanzillo

Jared Holt @jaredlholt.bsky.social · 8d

This really makes it sound like a Border Patrol agent tried to kill an anti-ICE activist in Chicago and DHS lied to cover for him

Chicago Sun-Times @chicago.suntimes.com · 8d

Body-camera video appears to contradict the government’s claim that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire at her late Saturday morning in Brighton Park, her attorney claimed.
trib.al/9Sxu9IN

Attorney for woman shot by Border Patrol claims officer said 'Do something b-----' before shooting

Body-camera video appears to contradict the government's claim that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire at her late Saturday morning in Brighton Park, her attorney claimed. A judge ordered Martinez and a co-defendant released pending trial.

trib.al

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Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 10d

I have a full day today, but I woke up early to put this edition of my newsletter together because I need you all to have this rundown of what we've been up against this week in Chicago as the federal assault on our city continues. To ignore these developments would be a damning mistake for us all.

Must-Reads and the War on Chicago

"Chicagoans will not be a conquered people."

organizingmythoughts.org

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Heba Gowayed هبة جويد @hebagowayed.bsky.social · 12d

This is who @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social is. Brilliant. Fearless. I fucking hate typing this shit out: Free Eman.

Amplify amplify amplify please.

Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 12d

@emanabdelhadi.bsky.social tells these cops about themselves.

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 13d

ICE out of Chicago NOW.

Anjali Enjeti @anjalienjeti.bsky.social · 13d

My god.

“Watson said she saw agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans. Kids were separated from their mothers…’It was heartbreaking to watch…seeing kids coming out buck naked and taken from their mothers, it was horrible.’”

Massive immigration raid on Chicago apartment building leaves residents reeling: 'I feel defeated'

The Department of Homeland Security said federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested 37 people in the raid.

chicago.suntimes.com

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Mark Elliott @profmarkelliott.bsky.social · 13d

Excellent (but depressing) analysis by @gsoh31.bsky.social on the fragile state of higher education in the UK. This passage particularly struck me. politicalquarterly.org.uk/blog/where-n...

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 16d

“A masked ICE agent inside the fencing shot a pepper ball from about 50 feet away, hitting Rezai’s truck, which had its driver’s side window down, ‘causing the chemical agents to engulf the inside.’”

Block Club Chicago @blockclubchi.bsky.social · 16d

ICE fired a chemical weapon at a TV reporter in Broadview. The "unprovoked" attack is now under investigation. blockclubchi.co/4mHRQd8

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 17d

My first Chicago half marathon to mark the start of the new academic year!

1 hr 55 min 42 sec time; not bad for being pretty undertrained (an international move will do that 🤷‍♀️).

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Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez @ramirez.house.gov · 21d

Hundreds of immigrant detainees held at Alligator Alcatraz are missing.

The Trump Administration keeps us in the dark because they don't want us to see how they’re violating our rights, tearing our families apart, and attacking our communities.

We need answers! Where are our neighbors?

Democracy Now! @democracynow.org · 22d

Miami Herald: Two-Thirds of Immigrants Held at “Alligator Alcatraz” in July Have Disappeared

In immigration news, hundreds of people who were once detained at the troubled immigration jail in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” have disappeared.

www.democracynow.org

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 22d

Like everyone else, I've deleted my academia. edu page and I'm in the process of shifting over to Knowledge Commons. I'm still figuring out how it works, but my articles and book can all be found there and on my personal website.

hcommons.org/members/aman...

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Anirvan Chatterjee @chatterjee.net · 23d

"Compared to the first year of the first Trump administration, arrests of noncriminals have increased 500 percent."

www.justsecurity.org/121122/us-de...

The Deportation Industrial Complex: Arrest and Detention Numbers

Detaining citizens & immigrants without a public safety rationale is inconsistent with American values and wastes of taxpayer money.

www.justsecurity.org

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Reposted by Amanda Lanzillo

Dr Eleanor Janega @goingmedieval.bsky.social · 28d

The destruction of the Gaza city mosque is a devastating loss to humanity as a whole. A part of our global medieval heritage destroyed in furtherance to a genocide. I despair.

Andy Khouri @andykhouri.bsky.social · 28d

Built in the 13th century. So that mosque stood for 800 years with every sort of person from every place and every religion in the world passing through Gaza century after century, only for it to be blown up by some shithead loser sitting behind a computer that we probably paid for.

🏳️‍⚧️ Josephine Riesman (Horrifying) @josie.zone · 28d

My rage knows no bounds

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 25d

“AI has always been a marketing phrase that erodes scientific inquiry and scholarly discussion by de- sign, leaving the door open to pseudoscience, exclusion, and surveillance.”

zenodo.org/records/1706...

6/🧵

Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia

Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these col...

zenodo.org

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Reposted by Amanda Lanzillo

Mondoweiss @mondoweiss.net · 27d

Netanyahu officially approved a settlement plan last week and announced his intentions to greenlight other settlements just like it. Together, these plans would end the West Bank as a geographic and political entity.

mondoweiss.net/2025/09/if-i...

#Palestine #Israel

If Israel’s settlement plan goes through, the West Bank will soon cease to exist

Netanyahu officially approved a settlement plan last week and announced his intentions to greenlight other settlements just like it. Together, these plans would end the West Bank as a geographic and political...

mondoweiss.net

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · Sep 14

Pious Labor (@ucpress.bsky.social ) reviewed in the AHR by @farinamir.bsky.social . I've been fortunate that the book has been read by several thoughtful and generous reviewers, and I'm especially thrilled to see this one.

academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...
🗃️

Lanzillo is keen to see labor history as a site for Islamic history. Pious Labor does so admirably through both method and content. As Lanzillo rightly underscores, the history of Islam in colonial India has largely been written through “an insistence on the primacy of canonical thinkers and texts” (17). Pious Labor elegantly portrays how artisans anchored their labor in Islamic pasts. Woodworkers traced their skills to the prophet Nuh (Noah); tailors to Idris (Enoch); blacksmiths to Dawud (David). Artisans often connected their trade and/or skill to Sufi pirs (guides/saints), as was the case with scribes and metalsmiths. By showing us an “artisanal Islam” in a range of contexts, the book effectively makes working- and lower-class histories integral to an understanding of Islam in South Asia.

Pious Labor is refreshingly original in bringing histories of economy, labor, technology, and Islam into dialogue with one another, and it makes contributions to each of these fields of history. Additionally, by highlighting how Muslim artisans emphasized the Islamic origins of their trades and the pious nature of their labor and rendered new technologies as sources for their accumulation of social and cultural capital, Lanzillo makes a valuable contribution to the history of late colonial India.

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · Sep 13

If we’re mourning a victim of political violence in the US this weekend, it should be Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez.

unraveled @unraveledpress.com · Sep 13

New, w/ @mulchy.bsky.social & @djbyrnes1.bsky.social:

ICE shot & killed an immigrant in the Chicago suburbs yesterday.

Then they immediately gave a misleading account of events.

Chicago erupted in chaos and a father who lived here for decades is dead. This is what really happened:

What happened to Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez

Immigration agents shot and killed an unarmed 38-year-old father outside Chicago on Friday—and their initial narrative of events was quickly disproven by videos captured by witnesses.

unraveledpress.com

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In These Times @inthesetimes.com · Sep 13

BREAKING in Chicago: "ICE Abducts Man Suing Off-Duty Police for Abusing Day Laborers" by
@sarahlazare.bsky.social & @bloomekatz.bsky.social

“The Department of Homeland Security has become the department of state terror,” @ramirez.house.gov said Saturday.

ICE Abducts Man Suing Off-Duty Police for Abusing Day Laborers

“The Department of Homeland Security has become the department of state terror,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez.

inthesetimes.com

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elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · Sep 13

What a thoughtful man Mahmoud Khalil is. A must read.

Was moved to know that while in detention he was reading Edward Said and Viktor E. Frankl

www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Mahmoud Khalil on exile, liberation and Ice detention: ‘It was a clear act of cruelty’

His grandparents survived the Nakba and he fled Assad’s Syria. Khalil is no stranger to political persecution, but not even Trump’s crackdown can silence him

www.theguardian.com

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · Sep 12

My next book, Out of Empire, is now under contract with @uncpress.bsky.social! The book provides a social historical perspective on the hijrat of 1920, during which tens of thousands of Indians left their homeland in search of freer lives in an independent, Muslim-ruled territory: Afghanistan.

A black and white photograph showing a parade of migrants and their supporters during the 1920 hijrat from India to Afghanistan.

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · Sep 11

An early example of testimonials in Urdu advertising! For the homeopathic treatment Amrat Dhara, which will help you with "any struggle in life," in a 1931 edition of Sadaqat (Kanpur). The advertisement features "a few letters of the 36,000" that they claim to have received from users 👀.

🗃️

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The Intercept @theintercept.com · Sep 8

You could house Chicago's homeless four times over with the money Trump's occupation of the city will cost PER DAY.

Read more: interc.pt/4mEgE6q

✍️ @nickturse.bsky.social 📹 @jordanuhl.com

Trump’s Chicago Occupation May Cost 4X More Than Housing City Homeless #politics #trump #chicago

YouTube video by The Intercept

youtube.com

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American Council of Learned Societies @acls1919.bsky.social · Sep 8

"Since the 1950s, area studies programs have quietly informed disciplinary practices across the humanities and social sciences."

2024 ACLS Fellow @amandazillo.bsky.social shares why area studies matter in @insidehighered.com: bit.ly/4lXw5p5

Why Area Studies Matters (opinion)

If we are to save area studies programs, it will fall to universities to recognize their value, Amanda Lanzillo writes.

bit.ly

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Nicholas Witkowski @nwitkowski.bsky.social · Sep 3

SEPT 15 JOB DEADLINE: Assistant Professor in South/Southeast Asian Religions (w/ focus on Hindu Traditions, defined BROADLY) in my department at the University of San Diego (PLEASE SHARE WIDELY).

jobs.sandiego.edu/cw/en-us/job...

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