Randolph Scully
banner
randolphscully.bsky.social
Randolph Scully
@randolphscully.bsky.social
Early American History and other stuff. COYS!
Reposted by Randolph Scully
Big life news: the McKenzies are headed to North Carolina! I’m thrilled to share that I’m starting as an Assistant Professor of Public History at @uncg.edu in January. While it will be hard to leave the Washington area after 21 years, I’m excited for this next step.
December 3, 2025 at 3:19 PM
When I saw this was in Ashland, it all made sense.
December 2, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Going for the world record for how many times one can wash the food processor in one day
November 27, 2025 at 8:09 PM
Gurrrrrrgh
"Ever since Columbus' 1492 discovery of the "New World," America's East Coast has been gateway to the United States and to new opportunities. Almost 500 years later, this legacy continues with the United States constituting the largest integrated and most lucrative business market in the world."
November 25, 2025 at 11:20 PM
This is a really good point (the whole thread is important too). For me, powerpoints make it easy to present cool stuff (esp. images, maps)... but that ease encourages over-reliance and often leads me to be less focused on how I present those things to engage students more actively
But, over the years, I've become dependent on powerpoints in ways that, frankly, I don't think are fully defensible.

IMO, this is an underappreciated thing in higher ed -- Technology makes our jobs easier by helping us do them more poorly. I'm going to move away from that.
November 24, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
To “my students and to anyone who might listen, I say: Don’t surrender to AI your ability to read, write and think when others once risked their lives and died for the freedom to do so.”

www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...
I Set A Trap To Catch My Students Cheating With AI. The Results Were Shocking.
"Students are not just undermining their ability to learn, but to someday lead."
www.huffpost.com
November 21, 2025 at 12:22 AM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
The Wizards, as a team, are very bad at basketball, but apparently very, very good at ecology. So who’s to say, really?
November 21, 2025 at 1:49 PM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
That Ken Burns is two thirds through this series and only in 1777 feels very much like the pace I teach my survey.
November 20, 2025 at 3:24 AM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
whenever i’m feeling even the slightest bit pleased with myself i just need to visit the duplicate items folder of zotero to be reminded how impressively inefficient i am👏🏽
November 18, 2025 at 2:25 AM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
Really lovely defense of higher education—focused on local colleges but applicable more broadly. Higher Ed is so crucial to economies, to people, to imaginations
Opinion: How higher education now powers the Lehigh Valley
Opinion: Colleges and universities function as anchor institutions in the Lehigh Valley
www.mcall.com
November 17, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
Could argue the misogyny Summers expressed both publicly while president of Harvard and in emails to Epstein says more about the culture at our most elite institutions than any of the frontpage freakouts over academia in the past few years but hey
November 17, 2025 at 12:36 PM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
Where does this “26 colonies” figure come from? Holly Brewer counted around 40 administrative divisions: boston1775.blogspot.com/2021/10/brit... #HATM
Britain’s Forty American Colonies
This month I listened in on some of the sessions of the American Philosophical Society’s “Meanings of Independence” conference . One of ...
boston1775.blogspot.com
November 17, 2025 at 1:21 AM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
‘Of all the violent phases in the history of Liverpool, the slave trade was the most vicious, yet it was barely acknowledged until recently.’

John Kerrigan on Liverpool, the Atlantic slave trade and m. nourbeSe philip’s long poem 𝘡𝘰𝘯𝘨!

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
John Kerrigan · No Illusions: Syntax of Slavery
Slavery was accepted across most of the early modern world. No one wanted to be a slave, except when the alternative was...
www.lrb.co.uk
November 12, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
This is astounding. The @michigandaily.bsky.social upstages every single legacy outlet in the country when it comes to exposing the underbelly of higher education. Just tremendous work.

specials.michigandaily.com/2025/opinion...
From the Daily: The University's values on trial
specials.michigandaily.com
November 10, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
Former VA Del. Mark Levine (D): "I’m really surprised a Senator I know personally and have long respected is this naive. Kaine isn’t stupid. But his justification for bowing down to King Donald is so illogical that it insults any thinking Virginian." bluevirginia.us/2025/11/sen-...
November 10, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
Don’t think we’re not looking at you, too, @markwarner.bsky.social . The math ain’t hard on this one
Super weird:
none of the democrats who just fucked over all of their constituents and made a month of a government shutdown completely meaningless are up for reelection.
What a crazy random happenstance! Or is it???
Were we were duped again as this capitulation happened after the nov. election ?
a woman says we got played on a netflix ad
ALT: a woman says we got played on a netflix ad
media.tenor.com
November 10, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
“Yes, @kaine.senate.gov voted for the deal and @markwarner.bsky.social voted no. We all know that was strategic, because Kaine just got safely reelected. They think we’ll forget.”
November 10, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
in any case it is wild that voters just sent a huge message and a bunch of senate democrats are all, “it doesn’t look like anything to me”
November 10, 2025 at 1:02 AM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
agreeing to make a terrible deal while your main opponent is quite literally being boo'd on live tv by an entire stadium of people is the kind of political instinct you'd normally only find in a 3 week old dead goldfish
November 10, 2025 at 12:36 AM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
No health care, no deal.
November 10, 2025 at 1:33 AM
@kaine.senate.gov Seriously, rethink this... please do everything you can to kill this vote before you do irreparable damage to the party and to millions of Americans.
This is a terrible mistake and hands a victory to Trump right after Virginia voters handed him a massive defeat. You are doing nothing to protect health care, and as for Federal workers, why did put them through 40 days of hell to just surrender for nothing?
November 10, 2025 at 1:43 AM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
November 10, 2025 at 1:24 AM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
Dealer: alright everyone ante up

Chuck Schumer: I fold

Dealer: … we haven’t even dealt the hand yet

Chuck Schumer: I 👏 fold 👏
November 9, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
i think this is key. taking the deal would amount to taking the blame. it would turn a clear political victory into an unambiguous defeat.
If the Dems blink after all of this, for a deal that all but ensures no ACA subsidies in 2026 anyway, then what was the purpose of letting the shutdown go for 40 days in the first place?
November 10, 2025 at 12:56 AM
Reposted by Randolph Scully
What happened, @nytimes.com? Why not stand by your original headline? Because it’s absolutely an accurate representation of this trash conversation.

To publish this at all should be a fireable offense - but to publish it as women’s rights are being decimated is deeply immoral, bordering on evil
November 7, 2025 at 8:10 PM