Bench Ansfield
@benchansfield
Followers
4K
Following
20K
Media
90
Statuses
3K
Writing a book on racial capitalism, risk, and real estate @wwnorton || Asst Prof of History @TempleUniv || they/them @benchansfield.bsky.social
Joined August 2019
I'm certain this is a mistake but my book is somehow on Barnes & Noble's list of "Most Anticipated Nonfiction of 2025" (link below). BORN IN FLAMES: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City is out Aug 19th from @wwnorton
29
122
744
Annelise Orleck has been banned from Dartmouth campus for six months for trying to protect her students from riot police.
This is historian Annelise Orleck, practicing what she preaches.
97
2K
10K
This is historian Annelise Orleck, practicing what she preaches.
Happening now: Dartmouth history professor pushed and subsequently arrested by New Hampshire state police during peaceful encampment. More than 15 arrests now.
44
1K
6K
You literally need to win a lottery to be added to a *waitlist* for housing assistance. It’s been 15 years since you could even enter your name into the lottery. We live in a permanent housing crisis.
New Yorkers will have 6 days to apply for the Section 8 waitlist from June 3rd to June 6th, the first time the waitlist has opened since 2009. Of those that apply, 200K will be selected by lottery for the waitlist. Here are the current income limits
16
2K
6K
Welcome to abolition! Though our calls for defunding and abolishing the police and prisons may seem brand new, many of us have been practicing abolition for decades. The transformative justice movement is one name for this effort. Here are some resources: /1.
9
995
3K
I'm so accustomed to the academic job market tearing people away from their communities that for 9 years I've been telling my Philly loves it was unlikely I'd return anytime soon. I'm shocked to announce that in '24 I'll begin as an Asst Prof of History at Temple U. in Philly😭.
51
11
1K
A little light at the end of a terrible weekend: here’s a photo of Ruth Wilson Gilmore in front of big Ruthie
7
159
1K
The term “burnout” was forged in the glow of a literal firestorm—the wave of landlord arson that ravaged NYC in the 1970s. For the Rest issue of @JewishCurrents, I wrote on the term’s origins in the creative destruction of the city and its workers.
9
324
1K
I reviewed the film Riotsville, USA for @nybooks. If you want to see a documentary that not only defangs the carceral state, but helps us think outside of it, see this film. It's the antidote to copaganda. It's aboliterature.
9
205
985
All those articles this summer (and the summer before that. ) on how much property damage BLM protests were causing? Those were insurer talking points. Amidst the 60s uprisings, insurers acted as racial capitalism's first responders. Here's how:
21
241
768
I wrote a dissertation. This one's for my loves. Taking suggestions on how to celebrate when the academic job market is so bleak.
68
26
715
As we rage, please remember that not every pregnant person is a woman, and abortion rights and women's rights are not interchangeable.
7
216
719
Beyond excited to be beginning my first semester as an Assistant Professor of History at @TempleUniv. This week marks the 60th anniversary of the '64 Philadelphia rebellion. I'm teaching a course on the History of the U.S. City in Nine Uprisings. Many public events tba!
44
18
668
When I started writing my dissertation, I was on medical leave and almost certain I wouldn’t be able to complete it. This award is the fruition of all the community care it took to get me well. Care work is the closest thing to magic I’ve experienced.
44
15
619
Tonight Dartmouth faculty voted to censure the college president in response to this scene from May 1. Didn’t know they had it in em
9
86
588
Imagine hearing "We Shall Overcome" in the mid-'60s and hearing "kill all white people." The same type of deliberate misreading is at play with "from the river to the sea." It's about criminalizing and penalizing dissent.
9
114
574
We knew broken windows policing was an excuse for racialized police violence. Turns out it was phony science too. My small contribution to the effort to tear it down (THREAD):
7
259
476
Safety politics continue to march toward a reactionary horizon.
0
86
400
Join Mariame Kaba and three brilliant abolitionist organizers for a free virtual event on transformative justice at a time of co-optation, and justice in the midst of institutional failure. April 14th at 6 ET. Open to all. Register here:
2
162
388
Teachers and profs, this is a moment to learn from your students and find your courage.
Our time on this earth is so brief. We might as well be brave.
7
81
375
Giselle, the 7-year-old child of my dear friends, was kidnapped today by her non-custodial biological father. He is armed, last seen leaving Philly toward NYC. Please spread the word to help bring her home.
#BREAKING: An amber alert has been issued for 7-year-old Giselle Torres. State police say Juan Pablo Torres, who allegedly abducted Giselle Torres in Pennsylvania, may be headed to the New York City area.
6
725
380
The state has not only had a monopoly on the use of force, it has had a monopoly on what it means to create safety. The transformative justice movement has been challenging that monopoly for over a decade. /2.
1
47
339
It’s impossible to overstate how much good work is being produced within critical prison studies/history of the carceral state. All these arrived in the last few weeks. Congrats @lydiajean8 @orisanmi @mguariglia @EmilyMBrooksPhD
1
50
338
Not sure what Cop City is? This is Cop City.
0
102
328
This one goes out to all those who've warned me that Israel is the only state in the region that protects queers.
Israeli security forces have admitted to deliberately threatening and outing queer Palestinians as a tactic to intimidate them into working as informants.
0
85
308
This just in from New Haven Public Schools: teachers who test positive for COVID after visiting one of the 31 states considered hotspots "may face disciplinary action, up to and including termination." In other words, NHPS threatens to fire teachers who get COVID.
18
126
288
Evolving out of the confluence of restorative justice, the anti-violence movement, and prison abolition, transformative justice (TJ) is modeled on indigenous responses to violence and was theorized, developed, and is led by women and transfolks of color. /3.
1
48
287
Many of the same police tearing down student encampments nationwide have been practicing on houseless encampments for years. The policing of housing insecurity laid the groundwork for this policing of dissent.
Philadelphia is shutting down a stretch of Kensington Avenue near Allegheny for seven hours on Wednesday. This is part of the city's "encampment resolution.". The official release says press "will not be permitted" to enter the era.
7
113
275
It is not a catch-all replacement for the criminal legal system. It is one seed--among many--from which we must grow a new world. See anything by @prisonculture esp Other leaders: @miamingus @thellpsx @ejeris @Estebantitos @alexispauline @adriennemaree /5.
1
79
267
I’ve never seen as many Vermonters assembled in one place as I do right now in Burlington
2
49
261
The moral and political clarity of this moment is so overwhelming I am finding it difficult to breathe. It’s not everyday that atrocities are presaged with warnings. I rarely pray, but at this point I fear yelling “not in our names” over and over is only that—an unheard prayer.
0
72
264
Anyone else watching the very quiet overtaking of . Best,. by . Warmly,.
11
17
272
TJ seeks alternatives to punitive justice, laying bare and addressing the underlying structures of power (patriarchy, racism, capitalism, homophobia, ableism, etc) that led to violence in the first place. It assumes that interpersonal harm is rooted in those larger structures. /4.
1
45
231
What we are seeing on campuses across the US is a coordinated act of retribution for 2020, meted out by cops who have been unleashed by college presidents who pretended not long ago that Black Lives Matter.
2
79
223
The entire cultural apparatus is working to tee up genocide.
You literally can’t make this up. They no longer want to honour Adania Shibli for her award winning novel A Minor Matter because *checks notes* it focuses on the murder of a Palestinian girl by Israeli soldiers. It’s almost like there’s a connection…
0
66
224
This happened. This was the first thing I wrote after three years of medical leave and cancer treatment. Hard to process in this moment, but there's something to say about what can come out of sustained struggle--and all the support it takes to get through it.
The Louis Pelzer Memorial Award goes to Bench Ansfield @benchansfield for the best essay in American history by a graduate student #OAH20Awards
18
14
180
For starters, see the new volume Beyond Survival and the how-to Fumbling Towards Repair and this toolkit from Creative Interventions
2
44
190
Delighted to share that my article "Broken Windows of the Bronx: Putting the Theory in Its Place" is the co-winner of the Arnold Hirsch Award for best article in a scholarly journal from the Urban History Association! Free from American Quarterly here:
12
28
178
When you dupe Philly into broadcasting the word “ceasefire” to the public…
3
24
194
Feels like Gen Z is just better at solidarity.
Jenna Ortega reportedly asked to end her contract with the “Scream” franchise following Melissa Barrera getting fired.
1
9
184
CT ppl: Senator Chris Murphy is very close to backing a ceasefire. PRESSURE CHRIS MURPHY (202) 224-4041.
My new Gaza statement:. "It's time for Israel's friends to recognize that the current approach is causing an unacceptable level of civilian harm and does not appear likely to achieve the goal of ending the threat from Hamas. I urge Israel to immediately reconsider its approach."
0
105
188
Chairs to the front.
WATCH: Among those arrested today were Noelle McAfee, Chair of the Philosophy Department at Emory University. I’ve asked for a comment from Emory on this arrest, no word yet. This video provided to us by an #Emory PHD student. You can hear him in this video. @ATLNewsFirst
2
25
159
“We're fighting back for our own public space.”
Your subway commute may look a lot more pro-Palestine this morning, thanks to a group of guerrilla artists. @adlankj was on the scene: .
1
44
162
This is starting to feel real. Elated & grateful to work with @dan_gerstle at Liveright/Norton! And ever appreciative of @EliseCapron . @LiverightPub @wwnorton.
Thrilled to announce this book deal for the brilliant @benchansfield, to the similarly brilliant @dan_gerstle!.Bravo, bravo, bravo to you both!
25
7
146
Before that, I'm heading to VT/NH for a 2-yr postdoc at the Dartmouth Society of Fellows. So thankful to have this time to work on my book in the woods. It feels like I won the lottery, but getting a good job shouldn't be a lottery. Neither should working where your people are.
3
1
141
Y'all do realize that the "human shields" argument, taken to its conclusion, can only yield mass death? When any human being, any child, can be portrayed as a shelter for Hamas, Israel gets carte blanche to kill as many Palestinians as it deems necessary. It's limitless.
Horrible. Israel has an obligation to protect civilians under the laws of war. Hamas’s use of innocent Palestinians as human shields does not excuse bombing a location filled with civilians.
2
25
157
To fellow Jews who remain reluctant to criticize the assault on Gaza: Listen when they tell you who they are. What other evidence do you need that the project of ethnic cleansing is underway?.
2
25
147
My book's not out yet but I just discovered that the Chicago Fed (?!) ran regressions on its central argument and found it to be correct. The book is out on August 19.
4
9
160
"Spoiler - not a comfortable read for landlords.".
Arson as a business model - "The Business of Arson".from @benchansfield . BORN IN FLAMES: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City via @wwnorton . Spoiler - not a comfortable read for landlords. Should all in #Springst be gifted a copy?
7
17
149
Out now in American Quarterly, my article on the intellectual origins of broken windows policing, a rollercoaster that runs thru the 1970s Bronx, the media's racialized construction of urban crisis, and Wilson & Kelling's willful manipulation of research.
5
48
128
All I can say about this is that I got really sick in the middle of the program and very nearly didn't graduate. I simply wouldn't have without the constant support from family--chosen & not--especially @nataliyabrgnsky without whom not a word would have made it on paper.
I know I’m gushing now but *listen* @benchansfield is the winner of the 2021 Field Prize, one of two university-wide awards given to top dissertations!!
13
4
129
Join the Abolition Collaboratory for a conversation on how abolitionist activism in the streets should shape abolition studies. Featuring Derecka Purnell @dereckapurnell, Andrea James, Beth Whalley, Eli Patterson, & moderated by the brilliant @deanzacook. May 3rd at 2:30 on Zoom
1
39
136
Writers, academics, and culture workers, sign this. We make each other brave.
1
49
128
See also this piece by the org I work with (which is in hibernation), Philly Stands Up.
3
21
122
Envisioning a Judaism dislodged from Zionism is far from new, but this is the first time I'm seeing its possibilities in technicolor. This fugitive Judaism is the only one that has any meaning to me.
It is hard to overstate how a new vision of American/diasporic Judaism is forming in front of us.
3
13
121
Burnout can feel like a blunt tool for naming the toll that racial capitalism takes on our bodies and minds. But locating it in the infrastructure of the city reveals a term imprinted with a violent truth: socially-differentiated exhaustion, even destruction, can be profitable.
3
19
109
Buckle up. Today is about to get gross af. This is the march they’re paying ppl $250 to attend.
Tomorrow’s Pro-Genocide March in DC has announced its guest speakers including racists like Michael Rapaport & fake progressives like Van Jones. This anti-Palestinian march, helped by the US govt, expects to gather a large crowd in support of 75 years of apartheid & occupation.
6
39
110
There is only one data point you need to know right now. Four out of five starving people worldwide are in Gaza. For those of us whose tax dollars are funding this, you can either name it what it is - forced starvation by design - or you are complicit. It's simple.
2
42
103
I can't wait to join all the rad students and faculty in the History Dept at @TempleUniv. Philly, see you soon 💜. It was a tough few years on the market. Huge gratitude for those who sustained me & solidarity with those feeling the sting of market precarity.
7
1
99
Growing up, there were few things worse than being a Holocaust denier. It sickens me to watch fellow Jews refuse to believe their eyes.
1
11
108
I'm sorry, we can't do hybrid events anymore to accommodate those with disabilities. Oh, you want to tamp down on democracy? Zoom away!!.
Joe Biden’s top advisors are worried the Democratic convention could erupt in protests — so they’re pushing to move it semi-online
3
21
97
Connecticut public schools are so overwhelmed with covid numbers, they've discontinued contact tracing and yet are proceeding with school tomorrow. Incredible that I can still be shocked by policymakers' abdication of responsibility, and yet here we are.
3
28
85
Overwhelmed and grateful to the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize committee -- @ashoncrawley @arsavium and @gnebgne -- for this honor! And huge congrats to the winner, M. Benitez of UMD!!.
As someone whose own teaching has been shaped by @benchansfield’s research + writing, I am overjoyed that the @AmerStudiesAssn has named Bench Ansfield the 2021 Finalist for the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize for Best Dissertation in the field of American Studies. So proud! ❤️🔥#ASA2021.
12
5
92
My review of @DestinKJenkins' spectacular Bonds of Inequality is out today in Reviews in American History. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in racial capitalism & contemporary cities. Feel free to DM for a pdf.
2
15
87
Shame on the IDF, shame on the NYT & CNN, shame on my family members who make excuses for genocide, who have spouted genocidal ideas as long as I can remember, who raised me to believe Israel was the antidote to genocide, and who harness our ancestors' pain toward that same end.
4
10
86
Feeling very fortunate that Lisa Lowe and Michael Denning are steering the ship I find myself on right now.
Yale American Studies faculty *unanimously* voted to support:. - “A one-year extension for our current graduate students”. - “A special, one-time, emergency allocation by the Yale Corporation to the Yale Graduate School to cover some of the Grad School's emergency costs.”
1
11
86
With the Jewish and academic calendars synced, today I’m beginning the new year at Harvard’s Charles Warren Center as an American Democracy Fellow. Excited to join the good folks at CWC and grateful for this lifeline as academia caves in.
7
1
83
I'll be speaking at The New School's Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies a week from today -- next Thursday night at 6pm. Come through! .RSVP here:.
3
16
87
27% of those hospitalized for Covid at Yale-New Haven Hospital were vaccinated. 27%. Yet it's full speed ahead on the semester, with universities in total denial that Delta is not the same virus we had planned for in the spring. This will be a disaster.
1
30
92
"In its most capacious vision, 'everyone for everyone' can be read as an abolitionist call—a way to think about safety grounded in solidarity and mutuality, raised in terrifying and precarious circumstances.". Read this piercing, urgent piece by @dnbrgr .
0
23
88
Was so surprised to learn that my critical history of insurance received this recognition. Honored and grateful @TheBHCNews.
Please join @TheBHCNews in congratulating @benchansfield for their outstanding #dissertation and presentation:. “Born in Flames: #Arson, #RacialCapitalism, and the Reinsuring of the #Bronx in the Late Twentieth Century” is the #BHC2022 #BHCKroossPrize winner. #insurance #bizhis.
6
4
75
Are they literally trying to lose?.
White House when asked what Biden's message to is to Arab-Americans as he visits Michigan tomorrow: "Israel has a right to defend it self"
5
20
73
I just combined all the chapters of my dissertation into one file and it's exactly 420 pages. High school me is BEAMING.
5
0
71
I know we’re all tired, but the bombing has not stopped, the siege remains in effect, and our work remains as urgent as ever.
After Israel bombed Gaza's last operational flour mill yesterday, the entire population of Gaza, including 1.1 million children, is at "immediate" risk of starvation
1
25
70
Dartmouth & Upper Valley folks -- come out on Tuesday at 1:30 to support grad student workers demanding a living wage
2
24
68
There's no love like the love for one's mentors. I wish that love for everyone.
2
3
60
This article shows how property insurers’ responses to the 60s uprisings helped set the course for US cities in the decades to come. Although the damage was minimal compared to an event like Hurricane Betsy in ’65, insurers worked themselves into a frenzy.
1
18
58
@KeeangaYamahtta Its self-immolation seems pretty rapid to me! It only took a few weeks to undo decades of base building.
1
0
56
Despite being branded as a racial justice measure, this insurance initiative benefited nobody more than absentee landlords, setting the stage for further ruin. Sorry about the paywall--DM me for a copy!!.
2
11
55
This needs to be bigger news. Macron calls for a ceasefire.
Macron has called on the world to "work toward a cease-fire" in Gaza.
1
5
55
But it wasn’t a broken window that drew passersby into the fray; it was the spectacle of Stanford researchers destroying a car in the middle of campus. In place of Z's critique of inequality, W+K invented a broken window and invested it with the ability to spur vandalism. /13.
1
7
53
In James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling’s 1982 broken windows essay in the Atlantic, a single source is cited to “prove” the link between one broken window and “a thousand broken windows”—claiming a connection b/t visual cues of disorder and neighborhood deterioration. 2/18.
1
12
53
This source is a 50-year-old experiment conducted in the Bronx and Palo Alto by social psychologist Philip Zimbardo. The authors of broken windows distorted its findings to suit their purposes. Their broken windows theory was founded on a lie. /3.
1
11
53
This criminological cockroach should be exposed as being constructed upon shaky intellectual ground. From its origins to its ruinous rise, the broken-windows theory was just that — broken. It’s time to tear it down. /18.
2
9
49
After years of redlining neighborhoods of color, they threatened to abandon cities once and for all. In 67, an offshoot of the federal Kerner Commission stepped in with a public-private insurance program to keep insurance flowing to cities.
1
13
46
@TomSugrue @vn_trinh13 @dartmouth And she is now banned from campus. She was supposed to teach 70 students in the coming days.
7
6
54
Featuring narration by @tobihaslett, Sierra Pettengill's @riotsvilleusa chronicles the fake towns built by the Army to train the police and Nat'l Guard how to respond to the '60s urban uprisings. It was a theater for honing politically acceptable forms of state repression.
1
6
51
I wonder how long these college presidents have been fantasizing about having an opportunity to sic the police on their students.
1
2
49
Is this just numbness or did I successfully pre-grieve?.
0
5
53
Philadelphia!! A @TempleUHistory series in commemoration of the 1964 Columbia Avenue uprising is coming to you in October, featuring Matthew Countryman and @JTRoane. Free and open to the public. DM me with questions
0
15
50
I visit archives for a living and still have no clue what it means to "archive" something in gmail.
2
2
46