Drew McKevitt (on a hiatus, mostly)
@drewmckevitt
Followers
13K
Following
47K
Media
7K
Statuses
87K
John D. Winters Endowed Professor of History @LATech. GUN COUNTRY (2023) and CONSUMING JAPAN (2017) for @UNC_Press. First-gen. I don't speak for my employer.
Shreveport, LA
Joined January 2011
2023 had its ups and downs but I published this great book and now that you've had enough to drink pehaps you want to impulse buy it. Happy new year!
4
11
81
normal writers: how. academics: the ways in which.
234
14K
104K
That Arizona even has Confederate monuments, despite not being a state for another 50 years, tells you this has never been about the war.
362
23K
53K
One thing people born after like 1990 or so will never appreciate is that there were several decades of American life during which literally every indoor space smelled like stale cigarette smoke.
938
3K
47K
I'm a big fan of the pomodoro method, which, if you aren't familiar with it, is when you do 25 minutes of focused work and then take a 95-minute break.
138
4K
44K
Using Twitter to search for news from Japan gives you hundreds of blue check accounts with very few followers posting video and images from 2011 and claiming it's today. $44 billion to make the world's most important news source absolutely useless.
117
4K
20K
Castro came to power 64 years ago. So Ted's father was imprisoned and tortured by the U.S.-backed regime of Fulgencio Batista.
66 years ago today, my father arrived in America. He had been imprisoned & tortured in Cuba, and America gave him freedom. He came to Texas; he spoke no English and washed dishes making 50 cents an hour. God bless America, the greatest Nation on earth. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
69
2K
19K
It is weird that he does not mention that both of his parents were college professors with PhDs from the University of Chicago and that this might have given him advantages other people did not have
160
1K
12K
"we will terrorize you and your families until you leave" was also a popular policy for the Klan.
They’re welcome to go back to Haiti if America bothers them so much.
43
1K
9K
One time in the Cold War history class I asked students if they knew who George Smiley was, and nobody said anything, and I said, "Nobody's read a John Le Carré novel??" and one student said "we're not old and weird, just tell us who he was".
217
380
8K
In the archives this morning I'm working through material on Columbine and one thing that stands out is how the killers were unmistakable white supremacists but within days the press stopped talking about that and instead focused on mental health, teen angst, media violence, etc.
82
2K
6K
HUUUUUUU. MAAAAAAA. NIIIIIIIII. TIIIIIEEEEEEEESSS
In school, rarely do we learn skepticism, and how political winds can influence it, morphing skepticism into obstinance.
42
2K
6K
Just overheard the 7 year old on Facetime with family: "actually the Civil War was about slavery".
44
146
6K
Had students read a New Yorker piece on Martin Luther at 500 and we talked about it in class and then I asked them to do a brief informal writing reflection on Martin Luther's impact on the modern world and two of them wrote about Martin Luther King.
134
197
6K
Voting for Trump means voting for a man whose foreign patrons called in bomb threats to keep Americans from voting.
Just in: 12 polling places in Georgia are having their hours extended due to Russian-originated bomb threats, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
31
2K
5K
Weird how the NRA knew exactly what an AR-15 was for in 1962
81
1K
4K
Historians have always known that unions were a better deal than economists made them out to be.
Economists are starting to suspect that unions were a better deal than textbooks made them out to be via @bopinion.
44
713
4K
What I've noticed at both the undergraduate and graduate levels is that people who went to elite schools are not necessarily smarter or more capable but they most definitely have a better network of elites to help them get ahead.
73
480
4K
As a parent of an only child I have come to realize through observation of multi-child households that a second child, whatever the child's temperament, is always a pure chaos agent.
177
146
4K
Good morning, may you greet the day with all the confidence of a mediocre white man shouting at women PhDs on the internet.
16
444
3K
Remembering fondly how three months ago I said Trump belongs in jail and my university felt the need to issue a public statement condemning me.
17
297
3K
One of the things university administrators don't like to tell you is that the liberal arts often brings in more tuition credit dollars than anyone else because we teach many required courses with large enrollments and we're paid much less than business or STEM faculty.
From WVU Provost Office:. English Dept: Revenue from tuition ALONE is avg $2M HIGHER per year than expenses. World Lang Linguistics Lit Dept: Revenue over $800k HIGHER per year than expenses. Together, they make WVU nearly $3M/yr. Why in the world would they cut that?! Invest!.
26
528
3K
Remember when he took out a full-page newspaper ad to say five children should be executed for a crime they didn't commit.
JUST IN: Donald Trump slams Jan. 6 panel after Ivanka Trump interview request: "They'll go after children"
30
422
3K
Oh Clarence Thomas dissents? Clarence Thomas you say? The same Clarence Thomas married to Ginni Thomas? The same Ginni Thomas who cheered on the effort to overturn the election?.
BREAKING: Trump loses his bid at SCOTUS to block Congress from obtaining his White House records related to 1/6/21. Clarence Thomas is the lone public dissenter in the apparent 8-1 ruling.
44
421
2K
Have they tried shooting the virus.
BREAKING: the NRA's upcoming Annual Meeting has been cancelled due to to COVID.
46
336
2K
Democrats should tread carefully with obstructionism. Republicans did it for eight years and only ended up controlling everything.
27
993
2K
The video inadvertently shows the tiny bubbles these people live in. Niall Ferguson is like "wow, we had a Trump support and a BLM support in the room together," like maybe try teaching at a regional public university Niall where this is literally every class you're in.
18
165
2K
It's okay to expound extensively on critical race theory even if you've never read an article or book about it but you definitely should not talk about guns unless you personally know the man who designed the AR-15.
19
243
2K
A week after getting my second shot at the mass vaccination site in Shreveport I'm having this weird side effect that manifests as nostalgia for efficient large-scale coordinated government action to address a major crisis.
18
223
2K
Take it from Louisiana's experience: it's an abject failure. Two thirds of voucher students ended up in failing schools that existed for no other reason than to funnel public money into private religious organizations.
Texas has 1 million kids in private or home school. If they each got a $8,000 voucher, it would cost taxpayers $8 Billion. A major transfer of public money to mostly religious institutions. More: #txlege.
28
659
2K
The obvious answer is that the Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004 but don't discount that 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, in which Congress freed gunmakers from any liability for their products killing people, which opened the floodgates on market "innovation".
13
814
2K
NPR just described Warren's speech last night as "like a professor delivering a history lecture but with more energy" and they will be hearing from my attorney shortly.
34
119
2K
Richard Hofstadter, 1970: "“What is most exceptional about the Americans is not the voluminous record of their violence, but their extraordinary ability, in the face of that record, to persuade themselves that they are among the best-behaved and best-regulated of peoples.”.
9
483
2K
What I find so baffling about the right wing obsession with the lab leak story is that if it's true that China leaked a virus that killed a million Americans it only makes Dear Leader's incompetent response look all the worse.
84
314
2K
This is a thread of political radicalization, no doubt, but it's also a thread of conspicuous consumption. Guns are expensive. Working-class people cannot afford these arsenals.
Miguel Farinas (35) and Diliet Farinas, Miami, Florida, April 2019
49
340
2K
It's as if nobody wanted to talk about how the Columbine killers were products of a toxic and deadly culture of white supremacy. Instead it was more convenient to turn them into "lone wolf" characters.
10
264
2K
It's worth noting that in 2023 total law enforcement deaths were at their *lowest* point since *1959*.
More people were killed by U.S. law enforcement in 2023 than any other year in the past decade — and it's increasingly happening in small towns and rural areas.
14
369
2K
One time I interviewed for a job and came in second but I called the search committee chair and said "I hereby refuse to concede" and they had to give me the job because it's in the constitution.
11
89
1K
Brought to you by the very normal adults who put "Let's Go Brandon" on their F-150s.
This whole “they’re weird” argument from the Democrats is dumb & juvenile. This is a presidential election, not a high school prom queen contest. It’s also a tad ironic coming from the party that preaches “diversity & inclusion.” Win on policy if you can, but cut the crap please.
23
120
1K
A literal Vanderbilt wants to tell you that you live in a silo.
Cooper: You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watch this network again. But do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away?
38
231
1K
The killers chose the date April 20 because it was Hitler's birthday. They were learning German and would shout it to each other in the hallways of the school. They were fascinated with Nazi military and material culture.
10
228
1K
The university president has announced a "vaccination incentive plan" for students that is a drawing for several prizes, including an iPad. Perhaps we also might consider a "vaccination incentive plan" that includes "you can't come back to campus if you're not vaccinated".
22
125
1K
What I think happens is that their clear white supremacist ideology gets tucked into a teen angst framework, as if white supremacy went hand-in-hand with violent video games and music as something angry teenagers experiment with when trying to figure out who they are.
7
170
1K
Now that I have tenure I would like to say good morning to everyone except the dean at my first job who said I'd never get a tenure-track position so I should just do something else.
25
56
1K
HEY YOU, it's MONDAY, time to GET PUMPED for another week of HARD WORK or at least some HALF-DISTRACTED WORK for the next couple hours before descending into a DOWNWARD SPIRAL of ENDLESS ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION then realizing that NOTHING MATTERS so WHY BOTHER, LET'S DO THIS.
17
210
1K
I kid you not, someone wrote the university president to say my Twitter joke about Rand Paul's neighbor's senate campaign was a "violent rant." I can tell you from nine years experience that there's only one side fighting this culture war here and it's not the "radical left".
15
97
1K
If there's any advice I can offer young people it's that you should try to avoid living your life in such a way that everyone on the internet will laugh when you die.
11
130
1K
I finished grad school 15 years ago, been teaching at the college level for 18, I'm tenured with an endowed chair, I've written two books, the most recent of which made a year's best nonfiction list, and my father just asked if I'm "doing a school project," so no that never ends.
21
37
1K
You know, if you really want to change politics in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and so forth, you could move down here. Bring your money. And bagels.
130
168
1K
To be clear he's talking about his mother in law, who is a provost at UC San Diego.
NEW VANCE AUDIO: In an interview from 2020, JD Vance agrees with a podcast host who says having grandmothers help raise children is “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.”. He also agrees when the host says grandparents helping raise children is a "weird, unadvertised
14
269
1K
Nobody is self-made. Everybody who made it had help, many of them from government programs that go unacknowledged. The self-made mythology is insidious.
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz: "I've also been criticized for being a billionaire. Let's talk about that: I'm self-made. I grew up in the projects in Brooklyn, New York. I thought that was the American dream. The aspiration of America."
47
214
1K
Students who've missed class have offered to show me the most personal medical documents and it's like, what asshole ever made you do this? Who is to blame for this?.
51
104
1K
Does the library still have holes in the ceiling?.
14
129
1K
[whispers loud enough for only students to hear] . if enough of you coordinate and refuse to go to in-person classes your instructors will have no choice but to move classes online and that's probably what they want to do anyway.
5
288
1K
Rich people should stop giving money to vanity projects at Stanford and Harvard and start giving it to schools that will be transformed by it.
18
100
1K
I'm just eyeballing the math here but if I'm not mistaken you're about 700 times more likely to be shot in the United States each year than you are to get a serious blood clot from a vaccine.
11
240
1K
"Your 280-character tweet does not express the rigorous sophistication and scholarly nuance I would expect of an academic monograph" is among the worst genres of tweets.
5
84
1K
You understand, they're declaring victory in Pennsylvania to distract you from the fact that they're all boarding a plane to some post-Soviet authoritarian country without an extradition treaty.
54
133
1K
I appreciate the sentiment but wait until you find out what kinds of Democrats FDR had to share the party with.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.”. I am with @AOC. We used to be a very progressive party until big money donors took over. Warren, Sanders, and AOC are fighting to return us to our FDR roots.
27
89
1K
It was easy to miss yesterday that the suspect in the burning of three black churches in Louisiana has been charged with a hate crime.
17
507
1K
This is domestic terrorism, and they're not even trying to hide it.
Militia leader Stewart Rhodes tells Alex Jones that his group will be at polling locations and is ready to kill Democrats
17
354
1K
A colleague of mine has a life-threatening tumor and has previously had their request for teaching accommodation rejected by the university. Now the university is reconsidering it but only if my colleague sends HR a recent MRI or CT scan documenting the tumor. Sadistic treatment.
40
111
1K
One thing I appreciate about the adorable naïveté of the "taxation is theft" crowd is their belief that, absent the entire apparatus of government supported by taxes, their job and their salary and everything else would be the same, and they'd just get to take home an extra 20%.
35
116
1K
For the last two days Twitter has been filled with an awful lot of people trying to either defend mass murderers from accusations of white supremacy or defend white supremacists from association with mass murderers. This website is weird.
2
111
1K
Hi, "rockstar tenured professor" here, and really all I want is for you to keep your private sector ideas in the private sector and to fund public education as if it were something we actually valued.
This week I found myself advocating for abolishing tenure at universities. Since giving up tenure myself (and seeing how the private sector operates) I’ve become confident that experimenting with (higher paid) merit-based contracts would be a smart move for universities that want.
77
75
1K
I'm curious: what would you learn getting a four-year business degree that someone who spent four years, say, learning to read critically and write thoughtfully and think and research independently couldn't learn in a couple months on the job?.
MY hottest take is colleges should remove business degrees.
44
43
1K
The same College of Liberal Arts that fired my colleague when a parent complained he was teaching about racism is today hosting readings of banned books, in case you're on campus and want to see what irony looks like.
9
110
1K
If you think a CEO's kid is gonna skip Harvard or Yale to go to SUNY Oneonta, then maybe your candidate hasn't really thought through how higher ed works.
13
150
971
Fewer cops, more rabbis with chairs.
BREAKING: The rabbi of Texas synagogue says he threw a chair at a gunman and escaped with two other hostages, ending a 10-hour standoff. Authorities say the British gunman Malik Faisal Akram, 44, was killed after the hostages left the synagogue.
8
144
1K
For the self-righteous nerds who want to pop in and say "how dare you make fun of students," I'm not. This is genuinely hilarious and the students would think so too. The point is not that they're "stupid." It's that they paid no attention. They may not have even been in class.
6
5
1K
This day is starting to look like some scene in a superhero movie where a supervillain takes over a prison and unlocks the cells of all the D-list villains.
Donald Trump is expected to issue clemency for convicted felon and tax cheat Bernie Kerik.
23
274
976
Tax churches, all of them, but start with this one.
Just a normal Sunday at Global Vision Bible Church as right-wing pastor Greg Locke literally screams at his congregation "do not get vaccinated" while saying that only "crack-smoking, demon-possessed leftists" think Biden is the legitimate president.
44
124
930
"The bottom line: Masking mandates were linked with significantly reduced numbers of Covid cases in schools.".
In a so-called natural experiment, two school districts in Boston maintained masking after mandates had been lifted in others. Researchers took that opportunity to compare the spread of Covid in masking and non-masking schools.
4
348
991
This is deranged and whoever is responsible for this should be fired immediately.
Sniper on the roof of the IMU. Absolutely unhinged response to a nonviolent encampment by a murderous and paranoid police state.
16
140
1K
TBH if I were a 19 year old living through the worst pandemic in a century and a concomitant global economic collapse and looking toward a lifetime of climate catastrophe that I did nothing to create then my intro world history survey would be pretty low on my priority list too.
13
47
966
Weird to think we're a little over a month away from commemorating the 20th anniversary of 9/11 when we've collectively lived with 200+ 9/11s in the last 18 months.
11
180
899
We're about two weeks out from the first stories with headlines like, "Couple Who Attended 'Reopen America' Rally Dies of Covid-19".
Ten days ago people in Wisconsin risked their lives to vote. Right now people in Brookfield, Wisconsin are risking their lives for the right to die in a pandemic - and infect others. A sad day for this country.
89
252
886
I noticed a good bit of the classic "assault rifle is just a name the gun control lobby invented to scare people" today and I felt compelled to grab something quickly from my research so here's an ad from The American Rifleman (the NRA's magazine) from June 1961.
29
230
875
Academics are talking about Twitter again and I think one thing that doesn't get enough attention is how Twitter is a democratic (even if imperfect) way to build the professional networks that people with degrees from elite institutions can take for granted.
19
127
934
Many years ago I got a student evaluation that said "He talked too much about slavery. He should teach facts, not opinions," and I like to think that today that student is a parent at a school board meeting shouting about critical race theory.
21
93
868
[grades two exams] . Let me check Twitter. [grades two more exams]. Let me check Twitter to see if anyone liked my joke about grading exams and checking Twitter.
16
23
890
Me: "I'm tired and hungry and I had a long day. Can we get dinner now?". 6 year old who sat through my two classes: "all you did was talk".
21
25
877
I thought this was very funny but all these "the kids these days" replies remind me why Twitter is terrible so muting this thread now.
20
6
848
Dan Quayle, who was elected vice president 36 years ago, is younger than both 2024 presidential candidates.
I am just old enough to remember when the vice president misspelling potato was a crisis.
4
125
940
Every book needs an Anti-Acknowledgements section for the people who seemed to go out of their way to make it impossible for you to finish your project.
26
84
900
This is going to be shocking to hear, I know, but there are mountains of data that show that when your society has fewer guns, you have fewer gun deaths.
12
194
802
Happy to announce that the history faculty had all teaching assistants taken away without warning a week before the start of classes. Love this for us, will be good professional development.
46
40
810
A 5-year-old who goes to school with my kid was critically injured by a stray bullet yesterday and I just want to show my appreciation to the NRA for keeping all these Second Amendment heroes out here armed.
28
144
798
So glad I can start brainwashing my students with communism at 11:01 am CST.
37
45
792
Me reviewing a book in grad school: meh, I've seen better. Me reviewing a book while writing a second of my own: this is AMAZING, it has WORDS, and COMPLETE SENTENCES, literally THOUSANDS OF THEM, arranged in LOGICAL SEQUENTIAL ORDER, a remarkable triumph, would read again, 12/10.
1
64
829
I took out loans to pay for college and I eventually paid back every dollar I and few things would make me happier than to see some or all of everyone else's student debt erased. I would be delighted to see my tax dollars go to this rather than F-35s or tax cuts for millionaires.
19
85
770
I don't want to name names but you will find lots of conservatives in Louisiana in significant positions of authority who sincerely believe that teaching the liberal arts means teaching students how to be liberals.
This is the kind of framing that reinforces the myth that universities indoctrinate students “school turned him liberal”… tenets of the Liberal Arts involve critical and independent thinking. To many that SEEMS like an ideological shift when it’s not. Do better @washingtonpost
26
135
809
I used to have the TA grade these informal writing assignments but now we have no TAs so I am grading them for the first time and I wonder how many times this has happened in the past.
6
5
769
Ah yes, Henry Ford, famous speaker only on issues directly related to his business, like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Historically, CEOS spoke out only on issues directly related to their business. Now leaders are taking public stands on controversial issues, one expert says. Leaders of more than 180 businesses recently signed a letter opposing restrictive abortion laws
18
95
702
Book cover incoming!. I can't tell you how excited I am to have a book in my hands that looks like this. Coming Fall 2023 from @UNC_Press!
72
96
690
Eugene Debs received 3.4% of the vote from a prison cell in 1920.
Ex-chief of staff Mick Mulvaney: Trump will run for the presidency again if he loses
15
64
681