Paul Renfro
@paulmrenfro
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Assoc. Prof. @History_FSU . Author, Stranger Danger ( @OxUniPress , 2020) and The Life and Death of Ryan White ( @UNC_Press , 2024). Rep’d by @CalligraphLit . He/him.
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Joined May 2016
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Last Seen Profiles
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The Jon Stewart interview is good, but the whole genre to which it belongs (The Daily Show, Good Liars, etc.) betrays liberals’ faith in shaming and fact-checking as political tools—neither of which works when your political opponents have no shame or regard for facts. 1/
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In anticipation of Henry Kissinger’s birthday tomorrow, here’s an animated map of US bombs dropped on Laos from 1964–73. I often show this map to students in my US since 1877 survey and US since 1945 course.
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Reminds me of this statistic, which I think about often.
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.
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NEW: Democratic strategist James Carville has meltdown, blasts young people for thinking about staying home and not voting for Biden.
The panic is setting in.
“You little f**king 26-year-old, you don’t feel like ‘the election’s important to me. They’re not addressing the issues
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More people have died of COVID-19 in Florida alone (81,910) than died of AIDS-related causes in the United States during the 1980s (76,581).
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Val Demings, the Democratic Senate candidate in Florida, called herself the “law and order candidate,” consistently punched left, lambasted efforts to “defund the police,” touted her credentials as a former police chief, and lost by sixteen points.
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Since at least the George W. Bush administration—Stewart’s professional heyday—and particularly during the Trump years, liberals have hoped that eventually one “gotcha” moment would reveal that the emperor has no clothes. 2/
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But McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare (more generally) outlived Murrow. In fact, we’re still reckoning with them. All this to say that authoritarianism won’t be thwarted through reason or fact-checking (with a dash of sardonic humor). 4/4
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Typical woke, blue-haired grad student studying some esoteric subject
Any universities out there let me do dissertation on how yummy cookies are? 🎓🍪
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This idea even structured a key Bush-era text, the 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck, which portrayed Edward R. Murrow’s supposed takedown of McCarthyism through cold-hard logic and sharp questions. 3/
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With all due respect, you seem to be weaponizing the language of care and mental health awareness to obscure the political conditions animating Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation. It’s also curious that you’ve chosen to tweet about this when you haven’t mentioned Gaza since 2018.
I strongly oppose valorizing any form of suicide as a noble, principled, or legitimate form of political protest. People suffering mental illness deserve empathy and respect, but it is wildly irresponsible to praise them for using a political justification to take their own life.
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That motherfucker—in the pages of the New York Times—called for people with HIV/AIDS to be tattooed.
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More Americans died of COVID-19 in January 2022 (60,000) than died in the Vietnam War (58,220).
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The constant references to the "complex"—even "labyrinthine"—history of the Middle East seem to be a product of Orientalism. Through this lens, the Middle East is a mysterious land full of secrets and ancient antipathies that simply aren't legible to those in the West.
Astonishing how many intellectuals are willing to insult their own intelligence by repeating the preposterous idea that some parts of the world have a more "complex" history than others
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The US conducted more than 580,000 bombing missions on Laos during this period. For more, see check out this piece in the Irish Times.
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Once again, the “culture war” isn’t a distraction. It’s the mechanism through which many Americans determine who “belongs,” who “contributes,” and who “deserves” certain rights and benefits—all of which are class issues.
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The young people in my history courses know that you supported the Iraq War.
Hillary Clinton criticizes pro-Palestinian protests and says many young people she’s spoken to “don't know very much at all about the history of the Middle East or, frankly, about history in many areas of the world.”
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This isn’t true at all. The
@nytimes
’s coverage of the 1980s–1990s HIV/AIDS crisis was so atrocious that ACT UP members called it the New York Crimes.
The movement of the New York Times from the left to the right is the biggest untold media story of the last 25 years. It's disguised by the fact that the rest of the legacy media has moved further right.
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Thirty-four years ago tomorrow, eighteen-year-old Ryan White died of AIDS-related causes at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. He was perhaps the most famous person with AIDS in the US, if not the world, at the time. Elton John was by Ryan’s side when he passed. 1/
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All Irish bands have now pulled out of SXSW, boycotting the Austin festival on account of its ties to the US Army and defense contractors.
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What do y'all think about this flyer for one of my spring classes? Too much?
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Bear Life: Zoological Resistance at the US-Mexico Border (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2028)
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Joe’s now more unpopular than Hillary Clinton was in late August 2016.
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I am absolutely thrilled to announce that, beginning in the fall, I will be Assistant Professor of History at Florida State University. Thank you to everybody who helped make this possible.
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That’s one of my students! He must’ve been inspired by my New Deal lecture on Wednesday.
#FSU
beats No. 13 Miami on a buzzer-beating 3 by Matthew Cleveland after trailing by 23 at halftime!!!
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It’s also remarkable that he’s been so wrong on so many major issues over the past half-century: busing, the war on drugs, mass incarceration, the war in Iraq. And now he’s wrong on this.
People put too much emphasis on Joe Biden's age and too little on his intellectual mediocrity, his arrogance, and his general lack of character.
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Historians will not call it that.
“I want to also express my profound gratitude to God, for the celebration of the anniversary of what historians will call the greatest day for defending life in our history—the overturning of Roe vs. Wade.”
#FXS24
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Just missed the tenth anniversary of this absolute humdinger of a tweet.
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I’m absolutely delighted to share the cover of my book, which will be published by
@UNC_Press
this fall. Many thanks to the design team at the Press and everybody who made this possible.
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@DeGolierThomas
Yeah, Florida’s now a red state, but my point is that libs can’t outflank the right on “crime.”
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Tapping the sign
Biden says Hamas is motivated by “ancient desires” to eliminate Jews
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Y’all agreed on same-sex marriage until 2013.
Can't believe I'm saying this but: I agree with Mike Pence.
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The myth that poor, working-class, southern whites—rather than the American gentry—are the main architects of antigay, anti-trans, and anti-feminist policies and attitudes simply won’t die.
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A clear illustration of how the boundaries of childhood are constructed and enforced. Certain young people benefit from resource-hoarding and thus enjoy access to the resources that enable healthy play and learning—from clean and open pools to “good,” safe schools. 1/
Several children were caught breaking into one of the many Baltimore City pools that remain closed with their gates chained. The break-in was caught on Monday. Footage details the children breaking in, setting up "camp", and entering the water along with a scooter.
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You got a fash car
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Listen 👏 to 👏 Third 👏 Way 👏 consultants 👏 whose 👏 preferred 👏 candidate 👏 lost 👏 handily 👏 in 👏 the 👏 Virginia 👏 gubernatorial 👏 contest. 👏 To 👏 absolve 👏 themselves 👏 and 👏 blame 👏 the 👏 left 👏 they 👏 convened 👏 18 (!) 👏 focus 👏 group 👏 participants.
Everyone who participates in Democratic politics should take a few minutes to read this analysis of a Biden-Youngkin focus group from northern Virginia and Richmond:
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Jesus, what a fucking hack.
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The Women's Committee of ACT UP played a pivotal role in these CDC actions. Check out the Lesbian Herstory Archives for more: .
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Seeing some folks argue that the
@nytimes
’s most recent anti-trans piece proves that it’s not a “liberal” paper. But that article’s core themes—fear of diminished parental authority and “unruly” children, along with perfunctory concern for trans rights—all fit neatly within … 1/
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Why can't other historians be like me: a totally apolitical and objective machine, completely detached from the present sociopolitical climate, ingesting facts and dispassionately integrating them into an anodyne narrative for consumption by other scholars and the general public?
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Just clicked submit. Should be on bookshelves this time next year.
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Just some of the books we’ll be reading in my Policing and Punishment graduate colloquium this fall.
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Though rightwing demagogues and provocateurs are the main architects of the deadly ongoing anti-trans panic, it's important to note how "respectable" mainstream media outlets like the
@nytimes
and
@TheAtlantic
have helped pathologize, delegitimize, and dehumanize trans+ people.
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Not sure an early release of the new season of Bridgerton will fix this.
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Wearing these socks today. Go South Africa and the rule of law!
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@scoey42757
@Brasilmagic
Right, but the Democratic response to the pandemic has been atrocious as well.
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“Thirty years ago, the answer would’ve been a no brainer: move to the center, do some racism, etc. Alas…”
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What’s happening in Florida is awful. This framing is also classist and reifies entrenched stigmas against people who use drugs. The people enacting harmful policies in Florida aren’t doing so because they do drugs.
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Those who have spent the last few years “just asking questions” about the humanity and dignity of an entire population have enabled this sort of eliminationist response.
"Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely," Daily Wire host Michael Knowles says at CPAC to cheers in the middle of a straight-up eliminationist anti-trans tirade. Fuck this shit
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Everyone loves a stack of books, so here are some of the titles we’ll be reading in my US since 1968 grad class this fall. And you’ll find a draft of the syllabus here, if you’re interested.
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Some good news, amid all the bad: My next book, The Life and Death of Ryan White, has been accepted for publication by the
@UNC_Press
Board of Governors. It should be published next fall.
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Tapping the sign again.
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… the suburban-oriented, “family values” liberalism that congealed in the late twentieth century. See especially Cooper’s Family Values, Lassiter’s Silent Majority,
@LGeismer
’s Don’t Blame Us, and my book Stranger Danger.
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continues to deliver much-needed care to people living with HIV and AIDS. To learn more about Ryan’s miraculous life and the contested meanings assigned to it, please check out my forthcoming book, now available for preorder. 5/5
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Damn, this age is awfully gilded.
At some restaurants, specialty dog menus have become the new version of children’s menus. At one San Francisco eatery, you can treat your pup to a $75 fine-dining tasting menu that changes seasonally.
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Once again, these forces are national (and, indeed, global); they aren’t localized within southern or “red” states, and they can’t be blamed on reactionary rubes in the hinterlands.
Insane: A school board in New Jersey just rejected a sociology textbook in part because:
it described the police killing of Michael Brown without including his size/weight
it didn't falsely hype antifa's role in the "2020 riots"
This is a new frontier:
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Perhaps the greatest title I've ever seen on an undergraduate paper.
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Not sure this really means anything, but whatever—it’s still good news.
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Some things never change.
MAGA House Republican proposals would slash funding for border security – a move that could allow nearly 900 pounds of fentanyl into our country.
We need more resources to secure the border. Not less.
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Eating chips and salsa in my Subaru outside of the Indiana State Archives. Who says the life of a historian isn’t glamorous?
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Happy belated birthday to Bob Corker! He was born yesterday.
I never thought I’d see the day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
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Campuses and Cages: Policing Protest at the Neoliberal University (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2024).
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This story is so disconcerting, but liberals are dreaming if they think this will somehow expose DeSantis as the REAL “groomer.” The anti-“grooming” discourse has little to do with preventing sexual violence and everything to do with policing and punishing LGBTQIA+ people.
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@Upgradez
Phenomenal film. I’ve shown it in my US since 1945 class before. The students get a lot out of it.
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was an exceptional person with AIDS (given his youth, whiteness, and perceived “innocence”), his service was a far cry from the shameful silence in which so many other people with AIDS—especially gay people and people of color—were laid to rest. Some AIDS deaths were hardly 3/
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The students in my US in the Twenty-First Century class had never heard of the Howard Dean scream, so I got to teach them about that today. Love my job.
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marked at all. Ryan’s passing also prompted Congress to dedicate an AIDS relief package in his honor. The Ryan White CARE Act passed by overwhelming margins just months after Ryan’s death, and George H. W. Bush (begrudgingly) signed it into law. The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program 4/
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Instead of grading, I've been working on the syllabus for my Fall 2023 course America in the 1990s. Check it out, if you want. Feedback is welcome!
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Same graphic designer?
Do conservatives think these covers look good or do they just not care?
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I’m delighted to be working with
@UNC_Press
and
@brndnpr
on my next book, tentatively titled Viral Innocence: Ryan White and AIDS. So incredibly grateful for the opportunity to explore this story.
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Terrible timing, but my book just went live on the
@UNC_Press
website. If you want to learn more about Ryan White, different strands of HIV/AIDS activism, and the ongoing epidemic, please check it out.
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Given yesterday’s transphobic article by Helen Lewis, and now this piece on trigger warnings,
@TheAtlantic
is in fine form. What’s next—another anti-immigrant screed by David Frum?
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Reagan was a monster, of course, but by exceptionalizing Reagan, we run the risk of obscuring the continuities between the New Deal and neoliberalism and romanticizing a “New Deal order” that was far less generous and equitable than most folks imagine.
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“Peaceful non violence” was the predicate of the Civil Rights Movement. Taking over a building and destroying property feels January 6th ish to me. 🤷🏽♂️
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Pamela Paul: “Yes, trans people are demonized and marginalized. Reproductive rights are on the chopping block. But who will stand up for the most subjugated group: transphobes? My latest for the
@nytimes
.”
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The gap between the two is actually wider than I suggested here (100,777 – 31,196 = 69,581). Source: .
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