Nimisha Barton

@nimishabarton

Writer, Educator, DEI Practitioner. Starting fall 2026 Asst Prof at CSU Long Beach. Author of Reproductive Citizens & A Just Future w/Cornell University Press. Co-President of Coordinating Council for Women in History. Rogue scholar. Rage writer.

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Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir nimishabarton.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Jul 21

just dug up this extract from an AHR article published 20 years ago. the historian gestures at "cyber communication" and the possibility of transnational collaborations. wild to think how much the discipline has changed in just that short period of time.

Beyond our own colleagues and students, cyber communication is also changing the way historians deliver their ideas to a larger public, allowing them to find broader transnational audiences through the Internet. In the future, nontraditional media such as the Internet, cell phones, and video games may also change the way in which we communicate historical knowledge to a broader audience.

Electronic transmission has also already begun to alter the way historians relate their text to images. Half a millennium ago, another substantial shift took place when illuminated manuscripts gave way to the black-and-white world of woodcuts, engraving, and print. Now, as through the magic of RGB and BinHex numbers we are moving back into color and easily reproducible images, historians are beginning to rethink this fundamental alignment.

In addition to disseminating information and revising the relation of text to image, this cyber network creates social and intellectual groups among people separated by long distances and multiple time zones. These networks have already realigned some interdisciplinary work, as artists and performance studies now regularly engage with engineers and computer scientists. Will such networks have a similar impact on history? Will history’s interdisciplinary relationships change—will literary and historical scholars perhaps increasingly cooperate transnationally on a single project? Peter Bol, Ge Jianxiong, Zhou Wenye, and Man Zhimin already collaborate on a major transnational geographic history of China’s administrative units, urban areas, and rivers (the China Historical GIS project, www.fas.harvard.edu/ chgis). Finally, will cyber networks alter the familiar paradigm of a lone historian trudging through the archives into a collaborative (more transnational?) model of research in the future?

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Jul 8

I don’t think breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Jul 5

Ok that’s it we’re all on timeout

Nyt article headline reads “Who Should I Vote for?’ Voters Turn to A.I. Before Casting Their Ballots
It takes effort to be an informed citizen. Artificial intelligence tools offer an alluring shortcut — but they’re not without risk.

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Jun 24

I’m sorry but this is funny

Nyt article title rightly makes fun of brexit results

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Jun 13

Wait wut

Nyt article entitled Mystery Potato Hovering Over Colorado

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· May 27

What an indirect way to say “he lies.”

From the nyt: “The Times analyzed Trump’s statements about the war and compared them with reality. Often, there was a wide disconnect.”

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· May 27

It’s giving

Fake lifetime movie from 30 rock about a dog who shoots owners face

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· May 23

Well this fucking sucks

The crisis comes as the Trump administration has proposed rolling back Biden-era chemical disaster rules aimed at preventing accidents at thousands of industrial facilities.

At the same time, the president has proposed eliminating the federal Chemical Safety Board, an independent agency that investigates chemical spills and other disasters.

Hiroko Tabuchi
May 22, 2026, 10:18 p.m. ET56 minutes ago
Hiroko Tabuchi

The proposed rollbacks of the Biden-era rules would eliminate mandatory audits at plants with prior accidents and would roll back requirements for facilities to prepare for storms, floods and other climate-related risks, and get rid of a “stop work” provision enabling employees to halt operations they perceive to be unsafe.

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Apr 13

At a moment when democracy is under fire and women, LGBTQ people, and people of color find themselves in constant danger, I offer this piece I wrote for @msmagazine.com showing the longer history of how white supremacy and misogyny prop one another up. Pls share: msmagazine.com/2026/04/13/h...

The war against “radical gender ideology” has been staggering.

The ascent of President Trump brought calls for the elimination of women’s and LGBTQ centers, rollbacks on Title IX protections, the exclusion of trans women from college sports and the purging of gender and sexuality studies from college curricula throughout U.S. institutions and higher education. These actions signal a massive backlash against the decades-long fight for gender equality and are inseparable from the administration’s wider assault on Civil Rights-era protections for people of color.

However, this moment is nothing new. It echoes an earlier race- and gender-based backlash in U.S. history over a century ago, when white middle-class American women began to attend colleges in large numbers. Against the backdrop of Black emancipation, the mass migration of racial “undesirables” and the immense success of the feminist movement, white women’s enrollment was seen as a threat, not just to white patriarchy but to the very future of the white race.

Today’s backlash is the most recent attempt to restore the status quo—to distinguish between who is and is not entitled to higher education on the basis of race and gender and to safeguard the future of a white nation.

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Feb 5

Check out this article in Academe where I discuss the DEI Debacle through a historical lens. We've been here before, people, and we've taken the wrong lessons Full text here: academeblog.org/2026/02/04/t...

There is an important lesson here: From Occupy Wall Street and the #MeToo movement to Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd protests, a resurgence of social justice activism throughout the 2010s has inspired student protests in ways that harkened back to the civil rights era. When we see the 2010s as a time of great social progress, the current onslaught against all things DEI is far less surprising; indeed, it is wholly predictable.

Unfortunately, the majority of today’s university leaders have taken the wrong lessons from the past. If their predecessors created the inhospitable conditions that watered down the struggle against institutional racism and tamed it with benign diversity and inclusion rhetoric, today’s senior leaders are going a step further—eradicating DEI altogether in ways that will hobble equity and justice work for years to come.

From Hungary to India and now the United States, modern authoritarian regimes have demonstrated a proclivity to attack higher education institutions as part of their larger agenda to undermine democracy. As various segments of our civil society bow to the pressure of the Trump administration, universities represent one of the last institutions of civil society capable of standing up against the hollowing out of American democracy. The question is: Will they rise to the occasion or will they back down again? The future of higher education—indeed, the future of us all— depends on what they do next.

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Dec 29

I had the pleasure of reviewing @elisefranklin.bsky.social terrific book Disintegrating Empire: Algerian Family Migration and the Limits of the Welfare State in France for the AHR. Here's sneak preview:

Elise Franklin’s book, Disintegrating Empire, speaks to the limitations of the post/colonial welfare state in France. She sets her sights on the French state’s ever-contradictory relationship toward Algerians—a formerly colonized people who had the unique distinction of possessing French nationality but not citizenship, a distinction that posed a host of challenges for the imperial and postimperial nation-state. While Amelia Lyons’s 2013 study on Algerian women showed that until 1962, the French welfare state aimed primarily to assimilate them into French society in order to “keep Algeria French,” Franklin notes a contradiction: why, then, did state-sponsored services for Algerians continue after independence? If you’re expecting an argument about French largesse or colorblind benevolence, however, you won’t find it here. Drawing primarily on state publications and social worker reports, among other archival sources, Franklin offers a forensic analysis of how empire, racism, and—critically—whiteness became inscribed on the heart of the French welfare state.

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Dec 24

This Christmas, I offer you all the following gift: my student's paper title

Prop-AI-ganda: A Proper Gander into President Trump's use of AI Generated Images

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Dec 6

New York Times, always asking the tough questions no one else is brave enough to ask

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Dec 5

A hero for the ages

A drunk raccoon passed out in the bathroom of a VA liquor store

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Nov 14

Boi, bye

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Nov 11

To be clear, I’m not the only one! Here’s the full list of best ofs:

Table of contents with all “best of” contributors

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Oct 26

Et tu rob?

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Oct 17

Each year I update this table which surveys scholars programs at the top 10 colleges and unis. Were schools that cared so much about DEI in 2020 still committed 5 years later? Here's what I found:

Following the infamous “Dear Colleague” letter sent out by the Department of Education in February 2025, many colleges and universities rushed to shutter diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices in the hopes of avoiding the fate of so many other institutions—namely, incurring the wrath of the Trump administration that views such programs as giving an unfair advantage to people of color and contributing to “the disenfranchisement of white men.” As of this writing, over 392 colleges and universities across 46 states including the District of Columbia have dismantled their DEI offices. Aggressive far-right government actors and their coordinated attacks on DEI efforts impact this study in a number of ways.

First, last year, many institutions were eager to participate in this study. By contrast, this year was marked by noticeable reticence. Johns Hopkins University opted not to participate in the study. Representatives from Stanford, Northwestern, and Yale did not reply to multiple email inquiries.

Second, information about scholars programs, or really anything related to DEI, is harder to come by on many university websites. This trend towards “disappearing” DEI information is most clearly reflected at Northwestern, which scrubbed their university website entirely earlier this year.

Third, even among those institutions that still offer scholars programs for students from historically marginalized backgrounds, there appears to be a subtle shift in language. As last year’s table demonstrates, many programs highlighted that their target student demographic came from first-generation and/or lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This year, that is less obviously the case.

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Oct 12

All I’m saying is why did they put they very white man with all white hair against a white background. Looks like floating glasses.

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Oct 6

Last weekend, I spoke at the 2025 Leadership in Higher Education Annual Conference. I discussed the history, present & uncertain future of #DEI. Bottom line: don't stick your head in the sand. Join in solidarity and fight for us. Don't believe me? Then take it from Pres Obama's ed secretary:

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Sep 16

Thanks to Beth Dutridge-Corp and Valerie Thompson for inviting me to speak on the NASPA LeadHER panel "Understanding Change & Its Impact" Student affairs folks - I see you and I see the difficult position so many of your institutions are putting you in. Take care of yourselves.

Poster for theNASPA LeadHER event series "Navigating Change and Fostering Wellness"

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Jul 24

I love the Chronicle.

An article from the chronicle of higher Ed entitled The Campus Job Talk from Hell with the line: Threats, psychosis, a gun.

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Jun 24

What an absolute embarrassment

Nytimes headline reads On Truth Social, Trump Narrates US Attacks in Real Time

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· May 31

Ummm related content: don’t you just want to slap these tootsies between two pieces of bread and eat ‘em up

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· May 25

Shocker.

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· May 15

I understand each of these words individually but not altogether in this order

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Apr 27

The campus bookstore did not disappoint. A student sent me this photo of A Just Future alongside the other naughty titles. As they say, I'm with the banned.

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Apr 25

No one: My health app:

So far you’re taking fewer steps than you normally do

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Apr 17

There are protests all around the country today. Get involved in any way you can: march, call your local reps, host a teach in, donate to a local org. We need to stand up for our students and ourselves because these institutions aren't going to save us. These are our demands. What are yours?

We will be demanding that CSULB commit not to cooperate with ICE and the Trump Administration!
· Defy requests from ICE or other agents of the Trump Administration for information or access to any university spaces
· Utilize BeachALERTS to warn students, faculty and staff of credible ICE threats on campus
· Declare CSULB a sanctuary immigration and LGBTQ+ campus
· Create an emergency response team to respond to and share information on visa revocations, ICE raids, federal grant cuts and revocations

We demand that CSULB fully repeal the CSULB Time, Place and Manner addendum!

We demand that CSULB and the CSU commit to devote existing monies to the core function of the University!
· No tuition increases
· No faculty cuts
· No staff cuts
· No parking increases

Nimisha Barton@nimishabarton· Apr 14

Just got this email from my university bookstore that they ordered copies of A Just Future and they're putting them on display along with the other "banned books" 😂😂😂