Nate Schenkkan

@nateschenkkan

Human rights expert. Global authoritarianism, transnational repression, Turkey and Eurasia, academic freedom. Entirely personal account.

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Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· 28d

Behold, the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Rights, and Labor has been turned into a far-right funding spigot simpler.grants.gov/opportunity/...

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DRL requests proposals to strengthen and develop democratic resilience, rule of law, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and the defense of human rights in Europe through research, conferences, cultural engagements, and support for civil society to address national sovereignty, migration, censorship, and lawfare challenges in line with shared political philosophy, law, and our common Western civilizational heritage.

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Jun 28

The cover of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Jun 16

It's like he did an inverted version of the meme

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Jun 13

A Bluesky evening

Iraqis hitting a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein with their shoes.

NB: In Arab culture, hitting someone with your shoe is a sign of grave disrespect. This is different from in other cultures, where you can hit people with your shoe affectionately.

Photo: https://correspondent.afp.com/tale-two-statues

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Jun 12

I liked this article, but if you're going to do this, you have to get it right. The word is bayraktar, not bayrakta

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Jun 7

That's a pretty strong indicator Pashinyan is winning (and of the power of "administrative resources") oc-media.org/live-updates...

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Jun 7

Russia is the guy putting a stick in his bicycle meme oc-media.org/live-updates...

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Jun 5

New bike commute route unlocked

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Jun 2

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Jun 1

January 8, 2025. I would simply die of shame if I ever wrote something as wrong as this

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· May 30

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· May 29

Wow, disembodied scrutiny is so powerful and active, I had no idea

A terrible NYT headline: "In Carroll Lawsuits Inquiry, Scrutiny Turns Toward Private Citizens Who Antagonized Trump"

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· May 28

Full credit to Brad Lander, without whom Dan Goldman would never be doing this

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· May 26

I feel like this will wind up being the most controversial statement in the piece

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· May 20

Australia? The continent in the Pacific Ocean?

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· May 18

The Journal of Democracy has been spun off from the National Endowment for Democracy to become an independent nonprofit now housed at Stanford www.journalofdemocracy.org/about/

In May 2026, the Journal of Democracy entered into a partnership with Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), a leading research center of global, political, and economic development. The Journal of Democracy’s editors alone are responsible for all editorial decisions, which do not necessarily represent the views or positions of the faculty and researchers at CDDRL or Stanford University. No outside party determines, reviews, or endorses the Journal’s choices.

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· May 11

Semi-OMG he admit it moment oc-media.org/putin-offers...

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· May 1

My favorite of these: V-Dem, Freedom in the World

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Apr 27

It's true, this is a variable in V-Dem

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Apr 22

This happened the same week that Tennessee passed a "Charlie Kirk Act" to prohibit exactly this

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Apr 20

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Apr 16

Second name (uncle)

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Apr 13

All other incoherencies aside, Iran's real economy and its political economy are *completely* different from those of Saudi and the UAE

That’s the logic here. Make the cake bigger, even as you tighten economic pressure on Tehran to accept U.S. terms. The aim is to convince Ghalibaf and his colleagues to transition from being a revolutionary “cause” that threatens the region into a real country that can modernize quickly and profitably, like its neighbors Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates across the Gulf.

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Apr 5

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Apr 1

This is at the end of a longer article and I feel like it is getting buried. These cultural spaces are supposed to be for promotion of English-language learning, cultural exchange, US study opportunities, etc. Not far-right propaganda

More than 700 “American spaces” – the cultural centers, libraries and exchange hubs the US government funds in countries around the world – are to be repositioned under the guidance as platforms for uncensored information and promoted explicitly as free speech “zones.”

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Mar 31

That NYT article summed up

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Mar 23

Since the name comes up in this piece, I feel like I have to point out this person works at the Pentagon again--at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Ga...

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Mar 20

The US State Department argued the US is a republic, not a democracy, in an official filing to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

"However, thesestatements provide absolutely no legal basis for concluding that States have recognized “democracy”or “representative democracy,”however those terms are defined, as a “human right.” For example, the United States is a constitutional republic, not a “democracy” in the dictionary definition of the word. The argument that the U.S. Constitution, with its structural separation of powers and protection for individual liberty somehowviolates the “human rights” of American citizens to “democracy” is absurd and perverse. It is not for this Court or any other international tribunal to fabricate a “right” and then use it to restructure an independentState’s system of governance"

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan· Mar 19

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