Guy Baldwin

I'm delighted to have been awarded a Yorke Prize by @cambridgelaw for my PhD thesis, "The Justification and Limits of Liberty of Conscience". A monograph based on the thesis will be published in 2026 with @hartpublishing

If your political view is "No Kings, but Yes Ayatollahs" you are one very confused individual

@Reyhan_Silingar @abdisaz Congratulations!!

Happy to share that I passed my PhD viva with no revisions today! My dissertation traces how Japan mobilised monarchy as a flexible instrument of statecraft across the remaking of the international order from 1921 to 1975.

For a long time the issue in the Middle East was Israel vs the Arabs. The Arab states lost three wars against Israel and, with them, the propaganda battle. As long as the conflict was framed as Israel versus the Arabs, Western sympathy flowed naturally toward the Jewish state; a tiny nation of survivors fighting for its life against a coalition of much larger hostile powers. It was an unwinnable narrative, so the Arabs changed the narrative. Through the 1970s, led by Arafat and the PLO with active Soviet strategic coaching, the Palestinian cause was deliberately repositioned as a Third World national liberation movement, culminating in Arafat’s carefully staged UN appearance in 1974 and the “Zionism is racism” resolution the following year. The unit of comparison shifted from Israel-vs-Arab-states to Israel-vs-Palestinians. The effect was a complete moral inversion achieved without firing a shot. Once Palestinians became the relevant comparison class, Israel transformed overnight from underdog to Goliath; a nuclear-armed military power occupying a stateless people. The Holocaust frame, previously Israel’s greatest moral asset, began cutting the other way: Jews of all people should understand persecution. Soldiers at checkpoints replaced massed Arab armies as the defining image of the conflict. The aggressor became the victim and the defender became the oppressor, not through any change in the underlying facts, but through one of the most successful narrative reframings in modern political history.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ But although the narrative has changed the reality hasn’t. It’s still the case that the Arab states (and Iran) simply view Israel as occupying Arab land. And irrespective of any pragmatic accommodations they’ll make to deal with Israel, the underlying logic is not going to change.

Really normal stuff by leftists here

This was OK but as many have said, the movie blows it out of the water

@MALG_UoM @AyakoHatano Great talk! Thanks for coming to Manchester @AyakoHatano

The ManReg Public Law Seminar Series, in collaboration with the Manchester Asian Law Group, was delighted to host @AyakoHatano (Oxford/EUI) for an excellent presentation on “Regulating Hate Speech in Japan: Developments, Debates, and Challenges”.

Offering euthanasia to depressed people is state-sponsored murder. There is no ambiguity. It is murder.

@jk_rowling Hoodies are my standard lecturing outfit in academia

I fear this might be my most controversial take ever, but I agreed to put it to a vote so here we are. Hoodies should only be worn by men young enough not to look silly carrying a skateboard.

Andy Weir announced a new novel with "no details yet" Brother we already know: regular guy gets stuck somewhere impossible, MacGyvers his way out with real science, makes us laugh while we ugly cry, and we all finish it at 3am on a Tuesday. Take my money.

Data analytics confirm huge bias in favor of pro-Islamic regime of Iran by BBC, CNN, NBC and NY Times. These media orgs used "war crime" 32 times in news reports in the first 3 weeks of the U.S./Israel-Iran war. ZERO references solely to crimes by Islamic regime, and 88% media uses referred solely to U.S. or Israel. Islamic regime uses cluster bombs against Israeli civilians, shoots missiles and suicide drones at civilian targets in numerous Arab countries not involved in war, fires missiles at holy sites in Old Jerusalem, etc., etc. ZERO identification of these war crimes as standalone crimes by major Western media organizations. This is shameful.

This might be the most horrifying headline I've ever read

Autonomy - isn't it wonderful.

Ryan Gosling says it's not on moviegoers to save movie theaters. That responsibility falls to the Hollywood studios. “Six years ago, I got the manuscript [ for 'Project Hail Mary'], the most ambitious thing I’ll ever make; it seemed impossible. It was too good not to give it a shot. Six years later, we did it. Here we are, we’re all back in theaters. It’s not your job to keep them open, it’s our job to make things that make it worth you coming out.” variety.com/2026/film/news…

Counterpoint: These kids are more or less fine. They’re drunkenly enjoying their spring break. Better to be socializing and partying with friends in real life than doomscrolling on X in isolation and hyperventilating about how awful America is.

I just saw the much talked about film “Project Hail Mary.” It's very entertaining and uplifting and features a fine performance from Ryan Gosling. But what most intrigued me were the powerful Christian themes at play in it. The title, of course, refers to the Hail Mary pass in football, since the adventure undertaken is a fairly desperate attempt to save the planet. But it also becomes eminently clear that the reference is not just to football but to the Blessed Mother herself, for the Gosling character is undoubtedly a Christ-figure. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but it involves a willingness to sacrifice one's life utterly in order to deliver the entire human race from disaster. It is, of course, no accident that Gosling's character is called Ryland Grace, for throughout the movie, his presence and actions constitute undeserved favor to others. A particularly intriguing character in the film is a sober German scientist who relentlessly presses Grace to make the supreme sacrifice, even when he is unwilling. She represented for me the great moral demand that presses upon us throughout our lives, continually summoning us to self-gift. A last observation: Jesus had a second in command whom he called Peter (the Rock); Ryland Grace has a very unusual sidekick whom he calls “Rocky.” I'll leave it at that. I know lots of people say that Christianity is in irreversible decline and that we are inhabiting, at least in the West, a post-Christian society. I'm not so sure. Like it or not, we remain a Christ-haunted culture—and a film like “Project Hail Mary” makes this clear.

This is called "terrorism"

The framing by @CNN is if anything too tough on these Pennsylvania teenagers. Careful review of the video footage shows they just slipped and accidentally threw the bombs, which could happen to anyone.

Huh. Fully operational IRBMs. I guess President Trump and U.S. defense officials had access to information regarding Iran's missile capabilities that was not available to leftwing tankies, New Right dipshits, and journalists.

> Iran just proved it has operational IRBMs with ~4,000–4,500 km range, far beyond its acknowledged official 2,000 km cap > First direct strike on US/UK assets outside the Middle East (Diego Garcia is in the Indian Ocean). > One missile failed, one intercepted by US Navy SM-3 > probably a retaliatory strike for Starmer allowing the Americans to use British bases for strikes to help reopen Strait of Hormuz > Iran now credibly threatens Central Europe too, not just Israel/Gulf