And rightly so, alas.

I'll simply say again that for Shlaes to resurface in The Economist at this moment is an indicator of an ambient concern that Rooseveltian policies and politics are increasingly likely. The thing about the New Deal is, it was *immensely popular.* That's terrifying to certain people

Are you for real man?

And that's what I find frustrating about the knee-jerk reaction to the Yale report, because it *does* actually take a self-reflective and self-critical stance!

Well, frankly, I also stand by that. I think the right-wing attack narrative is true -- I've written about this extensively over the years! -- but that faculty and administrators all too often use it to absolve themselves of any agency or responsibility for the legitimacy crisis in higher education.

I did! And I stand by mine. It’s not enough to say “restore state funding,” especially when it’s been Democratic administrations as well as Republican ones that have been doing the gutting. (Witness what happened at UConn recently.)

Hey @harvard.edu, if you want to hire a heterodox dude who writes about American conservatism hmu

Instead we got the system where financial aid is tied to individual students and colleges are competing with each other for enrollments.

And of course this all gets much worse with student debt. At least with Pell Grants you don’t have to pay them back and the university pockets the money!

But it’s not *just* funding cuts. It’s enmeshed with how higher ed. tuition/financial aid has worked since the ‘70s.

Take Pell Grants. There were proposals to simply give block grants to universities from the feds in the late ‘60s to keep tuition minimal or nonexistent.

I mean, I think it’s a bit more complicated than “the right did it.” If you go back and read Clark Kerr on higher education (the president of the UC system who was sacked by Reagan in ‘67) it’s very clear that he saw neoliberalization as a positive good in its own right.

To be clear, the bad-faith right-wing attacks *are* real and have taken a toll on American HE since the 1960s, but they’re not the full story and the root cause of the legitimacy crisis in 2026 is driven by student debt and the sense that universities have betrayed their promise of social mobility.

This narrative—that the only reason universities are experiencing a legitimacy crisis in the 2020s is because of bad-faith right-wing attacks—conveniently ignores the neoliberalization of higher education.

It's amazing.

Just had a group of students pass me by and I overhead one of them say about me:

"That motherfucker has aura."

Goddamn right.

I was never actually able to figure that one out, but he was probably referring to the Talmud.

Also, if you're in town today and need a break from the heat come to my book talk! 2pm in Hotel A on UVA Grounds.

This is one I've already read!

It's 90 degrees in Charlottesville today, so time to break out the madras.

Oh, say within the last two years.

What forthcoming or recently published books are people excited about? I need reading recommendations!

There are Fair Housing Act violations all over the place if just have the courage to see them.

okay since a friend shared this article with me: sharing this with all because. as I said. higher ed's on the struggle bus big time

www.npr.org/2026/04/13/n...

Universities won’t fix that by killing disciplines. They won’t fix it through curricular change at all.

What they CAN do is hire TT faculty for careers in teaching and research, instead of creating more gigs and pretending that these are just training young scholars for great jobs on a farm upstate

Obviously the two have nothing to do with each other, but it's nice to hear that someone enjoys my writing!

It doesn’t happen all that often, but every now and then I’ll hear from someone IRL: “I loved your book! I can’t believe you didn’t get a TT job.”

Prove this psychopath wrong, folks! I have faith in the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

I'm giving a book talk on UVA Grounds next Wednesday, April 15, at 2:00pm. If you happen to be around in Charlottesville, please come! There will be food!

All right I think I learned my lesson from the last odd waistcoat

Inshallah, as they say.

I mean, aside from the fact that the Gaza protests and the brutal suppression of them from a Democratic administration pretty conclusively proved that protests have limits in terms of policy outcomes... Iran can actually strategically defeat American and Israeli imperialism.