Contacts and sources:
Stand Together for Higher Ed @standhighered.bsky.social
The National Council of Faculty Senates
@kgrotke.bsky.social @charlieeaton.bsky.social @debtcollective.bsky.social
Peter Ecker
Stephen Silvia
Raquel Rall
Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities
This is a great piece on policy failure, as he illustrates with the example of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, summed up with the remark: "The horror of that day was not that the system failed. It was that it was functioning exactly as designed."
President Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935, with Perkins among those witnessing the signing (third from right) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Signing_Of_The_Social_Security_Act.jpg
1/ I recently wrote about Frances Perkins—FDR’s Labor Secretary and first woman cabinet member. She is best known as the architect of the New Deal but she had a lesser-known achievement:
She dismantled her era’s version of ICE.🧵
Why Underachievers Dominate Secret Police Organizations: Evidence from Autocratic Argentina Adam Scharpf Christian Gläßel Abstract: Autocrats depend on a capable secret police. Anecdotal evidence, however, often characterizes agents as surprisingly mediocre in skill and intellect. To explain this puzzle, this article focuses on the career incentives underachieving individuals face in the regular security apparatus. Low-performing officials in hierarchical organizations have little chance of being promoted or filling lucrative positions. To salvage their careers, these officials are willing to undertake burdensome secret police work. Using data on all 4,287 officers who served in autocratic Argentina (1975-83), we study biographic differences between secret police agents and the entire recruitment pool. We find that low-achieving officers were stuck within the regime hierarchy, threatened with discharge, and thus more likely to join the secret police for future benefits. The study demonstrates how state bureaucracies breed mundane career concerns that produce willing enforcers and cement violent regimes. This has implications for the understanding of autocratic consolidation and democratic breakdown.
Perennial reminder of this excellent paper about how secret police forces are swamped with underachievers
“We don’t want clever people. We want mediocrities.”
(Ungated summary here ajps.org/2019/10/08/w...)
thanks very much for alerting me to this, Matt. And I will keep it in mind every time I hear the words "fiduciary duty" with respect to pensions, endowments, etc.
Synthetic Risk Transfer is a financial innovation you probably haven’t heard of, the specific variety of securitization which is beginning to look like the Credit Default Swap of the next financial crisis.
Listening to this for the first time since it came out, partially to review my own research on Vista Equity, now a seeming target of kleptocratic antitrust suit.
But, omg, @ajdouglas.bsky.social, Jared Loggins, @kgrotke.bsky.social Crystal Sanders, Jelani Favors, & @bakerdphd.bsky.social are 🔥🔥🔥.
“It’s not that traditional liberal arts is out of step with student demand. Instead, it’s out of step with the priorities values desires of a powerful board of trustees with no apparent commitment to liberal education, an administrative class.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...
PRE-EXISTING CONDITION 1: ENDOWMENTS AND FINANCIALIZATION or as we say $$ Follow the Money $$
PRE-EXISTING CONDITION 2: STEM VS THE LIBERAL ARTS AND HUMANITIES
Thanks @kgrotke.bsky.social
We’d advocate for Mahmoud Khalil even if he was a witless jerk, but his letter from ICE detention will be, when we get through the fascist weather, a canonical document not of that which he calls “democracy of convenience” but the real democracy yet to be made. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
✊ 🥰
We've got Grotke @kgrotke.bsky.social and Baldwin @davarianbaldwin.bsky.social
Thanks, Eileen! Using it now :) nice to see you here as well
The silences produced by the generic framing of Trump as authoritarian, or Trump v. the constitution are not merely happenstance. Many of those defending universities are uncomfortable naming the crackdowns on pro-Palestinian, Israel-critical speech that have helped shape the Trump administration's most aggressive attacks on academia to date. Matters are not helped by the fact that the University administration makes a show of actually embracing the charges as a reasonable description of the situation on campus and a matter of the utmost urgency. Rather than addressing this concession head on, the resistance sidesteps it by aligning Trump with Erdogan or Orban, or treating him as a threat to the 1st Amendment. The result is an incomplete and incoherent account of how we have ended up where we are at.
Great essay by @adamtooze.bsky.social that explores why Palestine is so central to US campus politics. This section is worth highlighting, as it articulates the shortcomings of framing anti-Palestine repression primarily through discourses of free speech or Democracy v Authoritarianism (link below)
Colleges issue billions of dollars in debt!
