I don't think they are being endlessly held hostage. I don't think they ever were, and to the extent that they were, it was very brief and highly localized.
This feels a lot like the people saying Portland is a war zone in 2020 as though the vast majority of Portland wasn't going about its business as though nothing was happening.
I think this is true of virtually any serious philosophical, political, or scientific ideas, though. I don't know what it says about them other than that they are difficult to master and most people are intellectually lazy.
In the last century, I was in a jazz group that played coffee shops and local festivals and such, and we did an arrangement of that song. I continue to believe it's a great tune, and will vote for anyone who vows to fight such an Executive Order!
You’ve got some of them getting hired as they walk off the stage and others who walk off the stage and walk across the street and join a protest demanding student loan relief.
I mean, good for them if they do, but I don't think you have many students going straight into intentional unemployment unless they have enough money that student loans probably aren't an issue.
I think he's right that people broadly conflate critical theory with Marxism, and are particularly afraid of critical theory, even if I am quite certain that they know as little about critical theory as they do about Marxism, and perhaps less.
From early in its radio history through its early television days in the 1960s, Bertrand Russell was a fixture on the BBC, including doing segments in which he would talk about philosophical ideas, particularly those of the first half of the 20th century (famously lampooned here). It would be amazing if we could have someone come on TV and talk about major intellectual movements of the last century or so, including critical theory. I think more people would like it if they knew more about it.
The conversation we should be having, but are not, because it's a difficult conversation to have, is what do we want universities to be for? Should it serve a purely intellectual purpose (in which case, the "bad actors" are inevitable, and I think a feature, not a bug)? Should it prepare young people for careers (generally or specifically)? Should it be the home of the vast majority of our research, from basic to applied? Should it have a broad or narrow collection of majors? Etc.
Some of these are highly compatible purposes for a university, and some are significantly less so, or even contradictory. Currently, at least in practice, universities are trying to be all of them and more, or at least big tier 1 public schools and the bigger private universities are.
American conservatives have been increasingly hostile to the university's intellectual purposes, either desiring to get rid of this purpose entirely, or reset it to some time in the past when, they believe, it was just teaching the important ideas of the past, and not innovating in any way (except, perhaps, in interpreting the ideas of the past). Basically, the American conservatives who think the university should have an intellectual function at all are the most rigid of the Scholastics.
While I think there are plenty of faculty at universities large and small whose own academic work is terrible, and virtually all university faculty teach from a particular perspective, some of which are better, or more flexible, than others, I genuinely believe that the general public's view of the university as "ideologically captured," or overrun with "postmodernism" (as a general rule, the more a person uses that word, the less they understand it), are wildly blown out of proportion. In fact, I think something very different is happening at universities, in some ways the exact opposite of what so many people ignorantly (as in, they don't actually know what's going on at universities) criticize for: 1) The ever-increasing size of university administration, and in particular, upper-level administration, which is both a financial burden to the universities and pretty significantly alters the way universities function; 2) The philosophy of university administration, which has increasingly dominated university administrations and boards since the 90s, of treating the university like a corporation/business generally, which has also changed the way universities function, and resulted in an increased focus on schools, departments, majors, and even individual faculty who have a good "R.O.I.", particularly those that increase post-graduation salary numbers (STEM for the last decade or two, but also business, science, econ, and the practical majors); 3) related to both (1) and (2), the increased adjunctification of the university, so that whereas people who freak out about universities are freaking out about some tenured professor somewhere they heard about on the internet, who is teaching undergrads radical ideas, most of the professors kids will actually have, especially at state schools, will be low-paid adjuncts who have absolutely no job security or academic freedom, and generally toe whatever line the department/administration wants them to or risk losing their poorly paid, over-worked position.
If you want to fix universities differently, and have them produce better, more well-rounded educations, instead of focusing on "pomo" professors and Marxists*, you'd focus on those 3 things, which are rapidly destroying universities as they existed even when many of us were there (for me, that's the mid-to-late 90s, when people were already lampooning them as P.C.U., but still).
*If you have never seen the Zizek-Peterson debate, I recommend not watching it, but there is a funny moment in which Zizek asks Peterson to name some Marxist professors, and of course, Peterson is unable to do so. Then Zizek says he knows of two (one of whom was David Harvey; I can't remember the other). I know of maybe half a dozen in the U.S. (more elsewhere), and I suspect Zizek knows at least that many, but of the half a dozen I know of, none excluding Harvey actually teach Marxism or from a noticeably Marxist perspective. One of the ways that American universities have failed so many is in not teaching them what Marxism is, which means for so many of y'all, Marxism is merely a poorly seen and completely misunderstood spectre haunting academia.
Having spent still more than half of my adult life around universities, I just don't think things are bad there. Granted, I'm not in any way culturally conservative (except that I think 80s post-punk is better than 2000s post-punk, and you can't convince me otherwise), so it may just be a general philosophical difference.
Sure, that has no chilling effect on free speech at universities.
What's funny is part of Columbia's pitch to perspective students is their pride in their 1960s protest movement, which was much more disruptive than the 2024 version ever was. I'm sure in 20 years they'll be selling their history of student activism with the 2024 protests as well.
The vast majority of the funding that Columbia gets is allocated for research, much of it vital, and much of it now cancelled. I'm all for destroying the Ivy League, but it is important that funding still go to do this vital research. And it's not going to do that.
And it's not like Columbia students are suffering after graduation, so the university must be doing something right with the money it spends on educating students.
But this is nothing compared to when, in 2019, some cadets were investigated and ultimately suffered no consequences. And besides, someone on another campus at another university in another time zone did something, so they were really asking for this.
I mean, Harris was here in Austin a few days before the election, which made no sense from an electoral standpoint. It was probably less a 50-state approach than a scheduling flub indicative of the incompetence of her campaign, but still, she was here.
I wonder if she made any stops in Wyoming or Montana during the campaign.
And I don't think they will in 2028 either. Certainly none of the people above will, because even if they did, they wouldn't believe it, and therefore wouldn't be able to sell it.
Obviously, this is not a problem for the Right. Trump has shown over the years that what MAGA looks like, in its actual ideas, such as they are, is irrelevant, and can change at any point. What matters is that it breeds fear and nationalist pride, maybe with some cultural nostalgia thrown in. This allows any random Republican to join in and say whatever they want as long as it sounds touch and breeds fear or pride or makes people miss a time when the gays weren't so visible.
The biggest difference I think voters see between Trump and Not Trump is not so much that Trump is selling a revanchist, nationalist, authoritarianism, but that he's selling something, anything, to people who felt like neither party, outside of Trump, was selling much of anything. How bad must things be for people that selling anything, even far right authoritarianism, is better than selling nothing? Bad enough, I'd wager, that a bunch of Not Trump candidates with nothing to sell have little chance of defeating anyone in the Trump mold in 2028, so long as Trump hasn't plunged us into the apocalypse between now and then.
I keep harping on this point, but the Democrats had their own candidate selling things that were not revanchist, were not nationalist, and were not authoritarian, and that could have had a huge impact on people's lives, but the Democrats thoroughly defeated him, to the point that he's now basically exiled, touring the Midwest giving speeches to overflow crowds who want to hear his message of a social democratic change that makes the government work for them, and not for the wealthy.
I know the most popular narrative around here is that the Democrats lost because they went too far left, but do you think people who were offered the choice between a nihilistic billionaire authoritarian who did a half-assed coup attempt and then spent the last 4 years treating becoming president again as an opportunity to get personal revenge, whatever the cost to the American people, and somebody who tells them they should never have to go bankrupt because they or a family member got sick, and that billionaires should pay their fair share of taxes, are going to choose the former because of pronouns in people's email signatures and a half a dozen trans college athletes?
With the exception of Newsom, who is a proper ghoul, devoid of anything resembling a conscience, this looks like the most boring stable of candidates possible, comprised people who will run almost entirely on the message "Hey, at least we're not Trump!"
Wouldn't it be nice if there were potential presidential candidates in the party who had ideas, principles, even a message? That there aren't is an indictment of the entire party. The Democratic Party delenda est.
I used to fly SW almost exclusively, but it's been a while since they were the cheapest, even among the major (non-discount) carriers, despite being less pleasant to fly than most others (except United; fish United). The checked bag thing was seriously the only reason to pick them much of the time. I'm flying with them next week, and wonder if I'll fly with them again for personal travel after that (the institute that flies me around for work stuff always picks them, the cheapskate).
Yeah, I still see a certain type of liberal still using "Bernie Bros" pretty regularly. Basically the BlueSky set.
I also think the moderates and "Frontliners" (the people in tough districts who are likely to have serious GOP challengers) are doing it wrong, and I think Bernie's popularity in conservative Midwestern towns is evidence of that. What's more, I think if you ran Bernie-style (not AOC-style, but hyper-focused on economic issues) campaign in many districts currently represented by Republicans you could pick up a lot of wins.
But they're not gonna listen to me, and why should they, I won't vote for Democrats anyway. But I would like to see a viable opposition party with actual ideas.
Unfortunately, I don't think he does. I think a lot of people thought that it'd be AOC, but she has a at least three problems:
1) She's nowhere near as good as he is at staying on message.
2) She sees the path towards her ascendance as lying within the Democratic Party establishment, which happens to currently be Dubya-in-'08 levels of unpopular, and even if it weren't, will constantly try to restrain the message. One thing Bernie has consistently done is remain independent of the Democratic Party and its strict control of messaging.
3) Whereas Bernie is broadly popular, AOC is narrowly so.
Bernie is unique, in that he comes from a very small state, where he could campaign for Senate (or anything) without requiring a whole lot of money, so he has been able to operate outside the Democratic Party for his entire career. While we might get some potential Bernie successors (look at Greg Casar, e.g.) who are better at AOC at staying on message, and might be able to gain broader appeal, all of the current stable of young progressive Dems come from bigger districts/states, and operating without the Democratic Party's funding is pretty much impossible.
The hope was to move the Democratic Party towards Bernie, so you wouldn't need a single true Bernie successor, but would have many, and from them you could choose the best/most talented for national visibility, but the Democratic Party has so far resisted any move to the left, even when Biden was doing a few things that were at least in the same area code as Bernie (though I think they were more Warren-type policies than Bernie-type). The push to the center post November 2024 has been even stronger, and is, I have no doubt, responsible for those Bush-like approval ratings.
So yeah, I don't think we're going to get a Bernie successor, and I don't think the party is going to adopt his message. So we get to watch them flail, trying to convince people that actually, with the exception of the Dems needing to be more xenophobic and transphobic, the status quo they've been selling should be enough for everyone.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “From The New York Times Editorial Board: The Authoritarian Endgame on Higher Education”
I don't think they are being endlessly held hostage. I don't think they ever were, and to the extent that they were, it was very brief and highly localized.
This feels a lot like the people saying Portland is a war zone in 2020 as though the vast majority of Portland wasn't going about its business as though nothing was happening.
"
There's a simple way to stop the "never ending Palestine party," just as there was to end the "never ending Vietnam party" 55 years ago.
"
I think this is true of virtually any serious philosophical, political, or scientific ideas, though. I don't know what it says about them other than that they are difficult to master and most people are intellectually lazy.
On “Spaghetti on the Wall: Autopens and Out to Lunch Presidents”
In the last century, I was in a jazz group that played coffee shops and local festivals and such, and we did an arrangement of that song. I continue to believe it's a great tune, and will vote for anyone who vows to fight such an Executive Order!
On “From The New York Times Editorial Board: The Authoritarian Endgame on Higher Education”
You’ve got some of them getting hired as they walk off the stage and others who walk off the stage and walk across the street and join a protest demanding student loan relief.
I mean, good for them if they do, but I don't think you have many students going straight into intentional unemployment unless they have enough money that student loans probably aren't an issue.
"
I think he's right that people broadly conflate critical theory with Marxism, and are particularly afraid of critical theory, even if I am quite certain that they know as little about critical theory as they do about Marxism, and perhaps less.
From early in its radio history through its early television days in the 1960s, Bertrand Russell was a fixture on the BBC, including doing segments in which he would talk about philosophical ideas, particularly those of the first half of the 20th century (famously lampooned here). It would be amazing if we could have someone come on TV and talk about major intellectual movements of the last century or so, including critical theory. I think more people would like it if they knew more about it.
"
The conversation we should be having, but are not, because it's a difficult conversation to have, is what do we want universities to be for? Should it serve a purely intellectual purpose (in which case, the "bad actors" are inevitable, and I think a feature, not a bug)? Should it prepare young people for careers (generally or specifically)? Should it be the home of the vast majority of our research, from basic to applied? Should it have a broad or narrow collection of majors? Etc.
Some of these are highly compatible purposes for a university, and some are significantly less so, or even contradictory. Currently, at least in practice, universities are trying to be all of them and more, or at least big tier 1 public schools and the bigger private universities are.
American conservatives have been increasingly hostile to the university's intellectual purposes, either desiring to get rid of this purpose entirely, or reset it to some time in the past when, they believe, it was just teaching the important ideas of the past, and not innovating in any way (except, perhaps, in interpreting the ideas of the past). Basically, the American conservatives who think the university should have an intellectual function at all are the most rigid of the Scholastics.
"
While I think there are plenty of faculty at universities large and small whose own academic work is terrible, and virtually all university faculty teach from a particular perspective, some of which are better, or more flexible, than others, I genuinely believe that the general public's view of the university as "ideologically captured," or overrun with "postmodernism" (as a general rule, the more a person uses that word, the less they understand it), are wildly blown out of proportion. In fact, I think something very different is happening at universities, in some ways the exact opposite of what so many people ignorantly (as in, they don't actually know what's going on at universities) criticize for: 1) The ever-increasing size of university administration, and in particular, upper-level administration, which is both a financial burden to the universities and pretty significantly alters the way universities function; 2) The philosophy of university administration, which has increasingly dominated university administrations and boards since the 90s, of treating the university like a corporation/business generally, which has also changed the way universities function, and resulted in an increased focus on schools, departments, majors, and even individual faculty who have a good "R.O.I.", particularly those that increase post-graduation salary numbers (STEM for the last decade or two, but also business, science, econ, and the practical majors); 3) related to both (1) and (2), the increased adjunctification of the university, so that whereas people who freak out about universities are freaking out about some tenured professor somewhere they heard about on the internet, who is teaching undergrads radical ideas, most of the professors kids will actually have, especially at state schools, will be low-paid adjuncts who have absolutely no job security or academic freedom, and generally toe whatever line the department/administration wants them to or risk losing their poorly paid, over-worked position.
If you want to fix universities differently, and have them produce better, more well-rounded educations, instead of focusing on "pomo" professors and Marxists*, you'd focus on those 3 things, which are rapidly destroying universities as they existed even when many of us were there (for me, that's the mid-to-late 90s, when people were already lampooning them as P.C.U., but still).
*If you have never seen the Zizek-Peterson debate, I recommend not watching it, but there is a funny moment in which Zizek asks Peterson to name some Marxist professors, and of course, Peterson is unable to do so. Then Zizek says he knows of two (one of whom was David Harvey; I can't remember the other). I know of maybe half a dozen in the U.S. (more elsewhere), and I suspect Zizek knows at least that many, but of the half a dozen I know of, none excluding Harvey actually teach Marxism or from a noticeably Marxist perspective. One of the ways that American universities have failed so many is in not teaching them what Marxism is, which means for so many of y'all, Marxism is merely a poorly seen and completely misunderstood spectre haunting academia.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/10/25”
Having spent still more than half of my adult life around universities, I just don't think things are bad there. Granted, I'm not in any way culturally conservative (except that I think 80s post-punk is better than 2000s post-punk, and you can't convince me otherwise), so it may just be a general philosophical difference.
"
Sure, that has no chilling effect on free speech at universities.
What's funny is part of Columbia's pitch to perspective students is their pride in their 1960s protest movement, which was much more disruptive than the 2024 version ever was. I'm sure in 20 years they'll be selling their history of student activism with the 2024 protests as well.
"
Well the results of this investigation are horrifying, but expected :
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/report-of-the-commission-of-inquiry-israel-gender-based-violence-13march2025/
"
The vast majority of the funding that Columbia gets is allocated for research, much of it vital, and much of it now cancelled. I'm all for destroying the Ivy League, but it is important that funding still go to do this vital research. And it's not going to do that.
And it's not like Columbia students are suffering after graduation, so the university must be doing something right with the money it spends on educating students.
"
Yes.
"
They were in the process of doing this last year. They'd already done some of it. It just took this long, procedurally.
"
I can think of few better indications that someone is wrong than Yggles thinking they're right.
"
Yup, they capitulated (those measures had all been previously recommended), punished their students for free speech, and this is still what they get.
On “Posing, Posturing, & Positioning: 2028 Democratic Presidential Candidates”
The society of the spectacle.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/10/25”
But this is nothing compared to when, in 2019, some cadets were investigated and ultimately suffered no consequences. And besides, someone on another campus at another university in another time zone did something, so they were really asking for this.
https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1900365049597722800?t=LEX8wlmLd4uyqjhFa_pjtg&s=19
On “Posing, Posturing, & Positioning: 2028 Democratic Presidential Candidates”
I mean, Harris was here in Austin a few days before the election, which made no sense from an electoral standpoint. It was probably less a 50-state approach than a scheduling flub indicative of the incompetence of her campaign, but still, she was here.
I wonder if she made any stops in Wyoming or Montana during the campaign.
"
Yeah, I don't think they went left at all.
And I don't think they will in 2028 either. Certainly none of the people above will, because even if they did, they wouldn't believe it, and therefore wouldn't be able to sell it.
Obviously, this is not a problem for the Right. Trump has shown over the years that what MAGA looks like, in its actual ideas, such as they are, is irrelevant, and can change at any point. What matters is that it breeds fear and nationalist pride, maybe with some cultural nostalgia thrown in. This allows any random Republican to join in and say whatever they want as long as it sounds touch and breeds fear or pride or makes people miss a time when the gays weren't so visible.
"
The biggest difference I think voters see between Trump and Not Trump is not so much that Trump is selling a revanchist, nationalist, authoritarianism, but that he's selling something, anything, to people who felt like neither party, outside of Trump, was selling much of anything. How bad must things be for people that selling anything, even far right authoritarianism, is better than selling nothing? Bad enough, I'd wager, that a bunch of Not Trump candidates with nothing to sell have little chance of defeating anyone in the Trump mold in 2028, so long as Trump hasn't plunged us into the apocalypse between now and then.
I keep harping on this point, but the Democrats had their own candidate selling things that were not revanchist, were not nationalist, and were not authoritarian, and that could have had a huge impact on people's lives, but the Democrats thoroughly defeated him, to the point that he's now basically exiled, touring the Midwest giving speeches to overflow crowds who want to hear his message of a social democratic change that makes the government work for them, and not for the wealthy.
I know the most popular narrative around here is that the Democrats lost because they went too far left, but do you think people who were offered the choice between a nihilistic billionaire authoritarian who did a half-assed coup attempt and then spent the last 4 years treating becoming president again as an opportunity to get personal revenge, whatever the cost to the American people, and somebody who tells them they should never have to go bankrupt because they or a family member got sick, and that billionaires should pay their fair share of taxes, are going to choose the former because of pronouns in people's email signatures and a half a dozen trans college athletes?
"
With the exception of Newsom, who is a proper ghoul, devoid of anything resembling a conscience, this looks like the most boring stable of candidates possible, comprised people who will run almost entirely on the message "Hey, at least we're not Trump!"
Wouldn't it be nice if there were potential presidential candidates in the party who had ideas, principles, even a message? That there aren't is an indictment of the entire party. The Democratic Party delenda est.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/10/25”
I used to fly SW almost exclusively, but it's been a while since they were the cheapest, even among the major (non-discount) carriers, despite being less pleasant to fly than most others (except United; fish United). The checked bag thing was seriously the only reason to pick them much of the time. I'm flying with them next week, and wonder if I'll fly with them again for personal travel after that (the institute that flies me around for work stuff always picks them, the cheapskate).
On “So Let’s Put Together a Democratic Party Ad Campaign”
Yeah, I still see a certain type of liberal still using "Bernie Bros" pretty regularly. Basically the BlueSky set.
I also think the moderates and "Frontliners" (the people in tough districts who are likely to have serious GOP challengers) are doing it wrong, and I think Bernie's popularity in conservative Midwestern towns is evidence of that. What's more, I think if you ran Bernie-style (not AOC-style, but hyper-focused on economic issues) campaign in many districts currently represented by Republicans you could pick up a lot of wins.
But they're not gonna listen to me, and why should they, I won't vote for Democrats anyway. But I would like to see a viable opposition party with actual ideas.
"
Unfortunately, I don't think he does. I think a lot of people thought that it'd be AOC, but she has a at least three problems:
1) She's nowhere near as good as he is at staying on message.
2) She sees the path towards her ascendance as lying within the Democratic Party establishment, which happens to currently be Dubya-in-'08 levels of unpopular, and even if it weren't, will constantly try to restrain the message. One thing Bernie has consistently done is remain independent of the Democratic Party and its strict control of messaging.
3) Whereas Bernie is broadly popular, AOC is narrowly so.
Bernie is unique, in that he comes from a very small state, where he could campaign for Senate (or anything) without requiring a whole lot of money, so he has been able to operate outside the Democratic Party for his entire career. While we might get some potential Bernie successors (look at Greg Casar, e.g.) who are better at AOC at staying on message, and might be able to gain broader appeal, all of the current stable of young progressive Dems come from bigger districts/states, and operating without the Democratic Party's funding is pretty much impossible.
The hope was to move the Democratic Party towards Bernie, so you wouldn't need a single true Bernie successor, but would have many, and from them you could choose the best/most talented for national visibility, but the Democratic Party has so far resisted any move to the left, even when Biden was doing a few things that were at least in the same area code as Bernie (though I think they were more Warren-type policies than Bernie-type). The push to the center post November 2024 has been even stronger, and is, I have no doubt, responsible for those Bush-like approval ratings.
So yeah, I don't think we're going to get a Bernie successor, and I don't think the party is going to adopt his message. So we get to watch them flail, trying to convince people that actually, with the exception of the Dems needing to be more xenophobic and transphobic, the status quo they've been selling should be enough for everyone.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.