American Campus Podcast

From tolerance to land acknowledgements.

References mentioned this episode:

• Nimisha Barton. 2024. A Just Future: Getting from Diversity and Inclusion to Equity and Justice in Higher Education. Cornell …

The Chicago boys would have loved digital assets. 

References and suggested readings:

• Alan Blinder and Steven Rich. August 25, 2025. The Typical College Student Is Not Who You Think. New York Times. (S…

College, a nice time for nice ladies.

References mentioned this episode:

• Samuel Rutherford. 2025. Teaching Gender: The British University and the Rise of Heterosexuality, 1860–1939. Oxford University P…

A human history of ed tech

References mentioned this episode:

• Anne Trumbore. 2025. The Teacher in the Machine: A Human History of Education Technology. Princeton University Press.
• Anne Trumbore’s websit…

On making our academic writing a little more reader friendly.

References mentioned this episode:

• Laura Portwood-Stacer. 2025. Make Your Manuscript Work: A Guide to Developmental Editing for Scholarly W…

And, do US academics face a similar situation today?

References mentioned this episode:

• Frank Stahnisch. 2025. Great Minds in Despair: The Forced Migration of German-Speaking Neuroscientists to North A…

We forgot to mention Bob Jones was the son of a Confederate veteran.

References mentioned this episode:

• Adam Laats’s website
• Adam Laats. April 28, 2025. Trump Is Out for Revenge. The Chronicle of Higher…

On the creation of the statistical tests we often use in human behavioral research, especially in the fields of psychology, education, economics, and political science.

References mentioned this episo…

From Johnson’s Great Society to Clinton’s crime bill, Reiko Hillyer discusses the “rise and fall” of higher education in US prisons. Plus, she shares her experience as a professor who teaches in pris…

Louisiana State Penitentiary, a former plantation known simply as “Angola," is a site of higher education. Journalist Piper Hutchinson explains. 

References mentioned this episode:

• Piper Hutchinson. Ma…

In 2025, 45 million Americans owe more than $1.7 trillion in college debt. Ellie Shermer explains: “the story of skyrocketing college debt is not merely one of good intentions gone wrong. In fact, th…

That degree.

References mentioned this episode:

• Erik Baker. 2025. Make Your Own Job: The Entrepreneurial Work Ethic in Modern America. Harvard University Press.
• Erik Baker’s website
• Simon Callow’s Orson …

First, a continuation of the Chicago school of economics history (a nice follow up to last week’s episode on Charles Walgreen and UChicago), then David Austin Walsh explains the reactionary foundatio…

Professors teaching about communism and socialism? Un-American! Here’s some cash to make sure the university is preaching the supreme American virtue: capitalism. 

If you caught our joint episode with…

Freshman hazing, a time honored tradition of (at least) 1,500 years.

References mentioned this episode:

• Hannah Skoda. 2025. Frying Pans, Limpets, Donkeys and Becs-jaunes: Thinking about Violence in Lat…

From Kant to CRT via Columbia and UC Irvine.

References mentioned this episode:

• The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 3rd edition. W. W. Norton.
• Miquel de Palol. 2023. The Garden of Seven Twilig…

On the eugenics origins of the IQ test and why we're still using it in 2025.

References mentioned this episode:

• Pepper Stetler. 2024. A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother's Reckoning with the IQ Test.…

Sam Tanenhaus joins me for a deep dive into the college career of friend of the pod, William F. Buckley Jr., and his 1951 shot that fired the campus wars: God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of "A…

How does a librarian kill someone with a newspaper? This and other academic spycraft in Elyse Graham's Book and Dagger.

References mentioned this episode:

• Elyse Graham. 2024. Book and Dagger: How Schol…

Richard T. Greener was the first Black graduate of Harvard College in 1870. Greener went on to be a professor, lawyer, dean of Howard University law school, diplomat, and a celebrated intellectual of…