American Campus Podcast

“The reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I feel that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university. I have always wanted to go there, as I have felt that it is not just another college, but is a university with something definite to offer. Then too, I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a "Harvard man" is an enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain.” -John F. Kennedy, April 23, 1935

References:

• JFK's Harvard application, 1935. John F. Kennedy Library.
• bell hooks. All About Love. 
• Torrey Peters. 2025. Stag Dance. Random House.
• Laura Garbes. 2025. Listeners Like Who? Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry. Princeton University Press.
• pskconsulting.org
• Email prabh at [email protected]
• Sikh LGBTQIA+ Oral History Archive qtsikharchive.org 

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Oh my!

References and suggested readings:

• Naomi Oreskes. 2025. Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean. University of Chicago Press. 
• Naomi Oreskes. 2021. Why Trust Science? Princeton University Press.
• Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. 2011. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change. Bloomsbury.
• Naomi Oreskes. 2025. The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. Bloomsbury.
• Percival Everett. 2024. James. Doubleday.
• Andrew Ross Sorkin. 2025. 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation. Viking.
• Naomi Oreskes faculty page, LinkedIn, and Bluesky

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References and suggested readings:

• Andy Hines, ed. 2025. University Keywords. Johns Hopkins University Press. 
• Alyssa Battistoni. 2025. Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature. Princeton University Press.
• Emily Callaci. 2020. “On Acknowledgments.” American Historical Review 125 (1): 126–31.
• Justin Raden. October 23, 2025. Higher Ed's Rush To Adopt AI Is About So Much More Than AI. Defector.
• Bluesky @andyhines.bsky.social 
• aydelotte.swarthmore.edu
• @AydelotteFoundation on Instagram
• Abbie Boggs, Eli Meyerhoff, Nick Mitchell, and Zach Schwartz-Weinstein. January 19, 2022. Abolitionist University Studies: An Invitation. Viewpoint Magazine. 
• Abolish the University? Pamphlet, Abolitionist University Studies
• Email Lauren at [email protected] to join the Political Economy of the Academy group

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As a student, she was a proud "Goldwater girl, right down to my cowgirl outfit and straw cowboy hat emblazoned with the slogan 'AuH20." -Hillary Clinton, Living History, 2003.

References and suggested readings:

• Nicholas Buccola. 2025. One Man's Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle over an American Ideal. Princeton University Press. 
• Hajar Yazdiha. 2023. The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. Princeton University Press.
• Daniel Pollack-Pelzner. 2025. Lin Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist. Simon & Schuster.
• James Baldwin. 1956. Giovani’s Room.
• James Baldwin. 1963. The Fire Next Time.
• www.nicholasbuccola.com

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The money behind truth.

References and suggested readings:

• Maribel Morey. 2021. White Philanthropy: Carnegie Corporation's An American Dilemma and the Making of a White World Order. University of North Carolina Press. 
• miamisocialsciences.org virtual forums
• Gunnar Myrdal, American Dilemma volume I
• Gunnar Myrdal, American Dilemma volume II
• John Fabian Witt. 2025. The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America. Simon & Schuster.
• William H. Tucker. 2007. The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. University of Illinois Press.

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References and suggested readings:

• Brad Bolman. 2025. Lab Dog: What Global Science Owes American Beagles. University of Chicago Press. 
• Benjamin Alberto Schultz-Figueroa. 2023. The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research Into Animal Life. University of California Press. 
• Gustave Flaubert. Madam Boverie.
• Bluesky @bolman.bsky.social 
• Instagram @labdogbook
• Email Brad at [email protected] 

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A lesson on dark money influence in campus culture wars

References and suggested readings:

• Isaac Kamola. Spring 2025. Understanding the Evolving Culture-War Vernacular. Academe Magazine. 
• Isaac Kamola. 2019. Making the World Global: U.S. Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary. Duke University Press.
• Ralph Wilson and Isaac Kamola. 2021. Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War. Pluto Press. 
• Roderick A. Ferguson. 2017. We Demand: The University and Student Protests. University of California Press.
• Nancy MacLean. 2018. Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America. Penguin.
• Christopher Newfield. 2011. Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class. Harvard University Press.
• John K. Wilson. 1995. The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education. Duke University Press.
• Kendal Gerdes on the 2010s, safe spaces, and trigger warnings.
• AAUP Presents: Academic Freedom on the Line podcast and newsletter
• AAUP’s academic freedom syllabus, module, field guide, first aid kit, border crossing guide and international travel tips
• Benjamin Wallace-Wells. June 18, 2021. How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory. New Yorker. 
• Percival Everett books
• James McBride. 2021. Deacon King Kong. Riverhead.
• Ethan Rutherford. 2025. North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther. Strange Object. 
• [email protected] and follow on Bluesky

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From a student of Saul Bellow and Barack Obama.

References and suggested readings:

• John K Wilson. August 2025. “100 Years Ago, the Scopes Monkey Trial Discovered Academic Freedom.” Chronicle of Higher Education.
• John K. Wilson. 1995. The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education. Duke University Press.
• Fara Dabhoiwala. 2025. What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea. Belknap Press.
• John K. Wilson’s columns in Inside Higher Ed
• John K. Wilson on Twitter

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On the rightwing origins of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

References and suggested readings:

• Mary Anne Franks. 2024. Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment. Bold Type Books. 
• Mary Anne Franks. 2019. The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech. Stanford University Press.
• University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Report
• Lauren Lassabe Shepherd. March 19, 2025. Who's Side are College Administrators On? HNN.
• AAUP’s 2025 Statement on Institutional Neutrality
• Allen Levi. 2025. Theo of Golden: A Novel. Atria Books.
• Bluesky @maryannefranks.bsky.social

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ft. Geronimo, both Roosevelt presidents, Franz Boas, and the phrenologists

References and suggested readings:

• Rachel Morgan. 2024. Sins of the Shovel: Looting, Murder, and the Evolution of American Archaeology. University of Chicago Press. 
• John Fowler. 2021. A Forest in the Clouds. Pegasus Books.
• Follow Rachel Morgan on Instagram at @adventures_in_archaeology

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Browse the American Campus bookshelf