American Campus Podcast

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. May 2, 2025. “Guts, glory and opportunity on the outside.” Louisiana Illuminator.
• Piper Hutchinson’s Substack: Louisiana Higher Ed Weekly
• This is a crawfish
• Daniel Bergner. God of the Rodeo: The Search for Hope, Faith, and a Six-Second Ride in Louisiana's Angola Prison. 
• Octavia Butler. Dawn.
• Douglas A. Campbell and Jon DePue. 2024. Beyond Justification: Liberating Paul’s Gospel.

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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, the federal student loan program was never supposed to make college affordable.” 

References mentioned this episode:

• Elizabeth Tandy Shermer. 2021. Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt. Harvard University Press.
• Education Data Initiative statistics on student debt
• Get involved with our friends at the Debt Collective to cancel student debt
• Shermer’s Bluesky
• William C. Mao and Veronica H. Paulus. May 2, 2025. Harvard University Press Employees Say Director Drove Down Acquisitions and Morale. Harvard Crimson.

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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 Welles series
• The Drift magazine
• Follow Erik on Twitter @erikmbaker and Bluesky @erikmbaker.bsky.social 

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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 foundations of law and economics as backlash to the field of critical legal studies.

References mentioned this episode:

• David Austin Walsh. 2024. Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right. Yale University Press.
• David Austin Walsh. Summer 2024. Liberals are to Blame for the Rise of JD Vance. Boston Review.
• Neil J. Young. 2024. Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right. University of Chicago Press.
• Edward Nik-Khah. 2011. “George Stigler, The Graduate School of Business, and the Pillars of the Chicago School.” In Building Chicago Economics: New Perspectives on the History of America’s Most Powerful Economics Program. Edited by Robert van Horn, Philip Mirowski, and Thomas A. Stapleford. Cambridge University Press.
• Jennifer Burns. 2023. Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative. Macmillan.
• Lawrence B. Glickman. 2019. Free Enterprise: An American History. Yale University Press. 
• Elisabeth M. Landes and Richard A. Posner. 1978. “The Economics of the Baby Shortage.”

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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 the In Bed with the Right podcast in May 2025, you heard me give the TLDR version of the story of pharmacy magnate Charles Walgreen and the University of Chicago. But the case deserves a full episode, which journalist Steven Melendez lays out for us here. 

References mentioned this episode:

• Steven Melendez. August, 12 2024. Any questions for the pharmacist? Drugstore magnate Charles R. Walgreen’s anti-communist crusade. Chicago Reader.
• Follow Steven Melendez on Bluesky
• Our previous episode discussing Walgreen on the In Bed with the Right podcast

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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 Late Medieval Universities. Global Intellectual History. 
• Hannah Skoda’s website 
• Medieval Murder Maps 
• Samantha Harvey. 2018. The Western Wind: A Novel. Penguin Random House.
• BBC’s History Extra Podcast ft. Hannah Skoda and Rana Mitter for “History Behind the Headlines” series

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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 Twilights. Translated by Adrian Nathan West. Dalkey Archive Press.
• PDF: Immanuel Kant. 1784. An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? 1992 translation by Ted Humphrey. Hackett Publishing.
• Join the Verso books Fredric Jameson reading group
• Jonathan Fine’s website: https://jonathanblakefine.com/ 
• Jonathan Fine on Twitter @jonathanbfine and Bluesky @jonathanbfine.bsky.social‬

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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. Diversion Books.
• Pepper Stetler. May 8, 2025. Trumpian “Common Sense” and the History of IQ Tests. LA Review of Books.
• Michelle Adams. 2025. The Containment. Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North. Macmillan.

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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 "Academic Freedom."

References mentioned this episode:

• Sam Tanenhaus. 2025. Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America. Penguin Random House.
• Sam Tanenhaus. 1998. Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. Penguin Random House. (Winner of the LA Times Book Prize and a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize!)
• Heather Hendershot. 2016. Open to Debate: How William F. Buckley Put Liberal America on the Firing Line. HarperCollins. 
• Beverly Gage. 2022. G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century. Viking. (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, and LA Times Book Prize!)
• Stendhal. 1839. The Charterhouse of Parma. 
• Norman Mailer. November 1960. “Superman comes to the supermarket.” Esquire.

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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 Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II. Harper Collins.
• Elyse Graham’s website
• Elyse Graham’s Bluesky
• Michelle Young. 2025. The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland. Harper Collins.

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