Believe it or not, an English degree is still worth pursuing in a capitalist economy, even if one is not independently wealthy! Of this we can be hopeful according to a new book called Major Trade-offs by Corey Moss-Pech.

References mentioned this episode:

• Corey Moss-Pech. 2025. Major Trade-offs: The Surprising Truths about College Majors & Entry-Level Jobs. University of Chicago Press.
• Robert Penn Warren. 1946. All the King’s Men.
• Jesmyn Ward books
• Maya Angelou books
• Harry Crews. 1978. Childhood: The Biography of a Place.
• Library of America Complete Novels of William Faulkner
• Corey Moss’s Pech’s website, Bluesky, and Twitter

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Jennifer Leigh discusses the academy's struggle to accommodate learners and workers with disabilities, mental health challenges, and neurodivergences--especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. We talk about how US ed-tech companies take advantage of disability and mental health accommodations to exploit student and faculty intellectual property.

References mentioned this episode:

• Jennifer Leigh’s faculty page
• Nicole Brown and Jennifer Leigh, eds. 2024. Ableism in Academia: Theorising Experiences of Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses in Higher Education. UCL Press.
• Paul Novosad, Sam Asher, Catriona Farquharson, and Eni Iljazi. October 2024. Access to Opportunity in the Sciences: Evidence from the Nobel Laureates. 
• Torsten Bell. December 7, 2024. “The Science Behind Winning a Nobel Prize? Being a Man from a Wealthy Family.” The Guardian.
• Octavia Butler books

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Alexa in the dorm room. ProctorU monitoring exams. TurnItIn helping* faculty grade. Tech services are omnipresent on and off campus, and they come with a cost. Lindsay Weinberg offers a critical analysis of today's Smart Universities.

• Lindsay Weinberg. 2025. Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Tamara Kneese. January 27, 2021. "How a Dead Professor is Teaching a University Art History Class." Slate.
• Sonel Cutler. March 29, 2024. "Graduate Students Went on Strike. Then a Dean Suggested That Professors Use AI to Keep Classes Going." The Chronicle of Higher Education.
• Alex Hanna and Emily Bender. 2025. The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want. Haper Collins.
• Callum Cant, James Muldoon, and Mark Graham. 2024. Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labor Powering AI. Bloomsbury.
• Keep up with Purdue University’s Tech Justice Lab.

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In 1926, an NYU professor took to the high seas with 500 undergraduates on a worldwide learning voyage. The experimental "Floating University" docked for excursions at nearly 50 ports, where students were introduced to world leaders Mussolini, Gandhi, and others. Tamson Pietsch recounts the endeavor, unpacking the larger story of US intellectual imperialism in the 1920s.

• Tamson Pietsch. 2023. The Floating University: Experience, Empire, and the Politics of Knowledge. University of Chicago Press. 
• Ross L. Jones, James Waghorne, and Marcia Langton, eds. 2024. Dhoombak Goobgoowana: A History of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne. Melbourne University Press.

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Huey Long, Louisiana's notorious Depression-era governor and rumored presidential challenger to FDR, doesn't get enough recognition for his role in the expansion of LSU's campus throughout the 1930s. Listen as Bob Mann recounts Long's legacy at Kingfish U.

• Robert Mann. 2023. Kingfish U: Huey Long and LSU. Louisiana State University Press. 
• Check out Robert Mann's other works
• Read Robert Mann on Substack
• Follow Robert Mann on Bluesky
• Browse Niall Williams’s novels 

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Kendell Gerdes unpacks popular depictions of "sensitive" students throughout the 2010s. She tackles safe spaces, trigger warnings, #BlackOnCampus, and other student calls for accessibility over the last few years, showing how these matters are not in opposition to faculty academic freedom.

Links mentioned in the episode:

• Kendall Gerdes. 2024. Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Campus Activism. University of Pittsburgh Press. (Use code 29GERDES30 for 30% off)
• Follow Kendall Gerdes on BlueSky
• Bradford Vivian. 2022. Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education. Oxford University Press. 
• Bradford Vivian’s Substack, Campus Information

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This is Part II of an earlier discussion with Mike Collins about Supreme Court affirmative action cases affecting higher education, including Lau (1974), Bakke (1978), Fisher (2016), and Students for Fair Admissions (2023). For more, check out Collin's recent book, The Anti-Civil Rights Movement: Affirmative Action as Wedge and Weapon. 

• Mike Steven Collins. 2024. The Anti-Civil Rights Movement: Affirmative Action as Wedge and Weapon. University Press of Kansas.
• Listen to Part I here

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This is Part I of a two-part interview with Mike Collins about Supreme Court affirmative action cases affecting higher education, including Bakke (1978), Fisher (2016), and Students for Fair Admissions (2023). For more, check out Collin's recent book, The Anti-Civil Rights Movement: Affirmative Action as Wedge and Weapon. 

• Mike Steven Collins. 2024. The Anti-Civil Rights Movement: Affirmative Action as Wedge and Weapon. University Press of Kansas.
• Heather McGhee. 2022. The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Penguin Random House.
• David W. Congdon. 2024. Who Is a True Christian? Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture. Cambridge University Press.
• Mary Anne Franks. 2024. Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment. Bold Type Books.
• James Marcus. 2024. Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Princeton University Press.
• Michael S. Collins. 2013. Understanding Etheridge Knight. University of South Carolina Press.
• Michael S. Collins. 2013. The Travelling Queen. Sheep Meadow Press. 
• Michael Collins. "’Tight Like This,’ recorded 1928, Chicago, Illinois.” The Rupture.
• Listen to Part II here

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The ICE disappearance of Columbia student protestor Mahmoud Khalil in March 2025 followed in the wake of Trump's promise to deport campus activists. But 50 years ago, the Carter administration set the stage for student deportations. Will Teague discusses the history of presidential threats to deport student dissenters, beginning with the Carter administration's attacks against Iranian international students in the 1970s.

• Will Teague. 2024. Resistance/Rise: Iranian Student Activism in the Late 1970s US. History of Education Quarterly. 
• Reza Aslan. 2022. An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville. W. W. Norton. 
• Timothy Snyder. 2024. On Freedom. Penguin Random House.
• Will Teague. 2018. “Hostages of the Crisis: Iranian Students in Arkansas, 1979-1981.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 77(2): 113–30. 

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Abercrombie and Fitch is back, millennials and gen x-ers! Ethan Lascity takes us for a walk down memory lane in a discussion ofLegally Blonde, Drumline, Van Wilder, and other college movies of the aughts.

• Myles Ethan Lascity. 2024. The Abercrombie Age: Millennial Aspiration and the Promise of Consumer Culture. University of North Carolina Press. https://uncpress.org/book/9781469680910/the-abercrombie-age/ 
• Lyz Lenz. 2024. This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life. Penguin.  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/704120/this-american-ex-wife-by-lyz-lenz/ 
• Taylor Lorenz. 2023. Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. Simon and Schuster. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Extremely-Online/Taylor-Lorenz/9781982146863 
• Follow Ethan Lascity on Bluesky, Threads, and Instagram 

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In 1960, California experimented with tuition-free college for all public campuses in the state. As Andrew Higgins explains in Higher Education for All (UNC Press, 2023), the California Master Plan actually worked to make higher education more unequal for students. As calls for free college have gained traction in the 20th century, Higgins reminds us of critical shortcomings of the Cold War California experiment.

• Andrew Stone Higgins. 2023. Higher Education for All: Racial Inequality, Cold War Liberalism, and the California Master Plan. University of North Carolina Press. https://uncpress.org/book/9781469672915/higher-education-for-all/ 
• Ursula K. Le Guin. 1974. The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. Harper & Row. https://www.ursulakleguin.com/dispossessed 
• Eran A. Zelnik. 2025. American Laughter, American Fury: Humor and the Making of a White Man's Democracy, 1750–1850. Johns Hopkins University Press. https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/53720/american-laughter-american-fury?srsltid=AfmBOorXZsXFbZytjeYwjAM76_AurQV2wJfziy6RCFvSEmzBnJc0Er6z 
• “1964: Mario Savio’s “Bodies Upon The Gears” speech at a UC Berkeley student protest.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLc_JZk_BLs 

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Adrian Daub explains the recent history of the cancel culture moral panic.

• Adrian Daub. 2024. The Cancel Culture Panic: How an American Obsession Went Global. Stanford University Press. https://www.sup.org/books/media-studies/cancel-culture-panic 
• Jennifer Burns. 2023. Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374601140/miltonfriedman 
• Samuel L. Catlin. 2024. The Campus Does Not Exist: How Campus War is Made. Parapraxis. https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/the-campus-does-not-exist 

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The college dormitory is an American tradition, though it hasn’t always been necessary for education. Carla Yanni tells us why the dorm has become a feature of campus architecture since the 17th century.

References mentioned this episode:

• Carla Yanni. 2019. Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory. University of Minnesota Press.
• Carla Yanni’s faculty page

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Asheesh Siddique discusses the colonial creation of college trustee boards and explains how trustees govern our institutions today.

• Asheesh Siddique. 2024. The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World. Yale University Press. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300267716/the-archive-of-empire/ 
• Asheesh Siddique. 2021, May 19. Campus Cancel Culture Freakouts Obscure the Power of University Boards. Teen Vogue. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/campus-cancel-culture-university-boards 
• What are Universities for? 2024-2025 Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series. University of Massachusetts–Amherst. https://websites.umass.edu/feinberg/ 
• Elizabeth Tandy Shermer. 2021. Indentured Students: How Government Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in Student Debt. Harvard University Press. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674251489  
• Thorstein Veblen. 2015. The Higher Learning in America: The Annotated Edition: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men. Edited with an introduction and notes by Richard F. Teichgraeber III. Johns Hopkins University Press. https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11171/higher-learning-america-annotated-edition 

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Jasmine Harris discusses the historic experiences of Black women students and faculty at predominantly white colleges.

• Jasmine L. Harris. 2024. Black Women, Ivory Tower: Revealing the Lies of White Supremacy in American Education. Broadleaf Books. https://www.broadleafbooks.com/store/product/9781506489834/Black-Women-Ivory-Tower 
• Jasmine L. Harris’s website: https://www.drjasmineharris.com/ 
• Heather Terrell and Victoria Christopher Murray. 2022. The Personal Librarian. Penguin Random House. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/623191/the-personal-librarian-a-gma-book-club-pick-by-marie-benedict-and-victoria-christopher-murray/ 

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Ellen Schrecker discusses the post-World War II Red Scare and its consequences for American higher education. She walks us through her 1986 book, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities. Nearly four decades after publication, it is no less timely.

• Ellen Schrecker. 1986. No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities. Oxford University Press.
• Ellen Schrecker. 2021. The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s. University of Chicago Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo119945783.html 
• Ellen Schrecker’s website with links to previous books: https://www.ellenschrecker.com/books 

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Matthew C. Ehrlich tells the story of krebiozen, a fraudulent cancer cure, and the frenzy it wrought through the University of Illinois in the 1950s. His book, The Krebiozen Hoax, helps us contextualize decades of conflicts surrounding medical ethics, pseudoscience, and health disinformation through the setting of a postwar midwestern campus.

• Matthew C. Ehrlich. 2024. The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine. University of Illinois Press. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p088117 
• David F. Labaree. 2017. A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education. University of Chicago Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo19995111.html
• Julie Schumacher. 2024. The English Experience. Penguin Random House. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730658/the-english-experience-by-julie-schumacher/
• Julie Schumacher. 2019. The Shakespeare Requirement. Penguin Random House. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/550580/the-shakespeare-requirement-by-julie-schumacher/
• Julie Schumacher. 2015. Dear Committee Members. Penguin Random House. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/232129/dear-committee-members-by-julie-schumacher/ 

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Kelly L. Marino discusses college women's role in the suffrage movement. Listen to hear more about her new book, Votes for College Women: Alumni, Students, and the Woman Suffrage Campaign (New York University Press, 2024).

• Kelly L. Marino. 2024. Votes for College Women: Alumni, Students, and the Woman Suffrage Campaign. New York University Press. https://nyupress.org/9781479825196/votes-for-college-women/
• Michael Roy. 2024. Young Abolitionists: Children of the Antislavery Movement. New York University Press. https://nyupress.org/9781479830091/young-abolitionists/ 
• Paul M. Renfro. 2024. The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America. University of North Carolina Press. https://uncpress.org/book/9781469680859/the-life-and-death-of-ryan-white/ 

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Katherine Rye Jewell "hits" the high notes of the history of college radio. Listen to her discuss her new book, Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio (University of North Carolina Press, 2023).

• katherinejewell.com 
• Katherine Rye Jewell. 2023. Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio. University of North Carolina Press. https://uncpress.org/book/9781469677255/live-from-the-underground/ 
• Josh Shepperd. 2023. Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting. University of Illinois Press. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087257 

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Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva discuss their book, The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game (University of North Carolina Press, 2024).

Follow Nathan, Derek, and their co-host Johanna Mellis on The End of Sport podcast.

• Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva. 2024. The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game. University of North Carolina Press. https://uncpress.org/book/9781469683461/the-end-of-college-football/
• Derek Silva, Johanna Mellis, and Nathan Kalman-Lamb. 2024. The End of Sport podcast. https://theendofsport.podbean.com/ 

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Crystal Sanders discusses her book, A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs (University of North Carolina Press, 2024).

• Crystal R. Sanders. 2024. A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs. University of North Carolina Press. https://uncpress.org/book/9781469679808/a-forgotten-migration/ 
• Dylan C. Penningroth. 2023. Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights. Liveright. https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324093107
• Tikia K. Hamilton. Forthcoming. “Making a Model System: The Battle for Educational Equality in the Nation’s Capital before Brown.” https://www.luc.edu/history/people/facultyandstaffdirectory/hamiltontikiak.shtml 
• Ketanji Brown Jackson. 2024. Lovely One: A Memoir. Penguin Random House. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/737094/lovely-one-by-ketanji-brown-jackson/ 

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Gregg Michel discusses his book, Spying on Students: The FBI, Red Squads, and Student Activists in the 1960s South (Louisiana State University Press, 2024).

• Gregg L. Michel. 2024. Spying on Students: The FBI, Red Squads, and Student Activists in the 1960s South. Louisiana State University Press. https://lsupress.org/9780807182222/spying-on-students/ 
• Gregg L. Michel. 2004. Struggle for a Better South: The Southern Student Organizing Committee, 1964-1969. Palgrave MacMillan. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/struggle-for-a-better-south-g-michel/1123854008 
• Andrew C. McKevitt. 2023. Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America. University of North Carolina Press. https://uncpress.org/book/9781469677248/gun-country/ 
• Christina Greene. 2022. Free Joan Little: The Politics of Race, Sexual Violence, and Imprisonment. University of North Carolina Press. https://uncpress.org/book/9781469671314/free-joan-little/ 

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Sharon Stein discusses her book, Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022).

• Stein's Academia page: https://ubc.academia.edu/SharonStein 
• Sharon Stein. 2022. Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education. Johns Hopkins University Press. https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12600/unsettling-university 
• Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. 2021. Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism. Penguin Random House. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/675703/hospicing-modernity-by-vanessa-machado-de-oliveira/ 

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Matt Seybold takes us back to the 19th century literary world. We discuss Knobs University, a fictional HBCU imagined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their 1873 novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Drawing parallels from the novel and its HBCU, Matt helps us see how we may be living through our own second Gilded Age, a post-capitalist era of technofeudalism.

References mentioned this episode:

• The American Vandal Podcast
• The American Vandal Substack
• MattSeybold.com
• Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. 1873. The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.
• Ron Chernow. 2025. Mark Twain. Penguin Random House. 
• Willy Theyer. 2024. The Non-Modern Crisis of the Modern University. Translated by D. Bret Leraul. Northwestern University Press.
• Yanis Varoufakis. 2024. Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. Penguin Random House.
• Jodi Dean. 2025. Capital's Grave: Neofeudalism and the New Class Struggle. Verso.
• McKenzie Wark. 2021. Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse?  Verso.
• Cédric Durand. 2024. How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism: The Making of the Digital Economy. Translated by David Broder. Verso.

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On the medical school building boom of the early 20th century (1890-1940), and what it can tell us about the professionalization of academic medicine

Mentioned this episode:

• Katherine L. Carroll. 2022. Building Schools, Making Doctors: Architecture and the Modern American Physician. University of Pittsburgh Press.
• Amber N. Wiley. 2025. Model Schools in the Model City: Race, Planning, and Education in the Nation’s Capital. University of Pittsburgh Press. 
• Margaret Grubiak. 2022. White Elephants on Campus: The Decline of the University Chapel in America, 1920-1960. University of Notre Dame Press.

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Deirdre Clemente on the timeless campus style: casual.

• Deirdre Clemente. 2014. Dress Casual: How College Students Redefined American Style. University of North Carolina Press.
• John Izzo. 2007. The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

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Tim Lacy lets us in on all things Great Books: champions, curriculums, and controversies.

• Tim Lacy. 2013. The Dream of a Democratic Culture: Mortimer J. Adler and the Great Books Idea. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Daniel Wickberg. 2024. A History of American Thought 1860–2000: Thinking the Modern. Routledge.
• Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen. 2019. Ideas that Made America: A Brief History. Oxford University Press.
• Earl Shorris. 1997. New American Blues: A Journey Through Poverty to Democracy. WW Norton.
• Leo Tolstoy. 1867. War and Peace.

Learn more about the Society for US Intellectual History

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On the APA's collaboration with CIA to develop 'enhanced interrogation techniques' for the U.S. War on Terror. Plus, Eidelson's advice for how we can hold our academic and professional organizations accountable when they violate their stated missions.

Mentioned in the show:

• Roy J. Eidelson. 2023. Doing Harm: How the World’s Largest Psychological Association Lost Its Way in the War on Terror. McGill-Queens University Press.
• Roy J. Eidelson. 2018. Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible. Green Hall Books. [Free PDF]
• Roy Eidelson’s website
• ProPoublica, American Psychological Association tax filings
• Ruth Ben-Ghiat. 2021. Strongmen: Moussolini to the Present. W. W. Norton.
• Elle Reeve. 2024. Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics. Simon & Schuster. 
• Jonathan Blitzer. 2025. Everyone Who is Gone is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis. Penguin Random House.

Get in touch! Have a question for the host or a guest? A comment? Feedback? Want to request a topic or pitch an episode? Email Lauren at shephell@iu.edu

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on Patreon: www.patreon.com/americancampuspodcast
on Bluesky: @americancampus.bsky.social

For centuries, academics and university archivists have participated in and benefitted from the illicit trade of ancient artifacts. Roberta Mazza discusses this history and the academy's role in restoring and repatriating ill-gotten collections.

• Roberta Mazza. 2024. Stolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts. Stanford University Press.
• Ariella Aïsha Azoulay. 2019. Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. Verso. 
• BBC podcast: Intrigue: Word of God.

Get in touch! Have a question for the host or a guest? A comment? Feedback? Want to request a topic or pitch an episode? Email Lauren at shephell@iu.edu

Follow American Campus Podcast!
on Patreon: www.patreon.com/americancampuspodcast
on Bluesky: @americancampus.bsky.social

Bradford Vivian unpacks calls for "intellectual diversity" and free speech, explaining how these seemingly fair-minded demands work to undermine actual diversity in the classroom and on campus.

• Bradford Vivian. 2022. Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education. Oxford University Press.
• Bradford Vivian’s Substack, Campus Information
• Jack Schneider and Jennifer C. Berkshire. 2023. A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School. The New Press.
• Tressie McMillan Cottom on the NYT and campus stories, 36:30. Half Castle 'Gainst The Scott Walkers (A Tale of Today, Episode #9). American Vandal podcast. 

Get in touch! Have a question for the host or a guest? A comment? Feedback? Want to request a topic or pitch an episode? Email Lauren at shephell@iu.edu

Follow American Campus Podcast!
on Patreon: www.patreon.com/americancampuspodcast
on Bluesky: @americancampus.bsky.social