Immigration Is Imperative

Without migrants, the US would be in dire economic straits

Donald Trump's accusation, in the 2024 presidential debate, that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were "eating pets" may have quickly proven false, but it still led to sweeping policy action. Soon after Trump was inaugurated, the administration abruptly terminated the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) humanitarian parole programs, pulling the ...
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Immigration Is Imperative

The New Political Theology

Disestablishing the Establishment Clause

The First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Strictly ...
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The New Political Theology

A Martyr and a Meme

After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Walter Benjamin’s politics of spectacle should serve as a warning to Trump’s America

Within minutes of the deadly shot, millions of viewers across the digital public sphere saw right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s last moments in full graphic horror, from multiple angles. Each clip was pared down to shareable content. His death made him at once a martyr and meme. German philosopher Walter Benjamin, writing ...
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A Martyr and a Meme

Academic Freedom in a Time of Destruction: Reconsidering Extramural Speech

The protection of extramural speech is crucial for understanding the relationship of democracy to higher education

In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 US presidential election, before Donald Trump took office and started to threaten universities with the withdrawal of federal grants, it was already clear that academic freedom had become increasingly disregarded by university administrations. It is difficult to make an argument that will not ...
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Academic Freedom in a Time of Destruction: Reconsidering Extramural Speech

The Evangelical Capture of the Republican Party and Its Implications for Academia

On evangelical anti-intellectualism in the Republican Party

For the first time in American history, a major political party has a vested interest in a low-education electorate. This astonishing fact has inspired remarkably little discussion. Religion has a lot do with it. The Republican Party courted evangelical Protestants for decades, but the client eventually captured the patron. The party ...
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The Evangelical Capture of the Republican Party and Its Implications for Academia

Trump vs. the Fed

Or how history is forcing the question of a democratic politics of central banking

Donald Trump’s move to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook “for cause,” escalates his long-running battle with America’s central bank. The news has triggered outrage. In the pages of the FT, David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center for Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, warned: “President Trump seems determined to ...
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Trump vs. the Fed

The Revolution Against Legitimacy

To the new revolutionary class, legitimacy itself is an unjust claim of power

“[Stalin] changed the old political and especially revolutionary belief expressed popularly in the proverb “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” into a veritable dogma: “You can’t break eggs without making an omelette.”—Hannah Arendt We are living through a revolution, though not the kind we are used to. Most today ...
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The Revolution Against Legitimacy

Trump, Thucydides, and the Corruption of Language

The breakdown of meaning can threaten the very foundations of a civil society

On January 6, 2021, a violent mob stormed the US Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election. By any reasonable definition, this armed uprising was an insurrection. Yet President Trump recently described it as “a day of love.” In striking contrast, Trump called a mostly peaceful recent ...
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Trump, Thucydides, and the Corruption of Language

Trump Versus Los Angeles, Immigrants, and the Rule of Law

The ICE raids in Los Angeles were the first step in Trump’s plan to impose martial law

Ten observations on the ongoing anti-ICE protests and Trump's misuse of our military to thwart legal protest: The ICE raids in Los Angeles were the first step in Trump’s goal to impose martial law and consolidate his power. This is hardly far-fetched. Even Congresswoman Laura Friedman said that the other day. ...
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Trump Versus Los Angeles, Immigrants, and the Rule of Law

US Tariffs and Trump’s Neopatrimonial Mercantilism

Implications for the United States, China, and the global order

I have spent decades giving boring lectures on tariffs to graduate students. Suddenly, every other newspaper article is on tariffs. We have to credit President Trump with tapping into the popular disgruntlement with globalization beginning in 2016, leading to a rethinking of the structure of global economic governance and a ...
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US Tariffs and Trump’s Neopatrimonial Mercantilism

We’re Going to Fort Knox to Touch the Real

If somebody really hasn’t already raided the loot, maybe the administration will show us how it’s done

The Trump-Musk right repeatedly insists on revealing the true state of the world and of digging this true world out from under the distortions of liberal modernity. From Pizzagate to attacks on DEI, there exists a constant insistence on revealing what is hidden, mediated, and obfuscated. But nowhere is the ...
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We’re Going to Fort Knox to Touch the Real