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A gate with the dollar signs on the front.

No Change In Elite College Low-Income Enrollment Since 1920s

A comprehensive new study found that the socioeconomic makeup of highly selective colleges is roughly the same as it was a century ago.
by Liam Knox via Inside Higher Ed on November 21, 2024
A group of birds with one standing on top of the rest.

Rules for the Ruling Class

How to thrive in the power élite—while declaring it your enemy.
by Evan Osnos via The New Yorker on January 22, 2024
Collage of people in "preppy" clothing.

We’re All Preppy Now

How a style steeped in American elitism took over the world.
by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela via The New Republic on August 14, 2023
Crowd in the Senate chamber.

Mass Destruction

Real democratic participation in foreign policy is almost unimaginable today—but this wasn’t always the case.
by Daniel Bessner via Boston Review on March 27, 2023
C. Wright Mills.

C. Wright Mills’s "The Power Elite" Still Speaks to Today’s America

Mills exposed postwar American power and warned of an authoritarian turn in the book, which speaks to our own moment of inequality and right-wing anger.
by Heather Gautney via Jacobin on December 6, 2022
Black and white photo of The National Negro Business League with founder Booker T. Washington.

Identity Politics and Elite Capture

The Combahee River Collective and E. Franklin Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie agree that the wealthy and powerful will hijack activist energies for their own ends.
by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò via Boston Review on May 7, 2020

What Trump Gets Right—and Progressives Get Wrong—About Andrew Jackson

In the 19th century, Jackson broadened the electorate, but the self-righteousness of some Democrats impedes their efforts to do the same.
by Theodore R. Johnson III via The Atlantic on May 2, 2017
William Buckley stands behind a podium, surrounded by a throng of people, and waves.

The Real Bill Buckley

Even some liberals toasted William F. Buckley Jr. as a patrician gentleman. A long-awaited new biography corrects that record.
by Nicole Hemmer via Democracy Journal on June 17, 2025
Walter Lippmann.

Walter Lippmann, Beyond Stereotypes

On the political theorist and the new media landscape.
by Geoff Shullenberger via Compact on June 4, 2025
A magnifying glass on C. Wright Mills's book "The Power Elite."

Whatever Happened to the Power Elite?

The trio of interests atop business, military, and government depicted in C. Wright Mills’s postwar critique is no longer united in setting the national agenda.
by Peter Dreier via The New Republic on May 5, 2025
Edward Said.

Said’s Specter

Columbia is at war with its intellectual heritage.
by Timothy Brennan via The Chronicle of Higher Education on April 14, 2025
Donald Trump and the presidential seal in an empty theater.

The Hoax that Spawned an Age of American Conspiracism

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are just the latest populists to weaponise fears of a sinister “deep state”.
by Phil Tinline via New Statesman on April 2, 2025
A padlock around the Pentagon.

The Left-Wing Origins of ‘Deep State’ Theory

Those who wish to restore democratic rule, regardless of political orientation, must take it seriously.
by Christian Parenti via Compact on February 28, 2025
A drawing of a person staring at two different smartphones, with robotic arms holding their head in place.

What If the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction?

From the pianoforte to the smartphone, each wave of tech has sparked fears of brain rot. But the problem isn’t our ability to focus—it’s what we’re focusing on.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on January 20, 2025
Statue of Andrew Jackson on galloping horse, in Jackson Square, New Orleans.

Trump Should Revive Jacksonian Military Attitudes

The worship of military technocrats underwrites American failures abroad.
by Hunter DeRensis via The American Conservative on January 15, 2025
The “Little Red Schoolhouse” in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Schoolhouse Crock

In every generation, charlatans come along with a plan to make education better by spending less money on schools.
by Jennifer C. Berkshire via The Baffler on January 2, 2025
Protest encampment at University of California Berkeley.

The Free Speech Movement at Sixty and Today’s Unfree Universities

Can speech be free when billionaires buy influence on campus?
by Robert Cohen via Academe on December 4, 2024
A standardized test and a pencil, with answers bubbled in.

The Rotting of the College Board

Testing is necessary. The SAT’s creator is not.
by Naomi Schaefer Riley via Commentary on November 13, 2024
John Quincy Adams posing for a photograph.

Now Is Not the Time for Moral Flexibility: The Example of John Quincy Adams

We must stand by the principles of the open society, pluralism, freedom, and mutual toleration.
by Alan Elrod via Liberal Currents on November 13, 2024
Bruce Springsteen on July 19, 1988 at his concert in East Berlin on the cycle track Weissensee.

Can the 1980s Explain 2024?

The yuppies embodied the winning side of America’s deepening economic divide. Bruce Springsteen spoke for those left behind.
by Nicholas Lemann via Washington Monthly on August 25, 2024
Chalkboard in a classroom.

What Are You Going to Do With That?

The future of college in the asset economy.
by Erik Baker via Harper’s on July 23, 2024
Barack Obama speaking in front of a museum exhibit titled "Writing the Constitution."

The Constitution and the American Left

A culture of reverence for the U.S. Constitution shields the founding document from criticism, despite its many shortcomings.
by Aziz Rana via Dissent on July 19, 2024
Nora Kenworthy's book: "Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare".

Crowded Out: The Dark Side Of Crowdfunding Healthcare And Its Historical Precedents

The moral terrain of crowdfunding is fueled by two persistent social ideologies: the dual, and intertwined, myths of meritocracy and the “deserving poor.”
by Nora Kenworthy via HistPhil on July 12, 2024
A man tacks applications to Princeton University on a bulletin board
partner

The Rise of the College Application Essay

The essay component of American college applications has a long history, but its purpose has changed over time.
by Sarah Stoller via Made By History on July 11, 2024
Engraving of the Battle of Lexington After Alonzo Chappel: American colonists and British soldiers exchange fire at the Battle of Lexington, the first skirmish in the US War of Independence.

Taking Up the American Revolution’s Egalitarian Legacy

Despite its failures and limitations, the American Revolution unleashed popular aspirations to throw off tyranny of all kinds.
by Taylor Clark via Jacobin on July 4, 2024

The Electoral College and Slavery

It's easy to get this one wrong.
by William Hogeland via Hogeland's Bad History on May 24, 2024
John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.

A Trump-Biden Tie Would Be a Political Nightmare — But Maybe a Boon to Democracy

The political upheaval of 1824 changed America. The same could happen in 2024.
by Joshua Zeitz via Politico on May 16, 2024
Groups of workers outside a St. Louis, Missouri factory.

How the Term “Hoosier” Became a Weapon in the Class War

In Indiana, “hoosier” is a badge of honor. In St Louis, it’s the nastiest insult around. The difference reveals the prejudice that breaks worker solidarity.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Jacobin on May 7, 2024
George Eliot

“As If You Was a Insect”

George Eliot refused to stereotype the rural working class. Her outlook would serve us well today.
by Matthew Karp via Harper’s on April 26, 2024
Branko Milanovic, 2017.

The Problematic Past, Present, and Future of Inequality Studies

An intellectual history of inequality in economic theory reveals the ideological reasons behind the field’s resurgence in the last few decades.
by Branko Milanović, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via The Nation on March 20, 2024
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