Student protest movements have historically functioned as an indispensable corrective for America and the West. That is the legacy of 1968 we should be talking about | Continue reading
Mainstream elites are adopting a reactionary tale about the “leftist” indoctrination of America’s youth that verges on the conspiratorial and is destined to give the Right a major boost | Continue reading
The violent crackdown on campus protests reveals an alliance between the Right and mainstream elites who are driven by reactionary impulses and status anxieties | Continue reading
Highbrow conservative commentators are giving themselves and their readers permission to support Trump by portraying “liberal hysteria” as the real threat: A case study of National Review | Continue reading
Will the Right be able to implement these radical plans? Is Trump on board? What happened to traditional conservatism? Let’s tackle some of the key questions surrounding “Project 2025” | Continue reading
Biden’s State of the Union hinted at a key shift in the liberal imagination: From a merely restorative to a potentially more transformative vision for America | Continue reading
Unless America’s leading institutions start acting accordingly, how can we expect enough people to believe the danger to democracy and fundamental rights is really all that severe? | Continue reading
The Right has developed concrete plans to make America into a much nastier place for anyone who dares to deviate from the white Christian patriarchal order. That’s what is on the ballot in November | Continue reading
The Right’s plans for a return to power are driven by a radicalizing siege mentality and a desperate desire to restore dominance | Continue reading
Let’s evaluate the arguments of those who describe Biden as manifestly unfit – and how they preemptively assign blame for Trump’s possible return to “the Liberals” they despise | Continue reading
The Right is fantasizing about secession, “national divorce,” and civil war – because they will not, under any circumstance, accept pluralism. | Continue reading
Is this how America ends? Echoes of nullification crises and Civil War, and the dissolution of the Union | Continue reading
A reflection on our distorted, sanitized version of the civil rights struggle, reactionary “backlash,” and the eternal objection of the white moderate | Continue reading
Was it a key moment in the republic’s eventual demise or a milestone on the road to democracy’s ultimate triumph? The meaning of January 6 is yet to be determined | Continue reading
Happy New Year! We are off to a depressing start with a reflection on how to navigate the moral quandaries of social media extremism – and a plea to my readers to stick with me through it all | Continue reading
It feels like an eternity since the year started with a palpable sense of optimism… A reflection on where democracy stands at the end of 2023 – and what lies ahead | Continue reading
Democracy is fated to fight those who assault it with one hand tied behind its back, lest it become that which it seeks to defeat. But fight it must – or it will perish | Continue reading
The Right is successfully exploiting fears over rising antisemitism for its reactionary crusade while the Israel-Hamas war is tearing the democratic popular front to pieces | Continue reading
Nothing is ever inevitable. But every political analysis needs to start from the recognition that there is an eminently plausible - and fairly straightforward - path from here to autocratic rule | Continue reading
Pervasive pessimism and nostalgia, waning support for a racial reckoning, anti-feminist retrenchment, and so many conspiracies… A deep dive into the American Values Survey, Part II | Continue reading
A personal reflection on the chances and pitfalls of publicly engaging with the political conflict from a precarious academic position – and what the future might hold for this newsletter | Continue reading
Brace yourselves, this isn’t going to be pretty: A deep dive into the best survey data we have on the ideas and attitudes that shape the political conflict in the United States – Part I | Continue reading
The idea of the campus as a stronghold of leftwing extremism and authoritarian censoriousness stands in stark contrast to what’s happening inside the classroom | Continue reading
Past eras of stable white Christian patriarchal dominance are widely sanitized and mythologized in our political discourse | Continue reading