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-Sec...

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 Colleg...

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 

Support the show at patreon.com/americancampuspodcast

Get in touch. Want to request a topic or pitch an episode? Email Lauren...

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 Aus...

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 l...

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 fo...

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 readin...

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 ...

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 H...

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. Har...

Richard T. Greener was the first Black graduate of Harvard College in 1870. Greener went on to be a professor, lawyer, dean of Howard University law school, diplomat, and a celebrated intellectual of the Reconstruction era. Christian K. Anderson takes us through Greener's remarkable career in academia and international politics.

Links to references in the episode:

• Christian Anderson. 2022. The forgotten impact of Harvard’s f...

Check out my interview with Sasha Lilley for Against the Grain podcast. We talk about Resistance from the Right, which you can grab a copy of here. 

References mentioned this episode:

• Lauren Lassabe Shepherd. 2023. Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America. University of North Carolina Press. 

Support the show at patreon.com/americancampuspodcast

Get in touch. Want to request a topic or pi...

We're headed South with Kate Ballantyne to talk about the Old Left! Plus, Kate's tips for conducting archival research.

To join the student activism researchers Google group, send me an email: shephell@iu.edu.

References mentioned this episode:

• Katherine J. Ballantyne. 2024. Radical Volunteers: Dissent, Desegregation, and Student Power in Tennessee. University of Georgia Press.
• Harriet Constable. 2024. The Instrumentalist...

From the conception of ROTC after the Spanish-American War, colleges and K12 schools have been central to US military recruitment efforts. Scott Harding, Charles Howlett, and Seth Kershner explain the history of school militarism, and how peace groups have tried to break the war habit in American education.

References mentioned this episode:

• Scott Harding, Charles Howlett and Seth Kershner. 2022. Breaking the War Habit: The Debat...

Is the Title IX process working as intended? Nicole Bedera tells us what's working, what isn't, and what we can do about it.

References mentioned this episode:

• Nicole Bedera. 2024. On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators
  and Betray Survivors of Sexual Assault. University of California Press.
• Classroom resources to accompany On the Wrong Side
• Nicole Bedera’s website

Support the show at patreon.com...

On today’s episode, we’re covering the history and purposes of the first American research universities, Indian boarding schools, and Historically Black Colleges, all of which emerged at the same time in US history.

References mentioned this episode:

• Eve L. Ewing. 2025. The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism. Penguin Random House.
• Will Guidara. 2022. Unreasonable Hospitality: The Re...

Within and beyond the academy, Karl Marx remains a specter who assumes quite different shapes from his friends and enemies. According to Andrew Hartman, Marx himself wouldn't recognize many of the various derivatives or criticisms of his work. Hartman guides us back into the late 20th century classroom to meet Marx's academic friends and enemies. 

References mentioned this episode:

• Andrew Hartman. 2025. Karl Marx in Ame...

It was my great pleasure to join friends of the pod, Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub (who you'll remember from our Cancel Culture Panic episode), for a deep dive into the history of the trustees. Be sure to check out and subscribe to their excellent podcast, In Bed with the Right.

Follow along with IBWTR, Adrian, and Moira:

• Listen and subscribe to In Bed with the Right on Spotify, Apple, Patreon, or wherever you get your podca...

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...