In episode 5 of The Crown's season 4, a desperate out-of-work painter named Michael Fagan breaks into Buckingham Palace, enters the queen's bedroom, sits on the foot of her bed, and asks her for a cigarette. "Filthy habit," she replies. "Yes, I know, I'm trying to quit," he says. Then he gets down to business, … Continue reading “The Crown” and the Long Tradition of Petitioning the Monarch for Redress of Grievances
This post is a piece by Graeme Wood from the December Atlantic. Here's a link to the original. It's a profile of Peter Turchin, a population ecologist who decided to turn his skills in mathematical modeling toward big history -- looking for patterns across long expanses of time that help explain the rise and fall … Continue reading Graeme Wood — The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse
This post contains all of the material for the class on the History of School Reform in the US that I taught for at the Stanford Graduate School of Education for 15 years. In retirement I wanted to make the course available on the internet to anyone who is interested. If you are a college … Continue reading Class on History of School Reform in the U.S.
This post is a classic piece by W. E. B. Du Bois called "Of the Coming of John." It's a chapter from his book, The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903. Here's a link to the online version. It's a heartbreaking work of fiction filled with a lot of hard truths. It's the story of … Continue reading Du Bois — Of the Coming of John
This post is a brilliant essay by Francis Fukuyama, "Liberalism and Its Discontents." In it, he explores the problems facing liberal democracy today. As always, it is threatened by autocratic regimes around the world. But what's new since the fall of the Soviet Union is the threat from illiberal democracy, both at home and abroad, … Continue reading Fukuyama — Liberalism and Its Discontents
This post is an essay about the brief but glorious golden age of the US university during the three decades after World War II. American higher education rose to fame and fortune during the Cold War, when both student enrollments and funded research shot upward. Prior to World War II, the federal government showed little … Continue reading An Affair to Remember: America’s Brief Fling with the University as a Public Good
This post is a piece I published in Academe (the journal of AAUP) in 1999. It provides an overview of the argument in my 2004 book, The Trouble with Ed Schools. I reproduce it here as a public service: if you read this, you won't need to read my book much less buy it. You're … Continue reading Too Easy a Target: The Trouble with Ed Schools and the Implications for the University
In this post, I explore insights from two important books about the peculiar way in which liberty and slavery jointly emerged from the context of colonial America. One is a new book by David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy. The other is a 1992 book by Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness … Continue reading The Central Link between Liberty and Slavery in American History
In this post, I reproduce a seminal essay by Michael Katz called "Public Education as Welfare." It was originally published in Dissent in 2010 (link to the original) and it draws on his book, The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State. I encountered this essay when I was working on a piece of … Continue reading Michael Katz — Public Education as Welfare
Last summer I posted a classic lecture by the great German sociologist, Max Weber, "Science as a vocation." Recently I ran across a terrific essay by George Blaustein about Weber's vision of the modern world, drawing on this lecture and two other seminal works: the lecture "Politics as a Vocation" (delivered a year after … Continue reading Blaustein: Searching for Consolation in Max Weber’s Work Ethic
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 