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Six Reactions to the Proposed TikTok Ban
Six Reactions to the Proposed TikTok Ban
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Should Higher Education Ratify Privilege or Public Service?

Campus culture wars over DEI programs, gender nonconformity, and student debt cancellation might seem like distractions from the real problems facing higher education. However, they all tell us something important about the purpose of higher ed, because they all concern the central questions of hierarchy and its reproduction.

Abolitionism as a Question of Citizenship

The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments extended citizenship to formerly enslaved persons. But what did this status entail? In the subsequent political debates over abolition, one view carried the day: a contract and property-based notion of citizenship that fortified rather than unsettled antebellum era social relations. To realize the promise of Reconstruction today, we need a bolder vision of citizenship, one rooted not in marketplace imaginaries but in the elusive yet powerful concept of human dignity.

The Vicious Spiral of Political and Economic Inequality

Reagan’s 1986 Tax Reform Act, which slashed the highest marginal tax rate from 50 to 28 percent, was one of the largest and most regressive tax cuts in the history of the United States. New research shows that it also caused an increase in campaign contributions among the wealthy – demonstrating how rising economic and political inequality reinforce one another through public policy.

Emancipatory Horizons in Tenant Organizing

Earlier this year, a landlord presented a group of Kansas City tenants with the following choice: renew their leases at triple the rent or move. But rather than accept these terms, the tenants came together and declared “we won’t go.” This rejection of the options presented to them, originally a reflection of their desperation, soon became an expression of their power.

Recent

Weekly Roundup: March 22

Sara Rankin on the most consequential homeless rights case in decades, Marshall Steinbaum on the material basis for the culture war over higher education, and Marc-William Palen on recovering the left-wing free trade tradition. Plus, so many upcoming events this excerpt simply can’t do them justice: Empire and Constitutional Law, Historical Approaches to. . .

Recovering the Left-Wing Free Trade Tradition

Since the late 20th century, free trade has been defended primarily by neoliberals who cared little about social justice or democracy. However, a longer examination of free trade’s relationship to left-wing politics paints a very different picture. Recovering the history of those who defended free trade from the left may help us envision an alternative to. . .

The Unavoidable Consequences of Being Human

Next month, the Supreme Court will decide whether it is constitutional for cities to punish unsheltered people for sleeping outside, even when the city fails to provide any safe alternative. Yet, no matter how the court rules, homeless people will still face significant threats from cities.

Weekly Roundup: March 15, 2024

Julieta Lobato on Milei’s labor governance, Evan Bernick on the role of the Constitution in freedom struggles, and Jonathan Glater & Adriana Hardwicke on the fracturing of higher education. Plus, the next session in our Courts open course, a call for recently accepted LPE-relevant articles, pieces on the destruction of the Covid social safety net,. . .

Radical Constitutionalism and a Critique of Nonviolence

The most important work of legal scholarship in some time, Jocelyn Simonson’s Radical Acts of Justice raises, but does not develop, two major sets of questions. The first concerns the role of the Constitution in freedom struggles; the second, the legitimate role (if any) of violence in transformative left politics in the United States.