None of this would have happened if Joe Biden hadn't won in 2020.

I’m assuming that “constitutional right to abortion access” and “repeal the ban on same-sex marriage” are slam dunks. Less confident about any of the others.

There are a *lot* more initiatives on the Colorado ballot that I’m passionate about than in most years. I’m vaguely hoping my blue state will join me in most of them, but Colorado is an odd mix, so potential for some heartbreak. ballotpedia.org/Colorado_202...

The thing to understand about formal education is that it’s not even about what’s on the exam. It’s about which exam questions students got right enough to pass. I beg profs to reflect on the wrong answers given by students now carrying degrees in their field.

This will not be any surprise to anyone, but good to get confirmation that Jared can’t count, either.

Everything from assaults on “academic freedom” and tenure to a shift to adjunct faculty to students taking offense at being confronted with controversial ideas makes a lot more sense under the assumption that faculty have gradually become high school teachers without acknowledging the shift.

There are fascinating cultural differences between elite schools and the more accessible system, and lots to say about donor culture (including f*cking sports-as-academic-brand), but I’m out of patience for taking “unique intellectual culture” as a given. 4/4

Credential inflation has led the undergrad system to be mostly a gateway to the middle class, not some isolated monastery for higher thought. And this very much includes the “elite” schools, which are dominated by high performers, not deep thinkers. 3/

It really seems like all the grand theories treating “American universities” as a monolith are obviously dumb. If you’re trying to harken back to when university was a rare endeavor for the intellectual elite, I’m not sure that exists *anywhere* any more. 2/

Commentary is rife with completely self-contradictory theories of “the university”. The student-as-customer model is bad, but student-as-product is also bad. Students are both more and less politically engaged. 1/