"The Role of a Humanist Is to Preserve Knowledge, Safeguard Learning From the Market and the Tides of Popular Interest, and Ward Off Coarse Appeals to Economic Utility"

"Depending on whom I asked, the move to scale back humanities doctoral programs is either a prudent acknowledgment of the cratered job market for tenure-track professorships and a wise attempt to protect the university's humanities division from looming financial and political risks, or it is a cynical effort, under cover of the Trump administration's assaults, to transfer resources away from 'impractical,' unprofitable, and largely jobless fields (such as, say, comparative literature) and toward areas that the university's senior leadership seems to care about (such as, say, STEM and 'innovation'). One faculty member I spoke with mentioned a consulting firm that was brought on to help Chicago as it considers changes to its humanities division, including possibly consolidating the departments from 15 down to eight. Many professors worried that the move to impose uneven changes—reducing admissions in some while halting them in others—may be an attempt to create circumstances that will ultimately make it easier to dissolve the paused programs. 'Let no good crisis go unleveraged,' Holly Shissler, an associate professor in the Middle Eastern Studies department, said with a dark laugh. 'You engineer a situation in which there are no students, and then you turn around and say, "Why are we supporting all these departments and faculty when they have no students?"'"

Tyler Austin Harper at The Atlantic asks, "If the University of Chicago Won't Defend the Humanities, Who Will?"

"A Signifier of Something Beyond Music"

"If you buy the idea that what the Britpop brand represents is optimism, positivity and youth culture winning without compromise then you can see its appeal to a 17-year-old in 2025. Who wouldn't hanker after the notion of a prelapsarian world before the scrutiny of social media, 9/11, the rise of the 'alt-right' et al? And the era’s 'fuck you, we're gonna have a good time' excesses look alluring in an age of wellness influencers and constant cameraphone surveillance."

Alexis Petridis at The Guardian attempts to "explain why we're all still in thrall to the ​m​ad-fer-it 90s."

And Chris DeVille at Stereogum writes after a Chicago concert that, "at long last, Oasis have conquered America."

While Steven Zeitchik at The Hollywood Reporter says that "Oasis Just Glitched the Algorithm."

And Alex Edelman at Rolling Stone describes an Oasis reunion concert as a "religious experience, if the religion was 'football hooligan.'"

"The Blueprints Are Already There. The Question Is Whether We'll Finally Use Them

"The energy for reform that followed from Chicago 1919 or Detroit 1967 proved hard to sustain, especially in the face of political backlash. This time, however, though the social obstacles to change remain entrenched, the political obstacles seem to be falling. The scale and duration of this spring’s protests—and the discussions that are already happening in city councils and state legislatures around police reform—suggest that this time it might finally be different."

At Politico, David Greenberg writes that "Sober-minded experts have been writing reports for a century now" regarding police violence against African Americans.

"Reagan Was Looking for Kind of Outrageous Stories About Welfare"

"I wasn't aware that there had been a real life model for the welfare queen myth and stereotype. When I learned about it back in 2012 that Linda Taylor had been really the first person to be given this nickname and that the image of the fur coats and the Cadillac came from her I was fascinated both by that fact and the idea that a myth and a stereotype could endure in a person's image but that person herself could be forgotten and erased was just so kind of transfixing to me and I became obsessed with trying to figure out who this person had been and why she had been forgotten."

Hari Sreenivasan on the PBS Newshour interviews Josh Levin, the author of The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth.

"Government Can Rebuild the Pipeline to the American Middle Class and the Belief in the American Dream"

"For years, reformers have focused on the impact that pre-k can have on young people as they grow into adulthood. Now, cities and states are working quietly to revolutionize public education again. More than a century ago, America sparked an explosion of social mobility by creating a robust system of public schools that run to 12th grade. By adding community colleges to the nation's public-school systems and educational requirements, we can do the same today." 

Rahm Emanuel at The Atlantic argues that "associate's degrees should be as accessible for the next 80 years as high-school diplomas have been for the past 80."

As Little as Possible

"'Totally. That's why I do feel like it's a challenge to the design world to reassess what we're producing, why we're producing it, and how we could do it better. Do we really need all this stuff?' asks Hustwit, in a way he knows his question isn't even a question. 'San Francisco is the center of the design world, packed with all these people, and they're listening to this 86-year-old German guy in his backyard for an hour and a half, about like, how they're fucking up. And they're loving it, and they're laughing!'"

Mark Wilson at Fast Company writes about a new documentary about designer Dieter Rams.

And Harry McCracken offers an obit for designer Charles Harrison, who died in November.

"His Timing Was Perfect"

"Hefner the man and Playboy the brand were inseparable. Both advertised themselves as emblems of the sexual revolution, an escape from American priggishness and wider social intolerance. Both were derided over the years—as vulgar, as adolescent, as exploitative, and finally as anachronistic. But Mr. Hefner was a stunning success from his emergence in the early 1950s."

Laura Mansnerus at The New York Times reports the death of Hugh Hefner.

Elaine Woo at the Los Angeles Times writes about the life of Hefner.

As does Carrie Pitzulo at Politico.

As does Amber Batura at The New York Times.

"'I T'ink I'd Like to Talk to Someone About Gettin' a Grant'"

"Charm wafted up the line, fragrant as peat smoke, as I heard him utter the magic spell: 'I'd like to start a museum of American literature.'

"He said something else too, but I didn't catch it, because I was already racing downstairs three marble steps at a time."

David Kipen in the Los Angeles Times discusses the origins of the American Writers Musuem.

"Tonight It's My Turn to Say Thanks"

"My fellow Americans, it has been the honor of my life to serve you.  I won't stop; in fact, I will be right there with you, as a citizen, for all my days that remain.  For now, whether you're young or young at heart, I do have one final ask of you as your president–the same thing I asked when you took a chance on me eight years ago.
"I am asking you to believe.  Not in my ability to bring about change–but in yours."

The Los Angeles Times runs a transcript of President Obama's farewell address.

Danielle Kurtzleben at NPR provides statistics from 2009 to 2017.

And The Onion "looks back at the historic legacy of Barack Obama, a post-racial president for a pre-post-racial America."

"The Scope of Economics as a Field Has Been Reduced to a Study of the Market"

"One reason is the deep influence of the so-called Chicago school. The economics department at the University of Chicago has long been a leader in the field; it has garnered the most Nobel Prizes of any university economics department and a significant number of John Bates Clark medals in economics. But inequality has never been a priority for the Chicago school, to say the least. It has a strong libertarian bent, focusing on how to promote competition and economic growth and the benefits of a free market. 'In general, the [American] economics profession has avoided the subject of class conflict. All issues of distribution have been regarded as less pertinent than ideas of growth,' Arthur Goldhammer, a senior affiliate at Harvard's Center for European Studies who studies French and American politics and history, told me. 'Distributive questions in economics just raise hostility, and ultimately, growth is the important issue.'"

Alana Semuels at The Atlantic asks, "so why aren't American economists more preoccupied with wealth inequality?"

"As Long as That Process Continues Unchecked, the University's Bold Rhetorical Defense of an Art That It No Longer Teaches Us How to Practice Will Be Nothing Better Than Posturing"

"At one time, the University of Chicago might have been thought to be the one place above all others that was capable of preparing its students to acquit themselves well in difficult, valuable conversations about race, class, and violence. As my experience in seminars attests, though, Chicago is no longer fully committed to humanizing its students the old-fashioned way, through books and discussion. The left's attacks on free speech may endanger the academic project, but the greater threat to the free exchange of ideas comes from academic corporatization."

Malloy Owen at The American Conservative reacts to a recent statement by the Dean of Students of the University of Chicago about academic freedom.

And Jonathan Chait at New York reacts to reactions.

A "Democratic Tea Party"?

"Politics, like any war, is best conducted by professionals. But liberals and the left continue to place their hopes in 'outsiders' and 'insurgents,' amateurs who rail against the system without the means to reform it. The Green Party, for example, has embarked on yet another presidential campaign to nowhere; as its presumptive nominee, Jill Stein, recently boasted to The Village Voice, 'I'm a physician, not a politician.”'
"Stein seemed to consider this a point of pride. George Washington Plunkitt would have set her straight."

Kevin Baker at The New Republic argues that Democrats should re-embrace machine politics.

The Whole World Is Watching

"Republicans brayed that Democrats, who were happy to align themselves with the forces of social change in 1960 and 1964, had by 1968 been subsumed by them. The low-tax, anti-government rhetoric that defines modern Republicanism has its roots in the simmering white resentments that emerged in the late nineteen-sixties, animated by the belief that the federal government had become a tool for redistribution of white wealth into the hands of undeserving black and brown communities. Donald Trump represents the full expression of that belief."

Jelani Cobb at The New Yorker connects the 2016 presidential campaign to 1968.

As does Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo.

As does Rick Perlstein at In These Times.

"The Legend of Loyal Davis"

"Politically, Davis was a staunch conservative, who detested socialized medicine and any other form of government intervention in medicine. He was quite outspoken with hidebound views on issues medical and nonmedical. Although personally aloof, Davis took a liking to his new son-in-law when Nancy married Ronald Reagan in 1952. The father-in-law enjoyed sharing his political views with the actor, and many sources credit Davis with being among the most important people in the transformation of Ronald Reagan from a liberal Democrat in the 1940s into the conservative Republican he became in the 1950s and for the rest of his life."

Upon the death of Nancy Reagan, Cory Franklin in The Chicago Tribune discusses "the second most important person in her life."

"His Field, Economics, Has a Weirdly Distorted View of Human Behavior"

"After the '87 crash, when the market fell 20 percent in a day, and the Internet bubble, when the Nasdaq went from 5000 to 1400, and then the real estate bubble, which led to a financial crisis from which we're still trying to extricate ourselves, the idea that markets work perfectly is no longer tenable."


Paul Solman on PBS Newshour talks with Richard Thaler about behavioral economics.

"Subtle, Permanent and Devastating"

"Mielke, along with colleague Sammy Zahran, compared leaded gasoline emissions with aggravated assault rates in Chicago and five other cities and found a good fit in each one.
"Both trends look like an upside-down 'U.' Emissions from leaded gasoline started increasing in the 1950s, peaked in the early '70s and then steadily declined. Aggravated assault rates rose, peaked and fell on a similar curve, only about 20 years later."


In the Chicago Tribune, Michael Hawthorne reports on the social effects of lead poisoning.

"Politics Can Still Be a Calling, Not a Business"

"For that Senate race, Axelrod also recruited a partner from his consulting firm, David Plouffe, to help out. That proved a brilliant move. Obama came to believe as strongly in Plouffe's talents as he did in Axelrod's, so that in his presidential run four years later, he made Plouffe his campaign manager and Axelrod continued as strategist and message meister. Together, they were as essential to Obama in 2008 as Louis Howe was to Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Plouffe quietly created a grass-roots ground game that shocked the Hil­lary Clinton campaign; in learning how to channel Obama, Axelrod caught lightning in a bottle."


David Gergen in The New York Times reviews David Axelrod's Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.

"Boardroom Liberalism"

"Bill Clinton was in many ways more conservative than Obama, whom you couldn't imagine signing a draconian welfare law, or an anti-gay-marriage law, or, for that matter, de-regulating Wall Street. But Clinton was not above riling up voters for partisan gain. By August of 1995, the year Republicans took over Congress, Clinton and his surrogates were flogging them daily over 'Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment.' When Republicans retook the House in 2011, Obama spent most of the year shunning partisan taunts in hopes of consummating a grand bargain. And Jarrett was there at his side, amplifying those sensibilities."


Noam Scheiber in The New Republic profiles Valerie Jarrett.


And Scheiber responds to the response to his article.

"One More Sign that the Economic Archetype of 20th-Century America, Built on Manufacturing and Distributing Hard Goods to an Expanding Middle Class, Is Winding Down"

"In 1972, the year Sears began building the world’s tallest building in downtown Chicago, three out of every four Americans visited one of its locations every year—a larger proportion than have seen 'The Wizard of Oz.' Half of all households held a Sears credit card—more than go to church on Christmas. Sears’s sales accounted for 1 percent of the Gross National Product.
"In an internal merchandising plan written later that decade, a Sears executive identified the company’s audience, and its identity: 'Sears is a family store for middle-class, home-owning America. We are not a fashion store. We are not a store for the whimsical, nor the affluent. We are not a discounter, nor an avant-garde department store…We reflect the world of Middle America, and all of its desires and concerns and problems and faults.'
"Unfortunately, it’s been all downhill for middle-class, home-owning America since then, and it’s been all downhill for Sears, too."


Edward McClelland in Salon reports that "Sears is dying."

Holy Cat House Lincoln

The New York Times runs obits for musician Dave Brockie, writer Jonathan Schell, cinematographer Oswald Morris, presidential aide James R. Schlesinger, television writer Lorenzo Semple, Jr., sailboat designer Hobie Alter, disc jockey Frankie Knuckles, and criminal businessman Charles Keating.