LPE of Higher Education – LPE Project

Climate Change: The War on Higher Education Comes for Law Schools

James Brandt — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Academic freedom is under assault in the United States. Like the authoritarian populism rising across the globe, domestic attacks on individual professors and academic institutions buttress a broader and multifaceted campaign to undermine multiracial democracy and the institutions that sustain and safeguard it. The individuals and entities driving this antidemocratic movement have also targeted...

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The Colleges are Alright

James Brandt — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of a series looking at the law and political economy of higher education. ** ** ** American higher education is stratified. (I probably didn’t need to tell you that.) Some colleges and universities have higher status than others, as measured in prestige and resources, and the pecking order is a ceaseless obsession for institutional administrators and journalists. Furthermore...

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Securitizing the University

James Brandt — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of a series looking at the law and political economy of higher education. ** ** ** Since student protests against Israel’s violent campaign in Gaza began in October 2023, public and private actors have attempted to delegitimize this activism by accusing these students of supporting terrorism and even being terrorists. Now, after nearly eight months, those smears have been...

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How Universities Exploit the Tax-Exempt Status of Campus Land

James Brandt — Wed, 15 May 2024 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of a series looking at the law and political economy of higher education. ** ** ** In recent years, the image of the university as a bastion of educational access, academic freedom, and upward mobility has come under severe strain. Shrinking admissions rates and skyrocketing costs have replaced access with selectivity. The rise of contingency has converted university instructors...

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Seeing the University More Clearly

James Brandt — Tue, 07 May 2024 11:00:00 +0000

This post, originally published at Balkinization, is part of series looking at the law and political economy of higher education. *** Crisis can be clarifying. Recent events on campuses across the country have forced many of us to look more closely at how our own universities work. I have no special insight into most aspects of the Columbia protests or the administration’s response.

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Should Higher Education Ratify Privilege or Public Service?

James Brandt — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of a series on the LPE of Higher Education. *** Colleges are now battlefields, at least in the fever dreams of finance and tech billionaires, New York Times columnists, class-anxious parents in upscale suburbs, and boards of trustees troubled by student activists and inconveniently outspoken professors. At one level, the stateside culture wars over Israel’s ongoing genocide in...

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The Fracturing of American Higher Education

James Brandt — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of a series on the LPE of Higher Education. *** The cultural controversies swirling around college and university campuses are often viewed through the lens of national politics — as part of a broader battle against “woke” ideas, a partisan realignment by education, or a generational shift. This focus, however, makes it is easy to miss one effect of diverging paths currently...

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The Real Lessons We Should Draw from Claudine Gay’s Resignation

James Brandt — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 11:00:00 +0000

This post kicks off a series on the LPE of Higher Education. *** Last week, Claudine Gay was forced to resign as President of Harvard, after what might be called – with apologies to Clarence Thomas – a high-tech lynching. First, Gay was ambushed in a Congressional hearing. The ostensible topic was antisemitism on college campuses in the wake of October 7. But it was clearly a setup from the start.

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