Social Reproduction – LPE Project

America’s First Religious Public School?

James Brandt — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 11:00:00 +0000

On June 5, 2023, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board narrowly approved the application for St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Charter School, the first religious charter school in the United States. This development arrives at a time when charter schools have become a significant part of the American education system, enrolling over 3.7 million students nationwide—more than double the...

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The Political Economy of Trad Dad Populism

James Brandt — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Pop quiz: Who recently said, “Our economy has entered a new and decadent Gilded Age, where working-class jobs disappear and working wages erode and working families and neighborhoods fall apart—while denizens of the upper class live a cloistered life behind gates. . . .Why should labor ever be taxed more than capital? They should not be.” If you thought first of AOC, Shawn Fain, or Sara Nelson...

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Making Families Great Again

Elliot Setzer — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of a symposium on Melinda Cooper’s Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance. Read the rest of the symposium here. ** ** ** When people send sentimental cards or hang dubious wall art proclaiming “families are forever,” little do they know how right they are. Families are forever because, as Melinda Cooper reminds us in Counterrevolution, “[t]here is no...

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The Political Economy of Abortion Law in the EU

James Brandt — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 11:00:00 +0000

The European Union often presents itself as a global forerunner on gender equality issues—a claim that is not entirely unfounded. Since the 1970s the EU has adopted an array of laws and policies ensuring gender equality in relation to pay and working conditions, instituted a somewhat robust framework for guaranteeing maternity and second parent leave, and adopted legislation combatting gender...

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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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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 U.S.-Mexico Border as a Crisis of Social Reproduction

James Brandt — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 11:30:00 +0000

Despite what you may have heard on Fox News or read in the New York Times, the crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico is neither about the border, nor migrants’ impact on the country. There’s plenty of room in the United States to accommodate the people who want to come in the medium to long run, and immigration is extraordinarily economically and socially beneficial. Full stop.

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