New Books in American Politics

Freedom is often considered the cornerstone of the American political project. The 1776 revolutionaries declared it an inalienable right that could neither be taken nor granted, a sacred concept upon which the nation was established. The concept and actualization of freedom are also to be defended by the state. However, when such a concept has been arrogated, litigated, and delegitimized by a state that ignores its very definition, the concept of freedom comes under critical examination. Political theorist Elisabeth R. Anker, Associate Professor of American Studies and Political Science at George Washington University, has a new book dissecting the core of this conception of freedom. Ugly Freedom (Duke UP, 2022) explores who defined and continues to define freedom, she also examines freedom’s rhetorical capacity, and thus its potential for weaponization. Anker illuminates how the tainted gestation of freedom birthed a status quo based on the individualistic and conditional conception of ‘freedom’ that has long been tangoing with white supremacy, colonialism, climate destruction, capitalism, and exploitation. Such a dance is by design and has been constant throughout U.S. history.Anker establishes that for democratic government to take hold in the United States, racial domination and violence transpired, limiting the freedoms of some individuals in order to establish a governmental system that is based, in theory, on protecting liberty and freedom. This is the kind of tension that Anker explains as “ugly freedom.” Thus, American freedom, our freedom, has embedded in it the role of colonialism, imperialism, enslavement, and land theft. The shocking stains of slavery produced freedom of prosperity and leisure for white people through direct dehumanization of Black and Brown people—this is what Anker is talking about within the concept of ugly freedom. This has also been manifested through more contemporary rhetoric regarding imperial wars like those in the Philippines, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, destroying infrastructure and lives in those countries for the capital prosperity of the imperial core. These ugly freedoms legitimize the economic exploitation of the masses in the name of individual success for the few. Thus, ugly freedom examines the acts of freedom that rely on violence and brutality—this challenges how we often imagine freedom to be. Ugly Freedom explores the connection between politics and aesthetics as well, taking up an array of historical events, political theories and concepts, different forms of art, televisual productions, poetry, music, and biology to illustrate the compounding violence of the few in the name of freedom. The cultural artifacts interrogated were controversial in their own right, and Anker explores them to help understand which kinds of freedom are worth fighting for and which kinds of freedom must be fought against. Through a critical lens, Anker shifts the perception of freedom to help restore justice to its foundational value—one that is less dependent on the individual or individual heroics, and more enveloping of the community and shared collaboration.Emma R. Handschke assisted in the production of this podcast.Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you tuned in to our “ideas in strange places” themed programming last week, you would have heard an episode of Darts and Letters’ predecessor: Cited. (If you didn’t, check it out - there’s everything from science fiction to prison activism back there!)Today, as we continue exploring the politics of education, we’re bringing you another episode of Cited. This one was produced in collaboration with 99% Invisible. It tells a vivid story of science, politics, nature, and a heated battle over a small town’s beloved lighthouse.The forces of nature versus the forces of human willpower has been an eternal struggle. This is an evocative short documentary, melding history with salient reminders: in the face of climate change, the struggle is becoming more and more intense.We’ve got one more episode for this week, and then we’ll be moving on to a different theme! Stay tuned for more of our classic content, and get ready for new episodes of Darts and Letters right here on the New Books Network starting on September 16th.—————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————-You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button.If you want to do a little more we would love if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too.—————————-CONTACT US————————-To stay up to date, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. If you’d like to write to us, email darts@citedmedia.ca or tweet Gordon directly.———-CREDITS———-Today’s episode was produced by Gordon Katic, and edited by 99% Invisible’s Delaney Hall and Cited's Sam Fenn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the president of Wesleyan University, a compassionate and provocative manifesto, Safe Enough Spaces (Yale UP, 2021) on the crises confronting higher education In this bracing book, Michael S. Roth stakes out a pragmatist path through the thicket of issues facing colleges today to carry out the mission of higher education. With great empathy, candor, subtlety, and insight, Roth offers a sane approach to the noisy debates surrounding affirmative action, political correctness, and free speech, urging us to envision college as a space in which students are empowered to engage with criticism and with a variety of ideas. Countering the increasing cynical dismissal--from both liberals and conservatives--of the traditional core values of higher education, this book champions the merits of different diversities, including intellectual diversity, with a timely call for universities to embrace boldness, rigor, and practical idealism.Michael S. Roth is president of Wesleyan University and a historian, curator, and teacher. His previous books include Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do military organizations learn? Robert W. Tomlinson's book The Influence of Foreign Wars on U.S. Domestic Military Policy (Lexington, 2022) covers an important instance of military learning in which the United States military systematically examined the lessons of Israel's decisive victory in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and applied those lessons towards major doctrinal and equipment changes. The book relies heavily on Paul Senge’s model of learning organizations outlined in his seminal work, The Fifth Dimension. Using Senge’s model, the book examines the Departments of the Army, Air Force, and Navy’s reactions to the Yom Kippur War and how they organizationally incorporated—or ignored—the lessons of the conflict within their force. Using source documents, including personal memoirs, doctrinal publications, and individual reflections, the book offers a vital examination of how militaries can use foreign conflicts to make substantive and necessary organizational changes. The Yom Kippur War, particularly the Israeli experience in that conflict, provided the American military a battle laboratory in which to develop new warfighting concepts and assess new weapons acquisitions. In its conclusion, the book offers a cautionary tale that suggests learning and change do not come automatically to military organizations. If they are to be successful in the future, military organizations must embrace learning structures.Dr. Robert W. Tomlinson is an associate dean at the Naval War College.The views expressed in this podcast by both participants are their own, and do not reflect the official position of any organization with which they are affiliated.Sam Canter is a policy and strategy analyst, PhD candidate, and Army Reserve intelligence officer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why is so much right-wing money being funnelled at such a furious pace into universities across the US? Libertarian-minded billionaires like the Kochs and their partners have funded scholars and think tanks across the US, and similar things go on in Canada too. The money shows us that the right spends it because they care about education, for their own ideological reasons - and universities are all too happy to sell out.For today’s episode on the politics of education, we look at how big money seeks to corrupt academic freedom and integrity - and how campus activists are fighting to un-Koch their schools.This is another instalment of our Darts and Letters summer programming here on the New Books Network. We’ll be launching brand-new episodes starting on September 18th. Until then, tune in to our favourite past episodes - each week is a new theme!——————-FURTHER READING AND LISTENING—————— Visit UnKoch My Campus to learn about the organization and their work, including groundbreaking reports and their campaigns. Plus, read more from Jasmine Banks in The Nation, including “The Radical Capitalist Behind the Critical Race Theory Furor.” Visit James L. Turk’s academic page at the Centre for Free Expression. And check out his edited 2014 book Academic Freedom in Conflict: The Struggle Over Free Speech Rights in the University. Read the Canadian Association of University Teachers’ report on the relationships between Canadian universities and corporations Open for Business on What Terms? An Analysis of 12 Collaborations Between Canadian Universities and Corporations, Donors, and Governments. Dig into related works from the episode, and more on the Koch’s and their influence, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy Maclean and Jane Meyer’s Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Plus, read more of Jane’s work on dark money in the New Yorker. —————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————-You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button.If you want to do a little more we would love if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too.—————————-CONTACT US————————-To stay up to date, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. If you’d like to write to us, email darts@citedmedia.ca or tweet Gordon directly.———-CREDITS———-Darts and Letters is hosted and edited by Gordon Katic. Our lead producer is Jay Cockburn and our assistant producer this week was Jason Cohanim. Our managing producer is Marc Apollonio. David Moscrop is our research assistant and wrote the show notes. This episode had research and advising from Franklynn Bartol and Professor Marc Spooner. Our theme song and music was created by Mike Barber, our graphic design was created by Dakota Koop, and our marketing was done by Ian Sowden. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The protests of summer 2020 led to long-overdue reassessments of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in both American academe and cultural life more generally. But while universities have been willing to rename some buildings and schools or grapple with their role in the slave trade, no one has yet asked the most uncomfortable question: Does academic freedom extend to racist professors?It's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022) considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by outrageous police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be rigorously distinguished from freedom of speech, Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy—theories that have no intellectual legitimacy whatsoever. Approaching this question from two angles—one, the question of when a professor's intramural or extramural speech calls into question his or her fitness to serve, and two, the question of how to manage the simmering tension between the academic freedom of faculty and the antidiscrimination initiatives of campus offices of diversity, equity, and inclusion—they argue that the democracy-destroying potential of social media makes it very difficult to uphold the traditional liberal view that the best remedy for hate speech is more speech.In recent years, those with traditional liberal ideals have had very limited effectiveness in responding to the resurgence of white supremacism in American life. It is time, Bérubé and Ruth write, to ask whether that resurgence requires us to rethink the parameters and practices of academic freedom. Touching as well on contingent faculty, whose speech is often inadequately protected, It's Not Free Speech insists that we reimagine shared governance to augment both academic freedom and antidiscrimination initiatives on campuses. Michael Bérubé (interviewed here) is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University; Jennifer Ruth is a professor of film at Portland State University. Both have served in various roles within the American Association of University Professors, and also coauthored The Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom: Three Necessary Arguments (2015).Catriona Gold is a PhD candidate in Geography at University College London, researching security and mobility in the 20-21st century United States. Her current work concerns the US Passport Office's role in the Cold War. She can be reached by email or on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to week two of our Darts and Letters summer showcase! Darts and Letters is a show about the politics of ideas. We’re celebrating joining the New Books Network by bringing you some of our favourite past episodes of the show. Each week, we’re following a different theme. Last week’s was “ideas in strange places” - and today, we’re kicking off a week of episodes about the politics of education.This episode asks a big and nefarious question: have intellectuals enabled the US empire? Our host Gordon Katic looks at the RAND corporation (famously lampooned in Dr. Strangelove as the BLAND Corporation), and the broader defence-intellectual industrial complex. Get ready to meet some of the boring calculator men who are partially responsible for our permanent state of war.We’ll be launching brand-new episodes of Darts and Letters here on the New Books Network starting on September 18th - until then, stay tuned for more of our greatest hits.——————-FURTHER READING AND LISTENING—————— Have a look at Daniel’s book Democracy in Exile and check out his other books and articles on his academic homepage, including his co-authored volume The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science and Democracy in the 20th Century. Listen to his podcast, American Prestige, including the latest episode special “Auf Wiedersehen, Merkel.” Read more of his popular writing in The Nation, including “Can We Live Without Twitter,” The New Republic, including “The Case Against Humane War,” and Jacobin, including “Everything You Need to Know About What’s Happening in Afghanistan — An Interview with Derek Davison.” For some further reading on the national security state, dig into Top Secret America: The Rise of the American Security State by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin. For more from Daniel, visit his personal homepage. —————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————-You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button.If you want to do a little more we would love if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too.—————————-CONTACT US————————-To stay up to date, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. If you’d like to write to us, email darts@citedmedia.ca or tweet Gordon directly.———-CREDITS———-Darts and Letters is hosted and edited by Gordon Katic. Our lead producer is Jay Cockburn. Our assistant producer for this episode was Ren Bangert. Our managing producer is Marc Apollonio. David Moscrop wrote the show notes and is a research assistant. Our theme song and music was created by Mike Barber, our graphic design was created by Dakota Koop, and our marketing was done by Ian Sowden. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom (Duke UP, 2022) Thulani Davis provides a sweeping rethinking of Reconstruction by tracing how the four million people newly freed from bondage created political organizations and connections that mobilized communities across the South. Drawing on the practices of community they developed while enslaved, freedpeople built new settlements and created a network of circuits through which they imagined, enacted, and defended freedom. This interdisciplinary history shows that these circuits linked rural and urban organizations, labor struggles, and political culture with news, strategies, education, and mutual aid. Mapping the emancipation circuits, Davis shows the geography of ideas of freedom---circulating on shipping routes, via army maneuvers, and with itinerant activists---that became the basis for the first mass Black political movement for equal citizenship in the United States. In this work, she reconfigures understandings of the evolution of southern Black political agendas while outlining the origins of the enduring Black freedom struggle from the Jim Crow era to the present. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Darts and Letters is a show about the politics of ideas, and this week we’re searching for progressive politics in strange places… such as pro-wrestling.There have been 37 Wrestlemanias. That’s a lot of wrestling. And a lot of entertainment for the millions of people who enjoy watching wrestling, including our host, Gordon Katic. Maybe you’re a fan, maybe not. Fans and non-fans alike have often dismissed wrestling as frivolous. But there’s more to wrestling than meets the tombstone piledriver. Pro wrestling is like a Rosetta Stone for our politics; It brought us one President, and a recent poll suggests it might give us another. On this episode, we jump from the top rope into the wild, layered, complex world of pro wrestling and the folks who love it.This is part of the week’s theme of “ideas in strange places”. Darts and Letters is doing a different theme each week until we launch the new season on September 18. First (@10:46), Steve and Larson are the hosts of Going in Raw: A Pro Wrestling Podcast. They break down the history of Vince McMahon as a boss, character, and more — including what happens when the lines between the two become blurred inside and outside of the ring. PLUS: the full unedited interview is available on our Patreon. Subscribe today. Next (@37:15), Brian Jansen is a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Maine who writes on professional wrestling and labour. Wrestlers are workers, and as workers, face challenges shared by other workers — and some unique to their profession. And their fans, it turns out, are more progressive than you might think. Then (@53:06), the Spider Baby, Terrance Griep, is the world’s first openly gay wrestler. He wrestles in the Midwest Independent Wrestling Scene. He takes us into the world of wrestling, the building and presentation of a character, the immersive theatricality that is part of the experience for both wrestlers and their fans, and the “civil war” between the profession’s old and new guard. Finally (@1:09:30), Heather Levi is an anthropologist at Temple University who wrote her dissertation on lucha libre in Mexico. She even trained in lucha libre. She explores the fascinating world of a sport that is closely bound up with the country in which it thrives and finds a way of making meaning that brings together writers, wrestlers, and the public. —————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————-You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button.If you want to do a little more we would love if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too.—————————-CONTACT US————————-To stay up to date, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. If you’d like to write to us, email darts@citedmedia.ca or tweet Gordon directly.—————————-CREDITS—————————-Darts and Letters is hosted and edited by Gordon Katic. Our lead producer is Jay Cockburn, This episode’s assistant producer is Polly Leger, and our managing producer is Marc Apollonio. The research coordinator was David Moscrop. Our theme song was created by Mike Barber. Our graphic design was created by Dakota Koop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For decades, immigration has been one of the most divisive, contentious topics in American politics. And for decades, urgent calls for its policy reform have gone mostly unanswered. As the discord surrounding the modern immigration debate has intensified, border enforcement has tightened. Crossing harsher, less porous borders makes unauthorized entry to the United States a permanent, costly undertaking. And the challenges don't end on the other side.At once enlightening and devastating, The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear (U Chicago Press, 2021) examines the costs and ends of America's interior enforcement--the policies and agencies, including ICE, aimed at removing immigrants already living in the country. Economist Tara Watson and journalist Kalee Thompson pair rigorous analysis with deeply personal stories from immigrants and their families to assess immigration's effects on every aspect of American life, from the labor force to social welfare programs to tax revenue. What emerges is a critical, utterly complete examination of what non-native Americans bring to the country, including immigration's tendency to elevate the wages and skills of those who are native-born.dNews coverage has prompted many to question the humanity of American immigration policies; The Border Within opens a conversation of whether it is effective. The United States spends billions each year on detention and deportation, all without economic gain and at a great human cost. With depth and discipline, the authors dissect the shock-and-awe policies that make up a broken, often cruel system, while illuminating the lives caught in the chaos. It is an essential work with far-reaching implications for immigrants and non-immigrants alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices