Daniel Bessner – The End of the American Century
Episode description
0:00 The gigification of academia
8:26 Is education just another commodity?
18:14 What do historians do?
26:22 Daniel: The university system is an unregulated cartel
35:08 The liberalism (not the leftism) of the university
38:22 Using (and getting used by) new technology
43:19 An alternate history of global economic development
47:29 The end of the American century
54:27 Daniel’s critique of US support for Ukraine
Recorded February 7, 2023
Links and Readings
Daniel’s NYT op-ed, “The Dangerous Decline of the Historical Profession”
Daniel’s TGS mini-series, “Glenn Loury’s Intellectual Origins”
Francis Fukuyama’s book, The End of History and the Last Man
Daniel’s essay on Fukuyama for the Nation, “A Bad Breakup”
Adrianna Kezar, Tom DePaola, and Daniel T. Scott’s book, The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis’s book, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life
James Sweet’s column, “Is History History?”
Daniel’s Chronicle of Higher Education piece, “The AHA’s Mission Needs to Change”
Eugen Weber’s book, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914
Daniel’s podcast, American Prestige
Daniel’s Harper’s Harper’s piece, “Empire Burlesque”
Daniel’s New Republic piece, “Does American Fascism Exist?
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