American Campus Podcast

In 1926, an NYU professor took to the high seas with 500 undergraduates on a worldwide learning voyage. The experimental "Floating University" docked for excursions at nearly 50 ports, where students were introduced to world leaders Mussolini, Gandhi, and others. Tamson Pietsch recounts the endeavor, unpacking the larger story of US intellectual imperialism in the 1920s. Tamson Pietsch....

Huey Long, Louisiana's notorious Depression-era governor and rumored presidential challenger to FDR, doesn't get enough recognition for his role in the expansion of LSU's campus throughout the 1930s. Listen as Bob Mann recounts Long's legacy at Kingfish U. Robert Mann. 2023. Kingfish U: Huey Long and LSU . Louisiana State University Press.  Check out Robert Mann's other wo...

Kendell Gerdes unpacks popular depictions of "sensitive" students throughout the 2010s. She tackles safe spaces, trigger warnings, #BlackOnCampus, and other student calls for accessibility over the last few years, showing how these matters are not in opposition to faculty academic freedom. Links mentioned in the episode: Kendall Gerdes. 2024. Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Cam...

This is Part II of an earlier discussion with Mike Collins about Supreme Court affirmative action cases affecting higher education, including Lau (1974), Bakke (1978), Fisher (2016), and Students for Fair Admissions (2023). For more, check out Collin's recent book, The Anti-Civil Rights Movement: Affirmative Action as Wedge and Weapon .  Mike Steven Collins. 2024. The Anti-Civil Rights Moveme...

This is Part I of a two-part interview with Mike Collins about Supreme Court affirmative action cases affecting higher education, including Bakke (1978), Fisher (2016), and Students for Fair Admissions (2023). For more, check out Collin's recent book, The Anti-Civil Rights Movement: Affirmative Action as Wedge and Weapon .  Mike Steven Collins. 2024. The Anti-Civil Rights Movement: Affirmativ...

The ICE disappearance of Columbia student protestor Mahmoud Khalil in March 2025 followed in the wake of Trump's promise to deport campus activists. But 50 years ago, the Carter administration set the stage for student deportations. Will Teague discusses the history of presidential threats to deport student dissenters, beginning with the Carter administration's attacks against Iranian in...

Abercrombie and Fitch is back, millennials and gen x-ers! Ethan Lascity takes us for a walk down memory lane in a discussion of Legally Blonde, Drumline, Van Wilder , and other college movies of the aughts. Myles Ethan Lascity. 2024. The Abercrombie Age: Millennial Aspiration and the Promise of Consumer Culture . University of North Carolina Press.  Lyz Lenz. 2024. This American Ex-Wife: How I End...

In 1960, California experimented with tuition-free college for all public campuses in the state. As Andrew Higgins explains in Higher Education for All (UNC Press, 2023), the California Master Plan actually worked to make higher education more unequal for students. As calls for free college have gained traction in the 20th century, Higgins reminds us of critical shortcomings of the Cold War Califo...

Adrian Daub explains the recent history of the cancel culture moral panic. Adrian Daub. 2024. The Cancel Culture Panic: How an American Obsession Went Global . Stanford University Press. Jennifer Burns. 2023. Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative . Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Samuel L. Catlin. 2024. The Campus Does Not Exist: How Campus War is Made . Parapraxis. Text the show here! Support the sh...

Asheesh Siddique discusses the colonial creation of college trustee boards and explains how trustees govern our institutions today. Asheesh Siddique. 2024. The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World . Yale University Press. Asheesh Siddique. 2021, May 19. Campus Cancel Culture Freakouts Obscure the Power of University Boards . Teen Vogue. What are...

Jasmine Harris discusses the historic experiences of Black women students and faculty at predominantly white colleges. Jasmine L. Harris. 2024. Black Women, Ivory Tower: Revealing the Lies of White Supremacy in American Education . Broadleaf Books.  Jasmine L. Harris’s website Heather Terrell and Victoria Christopher Murray. 2022. The Personal Librarian . Penguin Random House. Text the show here!...

On the post-World War II Red Scare and its consequences for American higher education. Ellen Schrecker. 1986. No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities. Oxford University Press. Ellen Schrecker. 2021. The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s . University of Chicago Press. Ellen Schrecker’s website Text the show here! Support the show Browse the American Campus bookshelf

The story of krebiozen, a fraudulent cancer cure, and the frenzy it wrought through the University of Illinois in the 1950s. Matthew C. Ehrlich. 2024. The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine . University of Illinois Press. David F. Labaree. 2017. A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education . University of Chicago Press. Julie Schumacher. 2...

Kelly L. Marino discusses college women's role in the suffrage movement. Listen to hear more about her new book, Votes for College Women: Alumni, Students, and the Woman Suffrage Campaign (New York University Press, 2024). Kelly L. Marino. 2024. Votes for College Women: Alumni, Students, and the Woman Suffrage Campaign. New York University Press. https://nyupress.org/9781479825196/votes-for-c...

Katherine Rye Jewell "hits" the high notes of the history of college radio. Listen to her discuss her new book, Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio (University of North Carolina Press, 2023). katherinejewell.com  Katherine Rye Jewell. 2023. Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio. University of North Carolina Press. https://uncpress.org/book/9781469677255/...

Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva discuss their book, The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game (University of North Carolina Press, 2024). Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva. 2024. T he End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game . University of North Carolina Press.  Derek Silva, Johanna Mellis, and Nathan Kalman-Lamb. 2024. The End of Sport p...

Crystal Sanders discusses her book, A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs (University of North Carolina Press, 2024). Crystal R. Sanders. 2024. A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs . University of North Carolina Press.  Dylan C. Penningroth. 2023. Before the Movement: Th...

Sharon Stein discusses her book, Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022). Sharon Stein's Academia page   Sharon Stein. 2022. Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education . Johns Hopkins University Press.   Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. 2021. Hospicing Modernity: Facin...

Gregg Michel discusses his book, Spying on Students: The FBI, Red Squads, and Student Activists in the 1960s South (Louisiana State University Press, 2024). Gregg L. Michel. 2024. Spying on Students: The FBI, Red Squads, and Student Activists in the 1960s South . Louisiana State University Press.  Gregg L. Michel. 2004. Struggle for a Better South: The Southern Student Organizing Committee, 1964-1...