#RaceClass

On Wednesday Apr. 24, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced he would tour Columbia University and host a news conference to discuss “the troubling rise of virulent antisemitism on America’s college campuses.” Just ten days’ prior, Johnson appeared alongside Donald Trump for a press conference that “e...

One increasingly encounters the claim that anti-Semitism is on the rise and progressive politics are to blame. For anyone familiar with Christopher Rufo’s unapologetic smear campaigns against CRT and DEI, there is a reflex to dismiss both claims as somewhat obvious propaganda. That reflex makes sens...

In this episode, we explore two things that Brown v. Board of Education and DEI have in common. The first is the story we know well. Both Brown and DEI have been openly vilified by the Right—a history that spans the Southern Manifesto to an ongoing assault on racial diversity. The second is the stor...

Rightwing personalities are blaming DEI (“diversity, equity, inclusion”) for everything from broken Boeings and bankrupt banks to a flaccid military and train derailments. These are facially unserious claims. Yet they resonate with much of the public. One might say they enjoy a common-sense logic th...

On Dec. 5, the U.S. House passed HR 894, which states that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” On the same day, House Republicans charged the presidents’ of Harvard, Penn and MIT with institutional “cultures” that “foster [antisemitism] because you have faculty and students who hate Jews, hate Israel an...

On October 7, Hamas launched horrifying and unprecedent attacks targeting Israeli civilians and continues to hold Israeli hostages. Israel responded within an ongoing assault on Gaza that includes airstrikes and a blockade on humanitarian aid. Current estimates suggest that over 1,400 people have di...

In this special hour-long episode, Professor Victor Ray joins us to discuss racial education, structural racism, identity politics and his recent book "On Critical Race Theory."

In SFFA v. Harvard, the Supreme Court narrowed a university’s ability to consider the racial identity of individual students during admissions. Justice Roberts also emphasized that universities may consider each student’s personal experiences with race or racism. Many schools have responded by addin...

For our 20th Episode, we circle back to the beginning. In Episode 1, we asked why the mainstream press struggled so mightily to call the GOP’s campaign of discriminatory censorship what it is: an unapologetic assault on free speech. Unfortunately, little has changed. 18 months later, and much of the...

The opinion dropped. As we expected, conservative Justices invoked the claim that race-conscious policies stigmatize and mismatch their beneficiaries. Both claims have attracted sustained critique. But they still enjoy traction in the popular press and shape our national affirmative action conversat...