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"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- The Basement and the Birthing Room: A Life of Ilana Stanger-Ross
- Elizabeth Rosner
- ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History’
- Rachel Resnick
- Jon Papernick
- Belonging Without Believing: A Life of Tova Mirvis
- Adam Mansbach
- Sana Krasikov and the Price of Belief
- The Place That Comforts: A Life of Naama Goldstein
- Tamar Fox
- Binnie Kirshenbaum
- Mitchell James Kaplan
- Molly Jong-Fast
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- Ehud Havazelet (July 13, 1955 – November 5, 2015)
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BEST POSTS:
* American Epistemics (1-19-26)
* The Most Socially Toxic Inconvenient Truths (1-18-26)
* The Luke Ford Genre (1-18-26)
* The Filkins Pivot: Legacy Prestige and the Fracturing of the Chattering Class (1-16-26)
* Decoding The Trump Doctrine (1-4-26)
* If Tatiana Schlossberg were “Tatiana Smith” (12-30-25)
* ‘I’m So Trained’: How The Credential Society Burned Down the Palisades (12-28-25)
* Status Closure and The Lost Generation (12-25-25)
* The Bondi Massacre (12-15-25)
* Sydney Jews Learn That Their Aussie Social Contract Has Become A Suicide Pact (12-15-25)
* Terror in Sydney: Analyzing the “Chanukah by the Sea” Massacre (12-14-25)
* Decoding Nick Fuentes (11-2-25)
* The Landscape of Emotional Sobriety (10-29-30)
* The Rise & Fall Of Air Supply (10-19-25)
* No Kings, No Results: How Elite Pride Replaced Real Progress (10-19-25)
* You Are An Important Soldier In A Great War (9-7-25)
* The Revolt Of The Masses (8-31-25)
* The Covenant of Ashwood (8-24-25)
* If you can’t trust central bankers, then who can you trust? (8-23-25)
* Why Is The Elite Media Singing From The Same Hymnal About The Trump-Putin Summit? (8-17-25)
* Why Do Smart News Operations Sound So Uniformly Dumb So Often? (8-16-25)
* Nobody Is Coming (8-10-25)
* When Elites Restrict Our Speech, It’s Because They Love Truth, Freedom & Democracy (8-3-25)
Author Archives: Luke Ford
Ten Convenient Beliefs In UC Berkeley’s Sociology Department
Grok says: UC Berkeley Sociology is a historic powerhouse in social movements, political sociology, comparative-historical work, inequality, race/ethnicity/immigration, culture, and critical theory. It combines rigorous empirical methods with an explicit public-university mission of “critical inquiry… contributing to a better world” … Continue reading
Ten Convenient Beliefs In Harvard’s Sociology Department
Grok says: Harvard Sociology has enormous symbolic capital, deep ties to the Kennedy School, a mix of rigorous quantitative causal inference and high-profile cultural/qualitative work, and explicit research clusters in Inequality, Culture, Race/Ethnicity/Immigration, Comparative Sociology, Education, Health & Population, Crime … Continue reading
Ten Convenient Beliefs in the NYU Departments of English & Comparative Literature
Grok says: NYU English and Comparative Literature (tightly linked via shared certificates in Poetics & Theory and Comparative Approaches to Africa, the Middle East, and the Global South) sit in a downtown Manhattan ecosystem that rewards theory-heavy, activist-inflected work. Gallatin’s … Continue reading
The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Power at the University of Chicago
Deans, provosts, department chairs, and senior leaders at the University of Chicago do not compete for authority by saying they want power. They compete by invoking languages of Life of the Mind, Rigorous Free Inquiry, Merit-Based Intellectual Standards, No Slack … Continue reading
Ten Convenient Beliefs in Stanford’s Program in Modern Thought & Literature
Grok says: Stanford’s Modern Thought and Literature (MTL) is an explicitly interdisciplinary PhD program housed in the School of Humanities and Sciences but deeply entangled with the English Department. It markets itself as the place where literature meets philosophy, history, … Continue reading
Ten Convenient Beliefs in the University of Chicago Department of English / Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
Grok says: The University of Chicago English Department and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS) embody a uniquely revealing tension: the university’s legendary traditionalism (Great Books Core, rigorous close reading, anti-faddish intellectual culture, and historicist/formalist strengths) … Continue reading
Ten Convenient Beliefs In The Princeton Departments of English and Comparative Literature
Grok says: Princeton English and Comparative Literature (closely intertwined, with shared faculty, cross-listed courses, and joint theory requirements) represent the slickest, most polished version of elite humanities: rigorous historical coverage + high theory + aesthetic refinement, all delivered with Ivy … Continue reading
Purdue English and the Jurisdictional Wars: Convenient Beliefs in a STEM Empire
The “convenient beliefs” idea comes from Stephen Turner’s good bad theories framework. Beliefs function as social glue, status signals, and institutional maintenance tools. They coordinate hiring, teaching, grants, and self-image while explaining little about reality. Purdue English is a clean, … Continue reading
Ten Convenient Beliefs In The UC Berkeley Departments of English and Rhetoric
Berkeley’s English and Rhetoric departments share faculty, seminars, and a creed. English runs hard toward postcolonial, ethnic, and identity-centered literature. Rhetoric runs toward Continental philosophy, critical theory, and the analysis of power. The two read literature and rhetoric as tools … Continue reading
The Canon and the Press: Susanne Klingenstein’s Institutional History of Jewish Literary Power
Susanne Klingenstein was born in 1959 in Baden-Baden, Germany, and grew up immersed in German literary culture. Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Karl Kraus,and Arthur Schnitzler were her formative admirations. She studied at the universities of Mannheim, Heidelberg, and Stirling in … Continue reading