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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:
- Richard Nisbett: The Man Who Measured the Insult
- Katharine Weber: A Life
- Ayalet Waldman
- Steve Stern and the Resurrection of the Pinch
- Diana Spechler – Going Off
- Leora Skolkin-Smith
- Margot Singer
- Andrea Seigel: The Sideways Career
- Laurie Gwen Shapiro
- Robert Anthony Siegel: The Education of a Criminal’s Son
- 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
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
Yale’s English Department & The Culture of Discipline
Tenured full professors, the Director of Graduate Studies, the Department Chair, and the senior hiring-committee gatekeepers at the Yale English Department do not compete for authority by saying they want power. They compete by invoking languages of Close Reading Excellence, … Continue reading
Robert Pape, Jacob Siegel, Edward Fishman & The Pantomime Of Profundity
University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, Tablet magazine essayist Jacob Siegel, and Chokepoints author Edward Fishman do not compete for authority by saying they want status. They compete by invoking the languages of empirical rigor, regime-level historical theory, and … Continue reading
The Peculiar Quality Of Jacob Siegel’s Pantomimed Profundity
Most pundits are like Jacob Siegel in their production of useless pseudo-profundity but there is something uniquely off-putting in Siegel’s neediness. Most status-anxious writers are anxious about a single audience. The populist wants respect from the masses. The academic wants … Continue reading
Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare
Elites loved this stupid 2025 book. Amazon says: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic story of how America turned the world economy into a weapon, upending decades of globalization to confront a new authoritarian axis—Russia, China, and Iran. “Deftly … Continue reading
Jacob Siegel and The Information State
Jacob Siegel’s earlier work had a characteristic sound. It strained. It reached. It dressed simple observations about power in baroque scaffolding and then performed anxiety about whether the scaffolding was sufficiently distinguished. His 2016 profile of Paul Gottfried did not … Continue reading
Columbia University and the Logic of the Crisis Machine
Presidents, trustees, provosts, and senior deans at Columbia University do not compete for authority by saying they want power. They compete by invoking languages of In the Nation’s Service and in the Service of Humanity, Academic Freedom, Moral Clarity, Equity … Continue reading
Princeton University and the Logic of the Survival Machine
Presidents, trustees, provosts, and senior deans at Princeton University do not compete for authority by saying they want power. They compete by invoking languages of Princeton in the Nation’s Service, Lux et Veritas, Academic Freedom, Excellence in the Service of … Continue reading
UCLA and the Logic of the Three-Organism Machine
Deans, department chairs, and senior faculty at UCLA do not compete for authority by saying they want power. They compete by invoking languages of Serving the Public Good, Equity and Excellence, World-Class Research for California, Health Equity for Los Angeles, … Continue reading
Academic Life as a Mad Hazard: Contingency, Selection, and the Illusion of Merit
Academic life is a mad hazard. Stephen Turner is not being colorful. He is stating a structural fact. Careers, ideas, and entire disciplines develop under conditions where outcomes depend on timing, networks, institutional moods, and small accidents that could easily … Continue reading
American Sociology and the Logic of the Impossible Science
American sociologists do not compete for prestige by saying they want power. They compete by invoking moral languages that frame their claims as advancing scientific rigor, pursuing social justice, defending academic freedom, producing public sociology, or serving the common good … Continue reading