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"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:
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- Robert Oscar Lopez: The Inconvenient Witness
- Two Ledgers: Decoding the Gurus and the Price of Talk
- The Pervert’s Progress: Costin Vlad Alamariu and the Making of Bronze Age Pervert
- Curtis Yarvin: A Life Against Democracy
- Mark Helprin: Against the Current
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- John T. Jost: The Psychologist of Acquiescence
- Strange Bedfellows in the Academy: Alliance Theory and the Straussian Schism
- Tournier on Desmond Ford
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- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
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Category Archives: English
After Suspicion – The Rita Felski Story
Rita Felski was born in 1956 and grew up in England in a lower-middle-class household with no strong national attachments. She has described feeling at home nowhere in particular, a sensibility that turns out to be structurally important for understanding … Continue reading
Posted in English, Frankfurt School
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The Porous Professor
Philosopher Charles Taylor (b. 1931) distinguishes between the buffered self that is insulated from the cosmos, from spirits, from meaning that imposes itself from outside and therefore experiences the world through a kind of protective membrane and the porous self … Continue reading
The Custodial Imagination
America has enjoyed real gains and suffered real losses as the result of opening up its English departments to non-WASPs. The gains are easy to talk about, the losses not so much. Who has had the courage to note the … Continue reading
Posted in America, Christianity, English, WASPs
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David Bromwich – Critic, Moralist & The Last Man Of Letters
Yale English professor David Bromwich belongs to a lineage that has nearly run out. He is an essayist-critic in the tradition of William Hazlitt (1778-1830) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), for whom criticism is a moral activity rather than a … Continue reading
Alliance Theory & The Custodianship Question
Custodianship Question in America Australia, New Zealand Europe Asia Canada, Latin America, Africa Different groups may have different interests, but all groups want custody of their own sacred stories. After Jews consolidated their position in the American History profession in … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory, English, History, Leo Strauss, Paul Gottfried, Susanne Klingenstein
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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
Posted in English, University of Chicago
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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
Posted in English
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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
Posted in English, Rhetoric, UC Berkeley
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