I wrote about Biden and the new book. As the reporting in "Original Sin" makes clear: this story is bigger than just the 2024 campaign. It was more than a year or two of decline. We need to confront the truth: Joe Biden never should have been president of the United States. 🧵

https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/1923381726409113776

So far, most discussion of the book has focused on incidents from later in Biden’s term and 2024 campaign: not recognizing Clooney, calling Sullivan “Steve.” But arguably the most damning new reveal came much earlier, during the 2020 campaign, when Biden was not yet president. 2/

It can’t be emphasized enough: wide swaths of the academy have given up re ChatGPT. Colleges have had since 2022 to figure something out and have done less than nothing. Haven’t even tried. Or tried to try. The administrative class has mostly collaborated with the LLM takeover.

https://twitter.com/CatZhang1/status/1920285337663758433

Hardly anyone in this country believes in higher ed, especially the institutions themselves which cannot be mustered to do anything in their own defense. Faced with an existential threat, they can’t be bothered to cry, yawn, or even bury their head in the sand, let alone resist.

I spent years tutoring admissions; the ugly reality is that 4.0/1500+ SAT strivers are a dime a dozen. Elite admissions are like a nuclear arms race: a mindless fever to produce more and better products (whether bombs or elite students) knowing you can't possibly use them all.

https://twitter.com/felpix_/status/1905502809916596376

Higher ed simultaneously stokes this sick arms race (more extracurriculars! another 10 points on the SAT! another sport!) while perpetuating the fantasy that if you work hard you'll earn a spot. Then they turn around and brag "we could fill 6 class sizes of 1500+ SAT applicants!"

The movements/ideas that have been wildly successful in recent years provide a rubric for how to live your life. They offer rules for a chaotic world: wokeness, right-wing wellness, tech optimization culture all do this. That’s what the “we need a left Rogan” discourse misses.🧵 A huge part of the appeal of Rogan and the Rogan Extended Universe is all the motivational stuff and telling you what kind of man to be: watch sports, go to the gym, be curious, eat healthy, etc. It’s quietly about how to live. The show opener is literally “train by day…” 2/

One reason many good-faith left-liberals remain resistant to abandoning DEI is that they incorrectly see DEI as carrying on the legacy of the civil rights movement when in reality DEI has its true historical roots in stupid mid-century New Age therapies and HR compliance culture.

https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1882143755429683314

There’s a narrative that true DEI was captured by corporate interests and while this isn’t entirely wrong this argument also obscures the fact that there never was some pure version of DEI that later got corrupted. DEI is directly descended from idiotic mid-century woo and HR BS.

I wrote about Joe Biden, who deserves much of the blame for Harris’ defeat. Biden likes to say he ran in 2020 to save democracy from Trump. By refusing to relinquish power until it was too late, he handed the country back to him on a silver platter. That will be his legacy. 🧵

https://twitter.com/theatlantic/status/1854243557827104860

During his 2019 run, Biden heavily implied to his advisers and to the public that he would be a one term president. At the time, those closest to him realized that campaigning at age 81 would be out of the question. But in a Shakespearean fit of hubris, Biden changed his mind. 2/

I wrote about the question on everyone’s mind: are black men really going to vote for Donald Trump? 

White Democrats imagine minorities as half-saints, half-superheroes who they team up with to fight fascism. But the pesky truth is many minority men have Trump-ish beliefs.🧵

https://twitter.com/theatlantic/status/1852329788649730061

For almost ten years, liberal politicians and pundits have spotlighted and relentlessly attacked Donald Trump’s open bigotry. And remarkably, these efforts didn’t just fail. They coincided with black and brown Americans moving in ever greater numbers toward the bigot’s party. 2/

The AAUP statement insisting that mandatory DEI statements are compatible with academic freedom—and not political litmus tests—is ridiculous. DEI is not a neutral framework dropped from the sky, it’s an ideology about which reasonable people—including people of color—disagree. 1/ I have benefited from and support affirmative action, and there are some things that fall under the rubric of DEI that I agree with. But pretending that DEI is not a political perspective or framework—when only people of one political persuasion support DEI—is a flagrant lie. 2/

I wrote about the choice before Kamala Harris: to fully embrace the populist turn, continuing down the path beaten by Joe Biden, or to listen to the punditry and succumb to Obama nostalgia, re-upping the kind of technocratic centrism that voters have spent a decade rejecting. 🧵

https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/1825510556175921555

That Harris needs to moderate has congealed into common sense among the commentariat, who seem hell-bent on ignoring the last decade of American politics: the Sander insurgency, the Trump ascendancy, and Biden's presidency. The voters are done with neoliberal governance. 2/

The debates about whether the media is anti-Trump or wants him reelected mirror the debates about whether academia is liberal or conservative. Same basic dynamic: largely liberal workers nestled in institutions that often have financial incentives inimical to liberal aims. 1/ In academia's case, the right insists that academia is a "far left" hotbed, and they point to the ideas taught in certain departments + the relative absence of conservative profs. Meanwhile, those "far left" universities are debt machines that ruthlessly exploit their labor. 2/

It’s worth exploring why this line that dems are “anti-family” seems believable for so many people even as Republicans are doing shit like—literally—bringing back child labor. Vance has an interesting slip of the tongue here that sheds some light on what’s going on. Long 🧵

https://twitter.com/ajlamesa/status/1822665304964526243

When Bash hits Vance for calling Harris a “childless cat lady” even though she has step-children, he says “I criticized Kamala Harris for being part of A SET OF IDEAS…that is anti-family.” He’s using Harris as a vehicle for an *idea*: standing in for a type of dem we all know 2/

Dems got into a jam with Biden because journalists failed to exercise basic curiosity about the oldest President in history even as he visibly declined. Pushing Harris to outline a policy agenda isn’t “helping Trump.” That’s the same mindset that led to the mess with Biden. If journalists had done their jobs ages ago when Biden started showing obvious signs of being on the decline, and had done even a modicum of investigative reporting, we could have had a strong primary process. Journalists not doing journalism on dems they like is bad for dems!

I wrote about the woke style in American politics.

For months, talking heads have debated whether or not we are past so-called "peak woke." Many commentators seem to believe the hysteria of 2020 is settling into the rearview. But wokeness didn't peak, it became bipartisan. 🧵

https://twitter.com/theatlantic/status/1815775131794354239

If you see "wokeness" as a set of specific progressive beliefs about anti-racism, gender, masking, etc., it makes no sense to say the right became woke. But if you think of wokeness as a hermeneutics – a style of interpreting the political world – a different picture emerges. 2/

My layman's two cents re Kamala's pitch to America:

It's desperately important that her campaign understands that undecided voters don't believe the fascism talk. Those voters have a decade of evidence about Trump's inclinations. If they don't believe it by now, they won't. 1/ Kamala needs to campaign not on "threat to democracy" chatter – which undecided voters tune out – but actually provide a future-oriented vision for the country that offers voters a clear picture of what America will be like if she wins, that goes beyond "still a democracy." 2/

Here's a list of things Biden defenders expect us to believe. 🧵

1. The Biden we see on TV – rambling, exhausted, confused – has no relationship to the Biden that is running the country. He's too old to campaign vigorously but not too old to be president, which is less taxing. 2. Projecting competence and vitality on both the American and world stage is not part of the job of the president. It does not matter if he seems horribly frail and reminds you of a declining parent or grandparent. All that matters is that his administration gets results. 2/

The conversation we are currently having about affirmative action in faculty hiring is maddening. The critics of affirmative action are often racist, the defenders of affirmative action are often delusional, and both sides of this argument are full of gaslighting.

A 🧵.

https://twitter.com/matthewgburgess/status/1795497663778992572

One side wants you to believe that affirmative action means that white male academics can't get jobs and that minorities who get jobs are less qualified or unqualified. That's a lie. White men are still getting tenure-track jobs. The minorities getting jobs aren't unqualified. 2/

Yesterday, the Newspaper of Record ran a piece about the victims of US nuclear testing. It focuses on the Americans — “downwinders" — who were irradiated by Cold War Era programs. But that piece neglects to mention the group most impacted by US nuclear testing.

Some history. 🧵 First, let me say: American victims of nuclear testing deserve better. I'm glad to see more attention given to downwinders and I don't think we need to play oppression olympics. However, the fact of the matter is that the main victims of US nuclear testing were not Americans. 2/

I wrote about the Bumble founder's dream of AI dating concierges.

We're entering a world of disabling algorithms: AI services that promise to empower us, but that actually make us anxious and inept, incapable of carrying out basic human activities sans algorithmic mediation. 1/

https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/1792922058994720811

Earlier this month, Whitney Wolfe Herd told an interviewer that she hoped that AI-enhanced Bumble would "actually teach you how to date," describing a future where your AI surrogate goes on dates with other AI surrogates so as to narrow down your dating pool to a few people. 2/

MIT recently banned diversity statements. People opposed to this move argue that diversity statements are not ideological litmus tests. But this argument plainly obscures the difference between "diversity," "equity" and "inclusion" as VALUES, and DEI as a packet of ideologies. 1/ I think diversity, equity, and inclusion are important. My syllabi and approach to the classroom reflects that. (Many of you would find them very "woke"). Anyone who is not committed to cultivating a classroom where everyone can learn is not qualified to be a professor. 2/

I wrote about the crackdown on campus protests.

Universities like Columbia, Cornell and Emory trade on Vietnam Era protests to market themselves to student activists. Protest is part of their brand and sales pitch. Now they're punishing students for taking them at their word. 🧵

https://twitter.com/theatlantic/status/1786013284178460826

I'm disgusted by universities' draconian response to peaceful protests and their efforts to sanction legitimate political speech. Reasonable people can disagree about the protesters' message or strategy.

What is not debatable is that these universities are mired in hypocrisy. 2/

I’m horrified by the events at NYU and Columbia. The naked, fluorescent hypocrisy of institutions that have spent the last four years bleating about anti-racism and police reform sending in cops in riot gear to round up students the moment it’s convenient is appalling. 1/ Civil disobedience comes with consequences. My view isn’t that the police can never be called on students in any situation. This is about reckoning with the fact that elite higher ed stands for nothing, its values are for sale and determined by sticking a finger to the wind. 2/