Cover reveal. It's about how & why colonies/states controlled international & domestic migration until 1888, why in the late 19th c the feds took over, & what it was like for politically disfavored groups to live under that arrangement of power. You can't understand voluntary migration history 1/

One hundred times over, this. I'm all about reading great books, and no one should assume they amount to some kind of indoctrination program. The point is to get students thinking about the big questions, which is what these books excel at. Every college student deserves this.

The administration is suing a professional jazz musician . . . for $1 million. Maybe Miles Davis was a millionaire? The rest of millionaire jazz musicians can be counted on one hand. Maybe they'll confiscate his piano in their effort to "defend the arts"?

Yes, this!: "this isn't a crisis in teaching; it's an attack on learning" I'm finding that I don't have just to change assignments. I have to **abandon my entire teaching strategy**, which has always been built around scaffolded independent projects across the semester.

Big "yes" to this, which I sketched in my last book. Pleonexia (insatiable greed) is relentless for its victims. The Book of Ecclesiastes offer a lovely metaphor for this -- "chasing the wind" (trying to grasp something that can never be attained).

Whereas this student is being empowered for making vague and unsubstantiated references to Biblical authority, I was once placed on TPUSA's Professor Watchlist for specifically citing Biblical authority in a paper outlining the Bible's concerns about concentrated wealth. You can't win.

Came across this tribute to my beloved dissertation supervisor online this week. It captures many of his attributes that made him a brilliant teacher.

Of all the issues raised about the concentration of wealth in my last book, I confess, this one had not occurred to me.

In Elites and Democracy, @hdrochon.bsky.social explains why elites always rule democracies—and why recognizing that reality can help us respond to the crisis of democracy today. Available January 6 (3 March UK pub). Preorder your copy today: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... #PoliticalScience

“We are hastening the transition to an economy where all the good jobs have been eliminated and you’ll need to fight others to get a job in a poultry factory, that is, if you want to eat!” Good campaign slogan, no?

Honored that the distinguished economist @brankomilan.bsky.social has included my book among his favorite reads in 2025!

We can have an infinitely better education environment (and a much cheaper one) if only we have the courage to expel this technology.

For those keeping score this holiday season.

As Tocqueville suggests in the Ancien Régime, the greater the perception of inequality, the more it stirs active resistance.

On the shelves at Vroman's in Pasadena!

Honored to be on @durlauf.bsky.social's list of "major inequality books" over the past three years, alongside works by @ingridrobeyns.bsky.social, Darrin McMahon, Daniel Markovits, and other luminaries.

@unlawfulentries.bsky.social doing important and highly relevant research on migration law.

"...the eventual plan is to close the library" #depaul #Chicao (Illinois) 📚📜 depauliaonline.com/80758/news/d...

Honored to be on @durlauf.bsky.social's list of "major inequality books" over the past three years, alongside works by @ingridrobeyns.bsky.social, Darrin McMahon, Daniel Markovits, and other luminaries.

I taught the Republic in both of my fall classes. It was not the wrong choice.

I would think restoring massive budget cuts to the library would do much more to achieve R1 status (declared justification of this cash grab) at my Alma mater than cozying up with our data overlords. But what do I know about research???

My paper with Shlomo Yitzhaki whose work and life we shall celebrate on May 20, 2026 at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Decomposing World Income Distribution: Does the World Have a Middle Class? Review of Income & Wealth, 2002. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Love that some publishers still require a fax in order to place an order for desk copies!

Tonight at Union Station—this show is always a blast!

New podcast interview about my @princetonupress.bsky.social book, The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx, with Will Li at The Missing Piece.

New podcast interview about my @princetonupress.bsky.social book, The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx, with Will Li at The Missing Piece.

The East India Co., the Luddites, Marx/Engels, Henry George, Karl Polanyi and more--all in 28 minutes! I was thrilled to be invited on the excellent @econofact.bsky.social podcast to speak about how my book, Capitalism and Its Critics, relates to current debates. econofact.org/podcast/capi...

Former Indiana governor says what literally every professor in America can confirm: most of what happens at universities is good stuff. We can all find some disagreement with what some are doing, but they largely deliver on what they promise. But so much easier for people to image them as the enemy.

This is pretty much the story of every immigrant family I know in the States. (Maybe not the part about being a world-leading medical specialist in every case, but certainly in their contributions in myriad ways to their new countries.)

My piece for the Institute of Art and Ideas from earlier this year is back in circulation for the holidays.

In spite of myself, I've written a response piece. Watch this space in due course . . .

Let me tell you a story. Perhaps you can guess where this is going... though it does have a bit of a twist. I was poking around Google Scholar for publications about the relationship between chatbots and wellness. Oh how useful: a systematic literature review! Let's dig into the findings. 🧵

Has the Evanston parks department been seized by Kristi Noem???

Nobel Committee should declare the winner of the World Cup.

1) New piece from Donald J. Boudreaux on inequality. Don't have time to respond to this right now. But there he makes some pretty contestable points. . . .

For those keeping score . . .

I just published a Cambridge Elements that offers a critical overview of recent work in epistocracy, Confucian meritocracy, and democratic theories of meritocracy. Free to download for the next two weeks. URL: t.co/Z5BOYrCRGF.

This is not a sustainable business model for musicians, suffice to say. When I was in college, gigs usually paid $100-$200, enough to pay my rent and buy groceries. In 2025, gigs still pay the same (unadjusted for inflation). For professionals, the album sales helped. Streams not so much.

I'm a bit overwhelmed that my alma mater's alumni magazine has decided to do a feature on me with a focus on my recent @princetonupress.bsky.social book. I'm sure there are at least 50,000 TCU alumni living more interesting lives than I am, but this is nevertheless a real (and unexpected) honor.

I'm not opposed to going full Plato on these matters (abolition of property for rulers), but would settle for blind trusts for all of them.

One of the best pieces you'll read on AI's existential threat to education. Highlight here is its emphasis on the complicity of university administrators in this fiasco. Any respectable president or chancellor would have called for Congressional hearings for this being unleashed with no forethought.

This year, universities are giving $228 million to football coaches who failed at coaching football so that they won't coach football anymore.

The celebrated Hobbes scholar, A.P. Martinich, has created a Substack -- and has insights on the administration's approach to national defense.

Per the flowchart, because Thucydides is not *necessary* for an ancient political theory course, he MUST be removed from the syllabus. Also, there is no single Shakespeare play that MUST be in a Shakespeare seminar. So all the Shakespeare plays must be removed from the Shakespeare syllabus. Right?

This is surely insane on every dimension. But beyond the obvious authoritarianism is the fact that this would require a massive administrative expansion to manage the campus censorship offices.

Now in #paperback, Melissa Lane's Of Rule and Office is a constitutionalist reading of Plato’s political thought. Read a free preview: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb... #Philosophy #Plato

Join @jgordonwright.com, @jbsinger.bsky.social, me, and the rest of the guys Thursday evening at Evanston Pour for our annual holiday show. Playing all the seasonal favorites!

Went looking to the @nytimes.com for a story about its deal with the federal government. Found this instead. There's an even better story to be reported on what connects the new stadium with the government settlement. Hint: I'd start by interviewing trustees.