Daniel Bessner – The End of the American Century

0:00 The gigification of academia

8:26 Is education just another commodity?

18:14 What do historians do?

26:22 Daniel: The university system is an unregulated cartel

35:08 The liberalism (not the leftism) of the university

38:22 Using (and getting used by) new technology

43:19 An alternate history of global economic development

47:29 The end of the American century

54:27 Daniel’s critique of US support for Ukraine

Recorded February 7, 2023

Links and Readings

Daniel’s NYT op-ed, “The Dangerous Decline of the Historical Profession”

Daniel’s TGS mini-series, “Glenn Loury’s Intellectual Origins”

Francis Fukuyama’s book, The End of History and the Last Man

Daniel’s essay on Fukuyama for the Nation, “A Bad Breakup”

Adrianna Kezar, Tom DePaola, and Daniel T. Scott’s book, The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis’s book, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life

James Sweet’s column, “Is History History?”

Daniel’s Chronicle of Higher Education piece, “The AHA’s Mission Needs to Change”

Eugen Weber’s book, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914

Daniel’s podcast, American Prestige

Daniel’s Harper’s Harper’s piece, “Empire Burlesque”

Daniel’s New Republic piece, “Does American Fascism Exist?

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