Journalism
Here are the essays I’ve written for various newspapers and magazines. If you’re a student, you have my word that, while I’m a political being, like you, with ideas and values and issues I care about, I will always do my best to rigorously support intellectual diversity in the classroom and on campus. I will always treat you with the fairness and respect you deserve as a person and a student, regardless of your political orientation.
2026
- “Social Justice Was the Humanities’ Bid for Relevance” — The Chronicle Review
2025
- “State Universities are Scrambling to Appease the MAGA Regime” — The New Republic
- “How MAGA Got a Texas A&M Professor Fired” — The New Republic
- “Rail vs. Trail is Not the Debate for Maine” — Portland Press Herald
- “Peter Thiel’s Twisted Vision for the Trump Presidency” — The New Republic
2024
- “Passenger Rail for Central Maine Should Be Taken Seriously” — Portland Press Herald
- “I Know Why College Grades Are Going Up” — The New Republic
2023
- “WVU is Everything That’s Wrong with Higher Education” — The New Republic
- “Are AP Classes a Waste of Time?” — The New Republic
- “We Choose to Live with Dangerous Roads” — Waterville Morning Sentinel
- “College Students are Tired of Being Treated Like Employees” — The New Republic
2022
- “Cancel Culture Did Not Stab Salman Rushdie” — The New Republic
- “The Humanities are Facing a Credibility Crisis” — The Washington Post
2021
- “Have Founders of University of Austin Been in the Classroom?” — The New Republic
2020
- “Watching Netflix with Connie and Emma” — The Rambling
- “The Biggest P.C. Police are the Actual Police” — The Washington Post
- “Higher Ed is Not a Zero-Sum Game” — The Chronicle Review
2019
- “Anatomy of a Successful Campus Talk” — Guernica
- “Threat to Free Speech on Campus Isn’t Coming from the Left” — The Washington Post
- “Data at the Dawn of the Anthropocene” — The Brooklyn Rail
- “Centering the Humanities” — Inside Higher Education
- “We Don’t Need a Scapegoat to Talk About Values in Higher Ed” — Academe Blog
- “The University is a Ticking Time Bomb” — The Chronicle Review
- “What Does the ‘IDW’ Know About the Enlightenment?” — Everyday Analysis
- “Colleges Say More Teaching is Better; They’re Wrong” — The Chronicle Review
- “4 Academic Fashion Tips You Should Know” — Stylish Academic
- “How Blind Reverence for Science Obscures Real Problems” — The Washington Post
- “Finding Genres of Revolution in the Classroom” — Age of Revolutions
2018
- “Lies About the Humanities” — The Chronicle Review
- “Postmodernism Didn’t Cause Trump; It Explains Him” — The Washington Post
- “Steven Pinker Gets the Enlightenment Wrong” — Vox
- “Nick Isgro Doesn’t Get to Pick Who His Constituents Are” — Bangor Daily News
- “Are Liberal Colleges Creating a Free Speech Crisis?” — NBC News
- “Political Correctness Has Run Amok on the Right” — The Chronicle Review
2017
- “Why Not Social Reading?” — Ploughshares Blog
- “The Decline of Debate on College Campuses” — The New Republic
- “The Use of Dubious Science to Defend Racism is as Old as the Founders” — NBC News
- “Mary Chudleigh and Roy Moore” — Ploughshares Blog
- “The Problem with ‘Taking Offense’” — Academe Blog
- “When Scientists Study Novels” — Ploughshares Blog
- “What Stunts Like Yiannopoulos’s ‘Free Speech Week’ Cost” — The New York Times
- “The Self-Made Heir” — Ploughshares Blog
- “Offense of the Humanities” — The LA Review of Books
- “Trump, Transphobia, and the Lessons of the Argonauts” — Ploughshares Blog
- “Spying on the Rich in Crazy Rich Asians and Moll Flanders” — Ploughshares Blog
- “How the Right Stifles Speech with Threats and Violence” — The New Republic
- “Why Colleges Have the Right to Reject Hateful Speakers” — The New Republic
- “The Myth of the Marketplace of Ideas on Campus” — The New Republic
- “Advice for My Conservative Students” — The New York Times
2016
- “The Ongoing Ride of Don Quixote in American Politics” — The LA Review of Books
- “The Myth of the Liberal Echo Chamber on Campus” — The New Republic
- “How to Fix Our Toxic Debate About Political Correctness” — The New Republic
- “Are Ph.D. Students Irrational?” — The LA Review of Books
- “I’m Not a Student, I just Look Like One” — The Chronicle of Higher Education
- “The Free Speech Charade” — The New Republic
- “The Republican Establishment’s Donald Trump Delusions” — Salon
- “What the P.C. Left is Doing Wrong in Language Debates” — The New Republic
- “Violence, Fascism, and the Real Assault on Free Speech” — Salon
- “The Big Millennial P.C. Lie and the Myth of Campus Intolerance” — Salon
- “How the Microscope Redefined the Fact” — The Atlantic
- “College Students Aren’t ‘Cuddly Bunnies’” — The New Republic
- “Paul Ryan, Gun Control, and the Politics of Self-Interest” — Salon
2015
- “Oberlin’s Food Isn’t Cultural Appropriation” — The New Republic
- “Trump Sets the First Amendment on Fire” — Salon
- “America’s Real-Life Dystopia” — Salon
- “Ben Carson Wants a Safe Space” — Salon
- “Carson and O’Reilly are the Real Intolerant Speech Police” — Salon
- “Cucks, Wimps, and Feminazis” — Salon
- “Shkreli and Trump Deserve Each Other” — Salon
- “Note to ‘A Socialist at Liberty U’” — The Atlantic
- “The New Right-Wing College Lie” — Salon
- “The Trigger Warning Myth” — The New Republic
- “Fact-Checking Bill O’Reilly” — Salon
- “The Right’s Terrified to Talk About Race” — Salon
- “Bigoted Caitlyn Jenner Coverage Says it All About Today’s Hypocritical Right” — Salon
- “Students Need Trigger Warnings; Professors Do Too” — The New Republic
- “Scott Walker’s Destructive War on Education” — Salon
- “Racism’s Sinister Word Games” — Salon
- “Jon Stewart’s Brilliant Obscenity” — Salon