Professors teaching about communism and socialism? Un-American! Here’s some cash to make sure the university is preaching the supreme American virtue: capitalism.

If you caught our joint episode with the In Bed with the Right podcast in May 2025, you heard me give the TLDR version of the story of pharmacy magnate Charles Walgreen and the University of Chicago. But the case deserves a full episode, which journalist Steven Melendez lays out for us here.

References mentioned this episode:

• Steven Melendez. August, 12 2024. Any questions for the pharmacist? Drugstore magnate Charles R. Walgreen’s anti-communist crusade. Chicago Reader.
• Follow Steven Melendez on Bluesky
• Our previous episode discussing Walgreen on the In Bed with the Right podcast

Support the show at patreon.com/americancampuspodcast

Get in touch. Want to request a topic or pitch an episode? Email Lauren at shephell@iu.edu

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on Instagram: @americancampuspod

Freshman hazing, a time honored tradition of (at least) 1,500 years.

References mentioned this episode:

• Hannah Skoda. 2025. Frying Pans, Limpets, Donkeys and Becs-jaunes: Thinking about Violence in Late Medieval Universities. Global Intellectual History.
• Hannah Skoda’s website
• Medieval Murder Maps
• Samantha Harvey. 2018. The Western Wind: A Novel. Penguin Random House.
• BBC’s History Extra Podcast ft. Hannah Skoda and Rana Mitter for “History Behind the Headlines” series

Support the show at patreon.com/americancampuspodcast

Get in touch. Want to request a topic or pitch an episode? Email Lauren at shephell@iu.edu

Follow American Campus Podcast:
on Patreon: www.patreon.com/americancampuspodcast
on Instagram: @americancampuspod

From Kant to CRT via Columbia and UC Irvine.

References mentioned this episode:

• The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 3rd edition. W. W. Norton.
• Miquel de Palol. 2023. The Garden of Seven Twilights. Translated by Adrian Nathan West. Dalkey Archive Press.
• PDF: Immanuel Kant. 1784. An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? 1992 translation by Ted Humphrey. Hackett Publishing.
• Join the Verso books Fredric Jameson reading group
• Jonathan Fine’s website: https://jonathanblakefine.com/
• Jonathan Fine on Twitter @jonathanbfine and Bluesky @jonathanbfine.bsky.social‬

Support the show at patreon.com/americancampuspodcast

Get in touch. Want to request a topic or pitch an episode? Email Lauren at shephell@iu.edu

Follow American Campus Podcast:
on Patreon: www.patreon.com/americancampuspodcast
on Instagram: @americancampuspod

On the eugenics origins of the IQ test and why we're still using it in 2025.

References mentioned this episode:

• Pepper Stetler. 2024. A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother's Reckoning with the IQ Test. Diversion Books.
• Pepper Stetler. May 8, 2025. Trumpian “Common Sense” and the History of IQ Tests. LA Review of Books.
• Michelle Adams. 2025. The Containment. Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North. Macmillan.

Support the show at patreon.com/americancampuspodcast

Get in touch. Want to request a topic or pitch an episode? Email Lauren at shephell@iu.edu

Follow American Campus Podcast:
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on Instagram: @americancampuspod

Sam Tanenhaus joins me for a deep dive into the college career of friend of the pod, William F. Buckley Jr., and his 1951 shot that fired the campus wars: God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of "Academic Freedom."

References mentioned this episode:

• Sam Tanenhaus. 2025. Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America. Penguin Random House.
• Sam Tanenhaus. 1998. Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. Penguin Random House. (Winner of the LA Times Book Prize and a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize!)
• Heather Hendershot. 2016. Open to Debate: How William F. Buckley Put Liberal America on the Firing Line. HarperCollins.
• Beverly Gage. 2022. G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century. Viking. (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, and LA Times Book Prize!)
• Stendhal. 1839. The Charterhouse of Parma.
• Norman Mailer. November 1960. “Superman comes to the supermarket.” Esquire.

Support the show at patreon.com/americancampuspodcast

Get in touch. Want to request a topic or pitch an episode? Email Lauren at shephell@iu.edu

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on Instagram: @americancampuspod

How does a librarian kill someone with a newspaper? This and other academic spycraft in Elyse Graham's Book and Dagger.

References mentioned this episode:

• Elyse Graham. 2024. Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II. Harper Collins.
• Elyse Graham’s website
• Elyse Graham’s Bluesky
• Michelle Young. 2025. The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland. Harper Collins.

Support the show at patreon.com/americancampuspodcast

Get in touch. Want to request a topic or pitch an episode? Email Lauren at shephell@iu.edu

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on Instagram: @americancampuspod

Richard T. Greener was the first Black graduate of Harvard College in 1870. Greener went on to be a professor, lawyer, dean of Howard University law school, diplomat, and a celebrated intellectual of the Reconstruction era. Christian K. Anderson takes us through Greener's remarkable career in academia and international politics.

Links to references in the episode:

• Christian Anderson. 2022. The forgotten impact of Harvard’s first Black graduate. Washington Post.
• Christian Anderson. 2020. What should replace Confederate statues? The Conversation.
• Katherine Reynolds Chaddock. 2017. Uncompromising Activist: Richard Greener, First Black Graduate of Harvard College. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Robert Greene II and Tyler D. Parry. 2021. Invisible No More: The African American Experience at the University of South Carolina. University of South Carolina Press.
• Eric Foner. 2014. Reconstruction, Updated Edition: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
• W. E. B. DuBois. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880.
• Javier Cercas. 2007. The Speed of Light: A Novel. Bloomsbury.
• Chip Kidd. 2008. The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters. Harper Perennial.
• Chip Kidd. 2009. The Learners. Harper Perennial.
• The Milgram Experiment
• Richard T. Greener website
• Christian Anderson’s website: christiankanderson.com
• Christian Anderson on Bluesky: @profgamecock

Support the show at patreon.com/americancampuspodcast

Get in touch. Want to request a topic or pitch an episode? Email Lauren at shephell@iu.edu

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Check out my interview with Sasha Lilley for Against the Grain podcast. We talk about Resistance from the Right, which you can grab a copy of here.

References mentioned this episode:

• Lauren Lassabe Shepherd. 2023. Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America. University of North Carolina Press.

Support the show at patreon.com/americancampuspodcast

Get in touch. Want to request a topic or pitch an episode? Email Lauren at shephell@iu.edu

Follow American Campus Podcast:
on Patreon: www.patreon.com/americancampuspodcast
on Instagram: @americancampuspod