By John Croce-Renard · Monday, March 13, 2023 When the Supreme Court rules in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, it will surely declare that the use of racial preferences in higher education admissions violates the U.S. Constitution. There is some uncertainty about the precise shape its arguments will take, and their scope, but the basic outcome is clear enough. Here are seven reasons to welcome it from the standpoint of some traditional concerns of Telos.
First, a ruling against race-based affirmative action will diminish the material interests at stake in racial identity politics. It will thereby undercut the racialism that lies at the ideological heart of the liberal managerial establishment. Individual good intentions notwithstanding, the Tories of the managerial class use this insidious set of principles and rhetorical moves to justify their power and to bludgeon the working- and private sector middle classes.
Second, the ruling may enable colleges and universities to overcome the morally degrading culture of lies that the existence of racial preferences has spread throughout higher education, beginning in the elaborate charade that all applicants for admission or employment are judged by common criteria. It will help individual members of those communities to live in truth.
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By David Pan · Monday, November 28, 2022 Populism has now arrived in China. As opposed to the 1989 protests driven by students as well as an intra-government political struggle, the current unrest, while including students, has been driven much more clearly by a broader mass of people who have grown frustrated with the bureaucratic overreach of the zero COVID policy. With the largest and most comprehensive system of bureaucratically organized surveillance, management, and domination of the populace in the world, China has certainly been ripe for such populist revolt. While the original theory of the new class was developed by Milovan Djilas in order to explain state socialism in the Soviet Union, the populist reaction to the new class has up to now been associated mainly with liberal democracies whose state bureaucracies are still relatively undeveloped when compared to the Chinese version. The Chinese state receded somewhat during the reform and opening up period, but the rule of Xi Jinping, the growth of the surveillance state, and especially the zero COVID policy have led to new extremes in the level of new class management of the population. Moreover, the lockdowns and their economic effects have highlighted the divide between the new class and the broader populace. As one protester shouted to the police, the police are state functionaries with stable incomes while most of the people are dependent on the flourishing of a market economy that has been throttled by the COVID lockdowns.
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By Florindo Volpacchio · Tuesday, November 15, 2022 Characterizing a concept as a goal is a misleading way to approach a critique. At best, it tries to imply a teleological argument. (I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether that is a play on words.) In actuality here, it subsumes the normative argument under its instrumental implementation. As I noted in my previous commentary, the real story is being lost within the prism of an abstract liberalism that refracts the spectrum of colors back into a singular light. So let’s look at that light.
What is the goal of affirmative action? That isn’t really made clear by its critics. Like most cases in these situations, it becomes an all-encompassing buzzword to connote some kind of progressive agenda that they believe infringes on civil liberties. What is made clear is that they don’t like what is alleged to be its methods, in the case before us, racial classifications. But is this really what’s it all about, Alfie? There lies the rub. Those advocates who are prosecuting affirmative action before the Court, and those who cheer them on, are arguing for a decision that allows the justifiable use of racial profiles to infiltrate the admissions game. But before we let loose the dialectic of enlightenment, let’s get the story straight.
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By David Pan · Monday, August 29, 2022 Save 20% on the paperback edition of The Travails of Trumpification by purchasing it in our online store and using the coupon code BOOKS20 during checkout.
 The disagreement about the propriety of the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s residence reveals a fundamental divide over the proper role of the federal government. On the one hand, the defenders of the search have emphasized the rule of law and the idea that no one should stand above the law. From this perspective, Trump represents a danger to democracy itself, which the federal government is defending. On the other hand, for Trump supporters the search epitomizes the all-encompassing reach of the federal government into people’s daily lives and thus a further example of the erosion of freedom in the United States. The uncomprehending attitude of each side toward the other exemplifies the ways in which “the travails of Trumpification,” as described by Tim Luke, do not represent a passing phenomenon. As three recent reviews of Luke’s book emphasize, Trumpism is a complex phenomenon that is not just about Donald Trump. Populism predates Trump’s rise by more than a century, and the motivating attitudes and ideas will surely continue to shape American politics after he is gone. The focus on Trump the man has led, for both supporters (not least Trump himself) and detractors, to a failure to address the broader currents that he has been able to mobilize.
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By David Pan · Monday, August 8, 2022 Dear Telos readers,
I’m excited to invite you to attend a special event at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in New York City on October 14–15, 2022, to celebrate the 200th issue of Telos, which will be appearing in Fall 2022. You can register for the event at the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute website, at www.telosinstitute.net/telos200. The event will take place from 3 pm to 6 pm on October 14 and from 9 am to 5 pm on October 15. The admission is $100 for both days and includes a reception on October 14 and lunch on October 15.
The event will feature Joel Kotkin (author of The New Class Conflict) and Michael Lind (author of The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite) as keynote speakers, who will discuss the new politics of class.
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By Telos Press · Tuesday, December 28, 2021 Today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast features a panel discussion of Timothy W. Luke’s new book, The Travails of Trumpification, published earlier this month by Telos Press. The discussion, in which Tim is joined by David Pan, Fred Siegel, and Mark S. Weiner, covers a range of topics and questions, including the meaning and origins of “Trumpification”; Trump’s contempt for democratic liberal norms; the emergence of a progressive habitus in the early twentieth century; the critique of liberal managerialism; the rhetoric of the “forgotten little guy” (à la Rodney Dangerfield); the purposeful use of ignorance to send up the degreed classes; the extent to which Trump emerged out of “Nixonland”; Trump’s undermining of the claims of scientific truth; the relationship of science to political interest, and how each should inform the other; the populist attack on the New Class; Trump’s elevation of individual winning over larger collective interests and the public good; the weakening of a rationalist epistemology on which democracy depends in favor of an ethos of pure power; how the Afghanistan withdrawal and the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated the public’s disdain for expertise; and how power might be shifted from the administrative state to the local level as a way of integrating all members of the public in political decision-making and thereby revitalizing citizenship. Timothy W. Luke’s The Travails of Trumpification is now available in our online store, where you can save 20% off the list price by using the coupon code BOOKS20.
Listen to the podcast here.
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