by Robert Jensen After finishing required coursework, Ph.D. students in most disciplines take preliminary (sometimes called qualifying) exams to demonstrate that they’re ready to begin independent dissertation research. Faculty members on a student’s exam committee sometimes discuss potential questions ahead of time with students. As a joke, I would tell graduate students in the School…

by Robert Jensen Conclusive evidence is in from new DNA tests: Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings. To put it more bluntly: The primary author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States raped one of more than 600 people he enslaved, starting when she was a teenager. Does that…

by Robert Jensen Many of the books that shaped my work as a professor, author, and activist came into my life during my first two years of graduate school (1988-90), the most exciting period of concentrated learning I’ve ever experienced. As I write in my new book, This I Don’t Believe: A Fulfilling Life without…

by Robert Jensen Most politicians pledge to work for the working class, or sometimes for working families, a less Marxist-sounding label. Meanwhile, scholars struggle to define the category. I won’t assess the political posturing or adjudicate definitional disputes, but my work experience—spanning six decades and a wide variety of jobs—illustrates why the claims of working-class…

by Robert Jensen Do universities need to foster more intellectual diversity among professors? Should there be affirmative action for conservative thinkers in disciplines such as sociology and social work? Asked less often, but just as relevant: Should business schools and economics departments hire a few socialists? This long-running debate intensified in Trump’s second term, as…

by Robert Jensen Cornelia Gipson is trying to understand the hold that whiteness has on white people. “I grew up black in Mississippi, and from the time I was 4, I knew I was black and what that meant,” she said. “How do white people come to understand they’re white? When did you first realize…

by Robert Jensen Caitlin Taylor believes that a sustainable food system needs “legible” infrastructure, which is why she proposes—not entirely in jest—building slaughterhouses next to farmers markets. Architects and engineers usually strive to make infrastructure invisible—so functional and reliable that we forget about the countless systems that undergird modern life. We turn on a faucet…

by Robert Jensen Bill Rees likes to say that ecological footprint analysis began with an epiphany—when he was 10 years old. Sitting down to lunch on his grandparents’ Ontario farm with relatives he had worked with that morning, the sweaty kid realized he had played a small part in raising everything on the table—beef, chicken, potatoes,…

by Robert Jensen Not so long ago, the conventional wisdom in most liberal/left circles was that people concerned about population growth tended to be racists, nativists, and eugenicists. And mostly old white guys, according to a leading UK environmental writer. “It’s no coincidence that most of those who are obsessed with population growth are post-reproductive…

by Robert Jensen Wes Jackson’s career demonstrates that sometimes the race goes not to the swift but to the unconventional, that the battle can be won not only by the strong but by the stubborn. Straight-A students don’t always lead the way. Jackson, one of the last half-century’s most innovative thinkers about regenerative agriculture, has…

by Robert Jensen Smart people sometimes say not-so-smart things about freedom of speech. Let’s start with Elon Musk, the boss at Tesla and SpaceX, and his often-quoted declaration that he is a “free-speech absolutist.” Whatever one thinks about Musk, he seems to be a smart person. But that’s a silly statement. After he bought Twitter…