Lauren Lassabe Shepherd

I promise to stop reposting SUNY P soon but a) I’m obsessed with this cover art, b) it’s about representing the (ahem) lumpenproletariat, and c) it’s available open access thanks to funding from Emory U, the author’s uni. Heavy on the Greimas and Jameson (complimentary).

Novartis settles with Henrietta Lacks' estate over use of her 'stolen' cells to advance medicine Novartis has settled a lawsuit by the estate of Henrietta Lacks that alleged the pharmaceutical giant unjustly profited off her cells, which were taken from her tumor without her knowledge in 1951 and...

[1] When bio-ethics are taught in Univ, the use of a woman’s cancer cells, in 1951 without agreement, is a significant example of unethical behaviour. Henrietta Lack’s cell line has been used for decades. A little justice is served & it’s something I worried about for years. We do…

It’s been two days and he has still not rinsed out the purple shampoo

Okay yall twisted my arm I’ll do it

Does anyone want an academics in the Epstein files episode with @andyhines.bsky.social

ONE LIKE and I’ll release it Sunday

Mumford banjos are the opposite of xanax???

‘Very Republican, very patriotic’: right-leaning civic centers now offer courses at US public colleges Republican lawmakers push for conservative professors to counter purported leftwing indoctrination in schools

Want to know more about the sweeping trend of state mandated taxpayer financed and hyper empowered civics centers, and the political project they embody, as in Ohio? See this excellent @theguardian.com article @osuaaup.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

The DEI Debacle BY NIMISHA BARTON Following the infamous “Dear Colleague” letter sent out by the Department of Education in February 2025, colleges and universities rushed to shutter diversity, equity, and inclusi…

📣📣📣 @nimishabarton.bsky.social

academeblog.org/2026/02/04/t...

Episode 123 -- Once Upon a Time at Bard College | In Bed With the Right Get more from In Bed With the Right on Patreon

Sorry this @inbedwiththeright.bsky.social episode is so late, but we went *deep* on this one! In "Once Upon A Time at Bard College" Moira walks me through one college president's relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, and what it says about sexual violence on campus. www.patreon.com/posts/episod...

They did not fully wash the purple shampoo out of this man’s hair

Students that have a red or a blue color wash over them mingle around a campus plaza.

Most Conservative Students Don’t Feel Persecuted on Campus

A new survey of college students contradicts Republican rhetoric that campus culture is hostile to right-wing views. https://bit.ly/4styRX5

#AcademicSky #HigherEd #EDUSky

If you give Einstein your credentials to log in, then it can access ALL of your campus portals: your financial accounts, transcripts, email, health records, &c. because all of that is under one umbrella. Literally the only way to your LLM is through your campus login. The security risk is massive.

Like, this was not pay. This is reimbursement of my own money that has already been taxed. Don’t make me sound like a TEA Party freak

what even is the fucking point

Getting 1099ed for travel reimbursement is wild though

🙏🙏🙏

Progressive origins of eugenics with Mark Torres Podcast Episode · American Campus Podcast · February 22 · 41m

Spend your morning listening to the brilliant @llassabe.bsky.social

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

It's going to require major work, so it won't happen until at least Summer, but I will be leaving Substack & building an independent site for American Vandal. The content will always be free, but I can only consider doing this thanks to patron subscribers who make it possible for me to eat the increased overhead. Paying for media you love frees media from the people who hate you. Fuck Marc Andreessen.

This was gonna happen sooner or later, but all of y’all who give me $5 a month made it sooner. Bless you.

Other fans of eugenics, Helen Keller! WEB DuBois! 😭😭😭

Progressive origins of eugenics with Mark Torres - American Campus Podcast A homegrown science.References and suggested readings:Mark A. Torres. 2025. Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics: Station of Intolerance. The History Press. Rebecca Brenner Graham. 2025. Dear M...

An update to this, Eleanor Roosevelt was indeed the First Lady when she accompanied Vassar students to tour a eugenics facility

www.buzzsprout.com/2396665/epis...

Just… comically racist

Students begin Covid compensation claim against 36 more universities It comes after University College London settled a claim from students there over lost learning in the pandemic.

Imagine this kind of student organizing against Ed Tech / AI.

“I lost out on learning! Relationships! Oh and all of my personal data, too!”

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Next on the chopping block: the Big Science Cartel

(NSF and the rest of the ahem, scientific deep state of child mutilators)

The Problem of Personhood Over the last twenty-five years, the concept of per-sonhood has become central to many contentious debates. Corporations have won free speech protections, as if they were individuals. The right to lif...

Next in the TBR pile

www.versobooks.com/products/306...

A stack of books on a desk. The books are as follows, by week they we read them. Week 2: Ball, Blake Scott. Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts. Oxford University Press, 2021. Week 3: Stein, Judith. Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies. Yale University Press, 2011. Week 4: Ansfield, Bench. Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City. Norton, 2025. Week 5: McKevitt, Andrew C. Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America. North Carolina University Press, 2023. Week 6: Baker, Erik. Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America. Harvard University Press, 2025. Week 7: Chatelain, Marcia. Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. Norton, 2021. Week 8: Shepherd, Laura Lassabe. Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America. University of North Carolina Press, 2023. Week 9: Brownell, Kathryn Cramer. 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News. Princeton University Press, 2023. Week 10: Black, Liza. Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941–1960. University of Nebraska Press, 2020. Week 11: Goodman, Carly. Dreamland: America's Immigration Lottery in an Age of Restriction. University of North Carolina Press, 2023. Week 12: Jones, Howard. My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness. Oxford, 2017. Week 13: Kamensky, Jane. Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below. Norton, 2024. Week 14: Renfro, Paul M. The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America. University of North Carolina Press. Week 15: Colby, Jason M. Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean's Greatest Predator. Oxford University Press, 2018.

My graduate readings this semester, minus Brownell's 24/7 Politics (Princeton has a silly desk copy system that I had a tough time navigating but enroute now). The course is recent US history.

Old Project, New Vehicle: Conservative Civics and Leadership Institutes in Historical Context illiberalism.org | Lauren Lassabe Shepherd discusses the upsurge in new civics and leadership institutes, and how they fit into older right-wing projects concerning education and American society.

www.illiberalism.org/old-project-...

Your Data Will Be Used Against You with Andrew Guthrie Ferguson - American Campus Podcast How colleges collect our data.References and suggested readings:Andrew Guthrie Ferguson. 2026. Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance. New York University Press.&...

A particularly urgent episode of @llassabe.bsky.social’s reliably good pod, featuring @profferguson.bsky.social.

Hired for his ability to assault journalists plus three pubs no one’s read

Sharing the other link to this article so you can see the linkcard

www.chronicle.com/article/a-mo...

Assetizing academic content and the emergence of the ‘assetizen’: education platforms, publisher databases, and AI model training - Higher Education Higher Education - Academic content, such as teaching materials and academic publications, has become an economic resource. This has occurred through assetization as the key economic regime in...

New OA article just out on "assetizing academic content" led by @jkom.bsky.social with me, @keanbirch.bsky.social & Klaus Beiter, exploring how academic materials are turned into value-generating digital assets by HE institutions, edtech platforms, and AI companies link.springer.com/article/10.1...