Right wing money in academia is pervasive and influential. Libertarian-minded billionaires like the Kochs and their partners have funded scholars and think tanks across the US, and similar things go on in Canada too. The money shows us that the right spends it because they care about education. Maybe not in the classic way—higher learning, …
Programming note: It’s Major League Baseball postseason and Darts and Letters is (coincidentally) on a break this week. In honour of the playoffs, we’re running one of our favourite episodes — one fit for the season. America’s national pastime is being taken over by a woke mob and a global communist cabal. So say the …
There’s a foreign policy intellectual blob that serves as the architects for empire. They’re at academic departments, quasi-academic think tanks, and places like the RAND Corporation–famously lampooned in Dr. Strangelove as the BLAND Corporation. These boring calculator men are part of why we have forever war. These people are part of a long tradition that …
Canada’s federal election is over. And if you were expecting a boring, uninspired contest followed by a return to the status quo, you weren’t disappointed. Zombie politics shuffles along trailing dead ideas and dead dogmas. On this episode, host Gordon Katic sits down with independent journalist, author, and podcaster Nora Loreto for a wide-ranging conversation …
Canada’s 44th general election was a mess from the start. From wondering why it was called in the first place, to culture war wedge politics, the rise of the extreme-right People’s Party, and along to literal stone throwing–or gravel throwing, anyway. You might want to call that a new low. It’s definitely low. But it’s …
School’s back. Alongside the usual challenges of managing college and university life comes sorting out how to keep people on campus safe during the Covid-19 pandemic. Colleges and universities are trying to find their way forward after a rough 18 months, with more difficult times to come. But while the pandemic has affected higher education, …
Writing in 19th century Europe, Karl Marx was reflecting a time and place: Europe in the wake of the closing years of the Industrial Revolution. Marx himself, later in life, recognized that his crowning work, Das Kapital, had a limited scope, fitted for Europe but not for the rest of the world. In the 21st …
You can learn much about a media and political culture by examining when it panics, and who it panics about. And we’ve always panicked about video games, from the early arcades until this very day. Whether you are a prudish Christian conservative, or a concerned liberal-minded paternalist, demonizing video games has long been good politics. …
This week, Darts and Letters brings you a summer bonus episode with the host of one of our favourite podcasts, The Dig. Dan Denvir joins us to talk about his podcast, the place of academia and intellectuals on the left, radical media, ideas and political change, and more. Then, we air an extraordinary interview from …
Universities and colleges are often caricatured as hotbeds of radicalism. In reality, they’re institutionally conservative and elitist — especially Ivy League schools. What happens when folks push back against that? What happens when Black scholars, activists, and others demand better? On this summer bonus episode of Darts and Letters, we speak with Stefan Bradley, Professor …