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By the sound of it, the University of Michigan’s seeming about-face on DEI has the potential to be a drastic change for the better—but right now it’s only a distant potential. The university has been obsessed with DEI for a long time, and any serious shift in its approach will require a profound cultural and ideological change.

What we now call wokeness and DEI erupted on the public scene sometime around 2014, perhaps linked to the race riots emanating from Ferguson, Missouri. But for those of us connected to America’s institutions of higher learning, this progressivist view of social life has been around for quite a bit longer, percolating in academia among radical thinkers at least since the 1970s.

I was introduced to the now-familiar conceptual architecture of DEI in the middle of my time as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was at U-M when woke was taking root.

In the fall of 2006, I participated in the university’s Program on Intergroup Relations. I learned about social identities, privilege, intersectionality, marginalized groups, systemic oppression, etc. It was all so faddish and intellectually shallow. Even as an undergraduate, I didn’t find these all-encompassing doctrines compelling. But it was evident many of my peers did.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the most popular poet in American history. As Dana Gioia writes,

His work commanded a readership that is almost unimaginable today even for best-selling novels. In terms of their reach and influence, Longfellow’s poems resembled studio-era Hollywood films: they were popular works of art enjoyed by huge, diverse audiences that crossed all social classes and age groups.

Longfellow published “Paul Revere’s Ride” in the Atlantic Monthly in January 1861 (when the magazine was still highly respectable). Few Americans remained who had a living memory of the American Revolution. With his poem, he succeeded in preserving part of that heroic memory in verse for many generations to come, the way Homer did for ancient Greeks or Shakespeare for Englishmen in more recent times. 

It wasn’t just for future generations that Longfellow wrote. His own generation faced the coming of the country’s great crisis, the Civil War. All his readers would have heard in this poem the appeal to the courage and spirit of the Revolution, on which America must always call when a crisis comes. Millions of Americans still know lines of the poem by heart. It does us good to know them.

New York City is getting all the attention–much deserved–for the breath-taking success of congestion pricing.

Speeds are up, congestion is down, there are fewer crashes, less noise, more people on the streets and better business.

But congestion pricing also works in much smaller metro areas, and doesn’t depend on big investments in transit to work wonders

Louisville, Kentucky’s pricing of the I-65 bridges has reduced traffic by half on I-65, and lowered total crossings of the Ohio River by 15 percent.  

Residents of the suburban county North of Louisville now drive about 18 percent fewer miles per day than before pricing was implemented.

Traffic congestion, and bloated highway construction costs, are result of our failure to manage our roads with pricing

There’s a persistent myth in transportation policy that you can’t do pricing until you provide copious and comprehensive improved transit alternatives.  That’s bunk.  Pricing makes road systems more efficient by giving people incentives to drive less, particularly at peak hours.

Hello Readers, I have taken the last few days to rest after an intense 80 hour work week last week, having written four pieces totaling 16,000 words. I also felt that that run of pieces have sufficiently prepared readers for events this week that I didn’t need to rush out a follow up piece about the dollar. However, I thought it would be a good prelude to what I want to say to share- for the first time- the written version of a talk I gave at the University of Manchester nearly seven years ago. This talk, entitled “Monetary Sovereigns, Monetary Subjects and Monetary Vassals: A Spectrum Approach to Monetary Sovereignty and Our Dollar World”, lays out the basic building blocks of how I think about the international monetary order. This talk was written for an international public law audience, but I think its core points remain accessible. In any case, it will be an important touchstone to what I have to say in today’s context. For reasons of historical accuracy, I haven’t updated this talk with my current thinking or anything I’ve changed my opinion about. Nevertheless, I think it holds up quite well. Next week I will refocus on the payments crisis, with multiple pieces about what's going on in that Arena.

The Wrap with Amy Remeikis

In October 1980, before almost half the people voting in this election were born, Ronald Reagan posed what became one of the defining questions of modern politics.

Are you better off today than you were four years ago?

Reagan would go on to beat Carter and along with Margaret Thatcher, usher in the neo-liberal era to western democracies.

It’s been a standard in campaigns ever since.

Peter Dutton has revived it for the 2025 Australian campaign, asking voters to think about if  they are better off now, than they were three years ago.  He has been deploying it with increasing frequency (with four references in the most recent leaders debate alone) confident that the retrospection will fall his way, because the rear vision mirror is always a safer bet for a politician than the windscreen.

But it’s the wrong question.  It always has been.  In this current context, the question is asking you what?  Are you better off now than you were before a global pandemic rocked your entire foundation? Are you better off than before you survived the global inflation crisis that followed that pandemic? Are you better off than before you watched Israel carry out a genocide against the Palestinian people while your leaders pretend it’s not only not happening, but they have no role to play in it?

Are you better off than before  Donald Trump was elected? Were you better off before you saw the worsening impacts of climate change continue to devastate communities and the planet?

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

Future-Maxxing | The Roundtable Ep. 263

ABC News reports that both the Government and Opposition have sounded out independent MP Andrew Wilkie and Centre Alliance MP Rebekha Sharkie as potential speakers in the next parliament.

If it is a minority government, losing a government MP to the speaker position could hurt – giving a crossbencher the role helps the government numbers.

But it would also be consistent with longstanding practice in the UK, and more recently in South Australia.

Every Australian parliament – federal, state and territory – has had a speaker from a party other than the one in government at some point.

The speaker is responsible for keeping order in the lower house and defending the house’s rights and privileges. They also share responsibility for the security, upkeep and functioning of the parliament.

The first speaker of the House of Representatives, Sir Frederick Holder, resigned his party membership upon election to the role in 1901, following the British tradition of an independent speakership.

After he died in office, that tradition was abandoned until 2011 when the Gillard government elected Coalition MP Peter Slipper to the speaker’s chair.

Intending to revive the independent tradition, he resigned his party membership – but was replaced as speaker by Labor’s Anna Burke a year later.

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss the second leaders’ debate, the major parties’ housing policy announcements, and the two big elephants in the room: negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 17 April 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

Follow all the action from the federal election on our new politics live blog, Australia Institute Live with Amy Remeikis.

Order ‘After America: Australia and the new world order’ or become a foundation subscriber to Vantage Point at australiainstitute.org.au/store.

Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute and Centre for Future Work // @grogsgamut

Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek

Show notes:

The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it. To permit such officials to freely “annul the judgments of the courts of the United States” would not just “destroy the rights acquired under those judgments”; it would make “a solemn mockery” of “the constitution itself.” United States v. Peters, 9 U.S. (5 Cranch) 115, 136 (1809) (Marshall, C.J.). — from Judge Boasberg’s opinion.

Today, Judge Boasberg issued a slightly complicated opinion and order regarding the Trump executive’s apparent contempt of court in obeying his orders regarding Venezuelans the executive surreptitiously captured and sent to prison in El Salvador. The complexity is actually brilliant.

Boasberg found that there is “probable cause” for finding Trump officials in criminal contempt. Boasberg also set out a procedure for eventually reaching a criminal contempt judgment. That procedure ensures due process for any Trump official fined or jailed while keeping the public spotlight on the Trump executive’s likely refusal to obey the court yet again.

Every nation has a story. Recently, the Washington Post described the Smithsonian Institution, with its 21 museums and 14 educational and research centers, as “the official keeper of the American Story.” What kind of story have they been telling about our country?

On March 27, President Trump issued an executive order arguing that there has been a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history” and promote a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” This “revisionist movement” casts American “founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.” A White House fact sheet calls for “revitalizing key cultural institutions and reversing the spread of divisive ideology.” Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, is tasked with leading the administration’s efforts. 

Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz