Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
@llassabe.bsky.social
3.9K followers 3.5K following 360 posts
historian, author, speaker, podcaster Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars (UNC Press, 2023) 🎧 American Campus Podcast https://linktr.ee/llassabe
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llassabe.bsky.social
If you're reading this please go to the library right now and ask to plumb the campus archival holdings. Chances are 60+ years ago a white guy wrote A History of This University and it's awful but it's a jumping off point for primary sources
Reposted by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
llassabe.bsky.social
Can I buy shares of my own debt? Can I be both the investor and the investment 😭
llassabe.bsky.social
“high-performing portions of the government’s portfolio of student debt”
Reposted by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
michaelhobbes.bsky.social
We're getting a wave of articles that are like, "gee willikers it sure seems like the people who complained about 'cancel culture' for years really like canceling people."

Yes! This was extremely obvious at the time and a lot of us pointed it out!
washingtonpost.com
Some say canceling is an act of redress. Others blame it on a mob.

“People have used the word ‘cancel’ so loosely,” Ernest Owens author of “The Case for Cancel Culture,” said, “that everyone’s calling everything a cancellation.”
How cancel culture came for everyone
Few issues in recent years have united the American right as much as their professed hatred of cancel culture. That’s changing.
www.washingtonpost.com
Reposted by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
tressiemcphd.bsky.social
People think they’re taking down a rich intellectual sinecure but they’re mostly terrorizing committed public servants who make $58,000 a year after 15 years of experience at a school that has to budget creatively so students can access textbooks.
emayfarris.bsky.social
This new column by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social makes me think about when I recently had to talk to the police for yet another safety plan, I tried to “lighten” the mood by saying that we all knew this wasn’t my first rodeo. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...
For at least the past 15 years, my colleagues in academia have grappled with angry letters to university officials for doing their jobs. They have weathered campaigns for their firing. They have contended with an internet army obsessed with doxxing them, their parents, their kids. I’ve been contacted by the F.B.I. more than once in my career. Not because I hold any important state secrets or know a biker gang but because one of my colleagues has lived with so much sustained harassment from right-wing “activists” that it has become a matter of federal concern. Watch lists (one of which was constructed by Kirk’s organization) do not distinguish between public intellectuals at wealthy enclaves and hoi polloi who teach popular classes at cash-strapped schools. In either case, an army of trained provocateurs stands ready to destroy their lives to prove their bona fides as conservative activists.
llassabe.bsky.social
Hey can anyone find one single example of this
Reposted by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
asheeshksi.bsky.social
Chris Rufo did this and was platformed as a legitimate authority on universities by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Screenshot of Chronicle of Higher Education interview with Chris Rufo
Reposted by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
bakerdphd.bsky.social
I'm gonna be saying "was silence not an option?" from now on
Reposted by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
kissphoria.bsky.social
you're telling me that 15K people weren't really replying to every cracker barrel twitter post with outrage
brenttoderian.bsky.social
“Cracker Barrell Outrage Almost Certainly Driven By Bots.”

“…the boycott was unlikely to be an organic grassroots response but a bot-assisted amplification seeded by meme/activist accounts.”

Via @gizmodo.com

In other words, we’re being manipulated.

Aggressively, constantly manipulated.
Cracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers Say
Doesn't that make more sense than lots of people caring about Cracker Barrel?
gizmodo.com
Reposted by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
edburmila.bsky.social
This policy is the ultimate expression of what is wrong with the last three decades of technocratic liberalism. It hands public money to bad private sector actors. It will win over zero of the reactionary voters it is supposed to mollify. It will massively annoy every other voter in the process.
Reposted by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
adriandaub.bsky.social
Remarkably, by the rules of the language game around campus politics, not having been in any way connected to a college since you last puked in a dorm common room 30 years ago, actually qualifies you as a keen critic of higher ed.
tlecaque.bsky.social
Douthat graduated from college--the last time he's been affiliated with a university--the year before I graduated from high school. His experiences are a private prep school and Harvard. Asking him to comment on higher education is like asking me to opine on the mechanics of space stations.
llassabe.bsky.social
Brian Kilmeade wants to euthanize the homeless.

Gavin newsom wants to clear their encampments.

Aesthetics 👏 matter 👏 in HOW you disappear the homeless. #voteblue
llassabe.bsky.social
I don’t want to hear things like, “we have three months left of the year”
llassabe.bsky.social
Unfortunately the Bieber song Daisies is such a bop
llassabe.bsky.social
Loved this conversation, thanks for sharing what goes on under the hood!
Reposted by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
tottencs.bsky.social
It was so lovely to chat with @llassabe.bsky.social! University presses are creative, resilient, mission-driven, and just one of my favorite things to talk about.
llassabe.bsky.social
So 90% of my followers appear to be anti-MAGA, anti-GOP, blue no matter who, “antifa” bots lmao

How are yall blocking bots