When the New York Times launched its 1619 project last year, it sought to reframe the country's history
by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans
at the very center of our national narrative.
What began as a series of articles and commentaries in The Times' magazine, had morphed into a collection
of lesson plans for elementary and high school students, provoked an immediate controversy.
Five of the nation's most eminent academic historians co-signed a letter to The Times describing the project
as partly misleading and containing factual errors.
And Northwestern University Professor Leslie M. Harris revealed that she had been a fact-checker on the series,
and that her warnings of a major error of interpretation had been ignored. But Harris also took detractors
of the 1619 project to task for misrepresenting both the historical record and the historical profession,
writing that the attacks from its critics are much more dangerous than The Times's avoidable mistakes.
Enter Philip W. Magness, an economic historian of research fellow at the American Institute
for Economic Research, and the author of a new series of essays on the 1619 project. Though Magness has
praised aspects of the series, he says that the project's editor, Nicole Hannah Jones, is guilty of blurring lines
between serious scholarship and partisan advocacy, and he's called for the retraction of an essay in the series
by Princeton Sociologist Matthew Desmond, which was headlined, "If you want to understand the brutality
of American capitalism you have to start on the plantation."
I spoke with Magness from his office in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, about what The Times gets right
and wrong about US history, capitalism and slavery, Abraham Lincoln's legacy,
and why interpretation of American history matters in contemporary society.
Phil Magness thanks for talking to Reason. Thanks for having me.
Let's start out the project, it's a
collection of essays that you've been
writing since the 1619 project came out
you can get it at IIER's website
what is the what's the basic nub of your
critique of the 1619 project?
Well I'd say the the impetus for doing this
project was really taking a look at the
reaction that was coming out of the
16:19 project when it was published back
in August of 2019 and here's a very
worthwhile topic that the New York Times
set out to investigate with looking at
the history of slavery contextualizing
that in American Life all the way from
they go basically back to Jamestown
Virginia and trace it all the way up to
today which i think is a very worthwhile
story that needs to be told and quite a
bit of the content of the project did
that admirably but what immediately
concerned me about it was the heavy
ideological flavor that was inserted
into several of the essays and
particularly the historical pieces and
their discussion of slavery and that
ideological flavor was was almost
over-the-top anti-capitalism
there's no so I point to the matthew
desmond essay in particular and that's
kind of the you know i wouldn't say it's
the only thing but it's it's a main part
of you know what you find problematic
about this series he is can you explain
a little bit about what what is his
basic argument and what does it get
wrong about the role of capitalism and
slavery yes so Desmond's argument is
basically an origin story he's trying to
claim that the origin of American
capitalism and with that the Industrial
Revolution everything that we've seen in
terms of American economic growth from
about the 19th century to the present is
derivative of and directly connected to
the legacy of slavery another way most
famously he talks about how you know
double book double entry bookkeeping
accounting on the plantation gives rise
almost to a be literally to microcell
Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that it's
all this continuous privation that is
that is capitalist in nature and it
started on a slave plantation and it's
in you know office suites right now yeah
basically an origin story and that's
almost a direct quote from the essay he
says that we can trace from the plant
books in the early 19th century to
Microsoft Excel today right and you know
among other errors I mean he seems to
believe that double-entry accounting
started in the antebellum South what
what are its origins and why does that
kind of detail matter in this this is so
much so historians of accounting I know
there's a very dry subject area but that
actually goes back to late medieval
Italy the Italian city-states that were
some of the early banking hubs of the
European market exchange started to
develop these techniques as a as a way
to do their business and this is
something that evolved over centuries of
time long before the slave trade ignites
in the Western Hemisphere long before
the plantations are adapting some of
these techniques but one of the points
that I I keep making as a criticism of
the 1619 project they're telling this
origin story that links it to the
plantations but you can go to almost any
society from about the late Renaissance
to the modern age and you find
double-entry accounting taken place even
the Soviet Union is is using
double-entry accounting and we are
claiming that modern industrialization
came out of the Soviet Union so why the
play do I have to admit that a couple
years ago I interviewed one of the
members of Pussy Riot and she was
telling me I was like you know what was
your experience of you know communism
and she was like we didn't have
communism we had state capitalism and
she was saying you know that I she was a
supporter of Bernie Sanders so her sure
is talking about how like you know what
they had in the Soviet Union was a
communism so maybe there's some point to
be said about that you talk about the
new history of capitalism is the
historical movement that Desmond and and
much of the part of the 16:19 project or
at least the part that deals with these
with you know from Jamestown and the
introduction of shadows slavery of you
know a blacks in through the Civil War
it rests upon this new interpretation
this new historical school what is the
the new historic history of capitalism
and why is that important
yes so the new history of capitalism was
a movement that emerged out of the u.s.
history profession mostly in the wake of
the financial crisis so you start seeing
its early origins around 2008-2009 and
what these are are a group of historians
mostly centered around the league Ivy
League schools that have attempted to
rewrite the history of the American
economy and capitalism in general from a
perspective that that really draws upon
a critical approach to the institution
of capitalism they play a lot of word
games in the way that they even define
the institution you have records of
interviews and articles that some of the
historians associated with this have
made where you've asked them to define
capitalism and they said well we can't
really define it but then in practice it
becomes capitalism as a stand-in for
anything and everything they dislike
about the economy so and you know one of
one of the main claims of the NHC school
or the new history of capital is school
capitalism school is that slavery was
absolutely the major economic activity
or rather that the productivity of
slavery accounted for 50% or even 80
percent of GDP in the and in the pre
Civil War United States why is that
wrong or had it how do we know that
that's wrong and what what you know and
none of none of this is to diminish at
all obviously the suffering and misery
and just the wrongness of slavery but
you know what what's going on here you
know I've referred to the new history of
capitalism as the new king cotton school
of history and that there in a way kind
of reviving an old argument that was
popular at the on the eve of the Civil
War and that was that cotton made the
world's economy turn cotton is so
centric that if you disrupt Plantation
slavery you disrupt this productive
process the world economy will grind to
a halt and we know the Confederacy kind
of built its foreign policy around this
argument it ends up being proven false
by the war itself what they have
believed and wrong well yeah the the
central claim of it was that cotton was
so essential to trade to finance to
manufacturing
to cross-atlantic transfer of goods
imports and exports that anything and
everything that you did in those
industries would be disrupted if the the
southern cocking supplied was cut off
and you get from this some of the new
history of capitalism authors in
particular there's one book by a Cornell
historian named bad Baptist called the
haft has never been told and he does
this weird back-of-the-envelope attempt
to account for how much cotton
production made up of GDP in the United
States before the Civil War and he comes
through these these steps of
calculations and basically concludes
that cotton made up half of the US
economy well the problem is he defied
all standard practices of how you do
national income accounts when he came up
with this so he double and triple counts
all the different stages of other types
of production some more realistic
economic historians approach the
calculating cotton share of the US
economy would probably put it out
between five and seven percent as
opposed to 50 percent so these are guys
that are basically reinventing their own
proprietary form of economic methodology
that's completely at odds with the field
itself coming up with this ostentatious
claim that just so happens to line with
this ideological depiction of cotton as
the centerpiece of the world economy
before the Civil War you know one of the
one of the kind of main lines of
argument in the book is that historians
are not very good economists right and
and also and I want to get to the flip
side of that which is that oftentimes
economists are not particularly good
historians and insider myself what what
is going on I mean it seems strange in a
world if any of us who have gone through
graduate school in the past 30 or 40
years knows that the you know the main
focus or or at least rhetoric and lip
service has always paid to the idea of
interdisciplinarity economics has become
one of the if not the dominant social
science one of the dominant ways of
gathering knowledge how are our
historians missing you know what's going
on what's the disconnect there well
that's the oddity of it because prior to
about 2010 when this literature burst
onto the scene it was actually fairly
common for historians and economists to
engage each other in the debate over
slavery economists camp came at it with
a very empirical data driven approach
this dates back to the late 1950s when
econometrics or they call it Clio
metrics of mind to history jumped into
the debate they they start to attempt
measurements of how profitable was a
plantation how efficient was plantation
production and they're bringing
accounting books to do this so this form
of the literature developed from the
late 1950s up until the present date
it's probably one of the dominant themes
of economic history it's something that
anyone that studies that field goes
through very intense debates over yet at
the same time there are historians that
focus more on narratives and archival
evidence and you know personal accounts
of what slavery was actually like have
delved into the same literature that
they do engage each other and from about
the 1970s to the late 2000s this was a
major recurring theme of historians
versus economists sometimes they're on
the same side sometimes they're it heads
with each other but they're very engaged
in the literature then this new history
of capitalism comes along and one of the
distinctive features is it has almost no
attention paid in it to anything that
existed prior to it you know it uses
Cleopatra --xx or it supposedly looks at
you know what counts payable and
accounts receivable and things like that
in the plantation to generate its
conclusions yeah I see more so with
cherry-picks from quite metrics it finds
bits and pieces of data that seemed to
fit this pre-existing story that holds
up cotton production is the centerpiece
of the world economy right and you know
obviously lurking
that's not even lurk I mean it's it's
it's openly discussed but a book like
time on the cross which came out in the
mid 70s and was kind of the high-water
mark of I mean it it helped change the
historiography of the South have salive
experience but at the same time that
which was written by Stanley Angermann
and Robert Fogel who ended up winning a
Nobel Prize in Economics it was partly
done as a demonstration project to show
how history could use economic analysis
and economic data to kind of understand
things better can you talk a little bit
about the argument that was going on in
time on the cross and how that kind of
just gets ignored in your reading by the
new history of capitalism historians
yeah so time when the cross comes out in
the early 1970s and it's a culmination
of a little more than a decade work this
clea metric work coming together we
really started about 1958 there were two
economists at Harvard Alfred Conrad and
John R Myer that published a famous
article in the journal of political
economy that says let's try and measure
the efficiency of the plantation and
this really challenged an older notion
of plantation economics that thought of
of the Old South has been kind of this
inefficient relic of an earlier feudal
stage of economic development that was
bound by its inefficiency to eventually
dissipate and what these clea nutritions
do and when Thurman and Fogel was they
they build the evidence together they
they actually show that slave plantation
systems were able to produce
economically profitable outputs that
would have sustained the institution
much longer than we actually realized
because of the civil wars disruption
right and and they were widely attacked
or critiqued at the time from you know I
their economic analysis was taken as
some kind of justification for slavery
or that slavery was a legitimate system
that isn't what they were saying
right right trying to show is that
absent some kind of massive disruption
whether it was legal or cultural or
martial slavery was not going to
disappear under its own inefficiency
yeah and you find that in especially
Fogel subsequent work now when they
publish time on the cross it is written
in a and sometimes very bombastic style
and in some of the cases that were
critiqued they overstated their evidence
even though they're actually trying to
bring new evidence to bear so it's not a
perfect work by any means but what you
find in their later work is a very clear
acknowledgment that yes this is a
horrific institution it's a it's
horrific economically and in its
physical presence its moral presence but
nonetheless we have to see how it
actually operates to understand the
wickedness of it so that that's very
clear in that literature and I think
some of the the more tempered historians
that engaged it realize that and realize
that even if they diverged in their own
interpretations this is a conversation
worth having but that's all flowing out
the window now part of part of it though
it I guess this shows up again in the
the new history of capitalism crowd is
that various historians started to say
well you know some slave or at least
some slaves kind of envision themselves
almost as wage laborers and a
competitive you know in a free labor
economy you know and there were stories
where slaves would hold out for higher
wages or better work situations and
things like that you know does that is
that part of what informs the
anti-capitalist bias that we're seeing
you know post you know in the past ten
years of history I think there is an
element to that behind the
anti-capitalist bias although we know
from Frederick Hayek he was writing in
the early 1950s he points out that there
is a pervasive anti-capitalist bias in
the history profession that existed back
then this is before time on the cross
this is before clea metrics so in some
ways I'd argue that it's even the it's a
residual that's carried over just taking
on a new form what is the you know what
what is the main reason for that why why
would historians you know be
anti-capitalist especially you know I
mean because there you know there's
people and we both know Deirdre
McCloskey for instance an economic
historian who you know makes a
persuasive case and has her life's work
is basically been to show that the rise
of industrial revolution and the
liberating effects of capitalism you
know helped free people not just from
drudgery and and disease and one
happened to be able to express
themselves and live in
in a varied world like why is that kind
of the bizarre outlier position as
opposed to the dominant one in the
history profession
yeah my own take on this is a
combination of being detached and
separated from economic methodology
these are scholars that really do not
have the even a basic functional
understanding of what capitalism is or
does and are certainly not informing
themselves we see that in the in the
example I gave with Ed Baptist and
basically reinventing GDP stats that's
not an ideological question that's a
methodological question and he's just
out Lynch he doesn't know what he's
doing so there's that element but I
think it also combines with just a
general left-of-center political
disposition that's existed in the
discipline for a long time of history
but has also gotten much more pronounced
in recent years of you know historians
do we've leaned politically to the left
so you combine that element of ignorance
with an existing political bias you
start to come at historical topics in a
way that confirmed that that existing
bias you start to look at instances of
slavery so wait a minute
that's capitalistic therefore slavery
was capitalism there for all my biases
against slavery against capitalism today
are confirmed in slavery and it's almost
you can argue I point out in the book
that many of the many of the
contemporary historians will talk about
income inequality of the Occupy movement
or something related to the financial
crisis or or moments that are taking
place right now and they kind of work
backward to say this all started with
slavery one of the ironies you pointed
out that you know in many ways these
guys are replicating the King Cotton
thesis which was actually a function of
the left it was people to face the
Confederacy defending slavery one of the
other you know kind of strange ironies
is that the you know it was slave owners
hated capitalism or rather slavery
apologists could you talk a little bit
about that and why that isn't you know
coming up more
as it should yeah so on the eve of the
Civil War probably the single most
prominent defender of slavery in America
was this fellow by the name of George
Fitzhugh and he wrote two books
sociology for the south and cannibals
all in the 1850s as a prominent writer
into vowels review which is the leading
southern magazine at the time but the
recurring theme and Fitzhugh's argument
is that what we would call laissez-faire
theory or capitalism today was an
existential threat to the plantation
slave system one of the reasons he says
this is he's looking overseas to the
British abolition movement and seeing
who's involved in this so if you go back
to the 1830s and 1840s the leading
figures of the British abolition
movement are also very closely connected
to the free trade movement is Richard
Cobden and John bright the guys that are
responsible for the repeal of the Corn
Laws in 1846 or are also outspoken
abolitionists so he sees that there's a
historical unity between what we would
call free-market or classical liberal
capitalist thought at that time in
anti-slavery thought and he thinks that
markets are being brought to bear to
out-compete and and make slavery
obsolete disobey is basically his
argument he thinks that that capitalism
or laissez-faire theory he even goes so
far as to say is that more with the
slave plantation system why because it's
disrupting the social order even comes
up with what we would call a proto
Marxist argument that says that slavery
is superior to competitive free labor
because competitive free laborers are
exploited and denied of their surplus
value of their labor by the evil
capitalists so this is writing about a
decade before Marx does he essentially
comes at it from a pro-slavery angle but
comes to the same conclusion so we see
this throughout Fitzhugh's work a very
pronounced explicit anti-capitalist
position but it's also a pro-slavery
position right and and that also fits in
well with a kind of cultural reading of
the antebellum South and actually even
the post-civil war south or the whites
premises dimension of the south these
were not people who liked
cosmopolitanism they didn't like cities
they didn't like capitalism they didn't
like trade I mean they didn't like a lot
of things that are identified with
capitalism because it was disruptive to
a kind of hierarchical static Society
yeah and the King Cotton theory of
economics is premise taun the notion of
essentially like a replicated feudal
estate where you have the elite on top
you have the the lords of the estate
which are the plantation owners and then
James Henry Hammond who's the guy that
coins King Cotton theory and a famous
speech before the US Senate he announces
that the the proper economic social
order is built upon what he calls the
mudsill and the mudsill is the bottom
rung of society the laboring class that
allows delete intellectual leaders which
he saw himself as to live the good life
and to develop culture and to develop an
intellectual pursuit separate and apart
from the the menial tasks of labor but
his premise of this economic system is
you need someone to do the menial tasks
and the slaves are there to do that so
it's a it's very structured hierarchical
way of looking at the economy that that
verges sharply from everything we know
about free labor and competition and
people choosing their own course in life
people exercising their own agency and
deciding where to work it's he wants a
top-down directive being offered by the
almost paternalistic Lord of the estate
the plantation owner that tells the
working-class where they're wrong is and
society and what they have to do right
and you can see that in got a proto
socialist like Thomas Carlyle absolutely
in certain had a backward-looking
Marxist theorists who look back at the
Middle Ages for instance and love it
because even though you know not
everything is you know not everybody is
equal or anything like that everybody
has a place and an order in the
respected as somehow being integral to a
society as opposed to a capitalist
society where you know the Machine just
kind of like you know the wheels spin
off and all kinds of weird stuff happens
yeah you have someone like Thomas
Carlyle so Fitzhugh is a student of
Thomas Carlyle
great admirer he takes the title of one
of his book cannibals all from
Carlisle's diagnosis of the irish lower
class during the famines he says that
this is similar to the slave situation
there like the Irish peasants basically
so you have a disciple of Carlisle
that's curing for this ante market bias
and we see this too taking place in a
dialogue across the Atlantic
so Carlisle's famous he coins the term
economics is the dismal science because
economics wants to free the slaves wants
to emancipate the colonies well you see
someone like this you picks that up and
runs with it and says yes this is also
true in the United States the dismal
science the science of Adam Smith and
Richard Cobden and John bright David
Ricardo wants to liberate the slaves of
the south so when one of the most
glaring passages in his book just says I
want to displace this political economy
of freedom I want to toss Adam Smith and
jean-baptiste say and all of these great
liberal economists into the fire and
replace it with this paternalistic kind
of feudal approach to an organized
society in its economy you know if one
of the major misunderstandings then and
and you know in the part of your
critique of the 16:19 project is that it
misunderstands the economics of slavery
and and the larger kind of set of issues
and and realities that come out of that
another big part of it has to do with
the work by the editor of the project
nicole Hannah Jones could you talk a
little bit about what her primary
mistake is as you say it in that work
what was that
right so Nicole iana Jones wrote what
could be considered kind of like a
synthesis essay of summarizing all the
purposes of the project but she also
takes on the main treatment of the
American Revolution and covers basically
the period from about 1775 through the
Civil War there's a big focus in her
essay and one of the claims she makes
and this is the one that got her into
trouble with all these prominent
historians she claims that the American
Revolution was
principally fought to protect slavery
against the British and this comes about
from a way I would argue is a very poor
miss reading of bits and pieces of the
evidence of what's going on in the
anti-slavery scene on the eve of the
American Revolution there were two
events that happen one is in Great
Britain proper there's a famous legal
case that frees a slave that's brought
over from the colonies into England
basically he's petitions for a writ of
habeas corpus and the judge grants it to
him on the grounds that he was being
held against his will
and in England when there's no law on
the book that establishes slavery to
hold them there so this is a major
victory in the sense that it triggers
the British abolition movement this is
1772 so she says well wait a minute
abolition is emerging in Great Britain
that's true but she also mistakes that
for a motive in the colonists when they
revolt you know four years later start
to resist the crown she makes this
argument that the 1772 decision and the
British courts was now seen as an
existential threat being carried over to
the American colonies which is not true
but also so it's kind of like if America
doesn't break free of England or of
Britain Britain is gonna outlaw slavery
exactly exactly so obvious of what you
know why is that obviously wrong all the
the first and clearest point of evidence
is Britain does not outlaw slavery in
its own remaining colonies for another
50 years of the American Revolution it's
not until 1830 that that Britain really
starts to seriously consider
emancipation in in its Caribbean
holdings all of its other colonies
around the world and that comes about
after a 50-year legislative slog we have
the first evidence it's in I believe
it's 1789 is the first attempt to have a
serious discussion about just outlawing
the British slave trade in Great Britain
proper it takes an almost 20-year battle
before that bill even passes Parliament
so there's very little evidence that
Britain
was on the precipice of abolishing
slavery in the colonies and quite a bit
of evidence to the contrary now the the
times has made a minor you know kind of
concession on this how did they change
the language that they used to talk
about that point and you know what does
that say about their in your mind their
commitment to to the truth you know yeah
so the original version basically
stressed the preeminence of slavery is a
Kaunas of precipitating the American
Revolution and they back down it was
just a very very minor editing of the
text that basically changed it from a
preeminent cause to a cause considered
by some members of American society and
that's a there's a it's a more tepid
claim but there's a little bit more
evidence that you can say behind that
because there are instances of
resistance among the Patriots among the
American colonists when various British
officials try to offer freedom to slaves
in exchange for fighting in the white
West armies right so it's also telling
in those cases it's always you know if
you're fighting for the loyalists and
you're being held by American patriots
well free you but if you're owned by
loyalists forget right right there so
this is a caveat it's put into the
famous proclamation it's called a war
Dunmore's proclamation comes out in late
1775 he's the governor of Virginia and
he's basically on the run from the the
emerging rebels at the time so as his
last-ditch effort to hold on to his rule
as he says I will free any slave that
belongs to someone in rebellion that
comes over and joins my army oh by the
way any oil a slave owner is exempt from
this right so now you know you do say
you know yeah I mean you're not you're
not just panning the 16:19 project and
you say you know it has a lot of good
stuff in and I want to get to that
larger question in a second but just
focusing on Nichole Hannah Jones a
little bit more you do say that her
reading of Lincoln is an important one
in that it brings nuance that oftentimes
gets dismissed in kind of discussions of
Lincoln can you talk a little bit about
that yeah
so this is one area that I've credited
the project of being more right than
wrong or more right than the critics so
what Nicole Hannah Jones does is she
attempts to contextualize the American
Civil War from the african-american
perspective which does chafe with kind
of the more standard history that views
Lincoln as the great Emancipator who
comes in and and benevolently extends
freedom to the slaves so one of the
issues she explores is what what was
Lincoln's thought on a post slavery
Society what would a post slavery United
States look like and the best evidence
that we have including evidence that
I've worked on as a historian directly
is that Lincoln had a very conflicted
viewpoint he is absolutely in favor of
ending slavery he absolutely sees it as
a moral cause and he acts like that in
very bold ways that I think we should be
forever thankful for yet at the same
time he's fearful that a post slavery
United States a multiracial United
States will descend into political
violence and part of that fear leads him
to start entertaining ideas such as do
we attempt to relocate the freed slaves
abroad this is the old idea of send them
back to Africa send them to Liberia and
during the Civil War Lincoln adapts this
idea says well maybe we can acquire
property in the Caribbean and South
America and use that as a locale to set
all the freed slaves on Sonoco Leanna
Jones
pays attention to this she brings this
integrator notice then many historians
have been willing to do because the
standard approach to treating
colonization it's it's often seen as
like this this footnote to this
aberration in Lincoln's legacy that he
may be toyed around with but I'm
ultimately moved beyond and abandoned
and therefore we can't really judge him
or evaluate him against us she says no
wait a minute this is a complexity that
shows this isn't like the great white
savior stepping in this is actually a
practical politician who is wrestling
with some ideas and it actually took
them in in directions that today we
consider morally fraught even though he
does
generally good on the whole in freeing
slaves
he's very conflicted on that you know
what you know part a part of your
critique is that it it's not that third
trying this that you know that The Times
is doing the 16:19 project but that they
toggle back and forth between trying to
be serious scholars and they have you
know half a dozen you know historians
none none of the period that we're
talking about from the colonial period
through the Civil War but they have you
know real advisors going on and people
contributing to this but so on the one
hand they're they're making ciri or
they're attempting to do serious work in
a popular venue and then on the other
hand it's just kind of the worst sort of
present test advocacy you know and it's
like this is what I believe now and so
I'm gonna rummage through the past and
create a genealogy that completely
authorizes everything that I believe in
and I create a hero you know I create a
pantheon of heroes and I create you know
a cast of villains what you know talk a
little bit about that and about your
interactions both with Hannah Jones as
well as the editor of The Times Magazine
how does that make you feel like I am
een are they are they on the up-and-up
or are they kind of Fairweather scholars
yeah I think they have enlisted
scholarship very inconsistently across
the project you'll notice that you know
this is a massive undertaking it's a
magazine with like 20 25 different
articles in here from all sorts of
different articles authors and it's only
a small handful of them that have
received this backlash received this
criticism the other works in there are
probably best categorized as popular
representations of the author's
scholarly work it's a distillation for
the New York Times readership of things
that would appear in an academic journal
article or a book and that has not been
criticized because it's it's it's
probably pretty high-quality
representations of what those authors
were arguing but you've got these three
or four pieces the matthew desmond one
there's Nicole Hannah Jones as lead
essay and then one or two others that
have really blended the law
lanes between scholarship and advocacy
and this is where you start seeing
claims that capitalism emerged from
slavery and we see this today in the
criticism of Obamacare or we see this
today in the fact that Republicans are
resistant to raising taxes for
redistribution purposes so it's a very
present ISTA Genda that's projected onto
historical scholarship and I think very
unfortunately to the project
The Times has dug in its heels behind
these political and ideological
insertions into the historical narrative
and that's dragged down some of the
quality of the other work in there so my
own interactions with Nicole Hannah
Jones right after this is published I
was one of the first scholars to engage
the 16:19 project particularly Preity
King Matthew Desmond's piece and that
included both some Twitter
back-and-forth with Nicole Hannah Jones
and a few letters that I wrote to the
editor of the The Times magazine
pointing out factual mistakes and
Matthew Desmond's piece and in both
cases I found not only a willingness to
adhere to kind of this ideological line
but there is almost like an encourage
ability to even budge in the slightest
and recognizing that you know they had
overstepped scholarly boundaries and
moved into this advocacy politics in
ways that really wasn't supported by the
evidence so for example I asked The
Times editor to correct a few claims in
the in the matthew desmond piece which i
spell out in the book spell out as an
essay of why it should be retracted and
the response was was kind of to brush it
aside it was to come up with excuses for
why i would say a very clear
misrepresentation of evidence that he
engaged in was nonetheless permissible
because it fit with the broader
narrative which they considered to be
true at the same time in nicole hanna
Jones's case you know she very heavily
relied on this new history of capitalism
school the thing I pointed out to her
right off the bat when this was
published was just how contentious this
school of thought was among other
historians and among other economic
historians who have blasted
that you have been very devastating in
some of their critiques and she against
absolutely no awareness that there was
even this dialogue going on within the
academic literature which shows up I
think I counted it up there were seven
different scholars that are cited in
this one article on the history of
capitalism in slavery and all seven of
them are connected to the new history of
capitalism school no one else from
outside of that school so you're you're
basically cutting off the scholarly
conversation and she seemed entirely
unconcerned by that you know let's talk
a little bit about Lincoln and
libertarians you know your your take on
Lincoln is is very nuanced Lincoln looms
large among many kind of you know actual
economists or historians of a
libertarian bent it's a particularly
terrible leader you know he's the
American Caesar I mean it's a it's a
kind of Regis Edmund Wilson's
old you know attacks on Lincoln from a
left-wing perspective in the thirties
forties why is Lincoln singled out among
libertarian historians or you know and
and and then you know people at the you
know you know at Lew Rockwell calm for
sure you know the von Mises Institute
Ron Paul never has a good word to say
about Lincoln what's going on there yeah
my own take on Lincoln is a very nuanced
I rate him cut in the middle of the pack
of the presidents there's some very good
things he did obviously connected to
emancipate enslaves I I think his
government their governmental style is
approached during the war involves some
instances of mismanagement you know we
always hear about the suspension of
habeas corpus is something that really
rubs libertarians the wrong way and I
think there are valid criticisms of
Lincoln in that sphere what I think that
literature does that goes kind of off
the rails in some cases are really over
states its case and in some of the
instances is they tend to project
backwards on to Lincoln the effects of
the evolution of the American state in
the 150 odd years since his presidency
so there there there are very genuine
concerns that we see in the 20th century
about the erosion of federal
and the emergence of a very top-down
regulatory state on the federal level a
lot of this comes from Woodrow Wilson
and FDR in particular but the claim is
made that they're building on the blocks
that Lincoln provided them through the
course of the Civil War so it's almost
like a present projection backwards for
the libertarian sphere as well we're
unhappy with the legacy of FDR and one
of the inclinations is to look back in
history and say where did this start
well there's certainly political
rhetoric on the progressive left that
tries to claim Lincoln as one of their
own
but everybody claims a claim Washington
Lincoln
and you know what is the the racial
dimension there or the slavery dimension
because you know one of one of the odd
things is that when people start to talk
about Lincoln in many of the same people
who are arch critics among libertarians
will also say that the Civil War was not
fought in any way shape or form over
slavery and that was it was really about
taxes or about trade policy and and that
in order to believe that you have to
deny all of the evidence of the southern
slates southern states seceded from the
Union and all of them in their documents
said we are doing this because of
slavery not because of taxes or
terrorists you know what do you think is
going on there yeah and it's not just
the seating because of slavery it's
deceiving because they viewed the
election of Lincoln as an existential
threat run to public federal subsidies
to hold up the institution of slavery
you read these declarations they're
furious that Lincoln may undermine the
enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act
which is basically like this big
government federal scheme to throw money
into sitting sending these these slave
patrols out to round up escaped
fugitives well you and I mean obvious I
have perhaps most famously in the
cornerstone speech by Alexander Stephens
the vice president of the Confederacy
says you know the you know slavery isn't
incidental to the site it's a very
cornerstone and like you know a racial
hierarchy in which white you know smart
white people are at the top dumb white
people are somewhere in between
black slaves are at the bottom that this
this is the society capitalism
industrialism all of this is a threat to
it um what you know do you have a theory
of what explains that you know that
weird fixation among libertarians yeah
again I think it's a case of present ISM
and it involves almost willfully setting
aside evidence willfully setting aside
historical evidence to try to
rationalize or make the story fit for
the explanation that they want to offer
to to tell why FDR was successful in
implementing the New Deal to tell why
the income tax exists today or why the
Federal Reserve existed today so you
have this litany of policies in the
present day that libertarians I think
with reason find objectionable and they
want to fight an origin story of tracing
it back to the Civil War and that makes
them more willing to set aside evidence
that conflicts with that origin story or
try to emphasize well well maybe the
Civil War was caused by tariffs you
throw on top of this and there's some
complexity to it the Confederates were
very effective propagandists for their
cause they knew during the American
Civil War in Britain in particular that
a lot of the abolitionists a lot of the
people like Richard Cobden and John
bright were sympathetic to free trade
they knew that the abolitionists were
sympathetic to these pro-market
arguments because they had been arguing
them for years Cobden is like a pen pal
with Charles Sumner one of the
abolitionist senators who's famous and
that errors with the leading voice of
anti-slavery in the north but the
southerners see this and they're on a
quest for diplomatic recognition or
trying to keep Britain either out of the
war or even get it to come into the war
on their side against the north so they
really play up these explanations that
are saying this isn't really about
slavery this is about tariffs or
taxation so we have this historical
record of what's essentially
pro-confederate propaganda that was
offered to try and dupe some of the
foreign powers into coming into their
side during the war and unfortunately I
think a lot of libertarians have seen
that they take
face value and tried to elevate it to
their own narrative you you know you've
also written you were a vocal and I
think particularly effective critic of
Nancy McLain and her book democracy in
Chains which you know essentially said
that libertarianism and and things like
school choice the idea of school choice
is a neo Confederate plot and she picks
up on a point which I think people in
the libertarian movement were always
kind of slow to which is that you know
in the nineteen fifty-five essay that
Milton Friedman wrote talking about
school vouchers for the first time he
does mention you know kind of what was
brewing as massive resistance in the
south to create that essentially a
voucher program so that whites could say
in segregated schools in the wake of
Brown versus Board of Education you know
what it what is the effect do you think
on this kind of linking up of
Confederacy in certain cases anti
Lincoln rhetoric and the modern
libertarian movement when Rand Paul you
know announced too that he was going to
run for president which he has only been
on the Rachel Maddow Show he immediately
you know got embroiled in a conversation
about how you know the Civil Rights Act
was but you know the real problem with
it was you know that it meant that you
couldn't have segregated lunch counters
anymore or something like that
hates there's something I I don't know
any libertarians you know who are racist
or are you know apologists for a segment
you know my state segregated society but
it keeps coming up what you know can you
talk a little bit about this and how do
we clarify what's going on in a way that
allows libertarians to stop having to
explain things that aren't actually part
of their legacy yeah I worry that quite
a bit of this comes out of just a
natural contrarian ism contrarian ism
against which the official history or
the that the standard dialog and quite a
bit of that takes the form of trying to
be too clever by half it takes the form
of oh I'm going to offer an edgy take
that may sound like it chafes with
conventional wisdom but it also ends up
being a tone deafness to some very real
struggles you know my counter to that is
I urge any and every libertarian
listener reader out there to is to
investigate your own history investigate
the history of where classical
liberalism came from rediscover people
like Richard Cobden or or even go back
to some better known names like Frederic
Bastiat go back to the lesser-known
works of Adam Smith you find explicit
abolitionism running throughout all of
these works that is a classical liberal
cause possibly the preeminent cause of
classical liberals in the 19th century
before the civil war is ending slavery
and we've kind of I wouldn't say
jettison that we've just set it aside
and forgotten that legacy is also part
of our system of ideas too there is you
know I guess there's a sociological
dimension to this in that you know Barry
Goldwater for many people and I know you
know older libertarians will talk about
kind of being activated into politics in
the sixties by Ayn Rand and and Barry
Goldwater and Barry Goldwater who by
everyone's account even his critical
biographers will say you know this was
not a guy he was a racist or anything
but there's no question in 1964 he
rolled that way and he you know that
that creates a kind of toxic Junction I
think that hasn't been fully kind of
excavated and worked through I suspect
by libertarians you know I think
unfortunately what we saw in the
Goldwater movement is you know you have
a he's a very intellectual candidate
he's a guy that thinks about ideas very
seriously he surrounds himself with
advisors than or you know when we
consider well-known libertarian figures
today as Carl has it's Warren utter it's
a very prominent thinkers intellectuals
but part of the struggle that comes out
of the Goldwater movement is you know if
you're running for political office you
want to win and I think unfortunately he
tapped into a current of votes that
happened to be the deep south right it
happened to be the the Gulf Coast states
that are involved in this either massive
resistance against desegregation or that
gravitate to him not because of the
intellectual message he's put forth
because they they see him as a vehicle
to fighting back against the Civil
Rights Act yeah you know you mentioned
about you know kind of uncovering or
reading your own history and developing
your own history talk a little bit about
the benefits of the 1619 project which
is spur you know i we it's it's
interesting i I have two sons who were
once 26 the others 18 and all they have
been taught is a kind of revisionist
history which has now the new kind of
conventional history I was taught
something going to school in the 70s and
80s I was thought of it was different
than the history of my parents who went
to school in the third floor you know so
it's always changing but what is one of
the benefits of saying you know what
America didn't begin in 1776 or 1789 or
whatever it begins in 1619 you know what
is what's a positive outcome of that
well I think if it directs more readers
to start to investigate the nuances and
complexities of the history of slavery I
think there's a there's been a tendency
for as long as we have been teaching
history in schools to approach slavery
in a very superficial level and this is
whether it's the current narrative which
does focus on slavery but focuses on it
as a very simplified version of the
topic the slavery was evil which we I
think pretty much everyone acknowledges
but but it doesn't go deeper than that
surface to figure out what's actually
going on whereas if you went back a few
generations there's kind of this lost
cause projection on the slavery
especially in the southern states that
try to sugarcoat or gloss over it or
minimize it so it's again a very
superficial type of an argument even
though it's in the complete different
direction I do think that there's some
benefits of something like the 1619
project or at least in its idealized
version what it set out to do is say
what spoke a little bit deeper what's
get into some of the complexities
especially what the American Revolution
you know my calendars are something like
Nicole Hannah Jones who who offers this
this version that places slavery at the
center of the American Revolution I
would argue we need to study the
American River
lucien as a an engagement with slavery
that cuts across both sides of the war
there are pro-slavery and anti-slavery
figures on the Patriots are calling
aside there are pro-slavery and
anti-slavery figures on the loyalist
side and the British side during the war
so it's not like this black and white
dimension rather it's something that is
is playing out in a way that cuts across
both sides of the war at a time when the
question of independence is being fought
and hammered out so there's no cure
history and on the on the eve of kind of
rise of the Industrial Revolution and
what we would think Tennessee is a more
contemporary or a modern version of free
labor of the idea that that a worker
could choose among competing employers
that employers would have to actually
you know strike fair bargains or be held
to bargains with workers and things like
that it you know for me one of the I
what I found interesting about the 1619
project as it was announced was also
that I started thinking about my version
of American history and I want to ask
you about yours of like you know we
bring personal stories to this and in
many ways my grandparents who came over
in the 19-teens were all immigrants from
Ireland and Italy and in a lot of ways
my American history really starts in the
19-teens you know are at least with any
kind of personal connection to it
if you're an African American if you're
black it does start with 1619 and it is
a grim history and again and again the
contributions the you know much of
American culture and society and wealth
has been built on the backs of blacks
and it wasn't acknowledged properly so
it's interesting for me it started me
thinking about okay how do I conceive of
America and how is my America different
than somebody else's could you talk a
little bit about your you know how your
personal history or your family history
kind of influences your interest in
various topics and also your
intellectual journey how do you you you
have a PhD
in its in public policy yes I'm right
yeah from George Mason and George Mason
you know is named for one of the most
bizarre and interesting and kind of
complicated contradictory founders but
you know talk a little bit about Phil
Magnus where you come from and how that
informs your intellectual journey and
and your areas of interest yeah you know
it's my family is probably a lot like
your family's story my mother is an
immigrant from Canada her parents came
from England in Ireland so first
generation and then another first
generation my dad's family half of it
came from Mexico at the turn of the
century the other half of it has been
here since the 1600s so I've got a
little bit of a stake and almost every
type of story imaginable I can't claim
to be you know someone that's old it's
latched on to this one specific version
of American history that starts in 1776
that's just not my family story but at
the same time I'd say my approach to to
history diverges from quite a bit of the
profession and quite a bit of the
popular narratives in the sense that I I
don't tend to see history as like this
predetermined evolving story where where
there's an in-game of where we know
where we're going rather it's a it's a
succession of events that are unfolding
in almost unpredictable ways based on
the circumstance at the moment this is
where I think we start to see inputs of
something like public choice theory
really weighing into our understanding
of the past it's not a grand unifying
theory of the of the universe or of the
way that historical events play out
rather it's a system of tools to
understand and interpret and in a worker
way through evidence to figure out
what's going on often under the cloud of
uncertainty so Abraham Lincoln's the
classic example when he ascends to the
presidency in 1861 when he's inaugurated
he probably has no idea that just in the
course of two to three years he was
going to be emancipating the slaves he's
going to be signing the Emancipation
Proclamation
it's rather the course of events that
unfolded before him that make that
possible so there's not like this that
this grand arc of history that's driving
toward this inevitability rather it's a
person reacting to the uncertainties and
circumstances at the moment you know you
you mentioned public choice which brings
us back to James Buchanan which you know
brings us to among other things the
Nate's a MacLean art you know argument
against you know that Buchanan was
actually an agent of white supremacy
which I think is untenable and has been
shown to be so whether whether or not
that affects whether you know if her
interpretation wins out or not is a
totally separate question but it seems
to me that one of the problems with a
Buchanan kind of view or a public choice
view is you know it's economics without
romance it's history without romance
it's everything without romance and in
that sense it's a very corrosive way of
looking at history because you can't
have kind of those grand narratives or
idealism goes out the window do you
think that that's part of the reason why
certain elements of kind of libertarian
thought you know they may end up forming
a very powerful critique and certainly
you know I've read a public choice layer
by backgrounds and literary studies and
I was reading Foucault and you know the
way Foucault talks about how power
operates in the way that Buchanan and
Gordon Tullock and other public choice
there is do it is almost identical sure
which is that we tell these stories you
know and they can be the stories about
oh you know here's a great wonderful
entrepreneur who just wants to help
people where here is a great public
servant who what just wants to help
people here are doctors here's a medical
industry that just wants to help people
know you know both Foucault and the
public choice people seem to say we have
to look deeper and we have to look at
what's actually going on what are the
motivations and what are the effects on
people do you think that that's one of
you know it just makes it harder for a
libertarian narrative or a libertarian
rhetoric to really become you know
mainstream because it it's you know it's
it's a pretty punishing ideology in that
sense yeah
I think in a way we're all arguing
against the legacy of someone like
Thomas Carlyle who we know his history
which is great contribution to
historical study and understanding as he
pauses the great man theory of history
that there are our vibrant leaders that
emerge over time and this could be a
napoleon bonaparte it could be an oliver
cromwell you know carlisle has his own
people that he does latch on to and they
tend to be some pretty ugly pretty awful
tyrants of history but there are
adaptations that could go in any
direction
this isn't why we like to tell great
stories about George Washington or
Abraham Lincoln or FDR we like to have
history that's built around presidents
that we can prop up as heroic or on the
other side is to find as buildings so
it's a very Manichaean approach that
tends to infiltrate just the basic
conception of history in the public's
mind and I think we're almost at a
disadvantage of having to go against
that because people like to root for a
leader or they like to root for a good
guy or at least root against a bad guy
and you know as libertarians as
classical liberals or it's even more so
as good evidence-based empirical
thinkers the necessity of our approach
is going to add complexity it's going to
add nuance is going to add ways that are
not easily summarized in a grand
narrative story and that makes it
automatically harder for us to carry
that type of a message it also makes us
more susceptible to criticism in the
fact that we're not offering an
alternative to the great man
that's favored by someone else whether
that's on the left or the right yeah and
if we're being intellectually honest and
serious we're also not offering a
version of Whig history right for
anything where well you know this is the
best of all possible worlds and we're
just going to tell you a just so story
of how we got to exactly this place in
time where everything is perfect you
know one of your your previous book
before the 16:19 project critique is
cracks in the ivory tower you can read
it with Jason Brennan of Georgetown this
is I think very early in the book and I
believe I'm quoting accurately here you
you you guys say
you know this is a book about academics
or academia without romance it's right
what is what's the main theory of cracks
on the ivory tower and why is it
important that's our main argument is
that institutions matter and if you
throw just normal people into an
academic situation they're going to
respond to the institutional structures
and the incentives that those create so
what that means for higher education is
we have a very well-funded vast system
it's a it's basically a trillion dollar
enterprise unto itself
if you if you start looking at things
like student loans that are out there
and the amount of money that goes into
it it employs millions of people and
affects millions of students but the
incentive structures of higher ed are
often misaligned from the purposes that
we say we have the university system so
you ask a typical College administrator
a professor why are you doing what
you're doing it's always this
public-minded
high level worship we're creating an
educated society or we're molding better
citizens or we're empowering people to
to tackle the world and improve
themselves so very lofty high-minded
rhetoric and goals that I think we'd all
aspire to but then you juxtapose that to
what higher it actually delivers and you
see it falls short on most of these
problems doesn't often far short of some
of the more extreme promises so we
basically ask the question of what's
going on in the university system
because we know we hear all the time
that there are problems there are budget
shortfalls or tuition skyrocket kids are
burdened with that there's too many
students there's not enough students
exactly I mean if you study the history
of the university yeah you know just in
the 20th and 21st century it's just the
history of lurching from crisis to
crisis exactly exactly and you know so
did the standard approach that if you
read the Chronicle of Higher Education
they they follow these grand narratives
that are built around what we call
Terk ice-t's in the book universities
are in financial crisis right now
because they're being corporatized
universities have a student loan crisis
because neoliberalism moved in and
what's a poltergeist it's this evil
malicious entity that tears up the room
and makes a giant mess in its wake but
poltergeists are also not real they're
spiritual entities so it's kind of like
this academia tends to latch on to
concepts as scapegoats for all of its
problems but if you dig beneath the
surface you find a much more mundane
explanation of misaligned incentives and
people just acting like rational human
actors your own self-interest yeah if
you if you reward people for acting
poorly you shouldn't be surprised when
they when they do you know one thing I
wanted to ask you is you know you're an
academic you have a PhD you are but you
are not in academic right or you're not
in academia I read a lot in a lot of my
friends that I went to grad school with
you know some of them went on to be
tenure track or tenured professors
others faded out of the industry
altogether others were adjuncts you know
why why did you choose not to become a
full-time professor and is that is that
a cause for tragedy I mean like you and
I I feel because I spent a lot of time
earning it I feel compelled to always
bring up the fact I have a PhD whenever
I can I chose not to go into academia my
ex-wife is a is a full professor at
Chapman University as we speak a lot of
my friends from grad school are you know
in academia and not in academia I chose
not to I'm kind of happy with and I feel
like I learned a lot in it why didn't
you become an academic and is that a
failing of the university system as it
currently exists or is it a choice on
your part or is it something altogether
different I would categorize it on my
own sense as a personal choice so I
spent the better part of a decade one
way or another you know working in
academia
I taught college taught economics
full-time for a while
i tailed jerry's administrative post
adjunct it taught part-time did all of
that game and i think it was very
fulfilling at the time I enjoyed it I
enjoyed being in the classroom but I
also found that the way that you know
academic hiring is structured the way
that promotions are rewarded someone who
does the type of research that I tend to
do which of I think I've been fairly
successful at it getting published at
getting meaningful contributions to a
wide variety of literature out there in
print but the type of research that I
tend I tend to do is not something that
is prioritized for a whole number of
reasons especially at what we would call
elite research universities so it came
down to a decision whether I teach like
a four or four course load which can be
very fulfilling in its own right versus
having time to do more high end research
so I did the former for a little while
and and then migrated into the ladder to
where so my current position is as
basically a hundred percent devoted to
researching the topics that I'm
interested in doing that with a an
independent research institution so
we're very fortunate in that regard but
I have found that fulfilling even though
I do miss some elements at the class
radio' I died you know there's I think
you know the and I know that in cracks
in the ivory tower you point out that it
is a vast oversimplification to say that
the tenure track model is disappearing
from the university or from all
universities that is not and it is also
true that that if you can get a tenured
position somewhere it is an incredibly
sweet gig not because not not because
you don't do work but because you have
so much autonomy and time to do you know
the type of work and research that you
know that people would love to be able
to do if you're intellectually lined it
that way do you feel that the university
system is in a particular era of
transition now and again I mean I'm
mentioned before if you go back and you
look at you know pre World War two post
World War two post about 1970 when women
you know by the early 80s women there
were more women attending undergrad
institutions than men that had a change
the levels of state funding the you know
the the desire kind of the social desire
to have more educated people we've
constantly be going through you know
paroxysms of of change transition etc do
you think the university is in a
particular you know particularly strong
moment of change and if so how does
because you know as if I'm going to
mention that I have a PhD I think I also
feel that I need to say we're talking
you know remotely because of the
currents and the lockdown and the
quarantine which among other things I
shut down every College in the country
you know now how is that going to change
higher education but I'd so to simplify
or is the university in a particular
moment of change now that's one question
and then how do you think the corona
virus changes higher at or maybe it
doesn't yeah yeah so prior to the corona
virus I would have said that
universities are continuing to evolve on
more of a path trajectory than a
disruptive trajectory okay so I can't
predict exactly how long this is going
to last and what moving everything
online is going to do but what I will
say and I think this is true of
University evolution from about the
post-world War two period to a couple
months ago is that there's a heavy
public expenditure component that came
into its own in the 50s 60s and 70s and
has been with us what that means from an
economic perspective is that
universities are basically in the in the
business of rich seeking and rent
allocation from the public sector and
what do we know about rent seeking what
do we know about fast government program
of a similar magnitude when they become
entrenched is their very very hard to
disrupt or change course or dissipate or
abolish or whatever you want to do with
it I mean it's like trying to steer the
Titanic with a rubber band
that's the the situation that I consider
kind of university university as medic
the university has Medicare where you
know there might be some nibblies but by
and large we're still going to be
spending a lot of money on it
and it's going to affect a lot of people
okay so that said that is your your
thinking until a couple months ago how
does the how does the coronavirus change
that and you talk about a weird print of
event that nobody saw coming you know
you know and we'll put aside the idea
that there were five or six people in
the federal government it could have
stopped this but you know the
coronavirus comes in this is a black
swan or it's something that really is
disruptive how does that change your
understanding where universities were
headed yeah well I think prior to just a
few months ago the main area of what we
would call for lack of better term
budgetary bloat in the university system
with all these administrative roles that
are just expanding like crazy and we see
this empirically from the 1970s to the
present day administration has more than
quadrupled in size thank you hi you know
in cracks in the ivory tower or
something that like 20 30 or 40 years
ago I think it was that there were four
administrators for every ten professors
right a tenure-track professors and now
it's that there are nine professors for
every ten administrators or something
yeah is the administrator should have
far surpassed professors itself on
campus right even though universities
are basically delivering the same type
of good they're doing a degree so I
think prior to just a few months ago a
lot of that was taken place on on
University campuses through rent-seeking
for rent allocation off of budgets that
are built around having a very large
student body on campus so administrators
grew in conjunction with universities
providing more what they call student
services
student services are often a little pet
projects that was a lot easier to
justify when classes were held in person
and when the student body is there
living in the dorm you start to move
things online you can ask the question
what does the director of sustainability
climate change and parking lots have to
do anymore right
so I think the longer that this type of
a crisis persists that kind of pulls
back the cover on the question of
whether some of these roles are
necessary or whether some of these new
developments of what had grown on campus
is it is essential to the business that
we're doing I think the second thing
that that kovat has done is it started
to expose some of the financial
pressures that higher ed places on
students themselves through rising
tuition it's starting to get people ask
the question well I'm paying full
tuition but now I'm taking kind of like
this shell of a class that's now on the
line should I have to pay the same
tuition rate as I would if I got the
in-person experience and I think a lot
of people are gonna start asking
questions or saying no maybe I shouldn't
maybe there should be other discounts so
do you think I mean do you envision a
kind of hybrid model that is somewhere
between you know a more traditional
residential college which it's it's not
clear what percentage of you know
undergrads actually went to a four-year
residential college you know and and
lived apart from their parents as
opposed to you know living near the
campus with their family in an urban
area or whatever but do you think it's
more likely that we'll see a you know
kind of a hybrid model where some or at
a particular school a lot of maybe more
introductory classes will be delivered
via zoom or by a lecture with a couple
of recitation sections or higher level
classes will be all in person but lower
you know etc how do you see this playing
out I think that there is going to be a
bit of a trend to diversifying how what
we would call gen Ed's are delivered so
you're history 101 math 101 English 101
standard classes everyone has to take
under the precoded model and I guess the
standard model from history is you show
up
freshman year in the first two years or
spent knocking out your gen Ed's and
then you move into your major I think
this does open up a bit of an
opportunity especially if someone wants
to be entrepreneurial about it finding
ways to deliver gen Ed's that don't
require the butts in seats model sitting
there in the classroom whether that's
you and Jason Brennan are pretty I mean
you you are pretty big believers in the
signaling model of higher education and
so that what matters it's less that you
know it's less what you learn as an
undergrad and it's more where you have a
degree from so you still want that piece
of paper from a particular school rather
than you know you know online MOOC
University right right you want it to
say you know Dartmouth or I don't know
wherever job so how does that factor in
because and I you know and I'm thinking
now I know a lot of people who teach at
state universities and around the
country there has been a big push to say
that any state school in any you know in
any state has to accept Community
College courses for it you know for full
credit and that there was a push to try
and get people to take their gen ed
classes at Community College and then
you show up into the residential school
where you're gonna graduate from and
that way you spend less money and you
but you get the full freight or you get
the full impact of a degree from a name
University and how does that intersect
with you know with what we've been
talking about here yeah whether the end
goal of most students when they graduate
they want the piece of paper that says
Harvard or Princeton if they're going to
an elite school or maybe they want
University of Texas at Austin University
of Virginia like a major flagship State
University if it can be the case that
that you can transfer in Community
College credits for your writing 101 in
math 101 course which basically the
content is more or less the same you
aren't getting much of a premium by
doing that at the the full four-year
institution you you graduate from but
you can save quite a bit on cost that is
one way to alleviate
one of the driving concerns right now of
higher education which is tuition
skyrocketing I think prior to Co vid
there still seemed to be something of a
premium of the college experience of
spending all four years at the one place
I I do think that some of the move
online will make people a little bit
more willing to venture out beyond that
model make the average students to start
to think hey if I can knock out this
course online at my Community College
and transfer it into UVA or University
of Michigan next semester and then I
declare my major I've got my gen Ed's
out of the way I've done it at like half
the cost or a fifth of the cost even in
some of these cases and they're taking
the credits but then I go do my upper
division classes that institution I
graduate with the same degree the same
certificate that someone who spent all
four years there did all right well you
know what we're gonna leave it there we
have been talking with Phil Magnus he's
the author most recently of the 16:19
project a critique and before that with
Jason Brennan he was the co-author of
cracks in the ivory tower which is a
pretty fascinating read about the about
academia without romance Phil what else
what else are you working on it it seems
like you know it's been 15 or 20 minutes
and you should have another book project
in the works what's what's next for you
oh all sorts of things I say
historically I'm looking more into the
role of government institutions and
subsidizing slavery in the 19th century
which is I think a big part of the story
that's been under played or under
represented well as you know right at
the risk of going back into a full
conversation about the 1619 project and
a lot of the historiography of slavery
both that it you know it kind of leans
on but also then ignores that you know
what is fascinating is when you and you
were you were talking about this before
when you start to think about slavery as
a complex social cultural political
economic system you know and and you you
understand like how could it persist I
mean I you know and this is where the
the kind of simplified versions that we
get often you know whether it's in
history
classes are in movies you know just
don't really do it just as whereas
movies like well here's a slave and I am
particularly even though it's very much
a movie about movies not about history
Django Unchained like to focus on the
physical torment that was visited you
know that was visited upon slaves was
like a missing part of how slavery
operated but you're talking about how
government in various ways and at
various levels actually subsidize or
create it because there's no question
that when the Fugitive Slave Act was
passed and it started saying to people
you know abolitionist no you have to
help us hunt down freed so you know
escaped slaves you know that's a major
subsidy and that that also causes more
and more problems yeah yeah and I I'd
say even it's a project that builds on
the legacy of Adam Smith or if he knows
Deirdre McCloskey so st. Adam Smith
right you know here's a thinker that
attacked slavery on moral grounds
through Moral Sentiments and objections
to the horrors of the institution here's
someone that also critiques the
economics of the slavery and then least
discussed of the elements he goes after
the political economy of the slavery the
role of state institutions and propping
this up so he has an observation he says
that the the British colonies where
slavery is the worst the slave owners
themselves have somehow managed to get
themselves elected to the colonial
assembly and they're never going to
abolish or reform or do anything that
works against the the institution itself
so long as that persists so that
elements is there and in the Smith Ian
project I see myself as is updating that
with 200 years of history and records to
build upon but also just seeing how that
plays out to add greater depth to the
dimension of this project and this topic
that's often just glossed over in the
standard textbook histories well that's
a it sounds fantastic and we'll all be
looking forward to reading it
Phil Magnus thanks for talking to Reason
yeah thanks for having
you
