Wesleyan University
Private university in Middletown, Connecticutwww.wesleyan.edu
224
MENTIONS
111
EPISODES
96
PODCASTS
Search complete. 224 mentions across 111 episodes found for "Wesleyan University".
Nov 1, 2026
Lucas BeanHOST
This one explains how we finished this regime, for good.
Lucas BeanHOST
In 2011, researcher Erika Chenoweth at Wesleyan University wanted to know what separates the resistance movements that win from the ones that fail.
Lucas BeanHOST
She studied every major political uprising from 1900 to 2006.
Lucas BeanHOST
The study looked at hundreds of campaigns.
Sandra GuzeGUEST
But that's where things changed for me.
Sandra GuzeGUEST
I was forced to work on this master's degree and I was doing it at Wesleyan University.
Sandra GuzeGUEST
And I was exposed to things I had never been exposed to before.
Sandra GuzeGUEST
All of my passions, all of my loves, whether it be film, poetry, literature, music, theater.
Sandra GuzeGUEST
I was proud when those portraits and those jars of olives were Exactly right.
Sandra GuzeGUEST
But that perfectionism that really took a toll on me and it was somewhat painful and very stressful in doing that.
Sandra GuzeGUEST
But when I took this course at Wesleyan, it was just, at first it was grueling.
Sandra GuzeGUEST
I think I told you about we were doing surface preparation, surface exploration.
speaker_0HOST
But make no mistake, this reliance on AI disinformation is a distinctly Republican problem.
speaker_0HOST
The New York Times, which has a few examples of some of those realistic-looking AI ads, found that over 80% of ads reviewed by Wesleyan University researchers were from Republican campaigns or Republican PACs.
speaker_0HOST
Finally, a little bit of good news.
speaker_0HOST
Even though Republicans have tried their hardest to rig the results in their favor by throwing out mail-in ballots or aggressively gerrymandering districts, young voters at HBCUs are more determined than ever to vote.
ReeseHOST
This is not re-election stuff, folks.
ReeseHOST
Anyway, a Wesleyan poll for the Connecticut Project found that 76% support taxing millionaires.
ReeseHOST
The last income tax hike was 2015.
ReeseHOST
Lamont says more taxpayers, not more taxes.
Matthew RascoffHOST
But just from a personal perspective, can you just tell us, how did you come to do this work? You mentioned Duke Kunshan earlier, but maybe further back, did you have a radicalizing moment in your own education in which you said, like, wait, it doesn't have to be this way, just because it's always been this way.
Matthew RascoffHOST
I know you went to Princeton, which is... you know, hyper conservative place, but you also went to Wesleyan, which is the opposite in some ways.
Matthew RascoffHOST
Like what was that like going back and forth between the disruptors of Wesleyan and the sustainers of Princeton? I don't know where to go fishing, but you can, you can tell me about how far back in your past you can tell.
Matthew RascoffHOST
Yeah.
Noah PickusGUEST
It's so interesting because we live our lives forward, but most of us can only make sense of them and telling stories looking backward.
Noah PickusGUEST
I mean, you're right to see that this commitment to builders and renewers has emerged in part because I've been on both sides.
Noah PickusGUEST
I've seen the value and the necessity of both.
Noah PickusGUEST
And, you know, I had a great interdisciplinary education at Wesleyan.
Brian StelterSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
But when we study where the money is being spent, we can see how the battlegrounds are shifting in these final days.
Brian StelterSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
This is data from the Wesleyan Media Project, really fascinating numbers.
Brian StelterSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
You can see these are the top five states for overall ad spending in Senate races, House races, and gubernatorial races in the past two weeks.
Brian StelterSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And some of the states are obvious, Texas, Ohio, Ohio.
John BermanSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Are
Brian StelterSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
there any places where people are pulling back their ad spending? I'm having a hard time hearing you, John, but I think you're asking me if there's any places where the money is actually starting to dwindle or decrease.
Brian StelterSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Because Wesleyan has also studied which states are seeing a pullback in campaign ad spending.
Brian StelterSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And that data might be equally interesting because it tells us, again, a lot about the battleground states.
Cheryl NixonGUEST
I think having those key arguments, those abilities to talk about that is what has brought us Friends in Washington forward.
Matthew RascoffHOST
And is there a lesson there? Could others adopt this strategy? I had Michael Roth, the Wesleyan president, a couple of weeks ago, and he dropped legacy admissions.
Matthew RascoffHOST
As soon as the affirmative action decision came down from the Supreme Court, he said, we're no longer going to do legacy admissions because that's affirmative action for the wealthy.
Matthew RascoffHOST
And I think that won him some trust.
Matthew RascoffHOST
I don't know if it's the level that you all have, but I think that stood out among the elites in the Northeast.
Matthew RascoffHOST
Only Amherst and Wesleyan have made that move.
Matthew RascoffHOST
Or is your model just like particular to this history that you have in Appalachia, to your region, to your community? And therefore, like it doesn't really translate to other parts of the country.
Matthew RascoffHOST
And like, you know, you just do your thing and others do theirs.
Paul MassariHOST
What is a political party and what role is it meant to play in our democracy?
Sam RosenfeldGUEST
As we say in the book, as I think we tell our students, I think the pithiest definition was from a great political scientist at Wesleyan University, E.E. Schatzschneider, who defined a political party as an organized attempt to get control of the government.
Sam RosenfeldGUEST
Just keep it as simple as possible.
Sam RosenfeldGUEST
And you can break it down that it's an organized attempt.
Nick SyrettGUEST
Those universities that have tried to ban fraternities altogether, and there are a handful of small liberal arts colleges like Amherst, Williams, Middlebury, they don't have fraternities anymore.
Nick SyrettGUEST
Wesleyan made them go coed.
Nick SyrettGUEST
There's a great op-ed that just came out by the president of Wesleyan, but he got big pushback from alumni who disagreed and said, you know, we may not support our alma mater anymore.
Nick SyrettGUEST
How did
Katie KoestnerHOST
the Williams and Amherst get rid of them? like
Lin-Manuel MirandaGUEST
But no, again, I was a senior.
Lin-Manuel MirandaGUEST
I remember I went to Wesleyan University.
Lin-Manuel MirandaGUEST
I came out with the most lucrative degrees, a degree in theater.
Lin-Manuel MirandaGUEST
And I called Dr. Herbert, my eighth grade teacher, and said, are there substitute positions available at our high school? And he said, I'll do you one better.
101 more episodes mention Wesleyan University.
Create an account to see the whole feed, search across every transcript, and follow the entities you care about.