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The first of two episodes recorded at the “Public Budgets, Public Good” workshop hosted by Labor@Wayne, and co-sponsored by AAUP, HELU, and Public Good U. This episode features presentations on the Lend & Rule theory of campus debt, the bourgeois coldness of budget models, the Locus of Authority playbook for university presidents, and a pro-friction approach to EdTech.
Cast (in order of appearance): Sofya Aptekar, Matt Seybold, Brian Deyo, Kelly Grotke, Stephen Hastings-King, Justin Flores, Sean O’Brien, Bruce Simon
Date Recorded: April 30, 2026
Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby
Featured Speakers
Sofya Aptekar is Associate Professor of Urban Studies at the CUNY School of Labor & Urban Studies. As part of the Coalition Against Campus Debt she co-authored Lend and Rule: Fighting the Shadow Financialization of Public Universities (Common Dreams, 2024).
Brian Deyo is Associate Professor of English at Grand Valley State University and scholar of Ecotopia.
Kelly Grotke is a founding partner of Pattern Recognition Research Collective and the author of many essays on college finances, including at The American Prospect.
Stephen Hastings-King is a founding partner of Pattern Recognition Research Collective and the author of, among other things, a multi-part essay on “The Yale Model” of endowment investing.
Matt Seybold is Associate Professor for American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies, host of The American Vandal Podcast, and a member of the AAUP subcommittee on Artificial Intelligence & Academic Professions.
Episode Bibliography
Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947)
Coalition Against Campus Debt, Lend and Rule: Fighting the Shadow Financialization of Public Universities (Common Dreams, 2024)
Dominique Baker, Anna Kornbluh, & Matt Seybold, “Theory At The Bargaining Table” The American Vandal (January 7, 2026)
Samantha Cole, “University Professors Disturbed To Find Their Lectures Chopped Up & Turned Into AI Slop” 404 Media (April 27, 2026)
William Bowen & Eugene Tobin, Locus of Authority: The Evolution of Faculty Roles In The Governance of Higher Education (Princeton UP, 2015)
Jelani Favors, Shelter In A Time Of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership & Activism (UNC Press, 2020)
Liza Featherstone, “Data Centers Are The Enemy We’ve All Been Waiting For” The New Republic (February 17, 2026)
Michael Jensen & William Meckling, “Theory Of The Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs, & Ownership Structure” Journal of Financial Economics (October 1976)
Henrike Kohpeiss, Bourgeois Coldness (Divided Publishing, 2025) [trans. Grace Nissan]
Brian Merchant, “Understanding The Luddites In The Age of AI” Blood In The Machine (June 19, 2026)
Brian Merchant, “The Luddite Renaissance Is In Full Swing” Blood In The Machine (September 21, 2025)
Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Autonomedia, 2013)
Christopher Newfield, “AI & The Public Good” Remaking II: Long Revolution (May 2, 2026)
Christopher Newfield, Unmaking The University: A Forty-Year Assault On The Middle Class (Harvard UP, 2008)
Britt S. Paris, Radical Infrastructure: Imagining The Internet From The Ground Up (U. California, 2026)
Matt Seybold, “The Black University Concept & The Second Curriculum” The American Vandal (October 31, 2024)
Dean O. Smith, How University Budgets Work (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019)
Edward Whalen, Responsibility Center Budgeting: An Approach to Decentralized Management of Institutions of Higher Education (Indiana UP, 1991)
