Kick back and relax: In the latest entry to Harper Review’s winter letters prompt, “The ivory tower should endure,” En Lei describes her own lack of confidence in education—rosy visions of the humanities do not placate her. Students, Lei argues, are highly weaponizable: they often take on “the mission of human progress and don the armor of truth and moral consciousness” to become the leaders of those outside the tower. Likewise, they are eagerly “armed with some ideals and eager to accomplish some greater cause,” despite the fact that those who have done so in the past have often failed. So why not give education a break, and use the university as a space to “think, and not-so-eagerly apply ourselves, for some time?” Quoting University of Chicago sociologist Andrew Abbott, perhaps higher education is simply “a resting place before moving on elsewhere.”
Elizabeth Eck, senior editor
Funny business: To put it mildly, the executive branch of the US federal government has been undergoing great tumult. In the magazine The New Atlantis, conservative scholar Yuval Levin analyzes the implications of one exemplary event: the Trump administration’s slash of maximum NIH indirect cost rates—the federal government’s coverage of a calculated percentage of grant funds to account for research institutions’ operations costs—to 15% (compared to the 60+% that some institutions, including UChicago, currently receive). Levin writes that despite the predicted theatrics, little has been written about the mechanics of such a change and what they reveal about the new administration.
Levin asserts that the Trump administration seeks to cripple—not reform—the affected institutions, and that it has done so in a potentially illegal manner (perhaps even knowingly). Dredging up executive and congressional committee reports from the first Trump administration, he claims that this proposal had already been rejected before, on the grounds that the executive lacks the unilateral ability to change the rates.
Levin is not a lawyer. Rather, he argues that the uproar and subsequent legal challenges (of which UChicago is a part) is the point. Levin writes that the members of the current administration “understand themselves as outsiders fighting the government, not as insiders running it.” Levin, who would otherwise be sympathetic to major downsizing of the federal government, contends that this is a game the Trump administration might lose. Maybe “the deeper question,” though, is not a superficially partisan one, but a constitutional one: which branch will win the battle for power?
Levin asserts that the Trump administration seeks to cripple—not reform—the affected institutions, and that it has done so in a potentially illegal manner (perhaps even knowingly). Dredging up executive and congressional committee reports from the first Trump administration, he claims that this proposal had already been rejected before, on the grounds that the executive lacks the unilateral ability to change the rates.
Levin is not a lawyer. Rather, he argues that the uproar and subsequent legal challenges (of which UChicago is a part) is the point. Levin writes that the members of the current administration “understand themselves as outsiders fighting the government, not as insiders running it.” Levin, who would otherwise be sympathetic to major downsizing of the federal government, contends that this is a game the Trump administration might lose. Maybe “the deeper question,” though, is not a superficially partisan one, but a constitutional one: which branch will win the battle for power?
Jacob Neplokh, contributing editor
Lost in the (fish) sauce: The epicurean nihilism of present-day America, while at stark odds with its fun-shunning Puritan roots, is not, by any means, revolutionary. Proper Epicureanism flourished during the post-Alexander decline of the Hellenistic world in tandem with the Stoics, such that conspicuous consumption could be questionably combined with an aloof regard for mortal concerns. This all-around gloomy gourmandizing provoked social discontent (food was not cheap!). According to Amelia Soth in JSTOR Daily, this social unrest dates back to the Athenian Golden Age and marks a response to a character in Hellenistic culture: the opsophagos, or fish addict.
The opsophage, the nuisance of the agora, was as much a social role as the poet or the beggar—Socrates had about as much regard for opsophages as he did poets, specifying that his Republic wouldn’t be a “luxurious state… of [fish] sauces” and publicly shaming a fellow party-goer for eating too much fish. “Excessive fondness for fish,” a morally dubious offense in a limited-resource polis, “was a stock accusation for unpopular public figures.” Fish became symbolically linked to other vices—lust, greed, and haughtiness—such that one corrupt politician was salaciously accused of “having spent all of his bribe money on fish.” Fishmongers were feared to be exceptionally seductive, courtesans were linked to seafood, and wayward youth “stocked up with fish” conducted their liaisons brazenly in public.
While there were legitimate reasons for distrusting opsophages (one poet died after devouring a gigantic octopus), the panic that fish addiction engendered made fish-eating subversive for those who could afford it and a model for the infamous gluttony of the Roman world. While today’s overconsumption may be late-stage capitalism at work, it’s undeniable that there’s something fishy going on.
The opsophage, the nuisance of the agora, was as much a social role as the poet or the beggar—Socrates had about as much regard for opsophages as he did poets, specifying that his Republic wouldn’t be a “luxurious state… of [fish] sauces” and publicly shaming a fellow party-goer for eating too much fish. “Excessive fondness for fish,” a morally dubious offense in a limited-resource polis, “was a stock accusation for unpopular public figures.” Fish became symbolically linked to other vices—lust, greed, and haughtiness—such that one corrupt politician was salaciously accused of “having spent all of his bribe money on fish.” Fishmongers were feared to be exceptionally seductive, courtesans were linked to seafood, and wayward youth “stocked up with fish” conducted their liaisons brazenly in public.
While there were legitimate reasons for distrusting opsophages (one poet died after devouring a gigantic octopus), the panic that fish addiction engendered made fish-eating subversive for those who could afford it and a model for the infamous gluttony of the Roman world. While today’s overconsumption may be late-stage capitalism at work, it’s undeniable that there’s something fishy going on.
Brady Santoro, assistant editor
Image: Jean Siméon Chardin, The House of Cards, oil on canvas, ca. 1737 (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC).