A JHI Blog & Tocqueville 21 Forum
The JHI Blog and Tocqueville 21 are co-publishing a series of commentaries on the intersection of the academy and democracy. Each author approaches our prompt from a historical perspective, applied across different academic fields, regions, and eras, in order to cast light on contemporary affairs.
“Does ‘higher education,’ in its various historical forms, presuppose some sort of hierarchy? How has higher education destabilized elites and challenged aristocracies? How has it sustained them?”

Simon Brown, Higher Education and the Stuff of Revolutions
Andrew Newman, Balcony and Scaffold: Literary Theory and High School English in the 1960s
Arthur Goldhammer, From Democracy in the Streets to Democracy in Danger
Justin Saint-Loubert-Bié, Démocratie dans la rue, démocratie en danger [translation]
Jonathon Catlin, Fear of the Ivory Tower
Ethan Ris, “In American Higher Ed, Hierarchy Begets Hierarchy”
Tim Lacy, American Equality, in Fits and Starts
Emily J. Levine, Gender and Meritocracy: A Historical Perspective
Featured Image: The London Institution, Moorfields: the interior of the lecture theatre. Watercolour by R. B. Schnebbelie, [1820].. Credit: Wellcome Collection.