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Michael S Roth

@msroth.bsky.social
1.4K followers 65 following 398 posts

President of Wesleyan University. (grand)father, husband, author, professor. Defender of academic freedom, liberal education and democracy.

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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Congrats @wesleyanuniversity.bsky.social prof @maazamengiste.bsky.social www.macfound.org/fellows/clas... @macfound.org
macfound.org
Maaza Mengiste
Revealing the human costs of political violence through a compelling blend of history, memory, and imagination.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
"Aaron shall lean both of his hands..upon the live he goat's head and confess upon it all the willful transgressions of the children of Israel, all their rebellions, and all their unintentional sins, and he shall place them on the he goat's head, and send it off to the desert with a timely man"
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Ah, unbundling again! www.theatlantic.com/education/ar... www.theatlantic.com/education/ar... www.thedailybeast.com/how-to-destr...
theatlantic.com
Why 'Nano-Degrees' Can Never Replace Liberal Arts Colleges
In a market where jobs are constantly shifting and disappearing, the kind of ultra-specialized training offered by companies like Udacity won't go very far.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Read jloeffler.bsky.social “debates about Jews are never just about Jews. They are the seismographs of a society’s deeper tremors: its fears of difference, its contested visions of nationhood.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | For Trump, Jews Are Proving to Be a Very Useful Tool (Gift Article)
Debates about Jews are never just about Jews.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
About to go teach my first class of the year at @wesleyanuniversity.bsky.social. I'll try to remember this all semester: "Today’s students are trying to work out what it means to be decent humans in a world growing more heated, hostile and, sometimes, heartless." www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | This Is the Real Point of College (Gift Article)
It’s all about the practice of freedom.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Barbara Kingsolver quotes Wendell Berry: “As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/b...
nytimes.com
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
My take: “Students approach college “with energetic curiosity. They always do. Why? Because they are [about] to discover who they are as readers, as conversation partners, as people. They are figuring out what kind of work they find fulfilling, what they love to do.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | This Is the Real Point of College (Gift Article)
It’s all about the practice of freedom.
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Reposted by Michael S Roth
James Sims @simsjames.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Watch the full episode of @realbillmaher.bsky.social featuring @msroth.bsky.social on HBO Max and catch his appearance on the “Overtime” after show on YouTube. #highered
youtu.be
Overtime with Bill Maher: Byron Donalds, Molly Jong-Fast, Michael S. Roth (HBO)
YouTube video by Real Time with Bill Maher
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Reposted by Michael S Roth
James Sims @simsjames.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Wesleyan University’s @msroth.bsky.social from last week’s @realtimers.bsky.social. #highered
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Reposted by Michael S Roth
James Sims @simsjames.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
“The Secretary of the Treasury is using the IRS to advance a pro-White Nationalist agenda. That is extraordinary.” —Wesleyan University President @msroth.bsky.social on @npr.org with @steveinskeep.bsky.social #highered
npr.org
Wesleyan University president on administration's efforts to revoke tax-exempt status
NPR's Steve Inskeep asks Wesleyan University president Michael Roth about U.S. Treasury and IRS efforts to revoke tax-exempt status from private schools that help students based on race.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Read @michellegoldberg.bsky.social “the bleakness of our time makes her example more important than ever. She didn’t vanquish crude sexism, but she was part of a movement that made it marginal, at least for a while. If it was done before, it can be done again.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | What Gloria Steinem Can Teach Us (Gift Article)
Steinem has died at the end of a decade that undid some of what she struggled for.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Read @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social "if the free speech clause means anything, it means that each of us has the right to engage in political argument, no matter if our views are radically fringe, comfortably mainstream or something in between. This is basic stuff." www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Who’s the Snowflake Now?
Marco Rubio is taking the wrong approach to free speech.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
"Because the rules allow no wiggle room &the potential penalty is so large, schools are likely to examine their own activities and make changes even before the regulations take effect “The chilling effect is very real" @wsj.com @aacu.org @thefireorg.bsky.social @aaup.org www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...
wsj.com
IRS Proposes Rules to Strip Tax Exemptions From Colleges Using Race in Policies
Race-based admissions, scholarships and other policies could lead to costly penalties.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
“Ms. McMahon’s letter might appear more benign than the compact. But she still implies that core academic decisions should be overseen by the federal government…Coercion is coercion, even if it’s not explicit.” @nytopinion.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | College Presidents, Don’t Be Fooled by Linda McMahon (Gift Article)
Her open letter to American universities is a trap.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Read @dwightgarner.bsky.social “Some of the ironies are pitched so high that only a dog can hear them…You don’t finish “The Disappearers.” It finishes you.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/30/b...
nytimes.com
Book Review: ‘The Disappearers,’ by Marlon James
Marlon James’s story of gay experience and murderous homophobia in Jamaica is a maximalist’s banquet — and the Booker Prize winner’s finest book yet.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Too woke? “I used to live in the country that I thought was the most enthusiastic about the prospects for science improving the human condition, of any country in the world,” said Phillip Zamore… “And I woke up one day and that wasn’t true anymore.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/27/w...
nytimes.com
Canada Hires U.S. Scholars From Harvard and Other Top Universities
A crackdown on American academia by the Trump administration has handed Canadian universities a rare opportunity to lure some top researchers north.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Brian Rosenberg on the alignment of Vanderbilt with the White House www.chronicle.com/article/vand...
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Susan Faludi: “The purpose of civic society and government — in the democratic world, anyway — is to serve the unheroic needs of ordinary people. Not to make a mess of their lives on the way to staging a cage fight on the White House lawn.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Barbie Backlash (Gift Article)
‘The Odyssey’ and ‘Barbie’ show a zeitgeist shift that goes beyond Hollywood: The hero’s narrative is corroding our political and public life.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Read @jabannandale.bsky.social "If universities do not fight to maintain the vital work they have done to promote democracy in its most literal form, they will lose that foundational purpose, and the nation will lose the vital contributions of countless young adults" www.nytimes.com/2026/08/19/o...
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
My take: different period, similar story. "Even those who recognized that officials were not following the rule of law but instead lying to enrich themselves and attack their enemies might nevertheless have found a way to accommodate themselves to the new reality." www.wsj.com/arts-culture...
wsj.com
‘Hotel Exile’ Review: Occupiers and Survivors
The Nazis commandeered the Hotel Lutetia after capturing Paris. The hotel later became a center for those returning from the death camps.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
A fine history with unsettling relevance: “The very nature of the German occupation,” ...led many into a “take what you can” form of corruption. As the rule of law receded, as is so often the case under authoritarianism, greed and corruption came to the fore" www.wsj.com/arts-culture...
wsj.com
‘Hotel Exile’ Review: Occupiers and Survivors
The Nazis commandeered the Hotel Lutetia after capturing Paris. The hotel later became a center for those returning from the death camps.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Read @mashagessen.bsky.social “Fascism works not only by the passage of arbitrary, dehumanizing laws but by the arbitrary, dehumanizing enforcement of the laws.” @nytopinion.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | What’s Happening in Kansas Should Alarm Us All (Gift Article)
Is Kansas just the beginning?
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Reposted by Michael S Roth
Wesleyan University Press @weslpress.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
The wait is over—Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rae Armantrout's newest collection, Safe Rooms, is releasing today! Order your copy now at weslpress.org or your favorite bookstore near you! #bookrelease #raearmantrout #poetry #saferooms
The cover of Rae Armantrout's poetry collection, Safe Rooms, which features and an abstract window within a window within a window, sits above the words: "Safe Rooms Out Now. Get your copy at weslpress.org."Safe Rooms is open to page 6 on the poem "Blend":

Blend

A full-blown
salmon-colored
rose
at the end of its
long, thin stem
is the only lamp
this morning;
a blend
of anger and longing—
resentment—
having nowhere to go,
persists.
“Hitch your wagon
to a star,”
the man said.
Anything that burns.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Enjoyed talking with Joe Donahue at @wamc.org this week about the threats to academic freedom, and why it's so important to defend civil society during this season of authoritarianism. More at montereymeetinghouse.org on Sunday www.wamc.org/podcast/the-...
montereymeetinghouse.org
Monterey Meeting House | Preserving History & Community in Monterey, MA
Help preserve the Monterey Meeting House, a historic landmark in Monterey Village, as a vibrant space for cultural, educational, and community gatherings.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
"The Vanderbilt declaration goes far beyond what the Trump administration dreamed of proposing for colleges, imposing an extreme attack on academic freedom, shared governance, international scholars, and free speech that may be unmatched in the history of statements by American college boards."
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Schools are so afraid of the feds they praising its "national call to action." An executive branch bent on “reforming” higher ed has found collaborators to play ball just as other threats have incentivized “deals” between corporations & the administration. www.wamc.org/podcast/the-...
wamc.org
Michael Roth will speak on education and democracy at the Monterey Meeting House on 8/9
Michael Roth, the President of Wesleyan University, will speak at the Monterey Meeting House in Monterey, MA on Sunday, August 9th. His talk is titled: 'From Neutrality to Democracy; How Higher Ed Can...
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Nothing to worry about here. Thanks to bold and courageous collaborators and institutional neutrality, we are fulfilling the promises of White House.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Join a Loyalty Club for Higher Education! "history [shows] us..how this might work. In the decade or so after the end of WWarII, higher-education leaders across the country collaborated with Senator Joseph McCarthy’s effort to rid the land of communists." www.thenation.com/article/poli...
thenation.com
Join a Loyalty Club for Higher Education—While You Still Can!
Another way to show devotion to the nation and to truth.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Read @mashagessen.bsky.social “evaluating history has the potential to change a people’s future by changing its self-understanding. It can unite people in a genuinely new project. And then there is the rewriting of history, which is crazy-making.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Trump's Smithsonian Attacks Are Attacks on America’s Future (Gift Article)
This is how we decide who we are and who we want to be.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Trump “he has no enduring scale, beyond his own vanity, to judge what’s important or what’s right. And if some in his tiny circle of decision makers do, they lack the courage to tell him.” www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
nybooks.com
Trump’s Constitutional Dictatorship | Mark Danner
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s inside account of the Trump administration portrays a president with a vast appetite for power but who repeatedly backs down when the costs of his actions become to...
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
"Authoritarianism doesn’t have to involve men in suits dragging people into cars...Orban showed that critics — or pockets of independence — can be rendered pliable by making them believe that the smart move is to affirmatively sacrifice some of their independence" @yale.edu wapo.st/3RW4HPo
wapo.st
Opinion | Yale trustees, history is watching you
A lesson from Hungary: Boards don't capitulate to authoritarians. The people on them do.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Spoke with @wesleyanuniversity.bsky.social alum @emilydreyfuss.bsky.social about #HigherEd #AI jobs, and #LiberalEducation Full episode @sfstandard.com @aacu.org @aceducation.bsky.social
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Read @bardcollege.bsky.social prez @jabannandale.bsky.social "One fears that by the time US academic leaders understand the implications of our current retreat, the country’s leadership in higher education, like in so many other fields, will be lost." www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/even...
timeshighereducation.com
Even in the Trump era, abandoning HE’s civic mission is not an option
A room full of international educators half a world away reminded me what my priorities as an acting college president should be, says Jonathan Becker
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
White House authoritarian vision for #HigherEd clear at @Smithsonian @SmithsonianSec notes “It scares me when people aren’t brave enough to face their history. And in some ways you have to face it anyway.” @historians.org @Aacu.org @theFIREorg.bsky.org @aaup.org www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/u...
nytimes.com
Inside Trump’s Ideological Fight With the Smithsonian
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
On July 4 I’ll participate in a public reading of the Declaration, & I’ll thank my lucky stars that I live in a country where the links between learning & civic participation are broadly valued & where freedom of speech—linked to freedom of thought—is still cherished www.wesleyan.edu/about/news/2...
wesleyan.edu
Higher Education at America’s 250th
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
“I’m an original,” he said. “What I’m going to wear is something that says freedom.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/04/u...
nytimes.com
How Do You Celebrate America’s 250-Year Experiment? However You Want.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Read @jenszalai.bsky.social “After all, putting [cruelty]… first doesn’t have to mean that you give up imagining what could come after you denounce it. One can stare hard at reality as it currently exists and still propose a way forward.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/b... via @nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Liberals Are Preaching Moral Values. What Took Them So Long?
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Read @mollyjongfast.bsky.social “When Mr. Trump’s authoritarianism is all but underwritten by well-liked public figures and all but ignored by others, its toxic tenets start to look like politics as usual.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | If These Celebrities Are Democracy’s Last Hope, We’re in Trouble
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
www.wesleyan.edu/about/news/2... @wesleyanuniversity.bsky.social
wesleyan.edu
Happy Summer!
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
A basic educational idea (in France) “What counts most,” he said, “is an individual’s capacity to understand and grasp ideas.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/19/w...
nytimes.com
What Does It All Mean? Once a Year, French Students Try to Explain.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Read @fieldsmeyer.com & @juliaangwin.com : “At precisely the moment conventional wisdom would say to retreat into the ease of a smaller, more cautious, more guarded life, people facing authoritarianism made their community bigger.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/16/o... via @nytopinion.nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Opinion | The State of American Resistance Is Stronger Than You Think
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Lobbying against Derrida and relativism, no doubt: “Every Ivy League institution reported increases in legal fees, lobbying bills or both….Vanderbilt’s chancellor, estimated his time in Washington had roughly tripled in 2025.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/u...
nytimes.com
Legal and Lobbying Costs Surge as Universities Face Trump Pressure
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
An extraordinary memory, a more extraordinary heart. “Each book of “Paradise Lost” was like a “gothic cathedral,” he said, that he could enter by closing his eyes. “I’ll tell you,” he added, “it’s very useful at the dentist.” @wesleyanuniversity.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/06/09/a...
nytimes.com
John Basinger, Who Memorized All 12 Books of ‘Paradise Lost,’ Dies at 92
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Reposted by Michael S Roth
James Sims @simsjames.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
No night before commencement at Wesleyan University is complete without President @msroth.bsky.social joining the band for a jam session under the tent!
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
"Practicing education..is like practicing democracy: Both are collaborative, experimental paths of improvement. Both depend on inclusion rather segregation. Both are very much now endangered. If we don’t defend education and protect democracy, we will lose them" www.wesleyan.edu/about/news/2...
wesleyan.edu
President Michael S. Roth ’78: ’Expanding Your Circles of Curiosity and Wonder Enhances Your Lives’
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Read @wesleyanuniversity.bsky.social prof Andrew Curran “On one level, this is admirable: We are, after all, one species. Yet this powerful ideal has sometimes served as a shield against self-examination. The logic is simple: no race, no problem.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Brutal History That France Prefers to Ignore Is Being Heard at Last
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
.@jillfilipovic.bsky.social 10+ yrs ago: "No girl should be a hero for getting an education. But for many girls around the world, walking through the schoolhouse doors isn’t a right..it’s a victory over conservative fanatics –some of whom carry guns." Now Muslim & Jewish families must have courage.
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Skylar Mitchell “When the pendulum appears to have swung back to antagonism toward racial equity, H.B.C.U.s like Spelman preserve the intellectual and civic inheritance of Black Americans precisely when the broader culture moves to forget it.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The College Where I Wasn’t an Afterthought
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Read @dsallentess.bsky.social “The reflective patriot appreciates the power of free institutions to open pathways of possibility, while bringing cleareyed realism to where the country has and hasn’t lived up to its ideals, along with embracing correction and reform” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Nothing Beats Polarization Like Civics Education
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Michael S Roth @msroth.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
Carla Sosenko on “proximity without belonging” on Long Island: a “place forever caught, like the whole country, between a vision of who we aspire to be and an anxiety about who we really are.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/16/o... via @nytopinion.nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Opinion | Why So Many TV Bad Guys Come From Long Island
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