America in and of the world
Weekend reads for February 21, 2026
Happy Saturday, Ink readers!
This week’s been, yet again, a lot: Marco Rubio tried to sell the world on a fantasy vision of Western Civ, the U.S. threatened war with Iran, new evidence from the Jeffrey Epstein files meant a British royal faced justice for the first time since the 17th Century, the Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump’s tariffs, and Olympians offered a brighter vision of America to the world. If you haven’t had a chance to keep up on everything, we get it. So spend some time reading along with us, and catch up on some stories you might have missed.
In today’s edition of Weekend Reads:
Do university trustees want full classrooms — or empty atria?
Buying Foucault’s used car
Can cutting down on screen time really get our attention back?
Jesse Jackson’s legacy
Is generative A.I. tasteless?
What the left really wants from technology
How did good Germans see their world?
The fight to get justice for Black women who’ve survived abuse
Why are today’s authoritarians obsessed with content creation?
And music to mend a broken world
If The Ink helps you understand these times and this community keeps you sane, join us today. We can’t do what we do without the support of our subscribers.
Higher miseducation
He wonders if any trustees know how The Cooper Union, the famed engineering school, was brought to its knees in the wake of years of bad decisions, after its board of fiduciaries commissioned a lavish new building designed by a world-famous architect—with an atrium, naturally. He bets no one teaches that case study in the classes taken by the MBAs who run his university’s finances. [Public Books]
