Musk Dodges International Student Question, No Anthony Bourdain Slander Allowed, & More
Around the College Towns: Links and commentary related to urbanism and higher ed for the week of May 30 - June 6.
Note: I use this link round-up to (mostly) focus on stories that fell through the cracks in terms of higher ed and urbanism, rather than big national news (although, I have been consistently breaking this rule [sorry]). I’m also traveling this week, so the news might be a little light today.
Elon Dodges International Student Question
I have written plenty about Elon Musk and international students over the past few weeks. Both topics have unfortunately stayed in the news lately. Musk has just recently left the Trump administration, prompting questions around his service there.
During a sit-down interview, he was asked about stricter policies on international students under Trump, but Musk refused to answer the question. “I think we want to stick with the subject of the day, which is like spaceships,” he dodged.
He went on to say in the interview that he did not agree with everything the admin has been doing, but he also did not want to publicly criticize. He finally relented on the spending bill via X. Now, Musk is full on feuding with the White House, taking a scorched earth strategy. Trump allies, too, are even questioning Musk’s legal status in the US, possibly due to violations of student visas.
This fight between the former allies makes me wonder if the Tech Right crowd will finally stand up for international students.
In a metaphor for this debacle, a Chinese international student from Harvard was being interviewed about being Valedictorian and her experience in the US when a fight between two men broke out behind her. It is almost too perfect to illustrate the entire situation in which individual students get jerked around while the Musk and Trump throw social media barbs.
Links I’m Reading This Week
The r/Professor Subreddit asks, “Anyone else get depressed every summer?” My immediate thought was “no way.” But I could hardly believe that much of the group of fellow professors did indeed feel a kind of summer depression.
There is now a dearth of coding jobs, with CS majors now facing higher unemployment rates. Thanks, AI.
Coventry, UK, is extending what it calls its “Very” Light Rail to the main railway station and Coventry University. Love this sort of micro train system. Not everything has to be massive. If anyone is there and wants to review the system for me, my DMs are open.
Hong Kong has 100,000 non-local university students (many from Mainland China) who are struggling to find housing. I will be there Friday and hope to hear from some of them.
Likewise, Alabama A&M in Huntsville, Alabama, has seen its largest freshman classes in the last two years, and now upperclassmen are struggling to find housing since the school prioritizes first years.
Palm Beach is doing an interesting public-private partnership to build more housing for Palm Beach Atlantic University.
Granada, Spain, is a Spanish college town that is attracting more international students for its cheap and fun lifestyle. Who wouldn’t want to study abroad there!?
LA is finally opening its LAX/Metro Transit Center this week, which will allow people to arrive at the airport via trains. Hurray! We are finally becoming a real city. I hope to test it on my way back from Asia.
Around Substack
Note: I also think it’s important to shout out some fellow Substackers whom I am reading here this week. Here are a few:
at Ill Grandeur has a unique travel Substack that follows his life in China from back in 2004. It’s laid out more like a book with each post a chapter, a la China experiences like Peter Hessler. , a journalist from Los Alamos, New Mexico, has an interesting article exploring the homeless crisis in the Santa Fe area on. Of course, she reports it is all downstream from housing.
When Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) expanded its workforce to nearly 18,000 people in just a few years, those people needed a place to live. But the local housing supply barely budged…
The result is that homes that once housed teachers, veterinarians, and county workers when I was a kid now go for $500k+. Rents hover around $2,500 per month. A teacher earning $45,000 spends more than 60% of their income on housing.
Finally… No Anthony Bourdain Slander Allowed
A journalist from
had a slanderous take on Anthony Bourdain, saying he has made men pretentious when eating food. “The cult of personality Anthony Bourdain left in his wake is frankly insufferable,” said Suzy Weiss.I get Weiss was more popping off with a joke on a podcast, but it rankled a lot of people… including myself! Bourdain was an inspiration for a lot of people, and the slander against him brought out his defenders in droves. I was glad to see it.
There were a bunch more impassioned defenses, but these are the ones that stood out to me. I was myself personally inspired by Bourdain to go abroad as a student back as an undergrad. Young men today need more role models like him, which will be a future post by me on College Towns. There will be no Bourdain slander here!
Thank you for the shout out! It also appreciated and agree with your Bourdain defense. I went to a talk of his in Albuquerque and he was an absolute delight. I don't think appreciation of him has even come even close to "cult of personality" levels but if they were, what's the harm? So many actually dangerous cults of personality out there right now...