President @FREOPP. Past: @AFPhq, @standtogether, @EdWorkforceCmte. Proud @BostonCollege @bctrackandfield alum. Rhode Island born and bred.
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Some personal news - March 21 is my last day at AFP; On March 26, I begin as President of @FREOPP!
I am grateful to AFP and Stand Together, and honored for the opportunity to lead FREOPP - looking forward to helping expand the American Dream to uplift more Americans than ever!
FREOPP is thrilled to announce that Akash Chougule has been appointed President of the organization, effective March 26. Chougule succeeds FREOPP's co-founder @Avik, who has served as President since the think tank's founding in 2016.
businesswire.com/news/home/2…
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Too many Americans have stopped talking to each other and stopped coming together organically in their communities to meet people and solve problems, and it's leaving them sad, lonely, and desperate to fill the void obsessing over politics in Washington.
It's unhealthy, and policymakers should be thinking more seriously about how to fix the problem and reinvigorate civil society - without making government an even bigger force in our lives. @tanneronpolicy explains for @FREOPP: washingtonexaminer.com/resto…
Fewer Americans are volunteering, joining civic groups, or showing up for their neighbors, and that isolation is taking a real toll on our mental and physical health.
On @SutherlandInst's Defending Ideas, @tanneronpolicy lays out how to rebuild the local ties that hold a community together.
Watch the full episode here: piped.video/watch?v=nUltbM-Y…
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Akash Chougule retweeted
Happy First Day of Fall, Eagles! 🍂
📸: Abby Slimmon '24
ALT A scenic view of the Boston College campus in autumn, featuring Gasson Hall with its prominent Gothic architecture. The surrounding trees display vibrant fall colors, and a manicured hedge lines the walkway.
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Akash Chougule retweeted
This post—“there are many, many downsides to pure meritocracy”—perfectly encapsulates what I mean when I say that certain segments of the GOP did not realize, or were not prepared for, the natural outcome of Students for Fair Admissions enforcement, which is: more Asian kids.
Eliminating the use of race as a factor in American education, employment, etc. had been a decades-long project for Republicans that was finally achieved in 2023. It was a generational victory supported by a super-majority of Americans who believe that college admissions, for example, should be determined only by objective metrics such as grades and test scores.
This victory for colorblindness—which, I have to reiterate, is a principle widely supported by the American public—is now being criticized by some Republicans using the exact same logic as that used by supporters of racial preferences, that if merit leads to less representation of their preferred racial group, we simply cannot have it.
Racial preferences were a failure for the left, and they will be a failure for the right, too.
This comment from Ben Shapiro is incredibly simplistic and historically ignorant-- not just because it doesn't acknowledge that what he happens to think of as a "meritocracy" (a certain cleverness with words, spreadsheets, or computer programming-- which is how most of the really big fortunes are made today) is historically contingent-- as @romanhelmetguy famously pointed out in the tweet below (which was not directed at Shapiro, to be clear)
But Shapiro's comment is also wrong because there are many, many downsides to pure meritocracy, and there are many important cultural and historical values that pure meritocratic thinking erases. This may be "good" for clever folks situated like Ben, but it's not good for society as a whole. Inevitably the logic of of pure meritocracy leads to open borders, globalism, extreme wealth inequality, and cultural homogenization (even if Ben might nominally claim to oppose, say, open borders)
Ben seems blissfully unaware that the term "meritocracy" itself was popularized in sociologist Michael Dunlop Young's 1958 *dystopian* novel The Rise of The Meritocracy, which warned against just such a purely "meritocratic" society as proposed by Ben and ultimately ended with the overthrow of the "meritocrats" by populists.
Don't get me wrong-- merit is good-- and societies that don't ultimately recognize and reward merit according to reasonably objective standards will tend to fall behind those who do.
But there are many social values other than "merit" that any society should consider in making policy, and to champion some sort of bloodless "meritocracy" as the primary goal we should aiming towards shows an unfortunate degree of ethical and intellectual tunnel vision.
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Akash Chougule retweeted
New from @FREOPP:
"Affording the American Dream: Making Everyday Life More Attainable for Every American"
Too many people on both sides resort to more government as the answer to the affordability crisis.
Today, FREOPP showed how we can make child care, housing, energy, health care, college, and more more affordable:
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New from @FREOPP:
"Affording the American Dream: Making Everyday Life More Attainable for Every American"
Too many people on both sides resort to more government as the answer to the affordability crisis.
Today, FREOPP showed how we can make child care, housing, energy, health care, college, and more more affordable:
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Read the full report, plus a summary of the policy solutions, here: freopp.org/wp-content/upload…
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"Let's be honest about what this is. Not poverty. Not harmless shoplifting. Organized crime, enabled by a system that refuses to treat it like organized crime."
This is so good from @sarithaforny, candidate for Attorney General in New York.
Locked shelves. Closed stores. Higher prices. Failed leadership.
As Attorney General, I’ll crack down on organized retail theft to make New York safer and more affordable.
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Anti-Indian racists are making common cause with the Chinese Communist Party.
It isn’t just that the CCP promotes the same garbage through propaganda and bot farms. It’s that they do so because both groups are threatened by the prospect of a strong and prosperous America, and benefit from attacking people who help make it that way.
It’s well-established that Indian-Americans are hardworking, entrepreneurial, productive, and so on in ways that obviously help build and strengthen the United States. That’s why people with a zero-sum view of the world, who are none of these things, despise Indian-Americans.
Attacking Indian-Americans weakens America, and a weaker America helps two groups: those with a loser mentality domestically, and an adversarial mentality abroad.
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“Today’s far-right nativists claim to defend American identity, but they’re importing the European blood-and-soil politics that America has rejected.
…Many on the Right have argued that liberalism weakened inherited institutions and left people free but unmoored. That is exactly why one should care about institutions that still give young people a sense of belonging.”
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Akash Chougule retweeted
On this day in 1787, the founders signed the Constitution, laying the foundation for the most free, most powerful, most successful, most benevolent nation in the history of the world.
We must continue the fight to defend and protect it. 🇺🇸
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This is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of the Right.
The institutional post-conservative, big-government “new right” in DC is a well-funded, toxic brew of some of the worst people and ideas imaginable - even worse than we already knew.
For the last month, I've been working on tying together the white nationalists, Christian nationalists, and neo-Nazis rising on the right. They not only have common sources of funding, but they are taking over portions of the conservative movement. Finally hitting "publish" in the morning. ewerickson.substack.com
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This morning I testified in front of @EdWorkforceCmte on how to make unions more transparent, accountable, and democratic, so they actually serve the workers they claim to represent. Here is my opening statement @FREOPP @Inst4AW: piped.video/live/sgo_cy79uts…
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FREOPP President @AkashJC is before the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions today on how workers get left behind when union politics come first.
Watch it live here: piped.video/live/sgo_cy79uts
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Tomorrow, I'll be testifying in the @EdWorkforceCmte about how labor union leaders are out of touch with rank-and-file workers:
- Union political spending does not even closely resemble union household voting patterns
- Union leaders oppose commonsense policies that workers support, like secret ballot elections
- Union leaders use collective bargaining to push social justice agendas irrelevant to workers
- Union leaders vehemently oppose greater transparency so workers can see how dues are spent
And much more. The status quo in organized labor is completely broken, and the decades-long collapse in union membership shows it.
Tomorrow, I'll discuss how unions can become more democratic, transparent, and accountable to the workers they represent. @FREOPP @Inst4AW
edworkforce.house.gov/calend…
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People forget before he went viral for his racist tweets & loser mentality, @bofrench was SUED by the widow of Chris Kyle, the famous "American Sniper," and she demanded he stop using Kyle's name and image. Bo is a fraud who disrespected an American hero. texastribune.org/2016/02/24/…
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Akash Chougule retweeted
The University of Texas (and TAMU) heavily emphasize instate admissions, more than pretty much any other prominent state school in the USA. It's notoriously hard to get into as an out of state student.
Their automatic admissions program does a great job of recognizing merit without penalizing kids from poorer school districts. Graduated in the top 5% from a Texas public high school? Congrats, you're in. Home schooled or non traditional school with a 36 ACT or 1570 SAT? Congrats, you're in.
That's why these guys are at UT, not some secret conspiracy. Anyone on this hellsite claiming that their precious 5.0 GPA 1600 SAT "Heritage" child was denied admission to UT is lying through their teeth.
admissions.utexas.edu/apply/…
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Trump won Texas by 14 points and @bofrench of viral racist Twitter fame is - at best - barely squeaking by. (h/t @EsotericCD)
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Akash Chougule retweeted
Welles Crowther was a former Boston College lacrosse player and a New York City firefighter who carried a red bandanna.
On September 11, 2001, Welles ran into the World Trade Center to rescue those in need.
25 years later, his life and legacy endure with one of the most powerful traditions in sports, BC's Red Bandanna Game ❤️
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Akash Chougule retweeted
Welles Crowther '99 was the "Man in the Red Bandanna," saving as many as 18 lives during the 9/11 terrorist attack. His story is shared at BC and beyond as a symbol of courage, sacrifice, and being men and women for others.
Video credits: on.bc.edu/ManintheRedBandann…
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Watch this if you haven’t, and show it to someone new if you have.
To this day, every single Boston College freshman at their orientation during their first week on campus is taught who Welles was and how he embodied the University’s motto and values.
Incredibly fortunate to share an alma mater with one of the greatest heroes our country has ever known. #WeAreBC 🦅🇺🇸
If you haven’t watched the Welles Crowther story on ESPN you really need to.
The epitome of Boston College’s motto “men and women for others” and a national hero.
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