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Elizabeth Nolan Brown

3 min read

Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a senior editor at Reason magazine. She appeared as a guest on The Bob Zadek Show in an episode devoted to President Biden’s executive order forgiving student loan debt The Student Loan Debt Fiasco (2022).

On the show

2 appearances, 2019–2022.

Student loan forgiveness

Host Bob Zadek introduced the episode by describing Biden’s action as executive action carrying no input from Congress, and said it had been observed to be more economically consequential than any other executive act in 240 years. He framed the forgiveness as unilateral, applying to debt students had incurred with the legal obligation to repay it, and asked what the action meant for the economy, for collective morality, for those whose debt was forgiven, and for those whose debt was not The Student Loan Debt Fiasco (2022).

Zadek introduced Brown as a Reason writer who had just written a piece on the executive action, noting she had been at the magazine since 2014 and had emphasized politics, policy, and legal issues surrounding sex, speech, tech, justice, reproductive freedom, and women’s rights. The episode’s stated topics included the questionable use of the HEROES Act of 2003 as justification, the potential for increased inflation and tuition costs, and the moral hazard created by what the episode described as a significant wealth transfer from the working class to college-educated professionals The Student Loan Debt Fiasco (2022).

Closing remarks and other work

In the closing segment, Zadek asked Brown what projects she was working on at Reason and how the audience could follow her work. Brown said she writes a weekday morning newsletter for Reason called the Reason Roundup, found on Reason.com, covering whatever is happening in the news from a libertarian perspective. She said she also tends to write longer pieces, and was working on one at the time in defense of algorithms. She directed listeners to Reason.com and to her accounts on Twitter and Instagram at @ENBrown. She also said she co-runs a libertarian feminist group called Feminists for Liberty, at FeministsForLiberty.com The Student Loan Debt Fiasco (2022).

Zadek characterized the algorithms piece as shilling for the algebra lobby, and Brown replied that she was shilling for big math. Zadek thanked her for her time and for calling attention to both the student loan problem and to sexuality and feminism in America, noting she had appeared on the show about a year earlier on that topic The Student Loan Debt Fiasco (2022).

Across episodes

Only one episode on the show features Elizabeth Nolan Brown, so the episodes show no development in her treatment across episodes; the sole appearance touching her is the student loan forgiveness episode The Student Loan Debt Fiasco (2022).

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