Cambridge University Press is mentioned in three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, in each case as a publisher rather than as a topic in its own right. In the earliest of the three, the press figures in a hypothetical about campaign finance law; in the two later episodes it is named as the publisher of books by the program’s guests.
The book hypothetical in Citizens United
In a discussion of the Duopoly and Citizens United, Mike Munger described a documentary about Hillary Clinton that was to be shown in movie theaters within 60 days of the 2008 election. The Federal Election Commission, he said, told its makers that they could not show it, could not show it on television, and could not advertise for it within 60 days of the election, because of McCain-Feingold. Munger called the Commission’s interpretation correct as a matter of law while arguing the law itself was unconstitutional, and noted that the law had been upheld in McConnell v. FEC. He said Hillary: The Movie was a violation of McCain-Feingold because it mentioned Hillary Clinton’s name and expressed advocacy. Who Wants to Buy a Politician? With Mike Munger (2015)
Munger then described the question he and others wanted the Supreme Court to ask as the case wended its way through the courts: what about a book? He posed the hypothetical that Cambridge University Press, which he called the prestigious academic press, had published a book containing the sentence that Hillary Clinton is a good candidate or a bad candidate, published within 60 days of the election. According to Munger, the court asked that question, and the Solicitor General of the United States said that would outlaw the book, that they would burn it and ban its publication. Munger recalled silence in the courtroom at the implication. Who Wants to Buy a Politician? With Mike Munger (2015)
After a rehearing, Munger said, the decision was written by Anthony Kennedy, and he allowed that it could be criticized as overly expansive because Kennedy expanded the issue from nonprofit corporations to for-profit corporations. Most importantly, in Munger’s account, the decision overturned McConnell v. FEC, which he called unconstitutional and a bad decision. Munger stressed that the phrase “corporations are people” never appears anywhere in the decision, and that the decision rests on freedom of association: a group of people can come together, pool their resources, and express political views. He quoted Kennedy’s opinion that if the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing associations of citizens for simply engaging in political speech. Who Wants to Buy a Politician? With Mike Munger (2015)
Bob Zadek closed the segment by saying that if one person has freedom of speech, a group of persons have the same freedom of speech, and that it is nothing more sinister than that. Who Wants to Buy a Politician? With Mike Munger (2015)
Tomorrow 3.0
In a 2017 episode on public choice economics, Munger told Zadek about his new book, Tomorrow 3.0, coming out with Cambridge University Press early the next year, on the sharing economy. Munger said he called it Tomorrow 3.0 because he believed we are in the midst of the third great economic revolution: the first was the Neolithic or the move to fixed agriculture, the second was the industrial, and the third, he said, will change our lives in ways that are hard to predict but that we ought to be thinking more about. He said he was in the very final stages of working on the proofs. Leviathan in Chains: Michael Munger on Public Choice Economics (2017)
The same episode’s discussion of Cambridge University Press is confined to that book announcement; the press is not otherwise discussed. The episode’s main argument, in the portion of the transcript devoted to a caller’s question, concerned a confrontation in Utah between an emergency room nurse and a police detective sent to obtain blood specimens from a badly burned, unconscious patient. Munger said the police had no probable cause and wanted a blood sample to look for drugs they might use against the patient, and that the nurse stood down the armed policemen in what he called a very brave act. He framed the episode as an illustration of Public Choice’s emphasis on the importance of rules and on not forgetting the individual. Leviathan in Chains: Michael Munger on Public Choice Economics (2017)
Wretched Refuse
Cambridge University Press appears again in two episodes featuring Alex Nowrasteh on immigration. In a 2020 episode, Nowrasteh described an argument against open borders that he said would convince him if the evidence supported it: that immigrants might bring ideas, voting patterns, and opinions about the nature of government, including anti-capitalist opinions, that could influence public policy and undermine prosperity. He said that he and Benjamin Powell, a professor at Texas Tech University, wrote a book about this, coming out later that year or early the next from Cambridge University Press, analyzing all of the evidence on whether immigrants from poor countries and countries with bad institutions undermine institutions in developed countries. Immigration Myth-Busting - Redux (2020)
Nowrasteh said they found no evidence that this has ever happened anywhere, and a lot of evidence that immigrants actually improve institutions in places like the United States. One mechanism he proposed is that immigrants undermine labor unions, which he called the one most powerful vehicle from which left-wing politicians gain power. He said it was no mistake that when immigration was most closed in this country, from the mid-1920s up through the mid-to-late 1960s, the federal and state governments grew in size tremendously because labor unions were growing, and that labor unions started to shrink and collapse beginning in the late ’60s and early ’70s, exactly as immigration laws were liberalized. Immigration Myth-Busting - Redux (2020)
In that episode Zadek offered a counter-hypothesis at his own invitation: that the argument against immigration—that newcomers bring anti-capitalist ideas—is the same argument people in Colorado, Utah, and Texas make about Californians who leave California and bring progressive voting habits to more conservative states. Nowrasteh responded that when you look at the voting patterns of people from California who settle in Texas, they are actually more conservative than native-born Texans and vote more Republican, so that without interstate migration Texas would be slightly more Democratic than it is currently. Zadek concluded that California’s two major exports to the rest of the country are avocados and conservatives. Immigration Myth-Busting - Redux (2020)
In a 2021 episode, Nowrasteh named the book: Wretched Refuse: The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions, published by Cambridge University Press, written with Ben Powell. He said they looked at the topic in the United States and around the world to see whether there is any relationship between more immigration and more socialist or big government policies, and found either no relationship at all or, in some cases, that more immigration leads to more economic freedom, more representative government, and more prosperity along the lines libertarians believe in and want. The Immigration Crisis in Context (2021)
Nowrasteh called the idea that immigrants vote for socialists a pernicious stereotype and said it is not true, pointing to a swing of Hispanic voters and naturalized immigrant voters toward President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, and to patterns in places including Israel, Jordan, and Europe. He said that historically in the United States the government grew the most and fastest when immigration was most closed, from about 1930 to 1970, and grew much more slowly in periods since 1970 and before 1930 when immigration was more open. He added that on the state level, states with more immigration are not seeing their governments grow more quickly than states with less immigration. The Immigration Crisis in Context (2021)
Across episodes
Cambridge University Press recurs across three episodes spanning 2015 to 2021, but the excerpts show no development in how the press itself is treated: in 2015 Munger uses it as the hypothetical publisher in the Citizens United book question, in 2017 he names it as the publisher of Tomorrow 3.0, and in 2020 and 2021 Nowrasteh names it as the publisher of Wretched Refuse. The constant is the press as a vehicle for political and economic argument, not any change in the discussion of the press.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe Cambridge University Press’s history, governance, location, or relationship to the University of Cambridge, nor do they give any founding date or editorial policy. They do not state whether the press was in fact threatened with any legal action, only that Munger posed a hypothetical book and that the Solicitor General said such a book would be banned. The publication dates of Tomorrow 3.0 and Wretched Refuse are given only as the guests’ own projections at the time of speaking. No excerpt reports a response from the press itself to any of these discussions.