Mastery and Drift
Professional-Class Liberals since the 1960s
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Mastery and Drift
Professional-Class Liberals since the 1960s
A revelatory look at modern liberalism’s historical evolution and enduring impact on contemporary politics and society.
Since the 1960s, American liberalism and the Democratic Party have been remade along professional class lines, widening liberalism’s impact but narrowing its social and political vision. In Mastery and Drift, historians Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer have assembled a group of scholars to address the formation of “professional class liberalism,” and its central role in remaking electoral politics and the practice of governance. Across subjects as varied as philanthropy, consulting, health care, welfare, race, immigration, economics, and foreign conflicts, the authors examine not only the gaps between liberals’ egalitarian aspirations and their approaches to policymaking but also how the intricacies of contemporary governance have tended to bolster professional class liberals’ power.
The contributors to Mastery and Drift all came of age amid the development of professional-class liberalism, giving them distinctive and important perspectives in understanding its internal limitations and its relationship to neoliberalism and the Right. With never-ending disputes over the meaning of liberalism, the content of its governance, and its relationship to a resurgent Left, now is the time to consider modern liberalism’s place in contemporary American life.
Since the 1960s, American liberalism and the Democratic Party have been remade along professional class lines, widening liberalism’s impact but narrowing its social and political vision. In Mastery and Drift, historians Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer have assembled a group of scholars to address the formation of “professional class liberalism,” and its central role in remaking electoral politics and the practice of governance. Across subjects as varied as philanthropy, consulting, health care, welfare, race, immigration, economics, and foreign conflicts, the authors examine not only the gaps between liberals’ egalitarian aspirations and their approaches to policymaking but also how the intricacies of contemporary governance have tended to bolster professional class liberals’ power.
The contributors to Mastery and Drift all came of age amid the development of professional-class liberalism, giving them distinctive and important perspectives in understanding its internal limitations and its relationship to neoliberalism and the Right. With never-ending disputes over the meaning of liberalism, the content of its governance, and its relationship to a resurgent Left, now is the time to consider modern liberalism’s place in contemporary American life.
416 pages | 3 halftones, 1 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2025
History: American History
Political Science: Classic Political Thought
Reviews
Table of Contents
Introduction: Professional-Class Liberalism
Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer
Part I: Generational Change and Continuity
1. How Philanthropy Made and Unmade American Liberalism
Lila Corwin Berman
2. Managing Global Development: Robert Nathan and the Liberal Roots of the Contract State in US Foreign Policy
Stephen Macekura
3. Creating “Initiatory Democracy”: Ralph Nader, the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, and the Shaping of Liberalism in the 1970s
Sarah Milov and Reuel Schiller
4. “What Is a Populist Approach to This Crisis?”: ACORN’s Liberalism and the 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis
Marisa Chappell
5. Survival Pending Corporate Sponsorship: The “Crisis” of the Black Family, Black State Skepticism, and the Evolution of Black Liberalism in the Post–Civil Rights Era
Danielle Wiggins
6. Queer Autonomy and the Afterlife of the Family Wage
B. Alex Beasley
7. Making the Liberal Media: Journalism’s Class Transformation since the 1960s
Dylan Gottlieb
8. Seeing Like a Strategist
Timothy Shenk
Part II: New Governance
9. The Preservation of Conditional Citizenship after the 1965 Voting Rights Act
Julilly Kohler-Hausmann
10. Liberalism’s Last Rights: Disability Inclusion and the Rise of the Cost-Benefit State
Karen M. Tani
11. Computerizing a Covenant: Contract Liberalism and the Nationalization of Welfare Administration
Marc Aidinoff
12. Left in Limbo: The Fight for Temporary Protected Status and the Illiberal Effects of Liberal Policymaking
Adam Goodman
13. The Austerity Imperative: Democratic Deficit Hawks and the Crisis of Keynesianism
David Stein
14. The Professional-Class Presidency of Barack Obama
Nicole Hemmer
15. State Agency: Social History with and beyond Institutionalism
Gabriel Winant
Acknowledgments
Notes
List of Contributors
Index
Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer
Part I: Generational Change and Continuity
1. How Philanthropy Made and Unmade American Liberalism
Lila Corwin Berman
2. Managing Global Development: Robert Nathan and the Liberal Roots of the Contract State in US Foreign Policy
Stephen Macekura
3. Creating “Initiatory Democracy”: Ralph Nader, the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, and the Shaping of Liberalism in the 1970s
Sarah Milov and Reuel Schiller
4. “What Is a Populist Approach to This Crisis?”: ACORN’s Liberalism and the 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis
Marisa Chappell
5. Survival Pending Corporate Sponsorship: The “Crisis” of the Black Family, Black State Skepticism, and the Evolution of Black Liberalism in the Post–Civil Rights Era
Danielle Wiggins
6. Queer Autonomy and the Afterlife of the Family Wage
B. Alex Beasley
7. Making the Liberal Media: Journalism’s Class Transformation since the 1960s
Dylan Gottlieb
8. Seeing Like a Strategist
Timothy Shenk
Part II: New Governance
9. The Preservation of Conditional Citizenship after the 1965 Voting Rights Act
Julilly Kohler-Hausmann
10. Liberalism’s Last Rights: Disability Inclusion and the Rise of the Cost-Benefit State
Karen M. Tani
11. Computerizing a Covenant: Contract Liberalism and the Nationalization of Welfare Administration
Marc Aidinoff
12. Left in Limbo: The Fight for Temporary Protected Status and the Illiberal Effects of Liberal Policymaking
Adam Goodman
13. The Austerity Imperative: Democratic Deficit Hawks and the Crisis of Keynesianism
David Stein
14. The Professional-Class Presidency of Barack Obama
Nicole Hemmer
15. State Agency: Social History with and beyond Institutionalism
Gabriel Winant
Acknowledgments
Notes
List of Contributors
Index