How I Read for My Prelims

In 2021, I wrote a blog post about how I organized journal articles for literature reviews. My system then involved searching for papers, keeping them in Mendeley, and logging what I found in Excel. I still believe in the basic idea behind that post: no one can remember everything, so every researcher needs a second brain. But reading for my preliminary exams has forced me to rethink what that second brain is supposed to do.

This post is another note to myself and a record of how I have grown as a researcher. As I understand it, the prelim is meant to establish that I have read broadly and deeply enough to engage with my own research questions. It is not simply a test of how many books I can finish or how many citations I can collect. My preparation has therefore had three purposes:

• Read broadly enough to learn from other disciplines and identify gaps.

• Read the classics and understand the main arguments in the field.

• Create a trackable system that I can return to when writing my dissertation and future papers.

The last purpose has become increasingly important. I do not want to finish the prelim with a folder of disconnected notes that I never open again. I want the reading to become part of the theoretical foundation for my dissertation.

START EARLY AND START BROAD

Looking back, one thing that helped me was identifying my main keywords early. I knew that my work would involve culture, education, and spatial inequality, although I did not yet know exactly how these ideas would fit together. Starting with broad concepts allowed me to search across education, sociology, economics, history, migration studies, and cultural sociology instead of staying inside one disciplinary box.

I am especially fond of systematic reviews because they make the search process visible. A search can easily become guided by memory, convenience, or whichever article happens to appear first on Scopus. Using a PRISMA-style process forces me to record where I searched, which keywords I used, how many records I found, which duplicates I removed, and why I excluded certain studies.

The PRISMA flow diagram was created as a reporting tool for systematic reviews, but I also find its logic useful for prelim preparation. It gives me a way to double-check whether an important work appearing on my current list was captured in my earlier searches. It also reveals the boundaries of my reading: What databases, languages, publication types, and keywords shaped what I was able to find?

A systematic search does not eliminate judgment. Keywords change as I learn the field, and classic books are not always captured well by database searches. I therefore supplement the formal search by following reference lists, checking who later cited an important work, and asking which texts scholars repeatedly treat as foundational.

I also find bibliometric review useful at the beginning. Tools such as Bibliometrix and Biblioshiny can show frequently cited authors, recurring keywords, clusters of scholarship, co-citation patterns, and how themes change over time. This does not tell me which argument is correct, and citation counts are not the same as intellectual importance. What it gives me is a map. I can see the main conversations in a field, identify scholars I should know, and notice groups of researchers who may be studying similar problems without citing one another.

Together, systematic and bibliometric reviews help me answer two different questions:

“What belongs in this body of literature?”

and

“How is this body of literature organized?”

Neither can replace close reading, but both help me decide where close reading should begin.

CREATE A SECOND BRAIN I CAN ACTUALLY SEARCH

I have discussed the idea of a second brain in several previous posts (here, here, and here). After preparing for my preliminary exams—and learning from several failed attempts—I have finally settled on a system for organizing mine. During my first year, I used Notion to store all my notes. In theory, it seemed like an ideal all-in-one workspace. In practice, however, accessing and syncing my notes across devices was not as seamless as I needed it to be. I also could not integrate the system easily with Zotero. Because moving information between the two platforms required too much manual work, I gradually stopped maintaining the system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0CNzr9Q3ME

My second attempt combined Obsidian with Zotero. This was an improvement, but I was still treating Obsidian as a separate destination where every source required another round of manual entry. I was storing information, but the system was not helping me retrieve and reuse it when I needed to write. That experience made me realize that a second brain should not simply contain my notes. It should reduce the distance between reading, thinking, and writing.

My final solution is surprisingly simple: my second brain is now a folder. It is one working directory containing my fleeting notes, literature notes, permanent notes, project drafts, data, figures, code, and templates. I save my notes as Markdown files so they remain portable and easy to search, edit, and reuse. I open the same directory in both Obsidian and Visual Studio Code, while Zotero remains connected to the workflow as my reference manager.

Obsidian allows me to read, connect, and search my notes while visualizing the relationships among them as a network. Visual Studio Code gives me another way to work directly with the files and integrate tools such as Codex and Claude Code when I need help organizing material, identifying connections, or refining my writing. Codex can search across the directory, retrieve relevant material from different notes, and help incorporate it into another file. Because the files are stored in an open and readable format, I am not limited to what a single application allows me to do.

Keeping everything in one vault is crucial because my projects often overlap. A book I read for a preliminary question may later contribute to a dissertation chapter, a methods note, or an entirely different paper. An idea does not have to remain trapped inside the project for which I originally encountered it. By storing everything as searchable Markdown rather than isolating my notes across separate applications, I can recover an old idea by searching for a concept—even when I have forgotten the author, title, or original project.

The key point is not the number of tools I use, but rather that each tool serves a specific role within an interconnected system:

• Zotero manages sources, PDFs, and annotations.

• Obsidian connects ideas and makes my notes searchable.

• Visual Studio Code allows me to work directly with the entire research directory.

• The vault keeps everything portable, searchable, and reusable.

MY ACTUAL READING FLOW

1. Build the initial reading list

I start by asking experts in the field, especially my advisor, what I should read. I also collect syllabi and add works that I recognize from my earlier systematic review. I then put the initial reading list into an Excel file with basic information about each source. At this stage, I am not trying to understand everything. I am building a map of what I need to read and a way to track my progress.

2. Read and annotate in Zotero

My current workflow begins in Zotero, where I read and annotate PDFs using a limited color system:

• Yellow: core argument

• Green: evidence, data, and statistics

• Blue: theories, concepts, and definitions

• Red: critiques, limitations, and gaps

While reading or listening, I add comments beside important highlights. This is how I try to stay involved in the reading rather than passively collecting quotations. A highlight preserves what the author said. A comment preserves what I was thinking when I encountered it. Without that comment, I may return months later and have no idea why I saved the passage.

3. Turn annotations into literature notes

After I finish reading, I move the material into the vault using a literature-note template for a book, article, or book chapter. The template asks for more than a summary. I record:

• The core argument

• The theoretical framework

• Evidence and data

• Methods

• Limitations

• Connections to other readings

• Possible uses in my own writing

I also extract quotations I may need, although I try not to let quotations substitute for explaining the argument in my own words. Most importantly, I keep my prelim questions in mind during the write-up.

• Why did I read this?

• Which question does it help me answer?

• Does it support, challenge, or complicate my framework?

If I cannot explain the connection, the source may be interesting, but it may not be central to the prelim.

4. Synthesize, rather than collect

The final step is synthesis. I bring the literature notes into the prelim outline and place ideas next to one another. I do not want the paper to become a collage in which every paragraph summarizes a different author. I want to know where authors agree, where their explanations diverge, and what becomes visible when I connect literatures that are normally separated. This step becomes my

Because every note is searchable in Obsidian, I can also see which subjects repeatedly attract my attention. Sometimes this confirms the direction of the project. At other times, it reveals that I have collected many readings on a fascinating side question while neglecting a mechanism that my argument actually depends on. Searchability is therefore not just about retrieving information. It also gives me a rough picture of my own intellectual habits.

Epilogue 

The biggest lesson is that I cannot simply adopt someone else’s system and expect it to work perfectly for me. Other systems can offer inspiration, but finding what works requires experimentation, change, and constant iteration. After several attempts, I now have a second-brain system that seems to fit the way I read, think, and write. The process has taught me to adapt the original idea of the Zettelkasten to the possibilities and demands of research in the digital age. More importantly, the system helps me generate new ideas, examine their connections, and return to them with greater clarity.

This system is still evolving, just as I am still growing as a researcher. I hope to revisit this post in the future and share another update on what continued to work, what failed, and what I changed along the way.

Until next time!

[American City Chronicles] Stumbling in arts and words

I had a blast in Philly. If one city gives me the vibe of being at home, it was Philly, for its walkability, boutique shops, and convenient public transportation. I also realized the accidental curriculum a city has to offer. It gave me a feel for the perks of living in big cities. Museums and libraries expose you to accidental discovery. If you're a reader of my blog, you might be aware of the Terence Tao interview. Since we're so drawn into AI these days, meeting something by accident has become the thing I'm always looking for. There's actually a concept called the hallway effect, where spaces (like Harvard's hallways) are intentionally designed to foster random encounters and spark creativity. I truly embraced that spirit in Philly—letting myself wander and be surprised.

Here are some snippets of my accidental curriculum in Philly, for you to feel the vibe.

Discovering the Accidental Curriculum in Philadelphia

ALBERT BARNES AND THE ART OF ARRANGEMENT

The Barnes Foundation began with Dr. Albert C. Barnes, a physician who made his fortune from Argyrol, an antiseptic silver compound used to prevent and treat infections. He began collecting seriously in 1912, first sending his school friend, the painter William Glackens, to Paris with $20,000 to buy modern art. Glackens returned with thirty-three works, including Vincent van Gogh's The Postman. That shopping trip became the beginning of an astonishing collection: Barnes eventually acquired 179 paintings by Renoir and 69 by Cézanne—the largest holdings of either artist in the world—alongside major works by Matisse, Picasso, and Modigliani.

Because of such intense exposure (normally I only see one or two Renoirs and Cézannes; now it's nearly a hundred), I kinda know which art I'm particularly drawn to. Beyond my fascination with Monet and the whole Impressionist approach, I also found a deep interest in Matisse and Rousseau. I'm into the mythical way of drawing—the use of color and story and storytelling. Here's some of the paintings from Matisse at Barnes that I feel the urge to share with y'all.

What interested me most was not simply what Barnes owned, but what he did with it. He organized the objects into what he called "ensembles." A Renoir might hang beside a Pennsylvania German chest, an African mask, and an ordinary iron door hinge. The objects are arranged through echoes of line, color, light, and shape rather than by nation, century, price, or prestige. The hinges and spatulas are not treated as background decoration. They are part of the visual argument.

Once I sat in one of the Cézanne rooms, a group came in. There was a senior artist who told her friends that she used to come to this room to study how Cézanne used his brushes. I thought about what it means to have that kind of access—to return, again and again, to nearly a hundred Cézannes and let them teach you something. We like to believe great painters are born. But nurture matters just as much as nature. It's proximity to greatness, accumulated over time, that turns raw ability into mastery.

Cities like Philadelphia carry enormous cultural capital—museums and collections built over centuries that quietly shape the people who live near them. A Vietnamese artist, however talented, rarely gets this—not because of ability, but because of geography. That's a quiet form of segregation, not between neighborhoods, but between countries.

A MUSEUM MADE FROM MANY COLLECTORS

I went when, for the first time, two Sunflowers paintings by Van Gogh were displayed on the second floor. On Friday, there was pay-as-you-wish admission with a DJ on the first floor. I became so envious of Philly folks for their abundance of art choices, with such affordable entry and such integration of classical art and modern life. Imagine wandering an old building surrounded by art. It's a feeling that I don't want to forget.

I also noticed, through walking around, that Picasso was a damn good classical painter—his foundation in drawing still objects is phenomenal. Here's the painting I saw that awed me with his intense use of color. I also read that he had his Rose and Blue periods before getting into Cubism and other styles. But other than that, he has a very strong foundation in painting. Should you be strong in the basics before getting creative?

Another thing I noticed is that, unlike other art museums, the Philly art museum brings the whole freaking building into the surroundings of their art pieces. On the 3rd floor, you see a whole church and a Japanese pagoda together with the art. Art here expands to architecture and decor, and it was a very immersive experience that left my friend and me in awe.

JULES MASTBAUM'S TWO-YEAR OBSESSION WITH RODIN

The Rodin Museum returns to the story of a single collector. Jules Mastbaum was a Philadelphia movie-theater magnate who owned the Stanley Corporation of America, then the country's largest cinema operator. In September 1924, he visited the Musée Rodin in Paris and, within two years, had acquired more than 150 sculptures—enough to commission architects Paul Cret and Jacques Gréber to build this museum, which opened in 1929, three years after his death. It's the single museum that holds the most Rodin works outside of Paris.

The collection traces Rodin's working process as well as his famous finished forms. The Thinker began not as a generic man engaged in philosophy but as Dante, positioned above The Gates of Hell and contemplating the suffering below. Individual figures escaped from that enormous doorway and became independent sculptures. The collection also includes The Burghers of Calais, The Kiss, studies for Balzac, and drawings. Being able to see The Thinker and other Rodin works in progress, with Jake Bugg playing in the background, truly left me shaken with happiness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4AEXRtDEEY

What's interesting is that I kept comparing Rodin's The Kiss and Klimt's The Kiss. Both are full of passion, but in one the woman faces the audience, while in the other the girl's face hides from it. Which counts as more like a kiss? Also, Rodin had a very modern take on art—his study for Balzac, in its honest form, was then considered a humiliation of the man himself. He also left some of the sculptures unfinished and kept his fingerprints somewhere on them. Everything keeps a raw take on the process.

Another thing that stirred me was his use of others to help finish the work. He also created multiple versions of The Thinker—something I didn't know before coming here—inherited from his time working as a commercial sculptor. What blurs here is art and commerce, a tension that resurfaces with Andy Warhol and his factory model. But maybe that's the wrong argument to have. As long as art speaks to the heart before the brain has time to rationalize it, does the process really matter?

Or maybe we've been trying to godify art all along—to lift it above ordinary life—when in reality it is deeply embedded in the same human desires, ambitions, and contradictions as everything else. If art could truly exist independent from commerce and social recognition, perhaps we wouldn't have had as many tragic artists as we do. Van Gogh, who sold only one painting in his lifetime. Modigliani, who died in poverty at 35. Vivian Maier, who spent her life as a nanny while quietly producing one of the greatest street photography collections ever made, discovered only after her death. The work outlived the recognition. It almost always does.

DEBBIE SANFORD, GREG SCHIRM, AND THREE HUNDRED CATEGORIES

House of Our Own Books offers a less monumental form of collecting. The store occupies two floors of a Victorian house at 3920 Spruce Street, near the University of Pennsylvania. It has been there for more than fifty years. In a 2002 interview with Penn Today, Sanford said the store contained more than three hundred categories. Even the fiction reflected an argument about how knowledge should be organized, with separate sections for Caribbean, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Southeast Asian writing rather than one undifferentiated shelf labeled "world literature."

That is a kind of curatorship too. The store's crowded rooms may look accidental, but the subjects reveal decisions. Someone kept a book in circulation, bought it from a previous owner, placed it in a category, and made it available to a reader who did not know to search for it. This is different from an online recommendation system. An algorithm presents a book because it resembles something you already wanted. A used bookstore lets physical proximity create the relationship. You look for one author and find another. A title you have never heard of sits beside a subject you have been thinking about for months. The discovery feels personal even though it is partly an accident. This is what I feel like we're missing in the modern world.

This was also the spot where Lin Huiyin (whom I didn't know of before coming to this place) used to be, back when she was at Penn—long before it became a bookstore. I then had some time to read about her and her husband. Such a treat to run into different people while strolling around the city.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcHYdWP_YHE

THE ROSENBACH BROTHERS AND THE EVIDENCE OF WRITING

At the Rosenbach, the collector and the bookseller become the same person. Brothers Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach and Philip Rosenbach lived in the Delancey Place townhouses that now hold the museum. Their Rosenbach Company dealt in rare books, manuscripts, and decorative art from 1903 to 1953. A.S.W. Rosenbach became one of the most influential rare-book dealers of the twentieth century, helping wealthy American collectors build libraries while reserving extraordinary objects for his own shelves. The brothers left their home and collections to create the museum, which opened in 1954.

Among its treasures is James Joyce's manuscript of Ulysses, purchased by A.S.W. Rosenbach in 1924. The museum also holds Bram Stoker's working notes for Dracula; first editions and letters by Emily Dickinson; presentation copies of Herman Melville's books, kept in a bookcase that once belonged to Melville; and virtually all the manuscripts and papers of the modernist poet Marianne Moore. Moore left the contents of her Greenwich Village living room to the museum, which reconstructed the room in Philadelphia. He was also the one who advocated for Moby-Dick.

What interests me is the man's intense love for literature alongside his expansive engagement with geography. His collection of geography books ranged across different lands, and he spoke both English and Spanish with fluency. Being a polyglot isn't as celebrated nowadays, but it stirs something in me—as a new learner of Chinese myself, I've found that learning languages unlocks genuine intellectual stimulation. Stepping into his world made me feel more assured about my own interest in different lands and languages.

I also noticed copies of Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People on his bookshelves. It was curious—why would this established collector be interested in immigration stories? I learned later that Rosenbach himself was the child of Jewish immigrants. He was an active member of efforts to preserve and foster Jewish-American community and culture. The question of who counts as American never really goes away. It just gets asked of someone new.

To browse his collection, you can go to the library's website. The library now has two tour guides who are deeply passionate about the buildings. I had a chance to hear them talk about the space. You can actually take their audio tour without even getting into the house, just to satisfy your curiosity. They also host podcasts and readings for the public—please consider a virtual visit to support their effort. Such a hidden gem in Philly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE8W6p5cQQI

ROCKY

Rocky deserves its own section. Before coming to Philly, I had zero exposure to the movie and the man. Since everyone was talking about the Rocky statue, I got curious. Until the very end of the visit, I hadn't watched the movie, so I didn't have any urge to visit the statue. Once the training was over, I finally sat down to watch the series and got seriously hooked. What Stallone created in his world was the underdog story—he created hope and wishful thinking in a very beautiful way.

The movie was very artistically pleasing, as I love how blue and red pair with each other. It's lovely to see hope in a movie and to be boosted up during down times. The scene where Rocky proposes to Adrian at the Philly Zoo, under the snow, in a leather jacket, with a red trench coat and a tiger behind them, is one of the most beautiful scenes in my movie journey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCZNyjhoINE

OUTRO

Philly was a city to remember for me. We often describe the advantages of cities in economic language: jobs, universities, transportation, professional networks. But there is also a less measurable advantage. A museum is near a bookstore. A lecture is happening a few blocks from a park. A poster in a window leads to a reading. You follow a street or enter a building because the door is open. The city keeps offering small invitations to become interested.

Access, of course, is not evenly distributed. The ecology of learning is profoundly important, and we can't facilitate education in an AI-driven world until we first facilitate the physical spaces—the enclaves—where stumbling happens. Stumbling is not the opposite of learning. It may be one of its oldest and most valuable forms. That was my deepest lesson from Philly.

I hope this post sparked something for you—a desire to visit Philly, to notice the curated accidents around you, or simply to embrace the wandering. I'm happy if it landed. Finally, come stumble with me: watch this favorite YouTube video about the history of Philadelphia.

Until next time!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ocb-3hzK-c&t=342s

Compassionate, Noble, A Unifier: Portrait of Nixon?

I am currently in California for summer school. On a rare free afternoon, our group visited the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda - his birthplace, where a small white frame house still stands on the manicured library grounds. As a Vietnamese visitor, an education policy researcher, I walked out of that archive with far more to think about than I ever expected.

The Yellow Pad: Thinking vs. Posturing

I have always been drawn to other people's handwritten notes in a way I can't entirely explain - their postcards, their marginalia, their discarded to-do lists. In the library, one specific archival note stopped me entirely. Dated December 6, 1970, and written in the Lincoln Room with a list of qualities Nixon needed to project or become:

Compassionate – humane – fatherly – warmth.Hope, Confidence in future, Optimism. Courage – willingness to stand alone for what is right. Candor – Honesty – openness – trustworthy.Vitality – Youth. Enjoyment – Zest. Purpose – goals for generation – vision. Dignity – respect – prestige – a man people can be proud of. Hard work – dedication. Open Mindedness – listen to opposing views. Unifier – fairness to opponents – and end bombast, hatred, division."

The list reads less like a record of private conviction and more like a corporate brand brief. a man writing down instructions on who he wants the public to believe he is. Compassionate. Noble. A unifier. These are the exact qualities that the historical record would most violently complicate. He wasn’t discovering these values in quiet meditation; he was engineering their projection.

Yet, the pads show another side of him. He used them for meticulous, long-range planning, drafting five-year and ten-year outlines (even down to notes reminding himself that regular church attendance should remain part of his public routine).

Source: Author's image from Nixon Library

Before his historic 1972 China trip, he worked through pages of intense diplomatic analysis, breaking down exactly what each side needed from the negotiation and identifying where mutual interests could align.

It was one of the first times I had seen someone use legal pads purely as an instrument of thought — not to draft, not to record, but to think. In the archives I had visited in Vietnam, handwritten notes always served a terminal purpose: finalizing an article, logging a reading, fixing something already half-formed. These yellow pads were different. They were a mind working in real time.

When the Record Turns Against You

Nixon didn't only write; he recorded. He had a secret, voice-activated taping system installed throughout the White House—the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, his private office in the Executive Office Building, and the phone lines. It was a comprehensive net that captured thousands of hours of raw conversation without the knowledge of most people in the room.

While previous presidents had selectively recorded conversations, Nixon was the last to utilize such a totalizing system.

The very tapes meant to preserve his preferred version of events 
became the bulletproof evidence that destroyed his presidency.

The infamous "Smoking Gun" tape from June 23, 1972—recorded just six days after the Watergate break-in—captured Nixon explicitly directing the CIA to pressure the FBI into blocking its investigation. He had spent months telling the public he knew nothing. The tape proved otherwise. The Supreme Court eventually ruled 8–0 in United States v. Nixon (1974) that he had to surrender the recordings. He resigned sixteen days later.

I find myself sitting with a question that doesn't have a clean answer: Why does the habit of recording your own life so often backfire? There is a fundamental psychological difference between the mediums:

• The Spoken Word: Spoken conversation is emotional, fluid, and often carried by transient anger or unfiltered impulses.

• The Written Word: Writing forces you to observe your own thoughts. You think more deeply when you write because you must consciously choose what is worth preserving on paper.

Recording captures the unvarnished, uncritical self. If a person spends their life pretending, the tapes reveal exactly how long and how aggressively they had to act to maintain the illusion.

Therein lies the deeper irony: both the yellow pads and the taping system sprang from the exact same impulse. He wanted to control his legacy. He was meticulous about history in a way that suggests someone who was always performing for a future audience. Yet, that desperate desire to author his own historical image is what produced the exact evidence that made the image uncontrollable.

Policy: The Coexistence of Diplomacy and Destruction

War, Empire, and the Cost of "Honor"

Vietnam is the part of Nixon’s presidency that I feel most intimately. Nixon entered office in 1969 promising "peace with honor." His administration pursued Vietnamization—gradually withdrawing American ground troops while transferring the burden of combat to the South Vietnamese military. Yet, this withdrawal did not mean the war shrank. Instead, the conflict bled into Cambodia and Laos, and massive American bombing campaigns brought unprecedented destruction across Indochina.

What struck me most at the library’s casualty display was the staggering, unbridgeable gap between American military deaths and Vietnamese deaths (North and South combined). I found myself wondering:

• How accurately were those millions of lives counted?

• By whom were they counted?

• Does this potrait certain political message of that framing at the time loss of the American lives. I would be curious of the same statistical reports published by the North Vietnam sides.

The expansion into Laos — the "Secret War" — was conducted entirely outside public knowledge, a direct consequence of Vietnamization's logic: withdraw American bodies, but deepen the violence elsewhere. The costs were borne by people who had no voice in the negotiation and no place in the eventual peace: lives lost, landscapes poisoned, health consequences that would pass down through generations across Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

"Peace with honor" was, in practice, symbolic honor for one nation — paid for in millions of lives across a fractured region.

The Environment as a Public Good

During his administration, the United States created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and adopted sweeping legislative frameworks like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Clean Air Act of 1970. These moves made environmental protection a permanent, institutionalized federal responsibility.

Was it a genuine conversion, or just a tit-for-tat political calculation to appease an angry public? The lesson is ambiguous: imperfect, calculating political actors can still produce lasting public institutions worth defending.

Criminal Justice, Race, and the Carceral State

In 2015, I gave a presentation on private prisons at Indiana University Bloomington. One of the key takeaways was that America's War on Drugs created the perfect economic conditions for the private prison industry to explode. In 1971, Nixon declared drug abuse "public enemy number one." While his administration initially funded treatment and rehabilitation alongside enforcement, it was the violent language of war that endured. Once drug use was framed as an enemy to be defeated rather than a public health crisis to be treated, the policy logic shifted permanently toward hyper-policing, aggressive prosecution, and mass imprisonment.

There was a crucial legal pivot that allowed this to happen. In Robinson v. California (1962), the Supreme Court ruled that a state could not criminalize the status of being an addict—treating addiction as a disease rather than a crime. The Nixon administration effectively bypassed this public health framework by heavily criminalizing the possession of even trace amounts of controlled substances. You couldn't jail someone for being an addict, but you could jail them for what was in their pocket.

The consequences were devastatingly unequal. Drug enforcement fell disproportionately on Black and Latino communities, while identical drug use in affluent white communities was treated as a private family matter. This highlights the perverse incentives of privatizing public goods. A private prison company's revenue relies directly on bed occupancy. While the theoretical purpose of criminal justice is public safety and rehabilitation, the business model of a private prison is maximum incarceration. When you hand public policy over to market logic, the institution begins working directly against the people it is meant to serve.

Education Policy & Nixon Administration

Gender: Access Granted, Care Denied

The legislative record of 1972 is staggering: Title IX banned sex discrimination in federally funded education, and the Basic Educational Opportunity Grants laid the foundation for the modern Pell Grant. Both opened the doors of higher education wider for women than ever before.

Yet, almost simultaneously, Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971. His veto message explicitly rejected what he called:

"...communal approaches to child rearing over against the family-centered approach."

With one hand, his administration expanded structural access to universities; with the other, it intentionally dismantled the childcare infrastructure that would have allowed women to actually utilize that access. Childcare costs remain one of the primary drivers of the wage ceiling for women today. Nixon happily signed off on the rhetoric of equality, but flatly refused to fund the public infrastructure required to realize it.

Race: Compliance as the Ceiling

On paper, Nixon's racial record in education looks substantial:

• The desegregation of over 1,300 Southern school districts.

• $1.5 billion channeled through the Emergency School Aid Act.

• The Indian Education Act of 1972, giving tribes actual input over federal funds.

But this progress was deeply cynical. Nixon had won the presidency using the Southern Strategy, openly courting white voters by opposing mandatory school busing. He routinely instructed his subordinates to enforce desegregation only to the absolute minimum extent that the law required.

Leaving with Contradictions

The Nixon Library does exactly what presidential libraries are built to do. It lists milestones, highlights achievements, and contextualizes the ugly scandals. It isn't explicitly dishonest — the raw facts are technically there — but the selective emphasis forms a quiet defense, all the more effective for how neutral it looks. What you take away from an archive depends entirely on what you bring inside. I entered as a Vietnamese visitor, a policy researcher, and a keeper of yellow pads. I left thinking about the vast gap between who a person writes themselves into being and what history eventually proves them to be.

Sources & Further Reading

Primary Documents & Speeches

• White House Tape, Conversation 741-2 ("Smoking Gun" recording), June 23, 1972. Nixon White House Tapes. National Archives and Records Administration.

• Nixon, Richard M. Special Message to Congress on Drug Abuse Prevention and Control, June 17, 1971. The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara.

• Nixon, Richard M. Veto Message on the Economic Opportunity Amendments of 1971, December 9, 1971. The American Presidency Project.

Legislation & Court Decisions

• Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX; Pell Grants). Public Law 92-318. June 23, 1972.

• Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962).

• United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974).

  
  

If you want to dig deeper into this era, the History Hit Podcast has excellent, multi-part audio deep dives on the Watergate break-in. You can also explore digitized archives directly via the official Richard Nixon Presidential Library Website.