Chapman University enters The Bob Zadek Show not as a subject in its own right but as the academic home of guests who appear in other capacities. Across three episodes spanning 2018 to 2021, the university is named only in identifying a guest’s affiliation or in attributing a scholarly position to a faculty member. The excerpts supply no account of the institution’s history, location, governance, or programs.
John Eastman and the Fourteenth Amendment
In the December 15, 2018 episode, guest Sheldon Gilbert invokes John Eastman, described as a friend of Gilbert’s at Chapman, as the source of a scholarly argument about birthright citizenship. According to Gilbert, Eastman contends that the 1898 case Wong Kim Ark does not settle the question of children born in the United States to parents who entered unlawfully, because Wong Kim Ark’s parents were present legally. Gilbert attributes to Eastman and other scholars the position that such individuals “are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States in the sense intended by the 14th Amendment because their allegiance does not run to the United States.” Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018)
Gilbert frames the dispute as turning on the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and on whether the amendment contains what he calls a loophole for persons who have not sworn allegiance through a formal mechanism such as a permanent resident visa or naturalization. He notes that Eastman debated the issue with Jim Ho, whom Gilbert identifies as a former Texas Solicitor General, a former clerk for Justice Thomas, and an appointee to the Fifth Circuit, and who published an op-ed in 2011 in the Wall Street Journal. Gilbert summarizes Ho’s counterargument as being that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” must mean being legally required to obey US law, with diplomats as the only exception, and that reading the phrase as an allegiance requirement would create a problem for the enforcement of any laws. Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018)
Host Bob Zadek presses the contrary view, observing that the amendment says nothing about a formality of swearing allegiance and that a person present in the country, including one present unlawfully, is subject to prosecution and therefore to jurisdiction, unlike a foreign diplomat. Zadek characterizes the allegiance reading as looking for the slenderest of technicalities to find wiggle room in the 1898 case rather than adhering to the plain language of the amendment. Gilbert presents this as the argument on the other side and notes that Ho’s practical objection is that accepting the allegiance reading would put the country in what he calls a topsy-turvy world. Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018)
The excerpt ends at a section break headed “Caller: Robot Citizenship,” with Bob Zadek’s label followed by no text, so the caller segment is not available.
Tom W. Bell and Private Governance
The September 17, 2020 episode, “Vote to Float,” identifies Tom W. Bell as a Professor of Law at Chapman University and author of Your Next Government? From the Nation State to Stateless Nations. Vote to Float (2020) Bell appears alongside Joe Quirk, identified as President of the Seasteading Institute and author of Seasteading. In his introduction, Zadek describes Bell as a lawyer by profession who earned his JD from the University of Chicago and practiced law in Silicon Valley, and notes that Bell studied copyright law, which Zadek says will not be discussed. Vote to Float (2020)
Zadek’s framing for the episode concerns what he calls the market for governance: zones that are politically independent of the environment where they physically are, including Special Economic Zones, seasteading, and ZEDEs in Honduras. He describes the topic as the freedom to move from place to place and from country to something other than a country, and as the degree to which one can live in control of the political environment that regulates one’s behavior. Vote to Float (2020) The excerpt’s topic list names seasteading, Special Economic Zones, private governance, ZEDEs, common law, charter cities, Hong Kong, Dubai, and Panama. Bell’s own substantive remarks do not appear in the excerpt; the section headed “Seasteading: Homesteading the High Seas” breaks off after Zadek’s label.
Bart J. Wilson and Experimental Economics
The May 17, 2021 episode, “The Foundations of Property,” introduces Bart J. Wilson, author of The Property Species: Mine, Yours, and the Human Mind. Zadek states that Wilson is an economist who teaches economics and is also an attorney, that he has taught at Chapman University and at the Fowler School of Law, and that he founded, with Vernon Smith, the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy. The Foundations of Property (2021)
Wilson describes himself as an experimental economist and explains the method: bringing undergraduates into a computer laboratory, creating virtual worlds for them to participate in, and paying participants to make decisions in order to test whether what economists believe is true matches what people actually do. He says the better decisions participants make, the more money they earn. As part of the research project, he says, the aim was to see how markets grow from the ground up and what happens when no one enforces ownership over things. In a world where people could discover that they could trade stuff and move stuff to and from each other, Wilson reports that what they found was things flying all over the screen and that it was very unstable. The Foundations of Property (2021)
Zadek’s introduction frames the episode around a challenge he says he received on a prior show: where the morality of exclusive use of lawfully acquired property is written, and why it is moral rather than automatic. He says he had difficulty working the question through until the guest was invited, and he asks whether the concept of property is primal or taught, whether it must be enforced or is natural, and whether property rights benefit society or are exclusionary. The Foundations of Property (2021) The excerpt ends mid-sentence in Wilson’s account of what experimental markets show about gains from trade.
Across episodes
The three episodes do not develop a common argument about Chapman University; each names it only to identify a guest’s affiliation or, in Eastman’s case, a scholar’s position. The treatment does not change between the 2018, 2020, and 2021 episodes, and no excerpt describes the institution itself.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Chapman University’s location, founding date, denominational history or current status, enrollment, schools and colleges beyond the Fowler School of Law, or any institutional policy or controversy. They do not say whether Eastman, Bell, or Wilson held their positions at the time of the broadcasts, nor what fields or departments they belonged to beyond the labels given. No excerpt reports any statement by a Chapman University official or any institutional response to the arguments attributed to Eastman. The caller segment in the 2018 episode and the substantive remarks of Bell in the 2020 episode are absent from the excerpts.