ET Ask Home, a monthly questionnaire

With August guest Andrew Leber

Paid subscribers get two extra issues a month. One of those is ET Ask Home, inspired by  Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire (now featuring new questions for 2024). This month’s guest is assistant professor Andrew Leber.

Hi! Thanks for doing this. Please put down how you’d like to be identified here:

I am: Andrew Leber, an assistant professor at Tulane University’s Department of Political Science and Middle East/North Africa Studies Program.

Is there a particular photo you’d like me to use? It doesn’t have to be of you. It can be of, like, a dog.

Jasmine flowers in New Orleans - my favorite time of year there is when these are in bloom.

What is a piece of writing (book, play, poem, etc) that you think of often?

I think about Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Days quite a bit. There are many ways to interpret it, of course, but one thing I took away is that subservience to authority figures (perhaps in the belief that they have your best interests at heart) rarely turns out well.