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- (A) Education
- (B) Culture, Character and Ideology
- (A) Culture, Character and Ideology
- (B) Education
- (Foundational) Culture, Character and Ideology
- (Foundational) Education
By Mark Bauerlein July 14, 2026 - Getting courses included in college general-education requirements is how fringe academic departments with few majors justify their existence. To justify its roster of professors, the department needs enrollments, which it gets by mounting “Introduction to Queer Theory,” “Fashion, Gender, and Identity,” and 62 other courses that satisfy general education requirements. Without that benefit, few students would sign up and the department would fold....Some states are beginning to do something about this problem. Utah and Iowa have sought to return gen ed to its traditional mission. Read More
By Jack Butler - June 8, 2026 - Our revolution “did not just eliminate monarchy and create republics; it actually reconstituted what Americans meant by public or state power and brought about an entirely new kind of popular politics and a new kind of democratic officeholder.” Read More
By John Ellis - Only a few years ago, several well-established features of the current political landscape were too absurd to be taken seriously. Defunding the police was a ridiculous idea; critical race theory would be a giant step backward in in race relations; leftist radicalism was a fringe element of the Democratic Party. Suddenly all have gone mainstream....Only a short while ago most Americans would have been appalled to find that almost half of voters were foolish enough to want a lawless society, accept the teaching of racial hatred to children, and embrace radical leftist ideology. Read More
By Irving Kristol - WSJ - A great mind exposes ideological illusions, while thinking through better alternatives. The following are excerpts from essays that appeared in The Wall Street Journal by Irving Kristol, who died yesterday at age 89. An editorial on his legacy appears nearby. Read More
By Matthew Spalding - Wherever this agenda is allowed to take root, free expression and academic integrity are doomed…The first object of government, Madison tells us,…is the protection of diversity in … different opinions, to be encouraged to preserve liberty. Equity is an ancient legal concept of justice …, developed over centuries of English common-law practice. …. Yet in true Orwellian fashion, they have been redefined.…Diversity is no longer a term to describe the breadth of our differences but a demand to grant privileges to purportedly oppressed identity groups. Equity assigns desirable positions based on race, sex and sexual orientation rather than...
By John Ellis - Our corrupt, radical universities feed every scourge from censorship and crime to antisemitism. America faces a formidable range of calamities: crime out of control, borders in chaos by design, children poorly educated while sexualized and politicized against parental opposition, unconstitutional censorship, a press that does government PR rather than oversight, our institutions and corporations debased in the name of “diversity, equity and inclusion”—and more. To these has been added an outbreak of virulent antisemitism. Every one of these degradations can be traced wholly or in large part to a single source: the corruption of higher education...
By Samuel J. Abrams - If our aim is to sustain a functioning, self-governing republic, then it is not only appropriate but essential that deep constitutional study be centered in ordinary institutions. We cannot confine this work to boutique seminars for the well-connected and already powerful. The work must also happen where most Americans – especially future teachers – actually train: regional public universities, teaching-focused colleges, and continuing education programs that are accessible and affordable. Read More
By Ron DeSantis - Mr. Trump can empower states to manage education policy by removing the cumbersome bureaucracy that has become the hallmark of the U.S. Department of Education. Abolishing the department and reinvigorating state control of education would enable states like Florida to serve better the needs of students, parents and teachers. Read More
By Scott Yenor and Anna Miller - Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s antiwoke education agenda has drawn national attention, but equally important and far less noticed is how Mr. DeSantis advanced new educational standards. A pedagogical revolution is afoot in the Sunshine State, which could serve as a blueprint for states across the country. Florida’s education reformers understand that antiwoke rhetoric alone is insufficient. A vision for education excellence must displace underperforming K-12 institutions. Florida has passed universal education savings accounts, which give families access to public per pupil funds for tuition to private or classical schools, school supplies and home-schooling aid....
By Tunku Varadarajan and Ilya Shipiro - … The threat to ‘dismantle existing structures’ is an idle one in English class. But in legal education it targets individual rights and equal treatment under the Constitution.… If you read critical legal studies, of which critical race theory is a subset, you’ll read about the need to ‘fundamentally dismantle existing structures,’ to ‘change the way social hierarchies operate.’ . . . The goal is to fundamentally change the way that American society operates”…. Read More
By Sadanand Dhume - China leads the U.S. in research on 37 of 44 critical technologies, ,,.Given this challenge, you might imagine that America would re-emphasize the principles of objectivity and merit that made it the world’s leading scientific innovator. You would be mistaken. .... Ironically, scientists in communist China need to care less about ideology than their American counterparts. In the U.S., the National Institutes of Health requires some prospective researchers to demonstrate “a strong commitment to promoting diversity and inclusive excellence” in order to receive funding". Read More
By Gerard Baker - Jul 6, 2020- At the end of the 20th century, the U.S. had won World War II and the Cold War, liberated half the planet from history’s most dehumanizing ideologies, advanced a free-market capitalism that had led more humans out of poverty than any economic system ever devised, and given the world the richest bounty of… This article warns of how the effort to distort our history and the domination of the left in higher education.... Read More
By Jerry A. Coyne and Anna I. Krylov - The crux of our argument is simple: Science that doesn’t prioritize merit doesn’t work, and substituting ideological dogma for quality is a shortcut to disaster. In some ways this new species of Lysenkoism is more pernicious than the old, because it affects all science—chemistry, physics, life sciences, medicine and math—not merely biology and agriculture. The government isn’t the only entity pushing it, either. “Progressive” scientists promote it, too, along with professional societies, funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health and Energy Department, scientific journals and university administrators. When applying for openings as a university scientist today, job...
By Arthur Milikh - Summer 2021 Issue, National Affairs - From the birth of the modern conservative movement, dissidents concerned with civic and liberal education have tried almost everything to reshape America’s universities: … This article outlines the many grave problems of American higher education (with suggestions about how to correct them) and explains how its domination by the left is changing our culture, our politics, and our society in ways that threaten our future… Read More
By Michael B. Poliakoff - What these books have in common is an intense commitment to the liberal democracy that gives us the right to participate in it, indeed to criticize it. And, with that, the absolute obligation to instill the values and principles of our free society. Dr. Haass and President Daniels call not only for better K-12 civic education, but, like past president of Harvard University Derek Bok, for a required college course on American history and government....Those in our nation who do not understand the blessing of freedom and the price past generations paid for it are likely...
By Wilfred M. McClay and Kathleen O'Toole - Parents are appalled by the reduction of American history to an endless exercise in identity politics and moral accusation. They fear that the study of the American past — rather than providing the young with a sense of something larger than themselves — has become something deeply negative: a way of separating us from our past and a weapon used to sow shame and resentment, and even hatred and despair, in the hearts of tomorrow’s citizens. This is a recipe for disaster. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Good, honest...
By Christopher F. Rufo - Critical race theory is the latest battleground in the culture war. … key concepts, including “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” … have become ubiquitous in America’s elite institutions. Progressive politicians have sought to implement “antiracist” policies to reduce racial disparities, such as minorities-only income… Read More
By Robert Pondiscio - Students’ personal choices matter. And so do the choices made by the education reform movement, which is steadfastly unwilling to address or even acknowledge the role that family structure and stability plays in students’ life outcomes. If a child in poverty graduates from high school, finds full-time employment, gets married, and has children, in that order, Rowe tirelessly pointed out—the chance they will remain in poverty as an adult drops to a mere 2 percent. “There is no public policy that comes even close to those kinds of results,” ... Read More