Education, Culture, Ideology

Her personal virtues are an antidote to our era’s self-promotion and social-virtue signaling.

Within the hour of her death, Queen Elizabeth II was praised by commentators from left to right for representing so many traditional values. Reserve, self-containment, duty, responsibility, modesty of demeanor, graciousness, civility, prudence, fortitude. Read More

After watching 100 hours of leaked video, we now fully grasp the danger of this ideology in schools. Last spring we exposed how two elite independent schools in New York had become corrupted by a divisive obsession with race, helping start the national movement against critical race theory. Schools apply this theory under the guise of diversity, equity and… Read More

Voters have the sense to resist notions like critical race theory. A generation from now, they may not. 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… Read More

From the birth of the modern conservative movement, dissidents concerned with civic and liberal education have tried almost everything to reshape America’s universities: from refusing to donate to their alma maters (as William F. Buckley prescribed), to funding tenure-track positions, forming independent centers on campuses to host outside speakers, organizing external supplementary seminars to make… Read More

A day does not go by without news of some skirmish in the fierce ongoing battle to determine whether colleges and universities will hold fast to academic freedom and intellectual diversity as the catalysts of progress. Will our centers of higher learning be home to diverse theories and strategies, or will they take the illiberal path of deciding for faculty and students what they should believe?
A civil and unprejudiced campus is a priority for any academic community that is true to its purpose. But when a community of scholars and teachers, especially a famous and influential one, trades time-honored principles of free inquiry for reflexive and enforced social theories, it damages the broader social fabric. Read More

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 curriculum is not only possible; it’s come to pass. Read More

We find in these plans nothing short of a blueprint for an institutional overhaul—the anatomy of a diversity, equity, and inclusion takeover. Such a takeover will have obvious implications for education at the University of Tennessee. True education will erode. Indoctrination will flourish. These plans, moreover, reveal in extensive detail what an exhaustive diversity, equity, and inclusion program looks like. Thus, our report provides a case study in the rolling revolution under way in academia. Read More

…progressive intellectuals were passionate advocates of rule by disinterested experts led by a strong unifying leader. They were in favor of using the state to mold social institutions in the interests of the collective. They thought that individualism and the Constitution were both outmoded.

…we should start using “liberal” to designate the good guys on the left, reserving “progressive” for those who are enthusiastic about an unrestrained regulatory state, who think it’s just fine to subordinate the interests of individuals to large social projects, who cheer the president’s abuse of executive power and who have no problem rationalizing the stifling of dissent. Read More