Rejecting the Rejection of Empathy

For FAIR’s Substack, argues that empathy is being unfairly dismissed in today’s polarized politics. He contends that empathy is not just a feeling, but a practice of understanding those we disagree with, and warns that abandoning it risks dehumanizing our opponents and weakening democratic culture.

[Empathy] requires us to listen across differences, to sit with the discomfort of perspectives that unsettle our own, and to resist the temptation to dismiss what we haven’t yet tried to understand. Empathy, in this sense, is the foundation of deep listening, and deep listening is the foundation of democratic life.

The skills that make this possible — perspective-taking, active attention, the willingness to be changed by what we hear — are not mere instincts. They are practices. They can be learned, and they can be lost. Empathy does not require agreement. But empathy does require our love for our country to be reflected in our concern for our neighbors. Empathy requires us to take seriously the reality of the person across from us — their hopes, their fears, and the experiences that shape their convictions. That seriousness is what transforms a conversation into a community, and a community into a democracy.

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We invite you to join us on Monday, April 27th, at 4pm PT/ 7pm ET for a webinar discussion with FAIR Advisors and , moderated by FAIR Executive Director .

Documenting a Decade of Academic Meltdowns

For Quillette, FAIR Advisor Jonathan Kay interviews Canadian filmmaker Ric Esther Bienstock about her new documentary Speechless, which explores the past decade of campus culture wars and their impact on free speech and civil discourse.

As I was watching Speechless, I realized that campus “cancel culture”—a term that now seems somewhat antique—has been around long enough that it has a history. And Speechless tells that history thoughtfully and fairly by focusing on a handful of major case studies—no fewer than five of which center on figures who will be well-known to loyal Quillette readers and podcast listeners: former Evergreen State biologist Bret Weinstein; Erec Smith a former professor at York College of Pennsylvania; philosopher Kathleen Stock, formerly of Sussex University; former Harvard evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven; and right-wing warrior Christopher Rufo, whom Ric and her producer accompanied as he was leading the teardown of DEI programs at New College in Florida, on behalf of his political ally, Ron DeSantis.

In our conversation, Ric discusses why she devoted so much of her life to this project—almost a decade in the end; and how she successfully sold her two-part documentary to the CBC, the BBC, and a number of non-English markets in Europe as well.

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They Championed D.E.I. Now They’re Divided.

For The New York Times Opinion, FAIR Advisor Erec Smith joins a panel discussion to share his perspective on how DEI is practiced in universities and institutions. He argues that many DEI programs rely on rigid ideological frameworks — especially oppressor/oppressed narratives — that can oversimplify complex realities and discourage open discussion.

In recent years, diversity, equity and inclusion policies have shifted from an internal workplace initiative to a public reckoning. Critics argue that it has strayed from its original purpose, reshaping institutions in ways that are performative at best and discriminatory at worst… In this episode of “Divided,” we bring together four former D.E.I. leaders to reflect on their accomplishments and failures. Bo Young Lee, a tech executive, and Michael Yassa, a university professor, still see D.E.I. as a worthwhile endeavor and a set of ideals to strive for. Desiree Fixler, a finance executive, and Erec Smith, a professor, once shared that view, but have come to believe D.E.I. is counterproductive.

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Welcome to the Nebuchadnezzar: Forecasting a human future

For Heterodoxy in the Stacks, Sarah Hartman-Caverly shares the written interview between FAIR board member Heather Shayne Blakeslee and evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, who share their “thoughts in-progress” on coexisting with AI while carving out a distinctly human niche.

[Blakeslee:] Ultimately, if you want to argue that humans are special, you have to get real religious real quick. You’re talking about a soul, I think—and that’s really uncomfortable for atheists or even rationalists, but I’m not sure how you avoid that path. I supposed that because I don’t think we have souls, that I’m more inclined to give moral status to non-humans, period, whether or not they have a human-type consciousness.

Our cultural norms and ethics are all over the place on whom and what we grant moral or legal status to. Over our history, some people have been given moral status but not others; we’ve granted legal status to some rivers; the Citizens United ruling granted personhood status to corporations. We give very narrow and limited consideration to other mammals, or non-human animals generally, which has never made sense to me: a great ape can be held against its will and basically tortured, but a corporation’s speech is protected by the first amendment? We have to sort this out, because this big AI tsunami is already in motion.

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John Tomasi on the Diversity We Don’t Discuss

For Lean Out with Tara Henley, Tara Henley interviews John Tomasi, president of Heterodox Academy, about the new book, Viewpoint Diversity: What It Is, Why We Need It, and How to Get It, which he co-edited along with Bernard Schweizer. Tomasi discusses the importance of institutional openness to ideological disagreement and the role of viewpoint diversity in strengthening academic and civic life.

Listen to the interview or read the transcript here:

Lean Out with Tara Henley

John Tomasi on the Diversity We Don't Discuss

In recent years, viewpoint diversity has become a loaded term. But my guest on the program today says it is vital that we renew our commitment to dialogue, especially across lines of difference. He has edited a new book that brings together prominent professors and journalists to make the case for free speech, intellectual humility, and societal plurali…

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5 days ago · 24 likes · 2 comments · Tara Henley

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The Medicalization of Adolescence

For FAIR’s Substack, Dr. Kendra Kautz explores how normal adolescent development is increasingly treated as pathology. Rising diagnoses and prescriptions (especially antidepressants and ADHD medications) suggest clinicians may be moving too quickly, without fully weighing developmental, social, and environmental context or ensuring informed consent.

Adolescence has always been one of the most biologically intense periods of human development. The brain is rapidly reorganizing, hormone systems are activating, and emotional processing pathways are maturing. Mood swings, heightened stress sensitivity, and difficulty regulating internal states are not signs of disorder; rather, they are features of a developing mind and body learning to adapt to their environment.

Yet increasingly, these normal developmental experiences are being pathologized. Antidepressant dispensing among adolescents and young adults ages 12–25 increased by 66.3% between 2016 and 2022, driven largely by rising prescriptions among female adolescents. ADHD diagnoses have surged to approximately 11.4% of U.S. children ages 3–17, more than 6 million children. Hormonal contraception is routinely prescribed to teenage girls not for pregnancy prevention but for acne, painful periods, or mood fluctuations…

Medications can help. The question is whether they are being introduced before other physiological avenues have been explored and whether families are receiving the full picture before they consent.

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If this topic interests you, please join us on Wednesday, May 6th, at 7pm ET for a webinar discussion with Dr. Kautz.

Jacob Siegel: “The old ruling party is waiting in the wings”

For PUBLIC, FAIR Advisor Michael Shellenberger interviews Jacob Siegel about his new book The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control. They discuss the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” the increasing tendency to label anything that contradicts dominant narratives as “disinformation,” and threat this poses to democracy.

There are good reasons to be concerned about the impact of social media on young people, but Siebel Newsom, despite her attempt not to be political, made clear her problem was with boys “moving to the right,” which is a very different concern from the ones being raised by Jonathan Haidt and others about the impact of social media on childhood. And Siebel Newsom’s remarks come in the context of efforts by her husband to control and even censor information. In 2023, Newsom announced a state initiative for citizens to report disfavored speech (non-criminal “hate incidents”) they see online.

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The Tragedy of Murdered Indigenous Women is Real. So How Did Activists Turn It Into a Punch Line?

For Quillette, FAIR Advisor Jonathan Kay argues that the crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women in Canada is real and serious, but is more closely tied to social factors like crime and domestic violence than to a coordinated state effort. He contends that framing it as “genocide” can obscure effective solutions.

In 2015, the government of then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the creation of a public inquiry into the issue—known as the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls—noting that Indigenous women were significantly more likely to be murder victims than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Its mandate was to “look at all underlying causes of violence against Indigenous women and girls including systemic issues.” While Pickton’s crimes were unusually horrific, Canadians learned, his victims represented just a small fraction of the approximately 1,200 Indigenous women who’d been murdered or gone missing over the previous three decades.

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The New ‘Conversion Therapy’ Is Making Gay Kids Trans

For The Free Press, James Kirchick makes the case that “gender-affirming care” for minors functions as a modern form of “conversion therapy,” steering gender-nonconforming or same-sex-attracted youth toward medical transition.

By grouping sexual orientation and gender identity under the same “LGBTQ” umbrella, many conversion therapy bans conflate two entirely separate concepts. Sexual orientation is other-directed, determined by the sex to which one is physically and emotionally attracted…Gender identity, by contrast, is a subjective feeling of one’s own gender, which may or may not correspond with biological sex…For some, this means adopting gendered ideas about how the opposite sex is supposed to look, dress, and act. Others choose to undergo what used to be called a “sex change,” today euphemistically described as “medically necessary gender-affirming care.” This is utterly foreign to the gay experience, especially the young gay experience. Coming out of the closet does not entail the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or irreversible medical interventions.

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Yale’s ‘Trust’ Report Affirms HxA’s Reform Agenda — And Our Members Helped

For Free The Inquiry Heterodox Academy writes that Yale’s new “Trust in Higher Education” report independently validates many of HxA’s long-standing reform priorities, including a sharper institutional mission, stronger protections for open inquiry, and greater viewpoint diversity.

On self-censorship, one of HxA’s cornerstone concerns, the report is unsparing. It cites Yale’s own 2025 survey finding that nearly a third of undergraduates do not feel free to express their political beliefs on campus, up from 17% in 2015. “Self-censorship driven by fear of personal attack, academic retaliation, or other political pressure,” the committee writes, “undermines the principles of free speech and academic freedom.”

The committee’s approach to reform is also distinctly HxA’s: change from within. It calls for faculty-led self-studies, joint student-faculty committees on classroom principles, and collaborative governance. This is precisely the model HxA has championed for over a decade: equipping academics inside the institution to drive deep, lasting change.

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The Decline of Confidence in Higher Ed.

For Expression, Nate Honeycutt unpacks recent data obtained by FIRE which shows that one-third of Americans have no confidence in U.S. colleges and universities.

On their own, these confidence trends reflect an untenable dynamic for higher education leaders. But viewed alongside other indicators, they suggest deeper structural problems… Just as important are signs that many high schoolers — most notably males and Republicans — are less interested in graduating from college, that ideological diversity among professors and administrators is low and still declining, and that highly visible speech controversies continue to pile up.

If colleges and universities want to remain socially relevant and financially stable, they’re going to have to confront the reality that large segments of the public increasingly see them as exclusionary rather than open.

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Building a Culture of Dialogue: A Conversation with Harvard’s Intellectual Vitality Initiative

Last week, FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris joined the Harvard Alumni for Free Speech for a conversation with key leaders of the Intellectual Vitality Initiative. Co-sponsored by FAIR and the Council on Academic Freedom, the conversation explored ongoing efforts to strengthen intellectual diversity and open inquiry on campus. The conversation also featured Danielle Allen, Edward J. Hall, Ari Kohn, and John Evangelakos.

Monica Harris: Our curriculum [manystoriesonenation.com] teaches students to identify logical fallacies…and, crucially, they learn to spot these errors in arguments in their own thinking, not just in others…And, this is a framework I’m particularly proud of…it’s one of the most powerful in our curriculum, it’s called the “Competing goods framework,” where students learn that most controversies involve legitimate but conflicting values. And I think this understanding transforms how they approach disagreement, because this disconnect often fuels most of the divisive discourse we see. For example, safety vs. freedom, or, individual rights vs. community welfare; they’re both good, but [which is more important] depends on your values…So, once students internalize this framework, it fundamentally changes how they approach these very difficult conversations…[and] helps shift focus from “winning an argument,” to understanding the values that the other side is protecting…

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How to Understand the Well-Being Gap between Liberals and Conservatives

For American Affairs, Musa al-Gharbi does a deep dive into the literature on the relationship between political ideology and subjective well-being.

Liberal girls tended to be significantly more depressed than boys, particularly after 2011. However, ideological differences swamped gender differences. Indeed, liberal boys were significantly more likely to report depression than conservatives of either gender. The authors also found that the more educated a teen’s family was, the more likely the young people were to be depressed, and the more dramatic their rise in depression was after 2012.

Why is it that liberal teens are more consistently depressed than conservatives? Why might familial education correlate with heightened depression for liberal youth? Why was there a spike in depression (and a growing ideological divergence in depressive affect) after 2011, corresponding with the onset of the “Great Awokening”?

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Mark Milke: DEI has made society more racist

For the National Post, Mark Milke, president of The Aristotle Foundation, argues that so-called “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (“DEI”) is an illiberal and divisive ideology which has undone many of the gains made by the civil rights movement.

The twin beliefs — that racism explains much and that we must make up for past discrimination — is what drives the modern DEI movement. It is also why DEI is so anti-merit, illiberal and anti-individual. The “diversity” and “inclusion” movement today is in fact dismissive of intercultural borrowing. It also excludes people in hiring and university admissions if they are the “wrong” skin colour, ethnicity and so forth. DEI is thus anti-diversity and exclusive.

Strip out the social engineering, identity politics and flawed economic analyses from the concept and there’s much that’s right about diversity and acceptance.

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Why Politics Makes Us Bend Our Own Values

For Psychology Today, Amber Wardell explains how cognitive dissonance can push all of us into uncomfortable contradictions, and how we can learn to recognize those contradictions in ourselves, and seek to resolve them.

Why does hypocrisy—and the dissonance that drives it—feel so pervasive in politics? Three big reasons stand out. First, politics pushes us into a tribal mindset. If our party takes a position that conflicts with our values, we often assimilate rather than risk being cast out (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Second, politics is emotionally loaded. Because the stakes touch our freedom and quality of life, strong feelings drive quick, inconsistent reactions. We act first and rationalize later, finding post-hoc explanations for behavior that clashes with our principles (Haidt, 2012). Third, social media magnifies both tribalism and emotion. Algorithms prioritize outrage over nuance and partisanship over unity, leaving us feeling more divided than we actually are. Together, these forces make us more likely to act against our values—and more likely to rationalize it after the fact.

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Social Work is “For Everyone.” Except When It’s Not.

For The Multilevel Mailer, Nathan Gallo and Arnold Cantú write about how tthe CSWE’s definition of "everyone" masks an ideologically exclusive, DEI-driven vision of who belongs in the social work profession. This essay is Part 5 of a five part series uncovering the ideological capture of Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE).

This pull toward ideological conformity rather than professional neutrality, as Alam describes, comes “in ways that impinge on the equal treatment of clients, client autonomy, and respect for the diversity of clients’ values.” …Certainly, we question whether social work will continue to remain the fastest growing profession in the country if the field merely “become[s] a destination for people who want to get paid to be protesters,” as Schafer Riley says. …Social work in the 2020s is indeed for everyone. For everyone with rightthink and rightspeak.

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The dangers of ‘gender-affirming care’ are now undeniable

For Spiked, Jo Bartosch unpacks a new study from Finland showing that puberty blockers and hormone treatments deepen troubled kids’ distress, rather than helping them.

If this were about macrobiotic diets or juice cleanses, it would be harmless nonsense. But it isn’t. It is about children – distressed, suggestible children who were handed over to an ideology that promised relief and delivered the opposite. To gamble with their bodies for political vanity, and perhaps profit, is not just wrong. It is also contemptible.

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Identity Politics and the Soul of Psychotherapy

For FAIR’s Substack, Dr. Doug Novotny examines how identity‑politics frameworks can distort both clinical judgment and everyday understanding. He argues that reducing “culture” to immutable group traits flattens individuality, fuels polarized thinking, and critically impairs psychotherapy. He advocates a return to nuanced engagement with identity, morality, and human complexity.

Intelligent, well-meaning people with common-sense can be misguided by the rigid framework of “us-against-them;” “oppressor vs. oppressed.” This ideology foments dehumanizing trait categorization, flattens identity, and heightens division.

All of us are vulnerable to collapsing our ideas into ideology, and it appears across the political spectrum. It’s deeply concerning when politicians practice such divisiveness. It’s an abdication of authority when “experts” promote activism. It’s sad when it affects personal relationships. But it’s especially damaging when it enters psychotherapy —a field entrusted with expanding, rather than constricting human understanding. Therapists should be working to simultaneously enhance the better angels of our nature and our culture’s nobler aspects, like the sanctity of individual character.

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Uncanceling the Canceled

For Free Black Thought, FAIR Advisor Erec Smith writes about the wrongful cancellation of former Seattle principal Ed Roos, the long-term impact of “DEI” on educators, and the dangers of ideology overriding evidence. Roos first shared his story publicly on FAIR’s Substack, which you can read here.

One could say the tenet of “innocent until proven guilty” devolved under DEI into “guilty until proven innocent,” but this is worse than that. It is “guilty until proven guilty.” This is a side effect of a narrative that whiteness is inherently racist (a message Roos received frequently) and the concept of positionality: no white person can truly understand a black person, so anything he does is either dismissed or treated with suspicion. We cannot allow such blatant illiberalism to prevail. When one person’s uncorroborated word is all it takes to ruin a man, we are not staying true to the principle of fairness this country is supposed to uphold.

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Zion Lights: Green movement is “anti-human at its roots and goes back to Malthusian thinking”

For PUBLIC, FAIR Advisor Michael Shellenberger interviews Zion Lights, a former environmental activist and author (Energy is Life: Why Environmentalism Went Nuclear). They discuss how the green movement, by restricting fossil fuels in the Global South, has prioritized ideology over people, leaving millions without reliable energy.

In a small village in the Punjab, a girl of about eight years old crouches over a clay stove, feeding it patties of dried cow dung. Smoke billows into her face. She coughs while feeding the fire. There is no reliable electricity. When the family gets a little extra money, they buy liquified petroleum gas (LPG), which burns cleanly, as natural gas does in stoves in the wealthy West. Unfortunately, that LPG just got priced out of reach for hundreds of millions like her.

The 2026 Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz were the triggers for the current energy crisis, but the underlying cause is the chronic underinvestment and underdevelopment of oil and gas resources by poor, developing, and rich nations alike over the last ten years. Policymakers diverted that money into green energy, which failed to prevent the crisis.

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This Post Won’t Save the World

For The Certainty Trap, FAIR Advisor Ilana Redstone reflects on the Iran conflict and the limits of persuasion in a polarized environment. She explores how overconfidence in our own certainty can get in the way of genuine understanding, and why intellectual humility may be a more effective starting point.

Like so many people, I worry that this conflict will escalate to an apocalyptic, existential, World War III event. I fear what the future holds for my teenage kids. What kind of world will they inherit? Could this lead to a draft that affects them? What does real economic destruction look like? I get lost in the sheer number of things I take for granted every single day that could vanish in the blink of an eye. I go to the grocery store and expect that the shelves will be stocked. I flip a light switch and assume the electricity will come on. And if, God forbid, I have to call 911, I assume that someone will answer and someone will come. But what if everything I assume will always be there is actually deeply, heartbreakingly, fragile?

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Teaching History Without Taking Sides

For Derate the Hate, Wilk Wilkinson sits down with FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris for wide-ranging conversation about FAIR’s Many Stories, One Nation curriculum, the disempowering and discriminatory “oppressor/oppressed” framework, (de)polarization, and much more.

At the center [of the discussion] is Many Stories, One Nation—FAIR’s high school social studies curriculum. What begins as a question about how this differs from traditional ethnic studies quickly opens into something deeper: how we teach history, how we frame identity, and what we’re actually preparing young people to walk into. If the goal is to equip the next generation for a complicated and often divided world, the way we tell these stories matters.

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The Psychology of Speech Repression

For The Bedrock Principle, Antoine Marie Ph.D., examines why people across the political spectrum might support restricting speech. He points to perceived social threats, group identity, and the protection of shared narratives, arguing that these dynamics often fuel self-censorship and deepen polarization.

When people underestimate how widespread this self-censorship is, the result can be pluralistic ignorance: a situation in which public discourse becomes grossly misaligned with private beliefs. Everyone hears the same dominant opinions expressed in public, and each person assumes others genuinely believe them. In reality, many individuals privately harbor doubts that no one dares to articulate. Some examples in U.S. contexts: criticism of Trump’s authoritarianism in MAGA bubbles; scepticism towards open border immigration policies or biological sex denialism among strong liberals.

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Supreme Court sides with therapist in challenge to Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy”

For SCOTUS Blog Amy Howe reports on last week’s Chiles v. Salazar decision. The Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that the First Amendment prohibits states from using their licensing power to limit the topics therapists and other professionals can discuss with their clients.

The court has also acknowledged, Gorsuch continued, “the even greater dangers associated with regulations that discriminate based on the speaker’s point of view. When the government seeks not just to restrict speech based on its subject matter, but also seeks to dictate what particular ‘opinion or perspective’ individuals may express on that subject, ‘the violation of the First Amendment is all the more blatant,’” Gorsuch stressed. “’Viewpoint discrimination,’” Gorsuch said, “represents ‘an egregious form’ of content regulation, and governments in this country must nearly always ‘abstain’ from it.”

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Anti-Racist Task Force Report in Social Work Confirms Rufo’s CRT Suspicions

For The Multilevel Mailer, Nathan Gallo and Arnold Cantú write about how the CSWE quietly wove critical race theory into national social work standards under the banner of ‘anti-racism.' This essay is Part 4 of a five part series uncovering the ideological capture of Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE).

“By applying CRT,” the report explains, “social work practice can uncover its White supremacy and ensure the multiple realities of people of color/minoritized groups are centered.” Conveniently, “realities” from minority groups—and individuals—that refused to fit with the pre-built White- and racism-blaming CRT narrative didn’t count.

“To advance anti-racist social work education,” they also reasoned, “the profession must examine the White supremacy and ethnocracy that underscores social work as an applied social science that maintains information structures, paradigms, theories, and practices ensconced in academia.” (Imagine if the authors, instead, sought to examine a “Jewish ethnocracy” or “Black ethnocracy” or “Chinese ethnocracy.”)

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Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these Roundups, an audio version is available directly on the Substack app. Thank you for tuning in!

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Courage is Contagious: How I Remembered I was a Theatre Artist

For FAIR’s Substack, Artist Grant winner Mary Poindexter McLaughlin shares her journey from ostracization in the theatre world to finding support and community again, including through FAIR in the Arts. She warns that the greatest threat to the arts may be self-censorship, not disagreement, and shows how courage spreads when people speak their minds.

What I’ve discovered is that bravery is contagious. The playwrights of [Playwright’s Think Tank] do not all agree with one another on much of anything, but they speak their minds freely and send their works out into the world, regardless of the reception. And regularly sharing the company of such people has strengthened my resolve to do the same.

My desire to self-censor is all but gone. Now, when fellow theatre artists make political comments that assume consensus on a multitude of topics, I rarely default into, “Why jeopardize these burgeoning relationships?” Instead, I act from, “I’ll bet we can agree on at least some part of this issue.”

Instinctive, preemptive self-muzzling is what I see as the greatest threat to the arts, specifically within the theatre community. Based on my own experience and that of fellow PTT members and other Substackers who left the theatre, I know I’m not alone.

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The Democratic Case Against the Term "Far-Right"

For The Certainty Trap, FAIR Advisor Ilana Redstone argues that labeling ideas “far-right” shuts down democratic debate. When political disagreement is recast as moral disqualification, she writes, argument gives way to dismissal, undermining the very premise of pluralism.

In the current context, “that’s far right” does the same work as “that’s racist.” Both convert a position that could be argued with into one that can only be condemned. The argument is over before it begins.

And yet, democracy is built on a specific premise: that reasonable people, weighing real and competing goods, will reach different conclusions. Liberty against security. Individual autonomy against collective welfare. Continuity against change. Cultural cohesion against pluralism. There are genuine losses on every side of these contests. The person who weights them differently than you isn’t necessarily confused or malicious. They may be making a different but recognizable human judgment about what matters most.

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Rosie Kay on Cancel Culture in the Arts

In a conversation with Eric Kaufmann for the Centre for Heterodox Social Science, choreographer Rosie Kay (FAIR in the Arts) discusses how ideological conformity, funding pressures, and cancel culture are reshaping the arts. She reflects on her own experience of being cancelled, the climate of fear now shaping artistic life, and the evidence gathered in recent Freedom in the Arts reports on censorship, self-censorship, and boycotts. This is a wide-ranging discussion on dance, free expression, cultural power, and the future of the arts.

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The Inflating Cost of Artistic Freedom

Writing in White Rose Magazine, FAIR in the Arts 2026 Artist Grant winner Kevin Ray chronicles the full cost of dissent in the theatre world. After refusing to adopt certain ideological frameworks, he saw his career collapse, revealing the steep financial, professional, and personal toll of artistic independence.

I am trained as a teaching artist and a theater director. Before voicing my objection to embedding CSJ concepts into K–12 instruction, I had steady employment as a teaching artist. After refusing to comply, my workload was cut to a fraction of what it once was. Teaching theater and directing plays is not just my profession; it is what gives my life meaning. I am not alone in observing that the price of exclusion from the arts is equal parts financial, psychological, and spiritual.

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The Impact of Cancel (Revenge) Culture

On his Substack, former Seattle principal Ed Roos recounts the long aftermath of a false accusation that forced him out of a career he loved. Years after being exonerated, he remains effectively blacklisted—an account of how reputational damage can outlast the truth.

In the fall of 2020, I was an award-winning principal with seventeen years of exemplary service in the Seattle School District. I was forced out after a vengeful teacher leaked a story to the media that I had caged a student, when in reality, we were playing ball with him in a play court. Today, I am a skeleton of the man who once existed, serving a life sentence in a world that refuses to look past the headlines that reside forever in a Google search…

Cancel culture impacts every aspect of one’s life. In the immediate aftermath, I discovered that I was essentially unemployable. Rejection letters poured in citing the false media reports as the reason for my disqualification and informing me that I had been blacklisted. I went from providing a comfortable life for my family to scraping by at a part-time, nonprofit job.

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The End of LGBTQIA?

On Longview’s Reflector podcast, Ben Kawaller has launched a series examining the evolution of the gay rights movement into today’s LGBTQ+ framework. He explores shifting cultural definitions of identity, generational trends, and the tensions shaping this transformation.

Of course, the gay rights movement hasn’t been the gay rights movement since…well, gay rights were secured. At some point along the way, gay and lesbian rights became LGBT rights…and then some time after that, a Q started popping up. (Somehow, this has all coincided with everyone having less actual sex, but I digress.)

I watched these trends with great interest, especially as a new way of thinking about gender started gaining popularity in some circles – while incurring an enormous level of wrath in others. The influx of people, particularly young people, identifying out of their own sex (a trend that evidently peaked around 2023) always seemed to me a social phenomenon worth exploring, whatever its cause.

Listen to Episode 1

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

For Beyond Parody, Bridget Phetasy celebrates women quietly resisting cultural extremes—whether dictated by media or ideological trends—and whom algorithms don’t know what to do with because, as she says, “we don’t fit neatly into a box.”

There are millions and millions of us. We’re at the soccer games and the PTA meetings and the office and the grocery store and the school board meetings we never thought we’d attend because not long ago we were dancing on bars. We’re the women who still read books and have real friendships and know how to talk about politics and sports and give great recommendations for podcasts and skin products and restaurants. We’re the moms who let our kids play outside and the wives who actually adore their husbands and the professionals who earned their positions and don’t need to be on a panel about it.

And a criminal number of you are single women, too. You’re my heroes because you’re the ones navigating this alone, without a husband to vent to at the end of the day or kids to distract you from the relentless insanity. You’re out here building a life on your own terms in a culture that either pities you or tells you you’re a girlboss who doesn’t need anyone, and neither of those is true.

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Social Work Educators Slide into Ideological Irrelevance at National Conference

For The Multilevel Mailer, Nathan Gallo and Arnold Cantú write about how the CSWE’s 2025 “Disability Justice” conference showcases hyper-progressive ideology, instead of professional social work practice. This essay is Part 3 of a five part series uncovering the ideological capture of Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE).

“Independence is a myth,” charged a social work scholar at the Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) 71^st Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado this last October. “It’s not about fitting disabled people into the capitalist, ableist structures,” she said, “but dismantling these collective structures of oppression so that all of us can...work towards collective liberation.” This same professor referred to her fellow panelists as “comrades” on at least three occasions.

Despite scattered applause and assuming to have the final progressive say, the overwhelming majority of the American public would sharply disagree, according to reports on hidden political tribes, shared ideals, and personal agency by More in Common—a research organization dedicated to helping the country find common ground.

In normal times, a professional educational conference does not warrant public attention. In normal times—with properly earned public trust—an education conference acts as an incubator for faculty and professionals to discuss the latest developments in their discipline…

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The Silent Prescription: A Neurologist’s Journey from the Hippocratic Oath to the American Classroom

This week on FAIR’s Substack, Diana Blum writes as both a physician and a mother, sharing her concerns about K–12 education—and what led her to advocate for reform at her children’s school.

The turning point in my transformation from medical advocate to education defender occurred during a webinar I hosted for FAIR titled “Health Professionals in the Nazi Era.” Preparing for that presentation was a chilling experience. I saw with terrifying clarity how the most “educated” professionals of the 1930s, doctors and teachers, were the first to succumb to ideological capture. They didn’t wake up one day as monsters; they were slowly conditioned to prioritize activism over their professional oaths.

I looked at our current K-12 landscape and saw the same patterns. As depicted in the documentary Killing America by Eli Steele, the erosion of merit and the introduction of “social justice” frameworks in schools like those in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I grew up and raised my own kids, mirrored the lowering of medical standards I had fought against. Whether it is lowering the bar for a medical degree or removing honors math for eighth graders, the result is the same: the sacrifice of excellence at the altar of ideology. Unnecessary suffering inevitably follows.

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New York Theater Settles Case That Argued Discounts Were Discriminatory

In The New York Times, Michael Paulson reports on a recent lawsuit brought by FAIR in the Arts member Kevin Lynch (represented by Consovoy McCarthy), who challenged a “BIPOC night” at Playwrights Horizons. The theater has agreed to a settle out of court, and we applaud Lynch for his success.

A prominent nonprofit theater in New York has settled a lawsuit claiming that a discount offered to people of color was racially discriminatory.

Playwrights Horizons, an Off Broadway company…offered an apology to Kevin Lynch, a white musician from New Jersey who sued over last fall’s “BIPOC night”…

“Playwrights Horizons regrets that Mr. Lynch felt excluded because of his race,” the theater said in a six-sentence statement issued jointly by both parties on Tuesday. The statement did not specify whether the theater paid any money to Mr. Lynch, but said, “Playwrights Horizons and Mr. Lynch have agreed to resolve the matter out of court.”

…Lynch, in a statement…said he was pleased with the outcome. "Race-based ticket pricing violates all our civil rights, regardless of which race is on the receiving end of the discrimination…I consider it a victory for civil and human rights.”

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The quiet radicalization of the American library

In the Washington Examiner, Bethany Mandel argues that the American Library Association has abandoned institutional neutrality. She highlights the rise of the Association of Library Professionals, which promotes a vision of librarianship grounded in neutrality and community trust rather than ideological advocacy—and recommends FAIR’s Library Neutrality Toolkit.

Organizations outside the traditional library establishment have begun offering tools for citizens who want to evaluate whether their local libraries are living up to principles of neutrality and viewpoint diversity. One example comes from [FAIR], which recently released a public tool kit designed to help community members assess library policies and practices. The tool kit encourages citizens to ask straightforward questions about collection development, programming, and institutional policies. Are multiple viewpoints represented in book collections? Are libraries hosting speakers from across the political spectrum? Are policies applied consistently regardless of ideology?

These questions should not be controversial. For much of the 20th century, they would have been understood as basic elements of professional librarianship. The fact that they now provoke debate reflects how far the conversation has shifted.

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The DEI scourge in K-12 education has only gotten worse since I blew the whistle on my own school

Writing in the New York Post, Dana Stangel-Plowe (former Director of FAIR in Education) reflects on how education has changed since she blew the whistle on her school. In her view, it has become more ideologically rigid, less tolerant, and increasingly focused on activism over academics.

Within my left-leaning profession, I know that most teachers are not radical activists. But their good intentions make them susceptible to the path of least resistance paved by those who are. In a captured system, the politicization of education becomes the air that teachers breathe.

They often perpetuate the ideology without recognizing what it is: political. It may sound like an abstraction to say the ideology fuels hostility toward anyone it casts as an oppressor, but it’s all too real.

In my school, the more radical and often younger educators aggressively insisted on this new approach. They pushed the school to reduce complex issues, such as racial or gender inequities, into moral binaries and treat contested conclusions as settled truth.

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Harmed by Medical Transition

For Inspecting Gender, Genspect director Stella O’Malley explores the four stages of detransition, describing a process far more complex than commonly understood.

These include psychological detransition, which involves a shift in beliefs and internal self-understanding; social detransition, which involves changes in presentation, roles, and relationships; legal detransition, which involves reversing formal identity markers such as name and sex designation; and medical detransition, which involves reducing, stopping, or managing the physical consequences of medical interventions. These domains are not steps in a sequence, and individuals may experience one, several, or all of them. Many remain within a single stage without ever entering others. Taken together, they provide a framework for understanding detransition as a complex human experience that reaches into the mind, the body, and the structures that govern social and legal recognition. In this sense, detransition is best understood not as a simple reversal, but as a re-engagement with reality, embodiment, and personal agency at a pace and depth unique to each individual…

[The four stages] provide a descriptive framework for understanding the varied realities of detransition. They are not prescriptive, but intended to help individuals, families, and professionals recognize and respond to this experience with greater clarity.

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The Politics of Linguistic Evasion

In The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain, Helen Pluckrose examines why ideologues often resist labels that accurately describe their beliefs.

Firstly, there is the issue where these terms have been abused and fired at people whether they apply or not as a condemnation by activists of the Critical Social Justice movement. When a descriptive term becomes synonymous with ‘bad person’ this will produce instinctive ‘No, I’m not!” denials from people who are driven more by vibes and feelings than by definitions and reason. It also enables people with a more sophisticated but intellectually dishonest mindset who know very well what words mean to cynically redefine them as ‘terms that identify their speaker as the worst of our political opponents” to dismiss the accusation without addressing it. Wilfred Reilly is correct to note that this functions as the same kind of trap used by activists of the CSJ movement.

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Is Systemic Racism a Thing of the Past?

For Free Black Thought, Kevin Briggins reflects on his grandfather’s legacy as a prominent figure in the Civil Rights Movement, and how the broader fight against systemic racism has evolved in recent years.

If my great-grandfather were alive today, he would likely marvel at the real racial progress that has been made. Certainly, disparities still exist, but it is overly simplistic to allege “systemic racism” as the unproven boogeyman lurking behind every disparity. We would do better to heed the words of Dr. Lionel Newsom, another prominent man from my great-grandfather’s generation. In the same year the Civil Rights Act was passed (1964), he wisely noted that the freedom that comes with equal opportunity (unsegregated facilities, no formal discrimination in hiring, etc.) does not necessarily lead to equality (the same outcomes as other ethnicities). Rather,

“Equality can come only through individual efforts. In order to achieve equality people must be able to communicate, to understand and appreciate each other, and to give and take. One must strive for excellence in every undertaking in order to build self-esteem and respect from others. These are the things that finally lead to equality. Freedom may be granted but equality must be achieved.”

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The Cult of Fragility: Why Stoicism Beats Modern Victimhood

For The Coddling Movie, Edward Campbell makes the case for Stoicism as an antidote to the fragility and self-defeating pessimism of a victimhood mindset.

The ancient world understood what our pampered age forgets: you cannot build happiness on fragility, nor justice on perpetual grievance. The more we define goodness through pain, the more pain we manufacture. The Stoics sought tranquility through truth; modern fragility seeks safety through control. But control of others is a bottomless pursuit—and truth cannot be negotiated by feelings.

The choice before us is not political but psychological: freedom through mastery of the self, or frustration in the futile struggle to control everyone else.

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The Problem of Right-Wing Art

For State of the Arts, FAIR in the Arts Fellow Clifton Duncan argues that the political right’s difficulty producing influential art is largely self-inflicted, not simply the result of progressive dominance in cultural institutions.

Liberals and progressives have zombified the arts. Given their relentless discrimination against non-leftist creatives, they and they alone control America’s cultural institutions, therefore they and they alone must own the stagnation and unpopularity of said institutions. Meaningful change would require their developing a tolerance toward divergent visions, the capacity to see proponents of those visions as human beings, and the humility to consider that perhaps they have some things wrong.

These things will never happen. But there is also no reason to expect a renaissance of “right wing” art, as some might hope.

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FAIR in the Arts Fellow Clifton Duncan also recently appeared on The Andrew Klavan Show, to discuss his cancellation from Broadway, the problem of right-wing art, and his new one-man show Becoming Thomas Sowell.

Watch the Interview

Is Free Speech Maximalism Just for Young Men?

For Brownstone Institute, Gabrielle Bauer explains the concept of free speech maximalism and challenges the notion that it is only embraced by “angry young men.” As a 69-year-old woman and organizer with the Free Speech Union of Canada, she defies that stereotype, but laments that more women do not share her view.

And here’s the thing: when you embrace viewpoint diversity as an ideal, you tend to get less offended about things. You may profoundly disagree with a statement, but it won’t cause you to puff up in outrage…It’s a liberating habit of mind.

And if you do get offended? Big whoop. You’ll survive. During a recent bus trip from Whistler to Vancouver, my seatmate, a doctor, took it upon himself to share his candid opinions about women with me…I survived. I wasn’t traumatized.

Truth be told, I quite enjoyed our conversation. He listened as much as he spoke. I even found a few grains of value in his arguments, and perhaps a couple of my retorts gave him pause. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Humans of all stripes challenging and learning from each other.

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We Don’t Need Everyone To Agree. We Need Everyone To Change How They Disagree.

For We The Black Sheep, Salomé Sibonex suggests that the real problem isn’t disagreement itself but how we react to it. Instead of falling into the evolutionary trap of outrage and tribalism, she calls for approaching opposing views with curiosity and epistemic humility.

We can disagree beautifully about ice cream flavors because our identity isn’t tied up in “chocolate ice cream lover” the way it is in labels like “Christian,” “lesbian,” “Zionist,” or “vegan.” When our self-image is challenged, we might as well be in the Colosseum facing a starving lion. But by depending on our opinions and identity labels to define ourselves, we fail to update our ancient brain’s assumption that disagreement = tribal exclusion = death. The resulting ideological rigidity robs us of the freedom we have today, enslaving us to act out a primitive past where logic, curiosity, and honest disagreement offered more risk than reward.

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Why Traditional Psychotherapy Is Failing Today’s Gender-Confused Teens

For Reality’s Last Stand, Dr. Joseph Burgoo critiques the direction of modern psychotherapy, arguing that rigid ideological frameworks are limiting open inquiry and reshaping therapy into a process of affirmation rather than exploration.

Even solo practitioners today find it challenging to practice as we might once have done because the world around us disputes our authority as experts, undermines family structures that have traditionally supported our work, and replaces long-held understandings of human nature with newly minted and unevidenced theories presented as unassailable truth.

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Twitter, Tourette’s, and Tribalism

For Proof in Progress, Kirra Watkins weighs in on the recent “BBC BAFTA scandal,” in which John Davidson — Scottish BAFTA nominee and Tourette Syndrome advocate — ticced a racial slur at Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, who were presenting him the award. She shares her perspective as a black woman with Tourette Syndrome.

My lived experience does give me perspective. However, there’s been a bad habit in the last few years of using purely the identities of various individuals to elevate specific convenient talking points but look “morally pure” while doing so. The actual validity of the takes is then relegated to the back burner. This has created a ladder of identities to climb until one nears a platonic ideal of “wokeness” and is handed a microphone.

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Report Card From Hell

For Abstract Truth, the anonymous author writes about how and why the education system in America is failing, and what can be done to save it.

Our educational programs have focused on theory over subject matter expertise and smooshy ideas of social justice, rather than to actually study the philosophers and great thinkers — or even heroic people who tried to achieve it. Today’s teachers seem to have lost sight of the fact that things like brilliance in math, science, reading and writing itself is a form of liberation. Math, far from being racist was the kind of thing that the abolitionists taught to runaway slaves by candlelight.

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Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these Roundups, an audio version is available directly on the Substack app. Thank you for tuning in!

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The Damage Done by Accreditors

For Heterodox STEM, FAIR Tennessee Chapter Co-Leader Suzannah Alexander writes about her experience with the intolerant orthodoxy and lack of viewpoint diversity in her counselling program, and how this undermines the legitimacy of the profession.

Though I knew beforehand that psychology-based professional circles leaned progressive, I could not wrap my head around the idea that a therapist training program would be instructing students to look at the world in a racist and bigoted way. In my view, such a dogma was an anathema to creating the conditions that would make good therapy possible. I simply couldn’t believe they were serious. So whenever there seemed to be a surprisingly negative response to my comments, I thought I wasn’t making myself clear.

It wasn’t until much later, when I did an in-depth study of the textbooks used for the dreaded Multicultural Counseling Class I would have taken the following semester, that I realized just how diabolical the ideology and indoctrination program really is. Or how this is all orchestrated through accreditation.

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The Privilege of the Experiment

For his Substack, Friendly Fire, Hector Herrera reflects on his perspective of America as a new immigrant and explains why he chose this country to be his home.

I am especially in awe of the wisdom embedded in the First and Second Amendments. They are so exceptional, so audacious, that I increasingly suspect much of America’s success is rooted in them. Many nations have constitutions. Many have courts, elections, declarations of rights. But the robust protection of freedom of conscience—and the explicit recognition of the people’s right to defend that freedom, along with their property, from tyrannical government—remains a profound outlier.

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Part 1: Donald Trump Told the Truth About Sage Blair

For her Substack BROADview, Lisa Selin Davis details the story of Sage Blair, a teen who was socially transitioned at school, became a victim of sex trafficking, and was separated from her family by courts over their perceived lack of “affirmation.” Blair recently attended Trump’s State of the Union with her grandmother.

This is not just a story of how the school secretly facilitated Sage’s social transition, hiding it from her parents. It’s the story of how school personnel came to believe that to do so was their duty. It’s about how the justice system learned the same talking points about gender identity and came to see un-affirming—or, in this case, unaware—parents as so harmful that their kids were better off without them. It is the story of how a few poorly executed papers in the early 2000s about the importance of family acceptance were misinterpreted—and used to hurt families instead.

Read Part 1 of the Series

Erasing the Word “Woman”

For Quillette, Karleen Gribble investigates the desexing of language in women’s healthcare. She finds that replacing sex-specific terms like “woman” and “mother” is driven by gender-identity ideology and institutional pressure rather than evidence-based, scientific research.

In the absence of research, we are left in a place of unknowing regarding the impact of desexed language. Anecdotal evidence of misunderstanding, aversion, and miscommunication supports adverse consequences. It is likely, for example, that cervical cancer screening promotions describing those eligible for screening as “anyone with a cervix” are not understood by some women. But which and how many women? What are the morbidity and mortality costs resulting from missed screening for women who do not understand these health communications or reject the message? How might misunderstanding or rejection be mitigated? Who benefits from desexed language, and under what circumstances? We do not know the answers to any of these questions. And yet journals, publishers, university ethics committees, health organisations, and others are moving full steam ahead using, promoting, and sometimes enforcing desexed language. This is a completely unacceptable situation. Desexing the language of women’s health is a major intervention, one that should not be made without a strong evidence base.

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Taking back the schools: How to reverse the decline in local education democracy

For the Aristotle Foundation, Paul W. Bennett shares his research on the Canadian education system, and calls for a more grassroots, community-focused approach.

Across Canada, the school system is groaning under the weight of its own bureaucracy. Centralized control, layered administration, and top-down governance have hollowed out the very institutions meant to serve students, families, and communities.³ For decades, provincial ministries and regional boards have been building an ever-expanding education “apparatus” that too often stifles innovation and isolates decision-makers from the classroom. The wisest choice has never been clearer: If we want schools that truly serve communities, we must flip the system—replacing top-down governance with bottom-up accountability rooted in the schoolhouse.

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In Defense of Effeminate Boys

For The Atlantic, Ben Appel writes about how feminine or gender-nonconforming boys—especially those who may grow up to be gay—are increasingly being interpreted as transgender, and in many cases encouraged toward unnecessary and irreversible medical interventions.

As an adult, I vowed to help create a world where sissy boys like me could find space in society to be themselves, without any pressure to change—a goal that still feels urgent today. What I know now is that gender nonconformity didn’t disqualify me from being male. Effeminate boys, however atypical, are a natural variation of their own sex. The notion that they are really girls is anything but progressive.

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Rethinking Representation This Black History Month

For FAIR’s Substack, Erec Smith writes about how resilient figures in black history have been, and how resilient black Americans can be right now.

I am of the mind that the best way to honor black Americans who came before us, who certainly did not have the representation many black people feel they need to move ahead, is to thwart the need to see ourselves in particular professional spaces. What did those black heroes fight for? What is the point of putting all that time and energy into opening doors of opportunity if no one is willing to walk through them? For what did they endure physical, mental, and emotional pain if we’re just going to act like we have it as bad as they did? The need for representation is a sacrilege for two reasons: it downplays the triumphs of black history and shows that black resilience may have weakened when the whole point was to strengthen it.

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Lisa Bildy: Human rights rules on gender ideology are just blasphemy laws

For the National Post, FAIR Advisor Lisa Bidly writes about the case of Barry Neufeld, who was fined $750,000 for criticizing curriculum for young children that embedded gender ideology.

This case expands limits on freedom of expression in two significant ways. First, disparaging gender ideology — even when targeting ideas, not people — was found to be discriminatory. B.C.’s human rights commissioner argued that’s the way it should be. Excluding opinions on matters of “legitimate public interest” from the tribunal’s authority, she argued, created a loophole that should be closed. Mark Steyn avoided punishment for his commentary on Islam, also litigated in B.C., because it was considered political commentary within the bounds of free expression. Today’s human rights functionaries won’t abide such limits on their power.

Second, the expanded interpretation was applied to an elected trustee, whose role is to challenge policies and raise concerns about educational changes. Bureaucrats now dictate what elected officials can say on public policy matters.

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Stop Pretending the Tumbler Ridge Killer Was Female

For Quillette, FAIR Advisor Jonathan Kay writes about Canadian police and journalists extending fraudulent courtesies to a trans-identified mass murderer.

This kind of institutionally mandated misuse of language is dishonest at the best of times. But it is especially offensive when it serves to misrepresent reality on behalf of a murderer (posthumously or otherwise). While Jesse Van Rootselaar’s criminal motive is unknown, he left a trove of digital clues about his identity—all of which paint a picture of a deeply disturbed young man with a stereotypically male fixation on firearms and violence.

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Unmasking Academic Lies with Wilfred Reilly

FAIR Advisor Wilfred Riley joins the Center for Christian Virtue to discuss how mid-level bureaucrats are rebranding the poison of DEI as "belonging" or "togetherness" to stay entrenched.

Listen to the Full Conversation

What $1 Million of Anti-Racist Leadership Training Buys You

For The Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper writes about his disagreement with Wesleyan University's president and the inefficacy of DEI initiatives.

It is precisely because I respect Roth that I was surprised to read his response to my recent article about the Mellon Foundation, the billion-dollar nonprofit that has been using its de facto monopoly on humanities grant-making to push a “scholar-activist” agenda—one that seems to measure the worth of knowledge by its real-world impact on liberal causes. Roth’s letter, which appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, accuses me of peddling “fantasies” about Mellon’s undue influence. He also compares my critiques to the views of the segregationist Senator Jesse Helms, a man who is known primarily not for his views on higher education but for being one of the most openly racist American politicians to have held office this side of the moon landing. Roth’s letter is vaporous, obfuscatory, and symptomatic of the very problems I highlight in the Mellon article that he objects to.

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The Body–Mind Connection: How Physiology Is Often Overlooked in Mental Health Care

For FAIR’s Substack, Dr. Kendra Kautz writes about how gaps in clinical training and time-constrained care often leave physiology out of mental health decision-making, despite its central role in emotional regulation.

At the center of this discussion is informed decision-making. Patients deserve a clear understanding of what medication is intended to address, what it may not resolve, and what other biological factors could be influencing their symptoms. That context allows treatment decisions to be collaborative rather than reactive.

When care includes explanation—not just intervention—symptoms are less likely to be experienced as personal failures and more likely to be understood as meaningful signals. That understanding often changes not only how people feel, but how they engage in their own healing.

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If this topic interests you, please join us on February 4th at 7pm ET for a webinar discussion with Dr. Kautz.

The Road to Social Work Curricula’s Ideological Capture

For The Multilevel Mailer, Nathan Gallo and Arnold Cantú write about how the CSWE’s ADEI mandates deepened the discipline’s left-leaning bent, producing a “lost generation” of social workers.

In September 2021, the CSWE released a summary of survey feedback after receiving written responses from 564 social work educators (in addition to feedback solicited at two conferences and a town hall event). Even within the small sample size (current social work professionals total over 700,000 while faculty total an estimated 11,500), respondents raised concerns about the consequences of mandating ADEI ideas across the curricula and educational policy.

“This seems to be pandering to the left and training social workers to be radical advocates,” one commenter noted, “instead of compassionate and tenacious social work practitioners whose goal is to help everyone be the best that they can be.”

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Glenn Loury: I fear for America’s future

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks to eminent economist and social scientist Professor Glenn Loury about a troubling new shift in American discourse: the rise of Right-wing identity politics. Traditionally a critic of the woke Left, Loury turns his sights on the world’s wealthiest man, arguing that Elon Musk is making a "category mistake" by importing South African racial anxieties into the American context. By embracing white solidarity and racial essentialism, Loury argues, the Right is not defeating identity politics, but is instead adopting a politically destructive mirror image of the very ideology they claim to oppose.

Watch on YouTube

The federal charges against Don Lemon raise serious concerns for press freedom

FIRE’s Newsdesk breaks down its concerns with the case against Don Lemon.

In a free society, journalists play a vital role in documenting and reporting on events of public concern, including illegal conduct. Manufacturing federal crimes out of the facts we’ve seen so far chills that core function. Considered in light of the administration’s online taunts and demonstrated hostility to the press, that appears to be the point.

FIRE will be watching closely.

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How Curiosity Can Make Tough Conversations Manageable

Mónica Guzmán shares tips for constructive dialogue:

“Our community is hungry for this. We’re hungry for tools, we’re hungry for connection, and we’re hungry for answers,” Clemens said. “Students asked insightful questions at lunch about how to make space for thoughtful engagement when what we want is instant gratification. Dialogue does not bring instant gratification. And so remembering and reminding ourselves to be patient with the big questions, to be curious—that’s what’s going to get us, hopefully, to a better space.”

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Why Some Protest Movements Alienate the People They Aim to Persuade

For FAIR’s Substack, David King writes about why discipline, proportionality, and persuasion often determine whether dissent leads to change or backlash.

Societies weaken when protest becomes primarily an outlet for rage, and when spectacle replaces persuasion. Protest is most powerful when it appeals to our shared humanity—when it treats even opponents as people capable of being convinced, rather than obstacles to be shamed.

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Liberty: What Did the Founders Mean? | 5-Minute Videos | PragerU

When Thomas Jefferson wrote about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” he wasn’t just using poetic language—he was laying down a radical vision for a free society. But what did he and the Founders really mean by “liberty?” And how has that definition changed over time? Robert George, FAIR Advisor and Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, explains.

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It’s a VUCA World Out There

For Mutual Persuasion, FAIR Advisor Erec Smith writes about embracing the reality of living in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.

I think the real conversation about VUCA should emphasize strategies for collaborating with it. Many try to mitigate VUCA by trying to engineer its opposite (a Stable, Certain, Simple, and Clear world). Others, VUCA “enthusiasts” like myself, believe we should lean into it and encourage ourselves and the world to work with the inevitable chaos of the human experience. In fact, educators would do well to prepare students to navigate a VUCA world explicitly.

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Episode 291: Oh, Canada (with Jonathan Kay)

This week on Blocked and Reported, Katie Herzog is joined by FAIR Advisor Jonathan Kay to discuss conspiracy theories, the illiberal right vs. the illiberal left, and all things Canada. Note: There’s an additional hour of conversation for our Primo subscribers in which we discuss the residential schools grave scandal, Canada’s euthanasia program (MAID), our personal pronoun policies, and much more. To get the entire episode and support the show, please join us.

Listen to the Full Episode

Professor slams ‘sneaky approach’ to oppression-based teaching of American history: ‘fantastically false’

FAIR Advisor Wilfred Reilly speaks with Fox News Digital about his book, Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me.

“So, I actually responded to what we’re actually learning by looking through these guys, like the 1619 curriculum, and kind of focusing on what they got wrong from the left,” said Reilly.

In the case of slavery, Reilly noted that modern educators are teaching only a sliver of the whole story.

“What we’re teaching is a focus on kind of the latter part of the Atlantic slave trade, which was one of about 20 global slave trades,” he said. “And the reason that we’re teaching this is because it allows the pedagogue, the professor or the teacher, a chance to segue into the modern oppression of Black people. That’s it. That’s why that’s a focus.”

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Social Work Education’s DEI Capture Accelerated by Anti-Racist Task Force

For The Multilevel Mailer, Nathan Gallo and Arnold Cantú write about wow the CSWE’s anti-racist agenda turned social work education into an ideologically activist engine.

Today, the American public has little reason to believe this type of ideologically slanted education is going away. The Indiana chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the field’s main professional organization, joined the CSWE in defending the suspended IU professor last November. “Not only was Ms. Adams teaching an approved curriculum as part of an accredited social work program,” the NASW reasoned, “but she was training the next generation of behavioral health professionals.” In other words, the professor’s teachings were entirely justified by the ADEI Trojan Horse the CSWE stealthily injected into social work education writ large.

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The Battle Over K–12 Ethnic Studies

For FAIR’s Substack, Ilana Cohen writes about how politicized curricula are replacing inquiry-based learning, and what parents and educators are doing in response.

By contrast, Constructive Ethnic Studies centers on the contributions of ethnic minorities to the development of the United States. This approach encourages student inquiry, presents multiple viewpoints, and includes analysis of race and racism—historically and in the modern era—without reducing students to predetermined roles. It helps students see themselves in the curriculum while fostering understanding of their peers without stereotyping or assigning blame.

Politicized Ethnic Studies models, on the other hand, encourage students to adopt specific ideological positions, engage in radical activism, and view themselves and others through a victim–oppressor framework.

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Cancel Culture & the New Culture Wars ft. Michael Moynihan, John Wood Jr, Thomas Chatterton Williams

In this exclusive panel at the 2025 Global Free Speech Summit, FAIR Advisor John Wood Jr., Thomas Chatterton Williams, and moderator Michael Moynihan break down the moments that carved the major cultural and political divides of the last five years, from George Floyd’s death and the COVID-19 outbreak, to the Harper’s Letter controversy and the rise of a zero-sum approach to conflict, offering insight into why civil discourse has become so difficult and what it would take to restore meaningful dialogue.

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Liberalism’s Lonely-Hearts Club

For Quillette, FAIR Advisor Jonathan Kay writes about how standing up for due process, free speech, civil liberties, intellectual pluralism, and scientific rigor doesn’t win you many friends these days.

Following a recent speech I gave to a free-thinking Toronto crowd, the organiser felt moved to explain to attendees that it was important to hear “diverse views.” This was a diplomatic reference to my (poorly received) observation that many self-described heterodox intellectuals who cheer on my opposition to trans-activist pseudoscience will also insist (falsely) that COVID vaccines don’t work and (also falsely) that anthropogenic global warming is a myth. Science isn’t a buffet where you get to pick and choose what proven truths to accept, I told them. Few in the crowd looked convinced.

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The Next 30 Years

How Trauma-Informed Teaching Rewired American Education

A few readers of my most recent Substack piece expressed skepticism about my claim that school culture and curriculum have taken a dark turn in recent years and that too many teachers are using their classrooms performatively as platforms for their politics or anxieties. On Twitter, esteemed education scholar Tom Loveless put it…

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4 months ago · 19 likes · 12 comments · Robert Pondiscio

Why Shadi Hamid Defends American Power | Hats Off with Imam Tom

Imam Tom sits down with FAIR Advisor Shadi Hamid for a candid conversation on U.S. hegemony, America’s role in the world, and the evolving experience of Muslim Americans.

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Tucker and the Right

For First Things, Glenn Loury writes about the fracturing of the American right.

A mature conservatism recognizes that universal principles require concrete communities to sustain them, and that those communities are enriched rather than threatened by the presence of diverse histories and identities. The American nation is not a tribe but a covenant—a shared project rooted in moral aspiration and historical inheritance. Both black Americans and Jewish Americans have contributed vitally to that project, each in ways shaped by their distinctive histories. We are a more vital nation for that.

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Young People Say the American Dream Is Dead. The Antidote May Not Be What People Think.

For FAIR’s Substack, Julian Adorney writes about why younger Americans’ disillusionment may stem less from politics than from a growing sense of invisibility.

What’s going on? Why are so many of us, especially my generation and younger (I’m 34), in despair about the state of our nation—and, by extension, the state of our own lives? The report posits several explanations, from a struggling economy to a dearth of meaning in our lives to toxic polarization.

I think there’s truth to many of these explanations, but one key piece of the puzzle isn’t being discussed: fewer and fewer of us feel seen.

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Your School’s Ethnic Studies Curriculum Might Be More Radical Than You Think

On the latest 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗬𝗼𝘂 podcast episode, FAIR Executive Director discusses how her experience as a gay Black woman in Hollywood and then in “flyover country” shattered many elite narratives about America. She describes why she believes much of our current polarization is manufactured by media and political interests, and how identity-based frameworks like liberated ethnic studies and DEI are deepening division rather than healing it.

Listen to the Episode

There are valid debates among conservatives. This isn’t one.

For The Washington Post, FAIR Advisor Robert P. George writes about why conservatives must draw a bright line against the bigotry of Nick Fuentes and other extremists.

At the foundation, however, is the basic commitment to inherent and equal dignity and natural rights. If conservatism doesn’t stand for conserving these values, it stands for nothing… The “groypers” who are attempting to bring their toxic ideas into the conservative movement and remake conservatism in their image ought to be met with reasoned, principled responses. Conservative leaders and institutions must not pander to them or play footsie with them. We must, in the name of our ancient faith, draw the bright line.

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Helping students flourish, not just achieve: An interview with Mike Goldstein

For the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, FAIR Advisor Robert Pondiscio speaks with Mike Goldstein about what’s required beyond the school walls for teen flourishing.

Flourishing teens build busy calendars: sports, restaurant jobs, Starbucks hangouts with friends, church youth groups, scouting, playing guitar. Each domain (fitness, music, work, sleep, socialization) has its own vein of research showing benefits. Some flourishing teens do this the easy way: they join activities that the school offers. Other flourishing teens busy themselves with cool things that aren’t part of the school menu.

What we don’t know is precisely how to increase languishing teen participation in all of these things. There aren’t many field experiments. That’s what our center wants to do: challenge the conventional wisdom and do some R & D on how to help teenagers live healthy and meaningful lives.

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If free speech only matters when convenient, it isn’t free at all

For FIRE’s Newsdesk, Samuel J. Abrams writes about the fragile state of free expression in contemporary America.

Free speech is not a decorative ideal meant for ceremonial brochures or abstract jurisprudence seminars. It is a living civic discipline, and it demands that we cultivate tolerance even — especially — when it offends our sensibilities. That discipline has historically been one of the United States’ most distinguishing features: the belief that robust public debate, rather than enforced consensus, is the engine of democratic resilience.

But today’s culture increasingly treats emotional discomfort as a kind of injury, speech as a form of violence, and dissent as a moral failing. Within that framework, the logic of suppression becomes not only tempting but virtuous: If speech causes harm, then silencing it becomes an act of justice. Once adopted, that logic expands rapidly. Today it is Charlie Kirk. Tomorrow it will be someone else. The principle does not survive the politics.

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How Thomas Sowell Thankfully Made Me A Contrarian Educator

On October 20, 2025, the Hoover Institution honored Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell for a lifetime of fearless inquiry and principled scholarship. FAIR Advisor Ian Rowe spoke about how Thomas Sowell’s ideas influenced the development of Vertex Partnership Academies and how he helped him become a contrarian educator.

It is sheer blasphemy to criticize Brown v Board of Education. But it is this commitment to truth-telling that Thomas Sowell has practiced throughout his life to shatter unassailable myths, to buck conventional wisdom - not to be contrarian for contrarian sake, but to call out when there is evidence to the contrary. That’s what inspires me and so many school leaders across the country.

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Migrants Need Western Futures. But They Don’t Have to Be in the West

For Tablet Magazine, FAIR Advisor Wilfred Reilly and Emmanual Amadife write about what they argue is the issue of our time: migration.

In the United States, the national population has transitioned from 80%-plus white in 1980 to 58.9% white in 2022, with this change driven almost entirely by Hispanic and Asian immigration. Our country has maintained a similar level of GDP per-capita and financial dominance during this era, but things seem to be going more roughly across the pond. In Europe, the nightly news has been filled for years with stories about “small boat” migrants—African and Arab men attempting to sail to England or the continental mainland on commandeered dinghies and pleasure yachts—and a disturbing scandal centered on “grooming gangs” of South Asian origin recently swept Britain.

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Episode 176: Shadi Hamid on American Power

For Bookstack, FAIR Advisor Shadi Hamid speaks with Richard Aldous about his most recent book, The Case For American Power.

Listen to the Full Conversation

The Next 30 Years

The Most Important Civics Lesson Schools Can Teach

Last week, I was invited to speak to board members, educators and supporters of A+UP charter schools in Houston after several of them read a recent essay of mine in National Review about the bleak worldview too many schools are unwittingly imparting to children. My remarks built on that argument, exploring the civic consequences of raising young people …

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5 months ago · 42 likes · 11 comments · Robert Pondiscio

The Most Important Civics Lesson Schools Can Teach

For The Next 30 Years, FAIR Advisor Robert Pondiscio writes about why a generation raised to believe the world is against them won’t step forward to serve it.

Let me say a few more things about teaching and its role.

Teaching is not performance. It’s not therapy. It’s not activism. It is the quiet, steady, faithful work of forming human beings. Yuval Levin, whose work I invoked a moment ago, has also written about how the institutions that are supposed to be molds of our character have become platforms for performance.

Too many classrooms have drifted toward the platform model: my identity, my politics, my anxieties. But children don’t need our performance, and they certainly don’t need our anxieties. They need institutions that are molds—stable, trustworthy, and oriented toward the common good.

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Swarthmore asks court to toss lawsuit filed by trans athlete kicked off women’s team

For The College Fix, Ethan Savka writes about Swarthmore College’s decision to ask a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed against it by a transgender athlete kicked off the women’s track team.

The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, a civil rights advocacy group, told The Fix that separating men and women’s sports is a legal requirement under Title IX, and that “this case sits at the center of a fundamental debate about fairness, inclusion, and the proper interpretation of civil rights law.”

“Title IX’s original purpose was to ensure equal opportunities for biological females in education,” FAIR executive director Monica Harris said. “Colleges should develop transparent, evidence-based policies that acknowledge biological realities and prioritize fairness in competitive sports.”

In 2020, the Supreme Court held that Title VII protected “gender identity” under the umbrella of the word “sex.” Under the Biden administration, Title IX was interpreted the same as Title VII. Harris said this interpretation is legally unsound.

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A Retired Police Officer Posted a Meme. It Earned Him 37 Days in Jail.

For the New York Times, Greg Lukianoff writes about Larry Bushart’s arrest and its implications for American’s freedom of speech.

None of this diminishes the horror of Mr. Kirk’s killing. He was shot to death while speaking — apparently, for speaking — to students on a college campus. That violence sent a chilling message.

It’s the same message jailing Mr. Bushart sends: Some ideas are too dangerous to express, and those who give voice to them may lose their lives, their liberty or their livelihood.

The best way to honor Mr. Kirk is not to criminalize speech. It is to ensure that argument remains the alternative to violence. In a just society, people should not fear that they will be killed for their speech. And they should not fear that they will spend five minutes in jail — let alone five weeks — for sharing a nonthreatening meme.

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The Middle Way Through America’s Political Wilderness

For FAIR’s Substack, Greg Thomas writes about why reviving democratic discourse requires a bold recommitment to moderation.

In our current environment of extreme polarization, fed by media bifurcation and algorithmic manipulation, speaking for the exhausted majority in the middle has become a radical act. It requires courage to stand against the thought-policing that characterizes both extremes, where expressing openness to opposing views brings backlash from one’s own cohort. But this is precisely what democratic citizenship demands: the willingness to think independently, speak truthfully, and listen generously.

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A Sad Collapse in Student Preparation at UC San Diego Was Inevitable

For the American Enterprise Institute, FAIR Advisor Robert Pondiscio writes about the consequences of magical thinking in education policy and practice.

But the deeper crisis is moral. We have persuaded ourselves that to pursue excellence is to perpetuate inequity, that holding students to high standards is unfair, that success can be achieved by adjusting expectations rather than meeting them. The UCSD report exposes the folly of that thinking. “Equity” without preparation is cruelty disguised as compassion. It delivers opportunity in name only, while denying students the knowledge and skills they need to thrive.

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Snap out of your crisis of confidence, America — your country depends on it

For the New York Post, FAIR Advisor Shadi Hamid writes about America’s confidence crisis and why it matters.

This raises the perennial question of whether “exceptionalism” is a useful prism for understanding America’s strengths, if not necessarily its flaws. I, for one, think it’s useful. And I would go one step further. America needs to believe in its own exceptionalism. A country that doesn’t believe in itself is one that is vulnerable to challengers and competitors.

The case for “exceptionalism” of any kind is getting more difficult to make. In my writing, I have asked myself many times whether I really wanted to use words like “dominance” or “exceptionalism,” which I know can be off-putting to a significant number of readers. But I am increasingly convinced this instinctive discomfort is itself part of the problem. Why does the idea of America being better elicit such negative reactions in the first place?

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The Left’s New Moralism Will Backfire

For The Atlantic, Thomas Chatterton Williams argues that the rhetoric of “moral clarity” coming from the left isn’t helping their cause.

Of course, “no Nazi tattoos” and “don’t advocate political violence” are not particularly lofty ethical bars to clear; no one should be dismissed as a snowflake for finding such transgressions disqualifying. But the fact that many on the left seem willing to extend Platner the opportunity to redeem his mistakes is a promising sign. It is grounded in the recognition that Democrats’ long-term moral interests are moot if they can’t win elections.

The alternative—rigid sanctimoniousness that cannot allow the possibility of forgiveness or negotiation—is not clarity. It’s dogmatism.

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Voting is tied to more tolerance in men — but less in women

For Expression, Chapin Lenthall-Cleary writes about the data that shows how being registered to vote correlates with political tolerance.

For men, the boost in tolerance mostly comes from one place: Registered men are a lot more likely to be “perfectly tolerant” — the folks who say they’d allow every speaker, full stop. Political participation seems to make men more likely to believe in the principle of free speech for all. That effect doesn’t exist for women, at all. Instead, being registered to vote makes women more likely to be totally intolerant of the right specifically. In other words, registering to vote increases the odds of landing women in the stereotype of being woke. Men see a bump in that zone too, but it’s much smaller — and still overshadowed by the much larger increase in men becoming fully tolerant across the board.

Put together, this means that being registered to vote pulls men towards the free speech ideal and pulls women towards the woke stereotype.

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Why Beauty Might Be the Antidote to Our Modern Malaise

For FAIR’s Substack, Julian Adorney writes about how AI slop, a lost appreciation for nature, and endless distractions are starving us of the beauty that makes life worth living.

The good news is that we don’t have to transform society. Instead, our experience of the world is in our hands. Modern society may make it harder, but we can absolutely still fill our lives with the kinds of transcendent beauty that rejuvenates our souls and that buffers us against the aches and pains of modern life.

For one thing: no matter how bad the ratio of slop to beauty gets, true art will still keep being made, and that means that we can seek it out. All that’s required is for us to be conscious about the media that we consume.

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The Myth of the Anti-American Teacher

For The Next 30 Years, FAIR Advisor Robert Pondiscio writes about why it shouldn’t surprise us that most teachers think schools should teach that America is a good country.

Despite the noise, the civic consensus remains surprisingly intact. For all the heat surrounding public education, teachers remain close to the American mainstream. They may lean slightly left, but they are not radicals. They are far more representative of the country than the people who claim to speak for them—professors in education schools, union leaders, and political activists.

In the final analysis, you don’t teach that America is good; you show it. You do so by maintaining institutions that work—schools among them—that give young people a sense of agency, competence, and belonging. When schools function well—when they are orderly, demanding, and fair—they model the virtues of a free society better than any civics lesson ever could.

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Lawrence Krauss: The War on Science — How Ideology Is Undermining Academia and Research

For Quillette, FAIR Advisor Jonathan Kay speaks with Lawrence Krauss about his explosive new book, The War on Science, featuring essays from 39 leading scholars—including Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, and Sally Satel.

In this in-depth conversation, Krauss explains how progressive ideology, DEI mandates, and academic cowardice are threatening the foundations of scientific inquiry in universities across the West. He also addresses the political right’s war on vaccine science and funding cuts under the Trump administration.

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8 senators caved. This California Democrat has had enough.

For The Washington Post, FAIR Advisor Shadi Hamid speaks with Ro Khanna about how the guardians of institutions are out of touch with a populist moment.

Ro Khanna: So they are viewing things as sort of guardians of institutions as opposed to responding to the populist moment we’re in. And that populist moment is saying institutions have failed us. The younger generation gets that. And that’s why, you’re right, this was building with Schumer. We need a total makeover of the Democratic Party. And it’s doable. There is no establishment. The powers that be are weaker than they’ve ever been before. It’s a total open field running for the Congress, the Senate and the presidency.

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Ford needs workers, but American schools aren’t giving them the education needed

For the New York Post, FAIR Advisor Robert Pondiscio writes about why students still need the same baseline skills for trade schools.

Today’s auto technicians work with computer software, advanced sensors, high-voltage systems, and digital schematics. Servicing an electric vehicle requires interpreting data flows, troubleshooting electronics, and following precise, multistep instructions. That demands literacy, math, and the ability to solve complex problems. So the real question isn’t “what happened to trade schools?” It’s whether America’s K–12 system is any more capable of producing a workforce that is career-ready than it is at producing a generation that’s college-ready.

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NEW HIGH: 3/4 of Americans say free speech is headed in the wrong direction

FIRE’s Newsdesk shares its latest poll showing that a record number of Americans now believe that freedom of speech in the country is headed in the wrong direction.

To test support for academic freedom in the aftermath of the Kirk shooting, the October NSI also asked respondents about four politically charged — but constitutionally protected — remarks made by a professor on social media following the shooting. For each statement, majorities of Americans said the professor should not be fired. But their level of support varied by the statement, and substantial minorities in each case reported that the professor “probably” or “definitely” should be fired.

• 45% say a professor who posted “It’s O.K. to punch a Nazi” should probably or definitely be fired from their job.

• 37% say a professor who posted “These fascist Bible-thumpers want to drag us back to the Dark Ages” should probably or definitely be fired from their job.

• 24% say a professor who posted “Our colleges and universities are progressive indoctrination centers” should probably or definitely be fired from their job.

• 14% say that a professor who posted “We are going to make America great again” should probably or definitely be fired from their job.

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How a False Accusation Destroyed My Career and My Life

For FAIR’s Substack, Ed Roos writes about how his life unraveled overnight in the grip of cancel—or as he calls it, revenge—culture.

Now, as I approach my 60th birthday, instead of preparing for retirement, I’m starting over. After countless rejections from both the private and public sectors, I found solace in volunteering at a local nonprofit. That volunteer work became a part-time job, earning a fifth of my previous salary, but it restored a glimmer of meaning to my life. I help people in need every day. It gives me purpose, but it’s not enough to support my family. And I still ache for the profession that once defined me. Education wasn’t just a career—it was my calling.

Even after being completely exonerated, Seattle Schools has refused my repeated requests to be rehired.

My story is not unique—but it’s proof of what happens when truth is sacrificed to ideology, and when vengeance replaces justice. No one should ever have to endure what I did for simply doing their job.

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Competencies in Civil Discourse: Episode 9

FAIR Advisor Erec Smith speaks with Shira Hoffer, the founding Executive Director of The Viewpoints Project, about what would happen if we stopped assuming we know why people have their beliefs and asked WHY they have their beliefs.

Watch the Full Episode

Why I choose to root for U.S. dominance

For The Washington Post, FAIR Advisor Shadi Hamid shares an excerpt from his new book, The Case For American Power.

Progressives have always had a utopian bent, believing that life — not just for Americans but for millions abroad — can be made better through human initiative and solidarity (rather than, say, simply hoping that the markets will self-correct). The problem is that the better, more just world that so many of them hope for does not appear on its own; it must be willed into existence. Our values are not freestanding; they must be guaranteed, and in global politics nothing can be guaranteed without the credible threat of force. To move beyond the temptations of the passive voice, who exactly provides this guarantee? In most cases, for better or worse, there is only one obvious candidate: the United States. Morality, or in this case a more just global order, is impossible without power. And as it turns out, it’s not only impossible without power. It’s impossible without American power.

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From laws to literacy: The science of reading needs more than statutes to succeed

For the Fordham Institute, FAIR Advisor Robert Pondiscio and Kristen McQuillan write about how good reading instruction is a practice, not a policy.

Legislators are understandably impatient; parents even more so. But reform timelines and political timelines rarely align. The risk is that the science of reading becomes another compliance exercise—same teachers, same lessons, new labels. Avoiding this trap is a particularly sticky challenge for public policy since getting right it implies monitoring not just student outcomes but pedagogy and curriculum: Are student experiences really aligned to the science of reading? Are children getting the chance to read and make meaning of content-rich, worthwhile texts? Are they talking and writing about them? It’s one thing—and essential—to track student proficiency, but it’s a much stronger tool for improvement to track how their instructional experiences are evolving over time.

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Speaking at the site of a murder

For The Eternally Radical Idea, Greg Lukianoff writes about his speech at Utah Valley University, the place where Charlie Kirk was murdered in front of students.

The murder at UVU was a terrible rupture. But the way back isn’t complicated. It’s hard, but not complicated. We rebuild the old peace treaty by keeping the line between words and blows bright. We recommit to persuasion over punishment — especially when we’re sure we’re right. We teach students that argument is not an act of violence; it’s the alternative to it.

I didn’t give the polished, sweeping lecture I wrote and rewrote. And I’d be lying if I said that every stumble I had in the speech didn’t irk me when I listened to it later. But I think that’s how you know this was really from my heart, at an emotional moment in a space that had become historic for all the wrong reasons. I stood where a man died and made a simple case. America is not inevitable. It’s a choice. Let’s not become like everybody else. Let’s keep the wager. Let’s use words.

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Watch the Speech:

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When a Pie Social Needs Police Protection

For FAIR’s Substack, Alexa Chiang writes about her experience at a recent Democrats for Informed Approach to Gender (DIAG) pie social.

But these activists aren’t interested in debate. They don’t show up to exercise free speech; their goal is to prevent us from exercising ours.

I’m fed up. Why must we sneak around? Why must we choose between concealing our identities or risking doxxing? Why do we need police protection just to eat pie? We’re not doing anything illegal. Why must we operate like underground dissidents and outlaws when they can organize openly?

I’m a free-speech absolutist. I will defend anyone’s right to speak, short of inciting immediate harm. I support trans activists’ right to voice their views in public forums, and I expect the same for myself. Peaceful, respectful argument is how society moves forward. But when these activists show up, they don’t seek conversation. They seek to stop conversation.

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The Illusion of Learning: The Danger of Artificial Intelligence to Education

For the American Enterprise Institute, FAIR Advisor Robert Pondiscio writes about the dangers of artificial intelligence to education.

That’s the rub. The very people most likely to misuse AI—those with shallow background knowledge, weak discernment or motivation—are the ones most susceptible to its illusions. It’s a knowledge amplifier, not a knowledge substitute. Education is not a product to be delivered; it’s a transformation that occurs through effort. The problem with AI is that it can perform education’s outputs—essays, analyses, answers—without any of its inputs. In sum, it is a powerful tool in the hands of the curious and the motivated but devastating to those merely seeking a shortcut.

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The Scandal of Ana Caldas, and the Case for Sex Screening in Female Athletics

For Quillette, FAIR Advisor Jonathan Kay writes about how far some male athletes will go to hide their true identities.

USMS records indicate that it was 23 January 2009 when a new swimming sensation identified as “Hannah Caldas” suddenly appeared on the women’s USMS racing scene. Despite being a complete unknown, Caldas immediately began dominating the competition in the 30–34-year-old age group—including winning five out of six events at Caldas’s inaugural tournament in Charlotte, NC. The performances were so astounding that Caldas reportedly almost hit a benchmark time for Portugal’s women’s Olympic swimming team (reportedly missing the cut by a mere 0.3 seconds).

This would be a shockingly impressive athletic run for anyone—let alone a (nominal) rookie such as Caldas… But of course, it’s a lot less impressive once one is reminded that, unlike everyone else in the pool at the time, Caldas isn’t a biological woman.

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Why FIRE is now judging bias-reporting systems more harshly — and why I changed my mind

For The Eternally Radical Idea, Greg Lukianoff writes about the problems with bias response teams on college campuses.

At FIRE, we often say that the answer to speech you don’t like is more speech. But if we teach students that the right response is to report their peers and professors to a bureaucratic team — or the police — we’ve already lost the thread.

A university should not operate as a speech-monitoring bureaucracy. It should be a living, breathing space for debate, for discourse, and for the sometimes uncomfortable work of real learning. Our democratic experiment depends on people who know how to live with difference, not snitch on it.

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The global free speech recession

For Expression, Matthew Harwood writes about the global free speech recession.

The despots of the world must relish the propaganda value of this Western backsliding on free expression.

If they attack the press, they can point to what Trump is doing in the United States as justification. Throw a critic in jail? They can bring up Macron’s lawsuit for caricaturing him in France. Punish a religious dissenter? Well, there’s the curious case of Hamit Coskun in London. Repress the supporters of a disfavored group? They can point to the UK arrests of Palestine Action protesters. These illiberal actions are gifts to the world’s dictators — the Putins, the Erdogans, the Xis of the world — demonstrating that when push comes to shove, the world’s democracies will crack down on speech they don’t like, too.

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FAIR News Podcast

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What Yale Law School Taught Me About Free Speech and Friendship

For FAIR’s Substack, Jonathan Kay writes about his experience at Yale Law School and whether or not his experience could be replicated in today’s polarized political landscape.

But I do wonder if that would have been the case if my Yale experience were shifted a quarter century into the future. In the hashtag era, would my time-traveling classmates and I still have been able to keep our politics in parentheses as we embarked on our law school adventure? Or would I be sitting alone in a corner of the cafe, inviting conversations that would never happen?

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EXPLAINER: Why Marco Rubio’s arguments for deporting noncitizens for speech are wrong

For FIRE’s Newsdesk, FAIR’s chairman of the board Angel Eduardo explains how the First Amendment prohibits Congress from enacting laws penalizing speakers because of their opinions, no matter their immigration status.

The implications here should be obvious. If there is a credible threat of the government revoking your visa and engaging in deportation proceedings for speech you publish in your school newspaper, you’re unlikely to take the risk. This not only violates the First Amendment rights of these noncitizens, it also harms the ability of all citizens to read and hear perspectives about matters of public importance that the current administration doesn’t like.

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Public Schools Are Molds Not Platforms

For The Next 30 Years, FAIR Advisor Robert Pondiscio writes about why teaching must recover the humility and neutrality appropriate to public service

To put it plainly, public school teachers are state actors. Their speech and conduct are appropriately limited by that fact. When they cross those boundaries—whether in service of the left or the right—they betray the civic purpose of their role. Seen through this lens, neutrality is not cowardice; it is a civic virtue that is required to sustain or restore or faith in public education .

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A Conversation on Faith and Political Values

FAIR Advisor Shadi Hamid speaks with Ross Douthat, Kaitlyn Schiess, and Daniel Mark about faith and political values.

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The Self-Sabotage of the Conservative Movement

For Free Black Thought, Marcus Watkins writes about the right’s complacency with bigotry.

This complacency isn’t just ethically bankrupt; it’s politically suicidal. The 2024 gains among Latinos, Blacks, and Asians were built on trust. A trust that we see each other as fellow Americans, not punching bags for juvenile hate. Exit polls showed minority voters crediting Trump for inflation-fighting and resistance to a chronically corrupt establishment, not racial resentment.

However, leaks like this fuel the left’s narrative: Republicans as a party of white grievance and racism. Imagine a Latino family in Texas, newly energized by our border message, scrolling X and seeing Young Republicans joking about “raping” opponents or gassing foes. Or a Black entrepreneur in Detroit, drawn by tax cuts, stumbling on Hitler fandom from future GOP leaders. These aren’t hypotheticals; they’re backlash waiting to happen. If we let this fester, we’ll forfeit the diverse coalition that delivered our mandate, reverting to a shrinking white base while Democrats regroup with targeted outreach.

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Debate Bro Rhetoric and its Role in Civil Discourse

For FAIR’s Substack, Erec Smith writes about why rhetorical education should be holistic, not one-dimensional.

Rhetoric, understood through Kairos, includes both civility (in both senses of the word) and incivility as potentially valid in certain contexts. For organizations like Debate University and Braver Angels, their common error is isolating one rhetorical mode—e.g., humiliation and compassion, respectively—and presenting it as intrinsically right and worthy of solitary focus. Rhetorical training should encompass a wide range of persuasive strategies, including both vitriol and empathy. Again, Kairos does not necessarily determine right or wrong, but appropriate and inappropriate. Thus, I promote a holistic and kairotic pedagogy of rhetoric for effective communication in civil—that is, public and participatory—society.

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When School Boards Act Like the PTA

For the American Enterprise Institute, FAIR Advisor Robert Pondiscio writes about the institutional capture of America’s school boards.

For all the attention paid to angry board meetings and “book bans,” the more serious and enduring crisis is institutional capture. If the American public school system is to regain trust, it needs boards willing to act less like boosters and more like fiduciaries of the public interest. That starts with designing elections that encourage real competition. Ideas that have been proposed include “on-cycle” contests on Election Day in November, recruiting candidates outside the education establishment, and even making school board elections partisan affairs—adding candidates’ political affiliation to the ballot has been shown to increase voter turnout. After the election, it means training board members to understand student learning—not just budgets and buses.

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1 BLM Critic vs. 6 BLM Supporters (ft. John Wood Jr.)

National ambassador for BraverAngels and FAIR Advisor John Wood Jr. thoughtfully takes on 6 BLM Supporters on topics including: did BLM protest make cities less safe? Did BLM exaggerate how widespread police brutality against African Americans is?

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The trouble with ‘dignity’

For Expression, Dylynn Lasky and Bobby Ramkissoon write about a new standard that threatens free speech for students.

Once disagreement itself is framed as a denial of dignity, even empirical or policy debates about healthcare, sports, or law are reclassified as “harassment” rather than legitimate discussion. The zone of the impermissible grows, and the culture of caution grows with it.

Faculty and students, uncertain where the invisible boundary lies, retreat into self-censorship. They learn to treat disagreement as danger and discomfort as moral injury. The less precise the rule, the wider its reach. The wider its reach, the more timid the discourse. Administrative control breeds emotional fragility, and emotional fragility, in turn, justifies greater administrative control. It’s a feedback loop of moral protectionism.

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The History of Slavery Should Not Be Partisan

For The Free Press, Coleman Hughes writes about why if we want to heal racial divisions, we need more facts—not fewer.

The Trump administration has accurately diagnosed a problem area in American culture. But its attempt to fix it should not focus on minimizing the ugly facts of American slavery. Instead, it should focus on broadening the scope of facts that we allow into the conversation. In this way, Americans can have a more complete, more accurate, and less racially divisive picture of our own history—without compromising the truth.

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Join the FAIR Community

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