A Wake-Up Call for American Universities

Almost immediately after taking office, President Trump launched a bold campaign to reverse the progressive takeover of higher education. Although Trump’s aggressive tactics have drawn criticism, the need for reform in American higher education is widely acknowledged across the political spectrum. Over the last ten years, and especially since COVID, Americans’ confidence in their higher education system has plummeted.

Writing in The Atlantic, E. Thomas Finan urges the academy to take Trump’s interventions as a wake-up call. As the recipients of massive public funding, American universities remain accountable to voters and have a duty to serve the common good. If they want to retain public trust and support, university leaders must take active steps to rebuild what has been lost.

Finan points to several avenues for renewal. Above all, universities should recommit themselves to freedom of speech and thought, pushing back against the self-censorship that stifles intellectual diversity. They must also adapt their teaching practices to preserve human cognition and personal interaction in an age of artificial intelligence. This requires prioritizing the humanities, ensuring students acquire the kind of enduring knowledge that transcends technological change.

Read more of Finan’s advice for universities here.

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Vocation and Craft: Cultivating Serious Journalism

Truth is under attack in America. Propaganda saturates the airwaves, while social media overflows with fabrications and manipulated images. Historically, journalists have worked to cut through the noise and uncover the truth through rigorous investigative reporting. Today, however, many journalists simply echo partisan talking points, making it harder than ever for Americans to know which sources to trust.

In an interview with Pedro Gonzalez of Chronicles Magazine, Marlo Slayback, Executive Director of ISI’s Collegiate Network, discusses the need to rebuild serious journalism on the right. She notes that it’s easy for aspiring conservative journalists to simply produce the same kind of writing they criticize in progressive outlets, just from a different political view. But the most impactful journalism requires serious investigative work and careful, fact-based reporting.

Slayback urges young conservative journalists to “think less of themselves as playing defense against the left and think more of themselves as being truth-tellers who are obsessed with excellence in craft and technique.” By treating journalism as a vocation rather than a political weapon, conservatives can produce stories that are simply “too good to ignore.”

Read the rest of Slayback’s interview and learn more about her work with ISI’s Collegiate Network here.

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Compendium

Every article we feature here is available to read for free. Articles from paywalled publications are available for free through gift links.

1. Rose Horowitch on grade inflation in The Atlantic.

2. Katherine Dee on the Annunciation shooting in The Spectator World.

3. Thomas Murray on shadow bureaucracy in The American Mind.

4. Beth Baltzan on Adam Smith’s relevant trade insights in American Affairs Journal.

5. Christopher Caldwell on the UK’s immigration crisis in Claremont Review of Books.

6. Neal McCluskey on the US Department of Education’s longevity in Law & Liberty.

Upcoming ISI Events

If you enjoy what you’re reading here, we invite you to engage with ISI at one of our upcoming in-person events.

• William F. Buckley, Jr.: Conservative or Libertarian? | September 16 | Cambridge, MA
  ISI and the National Review Institute will host a debate to honor the centennial of William F. Buckley Jr., asking if he was more conservative or libertarian and what his legacy means for today’s political coalitions.

• Homecoming Weekend | September 19–20 | Wilmington, DE
  ISI invites you to our Wilmington, DE campus this September for a weekend of fellowship, learning, and spirited conversation. Students, professors, alumni, and friends from across the country will gather to explore this year’s theme—Golden Age Mindset: How to Restore Western Civilization.

• American Politics and Government Summit | October 9–11 | Wilmington, DE
  This annual scholarly conference examines the theme Statesmanship and Leadership in the Age of Mass Society and draws on timeless thinkers to address modern challenges. The summit is open to the public, offering rigorous discussion across history, politics, literature, and related fields.

Visit our events page on our website to see all upcoming events.

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This week, from ISI’s Digital Media:

In this clip from Project Cosmos, the panel debates a central question: can conservatives create institutions strong enough to shape America’s future culture and leadership? The conversation weighs the impracticality of nationalized K–12, the potential of funding incentives, and the ever-increasing challenge of cultivating talent.

Watch the full episode of Project Cosmos: Executive Power and the Common Good here.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more content like this.

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This week, from the Collegiate Network:

ISI’s Collegiate Network supports over 80 student-run publications across the country, empowering students to run independent college newspapers, magazines, and journals that report on important issues ignored by the mainstream media.

• From Memos to Meditations: Why I Pivoted Toward Philosophy at Duke via The Lemur
  Drowning in pre-professional pressure at Duke, one student discovers that “poking around” in philosophy and authentic curiosity offers a richer path than the relentless chase for prestige.

• Make America Healthy and Holy Again via The New Guard Press
  A new perspective on wellness amid America’s health crisis—one that honors God’s design for human bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit.

• Morality Monday: Rethinking Hookup Culture via The Cornell Review
  Hookup culture promises freedom and fun, but at Cornell, it too often delivers heartbreak and a broken sense of self.

• Critical Race Theory Permeates the Undergraduate Landscape at IU via The Crimson Post
  At IU, Critical Race Theory is creeping into classrooms campus-wide, shaping how students see history, business, and even everyday life.

• Rover Recommends: Campus Clubs via The Irish Rover
  An overview of Notre Dame’s faith clubs: save babies with Right to Life, ban porn with SCOP, grill steaks with the Knights, pray in Latin with Children of Mary, and more.

Visit our Student Journalism section to read more from the Collegiate Network.

Abstracting from Reality: The Danger of Dichotomies

In today’s political discourse, labels are tossed about constantly. Rather than grappling with the nuances of policy and philosophy, political debates too often devolve into mere exchanges of slogans—leaving no one the wiser about the real source of disagreement.

This tendency is not new. In this week’s article from Modern Age, originally published in a 1993 issue of the Intercollegiate Review, Sir Roger Scruton urges conservatives to resist the lure of simplistic dichotomies. He notes that two of the most common labels of his time—“liberalism” and “socialism”—owed their prevalence in political discourse to the “dichotomizing frame of mind” that marks modern politics. The modern mind tends to recast political conflicts in rigid categories that rarely align with the nuances of reality.

Scruton suggests the solution is to “return to reality” by “search[ing] for a language that is scrupulous towards the human world.” This requires attending to the actual places and people involved in political conflicts rather than speaking as if they were abstract thought experiments. Such a commitment to particulars over abstractions, he argues, should distinguish the conservative in political discourse.

Read the rest of Scruton’s essay here on the Modern Age website.

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Modern Age is ISI’s flagship publication. Visit modernagejournal.com and subscribe for a free daily newsletter.

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