In a new guest essay for the New York Times, Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey write that teaching college students to examine concepts such as human good and happiness critically helps them choose what to do with their own lives. The authors propose that this is not only the essential purpose of liberal education but also what makes the university so crucial to our society and democracy.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law on Tuesday, will give Medicare the authority to regulate the prices of certain drugs. AEI scholars are already studying what those provisions will mean for American health care. Benedic N. Ippolito identifies significant sources of uncertainty surrounding the new law’s consequences and says that Americans should be skeptical of politicians’ claims about its benefits. Meanwhile, Kirsten Axelsen breaks down the act’s four drug-pricing components and the responses that each may elicit from drug manufacturers, insurers, and patients.

Hal Brands traces the roots of Russia’s war in Ukraine back to the Soviet Union’s tumultuous fall. The brutal rule of the Soviet central government, Brands writes, meant that its dissolution “precipitated an ongoing struggle between the country that had dominated the empire, Russia, and the states and peoples that now looked to escape Moscow’s grasp.”

Robert Pondiscio argues that the state’s increasing encroachment on parents’ long-standing rights over their children’s education has animated the current debate about American public education. “Whether or not framed this way by combatants, battles before school boards and state legislatures are not mere culture-war jousting,” writes Pondiscio. “They are border skirmishes between parents and public education that’s testing the limits of schools’ ability to act ‘in loco parentis.’”

According to Mark Jamison, a recent Pew Research Center study undermines the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust cases against Meta, Facebook’s parent company. The study shows that Facebook has been losing ground to competing platforms. That finding, Jamison says, contradicts claims that Meta holds a monopoly on social media.

In the pages of National Review, Frederick M. Hess argues that teacher trainers are a primary force introducing divisive ideologies, such as critical race theory, to American public schools. Hess highlights the increasing prevalence and ideological rhetoric of these educational consultants, who are hired by school districts to give teachers professional development classes.