In a 2009 lecture for the Manhattan Institute, the late Charles Krauthammer declared that “decline is a choice,” a principle MI scholars steadfastly reject. |
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Good morning:
In a 2009 lecture for the Manhattan Institute, the late Charles Krauthammer reminded Americans that “decline is a choice.” It’s a choice that MI scholars reject every day. It’s why we conduct original investigative reporting and public policy analysis—but follow up with actionable plans for change. After all, a great idea only gets you so far without a practical way to carry it out.
In a new issue brief, education scholars Siri Terjesen and Michael Ryall tell the history of the university’s governance structure and how faculty made a devil’s bargain with administrators that empowered the bureaucrats who came to dominate America’s higher education institutions. Reform-minded trustees need to take back control. Terjesen and Ryall offer a blueprint to do just that.
In the New York Post, MI fellow Renu Mukherjee warns President Trump and the Justice Department that a Supreme Court decision prohibiting racial discrimination in university admissions is only as good as the presidential administration willing to enforce it. She then unveils the evidence for why some elite schools need the administration’s special attention.
Sometimes, MI scholars find outside ideas to elevate. In the Wall Street Journal, senior fellow Jason Riley offers encouragement to Republicans who are looking for a way to lock the back doors colleges and universities may slip into to continue racialized admissions processes. Politicized accreditation agencies, in particular, use their leverage to advance a progressive agenda on campuses. The Trump administration can and should scare some accreditors into backing off their DEI standards.
In City Journal, Paulson policy analyst Neetu Arnold breaks down how U.S. Department of Education research contracts are riddled with politicized, wasteful, and faddish spending. The nonprofit educational bureaucracy has denounced the Trump administration’s cuts but, judging by their own reports, it is exactly the right time for the executive branch to clean house.
The Department of Education isn’t the only arm of the federal government that needs reform. Christopher F. Rufo and Hannah Grossman published a new investigation in City Journal exposing chat logs within the National Security Agency that—under the protection of the agency’s LGBTQ+ “employee resource groups”—hosted explicit discussions among hundreds of gender activists who had these conversations on the taxpayer’s time and dime. Tulsi Gabbard, the new director of national intelligence, took note.
Finally, a profile of MI senior fellow Douglas Murray was published in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend. Murray, whose new book, On Democracies and Death Cults, is available for pre-order, discussed the reception of Vice President JD Vance’s recent speech in Europe, antisemitism both in the United States and abroad, and how Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel put the stakes for Western civilization in sharp relief.
Continue reading for all these insights and more. |
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Meet Douglas Murray, Europe’s Paul Revere
By Tunku Varadarajan | Wall Street Journal “America’s ‘great resilience,’ (Douglas Murray) believes, keeps decline at bay. ‘The country can be stress-tested very, very badly and it still keeps going.’ ...
“America resists decline, also, because it has ‘very good foundations.’ Mr. Murray says he is ‘forever railing against Americans who do down the founders of this country. Because I don’t think the ones who do that realize how lucky Americans are to have had the founders you had.’ Mr. Murray stumbled recently on some notes he’d made after lunch with Henry Kissinger. He can’t remember when it was, but Kissinger had just read ‘The Strange Death of Europe’ and had remarked to Mr. Murray: ‘It’s not clear to me that the country that dislikes its past has any future.’ This is why fraudulent history like the ... ‘1619 Project’ and political crusades like DEI are dangerous. ‘They’re intended to demoralize us, to trick Americans into believing that their country is a force for evil.’”
Pre-order Douglas Murray's new book: On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization |
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A Blueprint for Building Better University Leadership—and Cutting Administrators
By Siri Terjesen and Michael Ryall | Manhattan Institute When a university is operating as it should, trustees can and should take an off-hands approach to governance. But what about when the institution is in desperate need of reform?
In a new MI issue brief, Siri Terjesen and Michael Ryall give university leaders a three-step plan for turning their institutions around, cutting unnecessary administrative bloat, and successfully fighting off the inevitable resistance reform-minded trustees will face. Administrators did not always have as much power over universities as they do now. Their influence grew as universities' governance structure changed. Motivated reformers can change that structure again.
How this blueprint is implemented will differ from institution to institution, but this brief provides a template that reformers can fill in as their project gets under way and the appropriate and mission-aligned personnel begin to fill their critical roles. |
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Trump’s Justice Dept. Vows to End College Affirmative Action — Here’s Where to Start
By Renu Mukherjee | New York Post
“Trump’s Justice Department has committed to ending affirmative action and DEI in education — but top universities’ scofflaw behavior means that new Attorney General Pam Bondi will have a tough fight on her hands. ...
“Which elite universities should the DOJ keep an eye on? First, Yale. In 2016, a coalition of Asian-American organizations accused the Ivy of discriminating against Asians in undergraduate admissions. ... While an Asian-American applicant in the top academic decile had only a 14.32% chance of gaining admission to Yale, a black applicant in the same decile had a 60% chance. ... The Supreme Court settled the matter in 2023, but this past September, advocates alleged that Yale was still penalizing Asian-American applicants.”
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Congress Can Act Against College Discrimination
By Jason L. Riley | Wall Street Journal
“The administration’s resolve is refreshing and necessary given that schools could come under pressure from other powerful entities to continue their old ways.”
Two members of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission “are concerned that the threat of losing accreditation, which is required to get access to federal aid for students and research grants for faculty, will prod schools to find ways to evade antidiscrimination laws. ... The Trump administration may scare some accreditors into backing off. The American Bar Association announced this month that it was pausing its ‘diversity and inclusion’ accreditation standard. But (the commissioners) believe that Congress should provide a more permanent solution to the problem.”
Related: |
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How Left-Wing Activism Corrupted America’s Schools
By Neetu Arnold | City Journal
“Quality education research certainly matters. But the Institute of Education Sciences, which administers the contracts, has abandoned this mission. The IES has abused what should be a nonpartisan mandate and pushed progressive political agendas through research and training programs.
“Consider the IES’s Regional Education Laboratory (REL) program. ... REL Pacific produced a teacher’s guide on culturally sustaining pedagogical practices, an identity-based teaching approach that uses disciplines like ‘ethnomathematics’ to make minority students feel like they belong in the classroom. These approaches lack rigor, and their associated standards of implementation often compel educators to hold irrational beliefs.” |
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The NSA’s Secret Sex Chats
By Christopher F. Rufo and Hannah Grossman | City Journal
“The 'intelligence community' is one of the most powerful parts of the American national security apparatus. In theory, it works tirelessly to keep the nation safe. But according to internal documents that we obtained, some intelligence agency employees have another on-the-job priority: sex chats. ...
“One popular chat topic was male-to-female transgender surgery, which involves surgically removing the penis and turning it into an artificial vagina. ‘[M]ine is everything,’ said one male who claimed to have had gender reconstruction surgery. ‘[I]’ve found that i like being penetrated (never liked it before GRS), but all the rest is just as important as well.’ Another intelligence official boasted that genital surgery allowed him ‘to wear leggings or bikinis without having to wear a gaff under it.’”
Related: Director Tulsi Gabbard Responds |
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MI Scholars Appointed to the NYSAC and NJSAC Committees By Manhattan Institute
Congrats to MI's Rafael A. Mangual,Hannah E. Meyers, and
Wai Wah Chin on being appointed to the New York State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and Daniel Di Martino to the New Jersey State Advisory Committee.
Their service will bring balance and common sense back to these institutions captured by far-left ideologies.
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For more information and media requests, please contact
communications@manhattan.institute.
Are you interested in supporting the Manhattan Institute’s public-interest research and journalism? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and its scholars’ work are fully tax-deductible as provided by law. |
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Photo Credits: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images; Alejandra Villa Loarca/Newsday RM via Getty Images; Rory Doyle for The Washington Post via Getty Images; Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images |
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