Policy Stories

The relationship between faculty and students in the pursuit of truth is vital to American society, but restrictions on language, anonymous bias reporting, and required diversity statements undermine higher learning. Eager to protect students from discomfort, university bureaucracies have prioritized ideological conformity and self-censorship over critical thinking and the pursuit of truth. Academic inquiry and the pursuit of truth may be uncomfortable, but it is necessary to preserve what makes our higher learning institutions great.

The rapid rise of Artificial Intelligence presents humanity with exciting, life-changing possibilities, but has the potential for catastrophic, world-ending risks. How should we move forward to take advantage all the benefits AI has to offer while averting an AI apocalypse.

The United States faces no shortage of challenges from political polarization, institutional distrust, to economic uncertainty. But through devoted efforts towards civic engagement, civic education, and civic bargaining, American citizens can ensure American democracy survives and thrives.

Forty years after "A Nation at Risk," an extensive analysis exposes the limitations of disjointed education reforms, underscoring the urgent need for policymakers to pursue reforms that are coherent, sustainable, and measurable across greater spans of time to provide all students with a quality education.

Politicians and pundits on both the right and the left cry foul over election laws like voter identification and mail-in voting.  Is it all political hype? Or do these laws actually have the power to impact races and swing elections?

For the United States to successfully defend itself and its allies, prevail in global competition, and remain a force for good around the world, it must unlock its full innovative potential by connecting national security demands with the pace of commercially-driven technological innovation.

Third party payers, such as employers and the government, negotiate healthcare costs behind the scenes, cutting out individual patients from the process and contributing to rising healthcare premiums.  Individual Health Accounts would allow patients to take ownership of their healthcare, lower healthcare costs, and help millions of uninsured afford health coverage.

It’s uncommon for the popular media to discuss how problematic our climate models are. Those uncertainties should make us skeptical of their ability to predict human influences on climate change.

Teachers' unions in the United States hold significant influence over local school board elections, but successful challenges in one state suggest a potential path forward for education reformers.

The use of relative terms like “fairness” muddies the discourse on taxes, leading people to reject absolutely efficient gains that they perceive as unfair—even though they may make everyone better off.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022 precipitated the largest set of Chinese military exercises in twenty years, raising the question: Why should America remain involved with Taiwan?

The return of Taliban control in Afghanistan could create the biggest opportunity for al-Qaeda to reconstitute and reorganize in more than a decade.

Is Russia inherently imperialist and expansionist? No. Russian aggression is not innate, it is a choice. And Russia’s rulers could make different choices.

Since 2013, China has been creating artificial islands in the South China Sea and turning them into military bases in an attempt to expand its strategic sphere of influence.

Putin invaded Ukraine because, like all dictators, he is threatened by the expansion of democratic governments. 

The United States must reconsider how it approaches thinking about space in order to prevent potentially devastating conflicts. 

America can counter insidious efforts to inflame divisions in our society by discovering and calling out our adversaries when they use cyber-enabled deception operations.

Better economic policy predating the coronavirus led to a sharp decline in wealth inequality.

The Great Recession shows us how crony capitalism can cause financial policies to stray from clearly defined rules and put undue power in the hands of regulators and special interests.

Targeted household debt relief can effectively support the economy and accelerate economic recovery.

Niall Ferguson puts the 2020 pandemic into perspective and explains why we are getting worse, not better, at handling disasters.

Limiting the growth in federal spending is difficult, but history tells us it is not impossible.