A New Contract With Universities

Earlier this year, Christopher F. Rufo gathered policy leaders and scholars to develop principles for reform in higher education. Universities “have engaged in a long train of abuses, evasions, and usurpations, which, with every turn of the ratchet, have moved our society toward a new kind of tyranny—one in which ideology determines truth, and the university functions as a political agent of the Left,” he writes.

Rufo and 43 other signatories are calling on President Trump to draft a new contract with universities that requires them to prioritize truth over ideology, adhere to colorblind equality, and cease participation in political activism.

Read their full statement here.

Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission withdrew 14 Biden-era regulations that were still making their way through the rulemaking process. One was an anti-greenwashing rule, which would have mandated that ESG funds disclose the methodologies they use for measuring carbon footprint. A laudable goal, perhaps, but it wasn’t clear that the regulatory burden would be justified.

Another regulation involved the shareholder-proposal process, which has made it easier to advance environmental and social causes at companies’ annual meetings, often hurting shareholder value.

With these moves, Jarrett Dieterle writes, “it’s clear that the Trump financial deregulatory agenda has commenced in earnest.”

The Trump administration’s move to end a federal partnership with the Trevor Project—which provides suicide-prevention support to LGBT-identifying youth—is the right one, Colin Wright and Brad Polumbo argue. Once considered a lifeline for gay teens facing bullying, the Trevor Project “has drifted from its original purpose and transformed into a vehicle for advancing radical and harmful ideologies under the banner of suicide prevention,” they write.

As students fall behind in math and reading, artificial intelligence has emerged as a promising solution. The technology will soon be used for personalized tutoring services, and the Khan Academy is already integrating it for rigorous instruction.

Some teachers’ unions and school boards claim that AI will worsen academic inequality. In fact, Sydney Flisser writes, adopting the technology in classrooms holds promise for narrowing achievement gaps “associated with race, family income, and IQ, as students get personalized support that would otherwise be impossible with rising class sizes and teacher burnout.”

Rafael Mangual, Tal Fortgang, Carolyn Gorman, and Renu Mukherjee discuss public safety in New York City, the Senate vote to strip funding from NPR, President Trump’s desire to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and other big news stories from the week.

“Has any city relaxed drug laws and then experienced an improvement in the city’s quality of life? I don’t know of any.”

Photo credit: Justin Sullivan / Staff / Getty Images News via Getty Images