February 24, 2025

Now, on to the news…

Over the next several weeks, the Manhattan Institute’s director of higher education policy John D. Sailer will be exploring universities’ fellow-to-faculty pipeline models. Intended to hire more minorities, these programs often favor “academics who view their scholarship as an extension of their political agenda,” he writes. “The upshot: a small but significant number of faculty across the country” have gotten jobs “based on ideological affinity.”

Sailer’s work is based on thousands of pages of documents acquired through public records requests and interviews with more than a dozen scholars. Read the first installment in his series here.

Both critics and boosters of Donald Trump claim that the 47th president represents a break from GOP orthodoxy. His policies tell a different story, writes City Journal senior editor and Manhattan Institute fellow Charles Fain Lehman. Slashing taxes, cutting regulations, boosting energy production, and enforcing the border are all classic Republican priorities, not radical departures.

Trump’s efforts to shutter the Department of Education, overhaul the administrative state, and install constitutionalist judges also align closely with past GOP presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. And where Trump has nudged the party—on trade, entitlements, and some cultural issues—he’s pushed it to the center, where most voters are.

Read the piece here.

Just days ago, protesters—with their faces wrapped in keffiyeh scarves—descended on New York’s predominantly Jewish Borough Park neighborhood to scream at Jews, shouting: “How many kids did you kill today?”

Their outburst “reflects the growing normalization of masked rioters invading predominantly Jewish spaces to intimidate residents,” writes Hannah E. Meyers, director of public safety at the Manhattan Institute. Cities like New York need to start showing some spine against anti-Semitic misbehavior, she argues.

Read her powerful take here.

Why did low-income areas see a spike in murders during the pandemic?

A new Brookings Institution report claims that it’s because people in those neighborhoods “have fewer opportunities, weaker professional networks, and earn less income than those in other areas.”

But being poor doesn’t make someone a murderer, argues Barry Latzer, an emeritus professor of criminal justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Asian immigrants to New York City and millions of Latino migrants have far lower violent-crime rates than other low-income groups, for instance. “The most plausible explanation is cultural differences: groups’ varying habits and behaviors over time,” he writes.

Read his take here. 

A hero in war, a leader in politics—Charles de Gaulle embodied both. His War Memoirs, newly reissued in English, reflect the contradictions of a leader who saw himself as France’s savior but struggled within its democratic system. Adam Kirsch examines how de Gaulle’s legacy speaks to today’s political climate, where faith in democracy is fraying.

De Gaulle’s leadership rested on his unshakable belief in his own authority—without it, Free France might never have endured. Yet his memoirs expose the uneasy balance between democracy and strongman rule. Can a nation in crisis be saved through undemocratic means? And once people rally behind a larger-than-life figure, can they return to self-governance? History vindicated de Gaulle, but only because he knew when to step aside. Not every nation is so fortunate. 

“Elect progressives and you get chaos and high taxes. Never fails.”

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SaipanDrunkenSailor, commenting on San Francisco’s fentanyl crisis

Photo credits: The Washington Post / Contributor via Getty Images; PhotoQuest / Contributor / Archive Photos via Getty Images; Bettmann / Contributor via Getty Images