“The war in Ukraine can be ended permanently on terms that protect Ukraine’s statehood, meet Russia’s security concerns, and lay the foundation for a durable European security order. As another round of negotiations gears up in Norway, I propose a settlement concluded as a single package, signed by Ukraine and Russia, adopted by a vote of the United Nations Security Council under Chapter VII of the Charter. It would be guaranteed jointly by the five permanent members of the Council together with other states that choose to join. The proposal rests on the principle of indivisible security set out in the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris. The package would have four core commitments.” (10/21/26)
“What do you tell a child attending public school when her teacher singles out and disparages her religion? That is the question parents of Muslim children in Texas schools might soon confront. The Texas State Board of Education has approved new social studies standards taking effect in 2030 that require teachers to denigrate the religion of Islam with biased, ahistorical, and offensive characterizations. One of the most controversial edits would require students to study ‘the Prophet Mohammed’s brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves’. None of these claims stand up to a neutral reading of history.” (10/21/26)
“Governments at all levels have enacted laws that violate the right to contract. In every state, for example, licensing laws obstruct contractual freedom by preventing individuals who do not have a license from contracting with people who nevertheless want their services. Consider a law in North Dakota stating that only those who have obtained a license to teach from the state may enter into contracts to teach — not only in public schools, but also in private ones. Why shouldn’t the head of a private school be free to employ anyone he regards as capable of teaching? He, after all, has the strongest possible incentive to make sure that parents who pay for schooling will receive the best instruction. That is precisely the issue in a lawsuit brought by Capstone Classical Academy, a private school, along with a parent and a teacher, challenging North Dakota’s licensing law.” (10/21/26)
“If we return to the cradle of Western civilization in ancient Greece and Rome, we find an idea of liberal education as one that befits a free person and citizen, in contrast to a servile education that fitted one for a life of a specific line of work or trade. The proper curriculum for such an education was always a matter of lively debate, but it was widely agreed that such study should cultivate our minds, our speech, and our character in ways that expanded our freedom, making us more fit for various forms of self-governance and human flourishing. This ideal of the liberal arts seeks the truth for its own sake, to be sure, but understands this as expanding our freedom to flourish in both public and private life, not as a laissez-faire quest for more truth simpliciter.” (10/21/26)
“In many traditional cultures, ancient civilizations, and folklore traditions, a name is not viewed as a mere label, it is considered an intrinsic part of a person’s soul, essence, or spiritual makeup. Because the name represents the core of the being, possessing it was believed to allow a sorcerer, spirit, or enemy to manipulate, curse, or summon that person. To protect themselves, many cultures practiced name avoidance. People often used nicknames, public titles, or ‘noa’ (ordinary/allowed) names in daily life while keeping their true or spiritual name hidden from strangers or enemies. … The DSM, psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, defines most conditions by clusters of symptoms, not by any identified mechanism. In 2013 Thomas Insel, then director of America’s National Institute of Mental Health, said as much. He wrote that the manual’s categories lacked validity, and his institute began moving its research away from them. The labels are not even reliable.” (10/21/26)
“Reaction to the riots in France has followed a familiar arc: shock and disbelief, followed by dismissal and even denial. The wave of demonstrations began last month at a school in a Paris suburb, where teachers and students went on strike over staff shortages. What began as a local protest quickly morphed into a nationwide movement fueled by seemingly everything that ails France, turning particularly violent last weekend as rioters stormed city halls from Marseille to Limoges and Lille. In the aftermath, social media was awash with testimonials from Parisians insisting that the unrest was much ado about nothing. … The reaction to the storming of the Bastille in 1789 was no doubt much the same, at least until the revolutionaries started chopping off heads.” (10/21/26)
“Daylight saving time ends at 2:00 a.m. on Nov. 1. This summer, the House passed the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025, which would make it permanent year-round. The 308-117 vote drew support from across the aisle. This is the first bill to pass in Congress since the Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 with unanimous consent. Yet if Congress falls back into legislative inertia after the midterms, the 2025 bill may never become law, giving false hope for some and wasting the American people’s time once again. Given the similarities between the two bills, the 2025 version should in theory have no problem passing in the Senate. But the 2021 Senate bill was passed during a sparsely attended session, with some members expressing concern after the fact.” (10/21/26)
“Cornell University has long been an example of an academic echo chamber where conservative and libertarian faculty have been largely purged from departmental ranks. For example, a study by The College Fix found that Democrats outnumber Republicans 98 to 1 among Cornell professors across six of the humanities departments. Cornell professors disrupt events, launch campaigns to fire the remaining conservative faculty, and foster a cancel campaign culture on campus. However, the faculty recently decided to review its own record and found … wait for it! … that there really are no concrete measures needed to address their own overwhelming ideological bias. According to a 238-page faculty report from the Committee on the Future of the American University, there was no consensus on ideological bias or how to handle it.” (10/21/26)
“The number of civic institutes, centers, and schools at public universities has increased significantly since the first one, the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership (SCETL) at Arizona State University, emerged in 2017. Beginning in 2021, nineteen new centers and institutes have been established. Although many institutions have launched initiatives to enhance civic education, here I focus on the phenomenon of centers independent of any existing academic department but which are established by legislative or trustee action.” (10/21/26)
“These days, barely a week goes by in Europe without a drone sighting, a fire or a power outage being blamed on Russia. We’re told that these incidents are all part of a relentless, and escalating, ‘hybrid war’ that Moscow is waging against the continent. Tensions escalated dramatically last month after Germany formally attributed to Moscow a ‘failed’ drone attack on Leipzig/Halle airport. But does the evidence support Western claims that Russia is engaged in a systematic hybrid war against Europe?” (10/21/26)
