Kate Bierly is a Higher Education Policy Analyst at Next Generation Texas at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Originally from California and now a proud Texan, Kate is dedicated to advancing policies that promote freedom and opportunity in higher education.
Lincoln’s natural rights statesmanship should be our guide. If Hayek taught us to inquire about who ought to decide and Lincoln taught us to ask to what end, then the question of immigration compels us toward a third and inescapable question: Where is the line drawn? The principles of subsidiarity and federalism demand that matters should be resolved...
If economist Friedrich Hayek taught us to as who ought to decide, and Abraham Lincoln taught us to as to what end, then the question of immigration compels us to ask a third and inescapable question: Where is the line drawn? In the instance of Minneapolis, the line is both wrongly drawn, and drawn at...
In my earlier op-ed, I argued—drawing on economist Friedrich Hayek—that the Department of Education embodies the fatal flaw of all central planners: the illusion that distant authorities can gather, process, and act on local knowledge better than the people on the ground. Hayek’s central insight is about who should rule; decisions should be pushed down...
“The Department of Education is being torn apart in real time,” the New York Times declared this week. The Trump administration has kicked off the boldest federal education shake-up in 45 years, carving up its core functions across Labor, State, Interior, and HHS. To understand why this was inevitable, we must go back to the...
Texas A&M University has quietly benefited from over $100 million in research funding from Qatar through its Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), without disclosing it as required under federal law. The university’s justification? That TEES is not technically an “educational institution” and therefore does not act on behalf of the university. But the contracts tell...
Texans were shocked when they learned of the foreign espionage scandal at Texas A&M. But now we have learned that the corruption at College Station was not a one-off event. A University of Texas researcher has been charged with espionage, attempting to steal sensitive, federally funded cancer research and smuggle it to China. The case...
There is division surrounding the Qatar narrative—not just between the political left and right, but within the conservative movement itself. Some see Qatar as a valuable strategic partner; others view it as a duplicitous actor, undermining American interests behind closed doors. As geopolitical tensions rise in the Middle East, the question becomes increasingly urgent: Is...
Sometimes—though I will admit it’s rare—serious policy discussions can turn into comedy gold. In my recent op-ed, I discussed the capture of social-emotional learning (SEL) by DEI as I experienced it while in the Stanford Teacher Education Program, where I received my Master’s in Education. Apparently, my critique didn’t go over well with one of...
One day, as part of my student-teaching at Stanford, I was explaining a math lesson to a fourth-grade classroom, when a boy became disruptive. I repeated my directions to him, but then he got up from his seat and tried to bite me. Shaken up about this, I decided to bring this to my supervisor’s...
Live by the sword, die by the sword. Just ask Joe Biden, whose executive orders have quickly gone the way of all flesh during the first three weeks of Donald Trump’s second term. An executive order is, by its nature, a temporary fix. This is particularly true of Trump’s recent executive order to keep men out of...
In 2020, $100 was enough to cover a couple’s ideal Valentine’s Day complete with roses, chocolates, and a romantic dinner. But in 2025, that same $100 doesn’t buy quite as much. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that $100 in January 2020 has the same purchasing power as $122.34 in December 2024,...