Economy

Article V of Our Constitution Provides Us the Means to Combat Federal Overreach

The Texas Legislature is currently considering renewing its 2017 call to Congress to invoke Article V of the U.S. Constitution to propose amendments curbing federal overreach. The Article V effort seeks to restore federalism and individual liberty, requiring thirty-four states to call a convention and thirty-eight to ratify changes. To date, 19 states have passed resolutions calling for an...

April 14, 2025

Higher Education

Texas must embrace accreditation reform: Why HB 1705 matters

OPINION: Texas clings to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges like a relic of the past. It’s time for flexibility and competition. Texas stands at a crossroads with two companion bills winding their way through the Lone Star Statehouse that aim to reform accreditation by allowing public institutions to choose from...

April 10, 2025

Higher Education

Liberty and Efficiency: SB 37’s Vision for Texas Universities

A recent op ed in the Austin American-Statesman voiced substantial objections to Texas Senate Bill 37. It contends that the bill imposes redundant bureaucracy via the Office of Excellence in Higher Education, diminishes faculty governance by restricting faculty senates to tenured members and requiring half to be elected, curtails student academic options by eliminating low-enrollment...

April 7, 2025

Higher Education

College Grade Inflation Undermines Workforce Competitiveness

For years, I’ve warned that college grade inflation is real, rampant, and ravaging a university near you. It is a cancer eating away at American higher education, undermining academic standards, devaluing transcripts, and cheating students and employers alike. My research has tracked this crisis over the last decade, and the evidence is stark: what was...

March 10, 2025

Higher Education

The University of Texas System Does the Right Thing on Free Speech

Recently, The University of Texas System’s Board of Regents enhanced its free speech policy for all its member schools. No longer will Texas public universities be able to offer official political statements on matters that only tangentially affect their campuses. The new policy announces that it is not “the role of the UT System or...

October 21, 2024

K-12 Education

Do Opponents of HB 1605 Really Want to Ban MLK from Texas’ K-12 Curriculum?

Texas has instituted an historic education effort to rescue its students from lackluster learning. “Lackluster” may be a euphemism, hiding the frightening reality that the majority of Texas K-12 students are not reading at grade-level. In response, Texas approved the Open Education Resources (OER) project, which will provide free, online, high-quality instructional materials to Texas...

September 19, 2024

Economy

Are We a Democracy or a Republic? Answer: Yes

“These Trump supporters say America isn’t a democracy. And they’re okay with it.” So reads the breathless headline from a story last week by CNN. Apparently, CNN thinks that this view is anathema to the American way of life. But a closer look reveals the truth about what America was founded to be. It also...

September 4, 2024

K-12 Education

The New Texas Curriculum is a Win-Win

Texas is on the cusp of implementing historic reforms that could prove to be the most significant improvements in education in the state’s history. Last year, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 1605, which, in part, required the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to develop high quality instructional materials and provide them at no cost to...

August 26, 2024

Economy

If Independence Day Has No Future, Neither Does American Democracy

It seems that virtually every year around Independence Day, we are told by some in the media that we really shouldn’t be celebrating after all, because the Declaration of Independence, source of the American Creed, is, in reality, “a beautiful lie.” I have written about this rejection of the Declaration previously, but I must repeat...

July 3, 2024

Higher Education

For Whom Belle Tolls: An End to Accreditors’ Wheelan and Dealing?

A recent Inside Higher Ed article (IHE) on the college accreditor, SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) reveals—albeit, unintentionally—a great deal about the disconnect between the higher-education establishment and the rest of the country. Half puff-piece, half press coverage, the article anguishes over “the political trials of a Southern accreditor,” and especially its longtime...

November 14, 2023

Higher Education

The Last, Best Hope: A New Texas University Looks to Restore Genuine Higher Education

As someone who has spent most of his life working in  American universities, my subsequent writing about it in these pages has been for the most part negative. And not without reason: My on-campus experience, coupled with my research, has led me to agree with the assertion that constitutes the subtitle of  Allan Bloom’s “The...

November 6, 2023

Foreign Policy

The Antidote to Media Abuse: Overturn NYT v. Sullivan

The false, violence-promoting headline above, from the Oct. 17 New York Times, raises again an old question and, with it, an old word—calumny—as in, what is the role of government in preventing calumny? Calumny is the making of false and defamatory statements about others in order to damage their reputation. When written, such false, defaming statements are...

November 3, 2023