ARTICLES
The Collapse of Psychotherapy’s Scientific Pretensions
Christopher L. Schilling
Political scientist Christopher L. Schilling contends that psychotherapy rests on weak scientific foundations and increasingly blurs the line between healthcare, ideology, and spirituality. It isn’t just that psychotherapy and its underlying disciplines suffer from methodological flaws and ideological conformity. Now therapists are increasingly assuming the role of clergy rather than medical professionals.
The Ethics of Autonomous War: Power, Responsibility, and the Limits of Restraint
Lipton Matthews
While some democratic nations are morally hesitant to develop AI-powered military technologies, it is incumbent upon them to do so rather than cede the field to authoritarian rivals such as China and Russia. Humane societies owe their soldiers the best available tools for warfare and autonomous weapons reduce casualties and improve military effectiveness.
Reforming the Ivory Tower: Promise and Pitfalls in the NAS Agenda
Robert Maranto, University of Arkansas
Prominent education scholar Robert Maranto welcomes much of the National Association of Scholars’ higher-education reform blueprint, praising efforts to curb discrimination, strengthen accountability, and end universities’ exceptional treatment under the law. But he also warns that some proposals go too far, particularly those targeting research funding, foreign partnerships, and intercollegiate athletics.
A Response to Bob Maranto on University Reform
David Randall, National Association of Scholars
NAS research director David Randall is grateful for Robert Maranto’s diligent and largely favorable review of the organization’s higher-education reform agenda. But while Randall acknowledges Maranto’s libertarian reservations about some proposals, he defends a pragmatic approach that combines reducing government support with using state power when necessary to reform higher education.
The Yale Self-Report: Education Beyond ‘Public Benefit’
Gene Fendt, University of Nebraska, Kearney
Drawing heavily on Aristotle, philosopher Gene Fendt contends that research and public benefits are valuable but secondary to higher education’s primary aim: cultivating knowledge, wisdom, and virtue. While he welcomes Yale University’s self-report for renewing the emphasis on classical principles, Fendt warns against reducing universities to instruments of social engineering and purely technical training.
Civics Education, Self-Government, and the Survival of the Republic
Michael Platt
Long time AQ contributor Michael Platt insists that we must ask more of our civics education than rote memorization of the U.S. Constitution. Rather, the broader moral, religious, and liberal-arts traditions that shaped America’s Founders must play a central role. Only then can we defeat the mob rule that has dominated such disputes as immigration enforcement and sanctuary cities.
The Four Freedoms Essays, Eight Decades Later
Donald M. Bishop, Marine Corps University
Donald Bishop finds great educational value in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, which were memorably illustrated by Norman Rockwell and elaborated on in a series of largely forgotten wartime essays. Examining those essays can enrich our knowledge of American history, inform contemporary debates about freedom, and connect civic education to the nation’s intellectual and moral traditions.
The Fact/Value Dichotomy Is Essential to Science
John Staddon, Duke University (emeritus)
Duke University psychologist John Staddon argues for restoring David Hume’s fact–value—or “is–ought”—distinction as a cornerstone of scientific inquiry. He contends that contemporary philosophers have blurred this essential boundary, stifling important lines of investigation and undermining both scientific progress and humanity’s ability to benefit from it.
Nathaniel Urban, National Association of Scholars
Reflecting on his past experience as a resident assistant at an Ohio college and his own research, Nathan Urban demonstrates that higher education student affairs offices and the masters degree programs leading to those careers are deeply shaped by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) frameworks. This is so, Urban reports, despite state efforts (Ohio SB 1) to reduce DEI influence in public universities.
REVIEW ESSAY
The Many Meetings of East and West
James W. Springer
James Springer examines four books concerning the West’s long history of studying and interpreting foreign cultures. Springer concludes that while Western scholarship has sometimes misread other cultures for its own purposes, its sustained commitment to cross-cultural inquiry and self-critique remains a distinct and valuable intellectual achievement.
IN MEMORIAM
Robert Ludlow Trivers (1943-2026)
Scott Turner, National Association of Scholars
The recent death of evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers prompts physiologist J. Scott Turner to assess both his scientific legacy and turbulent career. Turner credits this “brilliant” but “troubled” scholar with extending Darwin into the social sciences and developing influential theories such as “reciprocal altruism.” But he also believes that Trivers’ biological reductionism reveals deeper flaws in sociobiology and Darwinian grand theory.
REVIEWS
While this issue of AQ is front-loaded with feature articles, the review section explores a strikingly wide range of subjects that seem to coalesce around the idea of dissent, with several authors presenting works that are skeptical of inherited truths and that challenge established orthodoxies.
Scott Turner starts off with an examination of Matt Kaplan’s I Told You So! Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right, a history of scientific mavericks whose ideas challenged established consensus, with Turner offering thoughts on conformity and dissent in the pursuit of truth. William Howard likewise examines God, the Science, the Evidence: The Dawn of a Revolution, a provocative work contending that recent scientific discoveries have called into question the widely accepted belief that scientific advances diminish the case for God. John Adam Moreau considers the renowned empiricist Charles Murray’s unexpected engagement with religion and questions of ultimate meaning in Taking Religion Seriously.
Several reviewers revisit some of the most contentious debates of our time. Brooklyn College economist Robert Cherry evaluates Phillip Magness’s critique of the 1619 Project, The 1619 Project Myth, which documents the corrupt data and methodology at the heart of the Project. Adam Kissel examines Representative Elise Stefanik’s indictment of elite universities and their response to antisemitism in Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities, while Mark Bauerlein reflects on Harvey Mansfield’s Where Harvard Went Wrong: Fifty Years of Commentary, an account of Mansfield’s decades-long dissent from the ideological currents of America’s highest-ranked college. George La Noue assesses Julie J. Parks’ effort in Race, Class, and Affirmative Action: College Admissions in the New Era to preserve race-conscious admissions despite the Supreme Court’s rejection of affirmative action. Finally, Jared Gould weighs Marshall Snyder’s argument that only a return to the Judeo-Christian moral traditions and civic virtues can reverse the West’s cultural decline wrought by woke ideology.
Taken together, these essays invite readers to consider the state of our institutions and the reliability of accepted narratives.
Photo by Peter Mode on Unsplash