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The Forum's full interview with Bill Kristol. Credit: Wikipedia Commons The following text is abridged. It features highlights from The Forum 's interview with Bill Kristol. It has been edited for length and clarity. Dhriti Jagadish: You began as an academic in the realm of political philosophy, so we have to ask, what are you reading nowadays? What do you recommend?  Bill Kristol: Not as much political philosophy as I should. As I’ve gotten older, I'm slightly more inclined to literature and to history, but I still try to read a little bit of political philosophy—and I always love mystery novels. Writing the “Morning Shots,” the newsletter at The Bulwark , keeps me pretty busy. And so when I read, it's often for work. For relaxation—mystery novels and some literature, history, and stuff.  Shiv Parihar: Of all the books you've read, what are some of the top ones you'd recommend to us, especially as college students?  Bill Kristol:  That’s a good question. I’ll say Harry Jaffa’s book—to take a Claremont former professor— Crisis of the House Divided , had a big impact on me in college when I read it. I was already a student of [Harvey] Mansfield, and I'd taken Mark Blitz. I was in his tutorial my first year. That's how I got into political philosophy. And [Jaffa] showed how interesting political history could be—and statesmanship. Political theory wasn’t here [ points upwards ] and politics just down here [ points downwards ]—there was a kind of bridge between the two.  I wrote my senior thesis in college on Tocqueville’s Democracy in America  and that always had a big influence on me. I had an instinct that Tocqueville was a much deeper thinker than people at the time thought. Now I think it's more common to read Tocqueville in political philosophy classes and think about him as Mansfield [and others did].  Oakeshott—I read a little bit, but that was never quite my taste in conservatism. I was more American and less traditionalist. I was a young conservative, or semi-conservative, kid and I was anti-New Left. So when my contemporaries were discovering Marx and various Marxists and neo-Marxists—or lefties from the late sixties—I was discovering Burke and people in that tradition. I was sort of a Burke, Tocqueville, Churchill type person.  Churchill is really worth reading because he's so accessible. And leave aside the books about  Churchill. His own autobiography, My Early Life , is so interesting. [So are] all six volumes [about] how you stumble into a war like [World War II] and how it could have been avoided, perhaps, or dealt with earlier. My recommendation to people who love politics is that they shouldn't read only  politics. And people who love political philosophy shouldn't read only  political philosophy. You should read some history. History is a very good grounding [for] the world. It took me a while to correct myself. I was in so much political philosophy that I sort of ignored the fact that, well, history also happens, and history happens in very contingent and unpredictable ways. You can study the theoretical version of modern liberalism or communism, but then an awful lot of what really happens  is much more mixed and murky and complicated. And I think that's a good lesson.  Dhriti Jagadish: Transitioning to politics now, I had the chance to listen to your son-in-law, Matt Continetti, this summer at Hudson. He said that “a surplus of the college-educated elite could lead to radicalism.” It’s true that we, students, are very out of touch. We don't have the pulse of the American populace. What advice do you have for us, in the time we have left in college and beyond? How do we stay informed and also stay empathetic [from within] this ivory tower? Bill Kristol: I disagree with Matt a little bit on this, I guess.  Not everyone has to be constantly in touch with everyone in America. You’re as American as anyone else is. If you're a student at Claremont, you're no more or less American than if you're a 54-year-old unemployed steel worker. The way the press writes, it's, “That guy is the real American and you're the pampered coastal elite.” But that’s ludicrous. Claremont’s a part of America, New York’s part of America.  Obviously at some point, if you want to go into politics—or if you want to understand the whole country—you need to get some understanding of parts of the country that you're not familiar with. But I think people overdo this sometimes, honestly. It's fine to go to college, read great books, and hang out with your peers at college. You don't have to, at age 22, have a comprehensive knowledge of all America.  I'm slightly on the side of: study what you want to study, hang out with people you find interesting. And if you decide that you want to have a better understanding of America as a sociological place, you should go at some point to Dayton, Ohio and so forth, and see what's going on there.  Shiv Parihar:  You worked for Dan Quayle [as chief of staff] from 1989 to 1993. A few years ago he was back in the news. It was reported that he was a very powerful force in convincing Mike Pence to go forth with a peaceful transition of power in 2020. As you knew Quayle and worked for him, are you inclined to believe that story as it was reported? Do you have your own perspective on [the] role Quayle may have played?  Bill Kristol: He’s a good person and a serious person. He hasn't been much involved in [politics since his vice presidency]. He tried to run for president. That wasn't gonna happen. I think he just decided, “You know, I've done what I could do.”  I don't see him quite as much, just because he's not in Washington too much. We’re on good terms and all that. I'm very proud that, when Pence called him, he told Pence the right thing and bucked him up—and had no question about what the right thing to do was.  As VP, I think he [Quayle] was underestimated and slightly unfairly criticized at times. [So] I'm glad he was able to get deserved credit for having not just good judgment, but a set of real principles. Dhriti Jagadish:  Jonah Goldberg had a piece yesterday about his relationship with Tucker Carlson, who used to write for you at the Weekly Standard . [Carlson] wrote a piece celebrating the withdrawal of Pat Buchanan from the party in 1999, and today he’s unrecognizable. Did you see any inklings of this shift when you knew him?  Bill Kristol: Well, it was a long time ago. I think he left the Weekly Standard  in 2000.  People do change, and I don't really like this game of,  “I'm gonna now go back and find this part that really prefigures that.” I don't know what happened. I believe in human agency, mostly, and people are responsible for what they are and what they become.  But in this case, he's [Carlson] made his choices. I think it's very legitimate from my point of view to criticize him. It's interesting as a kind of biographical matter, obviously—how did someone get from here to there? But I focus more on what people are doing and saying in the moment.  What I do think is, it's been a moment when people had a chance to step up or not. Or not just not  step up—like in his case—[but] really go in and be irresponsible and damaging to the country.  Shiv Parihar: On a similar note, are there any of your older Republican friends that you've remained quite close to, even if they’ve supported the direction the party's gone, or things it’s done? For instance, maybe someone like Norman Podhoretz?  Bill Kristol: Norman's quite elderly. I’ve haven’t really been in touch with him much. I think he's in decent shape. Obviously old friends are old friends and we remain cordial. That's true of some people who served [in] the Trump first term.  I think if you're in another profession—an engineer…or a physician—I assume you can have very close friends [despite political differences]. Politics isn't central to your life. Maybe it's a little awkward sometimes. Maybe there's a little jousting. But 80 percent of your conversation isn't about it. And you have a million other overlaps—in your interests, your hobbies, your families, your communities, church. And so it’s easier in those cases to have close friendships where you're at odds in politics. I’m in [politics] for a living, [so] it's a little harder to say, “I'm just gonna put all this aside.” But I’ve had many friends who I disagree with over the years. The Trump era is different, I think, from normal political disagreements. I had plenty of friends who were against the Iraq War, and that was a policy disagreement. It was a pretty heated one at times.  But at the end of the day, we all wished the country well. We all were in favor of the constitutional processes—the legal processes—that did in this case, produce a vote to authorize the use of force. But that was a different kind of situation. I do think the Trump situation has put real stress on old friends and friendships and even acquaintanceships. I have not had personally—unlike some other friends of mine—dramatic break offs. I've drifted away from a lot of people I was reasonably friendly with and close to. And I do feel—especially with my colleagues at The Bulwark  —that I'm in touch with younger people [who] are thinking about the future, not just because it's intellectually interesting, but because they are going to live in it and their kids are really going to live in it.  My main advice to 22 year olds is: things will change. You'll change. That's good, not bad. You should be open to change, including in your political views, your interests, your tastes, and your friendships to some degree. I do think people who try to keep an open mind about life, who try to keep learning as they get older—who don't get into a defensive shell, if possible—tend to have more fulfilling, more satisfying lives.  I don't mean to be too glib about how easy it is to do this—but I think it's good to be somewhat less judgmental than you are when you're 22. Dhriti Jagadish: It’s clear that you've kept an open mind. You've recently expressed positive sentiments about Zohran Mamdani— Bill Kristol:  Or at least not so negative sentiments.  Dhriti Jagadish: Which trends in the Democratic Party are you optimistic about? What are some tactics you may think work?  Bill Kristol: I'm closer to the centrist Democrats than the left-wing Democrats. Predictable. I’m closer to hawkish Democrats, as that’s one thing I haven't changed my mind much about. I still think the Scoop Jackson-Reagan-McCain view of the world is basically correct and basically the right policy for us.  Things went badly in Iraq. Mistakes were made. And we made some bad judgment calls, including me. But I still think, fundamentally, we should be strong and there should be a global system of alliances. I thought the people who went in after 9/11, many of whom are now serving in Congress, have been a very important change for the Democratic Party from [the] excessive, “We can't use force and power doesn't matter—it’s all about the UN.” I like the more free, pro-free market Democrats. I like the less left-wing, identity politics Democrats. Having said that, it's a big party. I don't have a whole lot of standing to really tell them what to do, because I'm relatively a newcomer from their point of view. I like to be part of the discussions. A lot of people have put very hard work into the Democratic Party on the progressive side, and they have the right to try to nominate their candidates and push for bigger government healthcare solutions than I would prefer. People who’ve been in the Democratic Party for 30 years are much more hostile to each other than I am actually, since, for me, it's a little like coming from outside. It’s sort of, “Okay, you know what? As long as you're against authoritarianism and for the rule of law, and basically for a market system with a welfare state, basically for American global leadership, and basically for welcoming immigrants and [for] a tolerant nation, then I'm sort of okay with it.” And so I found myself a little bit of a big tent Democrat. I think a lot of the younger Democrats are quite impressive. Uh, I wish— Dhriti Jagadish:  Any names [in Democratic politics] stand out to you? Bill Kristol:  I live in Virginia. So, Abigail Spanberger, who I think will win in November, is really excellent. It might be [Mikie] Sherrill in New Jersey, [and she is] excellent. And so, part of my core praise for Mamdani has been that if we elect three Democrats who win in November—the three big races, really—and it’s Spanberger or Sherrill and Mamdani? That’s okay. New York City gets to have a left-wing mayor. It’s not the first time, and it’s different from the rest of the country. I wish they were a little less tolerant of certain things—against Israel and all that. But some of the economic stuff, I think, is just silly, but I don’t think it’s going to matter. Shiv Parihar:  Do you think you would vote for him [Mamdani] if you were voting in New York?  Bill Kristol:  You know, I think so. I really can't think—the idea of going back to Cuomo is just, I think, ridiculous. I think if it had been the first round, I would’ve voted for someone else and maybe wouldn't have even ranked Mamdani and would've had other people who were more centrist, liberal types.  It was very disappointing. All these big shot finance types in New York, they couldn't get behind anyone except for Andrew Cuomo. It's really pathetic, in my opinion. So now they're rallying to Cuomo with some of them, but I don't have that much sympathy for that.  And I also just think, practically speaking, New York is a huge city. He's not going to destroy it, I don't think. He’s gonna set up five silly government-run grocery stores. I don't think he even will do that. So there'll be some grocery store somewhere and it won't be as good as the privately run ones, and it will go out of business in three years and it'll be a little bit of a waste of taxpayer money, you know?  Or it'll be harmless. I do think the right’s reaction to Mamdani has been a little hysterical. He's a very impressive politician. I don't know that he’s going to be a very good mayor. He's 33 years old, he's never run anything. They're good people who could work for him though, in New York. So, who knows? I don’t know.  As I've gotten older, I'm a little more hesitant. Mayor, governor—especially those—are pretty place-specific jobs. And if you don't live in the place…you read stuff online, and you get a little glimpse of Gavin Newsom here and Shapiro there. And of course, you watch clips of them, so you'd have some opinions. But you don't really know, you know? I do not really know what kind of governor Gavin Newsom’s been.  Now, I do think in Virginia, I have a much better sense of what the governor's effect has actually been. So, I've gotten more hesitant, especially on the state and local races, of having extremely firm judgments about people. Obviously I prefer generally pro-free-market and so forth, and anti- too much government planning, and foolish planning.  Shiv Parihar: I wanted to circle back a little bit to your response to the last question [on Podhoretz].  I'm curious how you see old neocon and paleocon debates [like those between Pat Buchanan and Podhoretz] playing out similarly today in the Republican Party. Now that we are approaching the post-Trump era, and the coalition is going to have to find other ways to define itself ideologically and policy-wise… Bill Kristol:  I'm not so sure we're approaching the post-Trump era, first of all. We may be approaching post-Donald Trump [but] you could be in a Trumpist era.  Shiv Parihar:  Post-Trump presidency, at least.  Bill Kristol: Maybe. He’ll probably run again though. But anyway—I do think the paleocons were kind of a precursor of Trump in a different way, and Trump is a much more effective demagogue than they were.  He’s more of a con man, more of a showman, and he is more in touch with actual middle America. He's been selling stuff to them for 40 years. He had a much better feel for how to do all this than someone like Buchanan. Buchanan was a gifted political figure in his own way. A talented polemicist.  Those fights were a little bit of a precursor. We, the neocons, basically won those fights for 20, 30 years—and then lost. So that's what happens in life. You have to keep fighting the fight. I do regret that some of the neocon types have assimilated—have accommodated Trump.  There are two aspects to Trumpism I think that…people like me objected to. One was the policy. I do think a lot of it could do quite a lot of damage, especially in foreign policy. The tariffs and the immigration stuff is really reprehensible, and foolish—just damaging. But, the policy stuff could be reversed.  We could have a crackdown on immigration now, and we could have liberal immigration policies in three years, same with tariffs and so forth. Some of the other stuff’s a little harder to reverse, [such as] global alliances. But that was never my fundamental objection to Trump. There've been plenty of Republicans who were a little more in that direction. I might not have voted for him, but I wouldn't have said, “Never Trump.”  It was always, for me, about the authoritarianism. And people dismissed it. “So you don't like the tweets, the style, the tone.” But that was never it. I mean, the style and the tone conveyed [that]  he didn't have any respect for the rule of law. He didn't have any respect for constitutional limitations. He didn't have any respect for fellow citizens who…didn't agree with him. The really bad thing is that he's been as bad as I feared. He was checked in his first term by internal guardrails in the administration. And Mark Esper and all the other characters obviously. Once January 6th happened, I thought, “Well, maybe that's it.” Once he survived that and got himself back on top of the party, I thought, “The second term is really going to be very bad.” And it has been, in my opinion.  So the people who are still on board, or who are more on board now—I find that somewhat bewildering. And especially if you're older. It's one thing if you're 30 years old, you sort of want a future in politics. For people your age, all you've had is Trump for the Republican Party. [So you go,] “I'm on the right, I'm gonna be Republican.” You're young, I understand that, and I don't hold people quite as accountable.  And then if you're 30 years old, you're ambitious. “Okay, I’m gonna swallow hard and go in, because if I can rise up, I could be [an] Assistant Secretary of State when I'm 36.” I don't approve of that, but I sort of understand. Why people who are at the end of their careers felt they had to go along with this—I am somewhat mystified by that and disappointed. Shiv Parihar: Who surprised you most?  Bill Kristol:  That's hard to say. I don't know. I’ll pass on that, I think. What I was going to say before though, was—in 2016, I thought there was some chance I was wrong. That is, one can miscalculate. “Maybe he’ll become president, he'll feel the weight of the office. He won't be a great president. He'll do some stupid things. I will cringe a lot when he says certain things, but at the end of the day, it'll be four years.” I thought that was the best case, and I wondered if I was overreacting in that sense.  Dhriti Jagadish: I know you’re certainly not naive enough to think that just because Trump is gone, MAGA will be gone. But a successor hasn't been named. So I’m wondering: who do you think is the closest secondhand man to Trump at the moment? And what does he or she have to do to adopt the MAGA brand in the next three years?  Bill Kristol:  It’s a good and interesting question. My main answer to it is: given how unpredictable everything’s been over the last ten years—we didn’t expect Trump, we didn’t expect Biden, we didn’t expect Trump to come back after January 6th—who knows? I could give you a more conventional honestly analysis based on my experience. Vance has probably consolidated a fair amount of power and support as a loyal VP to Trump. We could speculate about how the movement probably fractures, because history suggests that the original demagogue—the original cult leader, if you want to be a little less friendly to him—is the strongest. Right? It’s a little harder to hold it together.  You can imagine it fracturing. Tucker Carlson, Vance, some modern Nikki Haley type, DeSantis, Abbott. It could be a lot of them. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and God knows.  I just think we haven’t really run this experiment before. But also, you’d have to tell me: is the Trump presidency closing in 2028—if it does close in 2028—with 5 percent growth for the last three years and a successful foreign policy? Or is it closing with a tariff-induced recession? [Will we be] throwing our weight around in little places while Europe and Asia fall apart as we do nothing? So much depends on that kind of thing.  Bill Kristol:  The Democrats more broadly—they’re a traditional political party in America: a coalition, unruly, complicated, with cross-cutting cleavages, generational cleavages, left-center, [and] regional problems. I feel like one could game that out. I’m not saying we could predict it, but we could say what’s likely: who’s going to emerge in these elections, who are the leading centrists, who are the leading leftists, who ran before and might be strong, who was governor of a major state. I feel like that would be a normal conversation.  But the Trump Republican Party is such a different animal. It doesn’t lend itself to that conversation. It’s much more like figuring out the succession in some semi-authoritarian movement, and that’s pretty unpredictable if you look at history. So I don’t know. I am pessimistic about the return of a sane Republican Party. I’m pessimistic about a sane conservatism. Look at who’s getting elected. He’s [Trump] been the leader of the Republican Party for a decade. Most people in the House have arrived in the last decade.  A fair number of senators at this point have arrived in the last decade, or just before, but then accommodated to Trump early enough that they’re basically pretty Trumpy. The old Republican Party is old, and it hasn’t won a lot of elections. There’s Brian Kemp here, and a couple of people there… I can go have coffee with Larry Hogan, and I can have lunch with Bob Corker, and that’s all very nice. I can chat with Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I don’t think that’s coming back fast. Now, that could be wrong. Things can change. I’d say the upside is: first of all, the Trump thing happened quite quickly. The 2012 Republican ticket was Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. The 2014–2015 Republican leadership in Congress was John Boehner, then Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. It wasn’t obvious in early 2015 that this is all just going to fall apart and we’re going to have Trump. Everyone now has decided that was obvious after the fact, right? “Oh, they were zombie Reaganism, it was old and stale.” It didn’t feel that way. Scott Walker seemed to be a successful governor of Wisconsin. Bobby Jindal was a young, impressive, successful governor of Louisiana. Jeb Bush, if you wanted another Bush, was from Florida. Ted Cruz was an impressive conservative from Princeton [and a] Supreme Court clerk. It wasn’t obvious that it was going to go the way it went. So the flip side of that is maybe it could all change much faster in a different direction. Politics does sometimes do that. Shiv Parihar: Professor Jon Shields at CMC had an article in the New York Times about how he thought liberal professors might influence younger conservative students towards a center-right conservatism, as opposed to [a] more Trumpy, MAGA [type conservatism]. I was curious, what sort of things do you  think young conservatives, maybe Trump-skeptical [young conservatives], should be thinking about?  Bill Kristol:  I’m sympathetic to Jon’s wish that that would happen. I’m a little skeptical [about how much] professors teaching certain books is gonna change students’ views of things. Sometimes it does, but it’s sort of accidental, and it’s often unpredictable. But if you’re honestly gonna teach them, you’re not gonna teach them in this edifying way: “Here, I’m gonna give you a…”  I don’t really like courses—this is my own prejudice in a funny way—about “Conservatism” or “Liberalism.” I’m not against it, of course. You teach these traditions and so forth—but you teach them in a way that’s skeptical and open-minded, not like, “Here are the doctrines, and you’ll really like these ones if you read them.” I think people should read important books. But honestly, the great conservative books are great liberal books, for me.  The Founders did not go around saying they were “conservative.” They didn’t call themselves anything. “Liberal” wasn’t really a term at the time. But they were in favor of a revolution. They were in favor of innovation, as they put it in the Federalist Papers , in politics. They were not friends to the old order in Europe. The more prescient of them were not friends to the parts of the old order that remained here in the U.S., such as church-state issues and especially slavery. And Tocqueville sat on the left, the center-left in the French Parliament, not on the right. And Churchill began as a Tory, then he quickly became a Liberal in 1905, and at the end of his life said something like, “In my heart, I was always a Liberal.” I’m more of a fan, especially at this moment, with Trump, of the broad liberal-conservative and conservative-liberal tradition. Obviously, there are plenty of 20th-century books. You can go back, obviously, to Burke and all these people, which is great—but there are plenty of 20th-century thinkers who fought against fascism and communism, who tried to think about the problems of liberal democracy and how to strengthen it. The neoconservatives were one school of that, but there are many, many instances. [George] Orwell, who was a social democrat and a socialist, [was] a great analyst of politics. [Jose] Ortega y Gasset, who was a liberal in Spain. Bill Kristol: That would be my main recommendation: conservatives should read liberals who are open to conservative insights, and conservatives who are liberal at heart. Now, they can also read Nietzsche and Marx. I read them, and they had an influence on me. One of the stupidest things, honestly, about [those] setting up “conservative programs” and so forth, is that, what, they’re not gonna teach kids Marx? That’s really idiotic. He’s kind of an important thinker in world history. Or they’re not gonna read Nietzsche or Heidegger or other people who were not in favor of the American-type regime? Or they’re not gonna read serious Catholic thinkers or others? I’m more for liberal education and a little less for attempting to shape people’s points of view.   Dhriti Jagadish: In The Bulwark , Jonathan Last wrote that all journalism will tend toward propaganda unless it's explicitly formulated as anti-authoritarian.  Bill Kristol: In the era of Trump, I think he said. Dhriti Jagadish: In the era of Trump, yes. How concerned are you about the recent sales and mergers with Bari Weiss and CBS, David Ellison and Paramount? What do you think about the future of media and journalism? Should we be worried that journalism is so concentrated?  Bill Kristol: Well, I think concentration is a worry regardless in a way of where one might be on the ideological spectrum. I think Jonathan's being a little rhetorical there, but I think it is true. The tendency is to pull your punches against the people who could hurt you if you want to get ahead. The best journalism's always been sort of rebellious, and sometimes that's been at the expense of conservatives, sometimes at the expense of liberals. Obviously Bill Buckley: “we stand athwart history yelling stop.” People need to remember that. That was admirable.  Buckley made some mistakes, and not everything was great with National Review  over the decades, but to have the courage to say that and to do that was really something. I think we need a little more standing athwart history yelling stop, and a little less trying to figure out which way things are going so you can get on the parade.  Shiv Parihar: Thank you so much for your time. Bill Kristol:  Thank you, I enjoyed the conversation. And good luck with everything.

"Going back to Cuomo" would be "ridiculous," said Kristol. Bill Kristol at Arizona State University in 2017. Credit: Wikimedia Commons In an interview with The Forum on October 9th, Bill Kristol told Dhriti Jagadish and Shiv Parihar that he would vote for Zohran Mamdani if he were a resident of New York City. He referred to the alternative of “going back” to former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as “ridiculous.” Kristol, the son of famed conservative intellectual Irving Kristol, was born and raised in New York City. He served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle from 1989 to 1993. In 1994, he founded political magazine The Weekly Standard . Kristol broke  with the Republican Party in 2016 over the candidacy of Donald Trump and, in 2018, co-founded The Bulwark , where he now serves as editor-at-large. He is also Chairman  of the Board of the Salvatori Center at CMC, which hosts The Forum.  Zohran Mamdani is a democratic socialist and candidate for mayor of New York City. He rose to prominence earlier this year, winning  the New York City Democratic Mayoral primary in June. Mamdani has received endorsements from various figures on the American left, but Kristol’s statements may mark the first show of support from the Never-Trump Republican movement.  The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.  Bill Kristol: I think a lot of the younger Democrats are quite impressive. Uh, I wish— Dhriti Jagadish: — Any names [in Democratic politics] stand out to you? Bill Kristol: Yeah, well, I’d say both. I live in Virginia. So, Abigail Spanberger, who I think will win in November, is really excellent. It might be Sherrill, actually, in New Jersey, excellent. And so, part of my core praise for Mamdani has been that, you know what, if we elect three Democrats who win in November—the three big races, really—and it’s Spanberger or Sherrill and Mamdani? That’s okay. You know, New York City gets to have a left-wing mayor. It’s not the first time, and it’s different from the rest of the country. I wish they were a little less, you know, tolerant of certain things—on Israel, and so, against Israel and all that. But some of the economic stuff, I think, is just silly, but I don’t think it’s going to matter. Shiv Parihar: Do you think you would vote for him [Mamdani] if you were voting in New York?  Bill Kristol: You know, I think so. I really can't think—the idea of going back to Cuomo is just, I think, ridiculous. I think if it had been the first round, I would’ve voted for someone else and maybe wouldn't have even ranked Mamdani and would've had other people who were more centrist, liberal types.  It was very disappointing. All these big shot, you know, finance types in New York, they couldn't get behind anyone except for Andrew Cuomo. It's really pathetic, in my opinion. So now they're rallying to Cuomo with some of them, but I don't have that much sympathy for that.  And I also just think, practically speaking, New York is a huge city. He's not going to destroy it, I don't think. He’s gonna set up five silly government-run grocery stores, I guess. I don't think he even will do that [inaudible] . And so they'll be fine. So there'll be some grocery store somewhere and it won't be as good as the privately run ones, and it will go out of business in three years and it'll be a little bit of a waste of taxpayer money, you know? Or it'll be harmless, you know? And so people—I do think the right’s reaction to Mamdani has been a little hysterical. He's a very impressive politician. I don't know that he’s going to be a very good mayor. He's 33 years old, he's never run anything. They're good people who could work for him though, in New York. So, who knows? I don’t know. Listen to The Forum ’s full interview with Bill Kristol here .

The former vigilante running as the Republican nominee for Mayor of New York City deserves national recognition for protecting the lives of those unable to speak for themselves. Credit: Associated Press The 2025 New York City Mayoral election has garnered significant national media attention after the surprise victory  of socialist Zohran Mamdani in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary. Mamdani’s chief opponent, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, remains in the race as an independent. Despite consistently outpolling  the incumbent mayor Eric Adams, who dropped out of the race in late September, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa has often been dismissed in national discussions of the race. Sliwa’s background is unusual—and fascinating. He is a moderate Republican best known for founding the vigilante anti-crime group the Guardian Angels during the 1980s spike in New York crime. However, his commitment to the welfare of animals sets him apart from the pack of candidates and makes him New Yorkers’ best choice for mayor. Curtis Sliwa is not only running as the Republican nominee for Mayor of New York City; he is also taking advantage of New York State’s election law, which allows candidates to appear on multiple ballot lines if they gather enough signatures. This system, known as fusion voting, has enabled issue-focused groups to thrive.   Sliwa has pioneered  the “Protect Animals” ballot line, for which he will appear as the nominee this November. The effort is unsurprising to those who have followed his career; he’s been involved in animal adoption advocacy  with the Guardian Angels, and he and his wife host the “ Animal Welfare Hour ” on New York’s WABC radio. Those who value animal rights and the protection of mankind’s furry and feathered friends should know that few politicians in America have been as outspoken about the issue as Curtis Sliwa.  In the past, Sliwa has been mocked  for owning 16 cats in the 2,000 square foot apartment he and his wife Nancy share near Central Park. These attacks are deeply unfair. Sliwa has devoted extensive effort to hosting rescue cats in need of a home. Some of these efforts are temporary and the cats later go on to more permanent owners. He is known for taking meticulous care of the animals, so much so that the New York Times  reported that he changes their litter thrice daily such that the apartment bears no odor at all. It is an unfortunate reflection on the state of media that these immense acts of compassion have been caricatured as if Sliwa were some sort of maniac.  Sliwa’s recognition of the brutality of the American factory farming system has led him to become vegetarian. He is known to aspire  to be a vegan. However, Sliwa’s stance on animal rights goes beyond a personal distaste for factory farming and a fondness for cats; his commitment has been a consistent theme throughout his mayoral campaign platform. Sliwa is alone among the candidates in having put together a comprehensive platform  on animal rights issues. Amongst his proposals is the formation of a full fledged Department of Animal Welfare. The new Department would include a “hotline where people can call [to report] animal cruelty tips, illegal backyard breeding tips, [and] other animal related crimes” and would maintain a registry of all convicted animal abusers similar to a sex-offender registry. The agency would be able to “dispatch agents who would have peace officer status to investigate these reports.” Sliwa has promised to lobby against the sale of furs in New York, although it is unclear whether this would entail a complete ban. He has also proposed a program for pet owners modelled after SNAP—colloquially known as “food stamps”—where the city will cover up to $1,000 in care expenses for all who rescue a pet. Sliwa has even floated a GPS system to make tracking lost cats and dogs simpler. He hopes to have the Department of Animal Welfare oversee the formation of managed feline colonies to control the population of stray cats. This would allow strays to be checked for disease, spayed or neutered, and protected from abuse. Meanwhile, the city would use them to effectively control  New York’s rat and mouse population. The over 1,000 animals in New York’s shelter system have experienced tragic overcrowding  to the point of suspension of new arrivals. Sliwa has stood alone in denouncing this overcrowding and the suspension it caused. He has called for cancelling a billion dollars worth of city contracts with exploitative shelters. All future contracts would require shelters to be no-kill and offer free spay and neuter services.  A media obsessed with covering Andrew Cuomo’s long and horrific record  of sexual harassment, bribery  allegations against Eric Adams, and allegations  of anti-semitism against Zohran Mamdani has allowed the compassion of Curtis Sliwa to go relatively unnoticed. For those across the nation who care about animal protection, his campaign stands as a beacon of hope, showing how these issues can transcend party lines in politics.

By the time we feel ready to commit, we’ve spent a decade practicing how not to. Credit: Enya Kamadolli The first time that I told my family that I only date for marriage, my father’s eyebrows flew up, my mother had to put her tea cup back down, and my brother’s mouth opened before mine closed.  They all found that declaration rather worrying, and for good reason.  I’m surprised someone like you would want something that traditional, ventured my father. He may not believe that women should ever pay for dinner, but he’s quietly proud that he’s raised a daughter who demands to, anyway. The little girl intent on conquering the world had grown up into an unabashedly liberated young woman, and dating for marriage seemed to betray the arc of my own becoming.   You’re too young for that, admonished my mother. My mother and I are more alike than either of us would like to admit, and I saw in her eyes a longing to tell her younger self to stave off settling down for as long as possible.  God, what sort of men are you attracting saying things like that? My brother Aeden looked like he wanted to sprinkle me with spiced kombucha and plaster feminist literature across my forehead to ward off the chino-clad, regular-at-church, trad men he was imagining. He’s holding out hope that one of these days I might actually date a woman.  We often equate dating for marriage with a socially conservative outlook—one that upholds the family as the cornerstone of a virtuous life and disapproves of casual dating or sex. To be a social liberal is to have liberal amounts of flings and casual relationships during one’s twenties, apparently.  But really there are plenty of young fellow social liberals that do hope to have a happy marriage someday .  Anyone who considers marriage an eventual priority should start dating with that end in mind right now. In fact, the costs of not doing so are arguably higher for those of us who seek modern, egalitarian partnerships than for those pursuing more traditional ones. Without the templates of prescriptive gender roles or shared religious doctrines to guide us, identifying a truly compatible partner demands far more trial and error.  Divorce rates scream a humbling truth: we’re often not skilled at finding the right person—or at staying right for them. The best way to build conviction that someone is your  right choice and the best way to learn how to be their ideal life partner is to date—and date seriously—for several years. Even serious relationships that fail teach us so much about what it takes to live a successful partnered life and determine what we’re looking for (and what we’re hoping to avoid) in a life partner.  One of my older cousins recently got married after an eight-year-long relationship. She and her husband have the sort of relationship that even atheists pray for. I asked her once why she had waited so long to walk down the aisle. If someone’s the right person for you, you don’t lose anything by waiting to get married. But if someone’s not the right person for you, there are huge costs to rushing.  Wrapped up in all our worries about what we might lose when we commit to a serious relationship at the onset of young adulthood, we ignore the costs that we’re pushing onto our future selves—namely, the risk of committing to a marriage that we are ill-suited and underprepared for, one that is doomed to fail from the start.  If you spend your twenties running around the world with people that you know you’re not going to marry, the likelihood that you rush to the altar into your thirties is much higher. If you start dating to marry only when you’re ready to tie the knot, it might be too late. You’re an individual who has yet to learn how to be a serious partner , searching—frantically, if you want to start a family by a certain age—without knowing what you’re hoping to find.  It takes years to unlearn the individualistic reflexes that sabotage serious relationships. You can’t spend your twenties perfecting the art of self-prioritization and then expect to abandon self-interest the moment the right person appears. A successful marriage needs far more than two individuals—it needs two people who have learned how to make a union greater than the sum of its parts.  Yet, the “flip-switch” mentality is everywhere. There are the people you date for fun in your early 20s—the lore will outlast their stay—and there are the people that you date when you want to start settling down, we’re told. In Privilege ,   an account of his Harvard undergraduate days, Ross Douthat recalls a college crush telling him “I'm sorry—I could see myself marrying you. I could. But I don't know if I could see us dating right now. Does that make any sense?” We’ve forgotten that the two pools (those you date in your twenties and those you marry) can and do overlap all the time—in fact, finding someone who falls in the middle of the Venn diagram should be the goal.  My father and my best friend’s mother are more pessimistic. Even if you’re thinking about your future with someone right now, boys aren’t thinking that way, even if they think they are. While I was healing from my most recent heartbreak, my father advised me that men aren’t emotionally mature enough to have serious relationships until they’re 25, and that perhaps I should just swear off serious relationships until then. Similarly, every corner of the internet warns me that guys just marry whoever they’re with when they’re ready to get married . At least some of the men that I’ve dated are compelling evidence against the above parental wisdom, but many of them prove my father and my best friend’s mother right.  What dating for marriage asks of you is hard, no matter your gender or emotional maturity. How do I know who my future self will want to marry when I don’t yet know my future self?  We live in a world that increasingly pushes us to make predictions about our future selves earlier and earlier. Many of us try to create ordered lives that are older than we are, including in the romantic realm. When we’re young, serious relationships can look like playing house before we’re actually ready to run a household together.  In this way, dating with the future in mind can be dangerous. The imagined idyllic family life ahead can become a mirage that keeps you trudging forward, and in perpetually looking forward, you forget to look down at the ground you’re standing on. The fantasy of a shared future might blind you to the reality of an unfulfilling present.  Dating for marriage is not, and should not be understood as, dating for potential. We should not tolerate dissatisfaction in the present for the promise of an uncertain happy future—if only because our present happiness is predictive of the happiness of our future selves.  To date for marriage, then, is to honor both your present self and your future self. A relationship worth pursuing is one that makes you happy in the present and holds the promise of happiness and fulfillment years down the line. Don’t waste your time dating people you know you’ll never marry, and don’t waste your time dating people who have promised you the future but can’t show up in the present. Date the middle of the Venn diagram.

Higher education through one-sided narratives has created "closed classrooms." Credit: Wikipedia Professors Jon Shields (CMC), Yuval Avnur (Scripps), and Stephanie Muravchik (CMC) have recently released a working paper  analyzing diversity of thought in American college syllabi. The research team examined how three controversial issues—bias in the American criminal justice system, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the ethics of abortion—were taught in classrooms, with an eye to whether these issues were presented as scholarly debates between good-faith opponents.   With op-eds in the Wall Street Journal   and the Washington Monthly , alongside coverage from Ross Douthat in The New York Times  and Emma Pettit in The Chronicle of Higher Education , the researchers have garnered attention for their study’s bleak results: education through one-sided narratives has created “closed classrooms.” Methodology Through the “ Open Syllabus Project ” (OSP) database, the researchers had access to 27 million syllabi scraped from university websites dating back to 2008. “The surprising thing about the database is how little it’s been used,” Professor Shields noted in an interview with The Forum . With features tracking how often specific texts are assigned and paired with those expressing opposing views, the team could use this tool in an innovative way—to examine if syllabi fairly assigned both canonical texts and  their criticisms.     The three focus topics were selected for their disciplinary breadth—criminal justice draws on  sociology and law, Israel-Palestine on political science and history, and abortion on philosophy. These issues have also been omnipresent during the research team’s teaching tenure. Criminal justice and the Israel-Palestine conflict have been the two most polarizing campus issues for the past decade, Shields observed, whereas abortion is the most enduring issue in the broader American culture wars.  The next step was determining the canonical texts of each debate, with decisions made based on citation counts and the researchers’ own familiarity with the scholarship. The researchers chose Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow  (19,000 citations) on criminal justice, Edward Said’s Orientalism  (90,000 citations) on Israel-Palestine, and Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” (3,000 citations) on abortion. All of these authors have provoked pushback, with their critics raising subtle complications and, other times, offering full-throated rejections. The question remains whether these critics are being taught and, if so, at what frequency.  Findings Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow —assigned 4,309 times in classrooms since 2012—argues that though formal racial discrimination ended with the Civil Rights Movement, the carceral system has replaced the old Jim Crow. Critics like James Forman Jr., John Pfaff, and Michael Fortner argue that Alexander fails to consider favorable Black attitudes to incarceration and overemphasizes the role of drug convictions in prison growth.      Of all the opposing texts co-assigned with The New Jim Crow , Forman’s essay “Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration” was the most common. However, Forman was assigned only 149 times in the 4,309 syllabi that include Alexander. Simply put, only three percent of students reading The New Jim Crow  have also read its top critic. Instead, they read texts that reaffirm Alexander’s thesis; the texts most frequently co-assigned with The New Jim Crow  are Angela Davis’s Are Prisons Obsolete ?, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me , and Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish .   Syllabi that include Orientalism  indicate a similar trend. Orientalism —cited 90,000 times and assigned in 16,000 courses—is more popular in classrooms than any “great book” of the Western canon. Author Edward Said, in discussing the ways Western experts (“Orientalists”) misrepresent the East, argues that Israel’s sovereignty can only be justified by embracing a xenophobic Western ideology.  Said’s foremost critic is Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations  (cited 50,000 times and assigned in 9,000 courses). Huntington argues that Islam presents a dangerous threat to Western ideology. Said has called Huntington’s argument “a gimmick.”  Yet students are not made familiar with the heated debate between the two scholars. Huntington is only assigned in 758 of the courses that assign Said—less than five percent of the time. Orientalism ’s more commonly co-assigned texts are other works of critical theory, such as Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities , Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth , and Homi K. Bhabha’s The Location of Culture .  In a surprising turn, and to the credit of professors assigning Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion,” the most commonly co-assigned text is Don Marquis’s essay, “Why Abortion is Immoral.” In fact, works expressing pro-life positions are assigned with Thomson more than a third of the time.  The researchers note that the department primarily responsible for teaching Thomas—philosophy, which accounts for 90 percent of the occurrences of Thomson’s work across syllabi—may play a role in fostering this openness. Philosophy is a “discipline whose pedagogical aims explicitly include exposing students to competing arguments,” the researchers state.  However, during our interview, Professor Shields was cautious to read too much into disciplinary differences. Though philosophy professors assigned Thomson with her critics more often than their non-philosophy colleagues assigned critics for their materials, such professors were in the minority. The “norm was not to assign her with her critics,” Shields observes, remaining uncertain whether other questions in philosophy would be presented any fairer.  Interestingly, when critics are  assigned in syllabi regarding all three topics, the most commonly co-assigned materials are the mainstream canon. For instance, professors who assigned Forman assigned The New Jim Crow 82 percent of the time. And even if Alexander was not taught with her critics, the research team found that similar—sometimes even more radical voices—were often assigned in place of The New Jim Crow .  Reflections  Since the paper’s release, critics have questioned whether “closed classrooms” are the norm. Shields says that many higher-education courses are uncontroversial in their subject matters, and often taught without issue. But the measure of a liberal institution is not how it teaches inoffensive issues, but how it prepares its students to grapple with the deeply polarizing ones.   By no means should academics avoid teaching certain fashionable thinkers, Shields added. “The academy has always been…faddish and taken with certain intellectuals.” The concern lies in whether they are presented in conversation with critics or presented as infallible.  There are also pragmatic benefits to liberalizing these classrooms—even if such “controversial” courses are in the minority. Increasing the rigor of debates in the humanities and social sciences might curb the drift towards STEM. Doing so might also help universities avoid future federal attacks. By presenting more well-rounded syllabi, academics can change the perception that “we’re trying to push a particular political project onto the public,” Shield says. On a final note, when asked how he’d motivate professors to open their classrooms, Shields replied: “it’s more fun.” Presenting these debates certainly makes the world more “complicated and tragic” for these students, but also gives them the sense that something is at stake. They gain the confidence needed to become thoughtful citizens, recognizing the import of these weighty questions.  “We must invite students into the drama of truth-seeking.”

The United States must continue to make it clear that we stand with the Venezuelan people, against tyranny, and for democracy. Credit : Matias Delacroix, Associated Press It is no secret that the United States and Venezuela have not enjoyed friendly relations with each other. This fact has become especially apparent under President Trump. The President has on multiple occasions—both publicly  and privately —spoken of potential military action against the South American nation across his two terms. This possibility became particularly relevant  with the appointment of Marco Rubio—a longtime  advocate of intervention in Venezuela—as Secretary of State under the second Trump administration. Catalyzing regime change would certainly work towards America’s best geopolitical interests. And taking such a bold and active step to liberate the Venezuelan people is the morally right thing to do, as well. Nicolás Maduro is not the legitimate President of Venezuela; he is a usurper, holding onto power through illegal means, despite his people making it abundantly clear that they do not support his regime’s continued rule. The 2024 presidential election was suspect from the outset. Maduro blocked  his leading political rival, María Corina Machado—who was recently awarded  the Nobel Peace Prize—from running. When the election occurred, the legitimate results  published by the opposition—which have been independently verified  by election experts—showed Maduro losing in a landslide to former diplomat Edmundo González. This result was affirmed by  President Biden’s Secretary of State. But the “official” results published by the government (which lack transparent  data such as tally sheets) claimed that Maduro had won a third term. The government has since engaged in harsh crackdowns against dissent, forcing the rightful president-elect to seek exile in Spain. Political scientist Steven Levitsky called  the episode “one of the most egregious electoral frauds in modern Latin American history.” Since the election, multiple Venezuelan dissidents—including Machado, who has remained in hiding in Venezuela despite the immense threat to her life—have publicly stated  that they would welcome American military assistance in deposing Maduro. U.S. military intervention would not be an invasion. It would be a liberation of a people suffering under an illegitimate government—one they have rejected and that refuses to abide by democratic laws. Nor would it necessarily entail boots on the ground. Intervention might instead begin with a naval blockade, air strikes, and the like. This would catalyze action from within the nation, providing support to armed rebel movements without requiring American soldiers to set foot on Venezuelan soil. Any true believer in liberal democracy should approve of such a move.  As he has repeatedly shown, Maduro is not interested in any kind of peace. His government’s claimed annexation  of two-thirds of the territory of neighboring Guyana, for example, is a gross violation of Guyanese sovereignty and international law. If Maduro does not face punishment for his actions, he will continue to jail and murder his political opponents and intimidate neighboring countries. He will persist in eroding Venezuela’s democracy and will destabilize the democracies of other nations in the region. Indeed, the situation is already dire— almost 8 million  Venezuelans have fled because of food insecurity and political persecution since 2014.  Fortunately, the Trump administration has demonstrated a willingness to confront Maduro, most recently by shooting down  a boat operated by a Venezuelan drug cartel and through other displays of force  in the Caribbean. The United States must continue to make it clear that we stand with the Venezuelan people, that we want to see their wishes for self-governance honored, and that we stand against tyranny, against dictatorship, and for democracy. On Oct. 10, following her receipt of the Nobel Prize, Machado posted  the following on X: “We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy.” Machado’s words amount to a renewed call for U.S. intervention. The United States should listen to the Nobel laureate and restore order, democracy, and self-government to the people of Venezuela.

Attitudes towards the LGBTQ community have regressed because the movement has lost its ability to persuade.  Credit: Ted Eytan, The Denver Clarion It’s been over five years since I sat in a corner of my bedroom and forced myself to entertain the nagging thought that I was not straight. I didn’t grow up in a tolerant environment where my realization could have been just another aspect of hitting puberty. And I figured it out far too early for any sort of libertine college experimentation phase. The loneliness was crushing.  Yet, looking back today, on Coming Out Day 2025, I’m still thankful I came out when I did.  For the past three years, a consistent 64 percent of Americans have considered gay or lesbian relations to be morally acceptable—down from 71 percent in 2022, according to a 2025 Gallup poll . By party, Democrat acceptance currently rests at 86 percent and Republican support is at 38 percent, an 18-point drop from 56 percent in 2022. When asked whether gay marriage should be recognized with the same rights as traditional marriage, Republican support decreased by 14 points from 55 percent in 2022 to 41 percent today.  What may seem like a rapid regression in tolerance has actually been years in the making. Over the past decade, the LGBTQ movement has failed to shore up and sustain support for its members. The movement has “lost the art of persuasion” as Representative Sarah McBride —the first openly transgender member of Congress—told Ezra Klein for The New York Times  earlier this year.  With an era of good feelings post- Obergefell , activists brushed off the doubts and resistance that lingered in parts of the American populace, McBride argues. This hand-waving affected the transgender community most. After marriage equality was won, activists believed that enough of the population embraced the “T” of LGBTQ as part of “the same movement,” seeing no further need to engage and sway their opponents.  It’s a classic case of “dead dogma,” a concept introduced by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty . If we unflinchingly accept a view as true, our belief in that view—even if we’re convinced it is the truth—weakens. Thus, we file away the reasoning for our convictions and parrot the formularies—in this case, the “love is love” and “trans people are people” sloganeering. We then forget how to defend our beliefs against dissenters.  In part because of this ideological insulation, the movement’s tent no longer includes unlikely coalitions that can secure tangible victories. Consider the Human Rights Campaign  (HRC), which, in 1998, supported Republican Senator Alfonse D’Amato for re-election instead of Democratic challenger Chuck Schumer. Their endorsement strategy favored incumbents when candidates’ records were comparable, and D’Amato had supported anti-discrimination measures and bills allowing gays to serve openly in the military. The HRC sought out winners  for their cause, not leaders who’d signal their sanctimonious political correctness all of the time.   Today, with groups like “ Queers for Palestine ” and theories like “ Queer Ecology ,” the LGBTQ movement has been subsumed under a broader progressive one. Say what you will about how intertwined these allies’ needs are or how unified they are in spirit. The fact remains that the LGBTQ movement has transformed itself into a reactionary monolith, one bloc joining forces with other “oppressed” groups to resist politicians, corporations, religious groups, and “oppressors” of all stripes.  Lesbian author Camille Paglia  observed this tendency as far back as the 1990s in her book Vamps & Tramps : “Get rid of victimology and oppression politics…Gay activism has got to get off its knee-jerk oppositional mode and into an affirmative articulation of first principles.” This “oppositional mode,” a high-strung and zero-sum mindset, has become more popular in the movement today. Some of us snap too quickly. We no longer want to “open hearts and change minds,” to quote McBride. This is a departure from the strategies of the past, political commentator Andrew Sullivan  says, when activists explicitly sought out conversations at “fundamentalist churches…Catholic universities…[and on] right-wing talk shows.”  Sullivan, a gay man himself, believes that the LGBTQ movement has not only neglected to engage its opponents, but also its internal  dissenters. Today, disagreement abounds between older queer generations and younger ones. There are tensions between those who pursue marriage and the white-picket-fence, and those that reject that “heteronormative” lifestyle, for example.  Sullivan has long observed the great diversity of opinion within his community. Yet today, good-faith questions and dissenting opinions, be they about youth gender medicine or LGBTQ content in schools, are ignored at best and derided at worst. The movement attempts to put up a “unified” front—to its own detriment. When Sarah McBride claimed she would follow the rules of the House’s bathroom restrictions , she caught flack. Her insistence that this policy was a distraction —that the community must ignore these “manufactur[ed] culture wars” and choose their battles wisely—drew the ire of many. “She should be using [her] power…not promoting messaging that suggests trans people should fall in line,” one transgender individual responded  in an interview for The Washington Post . This individual’s comment represents the broader aversion of having to “debate one’s existence.” It’s a common refrain—as if defending  one’s identity invalidates  it. The fact of the matter is that conceptions of sexuality and gender are not passively understood, nor are they automatically embraced. This has become especially evident over the last decade, as the queer community has rapidly adopted complex ivory tower cultural norms and queer theory lingo, McBride observes. The movement has left many people—and most concerningly, many LGBTQ people—perplexed.  If you find that you can best describe your identity with neopronouns , “ xenogenders ,” or other hyperspecific—and, frankly, confusing—labels, you must be ready to explain, and yes, defend  yourself. Candidly, so should any lesbian woman or transgender man. Resting on your laurels, naively believing that any debate has been “settled,” is what got us here. Confusion drives fear, which drives hatred.  I get it. In middle school, I had no desire to speak to the classmates and parents who protested a textbook’s mention of Sally Ride’s sexuality. In high school, I certainly didn’t want to cross paths with the Bass Pro Shop enthusiasts and athleisure-loving popular girls who thought homosexuality was a mental illness. And outside of the occasional conversation with peers who believe I’ll be heading to hell, I wouldn’t say I’m doing much in the way of persuasion right now, either. However, even if we personally aren’t willing to “debate our existence,” we must endorse its strategic importance. We must demand this approach from non-profits and advocacy groups, activists and influencers, that are able. We must see the community for what it is: a political entity seeking to preserve its existence.  All communities must justify themselves through sustained persuasion. They must choose their battles carefully, even if it means making occasional concessions  to fight another day. From the Civil Rights Act of 1964  to vaccination policies , deliberative—though often tedious and frustrating—consensus-building leads to a more convicted and enduring base of supporters.  Rights secured by law do not remain secure by inertia; they must be defended, explained, and renewed through an ongoing commitment to engage with dissidents, both from without and from within. There is an art to building coalitions broad enough to withstand cultural and political headwinds.  If the LGBTQ movement wishes to reverse the erosion of public support, it must rediscover how to argue for itself, to listen, to disagree, and to master the hard work of persuasion. This is the only way we can ensure that the freedoms won in previous generations remain secure for ours—especially for the closeted youth hoping to find their way out.

What you need to know about Tuesday’s 5C events. Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine vigil.  On Tuesday, Oct. 7, students and faculty across the Claremont Colleges participated in pro-Palestine events, including vigils and speaker events, to mark two years of conflict between Israel and Hamas. On this day  in 2023, Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis on the country’s southern border and took 251 hostages, which sparked Israel’s siege in Gaza that has killed over 67,000 Palestinians and displaced most of the territory’s population.  On their Instagram, Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) shared a lineup of events  to take place during the week. The first event was a vigil organized by the Faculty for Justice in Palestine, hosted outside the Honnold Mudd Library on Oct. 6.  Multiple events took place on Oct. 7, with a "Strike for Gaza" promoted by the SJP, Claremont Undercurrents , Claremont Graduate University Intifada, and various other affinity and activist groups across the Colleges."No work! No spending," the groups urged, as they requested students and faculty to "not attend classes or work." An email template was circulated by SJP group leaders, giving students a format to explain the reason for their absence in class, while urging their professors to “acknowledge the genocide” and “atrocities occurring in Gaza.” The template concludes with student participants encouraging their professors to “let me know if there is anything I can do to support you in confronting this in class. I’d love to be a resource for you in this.”  SJP also hosted a vigil at the Pitzer clocktower between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., giving students, faculty, and staff the opportunity to place flowers and notes beneath a banner that read “Honor the Martyrs.” A portable speaker played audio that read aloud names of Palestinians killed in the conflict. At 12:15 p.m., speeches began as organizers delivered poems and works of Palestinian writers. A native Gazan shared his poem about the destruction of Palestine. Attendees then had an opportunity to read a piece or share their own words. At 3 p.m., the Southwest Asian North Africa Club co-hosted a speaker event with the 5C Prison Abolition Collective at Scripps’s Motley Coffeehouse. The groups invited activist Shaheen Nassar, a member of the “Irvine 11.” In 2011, Nassar and ten other students at the University of California, Irvine were arrested and convicted  for disrupting a speech by Michael Oren, the former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.  Outside the Motley, students set up a market with pro-Palestine prints and stickers. Customers were told that proceeds would go to The People’s Fund, a student-led mutual aid organization that has raised nearly $56,000 for relief groups in Sudan, Congo, and Palestine through their donation site . The Motley event organizers said that they had raised $1,000 that evening alone.  Fundraiser for The People’s Fund at the Motley. At 5:30 p.m., the Muslim Students Association organized a vigil titled “In Remembrance of the Martyrs of Palestine,” on the Scripps Bowling Green Lawn. Student leaders read aloud prayers and called for an end to the violence.  Many groups shared their reservations about organizing demonstrations during the second Trump administration. On Oct. 7 of last year, around 100 students occupied Carnegie Hall  for five hours, with some vandalizing the interior with graffiti and breaking AV equipment. Ten were suspended for the semester. On March 27, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter  to Pomona requiring that the college produce disciplinary records of students involved in “antisemitic incidents” since 2023, particularly of those involved in the occupation.  This year’s organizers also expressed fear for their undocumented peers, concerned that demonstrations would catch the attention of federal law enforcement agencies like ICE. “We knew that it would be too much of a risk for our members,” an SJP organizer stated, “We have a lot of folks within our community that organize with us that are undocumented or don’t have legal [status]... It is not a good time for us to escalate.” When asked what “white allies” could do to help at the Motley, Nassar responded, “If there’s more brazen forms of disruption, agitation, and protest, maybe some of our white counterparts who are less likely to receive the brunt of [law enforcement] force could step up to those levels.” Students gather on Scripps Bowling Green Lawn for Muslim Student Association vigil.  Even so, many participants did not wear masks during the events—a noticeable difference from last year’s Carnegie Hall occupation . The SJP organizer said that it was more “powerful” to show their faces, particularly at a nondisruptive event like a vigil, where attendees could reflect and share in “collective identity and grief.”  A point of contention is the decision to host these events on Oct. 7, the day when Israel experienced Hamas’s ambush and had not yet begun its offensive into Gaza. One of Claremont’s Jewish life groups, Hillel, denounced the chosen date, stating:  “Commemorating Palestinian ‘martyrs’ on October 7th—the day when 1,200 people…were massacred, and 251 Jews and non-Jews were abducted—is deeply painful to many in our community. Choosing that date to center Palestinian suffering does not come across as mourning Palestinian civilians; it reads as honoring those who carried out the attack.” At the Motley speaker event, when one organizer was asked why the event was held on Oct. 7, they did not have an answer and were unsure if anyone else at the event would be able to provide one. The Claremont Muslim Student Association did not respond to a request for comment. When asked over direct message, an SJP organizer said that their “vigil was about grieving the collective life lost in the past two years due to colonial and state violence, this includes all Israeli fatalities from Hamas’ [ sic ] attack on the Nova festival.” Another vigil, which was hosted that same day at CMC’s Bauer Center “to honor the lives lost on October 7th and throughout the ongoing conflict in Palestine,” memorializing both Israeli and Palestinian deaths, was poorly attended. The event, beginning at 7 p.m., saw not more than ten people trickle in and out.  This event was referred to as “Zionist-facing” by the SJP organizer for “not directly exposing the reality of colonial violence on the ground” and “describing things as ‘the conflict’ [instead of] calling the situation in Gaza a genocide.”  The peaceful nature of the pro-Palestine events also contrasted with the language used in various Instagram posts uploaded that morning, including one from the SJP: “Today and everyday until the zionist regime falls, we grieve and honor the martyrs, while remaining steadfast in organizing for those who are still enduring a brutal reality.” The post goes on, adding, “While the US/israeli [ sic ] war machine continues to devastate Palestine, the US government continues its colonial legacy by building cop cities and detention centers, conducting mass deportations without due process, and cracking down on dissent and free speech in violent ways.”  A few days later, on Oct. 9, Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire that would require Hamas to release all Israeli hostages and partial Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The Claremont Colleges’ McAlister Center for Spiritual Life and Claremont Hillel will be hosting a memorial service and speaker event with Oct. 7 survivor Yoni Viloga on Wednesday, Oct. 17. On Oct. 7, there were no public on-campus vigils held exclusively for victims of Oct. 7, 2023. This article was published in conjunction with the Claremont Independent . Andrew Nelson, Andrew Lu, Arjun Vohra, and Greta Long contributed reporting. Correction: This article has been updated to reflect SJP's status as one of several groups promoting the "Strike for Gaza." The original version referred to SJP as the sole organizer of the strike.

Provocative political posturing has no place on campuses committed to constructive dialogue. Credit: Bryan Myrick , Idaho Press Conservatives represent a small minority of the student body at CMC, and an even smaller minority across the Claremont Colleges. CMC’s 2024 Political Attitudes Survey  found that 18.8% of respondents identify as Republicans, up from 6% in 2022. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) affirms this result, reporting that CMC has a liberal-to-conservative ratio  of 4:1. The ratios for the other colleges are more stark: 30:1 for Pomona , 34:1 for Scripps , 26:1 for Pitzer , and 39:1 for Harvey Mudd . While all of these surveys rely on a limited sample size of each college’s student body and may have a substantial margin of error, they reflect an uncontroversial fact: conservative students are significantly  outnumbered in Claremont. In fact, the problem may be worse than it seems. Fear of social and academic repercussions leads conservative students to censor themselves both within and outside of the classroom. All of the Claremont Colleges earned grades of D or lower for “Self-Censorship” according to FIRE. Given this campus climate — and the strong leftward lean  of Claremont faculty — conservative viewpoints on campus are being expressed even more rarely than the demographics of the student body imply. CMC’s chapter of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) seeks to remedy this problem by empowering conservative student voices. Charlie Kirk, TPUSA’s founder, traveled to college campuses across the country to promote the organization’s views. His signature approach was sitting at a table with a sign boldly proclaiming “Prove Me Wrong.” He was known for engaging in fiery debates with students, often dropping provocative one-liners that got widespread attention — both positive and negative — on social media. Kirk warned  of “Blacks prowling the streets to go harass whites,” claimed that “anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors,” referred to President Biden as “a bumbling dementia-filled Alzheimer’s corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty,” and used a slur for transgender people. He advocated conservative principles, but he also engaged in rage-baiting through intentionally inflammatory comments. TPUSA’s “nearly 800+ college chapters”  follow Charlie Kirk’s model. Turning Point proclaims that its mission  is “to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.” But when this mission fuels incivility, political polarization, and the villainization of alternative viewpoints, it ends up harming our colleges and our country. Claremont McKenna College champions the principles of free expression, viewpoint diversity, and constructive dialogue. In 2018, the college founded the Open Academy  as “[a] response to the educational imperative of our time: overcoming what divides us to solve the world’s most challenging problems.” Turning Point USA aims to broadcast their political agenda at all costs, embracing combative discourse to do so. These tactics are antithetical to CMC’s core principles. America is incredibly polarized right now. 80% of adults believe  that Republican and Democratic voters disagree not only on plans and policies, but also on basic facts. Worse, we are struggling to have respectful, constructive dialogue across political differences. 84% of Americans believe  that political debate in the U.S. has become less respectful and fact-based in recent years. 57% say that disagreements between Republicans and Democrats receive too much attention, and 78% say that too little attention is paid to important issues facing the country.  In light of the current national political climate, CMC’s nonpartisan and campus wide Open Academy initiative is laudable. By teaching future leaders and professionals the value of civil discourse, colleges like CMC open the door to healing America’s polarization problem.  The solution to Claremont’s viewpoint diversity problem and America’s polarization isn’t platforming provocative and combative dialogue. Instead, conservative students should focus on opportunities to present their ideas in respectful, intellectual ways that open doors for further conversations. Many students come to the Claremont Colleges with little-to-no exposure to conservative viewpoints. Oftentimes, students perceive Republicans as angry, hateful, or bigoted. By promoting thoughtful conservative arguments in a civil manner, right-leaning students can challenge this perception, allowing their peers to see the American right for what it is: a diverse political movement with a rich history and a strong intellectual backing. Organizations like Turning Point USA simply reinforce the preconceived stereotypes about Republicans, fueling division while hurting the conservative movement. Representation is powerful. When students  interact with peers different from themselves — whether in identity, experience, or ideology — they become less prejudiced . Conservative students can help their peers consider new political perspectives while  healing  political polarization. However, this only works if we focus on building bridges rather than tearing them down. Turning Point USA’s combative approach to dialogue undermines the credibility of conservative students by associating their beliefs with harassment and incivility. A core tenet of conservatism is that change is slow. Edmund Burke, the intellectual founder of conservatism, wrote  that “Time is required to produce that union of minds which alone can produce all the good we aim at.” Lasting and stable social change is driven by consensus-building efforts, not by yelling louder than your opponents. Yet Turning Point USA has abandoned this principle, prioritizing clicks over progress. Claremont conservatives who want to be heard should embrace civil discourse and turn away from Turning Point.

To recognize Somaliland is to destabilize Africa and undercut America’s values. This article is part of The Forum ’s Debate Series, in which student writers take opposing sides on issues of importance to public life. Read the other side of the debate here . Somali Prime Minister Abdirashid Ali Shermarke with President John F. Kennedy at the White House in 1962. Credit: U.S. National Archives Somali Prime Minister Abdirashid Ali Shermarke with President John F. Kennedy at the White House in 1962. (Credit: U.S. National Archives ) The enclave calling itself Somaliland marked the thirty-fourth anniversary of its unilateral secession this May with parades, speeches, and pageantry. Its leaders point to a local currency, passports, and episodic elections as proof of independence. They brand Somaliland as the "only democracy  in the Horn of Africa," contrasting themselves with a Somalia still rebuilding from decades of conflict. Yet not a single United Nations member state has endorsed their claim. Only Taiwan—excluded from the UN itself—has extended recognition . The absence of recognition reflects a shared judgment: Somaliland's case does not meet the standards of statehood. For Washington to recognize it now would not affirm American values, but betray them. The territory that makes up Somaliland was a British protectorate until 1960, when it achieved independence. That independence lasted only five days. In July of that year, leaders from both the north and south voluntarily united  to form the Somali Republic. The union was celebrated as a rare example of African unity in an era otherwise defined by fragmentation. In 1964, the Organization of African Unity adopted  Resolution 16(1) , committing its members to respect the borders they inherited at independence. Somalia, as a recognized state, fell under its protection. Somaliland, having ceased to exist as a separate entity after the union, did not. For six decades since, international law has treated Somalia's territorial integrity as the baseline—a position consistently reaffirmed  by the African Union. Supporters of Somaliland often point to 1991, when the Somali National Movement declared independence in Hargeisa. The claim is that Somalia's collapse justified separation. But the declaration was unilateral. It was not ratified by a national plebiscite or endorsed by any international body. Later referendums organized in Somaliland suffered the same problem. In 2001, unionist regions refused  to participate at all, dismissing the vote as illegitimate. Even the 1961 constitutional referendum, often cited by secessionists, is misrepresented. While some northern districts opposed the draft constitution, the majority of Somali clans across the country, including in the north, approved  it. In Somalia's clan-based political order, no single region can claim to speak for all. These votes were never inclusive enough to carry the weight of sovereignty. The image of Somaliland as "the Horn's only democracy" is also less persuasive on closer inspection. Its multiparty system is capped  by law at three parties, each dominated  by a single clan. International human rights organizations have documented repeated violations : arbitrary detentions, crackdowns on journalists, and repression of political dissent. Historical episodes show a pattern of coercion. In Borama  in 1991 and Kalshaale  in 2012, civilians resisting secession were massacred . In Las Anod in 2023, authorities expelled  thousands of residents southward, separating families in the process. Elections have been held, but under these conditions they reflect control more than consent. To frame Somaliland as a model of pluralism is to overlook the exclusionary politics that sustain it. Recognition would also cut against America's broader commitments. U.S. foreign policy rests on three principles: sovereignty, democracy, and stability. Recognition of Somaliland undermines all three. Sovereignty, because it would redraw Somalia's borders without its consent, contradicting decades of U.S. support  for African unity. Democracy, because it would endorse one clan's dominance as representative of all Somalis. Stability, because it would invite other separatist movements across Africa—from Tigray in Ethiopia to the Anglophone regions of Cameroon—to demand the same treatment. The U.S. cannot credibly defend Ukraine's sovereignty against Russia or Taiwan's democracy against Beijing while disregarding Somalia's unity. Some in Washington have entertained recognition for strategic reasons. In 2023, Representative Scott Perry introduced legislation , and by 2025 reports suggested that the Trump administration might view recognition as a way to secure influence  in the Gulf of Aden. Senior U.S. military officials  even visited  Hargeisa, underscoring the interest. But treating Somali borders as bargaining chips for access or positioning undermines the very principles the U.S. claims to uphold. For decades, Washington has supported the African Union's insistence that postcolonial borders remain fixed  to prevent endless disputes. To discard that standard now for short-term advantage would not strengthen American strategy, but weaken its credibility across Africa and beyond. Nor is there African support for recognition. The African Union and regional bodies have repeatedly affirmed  Somalia's territorial integrity. No African state has recognized Somaliland. The push comes instead from Western think tanks, scattered legislators, and European populists. Acting alone would isolate Washington from Africa and hand China and Russia an easy line: that U.S. support for sovereignty is selective. Recognition of Somaliland would not mark a victory for democracy, but a return to colonial arrogance—a signal that the sovereignty of African nations can still be bartered away when it suits a superpower. It would silence the unionist communities who continue to reject  secession. It would reward an enclave whose history includes repression ,   displacement , and   exclusion . And it would signal that American values—sovereignty, democracy, stability—are negotiable. U.S. policy can either uphold those principles consistently or abandon them in Hargeisa. It cannot do both.

The Horn of Africa’s best democracy is key to a more peaceful continental order. This article is part of The Forum ’s Debate Series, in which student writers take opposing sides on issues of importance to public life. Read the other side of the debate here . A woman celebrates her nation’s independence in 2025. Credit: Somaliland.com The Republic of Somaliland celebrated  its 34th annual independence day on May 18 with parades, song, and oratory. Somaliland issues its own currency and passports. It is the only democracy in the Horn of Africa and has achieved relative prosperity despite seceding from Somalia, a nation now globally synonymous with state failure. Yet, only the Republic of China (Taiwan) has afforded any recognition  to the festivities—and Somalilander independence writ large.  The present-day Republic of Somaliland comprises the sector of coastal Northern Somali territory formerly under British rule. It gained independence in 1960, separately from the former Italian colonies of Somali. However, it sought immediate reunion as part of the independence requirements for the British and Italian colonies. The Southern, formerly Italian-aligned leadership came to rule the union and Somaliland began its first attempt to seize independence in an unsuccessful 1961 revolt. After a period of political turmoil typical of post-colonial states, Somalia came under the communist rule of General Siad Barre. This arrangement was opposed by the Somali National Movement and finally ended in 1991 as the disintegration of the communist regime left the nation in chaos. The clans comprising Somaliland declared independence. This was initially seen as a temporary measure, but the escalating nature of the wider Somali conflict in their southern region led voters to overwhelmingly approve  a constitution, finalizing the nation’s independence in 2001. No member of the United Nations has recognized the Republic of Somaliland, and the non-UN member Taiwan only extended its recognition  in 2020. Despite this, practically every expert on the region has recognized its success. The new constitution successfully produced a relatively strong democracy that has seen several peaceful transfers of power. Development specialist Seth Kaplan argues  that Somaliland succeeded by rooting democratic practice in “traditional Somali concepts of governance by consultation and consent” that built a vibrant civil society. Early gatherings to form the state included “elders, religious leaders, politicians, civil servants, intellectuals, and businesspeople” and incorporated the already existing frameworks of civil society governance into formal institutions. To maintain this cohesion, political parties are required to draw support across regions, preventing purely clan or ethnicity centered movements from gaining power. However, Kaplan also recognizes that Somaliland, while exceptional in handling the challenges of post-colonial statehood, still suffers from issues of “nepotism and clannism.” “Corruption is rife,” particularly in its barely meritocratic civil service. The recent 2024 presidential election  saw significant outbreaks of violence. Nonetheless, opposition candidate Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi was victorious and the republic saw another peaceful and orderly transfer of power once the votes were cast.  The situation is not perfect, but the international human rights non-profit Freedom House rates  Somaliland as being roughly as free as Bosnia or Thailand in terms of civil and political liberties. Somalia, in contrast, is comparable to Afghanistan, Syria, or Myanmar. By failing to recognize Somaliland, the United States has failed to recognize an objective reality on the ground. The republic has proved itself able to self-govern over decades and does so leaps and bounds better than any regional actor. Recognizing the reality on the ground offers an opportunity to further both American values and American interests. The United States has no basis upon which to deny diplomatic recognition to a relative beacon of liberty and democratic practices in a region where both are lacking—despite America’s attempts at democracy promotion. Indeed, it is ludicrous to devote resources and rhetoric to promoting democratization in Africa while denying support to a democracy that built itself without an American crutch. The burgeoning alliance  between Taiwan and Somaliland demonstrates Somaliland’s orientation against the interests of Chinese economic expansion, which has come to dominate the developing economies of Africa. American diplomats publicly encourage  Guatemala, Paraguay, and other allies to stand by Taiwan in the face of diplomatic depredations from China. Meanwhile, we have failed to support one of these select few nations affording Taiwan with full diplomatic ties. As recently as June 24, Taiwan and Somaliland agreed  to joint development of their mutual coast guard forces, a vital move as fears of a Chinese land invasion of Taiwan continue. The United States cannot participate fully in guaranteeing the safety of Taiwan without the ability to work with Taiwan’s newest crucial defense partner.  The move might not be as far away as it once seemed. The recognition of Somaliland by the United States was a centerpiece of the agenda for African foreign policy proposed  by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 , though the niche proposal gained far less media attention than the hundreds of significantly more controversial suggestions. Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s right-wing populist Reform UK party recently dominating polls, has also voiced his support  for recognizing Somaliland’s independence. Pennsylvania Representative Scott Perry introduced House legislation  recognizing Somaliland in 2023. The movement has regained some steam as of May 2025 when The   Guardian reported  that the Trump Administration might use recognition of Somaliland as a means of securing a strategic position in the Gulf of Aden, near where the Yemeni Houthi organization has targeted  American ships. This would protect American interests in the regional oil economy. Lending credence to the report, senior leadership of the United States Army recently visited  Somaliland’s capital of Hargeisa.  United States policy is on the right track, but it has not gone far enough. Only the complete and total recognition of the independence of Somaliland can open the door to full diplomatic cooperation in a key region for American interests. Most importantly, only this level of recognition aligns with the American ethos of global democratization.

Nadine Strossen is American legal scholar and the author of The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail . Strossen sits down with Sara Arjomand '26 to discuss free speech and its status on today's American college campuses. This interview transcript and recording have been edited for length and clarity. Sara Arjomand:  Nadine Strossen is a professor of law emerita at New York Law School, and was the national president of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008. She's now a senior fellow at FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. She's also the author of The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech — And Why They Fail , which was published this year. She has more than 40 years of experience in First Amendment law, and we’re lucky to have her here to speak with us today. Nadine Strossen, welcome to the podcast. Nadine Strossen:  Oh, Sara. I'm so honored to be your podcast guest and to be a return visitor to your very impressive and supremely beautiful campus. Sara Arjomand: Thank you. So I suppose we can start at the very beginning. What is your elevator pitch for freedom of speech? Nadine Strossen: Without freedom of speech, nothing that is positive in life could be achieved—starting with the ability to explore your own identity, your own values, your own concept of your purpose in life.  And moving beyond that, your ability to communicate with other human beings—to form relationships from the most intimate to interpersonal ones that are essential for being part of any community. And moving beyond that: instrumental values, including the pursuit of truth. Here on campus, that’s an especially important aspect—truth in every possible field, from spiritual, philosophical, and religious to scientific and social scientific. And then, last but far from least, as we live in a representative democracy, “We, the people”—to quote the opening words of the Constitution—could not effectively or responsibly exercise our sovereign power without the most robust freedom to debate and discuss policies and officials and candidates. Is that enough? Sara Arjomand: I mean, it’s certainly a compelling pitch. And I just, I suppose I wonder if not all of our readers will be on board at this point. I think that for many of them, the lingering worry has to do with hate speech. I think that’s especially relevant here on a college campus. Nadine Strossen: Well, if I could interject though, Sara.  Sara Arjomand: Of course. Nadine Strossen:  Freedom of speech is not absolute. I’m talking about the value of speech, but precisely because of its power, the Supreme Court—which has generally been very speech-protective—has never held that speech is absolutely protected. Let’s start with the language of the First Amendment, which is the Free Speech Clause: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Now that may sound rather straightforward, but when you hone in on it, you will not be surprised that every   single   word  in that phrase has been subject to debate. What is speech? Not everything that conveys a message is deemed to come within the protective ambit of speech. What is freedom? Freedom is not absolute. What is an abridgement? Maybe a restriction that is necessary to protect safety or health is not an abridgment that violates the First Amendment. So now you can ask follow-up questions. I didn’t mean to interject, but to say that one protects freedom of speech does not mean that therefore one says, “All speech is protected, and no limits are ever tolerable.” I do not know a single free speech champion who has ever taken that position.  Sara Arjomand : Maybe it would be helpful, then, to think about how “hate speech” has been traditionally understood. Nadine Strossen: There is no legal definition of hate speech precisely because the U.S. Supreme Court has never recognized a category of speech defined by its hateful message or content, and said, “Therefore, because of that message, it is excluded from First Amendment protection.” To the contrary, the Supreme Court has very strongly protected—as what it calls the bedrock principle of free speech—a concept called viewpoint neutrality: that government must remain neutral with respect to the viewpoint, the idea, the message, the content of the speech. No matter how unpopular or hated or hateful or otherwise controversial the view is, that alone is never enough to justify censoring it. So that fact that someone deems a message to be hateful is not ever going to justify government restrictions on that message. But the complementary principle is often called the emergency principle. And what that means is when you get beyond the viewpoint or the message of the speech and you consider it in its overall context—its facts and circumstances—if, in a particular factual context, speech (regardless of the message—it can be a hateful message, it can be any message), if in the facts and circumstances, it directly causes certain specific harm, or imminently threatens certain specific harm, then it can and should be punished. Let me give you an example. If speech is—well, this is a very simple example—if speech is through messages that intrude into your private life… Let’s say a phone call—the old-fashioned landlines that you couldn’t turn off, that would ring in the middle of the night—and somebody was persistently calling someone else, disturbing their sleep. It wouldn’t matter even if they were saying, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” That’s the opposite of hate speech, right? And yet it is still unprotected harassment  because it’s causing the harm of intruding into privacy and rest. There are many factual contexts in which much hateful speech can and should be punished—but not solely because of its message. So there are many instances of targeted harassment of the type that I talked about that are conveying hateful messages. There are many instances of threatening or intimidating speech, where the speaker intends to instill a reasonable fear in the targeted person that they’re going to be subject to violence. Many of those contain hateful messages. And I think that’s exactly right: that the speech that is the most dangerous, because it poses an emergency, can be punished regardless of what its particular viewpoint is. But the most dangerous censorship is also outlawed—and the most dangerous censorship is when government selectively chooses which messages it disfavors. Sara, I want to give you one other example, because I know that everybody has in mind particular odious messages that each of us thinks are hateful, and therefore would be very happy to have government restrict. So I want to remind everybody that what is going to be punished is not what you  consider to be hateful, but what the government  considers to be hateful. So let’s take Donald Trump and his vice president, J.D. Vance, and his chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, not to mention the Attorney General, Pam Bondi. I guarantee you that what they consider to be hate speech is going to be very different from what many members of our country consider to be hate speech. Donald Trump was quite expressed a few days ago. He basically said any speech that’s critical of him or of his policies is hate speech and should be punished. So it’s the danger of that subjectivity—the value judgments, and basically empowering whoever has the enforcement power to pick and choose the messages they personally disfavor. Sara Arjomand : And so in your view, is that kind of the most compelling rationale for safeguarding even the most deeply offensive forms of speech—this kind of worry about how a government might wield their subjective power? Or is it something else? Nadine Strossen: I would say that is—if I had to choose a single rationale, I would say the fact that it is such an inherently vague and broad, manipulable concept that it essentially empowers whoever is enforcing (whether it be a government official, a university official, or, for that matter, a social media platform). It essentially gives them unfettered discretion to pick and choose the ideas that the rest of us will be able to hear and to convey. And that’s extremely dangerous for all of the reasons that I explained—why freedom of speech is so important. It would undermine individual liberty, equality, and democracy alike. Another way to think of it is this: harmful as much speech—including much hateful speech—can be, I think it’s even more harmful to empower the government to suppress it. So it’s like: what is the least dangerous option? Sara Arjomand:  So, there are a couple of things we kind of often hear, I think, on a college campus like this one: words are violence, silence is violence. These are kind of common refrains on American college campuses. Nadine Strossen:  So everything is violence, right? Words are violence and silence is violence, right? And I think hopefully violence is violence too, right? Sara Arjomand: Right. I think that’s kind of something that we hear especially on campuses with the kind of liberal or leftist bent—which, you know, admittedly, is a great many of them. What would you say to my peers who hold that view? Because I think it’s kind of a particularly difficult one to disabuse them of.  Nadine Strossen: It’s a very important argument. My most recent book, which was just published this summer, co-authored with Greg Lukianoff, who’s the CEO of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), is called The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech and Why They Fail. Greg and I came up with the idea for this book because both of us are constantly speaking on college campuses and other venues and constantly hearing anti–free speech arguments. And we thought—we love answering the questions orally, we never get tired of that—but we thought it would be useful to concretize the answers in writing for people that we don’t have a chance to speak to in person. Of all the different arguments that both of us heard, we each came up with our own list of what we thought the 10 most important were. And then our editor also independently made his own selection. Every single one of us concluded that the most important argument that is regularly offered as a supposed justification for restricting speech, that we really had to refute, was exactly the argument that you have flagged, Sara—that words are violence. That has become very poignant and troubling in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Because if you fervently believe that words are violence, then it becomes justified to use violence to try to suppress words that you put in that category of violence. And FIRE’s most recent campus survey, which came out the day before Kirk was assassinated, showed that 34% of students on college campuses believe that violence is at least sometimes justified to silence a speaker whose message is detested. On your campus, the answer was about the same—34% of your fellow students thought that. So if we want to protect against actual violence, that is one reason to oppose this argument. But also logically, it falls apart. Sara, you’re a philosopher, so I’m sure you could answer this very compellingly. But Sigmund Freud supposedly said—if he didn’t, somebody else made the observation—that civilization began the first time an argument was responded to by hurling words rather than hurling rocks. Far from being violence, words and expression are the antithesis of violence—the alternative to violence as a mechanism for addressing and resolving conflicts through negotiation, through mediation, through debate and discussion. That is true on an interpersonal level. We don’t beat up somebody—or we should not physically assault somebody—we disagree with. We should engage with them through words. And likewise, for nations that are in conflict with each other, we would hope that rather than war and genocide and other violent tactics, they could have negotiated resolutions of their conflicts to advance human safety and peace and to enhance a long and good life for all of us as individuals and as nation-states.  Sara Arjomand:  Right. So you just mentioned your work—or FIRE. And Greg Lukianoff, who is the president. Can you talk to me a little bit about your work there, and kind of how you think about FIRE’s mission? Nadine Strossen: FIRE was founded a little bit more than 25 years ago, while I was the national president of the ACLU. And the ACLU has done and continues to do very important work in defending free speech for students and faculty members on campus. In fact, at that time, the concept of hate speech codes was just being pioneered in response to exactly the concerns that you raised, Sara—very important concerns about making sure that campuses were welcoming. I think it was before we used the phrase DEI, but the concepts were very much in play. We want to be sure that not only do campuses lower the traditional discriminatory bars to people who had been traditionally excluded, but that we truly create inclusive and welcoming environments.   And it was a very plausible argument that those environments are undermined through hateful expression. The ACLU, even though it had long defended freedom for speech that was hateful (that was antithetical to civil liberties), because of the fear of empowering government that we described, we thought: this is a serious new argument that hadn’t been raised in the past, one that was based more on concerns of equality and dignity and inclusivity. So we very seriously reexamined what our policy should be. And after much study and debate, the national board of the ACLU did something which is unheard of—it unanimously adopted a policy. Very contentious board, very large (more than 80 people), but every single one of us, including people who had devoted their whole lives to civil rights and racial justice, was convinced that no matter how well-intended, hate speech codes were at best ineffective and at worst even counterproductive in furthering those goals. And so the ACLU brought the first couple of lawsuits against campus hate speech codes. We won them. But despite those victories, campuses all across the country were adopting these codes, and it was too much for us to do on top of all the other work. So when I learned, and ACLU colleagues learned, about the forming of this new organization—then called, it had the same acronym but it stood for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education—co-founded by somebody who was a leader of the ACLU, Harvey Silverglate, I was very excited. You know, we really need an organization that is going to be dedicated full time to this burgeoning area. Often FIRE has handled cases together with the ACLU, often separate. And then, as you know, a couple of years ago—or, I think you know—FIRE expanded its mission to go beyond campus. Because what starts on campus doesn’t stay on campus, and the free speech challenges in the larger society have been growing exponentially. They kept the same acronym, but the “E” now stands for Expression. I’ve been closely involved with FIRE personally since the beginning, because I’ve always been very concerned about campus freedom and about free speech. From the beginning, I was on the board of FIRE, even while I was the national president of the ACLU. And then a few years ago, when I had stepped down from full-time teaching so I would be able to become a full-time evangelist for free speech—seriously, that was my idea, and it certainly has come to fruition—it was about that time that FIRE was expanding, and they asked me to become—I was one of its first two senior fellows. I’m very proud of that. And I continue to work very closely with both FIRE and the ACLU and a couple other organizations that are committed to academic freedom and free speech. I continue to be completely, enthusiastically supportive of the ACLU’s overall mission, which is broader than that of FIRE and these other organizations—defending all fundamental freedoms for all people. I’m passionately committed to all of those rights, from A to Z—or abortion to zero tolerance, to mention a couple of examples. But for the reasons I explained at the outset of our interview, I am absolutely convinced that freedom of speech is the essential bedrock for advocating every single other human right. And so, therefore, in my limited remaining time on this planet, I want to concentrate my time on that absolutely essential fundamental right. Sara Arjomand: Do you feel that kind of making these arguments is getting harder? I mean, has it kind of become more of an uphill battle as you’re, you know, kind of evangelizing today, versus maybe if you’d been on this kind of, you know, touring journey 10 years ago or something? Nadine Strossen:  Actually, it has really stayed the same, Sara, through all of the factual changes and through all of the changes in who’s exercising political power—all of the cultural changes. The basic problem from a free speech perspective has been consistent, and that is that the vast majority of people believe in freedom of speech for me, but not for thee. People are constantly changing their views depending on whether they like or dislike the particular message or the particular speaker. And I can illustrate that just by very recent events. When Donald Trump and Republicans were running for office, they were campaigning on free speech and against censoring hate speech and against cancel culture. Trump made this a big deal in his inaugural address. And I think his very first executive order—at least it was on the first day of issuing executive orders—was one that was, you know, “we’re going to get rid of censorship and restore free speech.” And how quickly things have changed. He and his attorney general are now saying, and many other Republicans are now saying, “We should censor hate speech” and “Cancel culture is fine as long as it’s coming from the right rather than from the left.” But conversely, in fairness, many progressives and Democrats who were in favor of censoring hate speech, who said, “Oh, there’s no such thing as cancel culture, it’s only consequence culture”—now that the power of those concepts is being wielded against messages that they support, their perspective has changed. I think that those of us who—and I don’t say this at all in a self-righteous way—I really understand people’s fervor about wanting to restrict ideas that they believe are fraught with danger. And it takes… But I do also believe that if I have a chance to explain, giving some current examples and examples from history of how even the best-intended censorship ends up causing more danger than alleviating the danger, then I can persuade people. But you can’t do it in a sound bite. Whereas, you know, saying, “That’s a hateful message, let’s silence the message,” is easy to convey in a sound bite. One really good example, which has been in the news lately, is burning the American flag—which Donald Trump is yet again saying that we should outlaw. That would require amending the Constitution, because the Supreme Court has held, including with the support of conservative justices, that any law banning or punishing flag burning would squarely violate that bedrock viewpoint neutrality principle. But I remember at the time that the Supreme Court first reached those holdings, they were so politically unpopular all across the political spectrum. The then-president of the United States, George H. W. Bush, the very next day gave a speech in which he called for amending the Constitution. And we were within one vote of amending the Constitution. Almost immediately, the House of Representatives passed the constitutional amendment by the mandatory two-thirds vote, and almost immediately, three-quarters of the states supported the constitutional amendment. In the U.S. Senate, it came within one vote of the two-thirds margin. So when people really detest an expression, it’s just like common sense that we should get rid of it. And I remember speaking to many members of the House and Senate who opposed the constitutional amendment, but they said, “I can’t say that, because I can’t say it in a sound bite. And my opponent—all my opponent has to do is get on TV,” or nowadays they’d say on your podcast. And I guess podcasts give you more time to make the point, but in a TV ad you can’t—it’s a sound bite. My opponent just has to say: “This person supports burning the American flag.” You can’t respond to that quickly. Sara Arjomand: Right, right. So I guess you just kind of mentioned the FIRE report, which was released a few weeks ago. And I guess for context for listeners—Claremont McKenna, we claimed first place. Nadine Strossen: Yay! And you’re, I think, the only… It’s the second time you’ve been in first place as the most speech-protective, congenial environment for speech of all the campuses surveyed. This year it was 257, and I think you’re the only school that has ever been number one more than once. Sara Arjomand:  Oh wow! Well, congrats to us, I guess. Right—and Pomona clocked in, unfortunately, at 247 out of 257. And then the other kind of Claremont Colleges, their placements spanned that range. Can you share any insights into the findings from FIRE? Nadine Strossen: Yes. So first of all, for anybody who’s interested, I highly recommend you to take a look at the report on FIRE’s website. It’s very transparent. All of the data are available, all of the factors that were considered for your university and all of the others are available. And FIRE staff who collaborated in the report openly invite every member of the campus community who’s interested in doing a deeper dive to contact them. The reasons why Claremont McKenna did so well have to do primarily with excellent policies and a complete absence of any punitive actions by the administration against either faculty or students for engaging in controversial but protected speech. So, on the policy front: FIRE, as you may know, ranks campuses by red light, yellow light, or green light. A green light means there are no policies that expressly—no express policies—that are inconsistent with First Amendment principles. Sadly, there are very few campuses in the whole country that have a green light rating. So the fact that CMC has that already puts it in a very rarefied category of campuses. Harvard, my alma mater, has a red light rating because it has quite a few policies that, on their face, violate basic free speech principles. The other two policy vectors that weighed heavily in favor of your positive rating were that: you have adopted some version of the Chicago free speech principles. You’re a private campus, so you’re not bound by the First Amendment itself, but you’ve chosen voluntarily to adhere to principles that are completely consistent with the First Amendment. And secondly: you have adopted institutional neutrality, which I was just discussing in detail with your wonderful president—who is an expert, and who had personally written the policy, I had not realized that. Basically—the details can vary from campus to campus—but the basic idea is that the college as an institution does not announce positions, does not issue statements on contested matters of public policy, unless they directly affect the mission of the college itself. So that would mean there would be no CMC statement—or statement from a leader, such as the president—on the war in Gaza. But there could and should be a statement about a Trump administration policy that is directly affecting the university, such as a policy of defunding or of seeking to dictate what the curriculum should be, that violates academic freedom. So you got top grades on all of those policies. The only area where there was a deficit—and here I have to say I’m going to give you the honest, less positive part of the assessment—is that even though CMC is number one, its grade is still a B–. And barely a B–. That was done by a rounding up, because FIRE does not have grade inflation. It uses the strict traditional curve. I remember B– is the median, right? And as FIRE’s authors of the report said, we really applaud the schools that are on the top end. But the fact is that they’re just doing less badly, less poorly than the overwhelming majority. Two-thirds of all the campuses in the report—257—two-thirds got F grades. Where the downside for most schools was in this student survey, where students report a very sad degree of self-censorship—that they don’t feel comfortable having a free and frank and candid conversation about the most important contested issues. 57% percent of students reported—I’m sorry, 51%, could not have such a candid conversation about Israel/Gaza. But the second-highest swath of students nationwide—and your campus was quite typical on this factor—the second most self-censored topic was abortion . Something like 47% said they couldn’t have a frank conversation about abortion. And then right under that was the 2024 elections: 42% of students said they couldn’t frankly discuss the elections. Sara Arjomand: You sound kind of incredulous. Is this surprising to you? Nadine Strossen: Yeah—and you’re not? Sara Arjomand: No, I am. It’s.. Nadine Strossen: The Gaza issue doesn’t surprise me—I know how fraught that is. But I’m really astounded that abortion, among other things… Because statistics do show that campuses are overwhelmingly liberal, and so I would think that the overwhelmingly liberal, predominant portion of the student body would feel very comfortable discussing abortion and advocating a pro-choice perspective. Here’s a real—this one maybe I’m not as shocked as I would be if I weren’t a free speech crusader: 20% of students say they cannot comfortably discuss free speech. I mean, free speech is seen as being such a controversial topic. Hate speech, which you raised earlier—27% said they can’t comfortably discuss hate speech. So that is really significant, Sara, because it means free speech was separated from hate speech. So even just plain free speech is considered… what you and I are talking about now, 20% of your classmates, and students all across the country, would not want to have this conversation. So thank you for being courageous. Sara Arjomand: No, of course—and thank you. Oh, I guess I’ll just say on the kind of abortion point—I mean, I imagine that it’s probably the pro-life students who are self-censoring. Was that…? Nadine Strossen: But that would surprise me, that they would reach such a high percentage then, right? Sara Arjomand: You’re right, that’s strange. Nadine Strossen:  So maybe my arithmetic is wrong. But how could you get to 46% or whatever it was? I doubt that those are all pro-life students. Sara Arjomand: No, it’s a good point—maybe people who are just kind of less convicted about the pro-choice view? Nadine Strossen: But anyway, anyway. This is a serious issue that, as I was discussing with some of your faculty members, and FIRE recognizes, is not directly within the control of the administration. So this is a factor that is weighted less heavily, in fairness, I think. Because no matter how good the policies are, students are still—and even if students aren’t afraid that they’re going to be punished by the administration (which, realistically, students here are not going to be punished by the administration or by faculty)—they’re afraid of their peers. And so, you know, peers have to change their own culture. Us old folks can’t do it for you. Sara Arjomand:  Do you have advice for us? Nadine Strossen: I can only say that, from experience, that to be true to yourself, you have to be comfortable expressing your own views. And to be true to yourself in the sense of also wanting to discover and pursue truth—and having humility that you might not have arrived at perfect truth on your own, especially at your relatively young age. But maybe the older you get, the more aware you become of your own limitations—that it benefits you to listen to people who have different perspectives. You may change your own views; you may discover that you were wrong, or refine your thinking, which is a great benefit. Or you will learn to have empathy and understanding for different views, and have a sharper, more nuanced appreciation of your own views. So just in terms of being a happy human being, that kind of robust discourse is important. But beyond that, to be an effective and engaged member of our political community, you really have to hone the skills, the desire, and the benefits of engaging in negotiation. Going back to an earlier point: if you are to be part of a democratic process that resolves conflicts in a peaceful, nonviolent way. Sara Arjomand: We’re running up against the time here. But if I can ask kind of a final question: was there a case during your tenure at the ACLU that kind of profoundly tested the limits of your free speech commitments? And can you tell me about what you kind of learned from that experience—how you stand up for your principles, even when it’s uncomfortable? Nadine Strossen: I have to say that, in terms of the principle, I never found it hard. And I don’t say that in a self-righteous way—it’s the opposite. I mean, I never was somebody who felt a conflict between hating an idea and wondering whether it should be censored. Although I’m always open to evidence. I engage with every anti–free speech argument I can, and I’m always looking for data. But all of the information I’ve seen has convinced me that the most effective way to counter an idea that is dangerous is through more speech, rather than censorship. So from that perspective, it’s never been hard. But in terms of the personal blowback I’ve gotten—it was quite painful when I wrote a book that was published in 1995 called Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights . At the time—and to some extent this has continued, though not nearly as dramatically—there was a big division among feminists (of which I have always considered myself to be one), between the so-called radical feminists, who believed that a certain category of sexual expression, that was from their perspective demeaning or degrading or dehumanizing to women perpetuated discriminatory attitudes toward women, which fostered not only discrimination but also violence against women, including rape and other forms of sexual assault. And so therefore, they used the term pornography to apply to that category of sexual expression.  And others of us—classical liberal feminists, civil libertarian feminists, if you will—who were very concerned about fighting against discrimination and violence against women, but believed that censorship, again, no matter how well-intended, would do more harm than good. This was based on a lot of history of laws against sexual expression targeting feminist expression, expression and information about contraception and abortion, about LGBTQ sexuality, about women’s health. So there was a lot of free speech from the so-called radical camp. And I say “so-called radical” because, to me, it was a profoundly reactionary viewpoint—but, you know, we’ll use the term that was commonly used. They engaged in what other people would call hate speech against myself and colleagues of mine. It didn’t particularly hurt me—I had developed very thick skin by that point—but it hurt me to see the pain that was caused to my husband in particular. I think each of us—we’re very well partnered, very fortunate—each of us gets more distressed and hurt about somebody who is hurting the other one. So very nasty things were said about me that were hard on him. He didn’t like the publicity. He’s a big free speech supporter, but those were troubling times. Sara Arjomand:  How has kind of the reception of that book—and obviously it was difficult then—how do you think it would be received if you published it today? Nadine Strossen: It’s funny that you should ask, because two years ago NYU Press got in touch with me and said, “You know, this book is as relevant and timely as ever, because we’ve seen an increased volume of attacks on sexual expression using the rubric of pornography and obscenity.” And it’s mostly been wielded by the right against curriculum materials and library materials in schools and in public libraries that have to do with feminism and abortion and LGBTQ writers and perspectives. I should say, at the time that I wrote the book, I documented that under either the radical feminist definition or the traditional obscenity definition—no matter what you labeled it and how you defined it—any attack on sexual expression disproportionately silenced not only feminist expression, but also LGBTQ expression. That was a major theme in my book, and that really has come home to roost. So NYU Press said, “We want to republish the book as part of our NYU Classics series. Will you write a new preface for it?” And I said yes. So that happened. It came out in 2023. Sadly, I think the feminists have become—there’s less support, although it hasn’t gone away. I have debated feminists who share my goals of protecting women’s dignity and privacy and autonomy, and they’ve been primarily concerned about so-called revenge porn, or non-consensual intimate imagery. And there, I would say we have a basic agreement—if the law is sufficiently narrowly defined. Beyond that, the #MeToo movement and the movement against sexual harassment is very important, but too often it has been too expansive, to include any sexual expression no matter how well-intended or justified—including serious academic discussion, serious artistic expression. I think the best-known example there is Laura Kipnis, a film studies professor at Northwestern, who wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education  in which she was opposing over-expansive concepts of sexual harassment as extending to expression, including serious academic discussions of sexuality and gender. Ironically, some students complained that her essay constituted sexual harassment, and she was subjected to what she called the “Title IX Inquisition,” sort of kangaroo court proceedings. She wrote a whole book about it. So the problems, unfortunately, persist. Sara Arjomand: Well, thank you so much for speaking to me. I really appreciate it. Nadine Strossen : Well, right back at you, Sara. Thank you for defending and exercising free speech so effectively. Thank you.