| Forwarded this email? Subscribe for more |
 |
| By Bari Weiss |
Last night, some 1,200 of you packed into a theater at Lincoln Center to hear Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speak. It was a rare opportunity to hear from the Justice—and she spoke about her faith, her judicial philosophy, and her new book, Listening to the Law. The full conversation will be up this Monday, so stay tuned. But check out our write-up here, and for a little taste, click here:
On a personal note: I love being in a room with other Free Pressers, and last night was made even more special thanks to cameos from Douglas Murray, Coleman Hughes, and Noam Dworman. It was the perfect way to kick off a year jam-packed with events nationwide. (Including a debate in Pittsburgh next week!)
If you haven’t been a part of our community outside of the comments section, these are not to be missed. Subscribe to make sure you’re in the know and to get early access:
 |
A New School Year—and Ancient Tools of Learning
How do you teach a 3-year-old to read The Hobbit? Just ask Erik Hoel.
“There exists an agreed-upon best way to educate children. The problem is that this best way is unacceptable. That’s because it is profoundly unfair, privileging those at the very top of the socioeconomic ladder.” That method? Aristocratic tutoring, which worked for Marcus Aurelius, Voltaire, Tolstoy. . .and now, for Hoel’s son.
As literacy rates plummet and AI turns the education system upside down, can we teach our kids like aristocrats?
Read Erik Hoel:
Earlier this week, the University of Austin—an upstart school I’m proud to have helped found—welcomed a new class of students. At convocation, UATX president Carlos Carvalho delivered an address you won’t hear at any other university: a defense of inequality.
“All men are created equal. But all men are not the same,” said Carvalho. Each has “different strengths, abilities, and passions. . . . To pretend otherwise is to flatten human experience into mediocrity.”
Excellence, he argues, can only be cultivated by acknowledging the dignity and differences of every student.
I’d encourage you to read his speech in full:
Also on my mind: Maya Sulkin on the students rejecting AI; Joel Klein on what NYC schools will look like under a Mayor Mamdani; and, in case you missed it, Jonathan Haidt and his brilliant colleagues at After Babel became contributors this week.
 |
Free Speech Crisis in the UK
On Monday, as Irish comedian Graham Linehan stepped off his plane at Heathrow Airport in London, British authorities arrested him, interrogated him, and eventually took him to the hospital as his blood pressure entered dangerous territory. His crime? Posting bad jokes about gender on X.
Linehan is the latest victim of a disturbing and illiberal trend in Britain—the criminalization of speech and expression. Read his story here, told from his hospital bed:
As J.K. Rowling put it: “This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable.” The troubling thing is: There are many Graham Linehans. And policies that take root in one country—like the one that landed Linehan in jail for a joke—often have a way of spreading to others. When liberalism is under attack in the UK, it’s only a matter of time before it comes under threat closer to home.
 |
Trust the Experts?
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) voted on a resolution this week that accused Israel of c