Witherspoon Institute
2026 Summer Seminars
Held in Princeton, NJ
For rising high school juniors and seniors, undergraduates, and graduate students.
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Interviews
If we think there’s too much government regulation, then the authentically conservative solution is not to say, “Well, let’s just try to operate a landscape of isolated individuals jostling in a competitively economic marketplace,” but “Let’s create institutions of countervailing power so that where exploitation is happening, the people themselves are equipped to resist it, and the government doesn’t need to intervene to fix it.” If designed correctly, a system of sectoral labor unions can actually help achieve the conservative goal of limited government.
“Post-revolutionary men and women are living in ways that are profoundly unnatural for the ineradicably social creatures that we are; and many are suffering as a result, at times without even knowing the name of what ails them. This preoccupation, and the desire to do something about it, continues to shape my work.”
Book Reviews
Although one might find oneself disagreeing with Smith, as I have on occasion, one will be better for it. And I can say that with a clear conscience.
Chastity is a way of being more holistically directed toward our happiness regardless of the desires and attractions we experience.
Vallier has done a valuable service by patiently pointing out all the moral and political problems entailed by any attempt to establish integralism. The most important problem with integralism, however, is less in its conception of the state than in its conception of the Church.
Eire’s absorbing and impeccably researched book invites us to at least ponder that alternative balancing act while reminding us of historian Ethan Shagan’s apposite observation that “every era is credulous, but they are credulous in different ways.”
Until everyone, including Byrne, sees that the point of gender ideology is to change our understanding of human being, our arguments and clarifications will ultimately be impotent.
According to Nichols, Aristotelian human flourishing requires piety, the acknowledgment that humans are akin to the divine but cannot be divine themselves. The task of the political community is to support the life of piety.
Barnes repeatedly emphasizes the many parents or clinic employees who had tried to sound the alarm but whose warnings were ignored by clinic authorities. But Barnes is loath to draw any firm conclusions from these stories. Her cautious wording and frequent qualifiers undermine some of the book’s most important points and questions.
We have become accustomed to the darkness of today’s China. But Johnson shows us flickering sparks of light, hidden on hard drives and thumbnails, that tomorrow may become blazing fires.
Moore’s writing is something of a memoir and a testimony, in good evangelical fashion, taking us back to the heartfelt and fervent faith of his youth and through what can only be described as a painful and poignant break-up with the religious tradition that nurtured and raised him.
Long Reads
Who would deny that liberalism is falling apart, that the center is not holding, or that a vindictive and evangelistic progressivism is afoot? If so, the natural law cannot but feel like feeble comfort. Still, some of us are unwilling to reject public reason or the hopefulness of John Courtney Murray, for we never assumed his optimism was naivete.
Openness to love is the only satisfying defense against the supposed conflict between private happiness and the common good, the only thing that can convert the common good from an abstraction to a lived reality. The most important element of the common good, therefore, is that all of the members of the community regard themselves, somehow, as friends.
Conservatives need to start thinking of children as an investment in our economic future. Families, too, need to start thinking of children as an investment and not a cost—as they did in the past, when children were employed in farm work. The only way to do this in the modern economy—an economy that has severed the age-old link between children and additional labor—is by ensuring that economic resources are directed toward families by the state.
Conservative critics of free markets are asking good questions, but their diagnosis of America’s economic challenges and proposed solutions leave much to be desired.
Our nation’s morally formative institutions are weak and weakening further, thanks in no small part to the enormously destructive effects of social media. The single type of institution best suited to resist these and other pressures of our times is the mission-driven, tech-skeptical K–12 school. The successes of our best countercultural colleges and universities, viewed in the light of Yuval Levin’s invaluable work on the nature of institutions, show us how the incentive structures of an excellent K–12 school make it the formative institution our time needs most.
The question that divides us is how we ought to respond to reproductive asymmetry: the reality that women carry disproportionate burdens due to our special role in human reproduction. What makes one a feminist is the view that this basic inequality at the heart of reproduction is one that deserves, in justice, an affirmative cultural response. We wish not only for maternity to be celebrated for the true privilege it most certainly is, but also for women to be encouraged and supported in other contributions they make. This requires that the burdens of childbearing ought to be shared not only within the family, but also across the wider society too.
If we think there’s too much government regulation, then the authentically conservative solution is not to say, “Well, let’s just try to operate a landscape of isolated individuals jostling in a competitively economic marketplace,” but “Let’s create institutions of countervailing power so that where exploitation is happening, the people themselves are equipped to resist it, and the government doesn’t need to intervene to fix it.” If designed correctly, a system of sectoral labor unions can actually help achieve the conservative goal of limited government.
Liberal justifications of liberal education are no longer effective. Teachers of humanities need a different way of defending the value of what we do and love. The Renaissance can teach us how to make a case for the study of old books that is compatible with the values of a pluralist society.
Integralism delivers a more realistic view of how states actually function—including states that are secular—than do models currently dominant in political and legal philosophy.
Newsletters
In celebration of our tenth anniversary, we're revisiting the most popular essays Public Discourse has ever published. Although we publish on a diverse array of topics, our most popular pieces tend to be first-person narratives on hot-button social issues, such as marriage, sexuality, and gender. These essays pair personal experience with philosophical analysis and solid social science.
Don't miss Public Discourse Editor Ryan T. Anderson's picks for the best articles we've published this quarter!
On August 2, 2018, Pope Francis announced an update to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, making a prohibition on the death penalty official Catholic teaching. Prior to this change, many scholars believed that the historic teaching of the Church did not declare capital punishment intrinsically immoral, even if the practice is, as a matter of prudence, not required in countries with modern prison systems that can safely isolate dangerous criminals. Other scholars argued that the natural law duty to respect all human life does in fact render any intentional taking of human life morally unacceptable, and that this development of doctrine does not contradict any infallible teaching.
The articles below lay out this debate, with clear summaries of the arguments on both sides.
Don't miss Public Discourse Editor Ryan T. Anderson's picks for the best articles we've published this quarter!
Don't miss Public Discourse Editor Ryan T. Anderson's picks for the best articles we've published this quarter.
Should business owners be allowed to discriminate against their customers in light of their religious or moral convictions? With the Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in mind, these authors staunchly defend our constitutional right to free exercise of religion.
Don't miss PD Editor Ryan T. Anderson's picks for the best articles we've published this quarter.
Don't miss PD Editor Ryan T. Anderson's picks for the best articles we've published this quarter.
All is not well in America—or in the University. Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind offers a profound and compelling diagnosis of the common illness infecting them both and of the intimate connection between liberal education and liberty. A best-seller from its release in 1987, Bloom offers an enlightening exposition of the state of education and culture in his decade that is eerily prophetic of our current environment. In commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of the book, this symposium assesses and comments on Bloom's three main themes: students, American Nihilism, and the university.
