News
A Nation of Takers meets "The Nortax"
New Book in the New Threats to Freedom Series
Now available: A Nation of Takers America's Entitlement Epidemic By Nicholas Eberstadt, with commentary by William Galston and Yuval Levin In A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic, one of our country’s foremost demographers, Nicholas Eberstadt, details the exponential growth in…
Video Contest Results
Some of you may have seen the news that we posted a few months ago about a video-based contest that we were conducting. It was a spin-off from our original schoalrship contest and it was meant to keep the…
Long Form Scholarship Contest: 3rd Place
Congratulations to Rose Waldman, a creative writing MFA student at Columbia University, for submitting the 3rd place entry in our long form scholarship contest. You can read her full entry below. The Freedom to Think Ever…
Long Form Scholarship Contest: 2nd Place
Congratulations to Clifford Lauchlan, a student at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, for submitting the 2nd place entry in our long form scholarship contest. You can read his full entry below. The Emperor’s New Clothes: Behaviorism…
Long Form Scholarship Contest: 1st Place
Congratulations to Josh Grundleger, a student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, for submitting the 1st place entry in our long form scholarship contest. You can read his full entry below. An Old Threat in…
Short Form Scholarship Contest Winner
Congratulations to Daniel Showalter, a PhD candidate from Ohio University, for submitting the winning entry in our short form scholarship contest. Out of the thousands of written and video entries that we received, Daniel's take on the loss of…
Authors in the News: Naomi Schaefer Riley on Politicized Professors
In his essays, videos, and his contribution to the book, New Threats contributor Greg Lukianoff frequently draws attention the lack of freedom on campus for students to express their personal political views. In a recent Washington Post opinion piece…
Inefficiencies in the American Political System: A Threat to Freedom?
New Threats contributor Anne Applebaum certainly seems to think so. She charts in her recent Washington Post article how dramatic inefficiencies are hampering America's efforts to propagate "a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge…
New Review in The American Spectator
The American Spectator has some nice coverage of New Threats to Freedom in their current issue. Here's an excerpt: "Many of the 30 contributors to [Adam Bellow's] collection of brief essays grapple head-on with various American freedoms and…
Is the Idea of "Being a Gentleman" a Threat to Freedom?
It's possible. At least according to New Threats contributor Mark T. Mitchell in his recent piece on the Iowa wrestler who refused to wrestle with a female opponent in the first round of the Iowa state championships. The male…
The Worst Colleges in America for Free Speech
"U.S. News can tell you which colleges and universities are ranked the best," writes New Threats contributor Greg Lukianoff over at the Huffington Post, "but what about your right to express yourself on campus?" That's the question at the…
Authors in the News: Daniel Hannon on Democracy as a Tool
In his recent column in The Telegraph, New Threats author Daniel Hannon strikes a very similar chord as fellow contributor Anne Applebaum did in her recent WP op-ed piece: that the West has been wrong to prop up tyrants just because…
Authors in the News: Anne Applebaum on Stability vs. Freedom
In a recent Washington Post piece, New Threats contributor Anne Applebaum tackles a dicey issue: our freedom-espousing leaders have been hesitant to really embrace popular freedom movements becuase these movements pose a risk upsetting a stable status quo, which could have a negative impact on the world…
Authors in the News: Glenn Harlan Reynolds on the Arizona Tragedy and Its Aftermath
New Threats contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds is leaping into the fray of fierce finger pointing that is taking place in the aftermath of the Jared Lee Loughner killing spree in a new opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal…
Authors in the News: Mark Helprin on America's Dangerous Rush to Shrink Its Military Power
Contributor Mark Helprin had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week in which he called out a new, new threat to freedom: our national instinct to shrink our military force. This is not a left vs. right…
The State of Free Speech On Our Nation's Campuses
The Huffington Post picked up an interesting free speech story recently and reported that "two thirds of colleges maintain speech codes that violate students' First Amendment rights, according to a new report released by the Foundation for Individual Rights…
Wiki-Leaks: Friend or Foe of Freedom, Part II
Last week, New Threats contributor James Kirchick had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal wherein he took a critical look at the potential fallout from the recent WikiLeaks revelations. You need to log in as a subscriber to…
Contest Page Back Up
Our apologies to anyone who tried to access our contests page from January 1st to January 3rd. The contests were originally slated to close on December 31st and when we decided to extend them, we forgot to adjust the…
The Unlimited Potential of Our New Participatory Culture
New Threats contributor Lee Siegel had an amusing column in the New York Observer earlier this month in which he discussed the fallout from a recent event at the 92 Street Y, wherein Deborah Solomon, an art critic and…
"What's the Biggest Threat to Free Speech?"
Reason.tv threw a party and asked this question of their guests. There are tons of high profile thinkers in here weighing in. The real question, though, is . . . what do YOU think?
Contest Update: Extended Deadline
If you haven't already done so, please be sure to check out our contest page, especially if you or someone you know could use a $5,000 scholarship. It's fairly easy to enter and we've just EXTENDED OUR DEADLINE to…
Wiki-Leaks: Friend or Foe of Freedom?
New Threats contributor Anne Applebaum explores this issue in her recent Slate article. Some commentators have heralded these releases as great advances in the cause of government transparency and even freedom. Others have decried them as dangerous. Applebaum falls…
Authors in the News: Dennis Whittle on the Best Christmas Present You Can Give
It's that time of year again! Can't think of anything to give the person who has everything? New Threats contributor Dennis Whittle was featured in Fast Company recently promoting a whole host of great gift ideas. For the cost…
Loss of American Hegemony: A Threat to Freedom?
That is the very question posed in a Washington Post editorial by Robert D. Kaplan. He writes: "Currency wars. Terrorist attacks. Military conflicts. Rogue regimes pursuing nuclear weapons. Collapsing states. And now, massive leaks of secret documents. What is the…
New Scholarship Contests
If you're a college or university student who cares about freedom, check out our two new scholarship contests that we recently posted on our Contests page. They both run through the end of the year and each one carries…
New Video 5: How Were the Contributors Chosen?
In this video, New Threats to Freedom editor Adam Bellow discusses how the list of highly esteemed contributors came to be.
New Video 4: Which Came First?
So, which came first: freedom or culture? Here's what editor Adam Bellow thinks.
New Video 3: Trading Freedom for Security
Here are editor Adam Bellow and Templeton Foundation blogger Rod Dreher examining our tendency to trade freedom for security.
New Video 2: Liberty vs. License
Here are editor Adam Bellow and Templeton Foundation blogger Rod Dreher discussing the relationship between liberty and license.
New Video: Editor Adam Bellow on Freedom
Adam Bellow came down to the Templeton Foundation offices a few months ago to speak about New Threats to Freedom. Some footage of that event is now available and I'll post the clips here. In this first one, Adam…
Blog Contest Winner!
Congratulations to Andrew David King for submitting the winning essay in our recent blog contest. For that contest, you may remember, we tasked bloggers with answering this question: What, in your opinion, is the biggest emerging threat to freedom…
Free Preview: The Illusion of Innocence by Shelby Steele
Many have argued that the political liberalism coming out of the 1960s quickly became—despite all its good intentions—a threat to freedom in America. I think this is true, but not the entire truth. Since the 1960s there has been…
Free Preview: Participatory Culture and the Assault on Democracy by Lee Siegel
Untrammeled individuality in popular culture used to be the stuff of vicarious daydreams. Today it is a real expectation. It’s as if the conflict of rights vs. entitlements in the social realm had now been decided, in favor of…
Free Preview: The New Behaviorists by Christine Rosen
“We have not yet seen what man can make of man.”—B. F. Skinner When Barack Obama won the presidential election in November 2008, observers credited the extraordinary effectiveness of his grassroots organizing with helping him to achieve his historic…
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