Leave it to a legal scholar to ask: Is a stigma a tax? If so, can government act legitimately to remove that stigma?

To legal scholar Cass Sunstein, the answer is yes. Certain social norms, Sunstein explains, such as wearing a seatbelt in Hungary or carrying a gun in Sunstein’s neighborhood, act as taxes on particular behaviors. Norms that encourage certain behaviors are, analogously, subsidies.

This Juneteenth – the day celebrating the end of slavery in the United States – take a moment to think about what it means to be free.

Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson provocatively argues that without the notion of slavery the concept of freedom cannot fully exist. In his lecture, “Free at last: How slavery begat freedom,” he explains that freedom is a concept unique to the west. Without our ugly history of slavery, in Patterson’s telling, we could not cherish the gift of liberty as we should.

“QUIT. Go teach somewhere else, you racist… (Maybe Charlottesville?)”

After publishing an op-ed in the New York Times calling for greater viewpoint diversity on college campuses, Sam Abrams found a sign saying just that on his office door at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY.

We take for granted that America is the world’s preeminent superpower, with hegemony abroad and prosperity at home. But how did we get here? And what does it mean for the US to use its superpower status to be a world leader?

In his new book, “Burdens of Freedom: Cultural Difference and American Power,” and in this 2016 Bradley Lecture, Professor Lawrence Mead argues that the basis of American wealth and power is an individualist culture. Threats to such a culture, Mead contends, are the primary challenges facing America as it tries to navigate its role as a leader on the world stage.

In this episode of the Bradley Lecture Series Podcast, released for President’s Day 2019, Walter Berns discusses the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln. The ideas contained in this lecture were the fruits of life-long study and reflection, and Professor Berns offers us additional reasons for sharing his regard for Lincoln, a man supreme in both word and deed.

As we learn from Walter Berns, Abraham Lincoln may be said to be the poet or maker of the Americans, both by teaching us what to think about our place and posture in the world and the meaning of our humanity, but also by his own heroic example of what it takes to defend, preserve, and live up to the highest principles of our common life.

Germany has free college. Australia has low default rates. Why can’t America just follow their example? When proposing higher education reform, politicians often point to other countries as guides to what America should do. But what can we really learn from other countries’ higher education policies?

In this episode of “The Report Card with Nat Malkus”, on the AEI Education Podcast, Jason Delisle and Alex Usher join us to discuss their new book on international higher education, and the tradeoffs between access, quality, and cost that every country has to make in higher education policy.

From teacher strikes to school safety, 2018 was an eventful year in education. In the last episode of the year, Laura Meckler, Alyson Klein, and Erik Robelen reflect with host Nat Malkus on the top education stories of 2018, and look ahead to stories we should pay attention to in 2019.

In this episode of the Bradley Lecture Series Podcast, Paul Johnson discusses “What went wrong with the media and how to put it right.” This lecture was originally delivered at AEI in October of 1994.

This lecture predated “alternative facts” and “fake news,” and, most importantly, it was given before the internet became part of the media landscape. Yet Mr. Johnson’s contrast between the ideal and the reality of American media stands the test of time. Drawing on the Book of John, Thomas Jefferson, Milton, and Daniel Webster, Johnson asks his audience to demand a moral media aware of its moral obligations to society.

In this episode of the Bradley Lecture Series Podcast, Henry Nau discusses “Conservative internationalism: Armed diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan.”

Two schools of thought typically emerge when Americans debate their place in the world: a realist, nationalist school and a liberal internationalist school. In simple terms, they ask, “Are we to be ‘Fortress America,’ or are we to be the world’s policeman? Nau posits a third school of thought which he traces through four American presidencies, showing that conservative internationalism combines key objectives with the values and means of the other two schools.

Last night, millions of voters went to the polls and gave both parties mixed victories. In this special edition of “The Report Card with Nat Malkus,” on the AEI Education Podcast, Frederick Hess, Jason Delisle, and Lanae Erickson join to discuss what the 2018 midterm election results mean for education policy, what we can learn from this election on education, and what issues that will likely be addressed in coming months.