Note: A version of this article originally appeared in my weekly Top of Mind newsletter, which goes out to subscribers every Thursday. Sign up to receive it directly in your inbox.

My brain has betrayed me this week. I have nothing of my own to tell you today. Instead, I’ve spent the week on something of an editorial rampage, publishing piece after piece from our contributors.

Last night, I published David Randall’s piece on the National Science Foundation’s new pilot program to place doctoral science students in private-industry research labs.

It’s a modest workforce initiative, Randall tells us. But it also signals the possibility that federal science funding may begin shifting from activist-dominated universities toward industry, where research is tied more directly to innovation and production.

Randall also wrote one half of a two-part exchange with Scott Turner on the White House’s report, Science: A New Golden Age. David examines where the report aligns with the National Association of Scholars’s (NAS) longstanding recommendations for scientific research and science education. Scott, meanwhile, argues that while the report diagnoses many of the right problems, it ultimately remains too committed to the federal government’s central role in managing science.

On Minding the Campus, you’ll also find Peter Wood’s essay on the National Museum of American History, which is laboring under what Roger Scruton once called “a spell.” Peter examines the White House’s recent report documenting how the museum increasingly portrays America not as an exceptional nation but as a story of systemic oppression.

Perhaps the most remarkable examples are a “Girlhood exhibit” telling children that “girls can be assigned male at birth” and another exhibit displaying a chest binder used by transgender skateboarder Leo Baker. Spare a thought for the fourth graders on their field trips.

I also crossposted an excellent essay by my friend Kate Bierly at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She argues that Texas has not gone far enough to protect its universities from hostile foreign influence and should strengthen its research security laws. Using Texas A&M as her case study, she shows how many of the state’s most significant foreign influence scandals were uncovered not by university compliance offices, but by Congress, federal investigators, and outside watchdogs. We count ourselves among them. In a 2022 Wall Street Journal investigation, then-NAS research fellow Neetu Arnold reported that more than $100 million in Russian and Qatari research funding received by the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) had not been disclosed under Section 117. NAS has since expanded its work on foreign influence through reports including Outsourced to Qatar, Behind the Climate Curtain, and Shadows of Influence. Kate’s essay helps keep those concerns—wait for it—top of mind.

And though I published more besides what’s been mentioned here, this letter would not be complete without mentioning Arnoldo Cantú and Nathan Gallo’s article, “Colorado State University Used an Extension Program to Export Anti-Racist Training to Rural Communities.”

The story follows last year’s withdrawn “Whitelash” study by examining another project involving one of its researchers. Disturbingly, through Colorado State University’s Extension network—best known for serving farmers and ranchers—the researchers developed workshops intended to “resocialize” participants toward “taking antiracist action” and “interrupting systems of White supremacy.” The paper repeatedly singled out white participants for ideological reeducation, treating anti-racism as white people’s moral obligation.

This is the first in what I expect will be a series of essays from Arnoldo Cantú and Nathan Gallo examining the ideological capture of social work education. If this first installment is any indication, the field of social work has been thoroughly co-opted by activist ideology.

Follow Jared Gould on X.