We tend to think of public education as a ladder of opportunity—a system that ensures that no matter a child’s economic circumstances, they will get the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in life. But what if that’s wrong? Indeed, what if the goal is actually the opposite: to keep people docilely in their place, no matter how bad their situation?

This is what Raised to Obey, grounded in deep, original research on the timing and targeting of mass education, contends. Public education was very often created not to give children what they needed to do or be whatever they wanted but to keep people in their place.

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Somewhere between the tendency to see everything through the lens of race and racial oppression and the tendency to dismiss those dynamics altogether lies the truth in any given setting, including criminal justice.

That there are police officers in this country who hold racist views is a problem the FBI has acknowledged in its own intelligence reports and information-sharing guidance to its agents. But how pervasive are racist views among police at the federal, state, and local levels? To what extent is there empirical evidence that racism among police leads to greater harassment, arrests, or violence against racial, ethnic, or religious minorities? Though the term “white supremacy” may be overused today, even as a synonym for racism, it should not desensitize us to the existence and true nature of white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups nor stop us from asking to what extent such elements have been able to find employment within law enforcement.

In Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within, FBI veteran Mike German tackles these and other questions. German spent 16 years with the bureau and conducted extensive and very dangerous undercover work targeting white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups. Join us on March 26 at 1 p.m. EDT as Cato senior fellow Patrick Eddington and Cato legal fellow Mike Fox question German about his new book and his own experiences as an FBI undercover agent who infiltrated violent right-wing groups.

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In recent years, calls to limit, regulate, or ban social media platforms have escalated from all corners of the political spectrum. These concerns have been as varied as national security, foreign ownership, and the danger of disinformation in a divided democracy. Yet perhaps the most cross‐​partisan concern has come from increasing evidence of social media’s detrimental impact on youth mental health. Join Sphere Education Initiatives on March 10 from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. for a timely webinar on social media and youth mental health featuring Jennifer Huddleston, senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute, and Clare Morrell, fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Offered during Civic Learning Week, which runs March 10–14 this year, this webinar seeks to highlight “the civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions that provide the foundation for an informed and engaged populace.” For more information about Civic Learning Week, visit civi​clearn​ing​week​.org.

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In conventional political debate—particularly in Washington, DC—“law” is understood as top-down legislation: rules consciously designed and imposed by central authorities. John Hasnas challenges this unspoken assumption, pointing to the Anglo-American common law, a decentralized, continually evolving system that produces order without conscious design or political control. In his important new book, Common Law Liberalism: A New Theory of the Libertarian Society, he offers a theory of liberalism that demonstrates that the common law can serve as an effective alternative to traditional politically created legislation. Hasnas’s thesis has implications ranging from modest (many government functions can be better supplied by the common law than by centralized legislation) to radical (if human beings do not need the state to make law, do they need the state at all?).

Please join us for a discussion of this provocative new book featuring the author and Professor David Schmidtz, director of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at West Virginia University, moderated by Cato’s Gene Healy.

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From the founding of the republic through the early 1930s, Congress set tariff rates through legislative revisions to the US tariff schedule. Low tariffs were initially imposed to raise revenue for the federal government, but tariffs became a tool to protect domestic producers from foreign competition. Today, Congress has broadly delegated its constitutional tariff powers to the president, and there is a real risk that the legislative and judicial branches would be unwilling or unable to check a future president’s abuse of US trade law as currently written.

In a recent briefing paper titled “Presidential Tariff Powers and the Need for Reform,” Cato scholars examine the current laws that might allow the president to impose broad tariffs without congressional input, as well as the reform options available to Congress for restoring balance between the legislative and executive branches.

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Higher education is at a crossroads. American universities are facing important questions about accountability and viability, including concerns about ideological influences, rising administrative costs, shifting academic expectations, and the growing challenge of student loan debt. But what are the underlying causes of these challenges, and how can we address them?

Join us for a thoughtful discussion with The Honorable Representative Burgess Owens, chairman of the Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee, alongside Cato experts Erec Smith, PhD, and Andrew Gillen, PhD as they examine the challenges facing academia today and explore practical solutions for the future.

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