November 2, 2026

Photo credit: NurPhoto / Contributor / NurPhoto via Getty Images

Introduced publicly earlier this year, the Alliance for Higher Education (AHE) serves as an administrative hub for groups like the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education and the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom. Essentially, AHE represents those who believe that higher ed should fight back against its critics. For instance, when the Department of Education asked universities to make public statements about free speech over the summer, AHE shot back, calling it an attempt at “ideological pressure.” 

As it turns out, AHE is the Mellon Foundation’s brainchild. “Through a series of public records requests, I’ve obtained thousands of documents, including emails, project proposals, lecture slides, and meeting recordings related to the Alliance for Higher Education,” John Sailer writes. “These records show how, behind the scenes, the Mellon Foundation is organizing and spending big to defend its vision for higher education. As the records suggest, Mellon has geared up for a political fight.” 

A central element of that vision? Fighting conservative-led higher education reform.  

Read more.  

Last week, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) found that Canoga Park Senior High School violated both Title VI, which protects students from hostile learning environments based on race or origin, as well as a state antidiscrimination law.  

Good, Dana Stangel-Plowe writes. Teachers at the school displayed flyers in classrooms that accused Israel of genocide, created a display of a “mini-Gaza” with vehicles next to dead children, wore keffiyehs, and recruited students for the Students for Justice in Palestine club. 

“Teachers have every right to hold and express political opinions in their personal lives,” Stangel-Plowe writes, “but they abuse their positions of trust when they turn public school classrooms into political platforms.” 

Read more.

Economic historian Gregory Clark’s new book, To Have and Have Not: The Determinants of Social Status in England, 1600–2026, argues that social status persists through genetic inheritance. Using historical information like English genealogies and marriage records, Clark finds such links in family members as distant as fourth cousins. 

“To Have and Have Not is far from thoroughly convincing, even to readers who are open to the idea that genes play a large role in determining social outcomes,” Robert VerBruggen writes. “Yet one cannot help but be awed by the scope of Clark’s undertaking—and his willingness to stake out a bold position, insisting that vast swathes of existing research and conventional wisdom are wrong.” 

Read VerBruggen’s review.  

Sixty years ago, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown aired for the first time. It remains the defining American Halloween special, capturing the melancholy and wonder of being a child in autumn. A few years ago, however, Apple TV took it off network television. Since then, it has becoming increasingly irrelevant and is fading from the American cultural lexicon. 

John Hirschauer reflects on why the Great Pumpkin is a classic, what makes a holiday special worth viewing, and why Apple’s stewardship has ruined an American tradition.