Executive summary Across 2016–2026, antisemitism has risen in reported incidents, perceived prevalence, and measurable online exposure—especially in the United States and Europe—punctuated by sharp surges following major political flashpoints and especially Middle East war triggers. In the U.S., ADL’s long-running Audit shows a steep escalation in “incidents” (a broader category than criminal hate crimes) culminating in 9,354 incidents in 2024, the highest level in the Audit’

Apple TV has quietly become the home of a particular moral experiment. In Ted Lasso and Shrinking—both Apple TV series, both streaming on Apple TV—the platform has produced two works of popular philosophy disguised as comedy. One radiates hope almost offensively; the other limps forward with grief still bleeding through the bandages. Together, they ask a single ancient question in two different moods: How should a decent person live when life refuses to be decent back? If Ted

Las Vegas is a city built on spectacle, but the most important thing that happened at the recent Cognia Conference was not flashy. It was foundational. It was philosophical. And, fittingly, it was about the future. Across more than 31 states, educators, administrators, superintendents, and innovators gathered under one unifying message: artificial intelligence is no longer a question of if in education, but how. How we use it. How we teach it. How we allow it to reshape learn

Nowhere is this crisis more visible—or more emotionally charged—than in education. Thirty years ago, most parents did not argue with teachers about curriculum. Not because teachers were perfect, but because there was trust. Trust that teachers were trained professionals. Trust that schools existed to educate, not indoctrinate. Trust that authority had been earned. Today, that trust has eroded. Parents increasingly insist on instructional control. Curricula are audited, challe

Long before spreadsheets, before silicon, before anyone thought to trap numbers inside machines, humanity discovered something quietly astonishing: math could be heard. The Pythagoreans, wandering somewhere between philosophy, mysticism, and early science, were among the first to notice it. They plucked strings, shortened them, lengthened them, listened carefully, and realized that harmony was not accidental. It was numerical. An octave emerged at a ratio of 2:1. A perfect fi

At a recent gathering of educators and leaders connected through Cognia, one theme surfaced again and again—not as a speculative whisper, but as a confident keynote refrain: artificial intelligence has arrived in schools, and it is here to stay. Cognia, long respected as one of the world’s leading accreditation organizations, has built its reputation on helping schools reflect, improve, and align with best practices. Its conferences tend to look forward, but this year the gaz

Introduction Apple TV’s Ted Lasso is more than just a sports comedy – it is a heartwarming exploration of community, cultural exchange, and personal growth. The series follows an optimistic American coach, Ted Lasso, who takes charge of a fictional English football club. As a viewer who studied in Liverpool (first in 2005 and again briefly in 2014), I found the show’s themes uncannily reflective of my own transatlantic experiences. This review offers a positive yet critical r

Choose strength. Choose responsibility. Choose to be the one who holds it together when others can’t—or won’t. Choose litigation from nineteen to forty like it’s a long apprenticeship in endurance. Choose to carry family, students, employees, institutions, histories, expectations. Choose to smile while doing it, because people tell you that leaders smile—and because sometimes smiling feels like the least disruptive thing you can do for everyone else. Choose silence. Because c

Dear Students, Lighting What We Have A Chanukah letter about school, mortality, and continuing anyway Chanukah has never felt to me like a holiday about winning. It’s a holiday about continuing. I used to think I’d live a different kind of life. When I was younger, I imagined myself digging in the wadis of Egypt—dust in my hair, language in my mouth, history under my fingernails. That felt like the good life. In some quiet way, it still does. But life rarely follows our first

By Matthew Weinberg October 31, 2025 I’ve spent years in the education trenches and even built a school from scratch using an old commercial property. From this firsthand experience – detailed further in my forthcoming book Cheap Talk, Big Gains Part 2: Gloves Off – I’ve concluded that public education in the United States is fundamentally broken in one major way: we pour disproportionate funds into infrastructure and capital projects, up front, often before a single child ge

Heavy Spending on Facilities Over Instructional Needs A recurring critique is that public school systems pour excessive funds into buildings and infrastructure at the expense of instructional resources. In many cases, a significant share of school capital budgets goes toward construction projects rather than classroom needs. For example, in West Virginia and Ohio during a recent period, new school construction accounted for over half of all K–12 capital spending (about 55–60%

Quaker (Friends) education is rooted in a profound belief that there is “that of God” or an Inner Light in every person. In a K–12 classroom, this translates into a warm, respectful approach where each student’s voice and spirit are valued. Rather than focusing solely on delivering curriculum, Quaker pedagogy emphasises community, reflection, and active listening as central elements of learning. Walk into a Friends school classroom and you’re likely to notice a calm energy: s

In the new documentary Riefenstahl, about the infamous Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, the director presses her repeatedly about her relationship with Adolf Hitler. Her responses are evasive but telling. “I knew Hitler as the head of the National Socialist Party,” she says, carefully. That phrase, National Socialist, spoken without reflection, contains the truth most of the modern world has tried to forget. The word fascist is Italian, drawn from fasces—a bundle of rods b

Introduction Science in the modern world is a story of inference. Every day, researchers sift through data seeking meaningful patterns, using the tools of statistics and guided by the principles of the philosophy of science. We live in an era where enormous data sets and sophisticated analyses drive discovery – from physics to genomics to social science – yet behind this empirical flood lies a centuries-old philosophical tension: How do we infer general truths about the world

How a Jewish immigrant’s faith and fortune helped bankroll the American Revolution — and why his name nearly vanished from history. “Freedom is never won solely by the sword, but also by the ledger, the letter, and the leap of faith.” The Banker Behind the Barricades By 1776, the fledgling Continental Congress had dreams of liberty but a treasury emptier than a pewter cup after a tavern toast. Into this fiscal void stepped Haym Salomon — a man of faith and figures. Trained in

There are moments when pop culture, like a drunken prophet, stumbles into philosophy. Peacemaker Season 2 is one such moment — a garish, blood-streaked epiphany disguised as a comic-book farce. Behind its cacophony of jokes, nudity, and brutality lies something altogether stranger: an inquiry into what Camus might have called the absurd machinery of peace, that grinding mechanism by which men justify cruelty through the rhetoric of order. Christopher Smith, “the Peacemaker,”

By ProfessorMattW (after Nietzsche, Camus, Foucault, and the Ghost of Alan Moore) I. The Invention of Peace Peace, that immaculate fiction, is one of civilization’s most exquisite delusions. We imagine it as absence — a world untroubled by conflict — yet in every century it arrives as command, never as condition. Peace is the propaganda of victors. It exists only where the conquered have forgotten how to scream. What Nietzsche called the “transvaluation of values” has here co

Respect isn’t obedience — it’s the courtesy we owe to those who’ve studied what we only sense. In an age where every parent is an amateur policymaker and every search engine a substitute for scholarship, we’ve forgotten that education is a science — not a hobby. When a headmaster with a PhD or EdD speaks, they’re not sharing an opinion; they’re distilling a decade of research into the fragile miracle of how a child learns. It’s time we remembered what civilization once knew:

Maria Montessori saw what modern neuroscience now confirms: formal schooling should begin around six or seven, when curiosity matures into readiness. Yet in the United States, Montessori’s revolution for the poor has been privatized for the rich, while most children are rushed through premature academics that smother imagination. Now, technology — once accused of stealing childhood — may paradoxically be the last refuge of authentic play. In Minecraft, Roblox, and digital wor

Among the many teacher–student relationships of the ancient world, few are as compelling or tragic as that between Socrates and Alcibiades. The story of the philosopher and his brilliant, self-destructive pupil captures the tension between reason and ambition, virtue and vanity, moral hope and human failure. It is a relationship preserved not only in the philosophical dialogues of Plato but also in the historical recollections of Xenophon, Plutarch, and others. This essay exp