May 2, 2025

Bryan Caplan

Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Cato Institute Adjunct Scholar, recently addressed GMU’s Board of Visitors. Prof. Caplan argued that the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) program at the school is like a “McCarthyite witch hunt,” and its office should close. If the DEI program stays, it will transform “GMU from a university where people can freely discuss the most controversial issues into a seminary where people are taught one controversial philosophy as established fact—and dissenters are intimidated into silence,” he said. A video and transcript of Prof. Caplan’s remarks are published below. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve received so much as an email from GMU’s DEI office. In fact, the last email I received about GMU DEI was a message from President Gregory Washington announcing that, “Our DEI office is now the Office of Access, Compliance, and Community.” Given the current political climate, why would any reasonable person consider the full abolition of this renamed DEI office, including the firing of all DEI staff, to be an important and valuable goal?

My answer: The current political climate will not last. Political climates never do. And once the political climate for DEI is once again favorable, the office will resume its ultimate mission: transforming GMU from a university where people can freely discuss the most controversial issues into a seminary where people are taught one controversial philosophy as established fact—and dissenters are intimidated into silence. You can call this philosophy “social justice” or “wokeness” as you prefer. Even if you think it is true, it should not be Officially True.

Why do I believe DEI is so dangerous in the long run for freedom of thought? Because, back in 2020, they felt secure enough to explicitly state their plans. Late that year, as you may recall, George Mason emailed us a statement on behalf of the Presidential Task Force on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence. It’s actually still on the GMU website, but in case they scrub it, I have it archived. I encourage everyone here to read the statement of the Task Force in its entirety, but key passages include:

Vision: George Mason University will become a national exemplar of anti-racism and inclusive excellence.

What if someone at GMU denies that racism is still a notable problem in modern America? What if they maintain that group disparities are caused by differences in ability or preferences? Can there be a place for such dissent in a “national exemplar of anti-racism”?

Mission: Develop and implement effective systems, practices and traditions that eradicate racism and bigotry at Mason.

If someone denies that racism and bigotry is a serious problem at GMU, doesn’t that get in the way of their “eradication”? Indeed, what if someone argues that DEI is the epicenter of on-campus racism and bigotry? And to make a statistical point, the only practical way to “eradicate” anything is to tolerate lots of false positives. To eradicate cancer, you have to cut out a lot of healthy tissue, because seemingly healthy tissue may still be cancerous. Similarly, to eradicate racism and bigotry, you have to get rid of anyone who conceivably, possibly, might be even slightly tainted by racism and bigotry.

The most ominous passage to my mind:

Anti-racism and inclusive excellence will be foundational in every program, process, policy, and procedure at Mason.

I teach labor economics. One of the topics we cover is discrimination. If “anti-racism and inclusive excellence” are really “foundational” in this way, how can I be allowed to favorably present the evidence that discrimination is not an important cause of labor market disparities?

To be fair, the document contains some apparent caveats, like:

Mason will be deliberate in establishing an inclusive environment in which all members of the campus community are welcomed and supported; experience a sense of belonging; and differing perspectives are valued and encouraged.

But there’s no sign that this includes my “differing perspective” that this whole project is a McCarthyite witch hunt.

Is it really such a big deal that some departments started requiring “diversity statements”? To get some perspective on this question, I looked at McCarthy-era Loyalty Oaths. To remain a professor at UC Berkeley in 1950, for example, you had to swear the following:

I am not a member of the Communist Party or any other organization which advocates the overthrow of the Government by force or violence, and I have no commitments in conflict with my responsibilities with respect to impartial scholarship and free pursuit of truth. I understand that the foregoing statement is a condition of my employment and a consideration of payment of my salary.

Notice: A devout Leninist revolutionary could honestly swear this oath as long as he doesn’t belong to an organization that advocates the government’s violent overthrow. Furthermore, he could belong to an alternative Communist Party dedicated to establishing Communism by democratic means. In sharp contrast, diversity statements really do demand your outright, wholehearted agreement with DEI.

The original McCarthyism faded away long ago. But consider: What would have happened if McCarthyites had managed to build Offices of Patriotism, Prosperity, and the People throughout higher ed, staffed by scores or even hundreds of Patriotism Officers? 

I submit that we would probably still have McCarthyism today! Enthusiastic activists can unleash a temporary witch hunt. But to make a witch hunt permanent, you need an army of full-time paid employees.

And that’s why GMU should decisively end DEI by getting rid of all of its DEI employees. Renaming McCarthyism would not have removed the threat it posed to freedom of thought on campus, and renaming DEI does not remove the threat it poses to freedom of thought on campus.

GMU’s DEI has never done anything to me personally. I’m not angry at anyone. But this has to be done to protect GMU from all the witch hunts we’re going to see in the future if we don’t do the right thing right now. Thank you.

Norbert Michel and Jerome Famularo

Today’s populists peddle two narratives to support their agenda. The first one is that the middle class suffered broad income stagnation for the past 50 years. The second one is that policymakers’ blind devotion to free markets—especially through free trade—decimated the US manufacturing sector, “hollowing out” the middle class by causing the alleged income stagnation.

The problem is that both stories are wrong.

The second populist narrative, that policymakers’ blind devotion to free markets decimated US manufacturing, is a broad topic that we won’t delve into here. But it’s covered in this new book, Crushing Capitalism, and we’ll go deeper in this upcoming Cato event.

Still, the relevance of the second narrative relies on the underlying assumption of income stagnation. We’ve previously written about how the evidence contradicts the income stagnation story, and many other scholars have as well. We’ve also provided concrete examples of how populists cherry-pick data to “prove” that income growth stagnated, and devoted a full chapter to debunking the stagnation story in this new book. 

Here’s just one more example of how wrong the populists’ income stagnation story is. Real median household income, for all American households, increased 73 percent from 1968 to 2024. That’s not stagnation. Interestingly, that figure is biased downward because of changing household characteristics, such as smaller families, an aging population, and more single folks.

As Figure 1 shows, real median income for married couples with children increased by 132 percent from 1968 to 2024. That’s pretty much the polar opposite of stagnation.

Given all the negative rhetoric, it’s hard to believe that living standards have been increasing broadly for decades. But it’s true, life has become more affordable.

For instance, as we’ve written numerous times, it’s not true that housing has become radically unaffordable, though that’s one of the more persistent myths. It’s difficult to see because the housing that people buy is very different than it was 50 years ago, and a more diverse set of households now pays for housing.

One way to highlight these differences is to look at the median home price as a percentage of income by household type. As Figure 2 shows, when we consider all households, the unaffordability problem looks much worse than when we consider only the income of those married with children. Again, looking at all households will understate income gains, since the population is aging and more people are choosing to live alone, so it is useful to narrow the focus to married couples with children.

As we showed back in December (see Figure 5), adjusting for both home and household size changes shows that housing has actually become slightly more affordable. Not to mention that homes have vastly more amenities nowadays than they used to, such as central air and garages, which are not factored into this adjustment.

For a more in-depth factual deconstruction of these populist narratives, please check out the book and join our live discussion on May 8, with our Cato colleague Adam Michel and the Washington Post’s Megan McArdle.

Colleen Hroncich

Alongside the growth of homeschooling and microschooling, student-directed learning seems to be gaining popularity. Many of the options highlighted in the Friday Feature incorporate some aspects of self-directed or project-based learning throughout the day. One Stone, in Boise, Idaho, takes student-directed to a whole different level.

One Stone was founded in 2008 with an after-school program called Project Good that set out to empower students to make a positive difference in their communities. From the outset, two-thirds of the organization’s board was made up of students, including several officer roles. “Chairman of the Board, Vice Chair, Treasurer, Secretary—all students. And it’s in our bylaws that it has to be two-thirds students and those officer roles have to be students,” explains Celeste Bolin, One Stone’s Executive Director.

Project Good involves teams of students and adults working to find solutions to causes the students care about, such as homelessness, gang violence, or empowering young women. They use “human-centered design thinking,” which Celeste describes as “a problem-solving, empathy-based way of defining a problem with the people that experience that problem and then solving it in a really creative way with multiple stakeholders involved.”

Celeste says the students who were involved with Project Good attended high schools all around the area. “They were finding so many incredible skills and so much passion for what they were doing that they were begging the question: Why isn’t this real school? Why isn’t this what high school feels like instead of this after-school program?” Celeste says. One Stone received a large grant to start an innovative, out-of-the-box school. 

As they set out to design a school, they had 24-hour “think challenges” with two different groups of 300 students from around the region. Celeste was a college professor at the time and was brought in as an expert on stress and wellness, which was her first exposure to One Stone. “They came up with two things. It needs to be passion-based: like, listen to students. What do they care about? And it needs to be relevant to the world right now,” she says. Those founding principles were the bedrock of the school.

The One Stone lab school started in 2016 with 32 students. Celeste came in the following year as a science coach and mentor. She became director of the lab school a year and a half later and now serves as executive director of the entire organization. “The lab school is our main program that awards a diploma and uses our rigorous growth framework,” says Celeste. It includes around 100 kids who are essentially grades 9–12, although they don’t use that terminology. Every student is on a unique journey that typically takes between two and four years.

One Stone has 24 skills in its Bold Learning Objectives, or BLOB. “We’ve developed a competency-based, real-world assessment of skills,” Celeste explains. “We measure students’ growth in their time here, and it’s become a framework that we’ve actually deployed in nine other partner schools across the nation.” One Stone personalizes the framework for specific schools, including various models—public and private, big and small. She emphasizes that these are not “One Stone schools”—they aren’t interested in having franchises—but they are schools that are interested in competency-based learning. One Stone shares its mentoring program, competency-based growth framework, and tracking system that they use to create transcripts for their students.

No two days are the same at the One Stone lab school, but a typical day includes a skills-based workshop in the morning. This may involve problem solving, such as applied mathematics or applied coding, or applied technical writing, such as journalism or scientific writing. Next comes a longer time block of experiential learning. There are a wide variety of projects the kids are tackling, including projects related to architecture, wilderness travel, and robotics. In the afternoon, they have their human-centered design thinking teams, where they work with clients to solve problems. Recently, some students have been working with the Idaho Transportation Department to find solutions to transportation problems, such as roundabouts and distracted driving. They end the day with an all-community clean and a big circle.

The lab school is located in a building in downtown Boise that gives them the flexibility to do all of this. “We have a science area, we have an art area. Then we have a foundry, which is our maker space. It’s got a CNC machine, it’s got a bunch of different makers’ tools, it’s got a welder. It’s where a lot of stuff is built. We do a lot of building around here. Then we have the music studio. We have a commercial kitchen, students love to do kitchen sorts of experiences,” says Celeste. There are also meeting rooms of various sizes that can be used for group work, community meetings, partner meetings, and more. The great room is big enough for the entire school and has modular furniture and a big screen so it can be used in multiple configurations.

In addition to the lab school, One Stone still has the Project Good after-school program as well as summer camps for younger students. Students from One Stone or other area high schools “run three to four different camps over the summer—STEM, love of reading, art, performance, entrepreneurship. That is really like our actualization of our value of doing good,” Celeste says. “Experiential service, civic engagement is a huge part of what we do.” The students run the camps with adults on site to drive the van, manage the credit card, or handle emergencies.

The founders of One Stone clearly created something unique. “I truly think the difference is students driving what we do,” says Celeste. “Their heart and their mind are fully appreciated here. Like they’re showing up as a whole person, and their opinions really do drive what we do. We change all the time, and it’s based on students’ interest or students’ advocacy for themselves and what they want to do.” But it’s not pandemonium—the students don’t lead everything, and there are still adults to provide guardrails and support the students as they work to achieve their goals.

“We meet all state standards and then some. All of our students who want to go to college are accepted into at least one and usually many more,” Celeste adds. “But the students are telling us what is really driving them to be curious about architecture or geology. And then we build with them and bring in experts as needed when we’re doing really cool big projects. So I think that’s truly unique and something I’ve seen few schools really do.”