Video: Standing Against Institutional Capture

Restoring the Sciences Webinar Series

National Association of Scholars

Academia has been thoroughly captured by its ideological and intellectual enemies. An academic who stands up to defend cherished academic ideals, such as freedom of inquiry and freedom of discourse, increasingly finds himself isolated and abandoned, even by colleagues who should be standing with him in solidarity. What’s going on?

This webinar features Bradley Watson, a former professor at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he held the Philip M. McKenna Chair in American and Western Political Thought. He resigned from this position in 2022 after a firestorm of controversy erupted over a presentation on race and politics, a controversy abetted enthusiastically by his Saint Vincent colleagues. He has written of his experience in The American Spectator, where he described the “moral virtue of courage” as “a virtue that is in catastrophically short supply” in our institutions. He is presently Associate Professor of Government at the Washington campus of Hillsdale College.

Listen in as Bradley Watson discusses how anti-intellectualism has overtaken and captured America's colleges and universities, and what professors might do to stand athwart such advances.

  • Share

Most Commented

December 16, 2025

1.

DOJ Does Away with Disparate Impact Theory

Disparate impact theory is on the Trump administration’s chopping block, signaling a move away from discriminatory government policy practices....

March 3, 2026

2.

The Ayatollah’s Friends are on Your Campus

The U.S. strike on Iran and the foreign funding shaping how universities respond to it....

March 11, 2026

3.

Bad Faith Noncompliance: Virginia Schools Flout Supreme Court and Trump with DEI ‘Rebrand’

Trump’s EOs and the Supreme Court make DEI illegal—but colleges keep rebranding it to dodge the law....

Most Read

May 15, 2015

1.

Where Did We Get the Idea That Only White People Can Be Racist?

A look at the double standard that has arisen regarding racism, illustrated recently by the reaction to a black professor's biased comments on Twitter....

February 21, 2014

2.

Taking Care

Is art worth dying for? The Monuments Men considers the value of good art and its purpose in preserving a cultural heritage....

October 17, 2018

3.

Hamilton: An American Musical - Its National Influence as Art

William Young finds much to praise in the hit musical....