Daniel Diermeier’s Sept. 14 online op-ed, “A report exposed a crisis in academia. The response was telling,” correctly argued that political commitments are eroding scholarly standards in the humanities and social sciences, despite objections to that characterization from many within those fields. I’d like to emphasize that Diermeier is not rejecting social justice, per se. He is rejecting the ideological orthodoxy that often undergirds it.
The desire to improve the world is wonderful, and every scholar approaches their work with values, assumptions and purposes. But academia starts to resemble an institution of higher indoctrination when a faculty member’s assumptions and purposes are used to advance a political cause. That’s especially true when questioning that scholar leads to your ostracism.
I am opposed not to social justice, but to the orthodoxy of a particular kind of it. For example, I believe giving traditionally marginalized students helpful tools for their professional lives, such as competency in standard English, is a form of social justice. As a Black American, how can I not? For some of my peers, however, my social justice is inherently unjust. For them, teaching standard English to racial minorities is intrinsically racist. We have the same goal: to help those we think need help. Yet my prescription for getting there, a means that involved helping students navigate the world, was so unacceptable that I was labeled a pariah by Black and White colleagues alike.
Let my experience exemplify the issue Diermeier and his colleagues have exposed: Inflexible orthodoxy and intolerance, not social justice, is the real problem.
Erec Smith, Washington
The writer is a researcher at the Cato Institute and a former associate professor of rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania.
Politics’ role in the classroom
The title of Dana Stangel-Plowe’s Sept. 15 op-ed says it all: “A teacher’s job is educating, not political organizing.” And what kind of message is Princess Moss, the new president of the National Education Association, sending when her priorities for the first 100 days on the job are to “organize, organize, organize”?
Moss, who was a Virginia public school music teacher for elementary students, didn’t have to prepare her students for the SATs, didn’t have to get them to pass the state’s standardized testing requirements and didn’t have to assign, proofread or grade term papers.
During my 34-year teaching career, I was far too busy preparing lesson plans covering the state’s mandated curriculum, teaching the required readings, grading papers, attending school-sponsored activities, chaperoning events, attending parent conferences, mentoring student teachers, writing college recommendations and monitoring the cafeteria during lunch.
I never had the time or inclination to advocate for political causes, acknowledge what Rebecca Rothstein called “the systemic oppression” that supposedly stands in the way of students’ success, or “organize, organize, organize.” My duties left me no time to organize or even discuss political issues, much less advocate for political change.
What good teacher has the capacity to take on such an edict from the president of the National Education Association? Surely she doesn’t represent the attitude of any teacher I know or worked with. Have teachers’ duties and times changed this drastically since I retired?
Kathy A. Megyeri, Washington
Dana Stangel-Plowe’s argument that a teacher’s job is to educate, not politically organize, overlooks an important distinction: Politics is not synonymous with partisan politics.
Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” pamphlet, published months before the Declaration of Independence was signed, recognized that humans need to create governments to protect their “freedom and security.” Politics, at its best, is how we peacefully govern our independence, and also how we might best keep from killing one another.
I’m a biology teacher, and I believe in our capacity to cooperate, coordinate and care for one another. I also think resolving conflicts peacefully is deeply rooted in our nature. Yet technology is advancing exponentially, and our collective wisdom hasn’t kept pace.
That is precisely why education must prepare citizens not just to know facts, but also to think critically and systemically and to participate responsibly to protect the freedoms and security that our government exists to preserve.
Chuck Woolery, Rockville
Keep Hollywood jobs in America
Regarding the Sept. 8 editorial “Hollywood loves to hate Trump. But it loves money more”:
I’ve spent my more than 30-year career in film and television production, working with crews who build entire worlds out of plywood, foam, paint and sheer willpower. A federal production incentive is the necessary economic lever to protect American labor, manufacturing and global influence.
The United States is currently bleeding market share to aggressively subsidized international markets. Data from the industry tracker ProdPro shows that the U.S. share of global production collapsed from 51 percent in the first quarter of 2022 to just 39 percent in the first quarter of 2025. The primary driver of this collapse is foreign federal incentives designed explicitly to poach American mobile factories.
The resulting devastation is uniform and widespread. In Los Angeles, on-location television production has dropped by almost 50 percent from its five-year average, with a loss of some 57,000 jobs in the last four years. In Georgia, direct production spending plunged from $4.4 billion in 2022 to $2.3 billion in the last fiscal year.
To understand what this means for Main Street, look to people like my wife, Concetta, who operates a craft service business that feeds production crews with food from local shops. This commerce also dries up when a production goes abroad.
Beyond the balance sheets lies an asset difficult for ledgers to capture: America’s cultural soft power. U.S. media output is our most effective ambassador. Conceding our preeminence in global media isn’t just an economic surrender; it’s a profound strategic blunder that abandons our best tool for international goodwill.
Brian Papworth, Long Branch, New Jersey
The writer is the executive director of the Coalition for American Production.
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