Incisive commentary on urban policy, politics, and culture. Published by @ManhattanInst and edited by @BrianACity.
New York, NY
Joined December 2008
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College rankings are broken.
We're doing it the right way.
Introducing: City Journal's 2026 College Rankings! collegerankings.city-journal…
City Journal retweeted
One of the many great things about the new @CityJournal college rankings is that terrific public universities, especially flagships, are found in the top tier. For too long, elite privates have gotten all the attention. collegerankings.city-journal…
City Journal retweeted
If you want college to educate, not indoctrinate—for growth, not affirmation—these are the rankings to pay attention to.
College rankings are broken.
We're doing it the right way.
Introducing: City Journal's 2026 College Rankings! collegerankings.city-journal…
City Journal retweeted
Yale is the only Ivy League college to make it in the top 10 of the 2026 City Journal College Rankings. Sounds like they are finally starting to course correct after more than a decade of lunacy: collegerankings.city-journal…
College rankings are broken.
We're doing it the right way.
Introducing: City Journal's 2026 College Rankings! collegerankings.city-journal…
City Journal retweeted
New Manhattan Institute college rankings just dropped:
#1 - UT Austin
#2 - University of Florida
#3 - University of Notre Dame
#4 - MIT
#5 - Claremont McKenna
#6 - UNC Chapel Hill
#7 - Georgia Tech
#8 - Purdue University
#9 - THE Ohio State University
#10 - Yale University
Bottom 10 (of major universities they looked at):
#106 - Pomona College
#107 - UMass
#108 - Brandeis
#109 - Tulane
#110 - University of Vermont
#111 - Colorado College
#112 - Vassar College
#113 - Macalester College
#114 - Smith College
#115 - Oberlin College
(Explanation of the ranking in the video and the full list below!)
We scored 115 of America's most prominent colleges and universities based on what actually matters.
On our 100-point scale, not one of these schools scored above 80. Only seven earned a 70 or higher. Eighty-seven received scores below 60.
The average score of an American school of higher education this year was an abysmal 50/100.
City Journal’s 2026 College Rankings are here, and they answer the ultimate question: Are America’s colleges and universities delivering the education that students and the country need? collegerankings.city-journal…
City Journal retweeted
Must read in the movement to save higher education -
Check out @CityJournal 2026 College Rankings 👇
College rankings are broken.
We're doing it the right way.
Introducing: City Journal's 2026 College Rankings! collegerankings.city-journal…
City Journal retweeted
Traditional, prestige-focused college rankings don't accurately help students and families decide which schools are worth their time. City Journal's College Rankings do. ⬇️
We compiled 95 distinct measures that evaluate institutional performance across four broad categories:
Governance Quality: Assesses administrators' focus on academic standards, free expression, and meritocracy.
Educational Experience: Recognizes institutions that prioritize intellectual pluralism in faculty hiring, strive to recover core learning in Western civilization and civics, and prevent shallow and trendy political movements from taking over academics.
Student Life: Rewards institutions that foster viewpoint diversity, freedom of thought, and resistance to political radicalism on campus.
Outcomes: Recognizes schools that prepare students for successful careers beyond what would have been expected given their students’ socioeconomic and academic backgrounds—measuring the real impact schools have on their graduates, and not just whether they happen to enroll students who were likely to succeed anyway.
No school scored better than an 80 on our 100-point scale. collegerankings.city-journal…
College rankings are broken.
We're doing it the right way.
Introducing: City Journal's 2026 College Rankings! collegerankings.city-journal…
City Journal retweeted
The @CityJournal 2026 College Rankings graded 115 top schools on what they deliver now. UT Austin, Florida, and Notre Dame beat out the Ivy League.
College rankings are broken.
We're doing it the right way.
Introducing: City Journal's 2026 College Rankings! collegerankings.city-journal…
City Journal retweeted
Been waiting for this
College rankings are broken.
We're doing it the right way.
Introducing: City Journal's 2026 College Rankings! collegerankings.city-journal…
“A familiar conservatism—keep taxes low, arrest criminals, reject gender ideology, and affirm a color-blind meritocracy—still has considerable public appeal,” @Sean_Speer writes. city-journal.org/article/mid…
Teachers' unions have spent months fighting the new federal scholarship tax credit, which could fund tutoring, special-ed services, books, and uniforms for students—despite the fact that most teachers support it.
Over 30 states have opted into the tax credit, including bright-blue New York. The question remains: when will the unions get on board?
@dany_egorov's latest: city-journal.org/article/fed…
The phrase “artistic excellence” was deleted from an early draft of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s strategic plan.
In September 2025, conductor Andris Nelsons asked that it be restored, because excellence is the “indispensable engine for everything the BSO does.”
Five months later, the board voted to terminate his contract.
@HMDatMI on the BSO's power struggle over diversity, ideology, and organizational control ⬇️ city-journal.org/article/cla…
On November 3, Nebraska banned men in women's sports.
Wisconsin passed a constitutional amendment prohibiting affirmative action.
California voters rejected the billionaire tax.
Tennessee passed a constitutional prohibition on a state property tax.
Ballot measures increasing fentanyl penalties, establishing sex-based eligibility for school and college sports, and prohibiting specified gender-transition surgeries for minors are leading in Colorado.
The Republican Party may have sustained massive midterm losses, but statewide ballot initiatives tell a different story. Conservative policies still resonate, @Sean_Speer writes, even as voters reject the Trump administration. city-journal.org/article/mid…
"That week, many felt that the tragedy might have a silver lining, that Charlie’s death might move people to set aside petty differences and come together for the good of the country. That was his mission and, for a moment, it seemed that everyone was trying to honor it.
Instead, his death marked the shattering of the American Right."
@christopherrufo's powerful account of Charlie Kirk's assassination and how to honor his legacy: city-journal.org/article/cha…
“Democrats in Texas will learn what Republicans elsewhere have discovered: a state’s policies tend to be sticky,” @judgeglock writes. city-journal.org/article/tex…
City Journal retweeted
When Anthropic goes public, the regular shareholders will have virtually no power, thanks to a baroque corporate structure so that Dario and other founders absolute power, coupled with total deniability.
My latest in @CityJournal
city-journal.org/article/ant…
Americans are flocking to walkable small-town downtowns on the edges of big metros, but regulation has made it nearly impossible to build new ones.
Via @bhargreaves
Who's really running Anthropic?
Since the beginning, Anthropic’s leadership has presented its mission as too important to be subject strictly to the profit motive.
Its SEC filing tells a different story. The trillion-dollar company’s corporate structure is ostensibly designed to keep Anthropic focused on the public interest—but in effect, it leaves CEO Dario Amodei and his co-founders firmly in control.
@chumpchanger on the corporate structure that seems designed to obfuscate ⬇️ city-journal.org/article/ant…
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Trump can still change the Department of Education, even with Democrats controlling Congress.
Yes, time has run out on eliminating it. But there's still much he can do 🧵
7. Make the Office of Civil Rights' own procedures a model of the rule of law.
Adopt binding procedures requiring timely investigations, clear notice of alleged violations, a meaningful opportunity to respond, public explanations of resolutions, and settlement obligations tied to identified violations with defined termination criteria.
An investigation that remains open indefinitely can punish an institution without establishing that it violated the law. Vague settlements can also entrench expensive bureaucracies and ideological training requirements that survive long after the original dispute.
Clear procedures would improve relief for actual victims while requiring the OCR to substantiate its demands. Institutionalizing those limits would help prevent future administrations from using civil-rights enforcement to impose political orthodoxy.
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A lame-duck presidency that just lost decisively in the midterms doesn’t have to mean either forgetting about a policy agenda or having to push the constitutional envelope to achieve it. Plenty can be accomplished in the next two years—at the Department of Education and beyond—through executive orders, regulations, guidance, grant priorities, and enforcement.
@ishapiro's latest: city-journal.org/article/dep…
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