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How Blockchain Will Disrupt Colleges, the Media, and Unions, Too

January 26, 2018  •  The Weekly Standard

As the technology empowering Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, blockchains have been in the news a lot lately. Bitcoin, of course, has both roiled markets and is making world governments nervous about the possible creation of an alternative currency while simultaneously thrilling investors in crypto markets. Blockchain, however, is about so much more than just enabling digital currencies. It can be applied to everything from dating to contract law. And blockchain might even upending politics.

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2017: The Year in Books

December 26, 2017  •  National Review Online

For my reading in 2017, I was hoping to get a handle on what was going on in our strange political environment. I have always felt that conservatives have had a healthy skepticism of the accepted conventional wisdom as they seek to understand what is going on beyond Washington, D.C., and the blue urban centers on both coasts. Unfortunately, this skepticism was not penetrating enough in 2016, argue my friends Chris Buskirk and Seth Leibsohn in American Greatness: How Conservatism, Inc. Missed the 2016 Election and What the D.C. Establishment Needs to Learn. Both Leibsohn and Buskirk come from the West Coast Straussian Claremont orbit, and they have little patience for misinterpretations of Strauss. As they put it in a nice turn of phrase, confusing "Straussianism" with neoconservatism is "a confusion or blending no student of Leo Strauss' would ever imagine." More broadly, the two acknowledge that the media are dominated by the Left, but they argue that such dominance does not let conservatives off the hook for failure to get their message out. The conservative establishment that we have counted on until now needs to do more, and better, if conservatism is to thrive in the future.

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Heritage's New President Faces a Challenge

December 19, 2017  •  The Atlantic

As Kay Coles James prepares to begin her tenure as head of the Heritage Foundation, she faces an immediate opportunity—and challenge. She inherits a storied American institution, which currently holds the title of—to quote the former and interim Heritage president Ed Feulner—"Donald Trump's favorite think tank." This privileged status brings with it significant advantages in terms of PR and access, but it also carries danger should the administration and the think tank diverge from one another. This is the delicate task that lies ahead of James—striking a balance between influence and independence in the work that Heritage will do.

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review of Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian

December 14, 2017  •  Commentary

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was the best-known American historian of the 20th century. The irony is that he is remembered more for his forays into politics than his writings, which included two Pulitzer Prize–winning books. He was, and remains, best known for his own Thousand Days, to steal a phrase, as a White House aide in John F. Kennedy's wannabe Camelot.

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An Eye-Opening Introduction to the Jewish Influence on America's Founding

December 12, 2017  •  Mosaic

The Tikvah Fund's new online course, Jewish Ideas and the American Founders, is a must-view and a must-hear. Its star—I use the word advisedly—is Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, well-known to readers for his enlightening contributions to Mosaic as well as to Commentary, the Wall Street Journal, First Things, and other publications. Meir Soloveichik serves as the rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York and director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University.

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Books by Tevi Troy