I’ve been passionate about higher ed reform since the early 1990s. Having wanted to be a Professor since almost the moment I’d started college, it took me only five years in the role to appreciate that academia had become a hollow shell of an industry. Pockets of excellence notwithstanding, it did nothing well, coasting on brand equity and past glory. I stepped outside wondering how long it would take for it to implode.

About twenty-five years later, it seemed that people had begun to notice. I finally wrote the story I’d been wanting to tell since 1993, expanded to include the consequences that the corruption of higher education had had for society at large. I wanted to call it The Cult of Expertise. The publisher prevailed upon me to use The New Civil War.

Two years later, I read that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had elevated a reform-oriented board to make a small, public, liberal arts college the poster child for higher ed reform. My immediate reaction? “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them fix higher ed without me.” I resurrected my thoughts on the nature of a classical liberal education for the information age—and hit my network. About six months later, I joined the team working to rebuild New College of Florida, initially in Admissions, more recently with its graduate program in Data Science.

My take on higher education reform, however, is broader than you might assume. I’m not content with eliminating its most discriminatory, ideologically rigid, and indoctrinatory elements. Because of my passion for widespread institutional reform, and as I detailed in The New Civil War, I remain focused on the incentives that made this critical-but-broken industry what it is. I’ve written about fixing the manifest flaws in financial aid. I’ve also research reform, as the key to fixing innovation policy and defeating the censorship movements that have assumed prominence in the 2020s, along with rebuilding our corrupt universities.

These issues are currently a primary focus of my work. I welcome all inquiries and opportunities addressing any of these issues and forwarding this critical cause.

In 2023, when I decided that it was time to get back into academia, I asked myself a simple question. What’s the most valuable thing I could teach today’s college students? I answered: How to navigate the contemporary information & media terrain safely.

I put together materials for a New College course that I taught for the first time in Spring 2025. I expect to publish selected materials soon, and I’m working towards a book (or two). I also expect to teach the course again, refining it with each iteration.

Far too many avid users of social media, the Internet, and smartphones (i.e., most people living today) lack the critical thinking skills necessary to navigate the complex and increasingly treacherous information landscape, (exacerbated by the rise of AI). That’s doubly true for today’s college students. Though digital natives, few have examined the forces shaping the information they consume—a landscape fraught with manipulation, misinformation, and weaponized narratives, positioning individuals as both targets and unwitting conduits of influence.

I’m developing materials central to spotting manipulative tactics and developing robust defenses. This work provides a foundational step toward informational resilience. It covers three core topics drawn from different disciplines—with examples inspired by current events, recent news, history, economics, science, and anything else of interest:

• Cognitive Psychology illuminates the mechanisms of cognitive manipulation, enables recognition of common tactics, and fosters strategies to counter them;
• Bayesian Statistics appreciates the importance of holding open multiple theories, recognizing your own biases, and integrating evidence into your understanding of events;
• Network Theory explores emergent properties in complex systems, providing tools to critically assess and resist conspiracy theories.

I teach and write this material without imposing formal prerequisites or assuming any background in any of those disciplines. All that’s required is curiosity and a commitment to intellectual growth. It’s geared towards developing critical thinking and research skills useful in all stages of an academic or professional career. It’s also about cultivating practical techniques to navigate pervasive misinformation and propaganda in personal and civic life.

My work in this arena focuses on personal self-defense, not systemic fixes. Think of it as the equivalent of learning how to walk through a dangerous neighborhood with street smarts and savvy, rather than of making our cities safer. The latter may be of greater consequence, but the former is something we must all do for ourselves.

Stay posted for new developments and please contact me with all interest. I am eager for collaborators, clients, platforms, and forums for popularizing this work.

Self-defense for the AI era. Ninja training costs extra.

I’ve been tracking and chronicling the decline of American society through most of the twenty-first century. Though many like to call it political polarization, I believe that it runs far, far deeper.

Early on, I thought that I was witnessing an eagerness to subvert articulated interests in the name of acquiring power or wealth or a glorification of willful ignorance and a consequent descent into madness. I’ve concluded that we’re facing a deep-rooted spiritual crisis and a consequent values divide.

I’ve written in depth about multiple aspects of the problem, including:

• The metaphysics of the Trans Movement—and the broader Wokeism religion to which it belongs.
• America’s spiritual roots and the need to reinvigorate them across contemporary society.
• The rise of antisemitism, the vilification of Israel, and how the consequent inversion of foreign policy rationalism is devastating American interests
• The attack on religious liberty, and in particular American Christianity.
• The values divide at the heart of political polarization, and how to restore America’s inherent decency.

I remain interested and active in exploring these and related areas. Collaboration, speaking opportunities, and funding are all sought, welcome, and appreciated.

For nearly twenty years, I coordinated my professional activities through a solo consulting practice. Throughout much of that period, expert testimony constituted my bread-and-butter, with strategy advising, valuation, and policy analysis rounding out the mix. Though my primary activities have since shifted in new and exciting directions, I remain open to appropriate engagements and opportunities through Informationism, Inc., a consulting corporation I founded in 2006. At this point in my career, my favored role on any project is as a background advisor, but I am always eager to learn about any exciting opportunity.