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3 weeks ago | 
wsj.com | Peter Wood
Ben Sasse made the school a model for reform. His evident successor, Santa Ono, has a bad record. When Ben Sasse unexpectedly resigned as president of the University of Florida last summer, he left behind an institution transformed. He’d dismantled the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy, confronted student radicalism, defended free speech and expanded intellectual diversity among the faculty.
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3 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Peter Wood
Are contemporary faculty members at risk from false accusations made by supporters of Governor DeSantis? Or more generally President Trump? Has a crackdown begun that instills fear into the hearts of classroom teachers? Is there an epidemic of self-censorship that has gripped the campus? Anna Peterson, professor of religion at the University of Florida, believes all this is true.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Peter Wood
Republicans in the House are considering a bill to make major changes in federal student loans for college, and President Trump is floating the idea of making colleges responsible for borrowers who fail to repay. For decades student loans and their repayment are never far the center of controversy, but it wasn’t always that way. I grew up in the era before massive student debt.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Peter Wood
Americans are not a naturally gloomy people. We don’t necessarily expect things to go our way, but when they don’t, we can laugh it off. In my part of Vermont there’s a place called Hateful Hill, for example, so-named by stagecoach drivers who had a tough time with the steep road. But Hateful Hill is also a beautiful elevation. Today, even those who don’t “get” Donald Trump need to start seeing the upside.
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1 month ago | 
spectator.com.au | Peter Wood
Americans are not a naturally gloomy people. We don’t necessarily expect things to go our way, but when they don’t, we can laugh it off. In my part of Vermont there’s a place called Hateful Hill, for example, so-named by stagecoach drivers who had a tough time with the steep road.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Peter Wood
The Singer Sewing Machine Company is credited – that’s the right word – with popularizing the idea of the installment plan. Starting in 1856, a customer could buy a sewing machine for a very modest down payment and a rather lengthy commitment to further payments. Isaac Singer copied the idea from a piano company, but he turned it into a model of aggressive marketing to the average household.
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1 month ago | 
spectator.com.au | Peter Wood
The Singer Sewing Machine Company is credited – that’s the right word – with popularizing the idea of the installment plan. Starting in 1856, a customer could buy a sewing machine for a very modest down payment and a rather lengthy commitment to further payments. Isaac Singer copied the idea from a piano company, but he turned it into a model of aggressive marketing to the average household.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Peter Wood
This is drumming season. That’s the time of year when the woodpeckers stake out their territories by tapping out tattoos on hollow trees. Road signs or “no trespassing” edicts make an even more impressive racket. I come to Vermont to get away from Midtown Manhattan’s horns and sirens – but this time of year, it’s just a visit to the percussion section. But the real racket isn’t from the birds declaring their sovereignty over the woods.
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Feb 17, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Peter Jones |Peter Wood |Justin Brierley |Grace Curley
If surveys are to be believed, Generation Z(oomer), aged roughly between thirteen and twenty-eight, have expressed a desire to be ruled by a dictator. That term derives from the Latin dictator, which referred to an official given absolute power (i.e. he was above the law) for a fixed term to do whatever he thought necessary to deal with a clearly identified problem. Take the famous example of Cincinnatus.
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Feb 17, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Josh Peterson |Katherine Dee |Peter Wood |Neal Pollack
Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down by Luigi Mangione in New York City on December 4. Surveillance footage hit the internet within hours. Wild speculation spread about the strange gun in the killer’s hands. The elongated barrel, the chamber movements that signaled repeated gun jams, the lack of recoil. Was it a veterinary euthanasia gun? As it turned out, it was a homemade gun, commonly known as a “ghost gun,” printed using 3D technology.
