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Crisis in Poland By Sebastian Weitz&nbsp; Contrary to what many mainstream media outlets report, the crisis surrounding the Constitutional Tribunal did not begin with the previous conservative government. It actually started at the end of the preceding liberal government’s term in 2015. The outgoing parliamentary majority had the right to appoint three Constitutional Tribunal judges but decided to elect five instead. The additional two vacancies would not arise until after the parliamentary elections, which the liberals subsequently lost. The Constitutional Tribunal itself later ruled that those two appointments were unconstitutional. The crisis has taken many turns over the past eleven years, but I think an important distinction is being overlooked. Whatever one thinks of the decisions taken by the conservative government, its institutional reforms were pursued through legislation passed by Parliament, signed into law by the President and officially promulgated. Their constitutionality could be challenged, and some measures were indeed challenged, but the government operated through the legislative process. What we are witnessing now is, in my assessment, the abandonment of legality as a principle of government. Tusk cannot force President Nawrocki to sign legislation, and his parliamentary majority is insufficient to override a presidential veto. Rather than accepting these constitutional limitations, his government increasingly resorts to executive measures, parliamentary resolutions and questionable legal interpretations to achieve what it cannot achieve through legislation. What happened on Friday was, in my view, nothing short of a constitutional coup. It follows the takeover of public broadcasting in December 2023 and the intervention in the prosecution service in January 2024. This time, however, we are dealing with a constitutional body whose independence is explicitly protected by the Constitution. The timing makes the whole affair even more remarkable. Everything unfolded on Friday evening, around 6 p.m., when the normal working day was over. It was also the Friday preceding All Saints’ Day, one of Poland’s most important Catholic holidays, when millions of people travel across the country to visit their ancestors’ graves. President Nawrocki was already en route to Senegal and had to turn his aircraft around over southern Spain, not far from Gibraltar, where General Władysław Sikorski died in a plane crash in 1943. It’s of course pure coincidence but a very symbolic one. The legal justification is equally extraordinary. The government and its allies are invoking, among other arguments, an opinion of the Venice Commission issued on October 13th. The Commission is an advisory body of the Council of Europe. Its opinions are not legally binding and cannot replace the Polish Constitution or statutory law. Moreover, this particular opinion concerns the President’s role in receiving judicial oaths. It does not authorise the suspension of the President and Vice-President of the Constitutional Tribunal or the use of police forces to enforce a change in its leadership. In other words, an advisory opinion from an international body is being used as a one of the pretexts for actions whose legal basis under Polish law remains highly questionable. The extraordinary nature of these methods is increasingly being recognised beyond conservative circles. Even the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, which certainly cannot be accused of conservative sympathies, has challenged the legal basis of the suspensions. The First President of the Supreme Court and the President of the Supreme Administrative Court have also raised serious constitutional objections, as Jadwiga explained in her email. And yet riot police were deployed around the Tribunal, with officers subsequently entering the building. Persons elected by the parliamentary majority, but who had not taken their oaths before the President, claimed the authority to suspend the Tribunal’s leadership and take control of the institution. The resulting confrontation with the President of the Republic, including physical attempts to obstruct his passage, would probably appear quite bizarre to an American audience. It has certainly raised serious concerns in Poland. As for the European Commission, there is one important update to Jadwiga’s account. A Commission spokesperson did issue a verbal statement over the weekend, effectively endorsing the parliamentary majority’s position regarding judicial appointments. The speed of that response raises an obvious question about whether Brussels had been briefed beforehand. We have no evidence of direct involvement, but the Commission’s selective attention to the rule of law is remarkable. It has so far avoided a clear assessment of the specific methods employed on Friday. What concerns me most, however, is that I do not believe this is the end of the story. Government-aligned lawyers and commentators are already raising the question of revisiting the legal status of Supreme Court judges. The same approach could subsequently be directed against other institutions. The National Bank of Poland is an immediate concern. On November 4th, the mandate of one of its board members expires. Unless the vacancies are filled, the board will fall below its statutory minimum. This is happening despite an earlier understanding regarding appointments, with the Prime Minister withholding the countersignature necessary to complete them. The National Electoral Commission could become another target. And ultimately, I would not exclude a confrontation aimed directly at the President himself. Nawrocki’s decisive victory last year remains unacceptable to the most hardline elements of the liberal electorate. I have little doubt that Tusk would prefer nothing more than to remove him from office or, at the very least, neutralise his constitutional powers. The President is effectively the last major institutional obstacle to the government’s ambitions. That is why I consider the events of Friday a constitutional coup rather than merely another political dispute. We are witnessing an attempt to change the balance of constitutional power without changing the Constitution, using contested interpretations of the law and, increasingly, the coercive apparatus of the state. And the most troubling aspect is that all of this is being justified as an effort to “restore the rule of law”.

Crisis in Poland

Poland's Constitutional Crisis: Ten Years of Eroding Trust, One Dangerous Escalation By Jadwiga Emilewicz Former Deputy Prime Minister of PolandThe dramatic events that unfolded at Poland's Constitutional Tribunal on October 30, 2026, mark a dangerous new chapter in a constitutional crisis that has been developing for more than a decade. What began in 2015 as a dispute over judicial appointments has now escalated into a confrontation involving police forces, competing claims to judicial authority, and the physical obstruction of access to one of Poland's most important constitutional institutions.To understand the gravity of these events, we must first acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: Poland's constitutional crisis did not begin with the current government of Donald Tusk. Nor can it be explained simply as the consequence of the policies pursued by the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government. Both political camps have contributed to the erosion of constitutional trust, although in different ways and at different stages of the conflict.The crisis began in 2015, when the outgoing parliamentary majority led by Civic Platform (PO) and the Polish People's Party (PSL) attempted to appoint five Constitutional Tribunal judges shortly before the parliamentary elections. Three appointments concerned vacancies arising during that parliament's term, while two concerned vacancies that would arise only after the newly elected parliament had taken office.In December 2015, the Constitutional Tribunal itself ruled that the appointment of the first three judges had been constitutional, but the advance appointment of the remaining two had not.The incoming PiS majority, however, went further than correcting those two contested appointments. It challenged all five appointments made by its predecessors and elected five new judges. President Andrzej Duda declined to administer the oath to the three judges whose election had been found constitutional.Subsequent legislative changes affecting the Tribunal's functioning, together with disputes over judicial appointments and the publication of judgments, deepened the crisis. These developments attracted serious criticism from European institutions and contributed to a prolonged confrontation between Warsaw and Brussels.There is no reason to deny these facts. Constitutional principles must be respected regardless of which political party happens to hold power.Yet acknowledging the mistakes of the past does not provide the present government with unlimited authority to correct them.When Donald Tusk returned to power in December 2023, his government promised to restore the rule of law. This was a legitimate political objective, particularly given the unresolved disputes surrounding the judiciary. But a fundamental question has increasingly emerged: can the rule of law be restored through methods that themselves raise serious constitutional objections?The events of October 30 suggest that this question is no longer theoretical.On that Friday, substantial police forces were deployed around the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw. At the same time, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, whose very status as a Constitutional Tribunal judge remains legally contested, claimed the authority to take over the institution's leadership. Although elected by the parliamentary majority, she had not taken the constitutionally required oath in the presence of the President of the Republic. Instead, she participated in an alternative oath-taking ceremony in parliament, the legal validity of which is disputed.Despite these unresolved fundamental questions concerning her own judicial status, she proceeded to issue orders purporting to suspend the Tribunal's President, Bogdan Święczkowski, and Vice-President, Bartłomiej Sochański, from their official duties.The legal justification for these actions relied in part on Article 130 of the Law on the Organisation of Ordinary Courts. Yet the Constitutional Tribunal is not an ordinary court. It is an independent constitutional institution whose status, composition and functioning are governed by specific constitutional and statutory provisions.This distinction is not a legal technicality. It goes to the heart of the separation of powers.Zbigniew Kapiński, First President of Poland's Supreme Court, publicly challenged the legal basis for the suspension orders. He argued that the provisions invoked did not confer authority to remove the Tribunal's leadership in this manner. He also warned against using police powers to exert pressure on independent constitutional institutions.Professor Jacek Chlebny, President of the Supreme Administrative Court, issued a separate and equally serious statement. He described the police presence and the obstruction of access to the Tribunal by its President and Vice-President as unprecedented, and warned that constitutional boundaries had been crossed.These objections cannot simply be dismissed as another episode in Poland's partisan conflict. They were expressed by the heads of two of the country's highest judicial institutions and concerned the legality of the methods employed.The confrontation escalated further during the night.President Karol Nawrocki, who had been travelling to Senegal, interrupted his journey and returned to Warsaw. After consultations with senior judicial officials, he went to the Constitutional Tribunal, where individuals at the entrance attempted to prevent him from entering. The confrontation became physical before the President ultimately gained access to the building.The President subsequently declared that Poland's constitutional order had been violated and called for the withdrawal of police forces and the restoration of the Tribunal's lawful functioning.Whatever one's political assessment of President Nawrocki, the sight of a democratically elected head of state confronting physical obstruction at the entrance to a constitutional institution should alarm anyone concerned about the stability of democratic government.There is, of course, another side to this dispute. The current parliamentary majority argues that the Tribunal has been deprived of its independence and effectiveness by the previous government's actions. It also maintains that judges elected by the Sejm must be allowed to assume their constitutional responsibilities. These concerns cannot be ignored, particularly in light of relevant European court judgments.But even a legitimate objective does not automatically legitimise every means used to achieve it.A constitutional democracy cannot function if each successive government believes it is entitled to disregard existing legal procedures in order to reverse the decisions of its predecessor.The rule of law is not simply about achieving the right political outcome. It is about respecting the rules even when they make that outcome more difficult to achieve.The response from European institutions adds another important dimension to this crisis.The European Commission has been closely involved in Poland's rule-of-law disputes since 2015. It repeatedly criticised the previous PiS government, supported judicial independence, and insisted on compliance with European legal standards.Following the events of October 30, Commission representatives were quick to emphasise the constitutional authority of the Polish parliament to appoint Constitutional Tribunal judges. They also referred to relevant European court decisions supporting the rights of newly appointed judges to exercise their duties.These are important legal considerations. But they do not resolve the separate question of whether the suspension of the Tribunal's leadership, the involvement of police forces and the restrictions on access to the institution were lawful and proportionate.So far, the Commission's public response has placed considerably greater emphasis on the legitimacy of parliamentary judicial appointments than on the constitutional objections raised against the methods used during the confrontation.This asymmetry deserves scrutiny.If the European Union wishes to remain a credible defender of the rule of law, it must apply consistent standards to governments of different political orientations. Judicial independence cannot be a principle defended vigorously when conservatives are in power and interpreted more flexibly when a pro-European government takes office.The same standards must apply to everyone.For Poland, the consequences of this prolonged constitutional conflict extend far beyond the fate of the Constitutional Tribunal itself.For more than a decade, successive political majorities have treated constitutional institutions as arenas of political competition. Each side has justified its actions by invoking the alleged illegality of its predecessor's decisions. The result is a dangerous cycle in which the legitimacy of institutions increasingly depends on political affiliation rather than public confidence in the constitutional order.The October confrontation demonstrates how far this process has advanced. A dispute that once concerned judicial appointments and constitutional interpretation has now reached the point where police forces, physical access to public institutions and competing claims of authority have become part of the political struggle.This is an alarming development for a country that has spent the past three decades building democratic institutions, strengthening its economy and establishing itself as one of the most important states in Central Europe.Poland is also a frontline NATO country, bordering a region destabilised by Russia's war against Ukraine. At a time of profound international uncertainty, institutional stability and public confidence in the state are not merely domestic political concerns. They are matters of national security.The way forward cannot be another attempt by one political camp to impose a definitive victory over the other.Poland needs a genuine constitutional settlement: one that recognises past mistakes, respects the independence of judicial institutions and establishes procedures that no future government will be tempted to circumvent.Such a settlement will require political compromise. But compromise must be grounded in the Constitution, not negotiated at the expense of its fundamental principles.Having served in government during part of this turbulent decade, I am convinced that Poland's greatest challenge is no longer simply to determine who was right in 2015 or who is right today. It is to rebuild institutions whose legitimacy can survive changes of government.The events of October 30 should serve as a warning.A democracy is not measured only by its ability to change governments. It is measured by its ability to preserve constitutional limits on power when governments change.Poland cannot afford another decade in which the Constitution becomes an instrument of political confrontation rather than the common foundation of the Republic.Jadwiga Emilewicz jadwiga.emilewicz@sobieski.org.pl

Poland's Constitutional Crisis: Ten Years of Eroding Trust, One Dangerous Escalation

France Has Forgotten How to Transmit Its CultureBy: Xavier-Laurent Salvador&nbsp; 1. The School That Made France France once possessed one of the most powerful instruments of cultural transmission in the world: its school system. The French Republic used schools to make French the common language of a country that was still linguistically diverse. In Brittany, as in other regions, generations of children learned French at school while regional languages progressively disappeared from public life. The methods used were sometimes brutal, and nobody should wish to reproduce them today. <a data-mce-href="https://eduscol.education.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/document/l-idee-republicaine-2024-72816.pdf?attachment" href="https://eduscol.education.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/document/l-idee-republicaine-2024-72816.pdf?attachment">But the historical fact remains: the Republican school had a deliberately unifying mission. It believed that a common language and culture could be</a> <a data-mce-href="https://eduscol.education.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/document/l-idee-republicaine-2024-72816.pdf?attachment" href="https://eduscol.education.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/document/l-idee-republicaine-2024-72816.pdf?attachment">transmitted</a> . The same confidence existed outside metropolitan France. From Algeria to Vietnam, from Central Africa to Pondicherry, French schools transmitted the French language and elements of French culture. My point is certainly not to defend colonization. It is to observe the extraordinary confidence France once had in the possibility of cultural transmission.&nbsp; A country that once believed it could teach French civilization in Pondicherry now doubts its ability to teach French grammar in Paris. Something else happened after decolonization. The necessary criticism of colonial domination gradually became, in parts of French intellectual life, a suspicion of the very idea of cultural transmission. Historical criticism changes nature when it produces a permanent culture of national repentance. In the process, two very different things have been confused: imposing a culture by force, and believing that a civilization has something worth transmitting. 2. A European Crisis of Transmission The latest PISA results make the consequences difficult to ignore. In 2025, French results in mathematics and reading fell again compared with 2022. In all three main subjects, performance is now among the lowest ever measured by PISA in France. Compared with 2015, the proportion of low-performing students has increased by 12 percentage points in mathematics and 11 in reading (https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results- volume-i-country-notes_2d4ff9ea-en/france_6d229453-en.html). France is not alone. The deterioration observed across many Western education systems suggests something deeper than the failure of one government or one reform. We may be facing a crisis in our understanding of education itself. Immigration adds another difficulty, although it cannot simply be described as the cause of educational decline. At the beginning of the educational pipeline, schools must integrate children from increasingly diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. At the other end, universities have themselves become highly internationalized. At my own university, Sorbonne Paris Nord, approximately one quarter of undergraduate students are foreign nationals. At Master’s level the proportion is around one third, with a strong representation of students from North Africa. In our internal figures, the proportion reached 37 percent in the second year of the Master’s degree. There is nothing wrong with foreign students studying in France. Many are excellent students. The question is different. A society receiving populations from different cultural backgrounds needs a particularly strong idea of what it wishes to transmit. Immigration did not create the French educational crisis. But an educational system that has lost confidence in assimilation is poorly equipped to deal with the challenge immigration creates. The old French school was interested less in where the parents came from than in where the children were going. 3. Laïcité Is Part of the Answer This is where France may sometimes be misunderstood by American conservatives. I am a medievalist specializing in the history of the Bible. I also teach at the Catholic University of Paris. I therefore have little reason to want Christianity to disappear from European culture. On the contrary, I do not think European civilization can be understood without the Bible and Christianity. Yet I also believe strongly in French laïcité. There is no contradiction. French secularism creates a common civic space in which the religious identity of a child does not determine his relationship with the state. This principle is especially important today. In parts of France where communal and Islamist pressures have become strong, laïcité remains one of our most powerful instruments for protecting a common civic culture. The answer to Islamization is not necessarily for the French Republic to become less secular. It may be for the Republic to become more confident in its own secularism. Jean Zay, one of the great Ministers of Education of the French Republic, wrote in 1936 that schools should remain “the inviolable sanctuary into which the quarrels of men do not enter.” His purpose was to protect schools from political propaganda. In 1937, he explicitly extended the same principle to religious proselytism (https://enseignement-moral-et-civique-pedagogie.web.ac-grenoble.fr/la-laicite-en-textes/jean-zay-1904-1944-circulaires-du-ministre-de-leducation-nationale). The sentence remains remarkably modern. Children do not need schools to reproduce every political, religious and cultural conflict of adult society. They need schools to teach them. 4. Universities and Academic Sovereignty The same problem appears at university in a different form. Last June, I testified before a French Senate commission on academic excellence. My argument was that what is commonly called “wokism” is not the fundamental cause of the crisis of French universities. It is partly a symptom of something deeper: the loss of academic sovereignty. Research increasingly depends on competitive national and European funding. European cooperation has brought obvious benefits, including mobility and scientific partnerships. But funding creates incentives. European institutions increasingly associate higher education with transversal objectives concerning inclusion, gender equality, environmental transition and other political priorities. The European Strategy for Universities explicitly asks universities to foster diversity and inclusion and proposes institutional changes concerning diversity and gender equality (https://education.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2022-01/communication-european- strategy-for-universities-graphic-version.pdf). The problem is not that Brussels tells a medievalist what to think about a medieval manuscript. It is that Europe increasingly helps determine which questions universities are rewarded for asking. What begins as a funding priority becomes an administrative vocabulary. What becomes an administrative vocabulary eventually reshapes academic institutions. This is why I prefer to speak about sovereignty rather than wokism. Scholarship requires a very simple freedom: the scholar must always retain the right to be wrong. If somebody proves tomorrow that my interpretation of a medieval biblical text is false, I must change my interpretation. That is scholarship. But when political categories, personal identity or lived experience become part of the proof itself, disagreement risks becoming a moral conflict. France does not need an American educational revolution. It needs to recover sovereignty over its own tradition. 5. Back to Basics, Forward with Technology The answer begins with something very simple: return to the foundations. Language first. Mathematics. History. Science. Literature. We often tell children that they must learn “critical thinking.” But critical thinking cannot exist in a vacuum. Before teaching students to criticize knowledge, we must give them knowledge to criticize. Critical thinking without knowledge very quickly becomes opinion. We also need to return to the classics. This year, at the Catholic University of Paris, I teach a course on the literature and cultures of Antiquity to students who generally know neither Greek nor Latin. We begin with the Greeks, with heroes, Athens and Thermopylae. But Western culture does not stop in Athens. It also passes through the biblical world, Rome and the emergence of Christian Rome. Before saying that schools should teach “our culture,” we must answer a difficult question: who is the “we”? The Western “we” is not a racial category. It is not even simply geographical. It is a historical construction. Greece, Rome, the Bible, Christianity, medieval civilization, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and modern science have all contributed to it. Teaching this inheritance does not require children to believe in it. It requires them to know it. But back to basics does not mean back to the past. Artificial intelligence may provide us with the most important educational opportunity in generations. Mass education has always had a mathematical problem. A teacher can teach thirty children, but cannot give each of them an hour of individual tutoring every evening. Wealthy families have always partly solved this problem with private tutors. Most families cannot. AI changes the equation. Outside the classroom, every child could have access to a patient tutor able to explain the same mathematical problem five times, correct grammar, practise a foreign language, review a history lesson or identify gaps in basic knowledge. But one distinction is essential. AI must be the tutor, never the professor. The teacher decides what is worth knowing. The teacher defines the curriculum, establishes standards and evaluates achievement. AI explains, repeats, trains and adapts. I would therefore keep AI outside the classroom as much as possible, but make it available everywhere around it. The teacher teaches. The machine helps the student learn. 6. Learning to Transmit Again The crisis of French education is not only a crisis of resources or methods. It is a crisis of transmission. France once possessed extraordinary confidence in its ability to transmit a language and a culture. Sometimes it did so too aggressively. We should learn from those mistakes. But we should not conclude that transmission itself was the mistake. At school, we need again to teach language, mathematics, history, science and literature with demanding standards. At university, we need to restore academic sovereignty and the freedom of disciplines. In our understanding of culture, we need to recover the long history connecting Athens, Jerusalem and Rome to modern Europe. And we should use artificial intelligence to give every child something mass education has never been able to provide universally: individual attention. The objective is intellectual freedom. Education gives young people the knowledge through which they can become free. Before asking endlessly how we should teach, France, and perhaps Europe, must once again decide what it believes is worth teaching.&nbsp;Xavier-Laurent Salvador is a French medievalist, Agrégé de Lettres modernes and Habilité à Diriger des Recherches (HDR), specializing in the history of the Bible and its vernacular translations in the Middle Ages. He is Associate Professor at Sorbonne Paris Nord University (Paris 13) and also teaches at the Catholic University of Paris. His research focuses in particular on the Bible Historiale, medieval biblical exegesis, the history of the French language and digital humanities. He is co-founder and President of the Observatory of University Ethics (https://www.decolonialisme.fr), a network of French academics devoted to academic freedom, scientific standards and the study of contemporary ideological movements in higher education. In June 2026, he testified before the French Senate’s Commission of Inquiry on academic excellence and the future of French universities. He is also a regular contributor to French public debate through the press, radio and television. His recent books include Les Secrets de la Bible au Moyen Âge (Cerf, 2025), on the transmission and interpretation of the Bible in medieval culture, and Vérité et Écritures, devoted to the relationship between truth, language and Scripture.

France Has Forgotten How to Transmit Its Culture

You are invited to join the inaugural discussion of an informal global network on education on rights and responsibilities, actions, and on-going initiatives. This will be a virtual discussion from 0900-1000 EDT on September 18, 2026.We can't stress enough that this is not just a network for education advocates and experts. Education is foundational to all aspects of human flourishing, prosperity, national security, and strong and resilient sovereign nations and civilizations. We all have skin in the game--and we need to support those making a difference. See <a href="https://friendstoliberty.com/blog/universal-statement-on-education-freedom-and-responsibility">https://friendstoliberty.com/blog/universal-statement-on-education-freedom-and-responsibility</a> We also think our connections and conversations will be valuable to all of us, from all corners of the world. We recognize the diversity of educational systems. Rightly, the structure of education ought to be a prerogative of national sovereignty and should rightfully reflect the values, priorities, traditions, and culture of the people of and their land. Nevertheless, educating is a fundamental human activity. The “central purpose of education is to transmit humanity’s accumulated knowledge and wisdom, as well as our nation’s particular culture and heritage, to the next generation.” Therefore, there must be elements of an authentic and constructive educational experience that are fundamental to all free peoples, the foundation of healthy communities, nations, and societies that promote human flourishing. So, we all have challenges, opportunities, initiatives, and lessons learned to share with each other and plenty of opportunity to share, help, and support one another. If you would like to participate, please contact james.carafano@heritage.org&nbsp;

Invitation: Sept 18, 2026 Education Discussion

In this First Principles essay, Heritage Foundation scholar Jay W. Richards makes explicit the foundational premises—often tacit—that shape all of Heritage’s research and advocacy. He identifies 15 principles, arranged logically from the deepest foundations upward: moral realism and the natural law, God as the source of moral order, and human equality and dignity; then inalienable rights, government by consent, and the reality of human fallenness; and finally ordered liberty, the rule of law, limited government, religious liberty, the pre-political family, virtue, free enterprise, national defense, and patriotic citizenship. The essay is descriptive rather than prescriptive, aiming to provide a durable foundation for the conservative defense of the American Republic.Please find the First Principles essay: <a href="https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/report/the-heritage-foundation-first-principles?utm_source=THF_Email&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=TheAgenda&amp;mkt_tok=ODI0LU1IVC0zMDQAAAGj0qSlje8uxfM43OgjZx_tWYKgJsBID8PDSJFqIq2G9D2Z8_fYxZksO7-5L_OJRWEPZq-vy-jZnXa9JU_3Epiltrh1V_gvBDW3n-gwZj7gSkzpflc" data-mce-href="https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/report/the-heritage-foundation-first-principles?utm_source=THF_Email&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=TheAgenda&amp;mkt_tok=ODI0LU1IVC0zMDQAAAGj0qSlje8uxfM43OgjZx_tWYKgJsBID8PDSJFqIq2G9D2Z8_fYxZksO7-5L_OJRWEPZq-vy-jZnXa9JU_3Epiltrh1V_gvBDW3n-gwZj7gSkzpflc" style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit;" data-mce-style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">here</a>Jay W. Richards, PhD, is Vice President of Social and Domestic Policy and William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation.

The Heritage Foundation First Principles

The conservative movement is in the midst of a global resurgence on the heels of key elections in the United States, Argentina, Italy, and beyond. However, many countries lack the conservative infrastructure needed to direct and sustain this growing momentum in recent and upcoming elections. In response to multiple inquiries from activists and academics around the world seeking guidance on how to establish a landmark, impactful conservative think tank in their own countries, we have gathered world-class experts to share their time and expertise. This workshop will not only provide expert knowledge and advice but will also be an invaluable opportunity to expand your network of conservative think tank professionals.&nbsp;Agenda (December 9) Welcome Fundraising and Development (Breakfast session)     Establishing and growing a donor base     Protecting research integrity Research and Values (Morning session)     Foundational ideas and applying conservative values to the modern policy debate     Developing a cohesive and relevant research agenda     Research methods     Building a research team&nbsp; Leadership and Management (Lunch session)     Establishing an effective leadership and operational structure     Building a media team&nbsp; Communications (Afternoon sessions)     Establishing and Growing Your Social Media Presence     Developing and implementing a media strategy&nbsp; Government Relations&nbsp;     Connecting with and influencing decision makers Partnerships     Amplifying reach through collaboration     Networking Events&nbsp;     Design and organize a successful event Developing Young Talent&nbsp;    Internships    Programs and activities &nbsp;&nbsp; Networking Reception (Evening session) If you are interested in participating contact glory.duran@heritage.org&nbsp; Please feel free to share this invitation.

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Crisis in Poland

Poland's Constitutional Crisis: Ten Years of Eroding Trus...

France Has Forgotten How to Transmit Its Culture

Invitation: Sept 18, 2026 Education Discussion

The Heritage Foundation First Principles

Invitation: International Think Tank Boot Camp, December ...