Voices of Freedom - Interview wth James Piereson

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

An Interview with James Piereson, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute, and Trustee, Thomas W. Smith Foundation The vigorous forces shaping American society, politics, and the economy today could have a transformative impact on the country’s future. Even amidst a sea of change and political realignments, our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom, says that the Constitution will be an enduring structure that continues to guide us.  James Piereson has dedicated his career to American history, Constitutional thought, and philanthropy. He shares his thoughts on the current environment in the US, the role of ideas in politics today, the state of the Constitution, and more. Topics Discussed on this Episode: Jim’s path to the study of American history and constitutional thought The current political and ideological realignment in the U.S. Whether the center right needs a “new fusionism” Areas around which conservatives can coalesce today The state of the Constitution How universities should be responding to the realities of today’s environment Philanthropy’s role in a polarized climate Ways in which philanthropy can address societal problems Reaction to receiving a Bradley Prize About James Piereson: James Piereson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy, where he writes on philanthropy, higher education, and general political subjects. Previously, he was president and trustee of the William E. Simon Foundation, which was a private grant-making foundation with interests in education and religion. Before that, Jim was the executive director of the John M. Olin Foundation, also a private grant-making foundation, which worked to advance conservative ideals. He has served on the political science faculties of several prominent universities, serves on the board of many non-profit organizations, and is a distinguished published author. He is also a 2025 Bradley Prize winner.

Hello and welcome to Voices of Freedom, a Bradley Foundation podcast. I'm Rick Graber, president and CEO of the Bradley Foundation. On the podcast, we'll explore issues that affect our freedoms with a focus on free enterprise, free speech, and educational freedom. So let's get started. America's experiencing major ideological shifts that will shape our country for many years to come. While this is not the first time this has happened, it really could turn out to be one

of the most transformative periods in the modern era. Our guest today has studied and written extensively about political, cultural, and economic forces that have shaped the United States. He joins our podcast to give some perspective about the current moment and to share insights from his decades of experience in philanthropy. James Pearson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy, where he writes on philanthropy, higher education, and general political subjects. Previously, he was president and

trustee of the William E. Simon Foundation, a private grant-making foundation with interests in education and religion. Before that, Jim was the executive director of the John M. Olin Foundation, also a private grant-making foundation which worked to advance conservative ideals. And he is also a 2025 Bradley Prize winner. Welcome and congratulations, Jim. It is great to have you. Thank you, Rick. Glad to be here. And I'm proud of that award. Very proud. Fantastic.

Jim, let's talk a little bit about you to kick things off. Your early career involved scholarship, teaching, later philanthropy, of course. What led you to focus on American history and constitutional thought as really as a career? Well, that's a good question, Rick. I took a PhD in political science in the early 1970s. And at that time in political science, the discipline was divided into the quantitative people who did statistical studies and political philosophers who read Aristotle

and Plato and John Locke and that sort of thing. I wasn't that interested in either one. I developed an interest in the historical evolution of institutions. I wasn't against using numbers, but I wasn't interested either in reading deeply in philosophy. And so I kind of developed an interest in American history, evolution of American institutions, and that kind of thing. And indeed, I did write a dissertation on the Founding Fathers and the conflict between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists in 1787 and 1788. And so, you know, it then followed, I went into teaching, and I was teaching large courses in American government, 200 students, 300 students, and you had to teach them something about the origins of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers and the Declaration of Independence.

And so, you know, I read widely, enough to stay one week ahead of my students in their reading because I was young and I didn't know a lot. But I did read a lot there. And then when I moved to the University of Pennsylvania, I lived near Independence Hall, which is where the Declaration was written and the Constitutional Convention was held. Yes. And I visited there often and saw the buildings and got a greater interest in the founders. And that became a kind of a touchdown of my outlook, what the founders did at that time in creating the United States and the institutions of the United States and the political battles that surrounded it. So also, at that point of view, it made me very much opposed to things that were going on on the campus at that time, namely identity politics, denunciation of

the founding fathers and the declaration of independence, all the attacks on business and American history. So I was to some degree at that time on the wrong side of where academics were going. This is now in the mid-1970s or late 1970s. Were there thinkers or specific historical events that most influenced you? Well, aside from the Constitution and the Federalist Papers and James Madison, probably Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War was a great factor. Somehow someone gave me a book to read when I was an assistant professor at Penn on Abraham

Lincoln and the crisis of the house divided. Actually, it was a book by Harry Jaffa, who was one of the founders of the Claremont Institute. And so I started reading the book and kept reading, kept reading, and finished the book. It had a great influence on me. And I began to read more and more about Abraham Lincoln, more and more about the Civil War, the conflict that created the Civil War, and a lot of the statecraft that went on surrounding that controversy. It was a kind of a universal lesson in politics, how the conflict developed, how it was addressed, how it blew up, how Lincoln addressed it,

and that kind of thing. And I use that often as a kind of framework to understand other events that have happened in American history and in other countries as well. With that, Alan Gelzo, a co-winner, fellow winner of the Bradley Prize, who's a great Lincoln scholar. We've had some wonderful conversations with him. I know Alan quite well, sure.

And he's written a number of great books on Abraham Lincoln. Yes, he has. I mean, the contours of American politics are changing all the time, but what on earth are we to make of the current political and ideological realignment that we're witnessing before our very eyes? Is this something that's new or are we just in another cycle? Well, I don't really buy the cyclical version of history. I think it was Mark Twain who said, history doesn't repeat itself.

It doesn't even rhyme. And it is new, but not entirely new, because it fits into the framework of American institutions, what's going on now. Obviously, you're talking about Donald Trump and some of the responses to Trump and the things Trump is doing in Washington. And so a lot of new things are happening that haven't happened before. The political party seemed to switch places. The Republicans are now the party of the working class and the middle class, and the Democrats are the party of the insiders

in Washington. And the Republicans, the conservatives, are pushing for change. And the Democrats and the liberals are pushing for change. And the Democrats and the liberals are pushing to preserve the status quo. That wasn't supposed to happen, but it seems to be happening today. And I would say this, that the three great reform movements of the 20th century, progressivism, the New Deal, the Great Society, all were geared toward building up the power of the central government through new institutions, new programs, and new spending. And post-Great Society and all these decades, it kind of accelerated.

That's why we have a $36 trillion debt and that kind of thing. Now Donald Trump comes along, and he wants to disassemble a lot of that. This has not happened before in the 20th century. Always programs are added. Spending was added. Government grew. Trump seems to be taking a pickaxe to this and trying to run things in somewhat the opposite direction.

That is to disassemble Washington to some degree. That's, I would say it's new. We haven't had that in the last hundred years or so, though. Republicans often talked about it. They never did much about it. I don't think Ronald Reagan killed any domestic programs. The main thing he did was to build up the military because he was fighting those battles, he let the domestic programs go.

And that has kind of been the pattern since then. Democrats step on the gas, Republicans step on the gas lightly. So Trump is doing something different. This is new for all those reasons. How is it going to turn out? A very good question how this will turn out. I think the public, the public will go along with this cutting spending, cutting programs and washing up to a point. Obviously, there are Paul, but some

of the things that governments have been spending money on, the EI in Serbia, comic books in Guatemala and that sort of thing. A lot of us have known this has been going on for a long time. I've known about this kind of thing since the 1970s. A lot of us have complained about it. Nobody did anything about it until Trump came along. When you consider the things Trump has done, I thought they were impossible. Could we ever get rid of DEI? I thought it was impossible.

I spent a lot of time on the college campus. I've written about it. I've criticized it. Every year it got stronger. After the George Floyd thing, they wanted to run the table. Trump seems to be killing it. And not only that, Trump has four more years to go. They're not going to be able to wait them out.

And the same with a lot of the other things that he's doing. So I would say this is, this is new in a way, since we began to build a big central government in the early decades of the 20th century, accelerated by welfare programs and national security programs. No one has ever tried to dismantle the organized state in Washington in the way that Trump is doing. We don't know if he'll succeed. It's way too early. Now he's taken a pickaxe to things, but somebody's added it all up and maybe he's cut out a hundred

billion. The numbers vary. I'm not sure what the real numbers are. We have a two trillion dollar deficit. A hundred billion dollars is five percent of our deficit. So you have to start somewhere. But to some degree, this is only a start. Yes. And he's been unwilling to talk about the real big issue. That's entitlement, Social Security,

Medicare, Medicaid. Understandably so, because the numbers of people involved there. And I would say on that, you better cut the garbage first before you start attacking that stuff. So in that sense, he's probably doing the right thing. Ideally, what I would like to see, I would like to see a central government that only does a few things and does it well. National defense, do it well. Social security, Medicare, a few other things. Not sure we need a post office anymore. And we need some law enforcement, but do we need a department of education?

Not sure about that. Maybe we can peel away a lot of the underbrush in the federal government and get it back to doing some fundamental things that it should do and make sure it does them well without a lot of this other stuff that roils the society. All the DEI stuff has basically caused more conflict through the institutions of society and it was going to continue to do so until Trump stepped in. So that's where I'd like to see it go and that would be new. We haven't tried that before. Yes. Yes.

You talked about the dynamics between the parties changing. It's also true that the contours of the center-right are changing as well. Let me just look at the debate that we're seeing now on the role of markets. There are very distinct views on the right about the proper role of markets and government for that matter. Fusionism was a concept developed in the 1950s that effectively brought the center right together to advance free markets, to advance social conservatism, to advance a strong national defense. And we've heard some on the right call for a new fusionism. Is that a good idea, Jim? Do you think that's possible? Do you think there are some areas

where conservatives can coalesce around? During this time where there is very much of a debate about the proper role of government. Well, I think so, but I'm not sure what it will look like. Right. The fusion of the 1950s, Frank Beyer, was the person who's pushing that, and he was trying to unite the Cold

War conservatives, the Bill Buckleys, with the free market people like Milton Friedman. And they did bring that off in Barry Goldwater. They brought it off in Ronald Reagan to a great degree. They were able to bring that off. They did succeed. In the Reagan years, they ended the Cold War, and we reinvigorated the U.S. economy, brought inflation down, interest rates down, and we had a 40-year ride of low interest rates and low inflation. If you look at those numbers from 1982 to, say, 2022,

until Biden broke it apart with a spending spree and drove up inflation and interest rates. We'll see if we can get him back down there. But that was a great achievement. But as I said, Ronald Reagan didn't cut a lot of programs and didn't cut spending to any significant degree. Not sure what fusionism would look like today. Now, one thing about that period is that it was very greatly influenced by ideas, magazines, intellectuals, Milton Friedman, Bill Buckley, people like that. And the Bradley and Olen Foundations kind of got into that by expanding the range of these ideas, supporting free market

thinkers, supporting Cold War thinkers, anti-communist thinkers, supporting all the magazines and think tanks. It was very much an ideas-driven movement. And fusionism was an ideas-driven idea. I mean, I believe the question I would have today, what role do ideas of that kind play in the politics we have today? Now when I was kind of coming into the scene, I would get my ideas from commentary and the public interest in the Wall Street Journal editorial page and places like that. Where do people get it today? They go on the internet.

They go on podcasts, all sorts of things. So the ideas probably play a somewhat different role today than they played then. Everybody is informed. I kind of go around the country and talk to people. They certainly know a lot more today than I think they knew back then about what was going on in Washington. So there is that factor. Now kind of on the conservative side, you know, the Cold War was a big issue for conservatives.

Now, of course, that's gone. And it's interesting, in the 1980s, the great defenders of NATO were Ronald Reagan and the conservatives. And today it seems to have flipped. You go on MSNBC and they're all screaming defending NATO against Donald Trump. So that's very interesting. Now, on the market side, you do have our free market people who want to cut taxes, cut spending. We know all that. But there is a group of sort of big government conservatives who think that the government can be steered in a conservative

direction and that you can, I don't know, that you can provide subsidies for employment and job training and all that sort of thing. And that debate is going on now. I'm not sure what side Trump is on. The tariffs would go on the side of the big government people. Our free market people don't like the tariffs. The reciprocity idea is not a terrible idea, but I think it's not a good idea to go out there every day and say, I'm going to raise tariffs on the European Union by 50% and on

Canada by 25%. On the next day, someone to take them off. And then the next day, I'm going to take them off. And then the next day, I'm going to put on again. That's not a good way to do it, I don't think. There is a way to do it, but that would not be the best way to do it. And maybe they're backing away from that. The reason I'm more on the free market side and not on the big government side is that I'm aware that 90% of the bureaucrats are left-wing Democrats, and you'll never get them to do the things

we want them to do. They're going to promote left-wing liberal ideas. I don't think there's any quick way to change that. Now, Trump and his people are aware of that. They know when they, you know, they kind of have 50,000 federal employees, that 48,000 are Democrats. And they seem to be keeping that in mind. So is there a possibility for fusion? I don't know what it would look like. As I say, ideas are playing a different role today. And a lot depends on the candidates.

Ronald Reagan was very important in the success of fusionism. Donald Trump seems to have his foot in both camps and we don't know where this is going to come out. Really interesting. How do you think the constitution is faring through this realignment we're witnessing? Federalism, separation of powers, so on and so forth? Well, it will, I believe, always be the structure that we will live under way into the future. But in the past, the Constitution has been bent, enlarged, whatever, by events. Certainly in the Jeffersonian period and in the Hamiltonian period, the meaning of the constitution changed by political developments.

Hamilton envisioned a pretty strong central state. He wanted to build a US government on the model of the British government. And the Jeffersonians thought that was anathema. And when they came in, they got rid of the debt and got rid of a lot of the stuff or tried to. The Hamilton started. Civil War changed the Constitution really a great deal. It got rid of secession, strengthened the national government to some degree. Lincoln passed the tariff. He passed the Morrill Act. He passed these laws that opened up the Western lands for settlement, Transcontinental Railroad. All those things happened in the

midst of the Civil War because the South had seceded. And the New Deal, of course, also did. Roosevelt passed his first package of reforms. The Supreme Court struck them all down in 1934 and 1935. And he tried to pack the court. He didn't succeed, but he got the message across. And there was a so-called switch in time that saved nine. And the court began to uphold the New Deal policy. So it was never thought before that, you know, you could have all these regulatory agencies and that the government could regulate the economy in the way that it tried to do, or

that it could have jobs programs of the kind that Roosevelt was starting. All that certainly enlarged the Constitution, and the Great Society did even more with the Civil Rights Act and very expansive rulings by the Warren Court, reapportionment, school to segregation, New York Times v. Sullivan, all those things enlarged the Constitution and in terms of the political movement of the day. Eventually, the Supreme Court does follow the election returns, as I say. We now have a conservative majority on the court, and they have done some things.

They got rid of affirmative action, race-based admissions in colleges. They've done a few other things. They've got some other big decisions coming down the road. It's not clear that Justice Roberts wants to go down this road very far. We'll see how far Trump can push him. But yes, I think it's true that the Constitution is probably going to reflect some of these political movements that are going on. And it may begin to take a lot of power away from Washington and back to the states, and they may complete

the Civil Rights Revolution of the 60s, in which race entered all sorts of programs in a way that was beneficial perhaps at the beginning, not so beneficial at the end. As I say, they pulled race out of the college admissions. They will be hearing cases before the end of this year on race and election districting. How far should we draw congressional district lines on racial alliance? They will consider this. Maybe they will begin to pull that threat out as well. Yes. Let's switch gears and talk about higher education for a bit. It's an area that you've written about. You've actually lived it as a professor. Universities are going through

some pretty dramatic change and no doubt due to the political climate, we've seen a population decline. How should they be responding to the realities of today's environment? Are they? Should they be responding to the realities of today's environment? Are they? Well, first of all, Donald Trump was putting pressure on them that they've not received before. So Trump has now said on the DEI that we're going to suspend federal funding to schools that are continuing to push DEI. You've got to get rid of those bureaucracies.

JD Vance has said we want to tax your endowments. That really affects those Ivy league schools and a few more. They've also cut the overhead payments from 60% to 15%. That will cost them hundreds of millions of dollars. Now for the universities, Trump has now pulled $400 million out of Columbia. And I see that today he's pulling some money out of the University of Pennsylvania for the trans-athletes. So this is entirely unprecedented.

None of this has ever happened before to the universities. And how will they respond? Will they get rid of their DEI programs? I've talked to some people who are saying they're trying to hide them. Maybe they can outlast the Trump administration and bring them back. We'll see if that works, but he's going to be in office for four more years. It may be difficult. I wrote something recently where I said, you know, this is their own fault. Over a period of 40 years from the time, rest the time recently I left academia now, they have reorganized the university around something called the diversity ideology,

where everybody who goes into the university has to obey this doctrine. And it's an identity doctrine that prioritizes all the interest groups. But it also makes a claim that America historically has been an oppressive country and that the whole purpose of DEI is to restore the balance and get even with the people who discriminated against us in the past. So it's a very large ideology that they're pushing. I happen to believe it's totally wrong. But in order to get into the university these days, you have to more or less except. That's one of the reasons why there no conservative on the campus because they don't buy the ideology.

Why were there no free market economists in the communist party well why are there no conservatives on the college campus. Question answers itself. college campus. The question answers itself. So they are now stuck with a faculty and a bureaucracy that's been built over 40 years on the basis of this ideology. And they now have an administration in Washington that's gone to war against it. And they depend heavily on federal funds. And they can't get along without those federal funds. So what will they do? You know, I don't have a good answer to it. Will they start to bring conservatives in? You know, there are programs around the country that are circumventing the faculty, Florida, Tennessee, Arizona, North Carolina, several of them, set up by the legislature.

So they're trying to circumvent the faculty to deal with the problem. The college presidents at Columbia and these other places, if they had any wits about them, they should welcome this. This is beginning to be a way out of the morass that they've taken themselves into. Because if Columbia had, say, 20% of the faculty or 30% of the faculty that had moderate views or conservative views, they could help them out a great deal in handling these sorts of problems. They could support them, advise them, that sort of thing. But they don't have that. Because if Columbia cracks down on the protesters, throws them in jail, the faculty will go bananas and say, the administration should have never done this. We don't have any confidence in

the administration. The president should quit. And that's what happens. And why? Because they have the faculty they've created over a 40-year period of time. So what could happen? Well, I think I'd like to see this crisis play out. It'll be very interesting and amusing to watch. Indeed. You've run two foundations. You've written about the influence of philanthropy on political and intellectual movements. What do you see as philanthropy's role in today's climate? Well, Rick, it depends a little bit on what we mean by philanthropy. So, you know, there are foundations like ours that have supported ideas. There's foundations like Ford and MacArthur and George Soros, which do that in a different way. Obviously, there are foundations that do a lot of other

things. They support medical research, very valuable. They support local institutions. A lot of philanthropy, or most of it, probably goes to support local churches. So there's a vast range there. Do I think that the, let's look at the foundations like ours, just for a second. I think you asked the question, do they contribute to the polarization in society as we've had? They may. I think that when I started in the foundation world, this goes back to the 70s, the Ford Foundation was very active in pushing liberal policies. One of the things that they did was they provided grants to start operations with the idea that could be turned over to the federal government. That happened with National Dome for Humanities, the NEA, public television, public radio,

some housing programs. They all started as initiatives of very liberal foundations. We began to develop somewhat in opposition to that as people stood up and said, somebody has got to do something about this. And that's kind of where we came in and John Olin came in and the Bradley Foundation came in with Tiny Rader and Bill Brady. So it's kind of an answer to that. I've always thought it was a paradox that what they did, here's the paradox, the charitable exemption was created in World War I to allow wealthy people to donate to local institutions without being taxed to pay for the war because they raised the income tax to 77% in the war.

So the idea was, you know, this charitable exemption is to support private enterprises and private associations so the government doesn't have to do it. So now, in the 1960s, the liberal foundations come along and say, we're going to use this charitable exemption to build government programs. We're not going to build private organizations, we're going to create seed money so the feds can take it over, which is more or less what happened. So

that, I don't think that was a constructive thing, and it was a phase where that led to the radicalization of a lot of things. I saw it on the college campus. A lot of business people saw it too. What's going on here? All these people are attacking business and government is growing. Inflation is raging and so on. We have to do something about this. So I think we are somewhat of an answer to that.

Did we create the polarization? No, there are other factors in play there. And as I say, there are a lot of philanthropies that do local level things that aren't political at all, which are very valuable. But we did something else. You did, we did. I think it's been extremely influential. It's been very constructive, in my opinion, and I would do it all over again. Absolutely. I mean, one area where the Bradley Foundation has played heavily is in strengthening civil society.

It's something that the Bradley Brothers cared about deeply. It's obviously a very local thing. And in our case, most of our civil society giving has been local. It's been Milwaukee, it's been the state of Wisconsin, but mostly Milwaukee. Talk to us a little bit about why that's important and how philanthropy can help address societal problems where government has failed, frankly. Well, certainly I'm aware of all the things the Bradley Foundation has done in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. You know, you could mention school choice in there

and school reform. Yes, to this day. Yeah, welfare reform, very important. A lot of things in Wisconsin, sure. I think almost by definition, the civil society has to be somewhat local. Tocqueville and others have said that the national government is too far away

for people to relate to. And they need to relate to, and they need to relate to local organizations that will help them make life better in local communities. So that's extremely important. The Boy Scouts, the Little League Baseball, the churches, the Chamber of Commerce, all those local institutions are extremely important. One unfortunate thing that has happened, and it goes along with what I just said, is that many of our civil associations have been heavily taken over by government.

Federal spending plays a large role in a lot of charitable organizations. Roughly about 30% of all monies received by not-for-profit organizations come from the federal government, 30%. A lot of that is Medicare and Medicaid to hospitals. If you take that out, it's 15 or 20 percent, but that's a lot. So Catholic Relief Services got $600 million from the federal government last year. Catholic Charities get a lot of money from the federal government. We know our colleges and universities get millions and hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government. The National

Urban League, the civil rights groups, women's groups, all sorts of groups are heavily funded by the federal government. So, you know, that plays a role in politicizing organizations that should be more private. And many of the things that we've been working on have been trying to keep private organizations more private, and if you do that, you don't politicize them. But when the federal government steps in and says you've got and if you do that, you don't politicize them. But when the federal government steps in and says you've got to do this or that to receive federal funds, you tend to politicize these operations. And then once people receive the federal money, they get dependent on it.

And so you hear a lot of screaming today about what's happening in Washington. Chuck Schumer said millions and millions of Americans, this is beside Social Security and Medicare dependent on federal spending. So, and this has to do with all the money that is shoveled out by the federal government to allow the charitable organization. So that would be one of the things

that we are working against to preserve civil society and these local organizations that are free from politics. Yes. Sadly, Jim, we're running out of time. One more question. What does it mean to you to receive a Bradley Prize? It means a lot. It is the most distinguished award that's available to conservatives in America. And the roster of people who've gotten this prize contains a lot of friends, colleagues, and people that I admire. So I'm proud to be included in their company.

At my age, it's a kind of a capstone on my career, a kind of a recognition of a lot of things I've done in philanthropy and writing and serving on boards and that sort of thing. And so I'm very grateful for that recognition. At the same time, it's something I have to live up to. So you know, I feel having won this award, I need to keep working and live up to the recognition that I've received.

So it means a great deal on both ends, both recognition of what I've done in the past and certainly an incentive to work in the future. We look forward to celebrating with you in May. It'll be a wonderful evening. I look forward to that, Rick. Thank you very much. Jim Pearson, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you for all of your contributions to the conservative movement, to our country. They really have made a difference. You've had a very important role in all this and we're deeply appreciative. I appreciate very much, Rick.

And thanks to everyone at the Bradley Foundation. Our pleasure. And as always, thanks to all of you for joining us on this episode of Voices of Freedom. Join us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts for our next conversation on issues impacting our freedom and America's foundational principles. And make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.

I'm Rick Graber and this is a Bradley Foundation podcast. Music