Without consulting students, the Karsh Institute of Democracy quietly added MAGA adviser Oren Cass to its roster of “Distinguished Practitioner Fellows.” The Institute’s own announcement calls him a “thought leader” on democracy. That characterization, and his hiring, is an embarrassment to our university.
Founded in 2021 on the Karsh family’s enormous financial commitment, the Institute traces its mission to Jefferson’s conviction that “wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government.” Martha and Bruce Karsh put it plainly at the Institute’s founding — “For a healthy democracy to thrive, its core principles, institutions and processes must not only be studied and understood, but also vigilantly protected and strengthened.” We have not always lived up to that standard. Hiring Cass is going against our very founding principles.
Cass is the founder of American Compass, a think tank which he started in 2020 to define the American right. He has been influential in doing so, contributing to Project 2025 and dubbed the “brain trust” behind Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s economic plans by the Washington Post. Vance has said American Compass’ work “really has influenced my thinking. It has influenced the thinking of multiple people within the administration.” Last year, Vance shared a friendly on-stage conversation with Cass at American Compass’ own gala. Cass has called Vance “one of the most thoughtful leaders we’ve seen.”
This is all happening as the Trump administration is currently destroying democracy, the Constitution and the University itself.
Cass championed President Donald Trump’s illegal and ruinous universal tariffs outright, which have been used to enrich the President’s family and cronies by billions, and cost $1.2 trillion across global businesses, saying, “I think a global tariff is the right way to do things.” Why is our University investing its reputation, institution and funding into an obvious huckster, lending academic credulity to this kind of destruction?
Cass, using his Harvard University law degree and fancy scholarly appointments, like this one at Karsh, helps sell Trump, Trumpism and their associated destruction, and gives it an air of academic prestige, using the University to intellectualize authoritarianism. He has been MAGA’s “working class voice,” and an architect of some of the Trump administration’s most disastrous, anti-democratic policies. An institute dedicated to the understanding of and opposition to authoritarian devastation should understand this directly, and act accordingly.
Importantly, the Distinguished Practitioner fellowship uses taxpayer money, and we are a public institution. That trust mandates Karsh to do more than launder a political operative through an academic title, particularly one used to employ government power to dismantle rights, attack our republic and destroy the global economy. Taxpayer funds should not be used to fund tyranny. Thus always to tyrants.
Cass has been welcomed into good-faith, liberal-democratic institutions, including the Harvard Kennedy School and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and weaponized that welcome to launder an agenda aimed at dismantling the very foundations those institutions exist to protect — including shedding doubt on the very credibility of expertise, despite casting himself as an expert, to sanewash an anti-democratic project. Now, it seems we are next on that list.
This hiring comes right after a Trump-led Justice Department pressure campaign forced former University President Jim Ryan’s resignation, and after that same administration pushed the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education to regulate curriculum and hiring in favor of the far right. It also follows our Board of Visitors, revamped to cater to MAGA loyalists, passing resolutions gutting offices guaranteeing access to marginalized students. It also follows our decision to sign a deal handing the federal government control of our admissions and hiring to make a civil rights investigation go away. It feels particularly insulting to students, faculty and those actually trying to protect this great institution and the principles it is meant to stand for. People who have played a role in harming our University, and democracy, should not join it.
None of this means the Institute should only host people who agree with each other, or even with my own, publicly vocalized policy preferences. Newly hired Fellow Yuval Levin and I disagree on plenty of policy, but I have never doubted his commitment to democratic norms and self-government. Dialogue between people who share those commitments and differ on means is what a healthy, pluralistic democracy needs. We can have these discussions, and promote the same basic principles through different preferred outcomes and theoretical frames.
What Cass offers is not that. He is hired, with taxpayer money and our institutional support, to spew and launder destructive garbage that undermines our institutions, rights and democracy. That is simply not acceptable. Productive policy debates can be fostered without letting the fox into the henhouse.
I have a personal stake in this. Last year, I served as a graduate fellow at Karsh, drawing a small research stipend — a rounding error against the Karshes’ $100 million gift. I joined because I believed that the Institute exists to promote and study democratic norms and institutions at a moment when democracy is in profound crisis. Saying this publicly may cost me future invitations, funding or goodwill. I do not care. This is about first principles.
We are living through a genuine crisis for democratic institutions, here and elsewhere. This is not the moment for mealy-mouthed window dressing that lets an authoritarian movement claim a foothold inside the very place meant to resist it. Giving them a space will not make them go away — it will make them stronger. Karsh should rescind this appointment, and ask its University community before it makes the next one.
Joseph Bouchard is a doctoral student in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, as well as a journalist and researcher. He can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.
The opinions expressed in this guest column are not necessarily those of The Cavalier Daily. The guest column represents the views of the author alone.
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