Sometimes, AEI scholars’ policy work becomes deeply personal. That was certainly the case recently for Danielle Pletka. After American forces left Afghanistan, Pletka felt a deep desire to help Afghan families fleeing the Taliban’s rule. As she writes in The Washington Post, she had the opportunity to aid a resettled family of six that lacked important resources. Pletka helped as much as she could, but she soon realized that a wider network was necessary to help this family — so she turned to her neighbors, friends, and colleagues. Their response, she says, demonstrated a profound and simple truth: “Americans are wonderful.”

Last week, Ian Rowe testified before Congress about a new way to bolster Black Americans’ upward mobility. Instead of echoing popular but unproductive narratives from the left and the right, he argued, our efforts must promote the traditions and institutions that foster and support individual agency: family, religion, education, and entrepreneurship. This framework has an apt acronym: FREE.

Robert Pondiscio observes that public educators’ missteps throughout the pandemic have cost them parents’ trust. He contends that public schools often failed to recognize the unique role they play in children’s and families’ lives and therefore failed to meet their urgent needs. Now, he says, “it seems uncontroversial to suggest that the historically solid and reliable relationship of most Americans with their neighborhood schools has never in living memory seemed more in play.”

Frederick W. Kagan warns that although the United States and its allies are right to be concerned about the potential for Russian encroachment into Ukraine, they should also be cognizant of Russian troops already in Belarus. These troops pose a serious threat to Poland and the Baltic states, Kagan argues, and NATO must respond by deploying forces of its own.

In his latest Bloomberg Opinion column, Hal Brands examines how autocrats are rewriting history to legitimize their expansionist ambitions. Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, and others are redrawing borders and manipulating historical narratives to expand their power. This week also marked the publication of Brands’ new book, “The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us About Great-Power Rivalry Today” (Yale University Press, 2022), which illustrates how America’s victory in the Cold War offers important lessons for how to oppose our totalitarian rivals today.