A Heterodox Education Reading List

Books that illuminate the biggest issues within the academy — plus a new volume on viewpoint diversity coming March 2026.

As the year winds down and many of us are (hopefully) taking some much needed time off from professional obligations, we may find ourselves finally able to pick up that book we’ve been meaning to read, and learn something new.

At HxA, we believe that intellectual progress depends on curiosity, openness, and a willingness to seriously engage with ideas. And reading is one of the simplest ways to practice those habits. Books give us the time and space to encounter arguments in their strongest form, wrestle with complexity, and refine our own thinking from fresh perspectives.

With that spirit in mind, we asked some members of Team HxA to share one book they think is especially worth your time right now, along with what they’re planning to read next. The result is a reading list that reflects the questions animating our work: speech, power, polarization, academic incentives, and viewpoint diversity.

Whether you’re stealing moments between holiday obligations or settling in for a long (quite warm) winter afternoon, we hope one of these picks invites you to stay curious and free the inquiry, one book at a time.

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Justin McBrayer, Director of University Partnerships

What you should read: Cracks in the Ivory Tower: The Moral Mess of Higher Education by Jason Brennan and Phillip W. Magness (2019, Oxford University Press).

This is the book that awoke me from my dogmatic slumbers about the structure of the university. The authors evaluate everything from grades and academic advertising to general education and cheating, all from the lens of incentive structures and moral obligations. The result is a web of perverse incentives that inhibit the important work the university sets out to do.

What’s next on my list: Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges by Richard D. Kahlenberg (2025, Public Affairs).

I’m interested in standpoint epistemology, the idea that your social standing deeply influences what you know and how you know it. Given that, I’m interested in thinking about how class matters in addition to things like race and gender when it comes to the kind of diversity that universities should inculcate.

Erin Shaw, Research Associate

What you should read: Follow the Money: Funding Research in a Large Academic Health Center by Henry Bourne and Eric B. Vermillion (2016, University of California Medical Humanities Press).

With research funding hotly contested these days, every faculty member and researcher should have a strong understanding of the many, many, university wheels that are greased by research funding. This book provides a granular account of how research dollars flow through a specific major research university. I promise, you are not too busy and important to read this book — it will illuminate many of the mysteries surrounding research funding, administrative decisions, and the procedural rigidity of your pals down in accounting.

What’s next on my list: The New Class? Edited by B. Bruce-Briggs (1979, The Center for Policy Research).

This series of essays and related works on class, culture, and prestige come up often in my work and personal life. This book has been looking at me menacingly from my bedside table for weeks now, and I’m excited to crack it open soon.

Shiri Spitz Siddiqi, Senior Researcher

What you should read: What Universities Owe Democracy by Ronald J. Daniels with Grant Shreve & Phillip Spector (2021, Johns Hopkins University Press).

This book, which calls on universities to reform their approach to civic education and intellectual pluralism, stood out to me as unique in its left-leaning perspective. I love to read people who critique their own community or “ingroup,” partly because I appreciate the unique stakes that come with ingroup criticism, but also because it pushes the writer to grapple deeply with the ideas and their own arguments.

What’s next on my list: Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics by Matt Grossman and David A. Hopkins (2025, Cambridge University Press).

I’m a social psychologist who focuses on political bias and polarization. I’m drawn to most things with “culture war” in the name. The politicization of universities (and experts broadly) is hugely concerning to me, so I’m looking forward to reading Grossman and Hopkins’ analysis of how we got here and what it means for the pursuit of truth and knowledge going forward.

Nicole Barbaro Simovski, Director of Communications, Marketing, and Events

What you should read: After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics―and How to Fix It by Will Bunch (2022, William Morrow).

This book gives, in my opinion, one of the best historical diagnoses about how politics and the academy got so intertwined. It’s a must read for anyone concerned about how polarization is negatively impacting higher education.

What’s next on my list: What’s So Great About the Great Books? Why You Should Read Classic Literature (Even Though It Might Destroy You) by Naomi Kanakia (2026, Princeton University Press).

With the rise of “civics education” across the academy and attempts to bring back the “great books” approach to general education, this one really caught my eye. I’m looking forward to reading this affirmative defense of reading the classics.

McKay Stangler, Director of Advancement

What you should read: Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher (2015, Vintage)

As a former English professor, I’m going to take a slightly different approach than my colleagues. While you should definitely read the nonfiction they recommend, I will also highlight Dear Committee Members, which is probably the funniest novel I read this year. It’s an epistolary novel that is the first (and strongest) in a trilogy focused on Jason Fitger, an English professor at a mid-tier liberal arts college whose brightest ivory tower days are behind him. Fitger spends most of his time writing letters of recommendation for students and fellow faculty members for various positions and accolades that will always elude him. What has this to do with the work of HxA? What the novel brilliantly shows is that the university, for all its flaws, works best when competing ideas and personalities collide with each other, leaving us to fumble our way toward a collective truth. It’s always worth bearing in mind, for critics and boosters of higher ed alike, that universities have lofty ideals that are good and needed — but in the end they are still made up of individual human actors, with all their foibles and flaws.

What’s next on my list: Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth: Law and Morality in Our Cultural Moment by Robert George (2025, Encounter Books)

I’ll always read a book by Robert George, and not just because he’s the best-dressed man in academia. His recent book has been burning a hole on my bookshelf. He contends that we’ve passed the “Age of Truth” and the “Age of Reason” and have entered the “Age of Feelings,” in which moral absolutes are derived from little more than felt preferences. Recalling the “emotivism” of Alasdair MacIntyre’s work and the “cultural narcissism” of Christopher Lasch’s, this book promises to have one of our best scholars turn his talents on one of our most bizarre cultural challenges. How do we bridge differences on weighty topics when we all fall back upon mere feelings?

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New Viewpoint Diversity Volume, March 2026

If your TBR isn’t already long enough, we have one more (very exciting) book to share with you: Viewpoint Diversity: What It Is, Why We Need It, and How to Get It co-edited by John Tomasi & Bernard Schweizer (Heresy Press) coming March 10, 2026, which Steven Pinker calls “both bracing and necessary.”

Viewpoint diversity seems to be on everyone’s lips these days — yet few can agree on what it actually means. Is it about confronting academia’s dearth of conservative scholars? Is it a political slogan or the equivalent of race, gender, and class inclusivity? Or is it something deeper — a commitment to intellectual freedom and open inquiry in an age of polarization?

In Viewpoint Diversity: What It Is, Why We Need It, and How to Get It, today’s leading heterodox thinkers come together to clarify one of the most contested ideas of our time. Defending pluralism across society, politics, academia, and the arts, this timely collection confronts the rise of orthodoxy on both the left and the right — and offers practical pathways for rebuilding dialogue across lines of difference.

Organized into three sections — covering higher education, public life, and culture — the book’s distinguished contributors go beyond diagnosis to offer solutions: how to foster real conversation, resist conformity, and create institutions that welcome a true diversity of perspectives. Provocative, nuanced, and refreshingly constructive, Viewpoint Diversity not only champions open-mindedness — it embodies it.