Sonia Kharbanda

PROJECT 2025. The project, mainly created by the Heritage Foundation, will have many limiting effects on public school curriculums and student expression.

Welcome to Political Pulse, a monthly political column published on RubicOnline. In this column, I will cover local, state, and national politics from my perspective and seek to cover the issues most important to students.

On the first day of school, most teachers begin their classes with a go-around, in which students introduce themselves with their preferred name and pronouns. Under Project 2025, at public schools, teachers would be required to use the pronouns and names that match each student’s biological sex and birth certificate unless given written consent from the student’s parents to use a different pronoun or name. Furthermore, public school teachers would not be obliged to use a pronoun different from a student’s biological sex if it contradicts the teacher’s religious or moral beliefs.

These are just two of many divisive policies regarding education outlined in Project 2025 that, if enacted, would reshape students’ experiences nationwide. Also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, Project 2025 is a conservative movement to restore order in America, with specific policies outlined in the 922-page book Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise. The conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation created the project and collaborated with other conservative organizations to write the 2023 book–one of many in the Mandate for Leadership series that the Heritage Foundation has published since 1981, usually before a presidential election.

Vice President Kamala Harris has weaponized Project 2025 to incite fears about former president Donald Trump’s plans if elected. Her campaign created a new website, kamalaharris.com/project2025, that bluntly tells voters, “Project 2025 is a plan to give MAGA extremists control over your life.” Her emphasis on the project may be paying off: according to a poll by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, conducted by YouGov between July 29 and Aug. 1, 53% of Americans knew about Project 2025 and disagreed with some of its policies.

Harris has little work to do in showing the plan’s flaws. From recommending that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) withdraw its approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, to mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, to ending climate change research, its policies are truly frightening.

Meanwhile, Trump has distanced himself from the controversial plan. During the Sept. 10 presidential debate, he denied involvement with the project, saying that it had “some good, some bad ideas.” However, according to a CNN review, at least 140 members of his former administration wrote, edited, or contributed to the 2023 Mandate for Leadership. Kevin D. Roberts, director of the Heritage Foundation, has described the organization’s role as “institutionalizing Trumpism,” and in 2018, the foundation proudly posted on its website that Trump had “embraced” at least two-thirds of Heritage’s policy recommendations from the most recent Mandate for Leadership. While Trump himself did not create Project 2025, his administration is deeply intertwined with its authors, and it is not a stretch to predict that he would implement some of its policies.

When it comes to education, the project advocates for removing critical race theory and gender ideology teachings from all public school classrooms. Project 2025 also seeks to redefine the relationship between parents, students, and schools: “Schools serve parents, not the other way around,” Roberts wrote on page five. This reflects the movement for parents to have greater autonomy in school curriculums and more choices in deciding between public and private schools. Roberts also called for removing a set of terms from every federal rule, grant, contract, and article of legislation, including but not limited to “sexual orientation and gender identity,” “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” “gender,” and “abortion.”

Project 2025 is a part of a broader increase in censorship and restrictions to school curriculums. PEN America, a nonprofit organization that aims to protect freedom of expression in schools, has found that since 2021, 28 bills in 18 states have been passed to ban “divisive concepts” such as slavery and white supremacy from the classroom. However, those upticks in censorship and curricula regulation only apply to individual states, while Project 2025 seeks to make those changes national. In addition, the project urges the elimination of the Department of Education, which would give more power to states to oversee education.

While regulating education may fly under the radar compared to the more obviously harmful policies in the project, the proposed curricula would have its imprint on the next generation of Americans. SPA states it plainly in its mission statement: “Shaping the minds and hearts of the people who will change the world.” Regardless of whether schools make that intention clear, the topics one is exposed to as a student greatly shape their worldview and their openness to different perspectives.

Though Project 2025 education policies would only apply to public institutions, all students should be concerned about the government limiting their self-expression and the content they can learn in school. For students with restrictive curriculums, make an effort to read a variety of news sources and challenge the narratives presented in your history classes. And for students lucky enough to be protected from the potential educational implications of Project 2025, acknowledge this privilege and don’t take SPA’s ever-expanding curriculum for granted.