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Walk across any campus, scroll through any feed, or wander into any café where coffee costs more than a week’s groceries, and you will see him: The Perfomative Male. He’s part poet, part open-mic philosopher. He prances through life with a tote bag, a Moleskine notebook, and the unshakable belief that the world needs another man reciting Paolo Coelho over a matcha latte. He is sweet, soft, sensitive, and — if his TikTok tags are to be believed — spiritually aligned with the moon. He trims his beard with military discipline, but only so he can claim he no longer cares about “traditional grooming.” He speaks in platitudes and nods solemnly at everything. He has mastered the holy trinity of modern manhood: eye contact, thrifted knitwear, and a falsetto apology. He’s not, to be clear, a bad person. He’s simply insufferable. This new type of man has convinced himself that the only way to escape the furnace of “toxic masculinity” is to walk into the opposite fire — the one lit by scented candles and guided journal prompts. He performs sensitivity with the energy of a man auditioning for a role he wrote himself. He posts tears. He posts therapy-speak. He posts readings of short stories that should’ve been buried in the backyard beside his creative writing degree. Online, he floats through life like a human chamomile tea. The Performative Male is the natural child of an age obsessed with telling men to reinvent themselves. We tell them to be tender, then mock them the moment they try. We beg them to open up, then churn out articles accusing them of faking it. The cottage industry is endless: think pieces, social media analyses, viral therapy jargon, even academic papers dissecting whether a man’s feelings are “authentic” or “performative.” With that much scrutiny, a new creature was bound to emerge. So he arms himself with props —  mindfulness journals he never finishes, vintage typewriters he can’t type on, houseplants kept alive solely for aesthetic credit — hoping these signals count as substance. But none of it is depth. None of it is change. It’s camouflage for a culture that hasn’t decided what it wants from men. And in the process, he becomes a parody. Not of masculinity, but of himself. While these men are busy perfecting “the gentle aesthetic,” most women aren’t asking for any of it. The vast majority still want men who are men — steady, grounded, the kind of presence that doesn’t melt into a puddle of feelings every second Tuesday. A sensitive streak is fine; a spine made of tofu is not. When things go wrong, no woman on earth is thinking, “Thank God he packed his healing crystals.” When the power goes out, the car breaks down, or some lunatic starts shouting in the street, who do you want beside you? A man who can keep his head and defend himself — or a man who needs to recalibrate his chakras before taking action? Most women don’t want a boyfriend who folds faster than laundry. They want someone who can feel and function, not someone who cries because Mercury is in retrograde. This is the part no one says out loud: the joke is on these roobs. They think the knitted sweaters and soft-spoken monologues make them irresistible. They think offering a tampon to a stranger in a campus contest will win hearts. They think reciting Sylvia Plath will unlock passion. What they fail to realize is that most women watching this circus aren’t swooning. If anything, they’re dry-heaving. They’re thinking, “Bless him… but absolutely not.” The Performative Male wants applause for traits that real men embody. He wants a standing ovation for vulnerability, while countless men are vulnerable in silence every day, asking for nothing but a fair chance. He wants admiration for empathy, while real men show empathy by showing up, not by staging a performance of emotional literacy for an audience of strangers. And yet the culture encourages it. The modern world treats masculinity like a broken chair: fix it, sand it, repaint it, but don’t lean on it. So young men panic. They fear being too strong, too quiet, too confident, too decisive — in other words, too male. They build a new persona made of pathetic props and even more pathetic posturing, hoping the world will pat them on the head and say, “Good boy. You are safe now.” It is a strange sight: men terrified of becoming the villains they have been taught to fear. Meanwhile, the men who refuse to play this sordid game continue living, working, building, fighting, loving, and leading. They’re not crying for likes. They’re doing what men have always done: taking charge when it matters most. And most women — the ones not trapped in online bubbles or sipping the digital Kool-Aid — still want those men. They want steady hands. They want calm strength. They want conviction. They want a man who can listen but also rearrange an intruder’s facial features if necessary. They want a natural provider and protector, not a narcissistic performer. The Performative Male doesn’t understand this because he has confused attention with admiration. The internet rewards theatrics, so he thinks theatrics are the path to desire. But deep down, the women watching know better. They recognize a phony the way a bartender recognizes a fake ID. A carefully curated persona can’t compete with someone who can actually handle a crisis without drama. Women know the difference between a man and a mascot — the Performative Male is the latter. 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Tradition. We don’t even need to say the word out loud to feel its weight. It is heavy for a reason. It carries the memory of a people. It stands on the shoulders of giants. It is the foundation on which we build. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2025 print magazine. Any conservative vision of higher education must begin here. Education should prepare students for the future while remaining in dialogue with tradition and its values, rituals, stories, and practices. The end of education is not simply the acquisition of information; it is the formation of a people — a people who can flourish. Without this in mind, education becomes a vapid, hollow enterprise, sending students adrift on the currents of popular opinion and the tsunamis of trend. As artificial intelligence tempts educators to leave so much behind, we must ask what is worth carrying forward, heavy as it may be. The answers don’t rely on vague nostalgia. There are concrete traditions that have proven their weight: the texts that form our common intellectual inheritance, the Socratic seminar where those texts are wrestled with, and the essay where students learn to defend and refine their own thoughts. In other words, what we teach, how we teach, and how we assess student learning. These are the places where the work of formation still takes place — and where it must continue. What We Teach: The Western Canon A benefit of the AI-saturated classroom repeatedly being touted on LinkedIn and in podcasts is its potential to personalize course content, engaging students on their own terms while endlessly adapting to their preferences, interests, and pace. New educational models like the Alpha School have built their identity on this promise. Universities may soon follow suit. Proponents paint a picture of education in which students can direct their own learning and pick the content that satisfies their curiosity. They complete these lessons alone, supported by a suite of AI-driven mastery tools that adapt to their pace and performance. Then they have time to develop socio-emotional awareness and “life skills” in cohorts with their peers. But the core of their learning is entirely their own. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our latest print magazine. All this might sound attractive. Indeed, taking the needs of specific students into account is not a bad thing per se, as each student is unique. However, this exaltation of the individualized learning path overlooks the importance of participating in shared intellectual experiences, building shared values, and cultivating shared meaning through curriculum. If, as I argued above, education is about the formation of a people and not merely the optimization of individual potential or knowledge acquisition, then learning and wrestling with a program of common texts is indispensable. And these should not just be any texts — they should be the texts that have shaped Western culture and values.  Through collective engagement with the works of Aristotle, Plato, the Scholastics, and the Enlightenment thinkers, students see the emergence of democracy, the ideological beginnings of human rights, and the perpetual struggle to find, grapple with, and name the truth. When you see the development of these beautiful ideas unfold, you gain a kind of reverence for their foundations. These things were hard-fought and hard-won. Engaging the whole narrative also brings into sharp focus what is at risk when the foundations fail. Even if God really were dead, Nietzsche was right: It wouldn’t be good news. Moreover, there is no way to critically think about these ideas or what they mean for us today without first engaging with them directly — by reading the Great Books. No one can credibly critique or deconstruct a tradition they have never actually read. To dismiss the Western canon without wrestling with it is like claiming to know the whole plot of a movie from the trailer. Yet this fantasy — that a 20-year-old can deconstruct the West after a semester of sociology, having read none of the Great Books — is one too often indulged in universities today. How We Teach: The Socratic Seminar This brings me to the next relic we should hold onto tightly: the Socratic seminar. The seminar is the embodiment of the Western canon. In it, we identify contradictions and approach nuance in dialogue with others who read the very same things. To do this, we must sit in the physical presence of someone who disagrees. We practice our prose so it lands. We learn to ask questions that reveal intentions rather than allege misplaced condemnations. These are formative moments. What do they form? Patience, humility, resilience, and courage. They teach students civility and how to engage with difference. Students place themselves, quite vulnerably, at the mercy of an expert and face probing questions that push them beyond their comfort zone. It’s worth contrasting this with the experience students have in most online asynchronous courses. They are asked to contribute to a discussion board. They paste in a response that can be generated in ten seconds from a flippant prompt to ChatGPT. They respond to peers who have done the exact same thing, echoing the same canned formulations. They type a trite response into a text box: “I totally agree.” Even if someone musters up the courage to raise a question or critique, he or she can do so from the safety of a keyboard, without ever feeling the weight of disapproving eyes. It is too easy. We have been calling some form of this “education” for far too long. It is not. Civility cannot be learned behind a screenname. If you doubt that, scroll through social media, and you will quickly be reassured. It’s worth noting the connection between the canon and a Socratic seminar more directly. Real-time discussion and debate with other humans who have feelings and views — the seminar — can’t be accomplished if everyone is going at their own pace, on their own schedule, only reading what immediately interests them. To think critically together requires a shared foundation. That base is, at minimum, reading the same book at the same time and coming together to discuss it under the guidance of an expert. In this sense, the canon and the seminar stand or fall together: The canon provides the common texts, and the seminar provides the common struggle. One without the other collapses — texts without dialogue become inert, dialogue without shared texts becomes shallow. How We Assess Learning: The Essay Now, we shouldn’t mistake the dialogue itself as the goal. Yes, it is a means to character formation. It is also a means of finding the best answers. And when one settles on an answer, they should be able to defend it. This is the goal of the essay: It is a testament to having thought well about some subject. To write well, someone has to think well — and rationally. This is what students aim to prove in their essays: that they have clear, defensible, rational thoughts on some subject. A good essay involves research, analytically organizing premises, weaving in evidence, and carefully selecting words to convey your intentions and represent your position. In this process, students learn how to work through an argument, engage competing perspectives, and defend a thesis. A coherent essay is evidence that these things can be done well — at least, it ought to be. This is why we have long asked students to produce them. This is also why the essay is an indispensable part of a university education. While AI makes it almost impossible for students to complete the traditional essay at home with integrity, this doesn’t mean it can’t be completed at all. In fact, it is entirely possible for students to write essays in class, by hand. And they should. Left to themselves, most students will succumb to the temptation to outsource their work. It is precisely because students are still in formation — not yet virtuous, not yet disciplined — that the essay must be structured to require honesty and effort. With a little scaffolding and careful cadence, the in-class essay can be even more pedagogically valuable than the take-home version. It is worth mentioning that being able to think well is not simply important for a student’s individual development. It is also essential for healthy public discourse, particularly in a pluralistic society like the United States of America. Dialogue breaks down when no one has thought deeply and analytically about their positions but instead spews them forth like reactionary defense mechanisms. And so students should most certainly practice writing and defending arguments.  Finally, the benefit of writing to think in this specific way — by hand and in class — is that it preserves a sacred space for students to develop their own thoughts without the mediation of technology. I know, archaic. But remember: These tools are not value-neutral. Their creators have intentions and ideologies that, as C. S. Lewis warns of all educational tools in The Abolition of Man, seep through in the most inconspicuous ways. For example, AI is trained on biased data that reflects the current cultural ethos. These tools have humans with agendas and half-baked ideas refining their models. As a result, freedom of thought depends, in large part, on ensuring students can think without the suggestions and covert manipulations of a chatbot made and trained in Silicon Valley. Organic thought protects freedom of thought. We should make time for it. Doing so will allow more critical engagement with these tools when they do need to be used. Some might label these suggestions as positively medieval. Perhaps they are. They are traditions — traditions important for the maintenance of beautiful ideas and the cultivation of character, the necessary components of a flourishing society. We should cling to them. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2025 print magazine.