Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right

With Laura K. Field

Thursday, March 26, 2026

4:00 - 5:30 PM

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E St NW | Washington, DC 20052

Room 211

This event is on-the-record and open to the public and media.

Donald Trump is not a big thinker, but his 2016 presidential victory presented a grand opportunity for people who are, and it set off a radicalization and reconfiguration of the American conservative intellectual world. In Furious Minds, Laura Field, who spent close to a decade in conservative academic circles, chronicles the rise of the New Right—the network of academics, public intellectuals, and influencers who provide ideological fuel to Trumpism. This movement includes figures such as Patrick Deneen, Christopher Rufo, Peter Thiel, and JD Vance. Their agenda is built to last, and it has dire long-term implications for liberal democracy.

The New Right has precedents in American history, but it is distinct for its youthfulness, misogyny, and extraordinary successes—most notably the elevation of Vance to the vice presidency. The movement—which draws together associates of the right-wing Claremont Institute, National Conservatives, Postliberals, and the Hard Right—advocates nationalist economics, tight borders, isolationism, and reactionary social values. It helped to strategize January 6th and created Project 2025. But above all, the New Right is engaged in a vast culture war against modern liberal pluralism. It is determined to harness state power and use it in new, illiberal ways, from college campuses to the international scene—all driven by the fantasy of restoring a pure America.

Incisive and urgent, Furious Minds tells the story of the thinkers of the New Right—and their powerful assault on American freedoms, values, and ideals.

Speaker

Laura K. Field is a writer in Washington, DC. She studied political theory and public law at the University of Texas at Austin, has held faculty positions at Rhodes College, Georgetown University, and American University, and today is a Scholar in Residence at American University and Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center. Laura has a longstanding interest in political culture and how thinking (and writing, and rhetoric) shapes our lives, which pairs well with current questions about the crisis of liberalism and rising authoritarianism around the world. She has worked extensively on the right-wing (“New Right”) intellectuals who rose to prominence under the Trump administration. Her new book is Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right (Princeton University Press, 2025).

Discussant

Joshua Tait is a historian of American conservatism. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina and is a visiting scholar at the Ronald Reagan Institute. Between 2021 and 2024, he worked for the New Zealand government. Tait is the author of the “To Live is To Maneuver” Substack and a forthcoming history of the conservative intellectual movement which will be published with Yale University Press.

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