New Trier Neighbors: What 2025 brought and what to look forward to in 2026!
Celebrating our eighth year of promoting common sense, free enterprise and the Golden Rule!
Amid a shifting national landscape in 2025, New Trier Neighbors continued its local mission to promote common sense and civil discourse about education and other issues that matter to residents of the North Shore.
Our 2025 programming highlights included:
A lecture at Uptown Glencoe by esteemed Northwestern professor Gary Saul Morson on “How to Teach – and how not to teach – Great Literature.” Dr. Morson discussed avoiding “activism traps” like symbol-hunting or imposing a “social justice” lens on 19th century life, and urged a return to timeless texts like those of Shakespeare to build shared cultural references and offer a window into the human condition.
An evening with Liberty Justice Center attorney Bridget Conlon that dissected legal aspects of “trans” issues, parental secrecy policies, and free speech retaliation. Bridget correctly predicted Supreme Court intervention on these issues: In its ruling in Skirmetti the court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender “affirming” medicine, and in the Mahmoud decision, the court held that parents had the right to opt their children out of LGBTQ curricula in public schools for religious reasons.
A virtual evening with You Need A Schoolhouse author Stephanie Deutsch about the Rosenwald Schools—an early 20th-century collaboration between Booker T. Washington and Chicago-based Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald -- that built nearly 5,000 schools for black children in the segregated South and nearly closed the literacy gap between white and blacks across four decades. Illinois, with our dismal reading and math proficiency numbers, could learn a thing or two from these community-based schools that demanded excellence from their students and believed they could achieve it.
An evening with Todd Ricketts, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs, former RNC Fundraising Chair and co-founder of Freespoke, a new free-speech-oriented internet search platform, where Todd shared insights from Washington, D.C.
We also debuted our New Trier Neighbors Book Group with discussions about The Hunter Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century by Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, and education icon E.D. Hirsch’s How to Educate a Citizen, which calls for a return to knowledge-based education teaching methods. Look for more book group meetings in 2026!
2025 also brought online ClassroomChamp.com, a free portal that promotes transparency and accountability at New Trier High School and its feeder schools. Click here to see what’s going on in your local school.
And for the third year in a row we awarded two grants of $1,000 each to students from Woodlawn’s Project H.O.O.D. in partnership with GameChangers Foundation. Jaden (below left) is studying psychology at Northern Illinois University and Kanika (below right) is studying psychology at Western Illinois University. Congrats to both of them!
This year New Trier Neighbors moved its communication platform to Substack and it is the best way to stay in touch with us. At our Substack you’ll find out news you’ll not see in local media as well as information about events and initiatives. You can view 2025’s 20+ posts here and sign up -- be sure to send the link to family and friends!
And on top of all that - we had several really fun parties and get-togethers and enjoyed fellowship, friends, and the free exchange of ideas.
All New Trier Neighbors Substack posts and program planning are done by volunteers. If you’d like to support our work, click here. We welcome contributions of any size and we make every dollar count.
In these divisive times, there is an urgent need for a complete rejection of political violence and a return to civil discourse, particularly in our schools, which should be places where our young people learn what is true, good, and beautiful.
We remain committed to being a focused voice of reason and look forward to seeing you in 2026!
Thank you so much for all you do to help us stay sane and to bring common sense and sanity back to our community!