Category: English

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Michael Vazquez, Teaching Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Philosophy majors rank higher than all other majors on verbal and logical reasoning, according to our new study published in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association. They also tend to display more intellectual virtues such as curiosity and open-mindedness.

Philosophers have long claimed that studying philosophy sharpens one’s mind. What sets philosophy apart from other fields is that it is not so much a body of knowledge as an activity – a form of inquiry. Doing philosophy involves trying to answer fundamental questions about humanity and the world we live in and subjecting proposed answers to critical scrutiny: constructing logical arguments, drawing subtle distinctions and following ideas to their ultimate – often surprising – conclusions.

It makes sense, then, that studying philosophy might make people better thinkers. But as philosophers ourselves, we wondered whether there is strong evidence for that claim.

Students who major in philosophy perform very well on tests such as the Graduate Record Examination and Law School Admission Test. Studies, including our own, have found that people who have studied philosophy are, on average, more reflective and more open-minded than those who haven’t. Yet this doesn’t necessarily show that studying philosophy makes people better thinkers. Philosophy may just attract good thinkers.

Our latest study aimed to address that problem by comparing students who majored in philosophy and those who didn’t at the end of their senior year, while adjusting for differences present at the start of their freshman year. For example, we examined students’ performance on the GRE, which they take toward the end of college, while controlling for scores on the SAT, which they take before college.

We did the same when analyzing survey data collected by the Higher Education Research Institute at the start and end of college. These surveys asked students to, for example, rate their abilities to engage with new ideas or have their own ideas challenged, and how often they explored topics raised in class on their own or evaluated the reliability of information.

All told, we looked at test and survey data from over 600,000 students. Our analysis found that philosophy majors scored higher than students in all other majors on standardized tests of verbal and logical reasoning, as well as on self-reports of good habits of mind, even after accounting for freshman-year differences. This suggests that their intellectual abilities and traits are due, in part, to what they learned in college.

Why it matters

Public trust in higher education has hit record lows in recent years, according to polling by the Lumina Foundation and Gallup. Meanwhile, the rapid advance of generative AI has threatened the perceived value of a traditional college degree, as many previously vaunted white-collar skills are at risk of being automated.

Yet now more than ever, students must learn to think clearly and critically. AI promises efficiency, but its algorithms are only as good as the people who steer them and scrutinize their output.

The stakes are more than personal. Without citizens who can reason through complex issues and discern good information from bad, democracy and civic life are at risk.

What still isn’t known

While our results point to real growth in students’ intellectual abilities and dispositions, they do not capture everything philosophers mean by “intellectual virtue.” Intellectual virtue is not just a matter of possessing certain abilities but of using those abilities well: at the right times, for the right reasons, and in the right ways.

Our measures do not tell us whether philosophy majors go on to apply their newfound abilities in the service of truth and justice or, conversely, for personal gain and glory. Settling that question would require gathering a different kind of evidence.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

The research described in this article was supported by a grant from the American Philosophical Association.

– ref. Studying philosophy does make people better thinkers, according to new research on more than 600,000 college grads – https://theconversation.com/studying-philosophy-does-make-people-better-thinkers-according-to-new-research-on-more-than-600-000-college-grads-262681

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Louis P. Masur, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History, Rutgers University

I was 18 when Bruce Springsteen’s third album, “Born to Run,” was released 50 years ago, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

I’d just finished my freshman year in college, and I was lost. My high school girlfriend had broken up with me by letter. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was stuck back in my parents’ apartment in the Bronx.

So when I dropped the record onto my Panasonic turntable and Springsteen sang, “So you’re scared and you’re thinking/That maybe we ain’t that young anymore” on the opening track, “Thunder Road,” I felt as if he were speaking directly to me.

But no song moved me more than the album’s title track, “Born to Run.” How I longed for that sort of love – and how I also felt strangled by the “runaway American dream.” The song was about getting out, but also about searching for a companion. I, too, was a “scared and lonely rider” who craved arriving at a special place. Decades later, I combined the personal and the professional and wrote a book about the making and meaning of the album.

All eyes on the Boss

The album was shaped by the times, particularly the malaise of the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate American landscape. There was an energy crisis, and it wasn’t only oil that was in short supply.

The excitement of the 1960s had passed, and rock ’n’ roll itself was in the doldrums. Elvis had become a Las Vegas lounge act; the Beatles had broken up; Bob Dylan had been a recluse since his motorcycle accident in 1966. The No. 1 hit in 1975 was “Love Will Keep Us Together,” by the Captain and Tennille. Obituaries to rock music appeared regularly.

Springsteen went into the studio feeling the pressure to produce. His first two albums had received good reviews but sold poorly. After seeing a show in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1974, writer Jon Landau proclaimed Springsteen “the future of rock ’n’ roll.” Springsteen wore the label uneasily, though he had more than enough ambition to try and fulfill the prophecy: He later called “Born to Run,” “my shot at the title, a 24-year-old kid aiming at the greatest rock ’n’ roll record ever.”

But in the studio, he struggled. It took him six months to record the title song. He kept rewriting the lyrics and experimenting with different sounds. He was composing epics: “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out,” “Backstreets,” “Jungleland.” And he was trying to tie it all together thematically as his characters searched for love and connection and endured disappointment and heartbreak.

When Springsteen was finally done with the album, he hated it. He even threw a test pressing into a pool. But Landau, who had come on to co-produce, convinced him to release it.

Poetry for the masses

Despite Springsteen’s apprehension, the response to “Born to Run” was remarkable. Hundreds of thousands of copies flew off the shelves.

Springsteen appeared on the covers of Newsweek and Time, where he was hailed as “Rock’s New Sensation.” Writing in Rolling Stone, critic Greil Marcus called it “a magnificent album that pays off on every bet ever placed on him.”

There was backlash from some corners: critics who resented all the hype Springsteen had received and who thought the music bombastic. But most agreed with John Rockwell of The New York Times, who praised the album’s songs as “poetry that attains universality. … You owe it to yourself to buy this record.”

An operatic drama

The album pulsates between hope and despair. Side 1 carries listeners from the elation of “Thunder Road” to the heartbreak of “Backstreets,” and Side 2 repeats the trajectory, from the exhilaration of “Born to Run” to the anguish of “Jungleland.”

I felt I knew the characters in these songs – Mary and Wendy, Terry and Eddie – and I identified with the narrator’s struggles and dreams. They all wrestled with feeling stuck. They longed for something bigger and more exciting. But what was the price to pay for taking the leap – whether for love or the open road?

These lyrical, operatic songs about freedom and fate, triumph and tragedy, still resonate, even though today’s music is more likely to emphasize beats, samples and software than extended guitar and saxophone solos. Springsteen continues to tour, and fans young and old fill arenas and stadiums to hear him because rock ’n’ roll still has something to say, still makes you shout, still makes you feel alive.

“It’s embarrassing to want so much, and to expect so much from music,” Springsteen said in 2005, “except sometimes it happens – the Sun Sessions, Highway 61, Sgt. Peppers, the Band, Robert Johnson, Exile on Main Street, Born to Run – whoops, I meant to leave that one out.”

In fall 1975, I played “Born to Run” over and over in my dorm room. I’d stare at Eric Meola’s cover photograph of a smiling Springsteen in leather jacket and torn T-shirt, his guitar pointing out and upward as he gazes toward his companion.

Who wouldn’t want to join Springsteen and his legendary saxophonist, Clarence Clemons, on their journey?

That October, I went on a first date with a girl. We’ve been married 44 years, and the stirring declaration from “Born to Run” has proven true time and again: “love is wild, love is real.”

Louis P. Masur does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ still speaks to a nation vacillating between hope and despair – https://theconversation.com/bruce-springsteens-born-to-run-still-speaks-to-a-nation-vacillating-between-hope-and-despair-263168

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Doug Sackman, Professor of History, University of Puget Sound

The Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign has not spared the U.S. agricultural industry, with agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement frequently raiding farms across the country in search of undocumented workers.

Now, farmers are facing a crisis the administration has helped create: not enough people to pick crops.

On a recent call to CNBC, President Donald Trump said, “We can’t let our farmers not have anybody.” To assure farmers that he had their back despite the immigration raids, he sought to distinguish immigrants he called “criminals” and “murderers” from nonthreatening farm laborers who have been picking crops for years.

To do so, Trump used an old stereotype for farmworkers: “These people do it naturally, naturally.” Trump recounted asking a farmer: “What happens if they get a bad back? He said, ‘They don’t get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die.’”

“In many ways, they’re very, very special people,” said Trump, referring to undocumented farmworkers.

Trump is labeling some of the people his administration has targeted for deportation as naturals.

As a historian of American agriculture and labor, I think the Trump administration’s contradictions on farmworkers are part of a long history of idealizing farming in America. It’s a history in which race, nature, exploitation and the very identity of America itself have all been involved.

From Jefferson to Sunkist

Thomas Jefferson, most famous for writing the Declaration of Independence, also declared, “Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God.”

Jefferson thought America’s true calling was to be an agrarian nation, for virtuous and independent farmers would also be perfect citizens. But Jefferson didn’t actually get his own hands dirty. He told John Quincy Adams that he “knew nothing” about farming.

The Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, in the musical “Hamilton,” crystallized the critiques against what came to be called “Jeffersonian agrarianism,” which praises agricultural life and the virtues of farmers, but fails to acknowledge it was not the planters who did the backbreaking work: “‘We plant seeds in the South. We create.’ Yeah, keep ranting: We know who’s really doing the planting.”

The image of America built up by white farmers contrasted with a reality that “those who labour in the earth” were often enslaved people. As the cotton empire expanded, so did slavery.

Apologists for this system of inequality argued that the “natural station” of Black people was to be enslaved. Black people were portrayed as natural manual laborers – and by extension, the institution of slavery itself was defended as natural, rather than an abrogation of the “natural rights” promised to all men in the Declaration of Independence.

American agricultural leaders in the early 20th century, as I document in my book “Orange Empire,” adapted these forms of “naturalization” – the process, as developed by cultural theorists, through which man-made things such as racial hierarchies are made to appear natural.

In this naturalizing mode, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce argued in 1929 that “much of California’s agricultural labor requirements consist of those tasks to which the oriental and Mexican due to their crouching and bending habits are fully adapted, while the white is physically unable to adapt himself to them.”

As I describe in my book, the president of the citrus growers cooperative Sunkist insisted in 1944 that Mexicans “are naturally adapted to agricultural work, particularly in the handling of fruits and vegetables.”

Through this naturalization, racism appeared to be made in nature. Everything in farming – all of the food grown in what author Carey McWilliams called “factories in the field” in his 1939 exposé – was carefully constructed by farmers, their lobbyists and their advertisers to appear natural. That includes the racism and labor exploitation at the heart of it.

While naturalizing workers as evolutionarily adapted to stoop labor, this system all but denied undocumented farmworkers legal access to the other kind of naturalization: becoming full citizens.

So when anti-immigrant ideology sparks ICE raids and deportations, the nation’s farms end up losing the labor they have long relied on.

Whose homeland?

On X, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been presenting itself as if it’s on a mission to secure a white homeland. It has posted videos of white people enjoying America’s natural wonders to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” and paintings that propagandize manifest destiny, the idea that the U.S. is destined to extend its dominion across North America.

Homeland Security recently posted John Gast’s 1872 painting “American Progress” as a “Heritage to be proud of.” It depicts a luminous white goddess flying west over the American landscape, with white farmers plowing the soil beneath, while petrified Native Americans, shrouded in darkness, are being chased from their homelands.

As I and others have pointed out, Homeland Security is using coded messages to affirm white supremacists’ vision of turning America into a white homeland.

On the ground in America today, nonwhite immigrants are fleeing from immigration agents, as if the Gast painting is coming to life. The United Farm Workers union, referring to “videos of agents chasing farm workers thru the field,” says that “workers are terrorized.” One worker said they are “being hunted like animals.”

‘Grounds for dreaming’

Trump told CNBC that he does not believe that “inner city” people can come to the rescue of farmers, whose source of labor has been decimated.

As Politico reports, Trump is now floating the idea of expanding an existing visa program for temporary agricultural workers and creating a new program that requires them to leave the U.S. before reentering legally. If so, he would essentially be reinventing the Bracero Program – the U.S. guest worker program with Mexico created at the behest of California growers during World War II that lasted until the 1960s.

Ian Chandler is an Oregon farmer whose cherries are rotting on the trees because he’s lost the farmworkers who normally pick them. He recently told CNN that these people “are part of our community, just like my arm is connected to my body, they are part of us. So it’s not just a matter of like cutting them off … if we lose them we lose part of who we are as well.”

The Spanish word bracero roughly translates to someone who works with their arms, but the earlier guest worker program didn’t have the same inclusive meaning Chandler intends. Instead, it racialized Mexicans as natural farmworkers, as mere brawn extracted from human beings who were otherwise excluded from the community.

As historian S. Deborah Kang notes, “Sumner Welles, former under secretary of state to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, excoriated the ‘poisoning discriminations’ faced by bracero workers and equated their experiences with the ‘Juan Crow’ racism.”

Over the course of its history, many Americans have held out hope that the U.S. would create a farming nation that lives up to the original promise of an organic democracy – the democracy Jefferson mythologized and one where all Americans are included – built from the ground up.

As historians Camille Guerin-Gonzales and Lori Flores have shown, farmworkers, whatever their official status, have worked hard to find “grounds for dreaming” in America.

Making that American dream a reality involves seeing farmworkers for who they are, I believe: vital members of the body politic who reconnect all Americans to nature through the foods they eat.

Doug Sackman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘These people do it naturally’: President Trump’s views on immigrant farmworkers reflect a long history of how farming has been idealized and practiced in America – https://theconversation.com/these-people-do-it-naturally-president-trumps-views-on-immigrant-farmworkers-reflect-a-long-history-of-how-farming-has-been-idealized-and-practiced-in-america-262858

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Michael Vazquez, Teaching Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Philosophy majors rank higher than all other majors on verbal and logical reasoning, according to our new study published in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association. They also tend to display more intellectual virtues such as curiosity and open-mindedness.

Philosophers have long claimed that studying philosophy sharpens one’s mind. What sets philosophy apart from other fields is that it is not so much a body of knowledge as an activity – a form of inquiry. Doing philosophy involves trying to answer fundamental questions about humanity and the world we live in and subjecting proposed answers to critical scrutiny: constructing logical arguments, drawing subtle distinctions and following ideas to their ultimate – often surprising – conclusions.

It makes sense, then, that studying philosophy might make people better thinkers. But as philosophers ourselves, we wondered whether there is strong evidence for that claim.

Students who major in philosophy perform very well on tests such as the Graduate Record Examination and Law School Admission Test. Studies, including our own, have found that people who have studied philosophy are, on average, more reflective and more open-minded than those who haven’t. Yet this doesn’t necessarily show that studying philosophy makes people better thinkers. Philosophy may just attract good thinkers.

Our latest study aimed to address that problem by comparing students who majored in philosophy and those who didn’t at the end of their senior year, while adjusting for differences present at the start of their freshman year. For example, we examined students’ performance on the GRE, which they take toward the end of college, while controlling for scores on the SAT, which they take before college.

We did the same when analyzing survey data collected by the Higher Education Research Institute at the start and end of college. These surveys asked students to, for example, rate their abilities to engage with new ideas or have their own ideas challenged, and how often they explored topics raised in class on their own or evaluated the reliability of information.

All told, we looked at test and survey data from over 600,000 students. Our analysis found that philosophy majors scored higher than students in all other majors on standardized tests of verbal and logical reasoning, as well as on self-reports of good habits of mind, even after accounting for freshman-year differences. This suggests that their intellectual abilities and traits are due, in part, to what they learned in college.

Why it matters

Public trust in higher education has hit record lows in recent years, according to polling by the Lumina Foundation and Gallup. Meanwhile, the rapid advance of generative AI has threatened the perceived value of a traditional college degree, as many previously vaunted white-collar skills are at risk of being automated.

Yet now more than ever, students must learn to think clearly and critically. AI promises efficiency, but its algorithms are only as good as the people who steer them and scrutinize their output.

The stakes are more than personal. Without citizens who can reason through complex issues and discern good information from bad, democracy and civic life are at risk.

What still isn’t known

While our results point to real growth in students’ intellectual abilities and dispositions, they do not capture everything philosophers mean by “intellectual virtue.” Intellectual virtue is not just a matter of possessing certain abilities but of using those abilities well: at the right times, for the right reasons, and in the right ways.

Our measures do not tell us whether philosophy majors go on to apply their newfound abilities in the service of truth and justice or, conversely, for personal gain and glory. Settling that question would require gathering a different kind of evidence.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

The research described in this article was supported by a grant from the American Philosophical Association.

– ref. New research suggests that studying philosophy makes people better thinkers – https://theconversation.com/new-research-suggests-that-studying-philosophy-makes-people-better-thinkers-262681

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Sidney Shapiro, Professor of Law, Wake Forest University

While the White House’s fight with elite universities such as Columbia and Harvard has recently dominated the headlines, the feud overshadows the broader and more far-reaching assault on K-12 public education by the Trump administration and many states.

The Trump administration has gutted the Department of Education, imperiling efforts to protect students’ civil rights, and proposed billions in public education cuts for fiscal year 2026. Meanwhile, the administration is diverting billions of taxpayer funds into K-12 private schools. These moves build upon similar efforts by conservative states to rein in public education going back decades.

But the consequences of withdrawing from public education could be dire for the U.S. In our 2024 book, “How Government Built America,” we explore the history of public education, from Horace Mann’s “common school movement” in the early 19th century to the GI Bill in the 20th that helped millions of veterans go to college and become homeowners after World War II.

We found that public education has been essential for not only creating an educated workforce but for inculcating the United States’ fundamental values of liberty, equality, fairness and the common good.

In the public good

Opponents of public education often refer to public schools as “government schools,” a pejorative that seems intended to associate public education with “big government” – seemingly at odds with the small government preference of many Americans.

But, as we have previously explored, government has always been a significant partner with the private market system in achieving the country’s fundamental political values. Public education has been an important part of that partnership.

Education is what economists call a public good, which means it not only benefits students but the country as well.

Mann, an education reformer often dubbed the father of the American public school system, argued that universal, publicly funded, nonsectarian public schools would help sustain American political institutions, expand the economy and fend off social disorder.

In researching Mann’s common schools and other educational history for our book, two lessons stood out to us.

One is that the U.S. investment in public education over the past 150 years has created a well-educated workforce that has fueled innovation and unparalleled prosperity.

As our book documents, for example, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries the states expanded public education to include high school to meet the increasing demand for a more educated citizenry as a result of the Industrial Revolution. And the GI Bill made it possible for returning veterans to earn college degrees or train for vocations, support young families and buy homes, farms or businesses, and it encouraged them to become more engaged citizens, making “U.S. democracy more vibrant in the middle of the twentieth century.”

The other, equally significant lesson is that the democratic and republican principals that propelled Mann’s vision of the common school have colored many Americans’ assumptions about public schooling ever since. Mann’s goal was a “virtuous republican citizenry” – that is, a citizenry educated in “good citizenship, democratic participation and societal well-being.”

Mann believed there was nothing more important than “the proper training of the rising generation,” calling it the country’s “highest earthly duty.”

Attacking public education

Today, Mann’s vision and all that’s been accomplished by public education is under threat.

Trump’s second term has supercharged efforts by conservatives over the past 75 years to control what is taught in the public schools and to replace public education with private schools.

Most notably, Trump has begun dismantling the Department of Education to devolve more policymaking to the state level. The department is responsible for, among other things, distributing federal funds to public schools, protecting students’ civil rights and supporting high-quality educational research. It has also been responsible for managing over a trillion dollars in student loans – a function that the administration is moving to the Small Business Administration, which has no experience in loan management.

The president’s March 2025 executive order has slashed the department’s staff in half, with especially deep cuts to the Office for Civil Rights, which, as noted, protects student from illegal discrimination.

Trump’s efforts to slash education funding has so far hit roadblocks with Congress and the public. The administration is aiming to cut education funding by US$12 billion for fiscal year 2026, which Congress is currently negotiating.

And contradicting its stance on ceding more control to states and local communities, the administration has also been mandating what can’t and must be taught in public schools. For example, it’s threatened funding for school districts that recognize transgender identities or teach about structural racism, white privilege and similar concepts. On the other hand, the White House is pushing the use of “patriotic” education that depicts the founding of the U.S. as “unifying, inspiring and ennobling.”

Promoting private education

As Trump and states have cut funding and resources to public education, they’ve been shifting more money to K-12 private schools.

Most recently, the budget bill passed by Congress in July 2025 gives taxpayers a tax credit for donations to organizations that fund private school scholarships. The credit, which unlike a deduction counts directly against how much tax someone owes, is $1,700 for individuals and double for married couples. The total cost could run into the billions, since it’s unclear how many taxpayers will take advantage.

Meanwhile, 33 states direct public money toward private schools by providing vouchers, tax credits or another form of financial assistance to parents. All together, states allocated $8.2 billion to support private school education in 2024.

Government funding of private schools diverts money away from public education and makes it more difficult for public schools to provide the quality of education that would most benefit students and the public at large. In Arizona, for example, many public schools are closing their doors permanently as a result of the state’s support for charter schools, homeschooling and private school vouchers.

That’s because public schools are funded based on how many students they have. As more students switch to private schools, there’s less money to cover teacher salaries and fixed costs such as building maintenance. Ultimately, that means fewer resources to educate the students who remain in the public school system.

Living up to aspirations

We believe the harm to the country of promoting private schools while rolling back support for public education is about more than dollars and cents.

It would mean abandoning the principle of universal, nonsectarian education for America’s children. And in so doing, Mann’s “virtuous citizenry” will be much harder to build and maintain.

America’s private market system, in which individuals are free to contract with each other with minimal government interference, has been important to building prosperity and opportunity in the U.S., as our book documents. But, as we also establish, relying on private markets to educate America’s youth makes it harder to create equal opportunity for children to learn and be economically successful, leaving the country less prosperous and more divided.

Sidney Shapiro is affiliated with the Center for Progressive Refrom.

Joseph P. Tomain does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why America still needs public schools – https://theconversation.com/why-america-still-needs-public-schools-260368

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Reid Kress Weisbord, Distinguished Professor of Law and Judge Norma Shapiro Scholar, Rutgers University – Newark

When professional wrestler and former reality TV star Hulk Hogan died on July 24, 2025, he left behind a grieving widow, two ex-wives, two children, two grandchildren he reportedly never met and a US$25 million fortune. He was 71 years old and died after having a heart attack.

News quickly broke that his daughter, entertainer Brooke Hogan, was estranged from her father, that she would “get nothing” from him and that she had arranged to have herself “taken out” of his will by asking Hogan’s financial manager to remove her name.

After her father, legally known as Terry Bollea, died, Brooke Hogan posted on Instagram. She said that they had shared a “quiet, sacred bond,” and it felt like part of her “spirit left with him.” But she also claimed that she had been “verbally and mentally abused since childhood.” She did not attend his funeral.

As law professors who research and write about trusts and estates, we teach courses about the transfer of property during people’s lifetimes and after they’ve died. We believe that the questions arising over who will inherit Hogan’s wealth offer important insights into how family estrangement can affect estate planning.

Making an unusual request

Journalists initially speculated about why Brooke “wrote herself out” of her father’s will, and earlier this month, she explained: Brooke was “scared” of the fighting that would come after her dad died. She said she was worried that there might be conflicts with her mother and her father’s third wife, Sky Daily.

But, to be clear, while anyone can ask to be left out of a will, they really don’t have any control over whether that ultimately happens.

A will is a document that spells out how money and other property should be distributed after someone dies.

The person who signs the will – technically known as the “testator” – is the only one with the power to change or revoke their own will. They don’t have to tell anyone what the will says.

Even the witnesses who sign it may not know who is left any property. They usually are not informed of the bequests made within the will, and some states don’t even require that witnesses know the document being signed is a will.

That means only Hulk Hogan could decide what his will said about who would get what once he died. Yes, Brooke Hogan could have asked him to exclude her from his will, but the final decision was up to him.

Refusing an inheritance

A will’s provisions only become final when someone dies.

Until then, the person can change their will multiple times. At death, the will can no longer be changed, but anyone who is named to receive property can refuse their inheritance. Refusing gifted or inherited property is known as a “disclaimer.”

Typically, when someone disclaims property, it goes to the next people in line – usually their children. If the deceased had no children at the time of death, their assets may go to their siblings or other relatives.

You might wonder why anyone would turn down an inheritance in the first place. One common situation arises when an heir is deep in debt. In these cases, disclaiming an inheritance can allow them to keep the money in the family.

This arrangement is legal in many states as long as the heir is not already in bankruptcy proceedings.

A hypothetical example

To understand how this might work, suppose an heir, whom we’re calling “Pat,” is left $4 million in his mother’s will. The timing is terrible for him because he’s deeply in debt, owing $5 million to creditors after the company he launched went belly up.

If Pat accepts that fortune, his creditors would be able to seize it. But he has a daughter, whom we’re calling “Marcy.” By refusing his inheritance, that $4 million can pass directly to Marcy. This arrangement is complicated but could leave Pat’s family better off because Marcy is free to spend her grandmother’s millions to pay off her college loans, buy a house and pay for her father’s rent – all without any risk of those assets being taken by his creditors.

Refusing an inheritance can also reduce the estate tax for the person who does so. The estate tax applies when people transfer lots of wealth at death. Under the tax reforms passed in July 2025, the first $15 million is exempt from the estate tax for individuals as of 2026, and twice that much for married couples. The exemption threshold is adjusted yearly for inflation.

The federal estate tax rate, which applies only to anything beyond the $15 million mark, is 40%, although many rich people take steps to reduce its impact through a handful of financial planning techniques. Many states have their own estate and inheritance taxes too.

Turning back to Pat’s mother, suppose that her estate was worth $100 million. If Pat accepts the inheritance, a 40% estate tax would apply. And if Pat leaves more than $15 million in 2026 dollars to his heirs without taking any steps to shield those assets, another 40% estate tax would be levied when he leaves his fortune to Marcy. But if Pat disclaims, then the government would only collect the estate tax once because his mom’s assets would skip him and go straight to Marcy.

Because Brooke Hogan asked to be disinherited before her father died, her request wasn’t a typical disclaimer. If she was not, in fact, included in Hulk Hogan’s will, as she requested, then there would be nothing for her to disclaim.

If Brooke Hogan is named in her father’s will and disclaims now that Hulk Hogan is dead, the most likely outcome is that her children, twins who were born in January 2025, would get their mother’s inheritance.

Being estranged from close relatives

Estate disputes can become very contentious when members of a family are estranged, meaning that their relationships have soured or even broken off completely.

Although Brooke Hogan was reportedly concerned about avoiding litigation, given her estrangement from her father, it is usually the testator who takes action during the estate planning process to prevent disputes after they die.

That’s one reason why most wills – nearly 70% of them according to one study – include a “no contest” clause.

These clauses typically say something like “anyone who contests my will shall be disinherited from my estate.” Estate planners who recommend this technique believe that the penalty discourages unhappy heirs from filing lawsuits, which usually incur high attorney’s fees.

Fighting over money after a relative dies

What makes Brooke Hogan’s case unusual is that she asked to be disinherited to avoid a court battle over her father’s estate.

In many estranged families, the situation is the opposite: Heirs sue because they are disappointed by their share of the estate when they are either disinherited or given less than expected.

For Brooke Hogan, who says that she asked to be left out of her father’s will to avoid involving herself in any new family conflicts, the concern is understandable. Estate litigation can take an emotional toll by dragging grieving relatives into courtroom battles that are lengthy, expensive and make family rifts even worse.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Hulk Hogan’s daughter can’t write herself out of the wrestler’s will – but she can refuse to take his money – https://theconversation.com/hulk-hogans-daughter-cant-write-herself-out-of-the-wrestlers-will-but-she-can-refuse-to-take-his-money-262560