The Heritage Foundation’s exodus of experts: The damage that President Kevin D. Roberts is doing is becoming irreparable

**Under Kevin D. Roberts, the Heritage Foundation Is Unraveling Edwin Feulner’s Legacy**

*By Joel Griffith | Spectator World | November 15, 2025*

The Heritage Foundation, once hailed as “the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement,” is undergoing a troubling transformation under the leadership of Kevin D. Roberts. The think tank’s storied legacy—built by its founder Edwin Feulner and characterized by moral and philosophical clarity—is now giving way to confusion, populism, and personality-driven politics. The damage to Heritage’s mission and credibility risks becoming irreparable.

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Much of the recent controversy centers on Roberts’s decision to maintain Heritage’s partnership with Tucker Carlson after Carlson’s now-infamous interview with Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes. During that interview, Carlson ridiculed Christians who affirm the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, mocking prominent figures like Ambassador Mike Huckabee and Senator Ted Cruz as “seized by this brain virus.”

Carlson went further, denouncing Christian Zionism as “heresy” and declaring, “I dislike them more than anybody.” He even proposed stripping U.S. citizenship from young Americans serving in the Israel Defense Forces. The record of Carlson’s troubling conduct is long and damning.

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In March 2025, Carlson hosted Qatar’s prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who defended his regime’s financial support for Hamas as a “mediation tool.” Carlson offered virtually no challenge to this narrative.

The previous year, in February 2024, Carlson traveled to Moscow for an interview with Vladimir Putin. During the exchange, the Russian dictator justified his invasion of Ukraine as a response to NATO expansion and described Ukraine as “an artificial state.” Carlson listened without objection, seemingly approving.

In July 2025, Carlson sat down with Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian, who denied nuclear ambitions and whitewashed his regime’s repression. Rather than condemning Carlson’s antisemitic tirades, Roberts chose to defend him, blaming “the globalist class” and “their mouthpieces in Washington” for supposedly forcing conservatives to “reflexively support” Israel. He dismissed those alarmed by Carlson’s rhetoric as part of a “venomous coalition.”

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This is not an isolated misstep. For years, Roberts has aligned Heritage with Carlson—even as the broadcaster has platformed dictators, historical revisionists, and antisemites hostile to American interests and values.

Equally revealing is Roberts’s claim that he doesn’t keep up with Carlson’s content because of his sports-viewing habits—as if ignorance excuses negligence. A CEO who neglected developments in his own industry would surely be dismissed.

The Heritage board’s duty of care requires ensuring that its president is informed and aligned with the organization’s founding principles.

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Roberts’s tenure has also seen troubling internal decisions threatening Heritage’s reputation. The sprawling “Project 2025” document places pro-market and interventionist ideas side by side, creating ideological confusion rather than clarity.

Even more concerning is Roberts’s weaponization of Heritage’s “one-voice” policy to pressure fellows to remove social-media posts defending capitalism or criticizing unconstitutional executive overreach. In effect, he has “canceled” Heritage’s own scholars.

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Under Roberts, Heritage has largely abandoned the philosophical fusionism that once defined modern conservatism—the Reagan-era synthesis of free markets, social conservatism, and a strong national defense.

Roberts’s Heritage now flirts with tariffs, industrial policy, and even capital controls—positions antithetical to economic freedom. He has condemned tariff critics as “globalist elites” and celebrated Trump-era protectionism as a “tool of statecraft.” This is a sharp departure from the tradition that rightly regards economic liberty as inseparable from political liberty.

Roberts appears to be steering Heritage away from Reagan conservatism toward Buchanan’s nativism, protectionism, isolationism, and central planning. The exodus of respected experts on free trade, financial regulation, macroeconomics, international relations, and first principles speaks volumes. Their departures symbolize both a collapse of institutional expertise and the silencing of the intellectual backbone that once made Heritage formidable.

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Meanwhile, Roberts’s hiring choices raise further concerns. He brought on Mario Enzler, who was forced to resign as Dean of the St. Augustine Business School after the university discovered multiple falsified academic degrees. Roberts also hired Mark Meador, a critic of both the “consumer-welfare” antitrust standard and the esteemed Judge Robert Bork, who championed it.

Roberts proudly claims he “does not take direction from members or donors.” In the corporate world, a CEO with similar arrogance would face swift action from the board and shareholders.

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Roberts’s alliances and rhetoric have damaged Heritage’s reputation and alienated its donor base. He is using Heritage as a personal platform for ideological experimentation and self-aggrandizement.

Donors have entrusted Heritage with hundreds of millions of dollars, often through endowments meant to safeguard Western civilization and the U.S.-Israel alliance. Those intentions deserve respect, not betrayal.

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A continued institutional alliance between Heritage and Tucker Carlson normalizes the antisemitism promoted weekly on Carlson’s show. For this reason, leading members of the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism (NTFCA) have publicly announced their departures from Heritage projects. These include the Combat Antisemitism Movement, Young Jewish Conservatives, Coalition of Jewish Values, Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), and the Israel Innovation Fund.

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The loss of Heritage’s moral and intellectual capital under Kevin Roberts is increasingly clear.

Once a bulwark of principled conservatism that confronted Soviet tyranny, championed tax reform and deregulation, and defended the Judeo-Christian roots of Western civilization, Heritage now aligns itself with a demagogue who flatters dictators and scorns allies. Meanwhile, Roberts muzzles Heritage fellows from speaking out.

In so doing, Roberts is dismantling not just a think tank’s reputation but a generation’s work of conservative institution building.

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**Topics:** Constitution / Conservatism | Culture / Society | News / Current Events | Philosophy
**Keywords:** Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, Tucker Carlson

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