Conservative professor receives threats after contributing to Project 2025

A conservative Michigan State University professor who wrote a chapter in the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Project has received threats over his involvement in the controversial policy document.

MSU law professor Adam Candeub said: Detroit News He had received “threatening emails from strangers” about his work but declined to provide further details to the newspaper.

According to Candeub’s biography in the 922-page project document, his research “focuses on telecommunications, antitrust, and Internet issues,” which notes that he served as acting deputy secretary of commerce and deputy attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice in the Trump administration.

The 2025 Project document states: “In discussing the Federal Trade Commission, Adam Candeub writes in Chapter 30, ‘Antitrust law can combat the pernicious effects that dominant firms have on ‘democratic’ concepts—‘such as free speech, the marketplace of ideas, shareholder control, and managerial accountability, as well as collusion with government.’”

The article continues: “Under Biden’s FTC, he writes, companies are trying to “avoid antitrust liability by offering climate-related, diversity-related, or other forms of ESG-type offerings.” Candeub argues that state attorneys general “are much more responsive to the needs of their constituents” than the federal government, and recommends that the FTC establish a position in the chairman’s office that “focuses on working with state attorneys general and inviting state attorneys general to Washington to discuss enforcement policy in key sectors under the FTC’s jurisdiction: Big Tech, hospital mergers, supermarket mergers, etc.”

One colleague said Candeub’s off-hours work at MSU was “protected” Detroit News:

Candueb’s conservative work is drawing attention to MSU because it counters the idea of a “strong link between education and leftist leanings,” said Casey O’Donnell, an assistant professor in the Department of Media and Information at MSU.

“Obviously, the professor has done his research on this, and what faculty members do on their own time is just as protected as (anyone else’s),” O’Donnell said. “We can say whatever we want, but we’re not immune from consequences. What we say is not divorced from what people think of us.”

Asked about Candeub’s contribution to Project 2025, MSU officials said the university values academic freedom.

“It gives faculty members the freedom to discuss academic topics, challenge accepted wisdom and publish controversial research,” MSU spokesman Mark Bullion said. “Adam Candeub does not speak on behalf of MSU. And he did not violate any university policy by engaging in Project 2025.”

The newspaper also interviewed several MSU law students who said they accepted the law professor’s personal opinions. Among them was Tristyn Meyer, a second-year MSU law student.

“He has every right to do whatever he wants. While I fundamentally disagree with the Heritage Foundation and fundamentally disagree with Donald Trump’s personality cult, in our current political climate I think excluding people is the wrong thing to do and will only make things worse,” Meyer told the newspaper.

The Heritage Foundation describes Project 2025 as a group of more than 45 “right-wing organizations committed to rebuilding this country through a combination of policy and well-trained people.”

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IMAGE: Center for the Renewal of America

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