Louise Dubé is about to mark her sixth anniversary at the helm of iCivics, which offers a menu of online games and lesson plans that have become perhaps the most widely adopted civics curriculum in the country. (The nonprofit was started by Sandra Day O'Connor soon after she retired from the Supreme Court.) Dubé started her career as an attorney in Montreal but has been an educational innovator in the United States since the 1990s — founding an alternative school for youthful offenders in New York, launching three educational software startups and helping start PBS LearningMedia while directing the digital education efforts of the network's station in Boston. Her answers have been edited for clarity and length.
What's the tweet-length description of your organization?
iCivics reimagines K-12 civic education to build civic strength.
Describe your very first civic engagement.
I'm from Quebec, and I grew up during the independence movement. It was a scary time, and you had to take sides. The father of one of my classmates was kidnapped during the conflict. I campaigned actively for the federal system, which won in a referendum. I marched and knocked on doors. I was proud of having helped in a small way to keep Canada together.
What was your biggest professional triumph?
I'm proud of the growth and impact of iCivics. We have more than tripled in size since I joined, and expanded to all 50 states. Students learn actively and deeply with our games and other curriculum materials. I am most proud of the community of educators we have built who are enthusiastic about iCivics. No learning happens in schools without the buy-in and skill of teachers.
And your most disappointing setback?
Over the past three years, we have sought to stimulate a movement to prioritize and improve civic education to combat what ails our constitutional democracy. We have made a lot of progress, but so far, the field has not found a home — in other words, no set of supporters for whom this is the primary mission. While every report and every person concerned with democracy reform mentions and highlights the need for civic education, it has not gotten the investment it deserves.
Many funders see elementary and secondary education as resistant to change. Others see it as a long-term project that is the responsibility of the government. Yet, the government has dis-invested in civics over decades, with clear results. I am still hopeful this critical mission will find the supporters and resources it needs to be the solution it can be.
How does your identity influence the way you go about your work?
iCivics is deeply committed to nonpartisanship. To do this work, I needed to adopt that same stance in my personal life. I do not post or share about political issues. I do not rail against politicians or support issues viewed as belonging to one party or the other.
But while iCivics will never take partisan stances, we will uphold moral imperatives, such as racial justice.
As a result our CivXNow coalition of educators has aligned behind policies that address equity in civics and democratic schooling environments — plus support for educators to have difficult conversations in the classroom as well as deeper knowledge and media literacy. We're working to do this while ensuring respect for a range of schools across very different viewpoints and local contexts.
Recently, though, iCivics made a commitment to pointing out institutional systemic racism in teaching about our institutions. This will alienate some, but it is the moral imperative of today.
What's the best advice you've ever been given?
I hate advice, but here is something that has inspired me over the years: Start with the end. It helps bring much-needed clarity.
Also: Look deep inside to see where you need to go, and join with others to find purpose.
Create a new flavor for Ben & Jerry's.
I sent this challenge to the iCivics team, which greatly appreciated the mission. The winner was a minty tie — between "Mint CitizenCHIP" (suggested by colleague Molly Launceford) and "27 A'mint'mints" (with 27 kinds of mint).
The runners up are "Liberty and Justice for Allmonds" (every other nut is out of luck, says suggester and head punster Emma Humphries) and "Seven Cream 76" (suggested by David Buchanan).
What's your favorite political movie or TV show?
"Twelve Angry Men," the 1954 play written originally for television by Reginald Rose. It's not actually political, but it's about the power of one person to strive for justice. I was trained as a lawyer after all. And HBO's "Veep," because ... it's fact based?
What's the last thing you do on your phone at night?
Check email to see if a million-dollar donation came through. This rarely happens, though.
What is your deepest, darkest secret?
Starting when I was 12 years old, I tried to figure out how to move to "The States," as they call it in Quebec. A number of harebrained schemes to get here all failed due to lack of cash. It is very gratifying today to have a very small role in improving our constitutional democracy as an American citizen.
Also, I hate mint ice cream.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.