She first made her mark as a strong critic of feminism in articles such as "The Barbarism of Feminist Scholarship.
[2] She was the founding Vice President of the National Association of Scholars, and an editor of Academic Questions, the quarterly publication of NAS.
In 1991 President George H. W. Bush nominated her to be on the board of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which was strongly opposed by officers of the Modern Language Association and other academics; they argued that she was not a distinguished scholar.
In her article, "Bryan was right", she wrote that Christians are mistaken when they say that God and Darwinian evolution are compatible.
In recent years she wrote increasingly on issues of national identity, criticizing the neoconservative belief that America is an idea rather as a culture.