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PragerU

The Prager University Foundation, known as PragerU, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit advocacy group and media organization that creates content promoting conservative and pro-capitalist viewpoints on various political, economic, and sociological topics. It was co-founded in 2009 by screenwriter Allen Estrin and talk show host Dennis Prager. Despite the name including the word "university", it is not an academic institution and does not confer degrees.

History
, co-founder of PragerU, in 2018 PragerU was founded in 2009 by conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager and radio producer/screenwriter Allen Estrin, in order to advocate for conservative views and to offset what Prager regards as the undermining of college education by the left. Marissa Streit, a former Israeli army intelligence member and headmistress of a Los Angeles county school, joined in 2009, and was made the chief executive officer in 2011. PragerU is based in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California, PragerU reached a billion views in 2018. Conflicts with YouTube and Facebook In October 2016, PragerU claimed that YouTube had put 21 of PragerU's videos in the "restricted mode" setting, which ensures content is age appropriate. PragerU claimed that Google's demonetization and flagging violated the First Amendment by arguing that YouTube was a public forum. In March 2018, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh dismissed the case, ruling that because Google was a private company, PragerU had failed to show that Google had infringed its free speech rights. In February 2020, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this ruling. In 2018, as part of its efforts to counter misinformation, YouTube added fact-checking tags to PragerU's videos about climate change. In August 2018, Facebook removed two PragerU videos from its platform. It later restored the videos, saying that they "were mistakenly removed." According to Francesca Tripodi, professor of sociology at UNC-Chapel Hill, there are plausible non-ideological explanations for Facebook's removal of several of the videos. PragerU contended that Facebook had engaged in deliberate censorship. == Finances ==
Finances
The organization depends on donations to produce its content. Much of PragerU's early funding came from fracking billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks. Other donors include the Morgan Family Foundation, Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, Donors Trust, the late Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, Lee Roy Mitchell, As of 2018, the organization reportedly had a $10 million annual budget, of which it spent more than 40% on marketing. PragerU consistently spends more on Facebook advertising than major political campaigns and national advocacy groups. In 2019, it ranked among the 10 biggest political spenders on the platform. == Content ==
Content
PragerU releases videos on various topics from a conservative viewpoint that according to its site "advances Judeo-Christian values." , its YouTube channel included 2,200 videos. Each video costs between $25,000 and $30,000 to create. Some prominent video presenters have included Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Nigel Farage, Charles Krauthammer, Michelle Malkin, Bret Stephens and George Will. Much of PragerU's popularity comes from its "5-Minute Videos", which summarize economic, political, and cultural topics, with many discussing controversial topics. PragerU is pro-Israel, and Dennis Prager has said that "Nothing better identifies incipient evil than antisemitism." PragerU videos also promote the Electoral College, arguing that it thwarts voter fraud and that "pure democracies do not work". and the history of fascism. PragerU has made claims that renewable energy is harmful to the environment. It has promoted "new climate denial", which involves casting doubt on the negative effects of climate change and anti-climate change policies. Climate Feedback, Reuters and the Weather Channel have found that their videos promote inaccurate and misleading claims about climate change. Gender-affirming care In November 2023, PragerU released Detrans: The Dangers of Gender-Affirming Care, a 21-minute film that follows two people who began gender-affirming care in their late teens and then later detransitioned. The short film was launched with a $1 million marketing campaign that included a "timeline takeover" on Twitter. Detrans was condemned by the president of the Human Rights Campaign, an American LGBTQ advocacy group, who called it "hate-filled propaganda". School program By 2015, PragerU developed two partnership programs to promote its views, including religious material, in public and private schools. PragerU's Educator Program, with 3,000 sign-ups reported as of 2015, supplies teachers with lesson plans and study guides that accompany videos. Secondary school teachers and college professors can register their classes through PragerU's Academic Partnership program, which lets students sign up and allows teachers to monitor their students' progress. In 2023, Florida became the first state to accept PragerU as an official education vendor. They were approved by the Florida Department of Education, who said that PragerU "aligned with the state's revised civics and government standards." The decision allows public school teachers in Florida to incorporate PragerU videos into their classroom materials. Critics warned that the official recognition of PragerU will expose students to the program's extreme material and expressed concerns about allowing an organization with a track record of disinformation into the curriculum. Florida's move was followed by New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Montana, and Arizona, with Louisiana becoming in May 2024 the sixth state to give PragerU materials state sanction. In July 2025, Oklahoma announced that it had partnered with PragerU to develop an ideology test to screen and withhold teaching certificates from teachers from "woke" states. Founders Museum On June 25, 2025, PragerU launched a "Founders Museum" exhibit at the White House for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in partnership with the Department of Education. The exhibit featured AI-generated videos of people from the Revolutionary War. == Reception ==
Reception
According to a 2019 report in the Los Angeles Times, PragerU videos have been watched more than 2 billion times. PragerU has ranked highly in influence compared to other free-market advocacy organizations, such as Reason and National Review. Vanity Fair said PragerU "packages right-wing social concepts into slick videos" and that PragerU was "one of the most effective conversion tools for young conservatives." Sociologist Francesca Tripodi has studied PragerU's marketing and messaging for the nonprofit Data & Society. She found that PragerU relies on search engine optimization and "suggested content" to market its videos. A BuzzFeed News article published in 2018 attributed PragerU's success to the quality of its production values compared to similar outlets and to its use of popular presenters with established audiences. The article also noted that it had received comparatively little attention from news and media analysts due to PragerU's lack of coverage of topical issues, such as Donald Trump. Reason criticized PragerU's claims of being censored by big tech companies as being false, given that content had not been removed from any social media platforms and that they indicate a misunderstanding of the First Amendment as protecting a party from any type of censorship, when that law merely protects content from censorship by the government. PragerU's coverage of COVID-19 has been proven to have spread false and misleading information about the nature of the pandemic and potentially life saving remedies. In 2019 to counteract PragerU, the former United States Senator for Alaska Mike Gravel launched The Gravel Institute, a progressive think tank. Mother Jones said PragerU videos assert that there is no gender pay gap, A case study of PragerU by McCarthy & Brewer said that "PragerU has fundamental overlapping ideologies to the extreme right" and detailed the methods of persuasion PragerU uses which "combine in a way that reflects information laundering and persuasion techniques used on online platforms by white supremacists who similarly hide racist propaganda behind more politically correct wording and professional-looking websites." Criticism of videos According to Joseph McCarthy of the Weather Channel, in the 2016 video "Fossil Fuels: The Greenest Energy", fossil fuel proponent Alex Epstein promotes misinformation about climate change, including false and misleading claims. According to Francesca Tripodi, PragerU's videos advance the conspiracy theory, popular among the alt-right, that whiteness and conservatism are under attack and many videos on PragerU focus on delegitimizing the mainstream media, accusing it of being based on emotion or opinion rather than fact. == References ==
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