Weekly Roundup and the Casualties of War

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This week we have a poignant essay on loss, grief and disillusionment from a former resident of Russia in Casualties of War, followed by a trenchant criticism of the anti-interventionists who deny the agency of the Ukrainian people from Rob Tracinski.

Another exceptional essay this week comes from documentary film maker Rob Montz, who argues that Roland Fryer's excommunication at Harvard has been at least partially motivated by an ideological backlash to his research.

We also have the first in a three-part installation on nuclear power from nuclear engineer Robert Zubrin, Jon Kay interviews Professor Frances Widdowson on unmarked graves in Canada for the podcast, and Aaron Sarin takes a look at the strange events unfolding in Shanghai.

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Until next week,
Claire

World Affairs

Casualties of War

I have been a Russophile for as long as I can remember. Or, to put it more exactly, since I was eight years old, when I attended a school play performance of Gogol’s The Government Inspector. I loved Gogol’s sense of humour, the long names with their patronymics—

QuilletteRobert Ginzburg

Ukrainians Are Nobody’s Pawns

Conservative anti-interventionists buy into an authoritarian narrative that ignores the clear choices made by the people of Ukraine.

QuilletteRobert Tracinski

Shanghai on the Edge of Madness

Starvation will push and pull human psychology in unusual directions—it is one of the few things that can overcome fear of the authorities. When famine came to China 400 years ago, it made Chinese peasants receptive to the preachers of class war. When the government failed to provide crucial

QuilletteAaron Sarin

Culture

Why Did Harvard University Go After One of Its Best Black Professors?

Roland Fryer Jr.’s life is a movie script: A man abandoned by his mom and raised by an alcoholic dad became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard University. After ascending to the academic elite, Fryer didn’t resign himself to irrelevant technical puzzles; he put

QuilletteRob Montz

Point of Compact

The late literary critic and social democrat Irving Howe once quipped that when radicals fail to build a movement, they start a magazine. Howe knew what he was talking about—his own magazine, Dissent, was one of them. The latest example of this truism is a new webzine called Compact,

QuilletteRonald Radosh

Liberalism and its Discontents—A Review

A Review of Liberalism and Its Discontents by Francis Fukuyama. Profile Books, 178 pages (March 2022) Liberalism is in bad odour. In the third decade of the 21st century, it is an ideology with few friends. Derided with equal vigour by populists on the Right and “progressives” on the Left,

QuilletteSeamus Flaherty

Will Elon Musk Take Over Twitter?

On April 14th, Elon Musk, billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, made an offer to buy Twitter. He wants to take the publicly-traded social media platform private, purchasing 100 percent of the company at $US54.20 per share, an $US8 per-share premium over the stock’s price on April 13th.

QuilletteDaniel Friedman

At 400, Molière Still Matters

Over the years, Le Tartuffe ou l’Imposteur has been one my favorite Molière plays to study and direct with my undergraduate students at Princeton University. I find it to be the best point of origin from which to discover his body of work. As often with Molière, the plot

QuilletteFlorent Masse

Science

How We Can Get Clean Energy—Fuel and Human Progress

Editor’s note: this is the first in a three part series on how we can get clean energy. Part I details Biden’s War on Fuel, Part II answers the question “Is Nuclear Power Safe?” and Part III provides an answer to “What Needs to Be Done?” There are only two

QuilletteRobert Zubrin

Podcasts

Quillette Podcast #186: Frances Widdowson on the Questions Canadians Aren’t Supposed to Ask About Unmarked Graves

Former Mount Royal University professor Frances Widdowson describes the political, academic, and journalistic taboos surrounding the fate of Indigenous residential-school students in western Canada. Transcript of the Introduction:Welcome to the Quillette podcast. I’m Jonathan Kay. This week, we’re…

QuilletteQuillette

‎27 Rouge: A Quillette Podcast: IV: “IDK” & other Good Ideas with David Samuels on Apple Podcasts

‎Show 27 Rouge: A Quillette Podcast, Ep IV: “IDK” & other Good Ideas with David Samuels - Apr 14, 2022

Apple Podcasts

From Around the Web:

Scientific Nihilism

A review of a review of Kathryn Paige Harden’s “The Genetic Lottery”

Science FictionsStuart Ritchie

Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

It’s not just a phase.

The AtlanticJonathan Haidt

‎Honestly with Bari Weiss: Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid on Apple Podcasts

‎Show Honestly with Bari Weiss, Ep Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - Apr 12, 2022

Apple Podcasts