The Social Science Monoculture Doubles Down
Obviously, greater intellectual diversity among researchers would be a key corrective, but adversarial collaboration is also critical.
Keith E. Stanovich
· 18 min read
Long Read
A collection of 201 posts
Twilight of the Satyrs
I. On April 18th of this year, Blake Bailey, 58, the author of Philip Roth: The Biography, was abruptly dropped by his literary agency, the Story Company. His book had been published on April 6th, and climbed to the top of the bestseller lists. But then allegations emerged that while
Charlotte Allen
· 28 min read
Why It’s OK to Speak Your Mind
The following is an excerpt from Why It’s OK to Speak Your Mind, by Hrishikesh Joshi. Routledge, 196 pages. (March 2021) The division of cognitive labor Modern society is only possible because of the division of labor. Without division of labor, the most we could achieve is a very
Hrishikesh Joshi
· 23 min read
The Incoherence of Gender Ideology
To understand the coherence and moral import of transgender rights claims, we must first define what it is that we mean by “transgender.”
Michael Robillard
· 21 min read
Life as a Stand-Up Comic Can Be Brutal. ‘Safe Space’ Call-out Culture Is Making it Unbearable
“Cancel culture” has become a trendy term in recent years. But public shaming has always existed. It’s a social tool, and like all tools can be used for good or ill.
Jessica Pigeau
· 35 min read
Listening to Literature—What We Gain and Lose with Audiobooks
The whole was something closer to verbal jazz.
Art Edwards
· 20 min read
The Philologist, the Iraqi Girl, and Me
The comrades worked together, ate together, read together, showered together, used the latrine together, sang together to the sound of accordions late into the night.
Edward Grossman
· 18 min read
Historical Racism Is Not the Singular Cause of Racial Disparity
The popular vision of race in America seems to be incapable of breaking the gridlock that places the fate of black Americans in the hands of white society and then condemns that society to the wasteland of history.
Samuel Kronen
· 26 min read
How All My Politically Correct Bones Were Broken
In my first 10 years of college teaching, from the mid-60s to mid-70s, I modeled myself on my best teachers—men and women who questioned my ideas vigorously. They let me know that I mattered to them, they praised when praise was due, and they pushed me hard. Often I
Gregory Hansen
· 22 min read
In Praise of the Novelization—Pop Fiction's Least Reputable Genre
This month brings us the release of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. No, not the film. That came out in 2019. But now HarperCollins is publishing a novelization, written by Tarantino himself, and based on the earlier film. This particular type of fiction—the bastard offspring
Kevin Mims
· 20 min read
The Bias Narrative versus the Development Narrative: Thinking About Persistent Racial Inequality in the United States
How can you expect population parity in an enterprise when there are some groups (Asians? Jews?) who are significantly overrepresented?
Glenn C. Loury
· 26 min read
The Limitations of Black Conservative Thought
Perhaps if black conservatives offered a more nuanced “vision” of the respective roles of individuals and governments in addressing racial inequality, the black community would be less receptive to the anti-racist narrative that conservatives so vehemently denounce.
Aaron Hanna
· 34 min read
The 'Lab Leak' Inquiry at the State Department
Anyone who cares about ensuring that the lab-leak hypothesis is taken seriously should probably be thanking me, rather than vilifying me.
Christopher Ashley Ford
· 20 min read
Understanding the Unidentified
With the decline of religious belief over the past century, perhaps this is what lies behind this quest to understand the unidentified.
Michael Shermer
· 22 min read
Debate and Disinformation: The Ugly Quarrel Over the UK Government’s Race Report
Most critics have instead based their criticism on the demonstrably false accusation that the report “denied the existence of institutional racism in the UK.”
Damian Counsell
· 24 min read