Progressive Orthodoxy

When Disagreement Becomes Trauma
How does one deal with those who claim that debate itself represents an agony beyond human endurance?

Watching My Beloved, Once-Eclectic Library Become Just Another Bastion of Orthodoxy
In 2018, the New York Times published an op-ed that illustrated the traditional conception of the public library. Under the headline, To Restore Civil Society, Start with the Library, sociologist Eric Klinenberg wrote: For children and teenagers, libraries help instill an ethic of responsibility, to themselves and to their neighbors,

Watching My Great Nation Lapse Into a Cult of Self-Abasement
I wasn’t a patriot until it had all gone; then I would have sold my soul to buy it back. ~Tanya, in Malcolm Bradbury’s Eating People Is Wrong For more than 20 years, from the mid-’70s to the late-’90s, Morningside, a three-hour daily broadcast that mixed

Anti-Racism as Office-Politics Power Play: a Canadian Academic Case Study
Last week, 53 top Canadian academic administrators convened in Ottawa for a biannual membership meeting of Universities Canada, a group dedicated to “providing university presidents with a unified voice for higher education.” The 89-page meeting agenda, which was leaked to me after the event, makes for an interesting read. The

The Vox Formula: Telling Privileged People What They Already Believe
In 2014, Ezra Klein, a 29-year-old journalist known for his Washington Post articles breaking down the thorny ins and outs of complex government policy, left the Washington Post for Vox, a website whose “mission is simple: Explain the news.” Vox would soon become famous for a style of journalism known

Podcast #167: Vivek Ramaswamy on the 'Woke Smoke' Blown by Corporate America
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with 36-year-old biotech entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy about how corporate elites burnish their progressive bona fides (and distract their critics) with anti-racism slogans and hashtags—instead of taking concrete steps to address real inequalities within their organizations.

Quillette Podcast 6 - Coleman Hughes on Progressive Orthodoxy in the Ivy League
Canadian editor Jonathan Kay talks to Coleman Hughes, Quillette columnist and Columbia University student, about being out of step with the prevailing orthodoxy at an Ivy League college, classical liberalism and playing in Rihanna’s backup band in 2016.