What Did You Think Decolonisation Meant?
Decolonisation theory operates as a rigid, Manichaean ideology that neatly divides the world into evil perpetrators and innocent victims.
Maarten Boudry
· 7 min read
Reader Favourites
A collection of 90 posts
The Wrong Man
In Iran, Donald Trump is showing us what a populist war looks like.
Michael J. Totten
· 11 min read
Francesca Albanese and the Perversion of Academia
Three Flemish universities are about to convey the sanction of university-recognised expertise to a deeply dishonest and fraudulent individual.
Norman J.W. Goda
· 12 min read
The Many Roots of Our Suffering: Reflections on Robert Trivers (1943–2026)
The contributions of Robert Trivers belong in the special category of ideas that are obvious once they are explained, yet eluded great minds for ages; simple enough to be stated in a few words, yet with implications that have busied scientists for decades.
Steven Pinker
· 16 min read
A New World Order in the Making
An interview with Dr Shmuel Bar.
Hannah Gal, Shmuel Bar
· 13 min read
Power Beyond Realpolitik
In geopolitics, moral culture shapes whether influence is experienced as leadership or domination, cooperation or coercion.
Scott Atran
· 8 min read
The Gender Identity Debate
A selection of Quillette essays and interviews examining the cultural, scientific, and legal dimensions of gender identity.
Quillette
· 7 min read
The End of the Middlebrow Movie
Middlebrow movies weren’t just two-hour escape pods, they functioned as a civic glue, a source of shared language, cross-generational references, and indeed, contemporary American myth.
Harrison Kass
· 7 min read
The Price of the Epstein Frenzy
Press-led hysteria and institutional cowardice are inflicting needless damage on higher education.
Lawrence M. Krauss
· 10 min read
Capitalism’s Paradox
Why prosperity breeds guilt, how status incentives reward critique, and what happens when function is replaced by moral performance.
Sarah Wooten
· 5 min read
The Uninvited Sermon
Why artists, academics and others should not exploit the presence of a captive audience.
Holly Lawford-Smith
· 8 min read
The Arabs’ Anti-Colonial Delusion
The Arabs still believe that they are fighting a colonial war against Israel. But they are not.
Hannes Stein
· 6 min read
Editors’ Choice 2025
Quillette’s editors choose their favourite essays of the year.
The Quillette Editorial Board
· 10 min read
The Sexual Paradise That Never Was
How Margaret Mead’s romanticised account of Samoan life became the founding myth of cultural determinism—and why it endures despite having been thoroughly debunked.
Patrick Whittle
· 19 min read
Tech Wants You to Believe that AI Is Conscious
Tech companies stand to benefit from widespread public misperceptions that AI is sentient despite a dearth of scientific evidence.
Nadav Neuman
· 8 min read