Right of Reply
The Case Against Lockdown: A Reply to Christopher Snowdon
I enjoyed reading Christopher Snowdon’s critique of lockdown sceptics (“Rise of the Coronavirus Cranks”). Chris is a lively and entertaining writer and he does a great line in withering scorn (“There is no shortage of stupidity on Twitter, but this is something different, something almost transcendent”). He posed some
Are Elite Colleges Really That Bad?
The last year has been a difficult time for the US’s top universities. In March, a number of top schools including Stanford, Yale, and Georgetown were implicated in the now-infamous college admissions scandal. Over the summer, the discrimination case against Harvard by a group of Asian American students exposed
Palestine Misunderstood
From my home on the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv, I hear the Muslim call to prayer every day as it issues from a mosque half a mile away in neighboring Jaffa. Jewish Israelis see Arabic on their money, on street signs, on buses, and on the labels adorning foodstuffs
Right of Reply: Our Response to Jerry Coyne
Jerry Coyne has offered a response in the pages of Quillette to David Gelernter’s provocative article, “Giving Up Darwin.” Gelernter rejected the standard model of neo-Darwinian evolution for a simple reason: he looked at three pieces of scientific evidence that appeared to be incompatible with that model: The sudden
Against Determinism—A Brief Reply to Jerry Coyne
In my previous Quillette article, I offered what was intended to be an intellectual history of agency, drawing partly upon the traditions of the continental school of philosophy. I contended that those intellectuals most resistant to deterministic explanations for human affairs are unconsciously, and fiercely, trying to protect the historical
Is Liberal Immigration Anti-Democratic?—A Reply to Gadi Taub
In a recent Quillette essay, Gadi Taub argues that restricting voters’ power undermines the “ability of citizens to protect their hard-earned liberal rights.” He also says this is “bound to hurt these very rights, since their only real guarantee is the fact that we can dismiss our governments and appoint
Secular Morality Does Not Depend on Faith
In his piece ‘Values: Even Secular Ones, Depend on Faith: A Reply to Jerry Coyne,’ John Staddon denies he ever claimed that secular humanism is a religion. Yet in Staddon’s original article, ‘Is Secular Humanism a Religion?,’ which I criticized in my response, ‘Secular Humanism Is Not A Religion,
On the IDW: A Response to Eric Weinstein
Over the past few weeks, I’ve published two Quillette articles encouraging the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) to engage more with the ideas of identity, privilege, and structural oppression (often referred to collectively as “social justice”) that have become prevalent on the left. On Friday, YouTube media channel Rebel Wisdom
