Beginning in 2011, there was a rapid shift in the ways people associated with the knowledge economy talk about, and engage on, ‘social justice’ issues.
Those who work in fields like tech, finance, education, journalism, arts, entertainment, design and consulting (and students who aspired to these professions) grew much more politically ‘radical’ over the last 10 years and increasingly intolerant of dissent. The shifts were especially pronounced on matters pertaining to ‘identity’ (e.g. sexuality, race and gender).
A lot of the public discussion of the ‘Great Awokening’ focused on ‘vibes’ and unrepresentative anecdotes. However, as I illustrate in my forthcoming book, it’s possible to measure the changes that have taken place among knowledge professionals in a more systematic way. Interestingly, many of the same types of data that helped substantiate that a significant transformation in discourse and norms had indeed taken place after 2011 now seem to suggest that the ‘Great Awokening’ may have run its course.
For instance, post-2011, there was a notable surge in protest activity, concentrated in knowledge economy hubs and driven by knowledge economy professionals – beginning with the Occupy Wall Street Movement, continuing through the post-Trump #Resistance movements, and culminating with the 2020 protests following the murder of George Floyd.
There was significant unrest within knowledge economy institutions as well – from campaigns to get people fired for saying the wrong thing, holding the wrong views, or minor behavioral infractions to internal movements demanding that institutions issue strong statements on contentious political issues, donate to activist organizations, expand DEI initiatives, and so on.
There were dramatic shifts in knowledge economy outputs as well. For instance, there was a rapid increase in terms referring to various forms prejudice and discrimination in print and television news outlets, in books, in academic scholarship, in video games and beyond.
Even before the election of Donald Trump, art has grown increasingly political since 2010. After the 2016 election, political art became the only work perceived to ‘matter.’
Entertainment outputs followed a similar trajectory. As New York Magazine columnist Molly Fischer observed, content produced by entertainment companies not only grew more political over the last decade, and grew more intensely focused on ‘identity’ issues (race, gender, sexuality), it also increasingly adopted “a tone along the lines of an after-school special.”
Within the arts and entertainment industries, works that failed to tow the preferred line or conform with the newly-imposed norms and expectations on social and political issues grew increasingly difficult to produce, and regularly faced cancellation campaigns post-publication when they were published over the protest of progressive staff.
There were also dramatic changes in expressed attitudes on contentious topics, and in the political alignments and behaviors of knowledge economy workers.
Most knowledge economy professionals in the U.S. are highly-educated whites who self-identify as liberal. Polls and surveys show that, post 2011, there was a rapid shift in how highly-educated white liberals responded to questions related to ‘identity’ issues — they became significantly more likely to strike the maximally ‘left’ posture on questions pertaining to ‘cultural’ issues.
Whites affiliated with knowledge economy fields also became much more likely to self-identify as ‘liberal’ and to vote for the Democratic Party over the past decade. This, in turn, significantly reshaped Democratic Party’s priorities and rhetoric, often alienating non-white, less educated, and less affluent voters.
The times, they are a-changin
It’s been ten straight years of heightened unrest among knowledge economy professionals and within knowledge economy institutions and knowledge economy hubs. However, it seems like the wave is now beginning to crest.
The outputs of knowledge economy professionals began changing rapidly after 2011, growing much more intensely focused on prejudice, discrimination and inequality. In recent years, these shifts have slowed or reversed. We can see this, for instance, in media outputs. In a 2021 analysis for Newsweek, my colleagues and I found that the 2020 election and first six months of the Biden Administration seemed to have had no discernable effect on the ‘Awokening’ – at least not with respect to media outputs. In the months since, however, it seems like trends have begun to moderate for news media too, as David Rozado, the lead author for the essays on prejudice-denoting terms, recently illustrated on his Substack:
Similar patterns seem to hold in cable news discourse too (h/t political scientist Eric Kaufmann for the visual):
Climate change doomism likewise seemed to peak around 2021.
Moreover, when journalists cover stories related to issues they once obsessed about, it tends to be with heightened nuance and complexity as compared to previous years — often to the consternation of activists. And when confronted, media organizations are increasingly putting distance between the sociopolitical aims of progressive activists and the mission of the press (in a way that was not the case in recent years).
For instance, the New York Times was recently targeted by GLAAD in an open letter signed by dozens of celebrities and ‘thought leaders,’ primarily for publishing stories about transgender issues that included perspectives of people who did not simply celebrate and affirm progressive activists’ preferred narratives. Yet rather than issuing an apology and promising to “do better,” firing, benching or reassigning the reporters and editors who produced the stories, and/or issuing editorial changes to help the paper conform with activist preferences downstream — which had been their playbook in the past — the paper instead responded:
“We received the open letter delivered by GLAAD and welcome their feedback. We understand how GLAAD and the co-signers of the letter see our coverage. But at the same time, we recognize that GLAAD’s advocacy mission and The Times’ journalistic mission are different… Our journalism strives to explore, interrogate and reflect the experiences, ideas and debates in society — to help readers understand them. Our reporting did just that and we’re proud of it.”
Contemporaneously, hundreds of current and former New York Times contributors penned a separate open letter demanding greater conformance with progressive activists’ preferred narratives, to which the paper responded even more forcefully:
“It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or to rally supporters to influence our journalism. In this case, however, member of staff and contributors to The Times joined the effort. Their protest letter included direct attacks on several colleagues, singling them out by name. Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy… We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues in on social media and other public forums.”
This type of reply would have been almost unfathomable at the height of the Great Awokening. More on this soon.
Social media outputs have also seen significant changes. There was a rapid spike in negative terms signifying bias and discrimination after 2012. However, the use of these terms seems to have stabilized or declined from 2018 the present (h/t David Rozado):
Alongside most other knowledge producing institutions, colleges and universities transformed dramatically after 2010. However, a range of empirical data suggest that the post-2010 “Great Awokening” of higher ed may be winding down as well. For instance, Heterodox Academy recently released the results of its 2022 Campus Expression Survey. It shows that students today feel more comfortable sharing their perspectives across a range of topics than they did in previous years.
It may be that contemporary students feel less need to self-censor because the objective conditions have changed at colleges and universities. You can see this, for instance, in data on “cancel culture” events. Incident trackers compiled by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) show marked declines in attempts to punish scholars for their speech or views across all measures:
FIRE’s data is not an outlier. We see apparent declines in attempts to censor uncomfortable speech on campus across a range of datasets.
And professors, too, seem like they’ve calmed down a bit. The intense scholarly focus on identity-based bias and discrimination seems to have cooled, for instance:
These findings have been replicated by David Rozado using slightly different databases over a longer historical period:
College leaders and professors have also become more assertive in pushing back against illiberal policies coming from within campus. There has been trimming of administrative bloat induced by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beyond looking at knowledge economy institutions and outputs, polls and surveys reinforce the impression that a deeper movement is underway. White liberals, the Americans whose expressed views shifted most radically over the last decade, have begun to moderate their responses to questions on issues related to race and ethnicity (h/t political scientist Kevin Wallsten for the chart):
When we look by partisan affiliation, we likewise see the changes were especially pronounced among Democrats compared to other groups, and white and Asian (i.e. the most affluent and educated) Democrats compared to others in the coalition. Both the initial progressive shifts, and the post-Awokening drop-offs were notably more pronounced among these subsets of voters (h/t John Sides et al.).
These shifts have been pronounced on questions related to LGBTQ identity too. Here, Americans seem to be moving in the opposite direction of what advocates might hope and suggest — especially on transgender issues. Although these shifts seem to be driven most heavily by Republicans and Independents, plateauing and backsliding are evident among Democrats as well (click to expand):
There have been shifts in the ways people identify themselves, too. For instance, polling and surveys suggest that ‘feminist’ and related labels seem to have lost some of their luster in recent years, including (and perhaps especially) among young people. And particularly among non-whites (h/t again to Kevin Wallsten for the visual):
FIRE’s nationally-representative surveys of tens of thousands of college students nationwide suggest that certain forms of LGBTQ identification have dropped precipitously among students who started college after 2020 (h/t Eric Kaufmann for the visual):
Over the course of the Great Awokening membership in the Democratic Socialists of America exploded, driven heavily by young professionals (although despite this growth its membership remained nearly 90% white and overwhelmingly male). Since 2021, membership has declined precipitously.
In terms of partisan affiliation, after 2010, the political alignments of Americans with postgraduate degrees shifted hard left. People with BAs went from being the least Democratic educational bloc to the second most Democratic bloc. Everyone else in America continued shifting right (as they’ve been doing since around 2006). However, Democratic gains among postgrads seem to have levelled off after 2017. Among BA holders, Democratic alignment peaked in 2020 and has been declining since. We see the same patterns among women (who comprise a growing majority of knowledge economy professionals) and early-to-mid career workers (who shifted most during these periods). We see distinct peaks around 2018-2020, followed by declines that wiped out most or all of the gains Democrats enjoyed with these constituencies after 2010.
This has created a real electoral problem for the Democratic Party, which went “all in” on cultural progressivism in order to lure knowledge economy professionals, only to find themselves on the precipice of an unworkable coalition. Following anemic 2020 results and recalls of progressive politicians in blue states, there have been efforts in the Democratic Party to “course correct,” to avoid further alienating normie voters. The Democratic base has moved in a similar direction, broadly rejecting progressive candidates during the 2022 primaries. These countermeasures likely helped the party stave off the anticipated “red wave,” preventing extreme Republican candidates from facing Democratic challengers who were also perceived to be far out of step with mainstream America. Running moderate Democratic candidates against GOP extremists proved to be a winning move throughout the country in 2022.
And yes, there are also “the vibes.”
According to some accounts, there is a growing appetite among Generation Z for humor and subversion, for a slackening of constraints and an expansion of horizons. The heavy moralizing around identity issues, the constant and intense surveillance and management of self and others, the incessant calls for revolution and reform—these elements of woke culture are running up against a growing sense of nihilism and ironic detachment among young adults.
There is growing discussion of a ‘vibe shift’ among Millennials as well. Many are coming to find the culture wars both unsatisfying and rote. They are exhausted by the relentless cynicism, fear, doomsaying, and impression management that have governed much of their lives—and for what? They recognize the revolution isn’t coming anytime soon. So they are looking instead to have fun, relax, and cut loose a bit. Or, at the very least, stop having to be so neurotic, guarded, and paranoid.
Mask off, gloves off
Perhaps responding to these changes in ‘vibes,’ multinational corporations seem to be reevaluating their position in the culture wars as well — often at the expense of employees who had come to view their employers as reliable allies in their campaigns to push progressive values.
Management has also been slackening enforcement of post-2010 norms and expectations on identity issues. For instance, they are growing less likely to rapidly terminate or suspend employees accused of sexual misconduct based purely on the word of accusers.
Many companies are walking back their aggressive symbolic commitments to social justice and quietly defunding the financial pledges they made to various activist groups and causes. Universities and corporations have also begun rolling back controversial DEI policies, such as hiring statements, that became standard during the height of the Awokening.
Simultaneously, employers have been making aggressive cuts to the DEI-related positions that have ballooned in recent years and have curbed hiring of new DEI workers. According to Wall Street Journal estimates, for instance, listings for Chief Diversity Officer fell by 75% in 2022 as compared to the previous year. DEI work is increasingly being folded into being a small and subordinate subset of responsibilities for other positions (such as chief human resource officer) instead of having freestanding positions dedicated exclusively to enhancing diversity, equity or inclusion.
Rather than rapidly caving to employee “social-justice” demands, as they had for much of the last decade, managers at knowledge-economy institutions are increasingly trying to reassert their authority, firing employees who attempt smear campaigns against colleagues and the companies they work for, and imposing new rules on how internal workplace channels are used.
When workers at Netflix attempted to cancel Dave Chappelle in late 2021, the company didn’t respond by issuing apologies and promising more programming on LGBTQ topics, as it did in the past. Instead, executives issued a memo informing protesting employees that if they weren’t open to publishing content they disagree with, they should quit. When an insufficient number of activist employees took them up on this invitation, the company proceeded with aggressive cuts apparently targeting these employees and the programming they worked on.
At Disney, following the profound box office failures of a number of high-profile movies promoting LGBT relationships—alongside a series of p.r. controversies related to Disney’s advocacy for the LGBT cause that culminated in bids by lawmakers to strip the company of its special governing and tax-exempt status in Florida—CEO Bob Chapek was ousted. Reinstated, ex-CEO Bob Iger immediately struck a more conciliatory tone on the culture wars, acknowledging that Disney and its employees have particular values and tastes that they are passionate about folding into Disney content, but also emphasizing, “When you tell stories, there’s a delicate balance. You’re talking to an audience, but it’s also important to listen to an audience. It’s important to have respect for the people you are serving, that you are trying to reach, and not have disdain for them.”
Meanwhile, social-media companies like Twitter and Meta have moved to reinstate the accounts of Trump and other controversial right-aligned personalities, generally against the preferences of their overwhelmingly left-aligned employees.
Across the board, employers seem to feel less social pressure to conspicuously conform with demands made in the name of social justice. Instead, executives seem to feel increasing social permission to marginalize, censor or purge employee activists in order to shore up their own authority and enhance the bottom line.
Simultaneously, companies have dramatically reduced their mentions of ESG and DEI in earnings calls, reflecting a growing awareness in C-Suites that many stakeholders who were very preoccupied with social justice over the last several years have now moved on to other priorities or have even become hostile to ‘wokeness.’
Whether any of these developments are “good” or “bad” will ultimately be a matter of perspective. The matter of fact is that, for better or worse (or more likely, a bit of both), the post-2011 “Great Awokening” seems like it might be winding down. What its legacy will be is yet to be determined.
Update: 9/14/2024
Apparently inspired by this piece, The Economist just ran an essay demonstrating the Great Awokening is winding down — extending the data into 2024, visualized nicely, with the help of my friend and longtime collaborator, David Rozado. I include their images below, showing that, roughly 18 months after this original essay was published, the Great Awokening continues to wind down (click to zoom).
