Category: Featured
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The Absurd Spectacle at Columbia Occludes the Grim Realities of Gaza
To understand broad trends, it can often be helpful to dig into a particular case. With respect to the tumult over the encampments protesting the U.S. backed Israeli offensive in Gaza, it would be hard to find a more illuminating example than Columbia University. Here, we can clearly observe students’ sincere but contradictory concern for…
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It’s Easy to Misunderstand Antisemitism in America
According to many popular contemporary narratives, American society is rife with antisemitism. Institutions of higher learning are purportedly hotbeds of anti-Jewish animus, indoctrinating impressionable young people into a leftist ideology that paints Jews as extraordinarily privileged, Israelis as oppressors, Hamas as brave freedom fighters and Palestinians as blameless victims. Many people I deeply respect have embraced claims like these…
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Israel’s Campaign in Gaza is a Failure on Every Level. The U.S. Must Stop Enabling It.
On December 14th, CNN aired a devastating peek into life in the Gaza Strip. The dispatch, from Clarissa Ward, marked the first piece of independent reporting from Gaza by a Western journalist since October 7th (all other reports by Western correspondents to date have come from people embedded with the Israeli army who had to…
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It’s the (Knowledge) Economy, Stupid
The biggest divide in American politics at present is not along the lines of socioeconomic status (SES), nor educational attainment, nor type (urban, suburban, small town, rural), nor gender – although these factors all serve as important proxies for the distinction that matters most. The key schism that lies at the heart of dysfunction within…
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New paper explores censorship and self-censorship in science
In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, my co-authors and I explore the prevalence, causes and impacts of censorship and self-censorship in science. We find that censorship is driven heavily by scientists themselves and, although the consequences of censorship are often pernicious in practice, censors tend to be…
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Contextualizing Ideological Gaps in Mental Illness and Well-Being
In a recent essay for Social Science & Medicine – Mental Health, epidemiologist Catherine Gimbrone and co-authors identified a significant gap in depressive attitudes between liberal and conservative teens. This gap was present in all years observed in the study (2005-2018). However, it grew significantly starting in 2012, as depressive affect unilaterally spiked among liberals.…
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The ‘Great Awokening’ Is Winding Down
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…
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U.S. College Professors Do Not Well-Represent the Rest of America
Tenured and tenure-track college professors are drawn from a narrow and idiosyncratic slice of society. Many backgrounds and perspectives are dramatically underrepresented in the academy. This gulf between the ivory tower and the rest of society undermines knowledge production, pedagogy, and public trust in experts and scientific claims. A new study published in Nature Human Behavior argues that, at its current rate of change,…
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Diversity is Important. Diversity-Related Training is Terrible.
In wake of George Floyd’s murder and the protests that followed, many colleges and universities have been rolling out new training requirements – often oriented towards reducing biases and encouraging people from high-status groups to ‘check their privilege.’ The explicit goal of these training programs is generally to help create a more positive and welcoming…
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Police in America Are Out of Control
Following the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent wave of protests nationwide (indeed, worldwide) against police brutality, Americans have witnessed video after video of cops assaulting unarmed demonstrators, and even complete bystanders unlucky enough to cross their path. In one striking case, police senselessly shoved a seventy-five-year-old man to the ground, causing blood to…