Dialogues with Richard Reeves

"The main reason we find it difficult to think critically about democracy is that it requires us to think critically about ourselves." That's the view of my guest today, Robert Tracy McKenzie, a historian at Wheaton College.  In his recent book We the Fallen People: The Founders and the Future of American Democracy , he argues that Americans - and American Christians in particular have forgotten what the framers always knew: that human beings are flawed, broken, inclined towards sin - in other words, fallen. He contrasts this view of fallen humanity with what he calls the "democratic gospel", based on the "comforting fiction that we are naturally good".  In this conversation we discuss the development of the idea that "America is great because America is good" (which Tocqueville never actually said); argue about the extent to which democracy is intrinsically good, or mostly good as means to other ends; discuss the balance between two different Christian anthropologies, one positive one negative; the use and misuse of history by political partisans; and the need for religious people, in particular, to take history more seriously. He's an interesting thinker, a terrific writer and this was a fun conversation.  (Robert) Tracy McKenzie McKenzie is a Professor of History at Wheaton College, where he holds the Arthur F. Holmes Chair of Faith and Learning. He  blogs about Christian faith and American History at faithandamericanhistory.wordpress.com

Diverse democracies are new, wonderful, but potentially fragile: that's the claim, the promise and the warning from my guest today, Yascha Mounk. Yascha wears many hats. He is a Professor at Johns Hopkins, the Founder of Persuasion, a publication and community devoted to the maintenance of a liberal society, and host an excellent podcast, The Good Fight. Also a political scientist and historian with four books to his name, most recently The Great Experiment - Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, which is the main topic of our conversation today. We talk about the dangers of tribalism and majority domination in diverse democracies; the difference between a liberal society and a democratic society (and which is more important), the intrinsic "groupiness" of human beings and how that means liberals need to be in the business of drawing lines between groups (whether they like it or not), what the communitarian critics of liberalism get wrong, the wonderful messiness of liberal societies, Federalist 10, and the risks of an overemphasis on racial or ethnic identity, or "racecraft", which is an increasingly dominant trend on both the political right and the political left. Yascha Mounk Yascha tweets from @Yascha_Mounk Check out his work at his website here. Buy his latest book, The Great Experiment here. ​Born in Germany to Polish parents, Yascha received his BA in History from Trinity College Cambridge and his PhD in Government from Harvard University. He is an Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, where he holds appointments in both the School of Advanced International Studies and the SNF Agora Institute. Yascha is also a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Founder of Persuasion.

It's not news that liberalism is under pressure. And one of the most prominent liberals of our era is Francis Fukuyama. As he writes in his latest book, Liberalism and its Discontents, the virtues of liberalism need to be clearly articulated and celebrated once again." In this wide-ranging dialogue, Frank and I discuss how his thinking has evolved since his famous 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, including the central tension between the universalism of liberal morality and the fact of nation states, and between the pluralism of liberal politics and the central importance of thymos - respect, dignity, recognition. Along the way we talk about the perils of the university tenure system, the significance of the war in Ukraine, why Papua New Guinea is such a good place to study political order, the relationship between liberalism and laissez-faire capitalism (Spoiler: hugely overstated), and the content of a good life, or what it means, in Mill's word "to pursue our own good in our as seen through the eyes of a liberal. Francis Fukuyama Tweets from @FukuyamaFrancis Read: Liberalism and Its Discontents (2022) The End of History and the Last Man (1992) The Origins of Political Order (2011) Political Order and Political Decay (2015) See also my review of his latest book in the Literary Review here. Francis Fukuyama is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science. More Christianism by Leon Wiesetlier Check out my dialogue with Joseph Henrich whose work we discussed, on Spotify  here or Apple here.

Something's wrong with our sex lives. That's according to Christine Emba. In her new book, Rethinking Sex: A Provocation she argues that too many people are having sex that is consenting, but not good. Sex that makes us feel used, or sad, or alienated in some way or another. She argues for an ethic of sex that is based on the Aristotelian definition of love as "willing the good of the other". Christine and I talk quite a bit about the differences between men and women when it comes to sex, and the dangers of women being held up (or perhaps down), to masculine ideas of sex. We talk about how the restriction of the debate about sex to one of consent misses the mark in terms of what people are seeking; the so-called "sex recession" as fewer younger adult report having sex (and whether that is a good or a bad thing); we agree that good sex, defined ethically, is not constrained by a particular institutional arrangement - and so can take place on a one night stand; the "orgasm gap" between women having sex in a committed relationship as opposed to a casual one; whether sex workers are having good sex; and much more. Christine is a terrific writer and thinker on contemporary culture, and has focused here on a particularly timely issue, I think.  Christine Emba Buy her book, Rethinking Sex: A Provocation. Read her Washington Post columns. Follow her on twitter @ChristineEmba  

"Every body is wrong; no body feels right". So says philosopher Clare Chambers, who defends the idea of the unmodified body, both as a political and an ethical concept. It's not that bodies don't change of course - they do all the time, and should, by what we do and eat and so on. But we dig into the three reasons we modify our body: appearance, health and hygiene, or identity (using my decision to brush my teeth as an example). Clare explains why the idea of being "trapped in the wrong body", a popular description among many trans people, has some problems as well as potential, in part because to some extent we are all not in the right body, or our "own" true body. That's why new mothers are urged to "get their body back". We talk about how far gender differences are the result of nature or culture; why there is no clear distinction between cosmetic surgery and cultural surgery; how shaming doesn't really work as a public health approach; the changed nature of bodybuilding (and not for the better). We discuss the striking differences in rates of male circumcision between the U.S. (80% of boys) and the UK (6%), where it is described as a procedure of last resort, what this tells about the role of culture and especially how what counts as a "medical procedure". In her new book Intact, Clare has produced an excellent and thoughtful treatment of some very important and sensitive subjects right now, and it was a real pleasure to have this dialogue with her.  Read Intact: A Defence of the Unmodified Body (Penguin, 2022) Clare Chambers Professor of Political Philosophy and a Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge. She is the author of Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State (Oxford University Press, 2017); Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice (Penn State University Press, 2008); Teach Yourself Political Philosophy: A Complete Introduction (with Phil Parvin, Hodder, 2012); and numerous articles and chapters on feminist and liberal political philosophy. She is also a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics,  Website: http://www.clarechambers.com/ Twitter: @DrClareChambers The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)

"Human beings can no more give up narrative than we can breathing or sleeping." So says my guest Jonathan Gottschall. But why are stories so important? He argues in his new book The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears them Down that the primary function of storytelling is to sway the listener in some way, to change how they think or fell about something, or someone. "Stories", he says "are influence machines". Part of the political divide today, for example, is over the story of America: Are we a city on the hill, a beacon of liberty and hope and progress, or an oppressive, supremacist and bloody empire? In a deep sense, the culture war is a story war, and in light of recent political developments, Gottschall says our task is now "to save the world from stories", in part by trying to tell stories without villains. Along the way we talk about the difference between suspension of disbelief and narrative transportation, politics, the role of religion, luck, and the lack of political pluralism in academia. I came away even more convinced about the power of stories, and our decisions about which stories to immerse ourselves in, as well as how stories layer on top of stories, in a kind of narrative collage.  Jonathan Gottschall Distinguished Fellow at Washington & Jefferson College, author of The Storytelling Animal, The Professor in the Cage, and The Story Paradox.  Twitter: @jonathangottsch Website: jonathangottschall.com    

What are friends for? To "help us be better versions of ourselves" is Reid Hoffman's answer. He has spent a lot of time thinking about the nature and importance of friendship for human flourishing. Reid is best known for his success as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist: he is co-founder of LinkedIn and PayPal, a partner at Greylock Partners and serves on the boards of Airbnb, Convoy, Edmodo, and Microsoft. The importance of relationships - networks, colleagues, friends, fellow citizens - runs through his philosophy and worldview. That is why he says that "entrepreneurship should include an embedded theory of human nature." Reid studied philosophy as a postgrad at Oxford and there's a strongly philosophical flavor to his work, and to our dialogue. At one point in the conversation he describes himself as a "predictive philosophical anthropologist", and I think by the end you'll see why. We discuss the value of philosophical thinking; the importance of what he calls an "embedded theory of human nature"'; the roles and responsibility of big tech and media companies: why the truth is slow and falsehood fast, and what we might do about that. We spend a lot of time unpacking why friendship plays such an important part in his ethical framework; our current political divides; the importance of truthfulness; and why he remains not a techno-utopian, but a techno-optimist. But we start with the question of why he has a Swiss Army knife in his car, and what that tells us about him.  Reid Hoffman Podcast: Masters of Scale  Latest book: Blitzscaling, The Lightning-Fast Path to Building  Massively Valuable Companies Website & blog: https://www.reidhoffman.org/ "Through friendship, a better version of myself"  "The Philosopher- Entrepreneur"  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman/ Twitter: @reidhoffman The Dialogues Team Creator: Richard Reeves Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)

“I am less interested in showing that the Medieval world was modern, than in showing how Medieval, in many ways, the modern world is.” That’s Roland Betancourt, my guest today and a truly fascinating scholar of history, art, theology, sex and gender, liturgy and much more. We discuss his book Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages, including the history of the later Roman Empire, the “slut shaming” of Empress Theodora, the importance, today as much as 1,500 year ago of the Hagia Sophia, the fascinating lives and deaths of trans monks, the significance of Mary’s consent to be the Mother of Christ, the messiness and ambiguity of human life, frailty and identity. (Note that there’s inevitably some pretty adult content in this episode). Dialogues will be back on Jan 10th, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, Happy Holidays to all.  Roland Betancourt  Roland Betancourt is Professor of Art History at the University of California, Irvine. In the 2016-2017 academic year, he was the Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. See his faculty page here. We mostly discuss his book Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020)  More Betancourt Performing the Gospels in Byzantium: Sight, Sound, and Space in the Divine Liturgy (Cambridge University Press, 2021) See his edited volume Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as Method in Modernity (Leiden: Brill, 2015). Also Sight, Touch, and Imagination in Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) "Why Sight Is Not Touch: Reconsidering the Tactility of Vision in Byzantium," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 70 (December 2016): 1-23. "Faltering Images: Failure and Error in Byzantine Lectionaries," Word & Image 32:1 (2016): 1-20. The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)

“Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster.” It took a moment of epiphany on a Brooklyn park bench, and becoming a father, for my guest today, recovering productivity hacker and Guardian journalist Oliver Burkeman, to see the truth. We’re all going to die. And soon: in fact, after about four thousand weeks. That’s the animating idea of his new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. But facing our finitude frees us to give up on the myth of a stress-free future, embrace the discomfort of failure, focus on the present, and make more thoughtful trade-offs. Maybe even start to allow time to use us, rather than the other way round. We talk about parenting, the role of religion, to-do lists, the regulation of time by states and churches, the pleasures of hiking, the Northern Lights, the sabbath, and much more. Oliver Burkeman Oliver Burkeman is a writer and recovering productivity hacker. His new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, is about making the most of our radically finite lives in a world of impossible demands, relentless distraction and political insanity (and 'productivity techniques' that mainly just make everyone feel busier). More Burkeman  Oliver is also author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking (2012) and Help! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done (2011), a collection of his Guardian columns. Follow Oliver on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/oliverburkeman. Sign up for his twice-weekly newsletter, The Imperfectionist, and check out his website here: https://www.oliverburkeman.com/ Also Mentioned  See Krista Tippett’s project, On Being I mentioned Jon Elster’s work on “willing what cannot be willed”, this appears in his chapter on “Sour Grapes”, available here.  Oliver referred to Alison Gopnik’s book The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children We mentioned Time and Despondency: Regaining the Present in Faith and Life by Nicole Roccas Oliver referred to the book Personal Kanban by Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry We discussed research on vacations in Sweden, for more see Terry Hartig’s work on “restorative environments” The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)

What should sensible Republicans do now? That’s the question Bill Kristol has been wrestling with since the nomination of Donald Trump - and it’s not going away. A veteran of Republican politics, scholarship and journalism, Bill’s view is that for the foreseeable future, the Republican party at a national level seems like a lost cause. The best hope is to build new spaces in the political center, and work with moderate Democrats, like Joe Biden, to actually, you know, govern the country, keep democracy safe, and all that good stuff. But Biden’s performance so far gives cause for concern. We talk about Bill’s own journey from working as a teen for Patrick Moynihan to the H.W. Bush White House and beyond; what Liz Cheney will likely have to do next; the warped politics of the Covid vaccination campaign; the bungled exit from Afghanistan and troubling signs of more isolationist thinking on both sides of the aisle; and the best and worst plausible scenarios for U.S. politics over the next three years. Bill Kristol  William Kristol is editor-at-large of The Bulwark, having been a founder of The Weekly Standard, and is a regular guest on leading political commentary shows. Read his Bulwark columns here. He also has his own podcast, Conversations with Bill Kristol. From 1985 to 1993, Kristol served as chief of staff to Education Secretary William Bennett in the Reagan Administration and as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle in the George H. W. Bush administration. Before coming to Washington, Kristol taught politics at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. Bill tweets from twitter.com/billkristol. Kristolisms I referred to a few of Bill’s Bulwark columns in particular: American Conservatism, b. 1955, d. 2020? A Tale of Three Possible Outcomes Springtime for Moderate Democrats The Birth of the Biden Doctrine?  Also Mentioned  Michael Oakeshott, in his essay "On Being Conservative" (1956), wrote that: "To be conservative ... is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss." Bill mentioned the rise of “affective polarization”. This paper is a good place to start on that topic. I mentioned Arthur Brooks on when our opponents become our enemies. See his oped here. The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)  

Anne-Marie Slaughter is an optimist, and a patriot, and an advocate for both personal and national renewal. We talk about the difference between renewal and both reinvention (out with the old) and restoration (back in with the old), and what it means for our politics. We also discuss her work on women, men, families and equality, almost a decade on from her famous essay “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All”; the need for more grace in both our public and private life; why we should be “calling in” in private, rather than “calling out” in public; the lessons in leadership from her role as head of the New American think-tank; the past and future of feminism; our long overdue reckoning on racial justice; how to prepare for the 250th birthday of our country; and the unique power of women after the menopause. Enjoy!    Anne-Marie Slaughter  Anne-Marie Slaughter is the CEO of New America and Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor Emerita of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. From 2009–2011, she served as director of policy planning for the United States Department of State, the first woman to hold that position. Prior to her government service, Anne-Marie was the Dean of Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School) from 2002–2009 and the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law at Harvard Law School from 1994-2002.   In 2012 she published the article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” in the Atlantic, which quickly became the most read article in the history of the magazine and helped spawn a renewed national debate on the continued obstacles to genuine full male-female equality. Her books include Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family (2015), ​The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World (2017)​, and her latest, Renewal: From Crisis to Transformation in Our Lives, Work, and Politics (2021). Foreign Policy magazine named her to their annual list of the Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. She received a B.A. from Princeton, and M.Phil and DPhil in international relations from Oxford.   The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)

My guest today, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is one of the most important intellectuals working today on issues of free speech, human rights, feminism and foreign policy. She is no stranger to either controversy or danger, not least because of her fierce criticism of Islam and Islamic culture. We discuss her own journey from Somalia to Saudi Arabia, via asylum in Holland to escape an arranged marriage, and finally to an academic career in the U.S. We also trace her psychological journey from a tribal mindset to a zealous religious worldview, and finally to a fiercely-held liberalism. We discuss the limits of Islamic liberalization, the contest for free speech, critical race theory, the state of intellectual and academic debate, the risks of self-censorship, and much more besides. We also discuss her latest book, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights (2021). We don’t agree on everything, of course, but as she says: “That’s the whole point!”  Ayaan Hirsi Ali Ayaan is a former Member of the Dutch Parliament (2003-2006) and is now a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and Founder of the AHA Foundation. She has written several books including Infidel (2007); Nomad (2010); Heretic (2015); and The Challenge of Dawa (2017). Her newest book Prey is available now. She also has her own podcast, the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Podcast. More Ayaan  Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights (2021) See this NYT profile, “Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Muslim Men and Western Women” In January 2020, Ayaan spoke at The Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization on “The Market for Victimhood” Also Mentioned We talked quite a lot about Mustafa Akyol’s views on liberalizing Islam. Listen to my dialogue with him here (Apple) or here (Spotify). If you’re interested in truth and truthfulness, you might enjoy my essay for Aeon, “Lies and honest mistakes” The Dialogues Team  My guest today, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is one of the most important intellectuals working today on issues of free speech, human rights, feminism and foreign policy. She is no stranger to either controversy or danger, not least because of her fierce criticism of Islam and Islamic culture. We discuss her own journey from Somalia to Saudi Arabia, via asylum in Holland to escape an arranged marriage, and finally to an academic career in the U.S. We also trace her psychological journey from a tribal mindset to a zealous religious worldview, and finally to a fiercely-held liberalism. We discuss the limits of Islamic liberalization, the contest for free speech, critical race theory, the state of intellectual and academic debate, the risks of self-censorship, and much more besides. We also discuss her latest book, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights (2021). We don’t agree on everything, of course, but as she says: “That’s the whole point!”  Ayaan Hirsi Ali Ayaan is a former Member of the Dutch Parliament (2003-2006) and is now a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and Founder of the AHA Foundation. She has written several books including Infidel (2007); Nomad (2010); Heretic (2015); and The Challenge of Dawa (2017). Her newest book Prey is available now. She also has her own podcast, the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Podcast More Ayaan  Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights (2021) See this NYT profile, “Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Muslim Men and Western Women” In January 2020, Ayaan spoke at The Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization on “The Market for Victimhood” Also Mentioned We talked quite a lot about Mustafa Akyol’s views on liberalizing Islam. Listen to my dialogue with him here (Apple) or here (Spotify). If you’re interested in truth and truthfulness, you might enjoy my essay for Aeon, “Lies and honest mistakes” The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Research: Ashleigh Maciolek Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)

If you find yourself saying, perhaps of a political speech, “Well, that’s just rhetoric”, you are getting things exactly wrong. That’s according to my guest today, Philip Collins, former chief speechwriter to Tony Blair and author of “When They Go Low, We Go High: Speeches That Shape the World - and Why We Need Them”. Phil is an old friend of mine and irritatingly good at very many things: he’s a philosopher, lecturer, policy wonk, journalist (now for both the New Statesman and the Evening Standard), and much else besides. I think of him now as “Mr. Rhetoric”. Phil believes that rhetoric is essential to the functioning of democracy and, now, to its saving. We talk about Donald Trump, Tony Blair, Boris Johson, Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Pericles, sophistry, the role of emotion in political persuasion, the need for enchantment - and the importance of paying our respects. Philip Collins Philip Collins is a British journalist, author and academic. He served as the chief speechwriter for Prime Minister Tony Blair from 2004-2007, after serving as the director of The Social Market Foundation, an independent think tank in the UK. Collins is the founder and writer-in-chief at The Draft, a writing and rhetoric agency, and he also teaches a course on rhetoric at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. He is a contributing editor at The New Statesman, and a columnist for the Evening Standard.  More Collins We discussed Collins’ vastly interesting book, “When They Go Low, We Go High: Speeches That Shape the World - and Why We Need Them” He also authored “Start Again: How We Can Fix Our Broken Politics” and “The Art of Speeches and Presentations,” among other books.   You can follow more of his work on Twitter: @PhilipJCollins1 Also Mentioned  I mentioned the book, “The Liberal Mind,” written by Kenneth Minogue Collins mentioned JP Stern’s book “Hitler: The Führer and the People”  Collins also referred to the book “How Democracies Die” written by Levitsky and Ziblatt  The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Research: Ashleigh Maciolek Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)

I’ll be honest. I didn’t expect a book from someone leading a university to say anything terribly interesting. Maybe my view of higher education has become too cynical. I rather like the description from Clark Kerr, builder of the University of California system, of the modern American university as “a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking.” But my guest today (from whom I learned that quote) proved me wrong. He is Ron Daniels, President of Johns Hopkins University, and author of the new book What Universities Owe Democracy. Daniels argues “the fates of higher education and liberal democracy are deeply, inextricably intertwined”, not just in the sense of universities needing democracy, but the other way round.  Daniels is the son of Jewish refugees to Canada before World War II, and a committed educationalist and institutionalist. We talk about his family background and how it has influenced his views of liberalism, democracy and education, and then discuss the four main contributions of universities: social mobility, democratic education, the production of knowledge, and dialogue across differences. We spend some time on his decision, at first quietly and then proudly, to end the practice of legacy preferences at Hopkins, and whether more colleges and universities will follow suit. We discuss his ideas on reforming admissions; on instituting a democracy requirement for college graduation; on the need for more openness and humility in academic research; and on ways to promote what he calls purposeful pluralism, including fostering more debates rather than just lectures, and the importance of allowing roommates to be random, rather than chosen.  Ron Daniels  Ronald J. Daniels is president of The Johns Hopkins University. He has previously served as vice-president and provost at the University of Pennsylvania, and dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. Daniels received his B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of Toronto, and his LL.M. degree from Yale Law School. In December 2016, Daniels was invested into the Order of Canada at the grade of Member. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018 and is also a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is the author of What Universities Owe Democracy (Johns Hopkins Press, 2021). Also Mentioned  I’m reading this biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas (a touch over-written in places for sure but still a great narrative) Amherst College just ended legacy preferences in college admissions  I’ve written a fair amount about legacy preferences, including in my last book Dream Hoarders and this Brookings piece.  Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admissions is a book edited by Richard Kahlenberg (Brookings, 2010) “Getting In” by Malcom Gladwell in the New Yorker (2005) contrasts college applications and admissions in Canada and the US   There is a campaign to end legacy preferences, #LeaveYourLegacy run by EdMobilizer Ron and I both raved about Jonathan Rauch’s new book impressive new book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth (Brookings, 2021). Check out my podcast with Jon too: Spotify https://spoti.fi/3pr13KG; Apple https://apple.co/3fWHExX The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Research: Ashleigh Maciolek Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)

“People should not underestimate Donald Trump’s abilities as a retail politician", says my guest today, fellow Brit-American Fiona Hill. "He knows how to connect with people, he knows how to get people riled up, he knows how to pit people against each other so that they can’t push back against what he’s doing”. Fiona is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and former deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. In November 2019, she testified in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. In very personal terms, we discuss the class system and social mobility in the UK, and her childhood in the North East of England, which lost its economic heart as coal mining collapsed; as well as her experience in the Soviet Union and Russia, American academia, and the White House. Fiona compares and contrasts the authoritarian style of Trump and Putin (with some discussion of Erdogan too); the need for more aggressive social and economic policy for places devastated by the shift away from industry; and the real and present danger posed to so many nations by political populism. We conclude, as her book does, with a discussion of what we can do as individuals and our own communities to build a stronger infrastructure of opportunity.  Fiona Hill Fiona Hill is a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. She is a foreign policy expert on Russian and European affairs, and has served under three presidents: Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush. Hill is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has held numerous positions directing research at Harvard University, where she obtained her PhD in History.  More Hill Hill’s book, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century, is an exceptionally honest tale of dwindling opportunity in the UK and the US.  You can read more of her work at Brookings, the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and Politico Her testimony at Trump’s first impeachment trial is also worth watching (starting at 3:08:43)    Also Mentioned  I mentioned Joseph Fishkin’s book, Bottlenecks: A New Theory of Equal Opportunity, which if you haven’t read by now, you really should!  Fiona mentioned The Fifth Risk, written by Michael Lewis and Angrynomics co-authored by Mark Blythe.  I quoted G.A. Cohen, “social justice isn't just found in structures and institutions, it's found in the thick of everyday life,” in his book If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? Fiona also mentioned the group Wider Circle and Dress for Success The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Research: Ashleigh Maciolek Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)  

“Residential segregation not only affects opportunity, it alters politics”. That’s one of the claims of my guest today, Georgetown scholar Sheryll Cashin. In this episode, we discuss Cashin’s new book, titled White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality. She describes her own upbringing as a daughter of civil rights activists and how this has animated her own work; how affluent white spaces are not only separate to low-poverty areas, but require them; the group of people she calls Descendants, whose ancestors were enslaved, and who live today in low-opportunity spaces; and what it means for white people to have “cultural dexterity”. We end up talking about what love has to do with pretty much all of this.    Sheryll Cashin Sheryll Cashin is a Professor of Law, Civil Rights and Social Justice at Georgetown University working on topics including race relations and inequality in the United States. She is the author of several books and numerous articles including commentary for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and is currently serving as a contributing editor to Politico. Cashin is also a board member of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council. Previously, she was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and worked in the Clinton administration as an advisor on urban and economic policy.    More Cashin  In this episode, we discuss Cashin’s new book, titled “White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality”  Cashin is a contributing editor of Politico Magazine, and she recently wrote a piece on this same topic, titled “It’s Time to Dismantle America’s Residential Caste System” She is also the author of Loving, Place Not Race, The Failures of Integration, and The Agitator's Daughter.  You can follow more of Cashin’s work on her website or on her twitter, @SheryllCashin   Also mentioned Cashin referenced Richard Rothstein’s book, “The Color of Law”  We discussed the work of Raj Chetty that looks at the socioeconomic composition of neighborhoods. This paper on housing vouchers illuminates the issue: “The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children”  We mentioned the work of bell hooks, particularly her book “All About Love”   The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Research: Ashleigh Maciolek Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)

What does “cancel culture” really mean, and how big a problem is it? Nick Gillespie, editor at large at Reason, has given these questions more thought than most. Nick is one of the leading lights of libertarian public intellectual life, and just wrote an essay, “Self-Cancellation, Deplatforming, and Censorship” that we dig into here. Nick is worried about the shift towards censorship in politics, in our organizations, including corporations, and in our own lives. We differ on whether the problem is more personal or political, but in the end we do agree that a healthy liberal culture is one that welcomes a robust exchange of diverse views. Along the way, we get into Nick’s particular beef with Facebook, some similarities in our backgrounds as journalists, and how his view of the world has some Marxist traces.  Nick Gillespie Nick is an editor at large at Reason, the libertarian magazine and host of The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie. “Nick Gillespie is to libertarianism what Lou Reed is to rock ‘n’ roll, the quintessence of its outlaw spirit,” wrote Robert Draper in The New York Times Magazine. A two-time finalist for digital National Magazine Awards, Nick is co-author, with Matt Welch, of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong With America (2012). More Gillespie  “Self-Cancellation, Deplatforming, and Censorship” (Sep 2021) The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie (including his latest here with Steven Pinker) “A Different Approach to Anti-Racism” (Nov 2021) “From Russiagate to the MyPillow Guy, Let's Stop With Electoral Conspiracy Theories” (Sep 2021) Also mentioned My Guardian essay, “Capitalism used to promise a better future. Can it still do that?” The narrator of Adam Thirlwell’s 2015 novel Lurid and Cute exclaims of capitalism: “‘Late? It had only just got started!” (I quote the line here). Nick’s podcast with Steven Pinker in how “Rationality Has Made Us Richer, Kinder, and More Free” I mentioned Abigail Shrier’s controversial 2020 book, Irreversible Damage: Teenage Girls and the Transgender Craze. (Nick’s had Abigail on his podcast). Nick mentioned Common Sense with Bari Weiss, on Substack I referred to MIT’s cancelation of University of Chicago professor Dorian Abbot who was to give the prestigious Carlson Lecture, which is devoted to 'new results in climate science'. Now Princeton is hosting it online instead.  I quoted John Stuart Mill from On Liberty: ““Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.””  Nick mentioned Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, published in 1975. I mentioned Bernard Williams’s last book: Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (2004); I also wrote an essay in truthfulness drawing heavily on Williams, “Lies and honest mistakes” (July 2021) The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Research: Ashleigh Maciolek Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)

What have genes got to do with inequality? It’s a thorny question. But it one that Kathryn Paige Harden squarely addresses in her book and in this episode of Dialogues. She explains the new science of genetics and how it can help understand outcomes like college completion. Along the way we discuss the importance of the disability rights movement, the nature of meritocracy, what luck has to do with it, designer babies, regional inequality, and how one byproduct of her Christian upbringing is an appreciation for the unique and equal value of every person.  Kathryn Paige Harden Kathryn Paige Harden is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas, where she directs the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab and co-directs the Texas Twin Project. Harden is also a fellow at the Jacobs Foundation. Having received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia, her work has focused on genetic influences on complex human behavior, including child cognitive development, academic achievement, risk-taking, mental health, sexual activity, and childbearing.  More Harden Her thought-provoking new book, The Genetic Lottery, can be purchased here.  Harden’s previous New York Times op-ed is a great starting place for learning more on this topic.  Read her recent profile in the New Yorker, “Can Progressives Be Convinced That Genetics Matters?” For more, check out her website and follow her on twitter: @kph3k Also mentioned I referred to my paper “The Glass Floor: Education, Downward Mobility, and Opportunity Hoarding”.I write a NYT oped on the same theme, too. I mentioned Joseph Fishkin’s book, Bottlenecks: A New Theory of Equal Opportunity  Harden referred to the work of Pamela Herd, specifically on the topic of Genes, Gender Inequality, and Educational Attainment  I referred to Caroline Hoxby’s work of mapping cognitive skills by region in the United States.  Harden mentioned a study by Abdel Abdellaoui on the geographic distribution of genetics in the United Kingdom. (See Twitter thread here).  Harden referred to Dan Belsky’s study in Dunedin, New Zealand.  I mentioned an article written by Toby Young, the son of Michael Young, and what he calls “Progressive Eugenics”  The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Research: Ashleigh Maciolek Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)

What made America into a tinderbox, ready for Donald Trump's spark? That's the question Evan Osnos, staff writer for the New Yorker, set out to answer in his book Wildland: The Making of America's Fury. Having lived overseas for many years, mostly in China, Evan returned to the U.S. in 2013 and felt something of a stranger in his own land. The events of the next few years added to this sense. So he set out to find out what had happened to make his home country feel so foreign, by returning to the places he knew best: Greenwich CT, where he grew up, Clarksburg WV where he started his reporting career, and Chicago where he covered city politics for the Tribune. The book is already a bestseller and being heaped with critical acclaim. The story is of a country that was ever more divided by class and geography and politics, but ever more connected by the ties of the modern economy. Evan and I talk about the financialization of the economy, and the transformation of the culture of his home town of Greenwich into the hedge fund capital of the country; the battles over the coal industry; the rise of Trump; the potential for Joe Biden to bring the nation back together; the cleavages of race and wealth in cities like Chicago. Although he is worried about what he calls the "seclusion of mind" of many of America's tribes, Evan ends on an optimistic note: that the pandemic has shown that whether we like it or not, we're all in together. Evan Osnos Evan Osnos is a staff writer for the New Yorker, contributor to CNN, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution covering politics and foreign affairs. A graduate of Harvard, Osnos started his journalism career in West Virginia and Chicago, before being stationed in the Middle East to report on the Iraq War. He then moved to Beijing for eight years and wrote, “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China” which won the National Book Award. He now lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and two children.  More Osnos  Read his "novelistically gripping" book, Wildland: The Making of America's Fury Find more of his writing at The New Yorker  Follow him on twitter: @eosnos Also mentioned We briefly discussed the book “The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class”, written by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett. Osnos referred to Michael Sandel’s work, specifically what he calls "The Skyboxification of American Life" We discussed the saga of Varsity Blues, and the very notable quote from Gordon Caplan: “To be honest I'm not worried about the moral issue here.”  Osnos referred to the documentary-style photography of Walker Evans Osnos spoke in depth about Patriot Coal  I highlighted the racial disparity in wealth pre- and post-recession, which you can learn more about here.  Osnos mentions a political movement in West Virginia, called WV Can’t Wait  The Dialogues Team Creator: Richard Reeves Research: Ashleigh Maciolek Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)  

Should feminists be pro-life? Should conservatives support more welfare for families? Who is Mary Wollstonecraft? What did RBG get right and wrong? I dug into these questions with my guest today, the legal scholar Erika Bachiochi. Our discussion centers on Erika’s new book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, which argues for a form of feminism that takes into account natural differences between men and women, especially in what she calls “reproductive asymmetry” i.e. that having sex and having children carry different implications for men and women. We talk about her journey from a Bernie Sanders supporting kind of feminist to a Roman Catholic kind of feminist, including a strong pro-life moral basis. Her intellectual heroine is the 18th century thinker Mary Wollstonecraft, who had a feminist vision that was about the equal pursuit of the good, which Erika John Stuart Mill’s feminism based on a perfect equality.  We talk about what Ruth Bader Ginsburg got right and wrong, whether conservatives should be supporting President Biden’s big pro-family welfare expansions, the Texas abortion law, family-friendly policy, and much more.  I should say that at the very beginning Erika candidly describes her troubled childhood and early adulthood, which in her darkest hours ever led her to thoughts of suicide. Erika Bachiochi  Erika Bachiochi is a legal scholar specializing in Equal Protection jurisprudence, feminist legal theory, Catholic social teaching, and sexual ethics. She studied at Middlebury College and got her law degree from Boston University. Erika is now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a Senior Fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute, where she directs the Wollstonecraft Project. She lives in Boston with her husband and seven children.  More Bachiochi  Bachiochi’s new book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, is a thoughtful and provocative read.  Her previous article in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, titled Embodied Equality: Debunking Equal Protection Arguments for Abortion Rights, served as a basis for her book.  Bachiochi has also written a few op-eds for Newsweek Follow her work on twitter: @erikabachiochi Also mentioned  Bachiochi quited Mill in On Liberty: “misplaced notions of liberty prevent moral obligations on the part of parents from being recognized, and legal obligations from being imposed” She also quoted Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: “A truly benevolent legislator always endeavours to make it the interest of each individual to be virtuous; and thus private virtue becoming the cement of public happiness, an orderly whole is consolidated by the tendency of all the parts towards a common center”  We referenced my work on the economic and social status of American women.  We discussed the work of my colleague, Isabel Sawhill, and her book Generation Unbound  I referenced Scott Winship’s work on the dynamics of marriage and childrearing  Bachiochi spoke about Mary Ann Glendon, a leading thinker in this space and a professor at Harvard Law.  She also referenced Joan Williams’ op-ed in the New York Times, titled The Case for Accepting Defeat on Roe.  I quoted Margaret Mead who wrote, “We won’t get equality between groups by ignoring the differences between them.”  Earlier this summer, Josh Hawley tweeted that he was against including women in the draft because he didn’t want to “force [service] upon our daughters, sisters, and wives.” We mentioned Heather Boushey who currently serves on the White House Council of Economic Advisors, and her work on family policy, for example in her Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict (2016). The Mary Wollstonecraft twitter account I referred to seems to have gone quiet lately. As an alternative. As a replacement may I suggest: https://twitter.com/womenpostingws.  The Dialogues Team Creator: Richard Reeves Research: Ashleigh Maciolek Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)