To more properly frame this issue, please enjoy this small collection of articles I have saved over the past year or so in anticipation of building this website. 1. Words mean things. We tell our friends they’re beautiful or thin, that they make good points or that they sing well when they don’t. One might even say that a thousand white lies are a necessary precondition for a social life, even friendship. The public space is different — the lies told there have real, even lethal, consequences. For our democracy to function, for a diverse public to be able to communicate and work together, we must speak in objective terms to which we all have access. We must make points plainly. (continued) January 10, 2021 2. A Time for Heroes We all know that something morally grotesque is swallowing liberal America. Almost no one wants to risk talking about it out loud. Every day I get phone calls from anxious Americans complaining about an ideology that wants to pull all of us into the past. I get calls from parents telling me about the damaging things being taught in schools: so-called antiracist programs that urge children to obsess on the color of their skin. I get calls from people working in corporate America forced to go to trainings in which they learn that they carry collective, race-based guilt — or benefit from collective, race-based virtue. I get calls from young people just launching their careers telling me that they feel they have no choice but to profess fealty to this ideology in order to keep their jobs. Almost no one who calls me is willing to go public. And I understand why. To go public with what’s happening is to risk their jobs and their reputations. But the hour is very late. It calls for courage. And courage has come in the form of a woman named Jodi Shaw. (continued) February 19, 2021 3. There is No Such Thing as "White" Math In my position as a professor of mathematics at Princeton, I have witnessed the decline of universities and cultural institutions as they have embraced political ideology at the expense of rigorous scholarship. Until recently — this past summer, really — I had naively thought that the STEM disciplines would be spared from this ideological takeover. I was wrong. Attempts to “deconstruct” mathematics, deny its objectivity, accuse it of racial bias, and infuse it with political ideology have become more and more common — perhaps, even, at your child’s elementary school. (continued) March 1, 2021 4. Time to reconsider supporting Amazon. The "World's Largest Bookstore" has quietly begun deleting books. (continued) March 3, 2021 5. The Miseducation of America’s Elites The dissidents use pseudonyms and turn off their videos when they meet for clandestine Zoom calls. They are usually coordinating soccer practices and carpools, but now they come together to strategize. They say that they could face profound repercussions if anyone knew they were talking. But the situation of late has become too egregious for emails or complaining on conference calls. So one recent weekend, on a leafy street in West Los Angeles, they gathered in person and invited me to join. (continued) March 9, 2021 6. I refuse to stand by while my students are indoctrinated. Children are afraid to challenge the repressive ideology that rules our school. That’s why I am. (continued) April 13, 2021 7. While I was planning to publish a roundup today of the many thoughtful responses to Paul Rossi’s essay, I’m going to save that post for Sunday, because I was just sent this letter that has my jaw on the floor. It was written by a Brearley parent named Andrew Gutmann and sent to all 600 or so families in the school earlier this week. If you don’t know about Brearley, it’s a private all-girls school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan where it costs $54,000 a year to attend and prospective families apparently must take an “anti-racism pledge” to be considered for admission. April 16, 2021 8. Should Public Schools be Allowed to Deceive Parents? A child should never be encouraged to keep a secret from her parents. That’s what we used to say, in decades past, when we believed a sacred boundary encircled every American home. Last week, I spoke with another mother who discovered her 12-year-old daughter’s middle school had changed the girl’s name and gender identity at school. The “Gender Support Plan” the district followed is an increasingly standard document which informs teachers of a child’s new chosen name and gender identity (“trans,” “agender,” “non-binary,” etc.) for all internal communications with the child. The school also provided the girl a year’s worth of counseling in support of her new identity, which in her case was “no gender.” Even the P.E. teachers were in on it. Left in the dark were her parents. (continued) August 29, 2021 9. Peter Boghossian has taught philosophy at Portland State University for the past decade. This morning he sent his resignation letter to the university’s provost. (continued) September 8, 2021 10. Why I Am Suing UCLA Recently, I was suspended from my job for refusing to treat my black students as lesser than their non-black peers. (continued) September 30, 2021 11. I am a professor who just had a prestigious public science lecture at MIT cancelled because of an outrage mob on Twitter. My crime? Arguing for academic evaluations based on academic merit. This is the story of how a cancellation is carried out, why it should worry all of us, and what we can do to stop this dangerous trend. (continued) October 5, 2021 12. How Activist Teachers Recruit Kids Leaked documents and audio from the California Teachers Association conference reveal efforts to subvert parents on gender identity and sexual orientation. (continued) November 18, 2021 13. Hollywood's New Rules The old boys club is dead. But a new one — with its own litmus tests and landmines — is rapidly replacing it. 'This is all going to end in a giant class-action lawsuit.' (continued) January 11, 2022 14. I turned down a $1 million severance in exchange for my voice. The money would be very nice. But I just can’t do it. Sorry, Levi’s. (continued) February 14, 2022 15. Behind the fall of David Sabatini, 'one of the greatest scientists' of his generation. He was a world-renowned cancer researcher. Now he's collecting unemployment. (continued) May 19, 2022 16. What Princeton Did to My Husband My alma mater is not the school I once loved. But Joshua Katz is exactly the man I knew I married. (continued) May 26, 2022 17. Why I'm Giving Up Tenure at UCLA Most people who leave their jobs as professors these days do not do so because they have a choice. They leave because they are pushed out by ideological bullies. But Professor Manson is leaving of his own volition. Why? In large part because he understands the nature of leopards. (continued) July 7, 2022