I saw Bari Weiss on Bill Mayer a while back. She seemed smart and like a reasonable conservative with some ideas. I had no idea about this political movement of hers. Thanks for keeping us informed!
I think she is smart, but she has had a very shrewd media sense since she was a student at Columbia fighting BDS. And the problem with her is that she is so hard to characterize politically--she isn't a real conservative, at least not in the traditional sense, but she has latched onto the anti-critical race theory campaigns and is solidly in the middle of whipping up culture wars.
I am also a staunch supporter of free speech. You wrote:
". . . a movement whose members believe that social change itself, and people who criticize them for their views, are threats to their free speech."
This belief and these movements are deeply rooted in religion. And yet very few among those fighting to save our democracy will directly, rather than obliquely, talk/write about this basic fact. Instead, they dance around the cause by focusing on the symptoms. Few are calling out the false claim of being silenced for what it really is: the social change itself you referenced that no longer conforms to a religious, fundamentalist world-view. And to rub salt into the wound, women are forced to subsidize their own subjugation via the tax-exempt status of religious groups.
Correct--they are deeply rooted in religion, although for Bari--well, she is very deeply Jewish, but in a way that rarely connects that impulse to her culture war activities.
I believe religion is the lens through which she creates the totality of her worldview. Her words: “Convinced this country would be happier, saner and more fulfilled if we had a religious revival.”
Caring about We not Thee is the hallmark of right wing thought. More profoundly I think you are pointing to the culture of Blame that infects everyone in this society. It’s a perverse struggle for recognition that even our best freedom movements can fall prey to while the Right capitalizes on it and conservatives like Weiss and Katz build careers with it.
I don't understand calling her a "contrarian". That basically accepts her framing of herself as an exile from orthodoxy, a free-thinking critic of conventional wisdom. It's like the branding of "Heterodox Academy", where the actual range of thought they showcase is narrow--running from conservative Democrats to centrist Republicans--and every 'debate' offers small variations in the same set of orthodoxies. Weiss isn't a contrarian, she's an ideologue of a very coherent orthodoxy.
The thing that's interesting about the UATX talk you describe here, though, is the central obsession with meritocracy, a concept that has been subject to very interesting and empirically grounded critiques from scholars and intellectuals who shade to the right as well as the left. Weiss isn't just about disinformation; she's also been consistently against anything that looks like genuine intellectual work, no matter who it comes from. In that sense, even the "Dark Enlightenment" figures that got her noticed in the first place are more studious or interested in ideas.
I guess y ou are right about the contrarian thing--I chose that because she does not really fit comfortably in the dominant forms of conservatism.
And yes, the meritocracy thing is fascinating--particularly since Bari grew up well-to-do in Squirrel Hill and didn't exactly fight her way into Columbia. Her partner is also independently wealthy. Do it isn't clear where her passion for meritocracy comes from, except perhaps being delusional about the sources of her own privilege.
I think historically the people who fight hardest to defend meritocracy as an idea are the people for whom it provides some form of comfort and perhaps cover--the people who need its ideology. (The first generation men and women who rise from modest means often don't need a *system* to defend their place, because they fought their way into success, status and wealth.)
I think it's also a canny reading of who her potential allies are. She's in a crowded lane full of David Brooks-ish people, while there is a far more crowded movement conservative lane off to her right. She's in the Yascha Mounk space, trying to get the attention of intellectuals, artists, etc. who aren't comfortable with the identity politics left or the Jacobin-reading left but who don't want to be at all identified with movement conservatives either. Those tend to be folks who value cultural and social status and credentials--they want to be welcome in Park Slope--but they also want to be reassured that it's ok to think that they and they alone are the last remaining sensible, reasonable, completely open to all sides folks. Which of course they are not, and nobody is. Meritocracy is one thing that people in that space can agree they value, since they still use it a ton to make decisions and evaluate people. In our worlds (well, you're about to step out!) even if you're a skeptic, whether you're in agreement with Michael Sandel or Jennifer Morton, you're still called all the time to make basically meritocratic judgments, after all.
Both of these are very shrewd comments, and I would add a third: one can have merit and a social/cultural/racial advantage when it comes to college admissions. If I sketched my own history, I would say it fits my history to a tee: I worked my butt off to get into an elite college, and--I didn't have to work on weekends or after school. I didn't have to care for siblings or a disabled adult. I had two parents who had not only gone to elite colleges, but on to graduate school. They could afford to send me to private school.....and so on. And it is these gray areas that people like Weiss eliminate to make arguments that are then powerful with people who have plenty of advantages, but not enough of them to push them to the top,
Historically, meritocracy is deeply linked with the religious litigation of who is deserving of salvation (grace vs law etc) and who belongs in the tribe. “Deserving” is the pivotal term and the contortions people are capable of in justifying the status quo are many. This is also prevalent in academia, evidenced by the way in which they speak about their “publics” in addition to the closing of the once open door to autodidacts.
I saw Bari Weiss on Bill Mayer a while back. She seemed smart and like a reasonable conservative with some ideas. I had no idea about this political movement of hers. Thanks for keeping us informed!
I think she is smart, but she has had a very shrewd media sense since she was a student at Columbia fighting BDS. And the problem with her is that she is so hard to characterize politically--she isn't a real conservative, at least not in the traditional sense, but she has latched onto the anti-critical race theory campaigns and is solidly in the middle of whipping up culture wars.
I am also a staunch supporter of free speech. You wrote:
". . . a movement whose members believe that social change itself, and people who criticize them for their views, are threats to their free speech."
This belief and these movements are deeply rooted in religion. And yet very few among those fighting to save our democracy will directly, rather than obliquely, talk/write about this basic fact. Instead, they dance around the cause by focusing on the symptoms. Few are calling out the false claim of being silenced for what it really is: the social change itself you referenced that no longer conforms to a religious, fundamentalist world-view. And to rub salt into the wound, women are forced to subsidize their own subjugation via the tax-exempt status of religious groups.
Correct--they are deeply rooted in religion, although for Bari--well, she is very deeply Jewish, but in a way that rarely connects that impulse to her culture war activities.
I believe religion is the lens through which she creates the totality of her worldview. Her words: “Convinced this country would be happier, saner and more fulfilled if we had a religious revival.”
Tennessee school are accredited though teachers believe in actual spells & curses. Very very sad.
Right. And a good reminder that Tennessee was the state that hosted the Scopes trial....
Caring about We not Thee is the hallmark of right wing thought. More profoundly I think you are pointing to the culture of Blame that infects everyone in this society. It’s a perverse struggle for recognition that even our best freedom movements can fall prey to while the Right capitalizes on it and conservatives like Weiss and Katz build careers with it.
Yup: agreed --and also claiming that social problems arise from values, not from structural inequality.
I don't understand calling her a "contrarian". That basically accepts her framing of herself as an exile from orthodoxy, a free-thinking critic of conventional wisdom. It's like the branding of "Heterodox Academy", where the actual range of thought they showcase is narrow--running from conservative Democrats to centrist Republicans--and every 'debate' offers small variations in the same set of orthodoxies. Weiss isn't a contrarian, she's an ideologue of a very coherent orthodoxy.
The thing that's interesting about the UATX talk you describe here, though, is the central obsession with meritocracy, a concept that has been subject to very interesting and empirically grounded critiques from scholars and intellectuals who shade to the right as well as the left. Weiss isn't just about disinformation; she's also been consistently against anything that looks like genuine intellectual work, no matter who it comes from. In that sense, even the "Dark Enlightenment" figures that got her noticed in the first place are more studious or interested in ideas.
I guess y ou are right about the contrarian thing--I chose that because she does not really fit comfortably in the dominant forms of conservatism.
And yes, the meritocracy thing is fascinating--particularly since Bari grew up well-to-do in Squirrel Hill and didn't exactly fight her way into Columbia. Her partner is also independently wealthy. Do it isn't clear where her passion for meritocracy comes from, except perhaps being delusional about the sources of her own privilege.
I think historically the people who fight hardest to defend meritocracy as an idea are the people for whom it provides some form of comfort and perhaps cover--the people who need its ideology. (The first generation men and women who rise from modest means often don't need a *system* to defend their place, because they fought their way into success, status and wealth.)
I think it's also a canny reading of who her potential allies are. She's in a crowded lane full of David Brooks-ish people, while there is a far more crowded movement conservative lane off to her right. She's in the Yascha Mounk space, trying to get the attention of intellectuals, artists, etc. who aren't comfortable with the identity politics left or the Jacobin-reading left but who don't want to be at all identified with movement conservatives either. Those tend to be folks who value cultural and social status and credentials--they want to be welcome in Park Slope--but they also want to be reassured that it's ok to think that they and they alone are the last remaining sensible, reasonable, completely open to all sides folks. Which of course they are not, and nobody is. Meritocracy is one thing that people in that space can agree they value, since they still use it a ton to make decisions and evaluate people. In our worlds (well, you're about to step out!) even if you're a skeptic, whether you're in agreement with Michael Sandel or Jennifer Morton, you're still called all the time to make basically meritocratic judgments, after all.
Both of these are very shrewd comments, and I would add a third: one can have merit and a social/cultural/racial advantage when it comes to college admissions. If I sketched my own history, I would say it fits my history to a tee: I worked my butt off to get into an elite college, and--I didn't have to work on weekends or after school. I didn't have to care for siblings or a disabled adult. I had two parents who had not only gone to elite colleges, but on to graduate school. They could afford to send me to private school.....and so on. And it is these gray areas that people like Weiss eliminate to make arguments that are then powerful with people who have plenty of advantages, but not enough of them to push them to the top,
Historically, meritocracy is deeply linked with the religious litigation of who is deserving of salvation (grace vs law etc) and who belongs in the tribe. “Deserving” is the pivotal term and the contortions people are capable of in justifying the status quo are many. This is also prevalent in academia, evidenced by the way in which they speak about their “publics” in addition to the closing of the once open door to autodidacts.