Author: Gabriel Andrade

Gabriel Andrade is assistant professor of medicine at Ajman University.

Academia and the Big, Bad Fascist

In Review: Jeffrey M. Bale and Tamir Bar-On’s Fighting the Last War: Confusion, Partisanship and Alarmism in the Literature on the Radical Right Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried “Wolf!” may have been originally addressed to children, but of course, adults are the ones who are in most desperate need of its lesson. This […]

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What Academia Should Learn from the NFL’s Flores Affair

Last week, former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores made headlines in the sports world after he filed a class action lawsuit against the National Football League and all 32 of its teams. Flores­, who is African American, was interviewed for a position as head coach of the New York Giants. The job was given […]

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Should We Praise Nepotism?

In 2003, Adam Bellow published a piece in The Atlantic titled “In Praise of Nepotism”—he would later expand his argument into a book with the same title. Playing the contrarian in the room, Bellow argues that nepotism is in our genes (as per the phenomenon of kin selection), and that we might as well learn […]

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In Review: Adrian Wooldridge’s The Aristocracy of Talent

From Greta Thunberg to Black Lives Matter, activists are fond of pointing out society’s imperfections, but are completely clueless when it comes to proposing alternatives. Meritocracy—and related concepts, such as IQ—is a case in point. When Michael Young coined the term in his famous 1958 book The Rise of Meritocracy, many people shunned the idea […]

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In Review: Philip Dwyer and Mark Micale’s “The Darker Angels of Our Nature”

Cancel culture has harassed Harvard professor Steven Pinker on more than one occasion. Not long ago, the witch hunters demanded the removal of Pinker as a fellow from the Linguistic Society of America. What was his crime? Pinker had the nerve to point out that modern Western Civilization is not the bogeyman social justice warriors […]

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Will Some Feminists Defend the Taliban?

The Taliban has now captured Kabul, a huge setback for women in Afghanistan. For many reasons, one may criticize the U.S. mission in that country, but some facts are undeniable: during the occupation, life expectancy improved by six years, and women’s time in school increased by at least four years. The Taliban is assuring girls […]

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Give Lil Nas X His Due

Rapper Lil Nas X has sparked controversy with his new brand of sneakers, the Satan Shoes. Only 666 pairs of such shoes were manufactured­—and sold within minutes. They feature an inverted pentagram and a reference to Luke 10:8 (where Jesus proclaims that he saw Satan fall like lightning). The marketing campaign also claims that each […]

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Shouting ‘Fire’ in a Crowded Theater: A Dangerously Inept Analogy

Former President Donald J. Trump has been acquitted in his second impeachment trial. This time, Mr. Trump was charged with inciting the mob that assaulted the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. on January 6th. Mr. Trump’s lawyers relied on the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which protects free speech. But Mr. Trump’s critics allege that his […]

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In Review: Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit

The 2019 college admissions scandal made it clear that, in American colleges and universities, students have three options for entry: the back door, the side door, and the front door. You enter through the back door when your parents donate huge sums of money to the institution. This procedure is not illegal, although many people […]

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In Review: Vicky Osterweil’s “In Defense of Looting”

In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, one of the novel’s heroes describes Robin Hood as “a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, has demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters. … It is this foulest of creatures—the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and […]

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Dear Black Lives Matter: What is the alternative to the nuclear family?

If Black Lives Matter were actually about protecting and enriching black lives, then it would be a praise-worthy organization—but it’s not. BLM’s stated goals have little to do with black lives and more to do with social revolution. One of the movement’s founders, Patrisse Cullors, once described BLM’s members as “trained Marxists.” Indeed, they are. […]

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