Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten

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Heather Mac Donald on Corrosive Identity Politics, Multiculturalism and Unjust Criminal Justice May 23, 2018

Show notes

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor at City Journal and author most recently of The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.

Mac Donald, the archetype of an unassuming academic, makes for an unlikely counter-cultural figure. She draws protests and outrage on college campuses across the country because she has the gall to challenge the prevailing progressive orthodoxy about subjects like identity politics, multiculturalism and criminal justice.

Ben Weingarten (@bhweingarten), Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and Senior Contributor at The Federalist interviews the bold, provocative and courageous Mac Donald on her contrarian work in these areas.

What We Discussed

How Mac Donald went from clerking for a leftist Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals judge and the EPA to Manhattan Institute intellectual
The contradictions of the Age of Virtue Signaling
Why victim status is celebrated -- and how detrimental it is for the victims
What it's like to walk onto American college campuses as a pariah
How pernicious ideas in the academy manifest themselves in society
The ramifications of Google's firing of James Damore
How to shatter the identity politics paradigm
Parkland and the "specious school discipline crusade"
Why the idea that the justice system is systemically racist is wrong
What law-abiding citizens in American inner-cities tell Heather about law enforcement
Lessons from New York City on its dramatic decline in crime
The ongoing impact of the "Ferguson Effect"