Contributing opinion writer
William A. McConnell
Latest Content
Political Polarization Is a Good Thing
As citizens, we would benefit from the same mindset shift: from an idealistic politics of truth, collaboration, and middle-paths to a politics of power. We should embrace polarization and the new attitudes and political strategies that come with it. If we are engaging with the right politically, it is to bring them to our side. Can you get your relative in a swing state to change their vote? Encourage a friend to understand their hidden biases and confront them? Get your friend to shut up about the pitfalls of polarization?
America’s Political Divisions Have More To Do With Fox News Than Fake News
Among the many things that Fox News is, it is a model for understanding how partisan journalism functions.
Meritocracy and the Harvard Admissions Trial
Something is wrong with a system, meritocratic or otherwise, where we funnel 18 year old kids into different walks of life largely on the basis of innumerable factors out of their control.
Retiring Capitalism
Capitalism is a system of economic progress, but at a certain point, whether today or somewhere down the line, the burden of progress, of the strictly economic sort, will be best left behind.
Science, Scorn, and Cynicism
We’ve internalized our cultural love of science so that we increasingly tend towards believing that human knowledge is driven by science and science alone, that most questions need to be answered empirically.
History in Color
The next time we want to dismiss the value of learning from our past, we should hesitate, and ask ourselves if we’re giving enough credit to the constancy of the human thread between now and then.
The Problems with Divest: What Environmentalism Can Do Better
Divest Harvard is a useful microcosm of the modern environmental movement that I think has a lot to work on. At two crucial turns the movement lets me down.
‘I’m Not Worried About My Data’
The more intimately we intertwine ourselves with the internet world, combined with the more insightful our algorithms become, the more control we cede over these sorts of facts.
