| Harvard's Michael Sandel talks about meritocracy. |
| Critical questions. Distinguished thinkers. Diverse perspectives. This week: Is meritocracy killing the American Dream? |
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MERITOCRACY VIDEO (60 MIN) Is Our Definition of ‘Success’ All Wrong? Has the ethos of the American Dream become hollow? Is the rhetoric true that if you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to rise as far as your talents take you? Michael Sandel, professor of political philosophy at Harvard and author of the forthcoming book The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good, doesn’t think so. Over the last 40 years, “one of the deepest failures of governing elites of the center right and center left, is that inequalities have deepened, and almost all of the income growth has gone to the top,” he says. “Not only is the inequality deeper, upward mobility is stalled.” The current pandemic — laying bare deep disparities in educational opportunity, wages for essential workers, access to healthcare, and racial injustice — further exposes the failure of meritocracy. “We need to rethink the attitudes towards success that we have fallen into,” Sandel says. “And this involves a kind of moral and civic and maybe even a spiritual turning.” Watch. |
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| RESOURCES The concept of meritocracy, wherein talent, grit, resilience, and hard work are keys to upward mobility, is undergoing intense scrutiny. As students head back to school and many face the pressures of high achievement, our collective notion of what it means to be successful, and who can attain success, is up for debate. Here are more perspectives on the topic: |
| How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition The Atlantic, Sept. 2019 Is Meritocracy Making Everyone Miserable? The New Yorker, Sept. 23, 2019 The Failure of Meritocracy Making Sense, May 22, 2020 (Podcast) The Myth of Meritocracy Prospect, April 9, 2019 Perfection Kids These Days, August 5, 2020 (Podcast) Sports, Racism, and the Myth of Meritocracy Only a Game, Aug. 12, 2020 |
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| | Putting a National Covid-19 Testing Plan in Place August 7 As COVID-19 cases surge toward 5 million in the United States, is it still possible to implement an effective testing and tracing plan? The Rockefeller Foundation released a plan to reach 30 million tests per week by October, the number they believe is necessary to safely reopen communities. Rockefeller president Rajiv Shah will discuss the importance of testing in the battle against the coronavirus. Register. |
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| | Citizen Leadership Awards August 11 Join the Aspen Institute as we celebrate four civic leaders who are demonstrating extraordinary leadership during these uncertain times: Mellody Hobson, Dr. Anthony Fauci, José Andrés, and Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. Honorees will share personal accounts of their lives and careers with Madeleine Albright, Katie Couric, Kaya Henderson and James Manyika, plus special performances by Condoleezza Rice and Anna Deavere Smith. Register. |
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