Fredrik deBoer

American writer, academic, and political commentator who writes about education policy, intelligence, free speech, and politics; author of The Cult of Smart.

This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.

  1. 1. How Elites Ate The Social Justice Movement

    An argument that the contemporary social justice movement has been taken over by professional elites who use identity politics as status signaling rather than pursuing material reforms; it traces how universities, nonprofits, and corporate DEI practices have institutionalized performative “wokeness,” sidelining working-class interests and producing moralizing cultural policing instead of solidaristic, class-based politics, and calls for a reorientation toward economic redistribution and broad-based organizing.

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  2. 2. The Cult Of Smart

    How Our Broken Education System Creates a Culture of Inequality

    This book challenges the common belief that intelligence is a fixed, individual trait and argues that the “cult” of innate smartness drives harmful education and social policies; it traces how meritocratic ideology and high-stakes testing amplify inequality, stigmatize many students, and divert attention from structural causes of academic differences. Combining analysis of education research, genetics debates, and social class dynamics, it calls for policies that stop sorting children by perceived ability and instead expand universally supportive schools, vocational opportunities, and economic measures that treat non-college paths with dignity and reduce inequality.

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