Welcome to the Quillett Podcast. I'm your host Jonathan Kay, a senior editor at

Quillett. Quillett is where free thought lives. We are an independent

grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

If you'd like to support the podcast, you can do so by going to Colette.com and becoming a paid subscriber.

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articles and early access to Colette social events. And this week I have a

libertarian-minded guest whom many of you may know from his work in Atlantic magazine.

Connor Friedrichdorf.

He's done a lot of great work at Atlantic over the years, but his latest piece published

on May 31st has been an especially big hit. It's called the

DEI industry needs to check its privilege. And by DEI, Connor of course means the three-part bundle of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

And by privilege, he's talking about the fact that a lot of those people brought in to teach

us about DEI, they're making a ton of money.

And what makes the situation more dubious still

is that a lot of these policies are justified by things like

the murder of George Floyd.

How do office workers sitting around learning about micro-aggressions

do anything to help real social justice for people who are affected by things like street violence

and poverty? As we'll discuss in the interview, it's a question that even a lot of traditional socialists are asking too,

based on their reading of good old-fashioned Marxist class-based analysis.

Just a few years ago, we were seeing boom times in the

DEI industry, but as Connor Friedrichdersdorf discusses some people are

...