Few observers of the present American cultural scene—whether scholar or layman—have more objectively reported or more thoroughly analyzed the pernicious effects of identity politics than MI’s own Heather Mac Donald. First in her 2016 New York Times best seller, The War on Cops, and most recently in her new book, The Diversity Delusion, Mac Donald connects the spread of identity politics to ills ranging from the disintegration of inner city policing to the decline of free thought and free speech on college campuses.

She was among the first to use the term “The Ferguson Effect” to describe the link between growing criticism of the police, an increasing reluctance of cops to enforce the law, and upticks in crime. Her clear-eyed reporting of this phenomenon, combined with her decades of writing about law enforcement issues for such publications as City Journal, the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and Washington Post, prompted former U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions (who spoke at YLC earlier this year) to refer to Mac Donald as “the greatest thinker on criminal justice in America today.” Columnist George Will (also a recent YLC speaker) says of her, “No journalist now writing about urban problems has produced a body of work matching that of Heather MacDonald.”

Mac Donald is a winner of the Bradley Prize and of numerous awards for journalism. No ivory-tower theorist, however, Mac Donald often risks her own safety to visit homeless encampments, high-crime, under-policed neighborhoods—and university campuses. Her fearlessness has earned her the Civilian Valor Award from the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police, the Heroism Award from the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association, and the Law Enforcement Patriot of the Year award from the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association—among others.

Please join us on Wednesday, November 20, 2019, to find out what motivates Heather Mac Donald, where she finds her courage, and to hear her thoughts on what can be done to reclaim American’s cites and classrooms from the effects of identity politics. Copies of her books will be available.

communicatons@manhattan-institute.org