News:

March 10 marked Heresy Press’s publication of the widely anticipated book Viewpoint Diversity: What It Is, Why We Need It, and How to Get It.

The book was released simultaneously in three different media—print, ebook, and audiobook (the audiobook cover is displayed below):

Tomasi and Schweizer’s volume avoids treating viewpoint diversity as a slogan, a partisan weapon, or a thin managerial fix. Instead, it becomes a demanding intellectual and civic aspiration—one that matters for higher education, politics, and the arts alike. As importantly, the essays are not merely celebratory; they are practical, searching, and self-critical. At a time of polarization, ideological sorting, social media fragmentation, and institutional mistrust, this book offers not just a defense of disagreement, but an account of how disagreement can help us find common ground even in the absence of a shared common good.

John Inazu, “Viewpoint Diversity and Why It Matters,” on *Some Assembly Required

In the run-up to publication, John Tomasi and three contributors participated in a lively webinar under the auspices of Heterodox Academy. The number of 155 registrants clearly testifies to the high level of interest in this topic.

A complete recording of the Heterodox Academy webinar is available on YouTube.

A wide-ranging (and yet brief) podcast episode on First Things features two contributors to the book, John Tomasi and Mark Bauerlein, in animated conversation about the definition, the importance, and the current status of viewpoint diversity on university campuses. A must-listen!

To hear John Tomasi and Mark Bauerlein on First Things, go here.

Rikki Schlott wrote a smart piece about the viewpoint diversity book for The New York Post, based on an interview with John Tomasi. The article met with lively interest, as indicated by the large number of comments.

Persuasion published an excerpt from the viewpoint diversity book on March 11. Find the essay “The Bourgeoisie Has Switched Sides” by Yascha Mounk here.

Guest Essay

By Jonathan Haidt

When I was a young man, I was very opinionated and confident in my opinions. On matters of politics and policy I was especially insufferable. But then I set out to write a book on the psychology of morality and politics, which became The Righteous Mind. I wanted to understand progressives, conservatives, and libertarians in their own terms, so I read their best writings and listened to their smartest thinkers. And then, something amazing happened. I discovered that there really are multiple internally coherent perspectives on complex social questions, and that each one gave me answers to questions I hadn’t even known to ask.

I had discovered the wisdom of John Stuart Mill. I would not read him for another five years, as I was co-founding Heterodox Academy, but by trying on multiple perspectives I came to grasp Mill’s famous line that “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.” Some readers of this volume will know the widely quoted next sentence of that passage, about how if you don’t even know what the other side’s reasons are, then you have no reason to believe that your side is right. But fewer will know the sentence after that, which is less widely quoted:

Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.

It is this passage that best shows us the value of viewpoint diversity on campus and in course syllabi. Humans are highly social creatures who need to grasp ideas intuitively before we can process evidence and arguments about their truth. Therefore, talking face-to-face, or in a small group, has a special power to open minds and build new mental structures. Western philosophy began that way, with people in dialogue, and that’s what a college education does well, when it includes enough viewpoint diversity.

That’s why this book is so important: it’s the first comprehensive book on viewpoint diversity in higher education, politics, and the arts. The editors have assembled an all-star cast of well-known professors and journalists. They all agree that viewpoint diversity is valuable, but because they come from different fields and different political starting points (left, right, center, and libertarian) they’ll give you a variety of ways to think about this powerful yet understudied form of diversity.

At a time when liberal democracies are facing new challenges from the fragmenting effects of social media and AI, a book on how we benefit from interacting with each other across lines of difference could not be more timely.

JONATHAN HAIDT is a social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU’s Stern School of Business. He is the author of three New York Times best sellers: The Righteous Mind (on morality and politics), The Coddling of the American Mind (with Greg Lukianoff, on universities and Gen Z), and most recently, The Anxious Generation (on youth mental health).

More News

Heresy Press to release V.N. Alexander’s new novel The Girlie Playhouse next month.

Both risqué and profound, this tale explores the fascination and moral ambiguity of exotic dancing in a playful manner.

“Full of surprises, The Girlie Playhouse subverts cliché. V.N. Alexander
is a serious stylist who is not afraid to ruffle feathers” (Charles Holdefer)

V.N. Alexander published a provocative essay in Free the People about the wider implications and sexual mores that inform her novel The Girlie Playhouse.

Read the the article here.

Pre-order The Girlie Playhouse here.

Heresy Press releases multiple audiobooks at once!

They are finally here! Readers who are primarily “listeners” can now order the following Heresy Press titles on Audible:

→  Tomorrow, the War, an epic novel by Max Watman. Order the audiobook here.

→  Viewpoint Diversity: What It Is, Why We Need It, and How to Get It. Order the audiobook here.

→  The Hermit, a novel about quitting Wall Street, came out as audiobook. Order it here.

→  Alice, or the Wild Girl, the profoundly affecting portrait of a feral child and her benefactor, available as audiobook here.

Readers respond enthusiastically to Half-Jew—Full Life.

Georgette Bennett’s riveting new book has accumulated 60 positive reviews on Amazon and over 100 Goodreads reviews!

Heresy Press’s Director, Bernard Schweizer, publishes article in Heterodox Academy’s magazine inquisitive.

He traces the roots today’s politicization of literature to academic developments in the 1960s-80s.

Excerpt:

“Under the aegis of the poststructuralist hermeneutics of suspicion, generations of undergraduate and graduate students, i.e. the future professional class of literary critics, agents, editors, and commentators, not to mention general readers, were taught that to be a discerning judge of literary works meant to be able to sniff out what identity was unfavorably represented in a given text, what insensitivities pervaded a story, or how texts socially constructed, and thus ‘made possible,’ the status quo around race, class, and gender. It hardly surprises that literary agents and editors in all echelons of the publishing industry are now willing to crucify works of literature, no matter how brilliantly written, on the basis of perceived sins of omission or commission.”

→ Read the full article “Bad Reads” here.

Publishing Fun Fact

Publishing fun fact: Books are outselling movie tickets!

Take that—ye doomsday prophets of the death of book reading and the demise of the publishing industry: In 2023, roughly 1 billion books were sold in the US while people shelled out money for “only” 825 million movie tickets (for more details, see here). This is a different perspective from the one that purveyors of the persistent myth that “50% of all published books sell fewer than 12 copies” want you to believe. That myth (rather charmingly promulgated here) is based on one statement made during antitrust testimonies about the merger of Penguin Random House with Simon&Schuster (regulators ultimately blocked the merger) by one publishing executive, and it has been thoroughly debunked.

While it is probably true that ca. 90% of books published in North America sell fewer than 1000 copies, it makes no sense that half of all books would sell only around 12 copies, or else most publishers, including the Big Five, would long have gone out of business.

Director’s Recommendations

In her stirring thought piece for After Babel, Freya India reflects on how AI both humiliates us as humans but also helps us recognize our peculiar human strengths. Moreover, it’s a manifesto for outspoken writing and unfettered expression—the core values of Heresy Press!

Excerpt:

“So write, think, live. Get hurt and rejected and feel it in your gut and sort of like that horrible feeling because at least you’re alive, you’re here. I realize now that I want to be real. I don’t want to be harmless, I want to be human, I want to say things that bother people and move people and confuse people; I want to start sentences that can’t be autocompleted because even I don’t know where they’re going. I want to learn and offend and regret and grow.”

→ Read the full article here.

A poignant take on the politicization of literature. Liza Libes remembers her college years when English professors rewarded fashionable and persecutorial approaches to literature while discouraging aesthetic appreciations of masterpieces.

Excerpt:

“This professor was a novel hire with little teaching experience, but when she stood before the lecture hall, there was not a single cell phone or slumping senior in sight. She radiated platitudes and themes, spouted all the buzzwords—heteronormativity and racial politics—and put a leftist spin on every play. It all fed my appetite for absurdity until one day I found a messy scrawl at the top of my midterm exam: Don’t forget to mention queer desire in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

→ Read the whole article here.

Michael Mohr is always good for a trenchant commentary on today’s publishing climate. Here he offers a 20-step program to maximize success on Substack. It’s a poignant meta-satire aimed at the very platform—Substack— on which he publishes the piece.

Excerpt:

“4: Stay away from the obvious Substack Failure Categories. We all know what these are, don’t we: Fiction (ugh, gross), literature, nuanced, balanced, non-extreme, well-argued and thoughtful articles (c’mon), deep complex memoir, tasteful yet honest book reviews, etc. No one gives a shit about your fiction writing, or your “interesting” personal life or your silly thoughts on the latest Sally Rooney novel. Steer clear of these pesky irritants. *(If you must comment on “literature,” at least be aggressive about it: Always have only contrarian takes and mock everyone on Substack as being illiterate, ignorant and stupid about literature. Prove your perspicacity in this area.)”

→ Read the full article here.