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Podcast #292: Social Work Without Stereotypes

Podcast #292: Social Work Without Stereotypes

Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay talks to Heterodox Academy scholar Nafees Alam about the need to challenge political orthodoxies in the field of social work.

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Jonathan Kay
Jul 08, 2025
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Quillette’s Substack
Quillette’s Substack
Podcast #292: Social Work Without Stereotypes
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Dr Nafees Alam is a smiley brown man with a thick beard and eyebrows, a cool haircut and diamond studs in his ear
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Introduction: Welcome to the Quillette podcast. I’m Jonathan Kay just back from a week in Brooklyn, where I attended the Heterodox Academy annual conference. Heterodox Academy, as many of you know, is a non-partisan organisation for academics who want to protect open inquiry, intellectual pluralism, viewpoint diversity, and a spirit of constructive debate on university campuses. Among its original creators was Jonathan Haidt, who many of you will know as the co-author of the famous book, The Coddling of the American Mind.

In past years, Heterodox Academy conferences have examined the question of how to push back effectively against demands for ideological conformity from dogmatic progressives, but more recently, as many speakers in Brooklyn took pains to emphasise, we’re starting to see illiberal pressures coming from the right side of the political spectrum. In part, this is simply because the culture war is cyclical and left-wing overreach on issues related to race and gender were bound to eventually awaken a vigorous counterattack from conservatives and principled classical liberals, but of course the phenomenon is also tied up with the election of Donald Trump, who’s used his federal government powers to pressure—some would say bully—universities to ally their DEI policies with his demands.

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A guest post by
Jonathan Kay
Toronto-based Quillette editor, writer & podcast host. Book author & ghostwriter. Boardgames & disc golf. Hair-care expert. Proud Canadian. Lapsed Jew. Quick-service dining enthusiast.
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