Fredrik deBoer is an American author.

Education

DeBoer earned his

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

degree in English at

Central Connecticut State University Central Connecticut State University (Central Connecticut, CCSU, Central Connecticut State, or informally Central) is a public university in New Britain, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1849 as the State Normal School, CCSU is Connecticut ...

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Th ...

degree in writing and rhetoric at the

University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of the state of Rhode Isla ...

, and

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

degree in English at

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and mone ...

. His dissertation was titled ''The CLA+ and the Two Cultures: Writing Assessment and Educational Testing''.

Views and career

DeBoer identifies himself as a " Marxist of an old-school variety". DeBoer has written for magazines, newspapers and websites. Topics include American education policy, cancel culture, and

police reform Criminal justice reform addresses structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Criminal justice reform can take place at any point where the cr ...

. He was the communications editor for ''Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy'' until 2017. DeBoer's first book, ''The Cult of Smart'', was published in 2020 by All Points Books. Gideon Lewis-Kraus, writing for ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', says the book "argues that the education-reform movement has been trammelled by its willful ignorance of genetic variation." Lewis-Kraus groups deBoer with "hereditarian left" authors such as Kathryn Paige Harden and

Eric Turkheimer Eric Nathan Turkheimer is the Hugh Scott Hamilton Professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. Early life and education Turkheimer is the son of Nathan Turkheimer, the former board chairman of the public relations law firm Turkheimer & ...

in their shared emphasis on the importance of recognizing the

heritability of intelligence Research on the heritability of IQ inquires into the degree of variation in IQ within a population that is due to genetic variation between individuals in that population. There has been significant controversy in the academic community about the ...

when formulating social policy. According to clinical psychologist

Jay Joseph James Jay Joseph (born April 13, 1959) is an American clinical psychologist and author. He practices psychology in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is known for his criticisms of behavior genetics and twin studies in psychology and psychiatry. His ...

, deBoer cites popular science works by

Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. ...

and Judith Harris without citing any original-data studies on genetics. In Joseph's opinion, deBoer failed to account for well-documented methodological flaws in the studies he was indirectly citing.

Nathan J. Robinson Nathan James Robinson (born c. 1989) is an English-American journalist, political commentator, and editor-in-chief of the left-wing progressive ''Current Affairs'' magazine, which he founded in 2015. Early life and education Born in Steven ...

, editor-in-chief of '' Current Affairs'', strongly disputed the accuracy of deBoer's position, saying "the central argument of the book is not just wrong, but wrong in the strongest possible sense of that term. It is based on fallacious reasoning." DeBoer has been a teacher at both the high school and college level.

Book

* (2020) ''The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice''. All Points Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Publishing Group.

References

External links

*
DeBoer's blog
on

Substack Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:deBoer, Fredrik 21st-century American non-fiction writers American educators American bloggers American male bloggers American male non-fiction writers American Marxists American socialists Central Connecticut State University alumni Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Purdue University alumni University of Rhode Island alumni Year of birth missing (living people)