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Helen Pluckrose

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Helen Pluckrose headshot
Helen Pluckrose

Helen Pluckrose is a British author and cultural writer.[1][2][3][4][5]

Education

Pluckrose completed a degree in English literature at the University of East London and a master's degree in early modern studies at Queen Mary University of London.[6] She particularly focused on "the ways in which medieval women negotiated the Christian narrative".[7]

Writing career

Pluckrose is currently the editor-in-chief of the online webzine Areo Magazine.[8][9] She has used this platform to criticise what she sees as the self-censorship of women on university campuses, which she sees as often stemming from a disagreement about the use of intersectional feminism in academic literature.[10]

Alongside James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian, Pluckrose was involved in the 2017–18 Grievance Studies Affair, an exposé that involved the submission of bogus academic papers to journals in cultural, gender, queer and race studies.[11] Despite criticism of the exposé as a "hoax" and "coordinated attack from the right", Pluckrose and her colleagues are self-described "left-leaning liberals".[12] They maintain that their intention behind conducting the affair was to highlight two key problems in social sciences – the "low standards of pay-to-publish journals" and the "meaningless nonsense" that can be published in humanities journals, so long as then-popular ideas about gender and sexuality are espoused.[13]

In 2020, Pluckrose released her non-fiction book, Cynical Theories, co-authored by Lindsay and published by Pitchstone Publishing. Shortly after its release the book became a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller[14][15][16] and a #1 bestseller in Philosophy on Amazon.[14] Harvard University's Steven Pinker, psychologist and public intellectual, said of the book that it "exposes the surprisingly shallow intellectual roots of the movements that appear to be engulfing our culture".[17]

References

  1. ^ "The controversy around hoax studies in critical theory, explained" by Zack Beauchamp, Vox, 15 October 2018
  2. ^ Murray, Douglas. "Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay review – woke warriors are conquering academia". ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 2020-10-01.
  3. ^ "The destructive power of culture wars and how they put liberalism in retreat". Crikey. 2020-09-11. Retrieved 2020-10-01.
  4. ^ "Wokeness is being pushed on everyone". www.spiked-online.com. Retrieved 2020-10-01.
  5. ^ Paul Kelly (12 September 2020). "Tracing the dangerous rise and rise of woke warriors". The Australian. Retrieved 2020-10-01.(subscription required)
  6. ^ "Helen Pluckrose – Battle of Ideas 2017". Retrieved 2020-09-06.
  7. ^ Helen Pluckrose (18 March 2019). "The problem with grievance studies". The Australian.(subscription required)
  8. ^ "Scholar Who Pulled Off Publishing Hoax Defends It: 'Papers Are Either Sound or They Aren't' " by Alexander C. Kafka, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 October 2018
  9. ^ Rosemary Neill (10 September 2020). "'You can't cancel me'". The Australian. Retrieved 2020-10-01.(subscription required)
  10. ^ "The State of the Campus and Women’s Self-Censorship" by Helen Pluckrose, Areo, 24 October 2017
  11. ^ Jennifer Schuessler (4 October 2018). "Hoaxers Slip Breastaurants and Dog-Park Sex Into Journals". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 October 2020.
  12. ^ "What an Audacious Hoax Reveals About Academia" by Yascha Mounk, The Atlantic, 5 October 2018
  13. ^ "Sokal Affair 2.0: Penis Envy: Addressing Its Critics" by Helen Pluckrose, Areo, 21 May 2017
  14. ^ a b Pluckrose, Helen; Lindsay, James A. (2020). Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – And Why This Harms Everybody. ISBN 9781634312028.
  15. ^ "Bestselling Books Week Ended August 29". The Wall Street Journal. 2020-09-03. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2020-10-01.
  16. ^ Press, Associated. "US-Best-Sellers-Books-USAToday". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2020-10-01.
  17. ^ Paul Kelly (12 September 2020). "Tracing the dangerous rise and rise of woke warriors". The Australian. Retrieved 2020-10-01.
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