American Academy Book Presentation

POSTPONED: The Identity Trap

In his most recent book, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time (Penguin, Sept. 2023), Yascha Mounk provides the most ambitious and comprehensive account to date of the origins, consequences, and limitations of so-called “wokeness.” He is the first to show how postmodernism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory forged the “identity synthesis” that conquered many college campuses by 2010. He lays out how a relatively marginal set of ideas came to gain tremendous influence in business, media, and government by 2020. He makes a nuanced philosophical case for why the application of these ideas to areas from education to public policy is proving to be so deeply counterproductive—and why universal, humanist values can best serve the vital goal of true equality.

This event is a presentation of the book’s German translation: Im Zeitalter der Identität. Der Aufstieg einer gefährlichen Idee, forthcoming from Klett-Cotta on February 17.

In cooperation with Klett-Cotta