Meritocracy Week

It’s Meritocracy Week on Engelsberg Ideas. Leading writers explore the global history of merit in culture and politics. Do meritocracies deliver on their promise? Is meritocracy working? Can the concept be fixed?

Podcast episodes

Caricature of a Cambridge University library in the Georgian era.
First prize winner at the Covent Garden fancy dress ball in 1905, a lady dressed in an elaborate costume as the Entente Cordiale.
A play is performed in an ancient Greek theatre.
Anna Komnene, a Byzantine princess and scholar.
Triple-microscope made by the optician Camille Sebastien Nachet in Paris.
Anarchist outrage at the Liceo theatre in Barcelona, 1893.