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

President John F. Kennedy with Robert McNamara during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Jean Béraud's painting 'Paris, rue du Havre', c. 1882.
From left to right: Dorothy McDonald (wife of John, née Eisner), Leon Trotsky and John McDonald in Coyoacan, Mexico, in the 1930s. McDonald was recruited to help defend Trotsky from charges made at Stalin's show trials. Credit: General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University
The Tribuna of the Uffizi by John Zoffany.
A jigsaw puzzle from the early nineteenth century, bearing representations of the Kings and Queens of England from William I to George IV.
The Trabant car being manufactured at the East German Sachsenring car plant.