Dear younger people: Strange as it may seem, there was a time when Harper's was one of the best magazines in the world. It was so much better than The Atlantic it wasn't even close. The Atlantic ran stories like "Whither Chesterton?" Seriously. This was the late 1980s. (more)

Harper's did truly brilliant stuff. Sent novelists to cover political conventions. Invented a "Readings" section that was kinda like zines + a literary highlight reel. Created the Harper's Index. Defended writers who were getting killed by foreign governments.

I had the great fortune to intern there (yes, for free; yes, white privilege; yes, I got lifted up into the system) and learn from editors like Michael Pollan, Ilena Silverman, Jack Hitt, Gerry Marzorati, Paul Tough.

Where did it go wrong at Harper's? Hard to say. Publisher Rick MacArthur began his tenure as the magazine's de facto owner-savior and a great defender of writers battling tyranny. (The magazine would have died without him in the early 1980s.) But then...

...he aged. The world changed, evolved, progressed. And it's my theory that MacArthur at a certain point refused to evolve with it, and just started stamping his feet and shouting at clouds.

When the internet arrived, he refused to adapt and go online with the rest of the world, despite the pleas of his editors. The Atlantic went online, became relevant, and flourished. Harper's became a print relic, the favorite magazine of tweedy English professors everywhere.

Younger, hip and knowing editors came and went. MacArthur simply exhausted some of them. The magazine became enamored of contrarianism simply as a reflexive pose. This hit its nadir with Katie Roiphe's infamous anti- #MeToo essay in 2018, a piece assigned...

...not because MeToo was wrong, but seemingly because when the wind blows to the west, MacArthur believes Harper's should blow east. And now we have The Letter. Which reads like one more thump on this never-ending stair tumble from the magazine's former heights.

I wish I could ignore it but I can't. It makes me profoundly sad. It undermines the serious work done by those writers and editors lo those years ago. The world is changing right now and that change desperately needs to happen. It must happen. People are fighting for their lives.

And yet for Harper's it's all just an intellectual game. All that talk in defense of American democracy apparently only mattered so long as their own careers and institutions remained exalted. Hold others to account for their monstrous actions--but not us. Not ours. Not me.

Well here we are in 2020.
Yes you.
Yes me.
Right now you're either doing the work of education, reflection, and action, or you're part of the problem.
Harper's is part of the problem.