Henry Farrell

Silicon Valley’s Reading List Reveals Its Political Ambitions

In 2008, Paul Graham mused about the cultural differences between great US cities. Three years earlier, Graham had co-founded Y Combinator, a “startup accelerator” that would come to epitomize Silicon Valley — and would move there in 2009. But at the time Graham was based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which, as he saw it, sent a different message to its inhabitants than did Palo Alto.

Cambridge’s message was, “You should be smarter. You really should get around to reading all those books you’ve been meaning to.” Silicon Valley respected smarts, Graham wrote, but its message was different: “You should be more powerful.”

Read the full article in Bloomberg Weekend.

Other Writing:

Academic Article

The Janus Face of the Liberal International Information Order: When Global Institutions are Self-Undermining – with Abraham Newman

February 9, 2021 International Organization Vol 75 with Abraham Newman
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman (2021), “The Janus Face of the Liberal International Information Order: When Global Institutions are Self-Undermining,” International Organization Vol 75, No.2:333-58 (75th anniversary special issue). Scholars and policymakers long believed that norms of global information openness and private-sector governance helped to sustain and promote liberalism. These norms are being increasingly contested ...
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Essay

When Politics Drives Scholarship – with Steve Teles

August 30, 2017 The Boston Review with Steve Teles
The publication of Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, a history of the “public choice” economist James Buchanan and his impact on American politics, has led to an enormous, highly charged debate. But as Marshall Steinbaum correctly noted in this journal, not many people have weighed in who aren’t either Team Public Choice or Team Anti-Buchanan. ...
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