The Age of Outrage

Preface

As an academic leader at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government, I increasingly found myself confronting individuals who were angry with “the way the world works” and what they saw as my role in it. One student bluntly declared: “You are the system.” As a brown, gay man, and an immigrant twice over, I was at once somewhat amused and astonished. Where, I wondered, did this kind of hostility against established institutions, such as Oxford, and those within them come from?

Oxford and its professors are not the only targets. These days almost every leader (and sometimes even rank-and-file employees) in the business, government, or not-for-profit sectors, from organizations of all sizes, must deal with their share of people ...