Heather Mac Donald

Positions

Mac Donald identifies herself as a secular conservative. She has argued that conservative thinking is superior to liberalism by virtue of the ideas alone, and that religion should not affect the argument and is unnecessary for conservatism. She has criticized the notion of treating boys as a new victim group, and criticized universities for seeking to hire so-called diversity consultants to help boys succeed. She has criticized welfare and blamed philanthropic institutions such as the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation for suggesting that welfare is a right; in particular, she has criticized welfare as having a negative impact in the sense that "generations have grown up fatherless and dependent". She has written that welfare programs serve as a "dysfunction enabler" and that food stamps cause an "unhealthy dependence". She has criticized American immigration policy as "importing another underclass", referring to Hispanics, which has the "potential to expand indefinitely". She has argued that the reduction in crime seen in American cities since 1991 is a result of efficient policing, high incarceration rates, more police officers working, data-driven approaches such as CompStat in which police efforts target high-crime areas, and holding precinct commanders accountable for results. On the subject of terrorism prevention, Mac Donald has defended the Patriot Act and argued a case for secrecy and speed in handling problems as well as the sharing of information between departments within the intelligence community, and advocated that the benefits of government power be balanced against the risks of abuse. She has advocated for religious profiling by the police on the grounds that "you cannot be an Islamic terrorist unless you're a member of the Muslim faith". She has said that the Abu Ghraib prison scandal's fallout was overblown and that opponents of then-President Bush used it to construct an exaggerated "master narrative"; she said that Abu Ghraib was "torture lite" compared with more brutal atrocities such as those of Pol Pot. She defended using torture as an interrogation technique as being necessary in selected circumstances.

In a break with some other conservatives, she has criticized talk radio for fueling "heightened rhetoric" and argued that criticism of President Obama on talk radio programs was overdone. She views Obama as a moderate or "standard-issue" liberal, not a radical. She has also condemned conservative "hate gestures", such as an incident in which the doors and windows of Democrats who voted in favor of a health care bill were broken, as "cowardly and juvenile" acts.

She has been a very vocal critic of the Black Lives Matter movement, and was among the first proponents of the "Ferguson effect". She is also an outspoken critic of criminal justice reform, such as the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which she testified against in October 2015.

Reviews of her books

Critic Robin Finn of the New York Times described her as an "influential institute thinker". Columnist George F. Will praised her thinking about urban problems. New York Times critic Allen D. Boyer gave a positive review of her book, The Burden of Bad Ideas (2000), writing "among discussions of urban malaise, where so much hot air has been recycled, this book has the freshness of a stiff, changing breeze". Tim Lynch, the director of the Cato Institute's project on criminal justice, gave her 2016 book The War on Cops a negative review in Reason. Lynch concluded that "What Mac Donald calls a 'war on cops' is better described as a much-needed debate about crime, law enforcement tactics, and how to deal with systemic police misconduct," adding, "Conservatives have some worthwhile ideas to offer in this debate, but Mac Donald's polemics add heat, not light."

Opposition

In the spring of 2017, a protest group announced plans to "shut down" her speech on the Black Lives Matter movement at a college campus in California, on the grounds that Mac Donald is, they allege, racist, fascist, and anti-Black. On April 7, around 250 protesters surrounded and prevented audience members from entering the building where she was speaking at Claremont McKenna College, whose president Hiram Chodosh stated afterwards: "Based on the judgment of the Claremont Police Department, we jointly concluded that any forced interventions or arrests would have created unsafe conditions for students, faculty, staff, and guests." Mac Donald ultimately gave the talk to a small audience in the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum which was also live-streamed on the Claremont McKenna website. Chodosh added: “In the end, the effort to silence her voice effectively amplified it to a much larger audience.”

Publications