>"Dear Jonathan, Let me begin by thanking you for agreeing to discuss this topic with me. Now more than ever, we suffer from a shortage of good faith debate across dividing lines, so I am especially grateful for the opportunity to swap arguments with you. My hope is that we will be able to come to some sort of constructive consensus on this issue by the end of our exchange, even if it eventuates in our agreeing to disagree. The topic in question is the quality of Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity – and Why This Harms Everybody, a recent book co-authored by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay. We have each published reviews of this book —"

I had to take a break as soon as I got to Jonathan’s letters— the focus on Robin DiAngelos work is almost funny (sorry, is that rude?) for playing into exactly what Sam is criticizing about the approach taken in *Cynical Theories*. DiAngelos Anti-Racism for Dummies engages with the work of Foucault and Derrida about as rigorously as the authors of *Cynical Theories* do. Pretty useless in regards to the conversation being had. Great writing from Sam but this is a long exchange so I will be returning to it later.