The truth is that an intellectual life is available to almost anyone, almost anywhere, if they work hard enough and are given some kind of access point.

It's only when an American steps outside of their own culture that you see how integral it is.

I had observed people whose identity crises around race seemed analogous to other people's identity crises around gender.

Yale's endowment became a metaphor for the kind of training it offered its graduates, namely, how to exploit the global marketplace, and technology, for your own interests, while maintaining a smokescreen of virtuous intent.

There's an enormous difference between normative white masculinity and normative black masculinity.

Most Americans have a sense of what the blues is. But in Hong Kong, they have no sense of the blues.

Hong Kong has been the place where the memory of Tiananmen Square lives on; Hong Kong people have become more and more committed in their resistance to authoritarian government, and also, not surprisingly, committed to safeguarding their culture and heritage as something distinct and worth preserving.