The Context Window — Reading Room

How People Rise — Mobility, Environment, and the Myth of the Self-Made

0 tier-5 · 2 tier-4

Across these two conversations Deming presses a single argument that runs straight through his own research: upward mobility is not the product of inner grit or lucky breaks alone but is *made possible by other people and the situations they create*. A former governor traces his trajectory back to under-resourced teachers rather than a scholarship; a psychologist who built her reputation on "grit" complicates it by insisting that perseverance only pays when your environment lets effort matter. Together they reframe success as a function of access, mentorship, and peers — the human-capital question of who actually gets the chance to rise.

Deval Patrick is not a "self-made" man

TIER 4 Jun 17, 2026

Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick rejects the "self-made" upward-mobility narrative, insisting his trajectory began not with the Milton Academy scholarship but with under-resourced Chicago public-school teachers and mentors who invested in him before any lucky break. The conversation ties Patrick's life directly to Deming's own research on who gets the chance to move up, threading civil-rights work, a death-row save, and the insider/outsider divide in politics through a clear thesis about mobility as something made possible by others.

upward mobilitymentorshipeducation accesscivil rightspolitical leadership

Angela Duckworth on the limits of grit

TIER 4 May 27, 2026

The full inaugural Context Window episode, in which Angela Duckworth complicates her own grit thesis: perseverance only pays off when your situation lets effort matter, and direction (passion) often takes years to find, as her own decade of being "capital-L Lost" shows. Drawing on her forthcoming book Situated and cases like Cody Coleman's, she argues environments and peers shape trajectories as much as inner traits, and that grit is learned through the people around you more than taught.

gritsituational agencycareer developmentpsychologyelite education

Meritocracy and the Elite Institution Under Scrutiny

0 tier-5 · 2 tier-4

Here Deming turns the lens on the institutions that supposedly certify merit — Harvard above all — and on the meritocratic logic that justifies them. A columnist argues that meritocracy and magnanimity cannot coexist and proposes blowing up selective admissions in favor of a lottery and far larger enrollment; a former bank CEO argues against purely commercial, skip-college education and faults Harvard for failing to make its case to the public as an American institution. Both pieces sit at the intersection of education economics and the legitimacy crisis facing elite higher ed, the terrain Deming knows from the inside.

Ross Douthat on the case for God

TIER 4 Jun 3, 2026

NYT columnist Ross Douthat makes a layered case that belief in God is more reasonable now than a century ago (fine-tuning, the multiverse, consciousness as a supernatural experience), and argues meritocracy and magnanimity cannot coexist. He critiques Harvard's careerist monoculture, proposes admission by lottery plus far larger enrollment, and revisits the Grand New Party diagnosis of downscale conservative voters that predicted the coalition but missed the policy.

religionmeritocracyelite admissionspolitical realignmentAI and consciousness

Lloyd Blankfein thinks the next financial crisis will be worse

TIER 4 Jun 10, 2026

Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein argues that post-2008 reforms spread capital and risk more evenly and outside regulators' reach, so a "law of conservation of risk" makes small crises (e.g. SVB 2023) more manageable but a large systemic crisis far worse, because the 2008 coordination of banks and government is now nearly impossible. He also makes a pointed case against purely commercial education (the Thiel Fellowship test) and argues Harvard has failed to make its case to the public as an American institution.

financial crisissystemic riskGoldman Sachsliberal arts educationHarvard