From Peter Boghossian: Adjusting My Confidence

In the middle of 2021, I stepped away from my career in academia to launch a nonprofit: National Progress Alliance (NPA). It was a risk I felt obliged to take. Although it’s impossible to forecast the trajectory of a new organization, it was equally impossible to remain in the clutches of an irredeemably corrupt university system. I spent the latter months of 2021 creating NPA’s infrastructure and producing our first videos. By the start of 2022, I had gathered a small but spirited team dedicated to our mission: promoting free expression and civil discourse, and fighting illiberalism.
 
We wanted to connect with the public on the modern battlefield of ideas, so we had to learn the ropes of social media. After seeing Robert Reich dancing on TikTok to get views, I doubted my ability to adapt our mission to these platforms where attention is scattered and users are in search of the next endorphin hit. It felt like a big risk to produce the series Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults with Dr. Lyell Asher. Could a complex analysis on education from a thoughtful professor fare well on social media?
 
Implementing our flagship projects of the year, Reverse Q&A Tour and All Things Re-Considered, was daunting, to say the least. We aimed to poke ideologies fueling the behemoths of higher education and NPR without knowing how much of the public would care. And the tour was expensive. How could we afford it?
 
It’s not unusual for everything to feel like a challenge when embarking on a new endeavor. It was clear what was desirable and what would move the needle but it was not clear what was possible. Frankly, my confidence was low that we’d have the funding to implement these ambitious projects. But week by week, project by project, I’ve recalibrated my expectations.

The success of Dr. Asher’s series was stunning. We released his conversations in short segments to satisfy short attention spans, but the full-length video, clocking in at an hour and 20 minutes, was viewed nearly 350 thousand times on YouTube.
 
Subsequently, supporters stepped forward and funded the Reverse Q&A Tour. Indeed, people did want to hear about speech suppression in college classrooms and how the current moral fashions influenced education. And All Things Re-Considered wasn’t just engaging to a fringe group of former public radio listeners. We found a growing (and increasingly vocal) population of truth-seekers who want to understand the rising authoritarian tribalism in NPR journalism. 
 
It feels pleasantly ironic that I’ve had to recalibrate my beliefs and expectations about what would be possible. After all, one of my fundamental goals is to encourage others to recalibrate their beliefs based upon reasons and evidence. What did it take to change my mind and increase my confidence?
 
The most compelling evidence has been success measured by discrete external metrics, like engagement with viewers. We added more than 100,000 subscribers to my YouTube channel in the past year. We launched TikTok about a year ago with low expectations; that platform now nears 70,000 followers. We continue to see tremendous growth across all social media platforms, proving beyond a doubt that we don’t have to dance to get people to pay attention to important topics. People are hungry for honest conversations.
 
2023 will be another busy year for me and the NPA team. I was lucky enough to have two fully sponsored trips to Mathius Corvinus Collegium in Hungary this year. In the most recent trip, I was able to record spectrum conversations in Hungary and Romania, and this remarkable footage will be released in the early part of the year. I’ll be filming additional spectrum conversations in Puerto Rico in January and in Australia in March. Meanwhile, we’re working on two major projects. The first is an analysis of bias in Wikipedia, one of the most popular research sources on the internet. The second is a hard look at the role ideological zealotry plays in the declining quality of American public education. I’m also planning to bring a wide range of guests to my YouTube channel this year to enhance our understanding of the ideological absurdity of these times.
 
NPA is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, and we rely on support from foundations and individuals who share our mission to reinstate civil discourse and the unencumbered exchange of ideas. I hope you will consider making a year-end donation to NPA to forward this aim. Visit our donation page to support this crucial work in 2023.
 
Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year—and many thanks,
 
Peter Boghossian
Executive Director, National Progress Alliance