"This book might just save America from itself."
–Lisa Arrastia, founding director of the Ed Factory and associate professor of education at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
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Bard College, Olin Auditorium. Thursday, October 17, 2024 – Friday, October 18, 2024
About Niobe Way
Internationally recognized NYU developmental psychologist Dr. Niobe Way has spent nearly 40 years conducting empirical studies with teenagers, particularly boys and young men from diverse backgrounds. Her social science research, which focuses on social and emotional development and how cultural ideologies shape child development, has made her a go-to expert on friendships, loneliness, teenagers, gender stereotypes, masculinity, and the roots of violence. In her pioneering new book, REBELS WITH A CAUSE: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture (Dutton | July 9, 2024), Way draws a direct line from her subjects’ insights—and suffering—to a much wider crisis that is impacting us all, but is in our power to change.
Rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicide are soaring, particularly among young people. Mass violence seems almost commonplace, and virtually all of it is committed by young men between the ages of 18 and 25. Experts across fields are pointing fingers at various causes and surefire remedies. But as Way reveals in REBELS WITH A CAUSE, if we listen with curiosity to what boys and young men have to say, we learn that these are all symptoms of a crisis of connection caused by a culture that prizes the hard over the soft, thinking over feeling, the me over we, stoicism over vulnerability, when our humanity is rooted. This “boy” culture—so-called because it is based on a caricature of a boy, not because it accurately reflects them—is killing our boys and harming us all.
Dr. Niobe Way is a Professor of Developmental Psychology at NYU, the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity (PACH), co-founder of agapi.teens, and the PI on the Listening Project. Dr. Way was the President of the Society for Research on Adolescence, received her B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, her doctoral degree from Harvard, and was an NIMH postdoctoral fellow at Yale in the psychology department.
Dear Reader:
This book is not about boys. It is about what boys and young men from ethnically, racially, and socioeconomically diverse communities have taught us about them, us, and the “boy” culture we live in that is killing them and us. It is a book about what it means to be human and what has gotten in the way and led some of them—and many of us—to act like monsters. It is also a book about how to solve our own problems and stop the violence.
This book is a call to action—to rise up and care, listen with curiosity, value our friendships, and recognize our common humanity. Once we create a culture in which all humans are seen as equally human, and both sides of our humanity (the “hard” and the “soft”) are equally valued, we will have joined the cause of most of the boys and young men in this book and rebels from around the world. We can then begin to lead lives defined not by how many toys we have, but by how much we take responsibility and act accordingly.
niobe way
New York City, 2024
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Featured Press
ABC News
Psychologist Dr. Niobe Way on How Society Can Better Raise Boys
The Harvard Gazette
The Urgent Message Coming from Boys
“Rebels With a Cause is a key intervention—as a developmental psychologist of immense experience, Niobe Way is uniquely positioned to unravel the very notions of (masculine) development that bind our society as a whole into structures of violence, exclusion, and isolation; in the often painful testimony of boys and teenagers, she also finds a compass to show us the way home.”
–David Wengrow, New York Times bestselling co-author of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
“Forever changes your understanding of the world you live in… A must-read for anyone who cares about our children, our society, and our future.”
–Jeff Wetzler, former chief learning officer for Teach for America and author of Ask: Tap into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life
“This is a book for everyone invested in education and children—meaning everyone who cares about the future.”
–Carol Gilligan, author of In a Human Voice & the little red book that caused a revolution In a Different Voice
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In REBELS WITH A CAUSE, Way thoughtfully expands on the insights from her previous works, including The Crisis of Connection and Deep Secrets, the latter of which was made into the Oscar-nominated film Close. She delves into human nature and how it conflicts with our culture, shares her latest research-driven insights, examines the latest social science research, and weaves the voices of young men throughout. As we understand the true and often-obscured nature of boys and young men, all of whom crave a sense of connection, we begin to understand just how disconnected “boy” culture is with them, and ultimately with us all. Way also offers solutions to this societal crisis which, remarkably, are also built upon the insights from the boys and young men from her research. Her subjects know instinctively what the research also bears out: that friendship is crucial for humans to thrive, that qualities typically considered “feminine” like empathy belong on equal footing with the so-called “masculine” qualities like logic, and that our innate capacity for curiosity is a superpower we must cultivate to save our boys and ourselves.
To create a culture that aligns with human nature, we must first value and foster our deep need for connection, Way shows. To connect with one another, we must listen to one another, exercising our innate capacity to listen with curiosity. Schools provide one venue for this shift, and Way outlines two powerful academic programs with strong results that help create this sense of connection among students and with teachers. She shares how workplaces can foster the wider cultural shift—and make employees both happier and more productive—by encouraging connection and cooperation. Way also offers strategies that we can use in our homes and our daily lives to build and exemplify positive bonds with our loved ones, especially our boys.
Changing the culture, Way argues, also involves unlearning harmful cultural practices such as treating mental health problems only at the individual level, as in by relying on therapy or medication. To succeed, we must also reject the stereotypes like “boys will be boys” that presume certain behaviors are the result of nature rather than culture, because they’re not. Once we create a culture that recognizes that all humans are equally human and that values the hard and soft alike, we will find that our world feels less depressing, anxiety provoking, and lonely.
With REBELS WITH A CAUSE, Way offers a new story about what it means to be human, what is getting in the way of our humanity, and how to solve our own problems by drawing from our natural capacities to care, listen with curiosity to each other and take responsibility.
