Musa al-Gharbi is an American sociologist who is a favored source among anti-transgender activists. al-Gharbi has co-authored work with prominent anti-trans activists, including Lee Jussim, J. Michael Bailey, David Buss, Sarah Haider, Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Geoffrey Miller, Pamela Paresky, Steven Pinker, Wilfred Reilly, Steve Stewart-Williams, and Bo Winegard.
al-Gharbi is a fellow at anti-trans organization Heterodox Academy and has appeared on anti-trans podcasts, including Blocked and Reported by Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal and Dishcast by Andrew Sullivan.
Background
Anthony Ray Adams was born on November 4, 1983 to Donna Adams (born 1958) and Anthony Ray Everette (born 1955) and grew up in Massachusetts in a military family based near Fort Devens. After studying in preparation for Catholic priesthood, al-Gharbi had a crisis of faith, abandoned the plan, and converted to Islam. Twin sibling Army Specialist Christian Adams died in Afghanistan in 2010 of wounds sustained in a non-combat-related incident.
In 2009, al-Gharbi earned an associate’s degree at Cochise College, then earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Arizona in 2001 and a master’s degree in 2013. Then al-Gharbi attended Columbia University, earning a master’s degree in 2017, a second master’s degree in 2020, and a doctorate in 2022.
After teaching in the University of Arizona system from 2011 to 2015 and serving as managing editor of the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle East Conflicts, al-Gharbi served as Director of Communications for Heterodox Academy from 2017 to 2020. al-Gharbi was appointed as a fellow of the Niskanen Center in 2021. In 2022, al-Gharbi was named a columnist at The Guardian. In 2023, al-Gharbi took an assistant professorship at Stony Brook University.
Anti-trans activism
In a conversation with Brink Lindsey of the Niskanen Center, al-Gharbi frames the conservative attacks on trans rights as the fault of “the specific ways that we engage in activism around transgender rights”:
Lindsey: After all the victories on gay rights, just very soon after that we saw the emergence of this gender radicalism and trans activism.
al-Gharbi: Well, my point is that the specific ways that we engage in activism around transgender rights has actually alienated the public. You can see the public trend lines, public support for a lot of polling questions involving transgender Americans has actually seen declines. They’re going in the opposite direction of what most symbolic capitalists would want. And the reason they’re going in the opposite direction is because of the… And so I suspect that as we moderate and disengage on this issue or engage in a different way-
al-Gharbi is cagey about exactly what political positions and movements “actually suck.” In a conversation with Andrew Marantz for The New Yorker:
The book is more diagnostic than prescriptive, and, when I asked al-Gharbi about his policy recommendations, he tried to remain above the fray. “In some cases, we may have to accept the possibility that the things we’ve been advocating for actually suck,” he said, but he declined to specify which things he had in mind.
al-Gharbi co-authored a 2023 paper with many leading lights in anti-transgender extremism.
- Cory J. Clark
- Lee Jussim
- Komi Frey
- Sean T. Stevens
- Musa al-Gharbi
- Karl Aquino
- J. Michael Bailey
- Nicole Barbaro
- Roy F. Baumeister
- April Bleske-Reche
- David Buss
- Stephen Ceci
- Marco Del Giudice
- Peter H. Ditto
- Joseph P. Forgas
- David C. Geary
- Glenn Geher
- Sarah Haider
- Nathan Honeycutt
- Hrishikesh Joshi
- Anna I. Krylov
- Elizabeth Loftus
- Glenn Loury
- Louise Lu
- Michael Macy
- Chris C. Martin
- John McWhorter
- Geoffrey Miller
- Pamela Paresky
- Steven Pinker
- Wilfred Reilly
- Catherine Salmon
- Steve Stewart-Williams
- Philip E. Tetlock
- Wendy M. Williams
- Anne E. Wilson
- Bo M. Winegard
- George Yancey
- William von Hippel
References
Staff report (June 20, 2010). SPC Christian Michael Adams. Cochise County Herald Review https://www.myheraldreview.com/spc-christian-michael-adams/article_f75110f2-5971-577e-9d88-1dd9808fce83.html
Marantz, Andrew (December 14, 2024). Have the Democrats Become the Party of the Élites? The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/have-the-democrats-become-the-party-of-the-elites
al-Gharbi, Musa (November 11, 2024). A Graveyard of Bad Election Narratives. Symbolic Capital(ism) https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/a-graveyard-of-bad-election-narratives
Selected publications
al-Gharbi, Musa (2024). We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. Princeton University Press, ISBN 9780691232607
Clark CJ, Jussim L, Frey K, Stevens ST, al-Gharbi M, Aquino K, Bailey JM, Barbaro N, Baumeister RF, Bleske-Rechek A, Buss D, Ceci S, Del Giudice M, Ditto PH, Forgas JP, Geary DC, Geher G, Haider S, Honeycutt N, Hrishikesh J, Krylov AI, Loftus E, Loury G, Lu L, Macy M, Martin CC, McWhorter J, Miller G, Paresky P, Pinker S, Reilly W, Catherine Salmon C, Stewart-Williams S, Tetlock PE, Williams WM, Wilson AE, Winegard BM, Yancey G, von Hippel W (2023). Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists: A perspective and research agenda. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Vol. 120, Issue 48). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301642120
Resources
Musa al-Gharbi (musaalgharbi.com)
- Resume [archive]
- musaalgharbi.com/musa-al-gharbi/resume
Substack (substack.com)
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)