Identity Project

Jay W. Richards, PhD

Director, DeVos Center, & Senior Research Fellow, The Heritage Foundation

Jay Richards, PhD is the Director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family, the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute. He has spoken at many academic conferences, college and university campuses, think tanks and public policy meetings. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including two New York Times bestsellers. Dr. Richards earned a PhD in philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary.

Jay W. Richards's Recommended Resources

Dr. Jay W. Richards - Heritage Foundation

Check out Dr. Richard’s webpage at the Heritage Foundation to see his latest work on exposing gender ideology.

The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines

Bestselling author and economist Jay W. Richards makes the definitive case for how the free market and individual responsibility can save the American Dream in an age of automation and mass disruption.

For two and a half centuries, America has been held together by the belief that if you work hard and conduct yourself responsibly in this country, you will be able to prosper and leave a better life for your children. But over the past decade, that idea has come into crisis. A recession, the mass outsourcing of stable jobs, and a coming wave of automation that will replace millions of blue- and white-collar jobs alike have left many people worried that the game is rigged and that our best days are behind us.

In this story-driven manifesto on the future of American work, Jay Richards argues that such thinking is counterproductive - making us more fragile, more dependent, and less equipped to succeed in a rapidly changing economy. If we're going to survive, we need a new model for how ordinary people can thrive in this age of mass disruption. Richards pulls back the curtain on what's really happening in our economy, dispatching myths about capitalism, greed, and upward mobility. And he tells the stories of how real individuals have begun to rebuild a culture of virtue, capitalizing on the skills that are most uniquely human: creativity, resilience, and empathy for the needs of others.

Destined to take its place alongside classics like Economics in One Lesson, The Human Advantage is the essential book for understanding the future of American work, and how each of us can make this era of staggering change work on our behalf.

Eat, Fast, Feast

The New York Times bestselling author and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute blends science and religion in this thoughtful guide that teaches modern believers how to use the leading wellness trend today—intermittent fasting—as a means of spiritual awakening, adopting the traditions our Christians ancestors practiced for centuries into daily life.

Synthesizing recent science with ancient wisdom, Eat, Fast, Feast brings together the physical, mental, and spiritual benefits of intermittent fasting to help Christians improve their lives and their health, and bring them closer to God.

When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment

Can a boy be "trapped" in a girl's body? Can modern medicine "reassign" sex? Is our sex "assigned" to us in the first place? What is the most loving response to a person experiencing a conflicted sense of gender? What should our law say on matters of "gender identity"?

When Harry Became Sally provides thoughtful answers to questions arising from our transgender moment. Drawing on the best insights from biology, psychology, and philosophy, Ryan Anderson offers a nuanced view of human embodiment, a balanced approach to public policy on gender identity, and a sober assessment of the human costs of getting human nature wrong.

This book exposes the contrast between the media's sunny depiction of gender fluidity and the often sad reality of living with gender dysphoria. It gives a voice to people who tried to "transition" by changing their bodies, and found themselves no better off. Especially troubling are the stories told by adults who were encouraged to transition as children but later regretted subjecting themselves to those drastic procedures.

As Anderson shows, the most beneficial therapies focus on helping people accept themselves and live in harmony with their bodies. This understanding is vital for parents with children in schools where counselors may steer a child toward transitioning behind their backs.

Everyone has something at stake in the controversies over transgender ideology, when misguided "antidiscrimination" policies allow biological men into women's restrooms and penalize Americans who hold to the truth about human nature. Anderson offers a strategy for pushing back with principle and prudence, compassion and grace.

The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls

In this book, Kara Dansky shines a light on the truth about “gender identity,” the “transgender” agenda, the very real threats that they pose to all of society—specifically to the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls.

Unraveling Gender: The Battle Over Sexual Difference

In the modern era certain ideologies have appeared with growing rancor that threaten the truth and meaning of human sexuality. Gender ideology is one of the greatest moral errors of our times. It is essentially the mistaken notion that gender is not necessarily connected to the sex of the body, but is a personal construct. The Church in her wisdom has stood up to stem the tide of this harmful new attack.

In this book, Dr. Grabowski lays out where gender ideology comes from and identifies its sources—the poisonous currents of modern secularism, the chaos of the sexual revolution, and the ever-expanding reach of technology. In the end, Unraveling Gender shows that what may seem like a new fad is actually the most recent manifestation of one of the oldest heresies in the Church’s history, one which is best refuted by the enduring beauty and clarity of her teaching about the body and the gift of sexuality.

Drawing upon Scripture and Church teaching, this timely book equips parents, religious educators, and clergy with the information they need to confront this dangerous ideology with clarity, confidence, and charity. As gender ideology continues to spread its errors, infecting our culture like a deadly virus, this book is a must read for every Catholic.

Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism

Material Girls is a timely and trenchant critique of the influential theory that we all have an inner feeling known as a gender identity, and that this feeling is more socially significant than our biological sex.

Professor Kathleen Stock surveys the philosophical ideas that led to this point, and closely interrogates each one, from De Beauvoir's statement that, 'One is not born, but rather becomes a woman' (an assertion she contends has been misinterpreted and repurposed), to Judith Butler's claim that language creates biological reality, rather than describing it. She looks at biological sex in a range of important contexts, including women-only spaces and resources, healthcare, epidemiology, political organization and data collection.

Material Girls makes a clear, humane and feminist case for our retaining the ability to discuss reality, and concludes with a positive vision for the future, in which trans rights activists and feminists can collaborate to achieve some of their political aims.

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2021 BY THE TIMES AND THE SUNDAY TIMES

Until just a few years ago, gender dysphoria—severe discomfort in one’s biological sex—was vanishingly rare. It was typically found in less than .01 percent of the population, emerged in early childhood, and afflicted males almost exclusively.

But today whole groups of female friends in colleges, high schools, and even middle schools across the country are coming out as "transgender." These are girls who had never experienced any discomfort in their biological sex until they heard a coming-out story from a speaker at a school assembly or discovered the internet community of trans "influencers."

Unsuspecting parents are awakening to find their daughters in thrall to hip trans YouTube stars and "gender-affirming" educators and therapists who push life-changing interventions on young girls—including medically unnecessary double mastectomies and puberty blockers that can cause permanent infertility.

Abigail Shrier, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, has dug deep into the trans epidemic, talking to the girls, their agonized parents, and the counselors and doctors who enable gender transitions, as well as to "detransitioners"—young women who bitterly regret what they have done to themselves.

Coming out as transgender immediately boosts these girls’ social status, Shrier finds, but once they take the first steps of transition, it is not easy to walk back. She offers urgently needed advice about how parents can protect their daughters.

A generation of girls is at risk. Abigail Shrier’s essential book will help you understand what the trans craze is and how you can inoculate your child against it—or how to retrieve her from this dangerous path.