Carol Iannone

Carol Iannone is a conservative writer and literary critic. She first made her mark as a strong critic of feminism in articles such as "The Barbarism of Feminist Scholarship." She has published extensively in Commentary, National Review, First Things, Modern Age, The American Conservative, Academic Questions, and other conservative and neoconservative publications. She is the founding Vice President of the National Association of Scholars, and an editor of Academic Questions, the quarterly publication of NAS. She is a regular contributor at the Phi Beta Cons blog at National Review Online. In 1991 her nomination by President George H.W. Bush to be on the board of the National Endowment for the Humanities was strongly opposed by the left because she had written that a black author had won the National Book Award on the basis of race rather than merit. The campaign against her as a "racist," backed by many leftist academics and by Sen. Edward Kennedy, succeeded in defeating her nomination. Iannone's interests have gone beyond literature. In her article, "Bryan was right," she wrote that Christians are mistaken when they say that God and Darwinian evolution are compatible, a view that is unsettling both to Christians who want to be accepted as part of the modern world, and to scientists who want to be respected by religious believers. While associated throughout her career with neoconservative organizations and publications, much of Iannone's writing can be characterized as traditional conservative rather than neoconservative. In recent years she has written increasingly on issues of national identity, criticizing the neoconservative belief that America is an idea rather as a culture.