Jahel Queralt, essayist: ‘Those who most criticize meritocracy are those who need it the least’

Her life could inspire one of those biopics about personal triumph, but Jahel Queralt, 43, says her fate is pure chance. The jurist, PhD and professor of political law at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona went from growing up in an isolated house without water or electricity to feeling “like you’ve gatecrashed a party in the wrong shoes” when she arrived in the world of academia. It happened in 2007, in Oxford, when she met Gerald A. Cohen, a leading figure in analytical Marxism and one of the mentors of her theses. He was so approachable that the young woman let her guard down while eating with the other fellows in the All Souls dining hall, inside the most elitist of the Oxford colleges. There she uttered the forbidden word that starts with F: “You do this in Spain and you are totally fucked,” she stated, and immediately heard the rest of the diners clear their throats. People still ask her at parties if she is “the girl who said fucked in the All Souls dining hall.” That, she says near her son’s public school a few yards from the Barcelona zoo, is what happens when “you learned English watching The Wire.”

The anecdote is included in Nadie merece nada. Por qué la izquierda necesita la meritocracia (or Nobody deserves anything. Why the left needs meritocracy), an essay with autobiographical traces in which she questions the identification of meritocracy with capitalism and dismantles the morality of success. “Things like this still happen to me: I go to conferences and sit surrounded by people from the Ivy League, except for another clueless person and me; we recognize ourselves, look at each other and say: How did we get here?”

Question. In the essay you recall an almost utopian childhood isolated from the world, without running water or electricity.

Answer. Materially it was a deprived life, but it was a happy one. I was born from an unplanned teenage pregnancy. My parents never had comfortable finances. My father was a bit of a hippy and was influenced by Rudolf Steiner and his ideas about biodynamic farming, which could lead to entire crops being lost. My mother, who combined that work with jobs like housecleaning, always tried to keep the family afloat. It was she who at one point asked that we move ‘to civilization,’ to my grandmother’s house in Alcanar. They never bought a house, but they always gave me a huge sense of freedom. They would tell me: “You, our daughter, fly.”

Q. You wanted to study philosophy but ended up in law.

A. I had grown up very aware that we had no money at home. I wanted a job that would provide that. But there was a moment in law school when I couldn’t picture myself in a big law firm; I felt I didn’t belong. I didn’t see myself there; I had a feeling of insecurity. The privileged kids were the ones who went straight to the big firms—how could I? I also couldn’t take the judicial civil service exam because it would have meant returning to my home town, and I refused to do that. So, since I always got good grades, I joined the department of philosophy of law.

Q. You hate the idea of seeing yourself as a self-made woman.

A. There is a temptation toward moral superiority, but I am just a lucky person. Of course I’ve put in effort and drive, but I will never introduce myself by saying: “I deserve it because I worked for it.” On the contrary, I often see people who have worked as much as I have, or even more, and for whatever reason have not fared as well. That person didn’t meet the right person at the right time.

Q. You defend the role of luck in personal advancement.

A. It all comes down to circumstances. Everything matters, from your physical appearance to your charisma, to bumping into someone on a train who turns out to be crucial in your life. I don’t think what we do is wholly our merit.

Q. You argue that the left needs meritocracy — why?

A. Sometimes the loudest critics of meritocracy are those who need it least. I wrote this essay in reaction to Michael J. Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit and The Meritocracy Trap by Daniel Markovits, with whom I have crossed paths several times and whom I find brilliant. They are two highly influential academics, but framed within the progressive liberalism of the United States — not necessarily left-wing, more like center-liberal.

Q. What do you reproach them for?

A. Meritocracy didn’t begin with Michael Young’s 1958 dystopian fiction against meritocracy. The meritocratic revolution started much earlier. It begins with the French Revolution, with British reformism, British socialism and the welfare states after World War II. That’s where steps were taken toward a society without privileges of birth or discrimination. Basically, positions were filled according to whoever had the required skills, and people had a reasonable chance to prepare for whatever was needed. I can’t be an opera singer and that’s fine—that’s not unjust. You have certain talents, I have others. What we must ensure is that people have fair and reasonable opportunities. That is meritocracy.

We have assumed that meritocracy and the market go hand in hand, and they do not. The large price differences between master’s programs don’t buy knowledge; they buy shortcuts.

Q. But meritocracy is problematic today.

A. Yes, because it did not include the premise that was later attached to it: that you deserve this position and everything the market is willing to pay you. That is not meritocracy. We have assumed that meritocracy and the market go together, and they do not. The large price differences between master’s programs don’t buy knowledge; they buy shortcuts. There meritocracy is not being upheld. What that produces is a paradox: we arrive at a very un-meritocratic state of affairs because it widens inequalities.

Q. In fact, you point out that the most unequal societies are those that most believe in meritocracy.

A. It’s the perverse idea at the heart of the American dream’s moral, and that’s what it is: a dream. In the U.S. a child born in the poorest quintile has only an 8% chance of reaching the top, yet almost 70% of the population believes that hard work and determination guarantee success.

Q. How do you achieve a meritocracy that guarantees a fairer society?

A. I am not here to offer solutions; I only want to remind people that a properly understood meritocracy requires mitigating and correcting inequalities. From an income perspective, for example, much more tax redistribution is needed. And schools should make learning more flexible for students.

Q. That brings you directly into the debate on genetic inheritance. You write: “Being born with a predisposition to depression, addiction or obesity is as arbitrary as being born into a poor family.” You believe the left has turned genetics into a taboo.

A. That is my major battle. The problem doesn’t disappear if material conditions improve: even in a society with a very strong public school system there would still be significant differences in abilities, mental health, physical appearance or predisposition to certain difficulties. Nature can produce deeply unfair outcomes, and therefore they must be named and addressed.

Q. How can recognition of genetic differences be prevented from leading to stigmatization or eugenics?

A. The answer should not be silence, but the careful and equitable use of information. Of course there is a risk the market will turn certain data into disadvantages, especially in competitive contexts, but failing to act and ignoring it can also have serious consequences. If someone has a family predisposition to addiction or mental health problems, ignoring it out of fear of stigma can deprive them of essential preventive supports.

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