Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class - Rob Henderson with Jon Shields

How do childhood adversity, social class, and elite institutions shape the trajectory of an individual’s life? Growing up in foster care, enlisting in the U.S. Air Force, and later attending Yale and earning a Ph.D. at Cambridge University, Rob Henderson has lived a life that defies expectations. His bestselling memoir Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class explores these questions through the lens of his own remarkable journey. In a moderated conversation with Jon Shields, professor of government and chair of the government department at CMC, Henderson will examine the structural and cultural forces that influence social mobility, the role of family instability in shaping life outcomes, and his concept of “luxury beliefs”—status-signaling ideas embraced by the privileged that often impose real costs on those with fewer resources.

Rob Henderson is a writer and social commentator whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and more. He is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for The Free Press and The Boston Globe. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he earned his undergraduate degree from Yale and completed a Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar. His research focuses on social class, psychology, and cultural divides.

Shaped by his firsthand experiences, Henderson's memoir has sparked national discussion on class and opportunity, with The Wall Street Journal highlighting his critique of how affluent individuals often promote ideals they do not live by, and The Washington Post describing Troubled as “a mystifying book about hypocrisy.”

Jon Shields, moderator, teaches American politics and chairs the government department at CMC. He has authored many books on American conservatism including Trump’s Democrats and Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University. Notably, his American Culture Wars class dives deep into matters of marriage, sex, and gender.

Mr. Henderson’s Athenaeum program is co-sponsored by the Dreier Roundtable at CMC.