DeBoer identifies himself as a "
Marxist of an old-school variety". DeBoer has written for magazines, newspapers and websites. Topics include
American education policy,
cancel culture, and
police reform. He was the communications editor for
Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy until 2017. DeBoer's book,
The Cult of Smart, was published in 2020 by
All Points Books. Gideon Lewis-Kraus, writing for
The New Yorker, says the book "argues that the education-reform movement has been trammelled by its willful ignorance of genetic variation." Lewis-Kraus groups deBoer with "hereditarian left" authors such as
Kathryn Paige Harden and
Eric Turkheimer in their shared emphasis on the importance of recognizing the
heritability of intelligence when formulating social policy.
Nathan J. Robinson, the editor-in-chief of the left-wing, progressive
Current Affairs, vehemently disputed the accuracy of deBoer's position, saying "the central argument of the book is not just wrong, but wrong in the strongest possible sense of that term." His next book, critical of individuals and institutions taking advantage of
Black Lives Matter,
How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement (his preferred title being
No Justice, No Peace, No Progress), was published in 2023. DeBoer has been a teacher at both the high school and college level. While he has stated that he stopped using
Twitter and other social media in 2017 for the sake of his health, he returned to
Bluesky in 2025 in anticipation of his forthcoming novel,
The Mind Reels (
Coffee House Press). == Books ==