The Triumph of the New Center

Sohrab Ahmari’s Final Compact Substack

As many of you know by now, I’m leaving Compact after three years for a new opportunity at UnHerd. Going forward, Compact will be helmed solo by my friend and co-founder, Matthew Schmitz. A founder’s departure from an institution is always a bittersweet moment. In this case, though, the sweet quotient is unusually high: As I often hear, Compact has “created a new political lane” among an influential set of public officials, business leaders, trade unionists, academics, and intellectuals.

Matthew and I conceived of Compact at a febrile juncture, in 2020: a time of compulsory masking, lockdowns, and race riots. Having spent the first 10 years of our respective careers on the mainstream right—he at First Things, and I at the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post—we felt that conventional, “fusionist” conservatism failed to comprehend the extraordinary events unfolding in our city and nation.

We envisioned a magazine that would serve as an alternative to existing conservative publications: more fearless in confronting the world as it really is, and open to a wider range of intellectual influences than the fusty old Buckley-ite vehicles permitted.