Malcolm Gladwell slammed for u-turn on trans athletes support: ‘Unadulterated jerk’

Best selling Canadian author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell has U-turned on his support for trans athletes, claiming he is now “ashamed” of being “cowed” into supporting their cause.

Gladwell, a longtime contributor to The New Yorker and who is best known for his 2000 book The Tipping Point, appeared on the most recent episode of The Real Science of Sport podcast and said he regretted his appearance at the 2022 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference where he moderated a panel on the participation of trans athletes in sport.

The author said he was “objective in a dishonest way.”

“I’m ashamed of my performance at that panel because I share your position 100 percent and I was cowed,” Gladwell told Ross Tucker, who had also been on the MIT panel in 2022.

🚨 Malcolm Gladwell says “trans athletes have no place in the female category.”

He admits he was cowed into saying that it was ok.

He knows it’s not.

He was bullied into it and he’s ashamed that he gave in.

Good for him. Mad props. pic.twitter.com/GGm1oCiNbv

— Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) September 2, 2025

Gladwell went on to allege that “90 percent of the people in the audience were on your side but 5 percent of the audience was willing to admit it”.

“If we did a replay of that exact panel at the Sloan conference this coming March, it runs in exactly the opposite direction,” Gladwell said. “And it would be, I suspect, near unanimity in the room that trans athletes have no place in the female category. I don’t think there’s any question.”

Gladwell added he now feels “ashamed” he was “cowed” into supporting trans athletes.

Gladwell’s comments were swiftly criticised on social media by people who took issue with him u-turning.

“Malcolm Gladwell has mastered the art of making simple stories sound profound, but that doesn’t make them true. Oversimplifying complex issues for catchy narratives isn’t deep analysis—it’s entertainment. Don’t confuse anecdotes with real data or evidence,” one user wrote.

Another called him an “unadulterated jerk of massive proportions”, whilst a third wrote: “Rich people stop blaming their clinical desire to be loved on others challenge. These guys weren’t cowed into anything they said the en vogue thing then and they are saying the en vogue thing now. Zuck, Bezos, Dimon same story.”

Who is Malcolm Gladwell and why is he famous?

Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist and best selling author, who has written for The New Yorker since 1996 and sold well over 25 million books.

Born in Hampshire in the UK, Gladwell and his family moved to Canada when he was six.

Gladwell has published eight books, including his 2000 bestseller The Tipping Point in which he “explains and analyses the ‘tipping point’, that magic moment when ideas, trends and social behaviour cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire”.

“Taking a look behind the surface of many familiar occurrences in our everyday world, Gladwell explains the fascinating social dynamics that cause rapid change,” the synpopsis reads.

In his 2008 book Outliers, Gladwell popularised the theory that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in a field. In the years since, however, the theory has frequently been disproven and criticised as being oversimplified.

Gladwell is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, an audio content company which produces the podcasts Revisionist History and Broken Record.

In 2005, Gladwell was included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list and in 2011 was named a Member of the Order of Canada.