because synonyms for essay

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conjunction as in on account of

Weak matches

• as a result of
• as things go
• by cause of
• by reason of
• by virtue of
• considering
• for the reason that
• for the sake of
• in as much as
• in behalf of
• in the interest of
• on the grounds that

preposition as in on account of

Discover More

Example sentences.

Because he's joined the colors—he's not dead!Because he's found his duty—he's not lost!

I will drive you over-because it is rather a lonesome walk for you.

He was silent; and presently she said: "I—the reason of it—my crying—is b-b-because I don't wish you to be unhappy."

Can you picture a room where the portires are all of different lengths?because the decorator had no sense of line value?

At length she stammered: "I did not come b-because I simply couldn't stand it!"

Related Words

Words related to because are not direct synonyms, but are associated with the word because . Browse related words to learn more about word associations.

conjunction as in because

• inasmuch as
• seeing that

adjective as in taking everything in mind

• all things considered
• everything being equal
• forasmuch as
• in consideration of
• in light of
• insomuch as
• taking into account

conjunction as in in consequence of the fact that

conjunction as in in view of the fact that

• making allowance for

adverb as in to such an extent

Viewing 5 / 11 related words

When To Use

What are other ways to say  because .

The conjunction because introduces a direct reason for an occurrence or action: I was sleeping because I was tired. As and since are so casual as to imply merely circumstances attendant on the main statement: As (or since ) I was tired, I was sleeping. The reason, proof, or justification introduced by for is like an afterthought or a parenthetical statement: I was famished, for I had not eaten all day. The more formal inasmuch as implies concession; the main statement is true in view of the circumstances introduced by this conjunction: Inasmuch as I was tired, it seemed best to sleep.

On this page you'll find 61 synonyms, antonyms, and words related to because, such as: as, as a result of, as long as, as things go, being, and by cause of.

From Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.

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Other Ways of Saying ‘Because’

2-minute read

• 16th December 2015

If English is not your first language , you may not know that there are lots of words that you can use instead of ‘because’. This is important, since using ‘because’ too often in your written work can make it seem stilted or repetitive.

By comparison, varying word choice can make your work easier to read and more engaging. Today, we’re going to share several synonyms for ‘because’ that will make your work look more academic .

Synonyms for ‘Because’

Let’s start with an example sentence:

Marjorie was angry because the moles kept digging up her garden.

Here , we could use several words and phrases instead of ‘ because ‘:

Marjorie was angry due to the moles that kept digging up her garden.

Marjorie was angry on account of the moles that were digging up her garden.

Notice that you need to adjust the sentence slightly to suit the alternative words used.

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Other Options

Another way to get round the use of ‘because’ is to rearrange the sentence:

The way the moles kept digging up Marjorie’s garden made her very angry.

Here, we have reversed the elements of the sentence and used the word ‘made’ to indicate the relationship between Marjorie’s anger and the moles in her garden. This can be a good way of varying your sentence structure.

You could also try the following variations:

The moles dug up Marjorie’s garden, making her very angry.

The moles dug up Marjorie’s garden and made her very angry.

The moles dug up Marjorie’s garden, which made her very angry.

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Synonyms of because

• as in since
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conjunction

Thesaurus definition of because.

Synonyms & Similar Words

• considering
• inasmuch as

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Synonyms for “Because”

2-minute read

• 27th February 2015

The word “because” is used to join two ideas and express cause and effect:

The lemonade fizzed because we shook the bottle.

However, if you find yourself overusing the word “because,” there are alternatives available. We’re going to look at some here.

Alternatives to “Because”

Instead of “because,” you could use any of the following terms (although this may depend on the context). Consider using…

Used as conjunctions, these are the simplest alternatives to “because.” They often work as substitutes without having to change the rest of the sentence:

The lemonade fizzed, since we shook the bottle.

The lemonade fizzed, as we shook the bottle.

Due To/On Account Of/As a Result Of

These alternatives all require changing the sentence slightly. Here, for example, we need to use the term “shaking” rather than “shook”:

The lemonade fizzed due to shaking the bottle.

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The lemonade fizzed on account of shaking the bottle.

The lemonade fizzed as a result of shaking the bottle.

Which Meant/Which Caused

In these phrases, the sentence must be reversed, with the cause coming first:

We shook the bottle, which meant that the lemonade fizzed.

We shook the bottle, which made the lemonade fizz.

In this version, we need to swap ‘fizzed’ for the infinitive ‘to fizz’.

We shook the bottle, which caused the lemonade to fizz.

Using some of these alternatives will be a great way to show off your vocabulary. They will also vary the rhythm of your text and engage the reader much more, enhancing readability.

Why Not to Use the Word Because

Using a word repeatedly in a paper can make you seem unimaginative. It could also make your work dull to read. If you need help finding other words to use, or if you are not sure that you have used these words correctly, simply upload your document to be proofread within 24 hours!

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10 Other Ways to Say “This Is Because”

So, you keep using “this is because” in your essay and want a better alternative. After all, you don’t want to sound repetitive in academic writing because you want your work to get you the best grades.

Luckily, this article is here to help. We’ve gathered the best synonyms showing you what to say instead of “this is because.”

Other Ways to Say “This Is Because”

• The reason is
• Simply because
• This is due to
• Due, in part, to
• With thanks to
• As a result of

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• “This is because” is suitable in essays, but it’s far too common and overused.
• “The reason is” gives you another way to write it and mix things up formally.
• You could say “after all” in informal essays to keep things interesting.

Read on to learn more about these synonyms. We’ve explained how the best variations work and all you need to know before writing them yourself.

We’ve also touched on whether “this is because” is correct. You can skip to the final section if you’d like to learn more about it.

The Reason Is (Formal)

“The reason is” is a great formal alternative to “this is because.” You should use it in an essay to explain the reason behind a choice from the previous sentence.

You will always start a sentence with “the reason is.” It needs to follow straight from the previous sentence for it to make sense.

Generally, you’ll write “the reason is” when trying to explain your methods in academic writing . It helps the reader to follow along with your ideas and understand your thought process behind something.

You can use “the reason is” instead of “this is because” in most written contexts. It’s not as overused, making it slightly more effective. However, we do recommend switching between them to keep your writing as interesting as possible.

Check out these essay sentence examples to show you how it works:

We did not account for all of the variables. The reason is that we thought the results would be too skewed.

I made sure to check for errors. The reason is that so many other experiments went wrong before they even began.

After All (Informal)

“After all” is a great informal alternative to “this is because.” You can use it conversationally or when you do not need a formal writing tone in an essay .

Generally, you should only use “after all” once or twice in your writing. The more you use it, the less impact it has. It’s a great way to explain a choice from the previous sentence, but you should only do it a handful of times.

“After all” is also an introductory clause . Therefore, you must place a comma after the phrase whenever it starts a sentence.

We don’t recommend using “after all” in formal essays or academic writing, though. “This is because” is still more effective in formal situations. “After all” should only apply to informal ones.

These examples will help you understand more about it:

I tried to find the most effective way to complete the task. After all, that would give me the best results for the situation.

There were a few errors along the way. After all, it’s not a foolproof system. I left a lot up to chance.

Is It Correct to Say “This is Because”?

“This is because” is correct and acceptable . However, you should avoid using it too much. It is overused , which can be problematic when you want to explain yourself in formal writing.

Generally, people reading your essay will find a phrase like “this is because” boring . It doesn’t add anything special to your academic writing. You should avoid using it more than once (or avoid it entirely since there are so many good alternatives).

You need to punctuate it correctly, though. For example:

• Correct: I did it like this. This is because I wanted to.
• Incorrect: I didn’t listen. This is because, there was no reason to.

Writers do get confused with the comma placement of “this is because.” It is not an introductory clause . Therefore, it does not need a comma after it. You should avoid placing one.

Feel free to bookmark this page to remind yourself of the best synonyms for “this is because.” Then, you’ll always have something useful to replace it with in formal writing.

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Another Word for BECAUSE: 40+ Useful Synonyms for “Because” in English

Are you searching for another word for “because”? Below are over 50 other words for “because” you can use instead .

Because Synonyms

List of other words for because.

Here, we share some great synonyms for “because” to help you add variety to your writing.

On the grounds that

Seeing that

For the reason that

For the sake of

Inasmuch as

In the interest of

As a result of

• As things go
• By cause of

By reason of

By virtue of

Considering that

In view of the fact that

Due to the fact that

• Owing to the fact that
• In as much as
• Forasmuch as
• As per the fact that

Insomuch as

As a consequence

• Reason being

Examples with Because Synonyms

• Now that  we have cable, we get a wonderfully crisp picture, even on our old TV.
• We oppose the bill,  on the grounds that  it discriminates against women.
• Owing to  a lack of funds, the project will not continue next year.
• Seeing that he could not carry out his plan, he flung up his cards.
• Since  his cancer was diagnosed, he feels as if he’s living on borrowed time.
• Thanks to  that job I became an avid reader.
• Through science, we’ve got the idea of associating progress with the future.
• You eat a massive plate of food for lunch,  whereas  I have just a sandwich.
• The learned judge held not,  for the reason that  no one is entitled to profit from his own wrong.
• He moved to the seaside  for the sake of  his health.
• This was a good decision  inasmuch as  it worked for you.
• You look terrific  in that  dress.
• In the interest of  safety, smoking is forbidden.
• In view of  the weather, the event will now be held indoors.
• The soldiers were diagnosed  as  having flu.
• She died  as a result of  her injuries.
• I’ll stay in Mexico  as long as  my money holds on.
• McLaren keeps his own counsel,  being as  reticent as Ferguson is gregarious.
• He’s always asked to these occasions  by reason of  his position.
• She became a British resident  by virtue of  her marriage.
• The event has been postponed indefinitely  due to  lack of interest.
• Their criticisms seem premature  considering that  the results aren’t yet known.
• In view of the fact that Hobson was not a trained economist, his achievements were remarkable.
• Tomato sauce stains terribly – it’s really difficult to get it  out of  clothes.
• He complied, his only concern  being that  it wasn’t drugs.
• The school’s poor exam record is largely  due to the fact that  it is chronically underfunded.
• Given that  they’re inexperienced, they’ve done a good job.
• This statement was important  insomuch as  it revealed the extent of their knowledge.
• Dinner was somewhat delayed  on account  of David’s rather tardy arrival.
• As a consequence of being in the hospital, Shelly decided that she wanted to become a nurse.
• His theory is no longer tenable  in light  of the recent discoveries.
• We may as well go to the concert,  seeing as  we’ve already paid for the tickets.
• I’ll help you  insofar as  I can.

Another Word for Because | Infographic

Useful List of Because Synonyms in English

Last Updated on January 7, 2021

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Because Synonym Guide — Antonyms, Definitions, and Examples

Table of Contents

The relationship between cause and effect is something we encounter regularly. The word “because” is one of the most commonly used words to denote reason. This guide might be what you need if you’re having difficulty selecting a because synonym example.

This guide helps readers find a more appropriate alternative for their case use. Read on to learn more.

The Definition of Because

“Because” is a conjunction that identifies the cause of something. Such cause or explanation can be a person, event, or thing.

For example:

• He was late for work  because  he woke up late.
• He woke up late  because  he had stayed up all night working on his project.

Because Synonym — Exploring Words with Similar Meanings

The English language is replete with words and phrases that can enrich your writing. Here are some alternatives to the word “because.”

The term usually describes a time between periods, but it can also refer to an event that is the primary cause of something.

• He hasn’t been able to walk properly since the accident.
• Since he was late for work, he was under tight scrutiny by management.

By Virtue Of

This because synonym suggests that something is happening by the authority of something or someone. It also indicates that a positive characteristic is the cause of something. It also entails that negative descriptions and characteristics do not work with this phrase, as virtues are always a positive force.

• He was knighted by virtue of the King’s decree.
• You will achieve all your goals by virtue of determination.

This phrase suggests a conditional cause of something.

• The Plaintiff will drop charges as long as the Respondent signs the settlement papers.
• The people will follow as long as you lead them well.

On Account Of

This idiom can substitute for because of, but it more accurately expresses that something is performed for the benefit of someone.

• He was cared for gently on account of his illness.
• The committee accepted his theories on account of recent discoveries. 

This phrase expresses that you are considering newly-discovered facts.

• Richard promoted Allan in view of his recent performance.
• The regulatory board barred Sarah from competing in view of her latest medical report.

Because Antonyms – Exploring Words with Opposite Meanings

“Because” antonyms are confusing at first, the trick to understanding them is to think of something that is NOT the cause of something. We explain this further in the examples below.

“Despite” describes being unaffected by a cause. A potential reason is rendered ineffective.

• The team succeeded despite difficult odds.
• He finished his work despite exhaustion.

Even Though

This phrase is a more potent way of saying “although” and “thought.” It also describes being unaffected by something that would have been a reason.

• He treated me well even though I was small and weak.
• The athlete finished the race even though there were many obstacles.

Regardless of

This phrase refers to a disregard for something. It entails that something happens despite conditions that would have hindered it.

• The results of the bar exams will be published regardless of weather conditions.
• Coaches expect athletes to persevere regardless of challenges.

Notwithstanding

Expresses that something happens even if something might prevent it.

• The books were written and distributed, notwithstanding the fact everybody was tired.
• The fighter jet landed safely, notwithstanding the extensive damage to its frame.

Without Considering

This phrase means paying no heed or disregarding something as a factor.

• The cavalry met the enemy on the fields without considering the disparity in their numbers.
• Frodo volunteered to take the ring to Mordor without considering the dangers involved.

English is a language with a rich history and an even richer scope. These examples are only a few synonyms and antonyms of the word “because.” If you need more examples, don’t forget to consult your dictionary and thesaurus to gain a deeper understanding of the world’s most popular language. 

Pam is an expert grammarian with years of experience teaching English, writing and ESL Grammar courses at the university level. She is enamored with all things language and fascinated with how we use words to shape our world.

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Synonyms of 'because' in British English

Phrase:  , usage note:  , synonyms of 'because' in american english.

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6 Better Ways Of Saying “This Is Because” (Complete Guide)

Sometimes, we use phrases all too often in essays and formal writing, making them less impressive when it comes to writing them. That’s why it’s important to use synonyms for phrases like “this is because” to make sure you’re keeping your writing fresh with every new sentence.

What Can I Say Instead Of “This Is Because”?

When you want to say “this is because” in a sentence, you might want to consider one of the following alternatives to make your writing pop:

• This is due to
• The reason for this is that
• As a result
• Thanks to this

The preferred version for the replacement is “this is due to” because it’s the closest synonym of “this is because.” It also gets used a lot in essay-writing and is the perfect phrase to explain a point further in a piece of writing.

This Is Due To

Let’s start by looking through the alternative methods a little closer. We’ll start with the most popular choice, “this is due to,” and work our way down from there.

“This is due to” means that the previous information is related to what we’re about to say. Basically, we’re saying that what was mentioned previously has a direct impact on what we’re about to say.

Let’s begin with a couple of examples to help you understand how “this is due to” might look in a sentence.

• People don’t like to communicate socially anymore. This is due to the growing relevance and accessibility of technology.
• It’s hard to get good grades in school . This is due to an oversaturated work curriculum that doesn’t set children up for success.
• It’s difficult for me to get into a good college. This is due to the fact that I didn’t try hard enough in my school years and didn’t get good grades.
• There are many developing countries in the world left to suffer. This is due to the developed countries not being willing to help them out of a tough spot.
• People are shopping less in malls. This is due to the internet making it much easier to order things online.

We usually start a sentence with “this is due to” when we want to develop the idea from the previous sentence. We can’t connect the two with a simple comma, and it isn’t advisable to use a semi-colon either.

Since we’re starting an entire new thread of discussion, it’s best to start a new sentence. That helps break up the flow of the sentence nicely and also gives the reader a chance to understand the direct connections we want to make between our pieces of information.

The Reason For This Is That

The next phrase we want to show you that works better than “this is because” is “the reason for this is that.” Generally, this one is a little less popular because it requires more wording to get right. Still, people use it comfortably in most forms of essay writing.

“The reason for this is that” also allows us to elaborate on a previously made point from the sentence before. It’s best to start a sentence with this phrase or a variation of it to continue a point.

• Christmas is less popular as a holiday now. The reason for this is that more people are beginning to turn to atheism and disregard religious beliefs.
• Television is one of the most powerful outlets in the world. The reason for this is that everyone has access to a TV and can watch it whenever they want.
• Mobile phones are detrimental to our mental health. The reason for this is that we see influencers post about their perfect life and only wish we can achieve it too.
• Wars are an unnecessary evil in the world. The reason for this is that governments just want to keep fighting for more power.
• School sets children up to learn fundamental things but forgets to teach us how to transition to adult life. The reason for this is that the school curriculum is outdated and needs refreshing.

As you can see, we use this phrase in much the same way as writing “this is due to.” It starts the next sentence and always follows on from the point we made previously.

As A Result

“As a result” is the next phrase we want to talk to you about. It’s also closely linked to the other ones we’ve mentioned here, but it is slightly different in that we’re talking about a direct impact of the information we provided rather than a causal link.

“As a result” is used when we want to share the resulting information that links to the previous sentence. It is more of a final result and summary of things rather than a direct synonym of “this is because.”

• Mobile phones are plaguing the world. As a result, family time has become less important to many children.
• With the growing age of technology, children are left inside playing video games. As a result, many children don’t get out to play in the fresh air.
• The internet is a dangerous place. As a result, thousands of people get scammed every month without even realizing it.
• The Amazon rainforest was on fire for a long time. As a result, we lost a lot of biodiversities.
• Ordering food online has become an increasingly easy process. As a result, eat-in restaurants have taken a big hit on sales.

As you can see, “as a result” is more of a final response to the previous information we provided. It’s still close to the meaning of “this is because,” but isn’t as close as some of the others we’ve mentioned.

“Owing to” is another example that follows the same trend as “as a result.” It refers to a result of something but also works well to replace “this is because” since it carries on from the previous information.

“Owing to” allows us to continue our point seamlessly throughout an essay. It works well as a synonym for “this is because” while also having the same meaning as the more final “as a result.”

• People are prepared to do what it takes to survive in the wild, owing to the increasing need to live in the wilderness with global warming.
• The internet is making it difficult to meet people in real life again, owing to how easy it is to connect with people across the globe.
• There are multiple ways you can write “this is because” in an essay, owing to the evolution of the English language and its roots.

As you can see, we don’t have to start a new sentence when we’re using “owing to,” which is different from how we use the other examples throughout this article.

Thanks To This

“Thank to this” is very similar to “this is because.” If we rearrange “this is because” slightly, we’re left with “because of this,” which is almost identical in meaning and delivery to “thanks to this.”

“Thanks to this” allows us to attribute a certain quality or point to the previous piece of information we were sharing in our essay.

• The ice caps have been melting for decades. Thanks to this, we’ve led a lot of arctic creatures to near extinction.
• Soldiers are frequently sent out to fight wars they have no reason to. Thanks to this, many families are left without sons and daughters.
• Politics has caused far too much drama over the recent years. Thanks to this, civil wars are beginning to develop right under our noses.

As you can see, “thanks to this” is used in much the same way as “this is because” and directly refers to the previous points made.

The last example we want to share with you is “since.” While this is one of the most common words to replace “because,” it is probably the furthest away from having a direct synonymous relationship with the phrase “this is because.” Still, it works well for our examples.

“Since” means “because” and relates to the previous information we’ve stated.

• Many children won’t receive presents when their birthdays come around since they come from poorer families and settlements.
• People are constantly arguing about their opinions since many of us believe that how we think is the only way the whole world thinks.
• There are many things wrong with the world that arent being fixed since none of the world leaders are ready to act on them.

We don’t need to include any punctuation when we’re using “since” in the examples you’ve seen above. This sets it apart from any of the other examples we’ve seen throughout this article.

Sometimes, it works if you make it a new sentence, but you never have to do so if you prefer the flow of keeping it as one sentence.

What Is The Difference Between “It Is Because” And “This Is Because”?

“It is because” should be used when talking about a general idea that might have impacted something. “This is because” should be used when talking about a more specific idea that directly relates to something that was previously mentioned in your piece of writing.

Martin holds a Master’s degree in Finance and International Business. He has six years of experience in professional communication with clients, executives, and colleagues. Furthermore, he has teaching experience from Aarhus University. Martin has been featured as an expert in communication and teaching on Forbes and Shopify. Read more about Martin here .

• 10 Better Ways To Write “In This Essay, I Will…”
• Due On, Due By, Or Due For? Difference Explained (+18 Examples)
• 11 Formal Synonyms for “As a Result”
• 10 Other Ways to Say “I Am” in an Essay

Filmmaker Yance Ford presents the police as the ‘armies that they have become’ in ‘Power’

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Charting the history of policing in America, the new documentary “Power” is rooted in questions: Who exactly are the police meant to serve? And whose interests are they protecting? Utilizing an essay form, the film turns to an impressive roster of legal experts, scholars, journalists and law-enforcement officials to bring the viewer along for an inquisitive probing of an issue that cuts to the core of social divides.

When director Yance Ford’s 2017 film “Strong Island,” was nominated for an Oscar for documentary feature, it made him the first openly transgender director to have a film nominated for an Academy Award .

“Strong Island” examines the story of how Ford’s brother William, then a 24-year-old teacher, was shot to death by a white 19-year-old mechanic in 1992 in an incident a grand jury found justifiable. The film explores in intimate detail the impact the criminal justice system has on one family’s grief.

With “Power,” Ford takes on a much broader scope, while still grounding the documentary very much in personal inquiry and curiosity. The core missions of police to protect property and control populations are often at odds with public safety and community concerns. Though the film does not provide easy answers, it does point in the direction of what could be done to make relations between police and citizens less oppositional.

“This film is a tool for people who do this work,” said Ford, 52, during a recent interview. “I hoped that it would be something that people who work to reimagine our definition of public safety can use.”

“Power,” which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival , is in theaters Friday and begins streaming on Netflix on May 17. While traveling to promote the film, Ford recently spoke with The Times on Zoom from Toronto.

Before we get into the movie, as you’ve been watching the images of police officers on college campuses across the country being called in to clear encampments of student protesters — what do you make of that?

It’s so hard to put into words what I make of it, because when I see these images, I’m reminded of how little we learn from history. I’m reminded of how easy it is for people to regurgitate talking points that were used to delegitimize student movements in the ’60s, talk of outside agitators, talk of professional agitators. It’s all so familiar in a way that honestly makes me wonder if the United States is simply doomed to repeat the past over and over again. The universities are calling in police to do what police do, which is to contain and control and remove people who are seen as disturbances to the status quo.

“Strong Island” was such a personal film, exploring your family’s experience with the criminal justice system. Did “Power ” come out of an attempt to get a 10,000-foot view on what you had gone through?

In many ways, I’ve been thinking about policing since there were detectives in my parents’ house explaining to them why the person who killed my brother wasn’t going to be charged with a crime. But when George Floyd was murdered and the protests were happening in the aftermath, I saw and felt something different in the reaction of police to the protests around the country. And in the city where I live, New York, that felt different. It felt dangerous. It felt unrestrained. And it felt like there had been a shift. This feeling got me asking the question “Is this what police are for” in a way that felt different than the times I had asked that question in the past. These were police acting as an occupying force and acting, quite frankly, as the armies that they have become.

And that’s what started the line of questioning that turned into the film. It was less about the 10,000-foot view of what my family had gone through and more about what I was seeing play out on the streets in the United States and around the world. Being in New York watching protesters being kettled [a crowd-control confinement tactic], pepper-sprayed — aggression is not even the word. It was the kind of violent response that reacted as if protesters were the problem, as opposed to Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd being the problem. And so when I saw this violent response to protests, I started asking the question about the purpose and the meaning and the function of police in a different way.

The film begins with a statement from you in which you say, “This film requires curiosity, or at least suspicion.” Can you expand on that?

I put that at the top of the film because I know that this subject of policing is one where the current debate has been Black Lives Matter [or] Blue Lives Matter. Whenever policing is brought up as an “issue,” there are folks who will think that a documentary will be a polemic against the police or that a documentary will be something that reinforces their own analysis of policing. And what I wanted to do was invite the audience, regardless of where they sit in relation to this issue, to come to the film as they are. So I know that if you are of a particular viewpoint that you will be suspicious of me and my intentions. And so I wanted to say: You know what? I get it. I don’t assume that you’re going to trust me if you’re suspicious. I want you to watch the film anyway. I understand that you might be curious to learn the information in this film because you’re predisposed to being interested, and that predisposition is also fine. I recognize all of that and I’d like you to engage with the film anyway.

O ne of the things included that made me feel I had a lot to learn is the simple fact that the first municipal police force didn’t even start until the 1880s. T hat sounds so recent. I know for myself and I think probably many viewers, there is an assumption that police existed long before that.

I think that’s the great thing about this film. It is fact-checked up one side and down the other. Because I assume and expect that when we release the film, that there will be people who say, “That’s not right.” And thankfully my partners at Multitude Films and the entire team, as well as our fantastic fact-checker, will all be able to say, “Actually, no, we have our receipts here. We’ve done the research.” And policing is not as old as you think it is. It is a mid-19th century invention, and it was not invented to ensure or to maintain public safety or to fight crime.

It was invented to protect property and to control property and to control movement and to break up unions and to help the country expand westward by removing Indigenous people from their land. There are many ways in which people can debate policing and where it might go from here. But one of the really important things for us was to establish facts and to research these facts in such a way that you can’t actually argue with them. By doing that, we help people get outside the moment and start to think about the ways in which history impacts the present.

One of the most surprising characters in the film is Charlie Adams, the Minneapolis police officer working to reform policing from within the institution itself . To see someone so close to where George Floyd lived and died, and to get this sense that policing doesn’t have to exist the way that we know it — how did you come to find Charlie Adams?

We researched a lot of different police officers, police commanders, police chiefs around the country who were doing work in their departments. And Charlie Adams rose to a place on the list that was interesting to us because he is in Minneapolis and he’s been doing work for a long time trying to help his officers at the 4th Precinct understand the perspective of the community and the people who live in the community in which they serve. Charlie Adams is a great character because he is someone who you see has good intentions, but he’s also someone who is restricted by the contours of the institution in which he works. There are aspects of the criminal legal system that limit the effectiveness of what he can do. I think that Charlie Adams tries to do what he can, but then when you see this thing where he butts up against the reality of policing, that helps you understand that it has to be about more than individual chiefs or individual officers.

World & Nation

Yance Ford’s ‘Strong Island’ asks white people to ‘interrogate their fear’ of black bodies

Sept. 15, 2017

When we think about what keeps communities safe, we can’t fall into this trap of talking about the behavior of individuals or to try another round of reforms that come from policing out into the community. We really have to approach it in a different way and about solutions that come from communities to police, and think about institutional reform or reimagine a different institution. I think that’s one of the things that being with Inspector Adams really shows is that there’s a really powerful institution behind every individual officer. And it’s the institution that needs to be addressed.

There’s a moment in the film when you say to an interview subject that you want to address this idea of the ” we-ness of it all.” Is that one of the challenges in talking about policing? Is it difficult to address the issues and concerns of all these separate communities, different people, different sets of “we”?

“Who is the ‘we,’” in my view, relates directly to the question at the end of the film about power conceding nothing without a demand. Because knowing who the “we” is is a part of defining what the demand will be. What demand are you going to make of police? What demand am I going to make of police? As soon as we get specific about who the we is, then we can drill down and understand what we will demand of policing. Because for too long the people whose job it is to regulate police, to tell police what their job is and how to do their job, they’ve walked away from it or they’ve left it up to police to be this self-regulating industry.

If it were a business, we would say, “Internet companies, you can regulate yourselves.” And we know from history how well self-regulation has gone in the business world. But we haven’t had people in elected office who’ve been willing to take up their responsibility to regulate the police. And so people are deciding that it’s their job as citizens to do so.

Why did you choose to call the film “Power” as opposed to simply calling it “Police”?

Because they’re synonyms — they are one and the same. Police are the power of the state made real. You and I and other people, some more so than you and I, will interact with police way more often than they will interact with their elected representative or senator. So in terms of how the government and the state is made manifest in people’s lives, the answer to that is police. When you think about who is the most powerful person, like [journalist] Wes Lowery says, in this country, on a day-to-day basis, it’s police for most people. And so I wanted to just be really clear about the lens through which the film is going to look at police and policing.

And it’s also just a great title, if I do say so myself. It tells you what you’re going to see. When you buy a ticket to a film called “Power,” you’ve got a sense of what you’re in for.

More to Read

Commentary: As LGBTQ+ rights are challenged, Matthew Shepard’s story is more vital than ever 25 years on

Oct. 11, 2023

What if women were more powerful than men? Toni Collette finds out.

June 15, 2023

Editorial: Lots of talk, still too little change to policing three years after George Floyd’s murder

May 25, 2023

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The Female-Midlife-Crisis Novel

Miranda July’s new book is full of estrangement, eroticism, and whimsy.

B ack when the word weird (or, in the spelling of the day, wyrd  ) was first commonly used in English, it was not an adjective but a noun, and it functioned as a synonym for fate . A person wasn’t weird; instead a person had a weird, which was theirs alone, determined by forces beyond control and understanding. Shakespeare’s “Weird Sisters” in Macbeth helped transform the word, linking its supernatural connotations with an aesthetic quality. Those three crones know the future—they seem to know everything, standing astride the temporal and the miraculous as they do. In them, the old and the new weird s meet: They are creatures in touch with the workings of fate, but they are also inexplicable, creepy, queer, spooky, deviant from the norm.

Explore the June 2024 Issue

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

I have been thinking about this word and its overtones since reading All Fours , the second novel by the idiosyncratic interdisciplinary artist Miranda July, probably best known for her work as a filmmaker . As I made my way through the book, I kept remarking to myself, and writing in the margins, “This is so weird.” That’s not a bad thing, in my personal lexicon, though in this instance I was registering a persistent feeling of bafflement. July’s middle-aged protagonist—a “semi-famous” artist known for her early multi-genre success (who, like July, has worked across film, writing, and performance)—consistently acted on instincts I didn’t understand and made choices I couldn’t imagine anyone making. As a narrator, she was not just unreliable but unpredictable, unsettling, shimmeringly strange.

Read: Miranda July on ‘Kajillionaire’ and nice people in Hollywood

This unnamed narrator—who, being a wry Los Angeles creative type, enjoys half-mockingly noting that she is a minor celebrity—is perplexing even to herself. Stalled out in her art practice and dissatisfied in her marriage (stable, loving, stale) to a music producer, she decides to drive to New York, leaving him and their young child behind for three weeks. She conceives the trip ostensibly to prove a point. At a party, her husband offhandedly suggests that people fall into two personality types: Drivers and Parkers. Drivers can immerse themselves in the ongoingness of life; they enjoy time with their children and pets; they’re good on road trips because they’re present and steady. Parkers “need a discrete task that seems impossible, something that takes every bit of focus and for which they might receive applause,” or they lapse into boredom and disappointment. The artist feels that she is being pegged as a Parker, and undertakes this road trip, she tells herself, to “finally become the sort of chill, grounded woman I’d always wanted to be.” That this is overly literal and somewhat illogical—leaving your family for three weeks doesn’t suggest a willingness to be present in daily ongoingness and child-rearing—doesn’t occur to her.

But even the artist is aware that this classic plot—a combination of the American road trip and the midlife crisis , both clichéd subgenres of the quest narrative—is the kind of trope that she typically wouldn’t bother with. Naturally, the road trip, and by extension the novel, goes sideways immediately. July herself has never been given to making chill, grounded art.

The narrator hasn’t gotten an hour away from her house before she makes eye contact with a young man at a gas station in Monrovia. A few minutes later, they run into each other at a nearby restaurant, and as they talk, he mentions that he works at Hertz and that he and his interior-decorator wife are trying to save $20,000 as a “nest egg.” For no discernible reason, the narrator proceeds to drive first to one of his Hertz locations and then to a dingy motel, where she rents a room. Soon after, she commissions the wife (without mentioning her encounter with the husband) to redecorate the motel room to look like a room at Le Bristol hotel, in Paris, for a fee of $20,000.

Is she stalking the Hertz guy, nearly 15 years her junior? Is this an art project? Whether July is presenting this as an earnest hero’s journey or as a self-skewering satire of the free spirit who does erratic things upon hitting her mid-40s and calls it art isn’t clear. That may sound like a huge flaw in the novel, and it does sometimes feel like a glitch, yet the ambiguity about what July and her narrator are up to makes the novel as intriguing as it is frustrating. July thwarts the reader’s instinct to decipher whether this is a narrative about miraculous fate or one about an odd character’s mundane sexual and hormonal odyssey. Instead, she writes as though there’s no difference.

I ’m not the first to be cheerfully confounded by July’s oeuvre, which amounts to a multipronged investigation of alienation from what the world sees as “normal.” Critics have often dismissively described her enterprise as “twee,” likely because she is fashionable and somewhat affectless, and her work features West Coast oddballs who blend quirkiness and borderline erotic perversity. Stylistically, she rides the line between deadpan humor and earnest absurdity. To take a representative example, in the first of her three feature-length films, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), a young video artist (played by July) fixates on a man whose wife has left him, and who recently set one of his hands on fire in an ill-conceived stunt to impress their children; secondary plotlines involve a middle-aged man leaving sexually explicit messages for two teen girls, and a woman planning to meet an internet stranger in the park after being titillated by his suggestion that they “poop back and forth” forever.

All of her projects, which revolve around a sort of randomness and mystery, probe shame and estrangement, but with a tonal lightness. “Who really knows why anyone does anything?” the narrator of All Fours remarks before she embarks on her zany motel-redecoration project. “Nobody knows what’s going on. We are thrown across our lives by winds that started blowing millions of years ago.” This aimlessness, her attunement to randomness, is entwined with her creativity. Yet as she keeps riffing, the narrator drifts toward a formulation of her experiment that’s more specific and ennobled, borrowing from feminist politics.

What kind of monster makes a big show of going away and then hides out right nearby? But this was no good, this line of thought. This was the thinking that had kept every woman from her greatness. There did not have to be an answer to the question why; everything important started out mysterious and this mystery was like a great sea you had to be brave enough to cross. How many times had I turned back at the first ripple of self-doubt? You had to withstand a profound sense of wrongness if you ever wanted to get somewhere new. So far each thing I had done in Monrovia was guided by a version of me that had never been in charge before. A nitwit? A madwoman? Probably. But my more seasoned parts just had to be patient, hold their tongues—their many and sharp tongues—and give this new girl a chance.

The appearance of the word monster comes as no surprise here. The female artist who does battle with what Virginia Woolf called “the Angel in the House” and leaves home to accomplish something inscrutable to her family and society at large still seems obligated to reckon with whether this act is horrific. As the critic Lauren Elkin observes in her recent book, Art Monsters , the impulse to demonize women who refuse domesticity in favor of creative exploration goes back hundreds of years (at least). So does the female artist’s own willingness to wonder whether her impulses are reprehensible .

July’s artist is consciously pushing back against this legacy here—she will not be kept from her greatness!—while July herself seems also to be lightly ridiculing the way her character’s politically enlightened logic is leading her into a foolish, perhaps unjustifiable set of actions. Her ghost self travels onward—she keeps track of where she should be, dutifully reporting home about the sights she isn’t seeing—while she remains installed in a Louis XIV–style motel room, where she is not busy making great art. Instead, she is masturbating furiously, overwhelmed with desire for a married stranger. This behavior is not monstrous, but it is wayward— weyward being an early spelling of weird .

Except that in a sense, it isn’t weyward at all: The narrator’s behavior (her erraticism, even her eroticism) is right on schedule. She has entered perimenopause , when estrogen levels begin to zigzag. This Rumspringa of hers is less about artistic evolution than the bewilderments of hormonal flux and (in her case) the problem of fitting wild, outsize desire into a life of monogamy, heterosexuality, and parenthood. Her yearnings converge: She wants to become more embodied, more honest and self-accepting, and creatively free—a state that she doesn’t entirely believe is possible. Her sexual awakening, experienced just as she’s learning that she’s likely nearing the end of her high-libido years, is baffling, transcendent, and abject. “This kind of desire made a wound you just had to carry with you for the rest of your life. But this was still better than never knowing.”

From the December 2014 issue: The real roots of midlife crisis

Continuing her old life now seems unbearable; leaving it behind is unthinkable. Whether as a woman, a wife, or an artist, July’s narrator has never, as yet, been an integrated person, believing instead in selectively presenting others with different selves, “each real, each with different needs.” For her, “the only dangerous lie was one that asked me to compress myself down into a single convenient entity that one person could understand.” And yet she still dreams of intimacy, of having a self that can be wholly expressed and held by another. “One fine day I would tell him all about me,” she fantasizes, thinking of her husband, “and this trip would be one of my stories. We would be holding each other in bed, saying everything, laughing and crying and being amazed at all the things we didn’t know about each other, the Great Reveal.”

The perimenopausal plotline—easily dismissed as niche and sentimental, unlike its cousin, the plotline of male midlife crisis—may in fact be the perfect form for July, who turns it into something appropriately whimsical and stark. She writes this hormonal crucible so well in part because she seems already positioned to capture precisely how heightened, bizarre, off-putting, confusing, absurd it is; these elements are the hallmarks of her style. In this context, the tone that might have been dismissed as irony or caprice in earlier work takes on a kind of embodied, material plausibility: “I was a throbbing, amorphous ball of light trying to get my head around a motherly, wifely human form,” the narrator reports with true desperation after returning home. What she has found in Monrovia may be weird, but it is also her weird—transgressiveness in search of honest intimacy, performative selfhood in search of authentic freedom. If this truest, weirdest self cannot be contained in the family structure or the social world that she occupies, perhaps breaking that structure counts as creative liberation.

Perimenopause, as the narrator experiences it, is a profound betrayal in that it begins transporting her into crone-hood without her consent, before she is ready. At the same time, the crone, the weird sister, is afforded proximity to the transporting, the repugnant, the queer, the prophetic. This is good for art, or it can be. In one climactic scene of the book—a sort of symbolic consummation with her future self—the artist has sex with an older woman with a connection to the Hertz attendant. “Her skin was beginning to thin with age, like a banana’s, but instead of being gross it felt incredible, velvety warm water. Well, knock me over with a feather , I thought.” After the encounter, in an epiphanic haze, she feels certain that promiscuity is the secret to life. This mania, as July renders it, is both completely earnest and totally laughable—a trademark tension in July’s work since her 20s.

Later, her narrator mulls:

I felt untethered from my age and femininity and thus swimming in great new swaths of freedom and time. One might shift again and again like this, through intimacies, and not outpace oldness exactly, but match its weirdness, its flagrant specificity, with one’s own.

Here, finally, she arrives at something that looks like a viable future, though after her return home from Monrovia, the book loses the fevered outlandishness that July achieves at its apex. The back half of the novel depends largely on an experiment with polyamory, presented as edgy, but an angsty middle-aged artist curing her ennui with an escapist lesbian affair is hardly radical. This delivers its share of tragicomic setbacks—and a banal, if true, realization that “the point was to keep going without a comprehensible end in sight.”

In Art Monsters , Elkin quotes an essay in which Woolf characterizes the two primary obstacles in her writing life: “The first—killing the Angel in the House—I think I solved. She died. But the second, telling the truth about my own experiences as a body, I do not think I solved. I doubt that any woman has solved it yet.” July frantically disassembles Woolf’s Angel in All Fours , without quite solving Woolf’s second challenge. (Has anyone?) Yet her entry into the canon of attempts to capture that truth, in all its flagrant specificity, is one only she could have produced: fascinating, jarringly funny, sometimes repellent, and strangely powerful.

This article appears in the June 2024 print edition with the headline “Miranda July’s Weird Road Trip.”

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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Guest Essay

Elite Colleges Walked Into the Israel Divestment Trap

By Gary Sernovitz

Mr. Sernovitz is a managing director of Lime Rock Management, a private equity firm that invests in oil and gas and clean energy companies and whose investors include colleges and universities.

“ Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest ” is a frequent chant ringing through pro-Palestinian college protests. Of all the actions one could advocate in the war between Israel and Hamas, protesters at Columbia listed, as their first demand, that it divest from companies and institutions that, in their view, “profit from Israeli apartheid.”

Israeli companies aren’t the only target. A proposal Columbia students put forward in December calls for divestment from Microsoft, Airbnb, Amazon and Alphabet, among others. Microsoft is tagged for supplying cloud software services to Israel; Airbnb is targeted for posting rentals in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, listings the platform said it would remove in 2018 . The company reversed this policy months later to settle lawsuits.

Administrators at some universities, including Brown and Northwestern , have agreed to talks with students about divestment as part of agreements to end campus encampments. Other schools have said point blank that they will not accede. The University of Michigan Regents, for one, in March reaffirmed “its longstanding policy to shield the endowment from political pressures and base investment decisions on financial factors such as risk and return.”

“Longstanding” is a debatable term, as it was only three years ago that the regents decided the endowment should stop investing in funds focused on certain fossil fuels (which affected the firm I work at). Before the war in Gaza, it had been pretty easy for universities to make compromises around divestment demands, but those expedient choices are haunting them now. Every investment in elite schools’ endowments is up for debate.

College endowment managers no doubt feel beleaguered that pressing moral questions regularly end up on their desks. For that desk is already covered with spreadsheets on another question: how to generate returns for universities that are nonprofits, unfathomably expensive, and desperate to not be just finishing schools for the rich. Last fiscal year, endowments over $5 billion provided 17.7 percent of their university’s budgets . This school year, Williams College charged $81,200 in tuition and fees . But spending per student was $135,600. The endowment helps make up the difference.

Yet activists view endowments with a sense of ownership. They are part of a community that owns this money. They also go after endowments because they lack better targets. It says something about the authority of ideas in our age that students lobby institutions dedicated to the advancement and propagation of knowledge mainly over what they do with their excess cash.

The mother to all divestment movements was the one that aimed at apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s and ’80s. (In 1981, Barack Obama g ave his first public speech at a divestment rally at Occidental College.) It largely worked: Over 100 colleges in the U.S. eventually agreed to at least partly divest from companies that did business in the country. Years later, many believe divestment played some role in ending apartheid in South Africa.

From 2020 to 2022, as evidence of climate change grew increasingly unavoidable, student demands for divestment from fossil fuels claimed more victories, especially at the Ivy League and other colleges with large endowments — and not coincidentally large groups of activist students telling them what to do with them. Schools’ exposure to oil and gas investments was often less than 5 percent of their endowment, so finding a way to wind down investing, in some form, in the sector was easy to do.

Every divesting institution found its own path, some more logically consistent and sincere than others. I watched some of this unfold firsthand as some schools stopped investing in our oil and gas funds while others invested in our clean energy funds. But almost all the schools succeeded in minimizing real disruption to the endowment and inducing student activists to move on.

Unlike the effects of the South Africa movement, the early impact of oil and gas divestment by colleges and others has been negligible, or even counterproductive: Oil and gas companies have needed little external financial capital , and hostility to the divestment movement has led Republican-led states such as Florida to restrict E.S.G. investing , which focuses on environmental, social and governance factors. (Note that Florida’s State Board of Administration manages almost exactly the same amount of money as the 10 largest private college endowments combined.)

What the fossil fuel divestiture did establish, however, was that university leaders can be made to concede that their endowments will, in certain circumstances, be guided by the school’s collective values, and that current students can shape those values. And by getting endowments to not invest in the sector in some way , the protesters hardened an abstract moral judgment: that the oil and gas business, and the faceless bureaucrats who work for it, are wrong . Divestment champions hope the symbolic removal of an industry’s “social license” can take on its own power, emboldening government policymakers to regulate that industry or dissuading students from seeking jobs in it.

Now the reason for divestment is Israel rather than oil. For many students it’s part of the same conversation , as I saw in a scrawled word salad sign on display at Tulane’s pro-Palestinian encampment: “From the Gulf to the sea, no genocide for oil greed.”

University leaders could follow the same playbook as they did on fossil fuels and find ways to symbolically divest without disrupting their endowments in any notable way. Based on the size of G.D.P., not investing is Israel directly would be like not investing in Colorado. And despite the chants that charge otherwise, many endowments appear to have little to no direct exposure to Israel or to many of the American companies protesters want to blacklist.

But there’s a key difference between avoiding fossil fuels and shunning Israel. The institutions that divested from oil and gas made sure to describe it as financially prudent, albeit sometimes with shallow investment logic. This time, Israel’s social license is the only thing that is on the table. And if Israel is on the table, what other countries should lose their social license? How many years must pass since what some believe to be a country’s settler colonialist period or messy wars that kill innocent civilians to make it investable?

And if divestment against Israel is carried out, when should it end? Oil and gas divesting is meant never to end; oil and gas consumption is meant to end. Divestment from South Africa ended with apartheid. So university leaders will be forced to ask an often heterogeneous group of students what would earn Israel its social license back. A cease-fire? A new Israeli government? A two-state solution? The end of Israel as a Jewish state?

The effort to identify every investment with ties to Israel is also fraught. Columbia activists could find information only on pocket-change-size ownership of certain companies, such as $69,000 of Microsoft stock. So protesters are also demanding that colleges disclose all their investments, presumably so students can research the morality of each one. However, some firms that manage parts of an endowment’s money, particularly hedge funds, don’t report individual holdings to investors: asking them for it is like asking for the secret recipe for Coke.

But even if an endowment could provide a list of every underlying investment, it would likely then be inundated for more calls to divest, for more discovered connections — however small — to Israel, and for reasons related to other offenses discoverable with an online search. Why would there not be a Taiwanese student group demanding divestment from China, to dissuade an invasion? Other students demanding divestment from Big Tech, citing students’ mental health? Others demanding divestment from all of it, the hedge funds and private equity funds whose asset managers are not exactly healing American income inequality?

The answer, of course, is that endowments can’t be in the moral adjudication business — and they should never have headed this way. This does not mean that investing should be a returns-at-any-cost exercise. But it does mean that the real world does not always provide objective answers to how to balance benefits and consequences of companies providing products and services: Carbon emissions are bad, but energy consumption is necessary. Microsoft software for the Israeli government may displease you, but Microsoft saying it won’t sell software to Israel would displease others — and probably get itself banned from working with New York State agencies .

Listen to the protesters on divestment. They will not stop. They will not rest.

But neither will the markets. They open every morning, Monday through Friday, and university budgets’ demands on endowments never go away. Tuitions are rising . Costs always go up . Colleges should debate deep moral issues and discuss the hard compromises to solve the world’s ills. But we should move those efforts to the lecture halls, away from the investment offices. Divesting is an easy chant. Investing is hard enough as it is.

Gary Sernovitz is a managing director of Lime Rock Management, a private equity firm that invests in oil and gas and clean energy companies and whose investors include colleges and universities. He is also the author of “The Counting House,” a novel about the travails of a university chief investment officer.

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