Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / #146 Amy Binder / Left & Right on Campus / Trump / Libertarians / Organizational Influence on Campus

Transcript

#146 Amy Binder / Left & Right on Campus / Trump / Libertarians / Organizational Influence on Campus · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together
• 0:15
  and we're live Amy. Welcome, welcome.
• 0:17
  Thank you so much for joining us on the episode.
• 0:19
  I'm so excited to be talking to you.
• 0:21
  Well, thank you for the invitation and I'm very happy to
• 0:23
  be here. Yes, I am.
• 0:25
  So I am excited to talk to you because I hope that this will be
• 0:30
  a fun, informative and thoughtful approach to politics
• 0:35
  and understanding of some of the political temperament I guess
• 0:40
  in, in our world today. And, and I came across the
• 0:43
  research and I thought, you know what, I, we could really use
• 0:46
  some cool heads and you seem like a cool headed person and we
• 0:49
  would like for you to prevail. So I'd love to, I'd love to
• 0:53
  maybe you could just introduce what you, what you do and what
• 0:55
  you study and we can go from there.
• 0:57
  Sure. I am a sociologist and I am at
• 1:02
  Johns Hopkins University, have been here for a couple of years.
• 1:06
  Prior to that, I was at the University of California, San
• 1:09
  Diego for most of my career. And I moved to Hopkins because
• 1:14
  there is an interdisciplinary institute called the SNF Agora
• 1:18
  Institute. And we are committed to studying
• 1:21
  democracy and democratic backsliding around the world.
• 1:26
  And we also are interested in doing not just academic
• 1:31
  research, but also working with community partners and having
• 1:35
  more of our work be public facing than just purely
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  scholarly oriented. That's really cool.
• 1:43
  So what kind of outreach is programming does this
• 1:46
  organization do? So we do a lot of programming
• 1:50
  for students to help them think about how to have difficult
• 1:54
  conversations across ideological differences.
• 1:58
  And then and and we do that as well internally with other
• 2:02
  faculty. We think about whether there's
• 2:04
  room for greater viewpoint diversity within the university,
• 2:08
  both our own and others as a more programmatic idea.
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  And then we also do a lot of this public facing work.
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  So a lot of, you know, writing for publications, sub stacks,
• 2:24
  New York Times, The Atlantic, a lot of us are quoted very
• 2:27
  frequently about our research and also thinking about how to
• 2:32
  turn research into things that practitioners can use, whether
• 2:38
  that's folks who are staffing The Hill or or journalists
• 2:42
  themselves or dissidents in other countries or artists and a
• 2:47
  whole variety of other folks like that.
• 2:50
  Wow, that's so, it's so interesting.
• 2:52
  It's so cool. I have two questions.
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  I guess the first easier follow up would just be what other
• 2:58
  countries, can you give me an example that you guys impact or
• 3:01
  go to or try to impact? Yeah, so I have one colleague
• 3:05
  who's studying democratic backsliding protest in
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  Venezuela. I have another colleague who's
• 3:14
  not a professor. She's one of our fellows, Anne
• 3:18
  Applebaum, who writes for The Atlantic, very prominent public
• 3:22
  intellectual, writes a lot about Eastern Europe, has an
• 3:25
  incredible podcast called Autocracy in America, comparing
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  modalities in the US to that which has happened in Turkey and
• 3:38
  Hungary and other places around the world.
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  And so we have, I have another colleague who studies corruption
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  predominantly in China. So there really is an
• 3:50
  international core of folks. Most of us study American
• 3:54
  politics in some way or another, but we do have that global reach
• 3:57
  as well. Sure, sure.
• 3:59
  Well, I mean, I think that in order to understand American
• 4:01
  politics, and I think I've come to realize this over the last
• 4:04
  probably year and a half to maybe 2 years of my life, in
• 4:07
  order to understand American politics, you got to have a
• 4:09
  little of a bit of an understanding as to what's going
• 4:11
  on in the rest of the world. Because, you know, our
• 4:14
  decisions, as much as I think a lot of people would like, our
• 4:19
  decisions are typically not made in a vacuum.
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  You know, and the kind of decisions that are made in the
• 4:23
  legislature that's passed and, you know, whether you're left or
• 4:26
  right and whether the president is left to right, No, decisions
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  are just made in a vacuum of, hey, you know, we're here in
• 4:33
  this country and I'm a Democrat and we're here in this country
• 4:35
  and I'm a Republican. And therefore we're just going
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  to do this. And I mean, it seems more clear
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  to me now than ever that that other countries definitely have
• 4:44
  a say or influence in or not. I don't want to say influence,
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  but perhaps influence, I don't know.
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  But at least the it's the the other countries are taken into
• 4:53
  consideration. Right.
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  Well, there's geopolitical influence, and then there's also
• 4:59
  kind of looking to other countries as models for, you
• 5:03
  know, how to do things. And I think that it's
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  inescapable that the Trump administration, for example, has
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  looked prominently at Turkey and at Hungary even more so to think
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  about how it should approach universities or how it should
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  approach protest or how it should approach.
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  Interesting. Have they?
• 5:22
  Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
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  I'm sorry. What what are the relationships
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  or what can you or what are the you know what, what what have
• 5:32
  you correlation that you've established potentially?
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  Well, so this I, I will say that this is outside my research
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  area, so I'm just dipping my toe in for the moment.
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  But certainly in Hungary, Viktor Orban's approach to shutting
• 5:52
  down universities or constraining speech is very much
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  a model for the Trump administration especially.
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  And Orban has been a favored head of state in the US He's
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  spoken at traditionally national conservative conferences.
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  So he's really looked to as, as, you know, a person to emulate
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  and a government to emulate. Cool, really interesting.
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  That's that's I didn't I didn't I didn't know that and I should
• 6:27
  look a little more into that. So, Turkey, and I'm sorry, where
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  was and? Hungary in particular.
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  Yeah, of course. Cool.
• 6:35
  OK, Well then let's dip our toes into a little bit more about
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  what you do, which is studying college campuses, which is
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  probably one of the most important and lively and really
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  constantly changing environments, I would imagine.
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  It's so cool. How so tell me about, I mean, I
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  know that you, so your first book was about becoming right
• 6:58
  and how campus campuses shaped conservatives, which I'm really
• 7:01
  curious to hear a little bit about the premise and a little
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  bit about that because I was curious.
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  My experience and from what I've heard from my peers is that
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  campuses predominantly lean left on a general basis.
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  So I am curious about, and I, and I, and you know, for
• 7:22
  example, I do know, and I, I mentioned I were on the phone
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  that or, you know, before recording that, that I'd, I've
• 7:29
  been a creative writing literature major, which was a
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  largely left-leaning, you know, field of education.
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  And, but, but I know that a lot of my friends in the accounting
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  school were not necessarily surrounded by liberal
• 7:40
  professors. Or I know that some of my
• 7:42
  friends and perhaps you know, data or in engineering schools,
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  we're not necessarily surrounded by liberal teachers And I, I
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  wonder if there's a correlation between what students study and,
• 7:54
  and, and the political impacts as of of their, you know, their
• 7:58
  outlooks. Yeah, I mean, this is a huge
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  question and thank you for it. I just one tiny clarification.
• 8:04
  This is the kind of thing that professors will make much of A
• 8:09
  muchness about. But it wasn't my first book.
• 8:11
  Becoming Right wasn't my first book.
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  It was my second book, but it was the first book about higher
• 8:17
  education. So more or less correct.
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  So I, there are many, many things to say about this.
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  So I became interested in higher education and conservative
• 8:32
  college students around 2005, 2006.
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  So I've been writing about these things for a couple of decades
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  now, and it was around that time that there was a conversation
• 8:45
  that was being held. I mean, it, it sounds so obvious
• 8:49
  now, but there is a conversation that arose again in those times
• 8:54
  about universities as indoctrination mills.
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  And there were politicians and there were pundits and there
• 9:03
  were, you know, folks in the media who are very concerned not
• 9:08
  only about conservative college students, but about all students
• 9:12
  being swayed by their liberal professors into not only, like,
• 9:20
  personally being mistreated or disrespected.
• 9:26
  But I think there was also a concern that universities were
• 9:30
  creating a cadre of people who would vote for Democrats in the
• 9:34
  future. So there were political concerns
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  or personal concerns. And this was bubbling up in a
• 9:39
  whole bunch of ways and and nobody had really studied what
• 9:47
  students themselves thought about this.
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  And so I thought I as a qualitative interviewer, much
• 9:54
  like what you're doing with me today on this podcast where you
• 9:58
  conduct lengthy interviews to get long form stories about how
• 10:04
  people come to have their views and do what they do.
• 10:07
  I thought it would be really useful to actually talk with
• 10:12
  students and see what their experiences were.
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  So some of the research questions were, you know, what
• 10:17
  does it feel like to be a conservative at your university?
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  I took out questions of, you know, it's a great retaliation
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  if you write something conservative or is or is there
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  not? When does it happen?
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  When doesn't it happen? I also wanted to know, like,
• 10:36
  what kinds of politics they were interested in, whether they
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  wanted to kind of go big and be provocative or be more kind of
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  establishment and refined and quieter.
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  And so I chose a, tell me if this is getting too deep in the
• 10:53
  weeds, but I chose two, OK. I chose 2 universities. 1 was a
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  private elite university on the East Coast, let's call it an Ivy
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  League university, and the other was a public university in the
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  interior WI. Don't.
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  I don't know what Football League gets in, I'm sorry it's a
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  big sports school. But basically I wanted to look
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  at 2 very different kinds of settings, both 4 year colleges,
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  both kind of flagship within their own sector, and see if
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  there were differences in being at a big state school versus
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  being at a small private elite university that has very
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  selective admissions. And just to cut to the chase,
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  what I found is that conservatives on each campus
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  more or less shared the same ideological tenets at that time.
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  They were both for low taxes, small government, strong
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  national security, generally for cultural, the same cultural
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  issues, anti abortion, anti-gay rights, things of that sort.
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  But what was really, really notable is that the way they
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  chose to express themselves were very different.
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  So at the public university where people were more or less
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  anonymous to one another because it's such a big campus and a lot
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  of students don't live on campus and they don't know each other
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  by name, they chose to engage in very confrontational,
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  provocative actions. They didn't care if they upset
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  other people, and they thought that that would be a better kind
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  of political flex for getting the kinds of jobs that they
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  expected in politics later on, in state government and so on.
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  Whereas the students at the private elite university were
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  much warier about doing provocative actions.
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  They knew about provocative actions.
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  They knew that it would be really fun to do that, but they
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  thought of themselves as being elites and that they were going
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  to be working across the aisle eventually.
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  And they chose to do much less provocative actions because I
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  didn't want to anger their faculty, their fellow students.
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  And they were basically setting themselves up for, you know,
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  like world historical positions later on, right?
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  So I could really see what the effects were of going to a
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  different college. And I think this is this is kind
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  of The upshot is that we tend to think of people as, you know,
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  learning about their politics at the kitchen table with their
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  parents. But my research showed that it
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  really matters which college and university you go to because of
• 14:00
  particular style is kind of a legacy style at each of these
• 14:06
  two places. Wow.
• 14:08
  Hey everyone real quick if you're enjoying the show, click
• 14:11
  subscribe and rate the show. 5 stars helps a ton.
• 14:14
  Thanks so much. Sorry about that.
• 14:17
  We're back. So first of all, the reason why
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  I was laughing halfway through is please, I really could not
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  help but think about the movie Animal House while you were
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  describing the difference between the public and private
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  universities and, and the type of frat traditions that they've
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  had. You know, and one guy, one group
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  is just driving a motorcycle up a frat house.
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  The other one is, you know, even though they're also engaging in
• 14:36
  similar behavior, you know, it's much more organized and having
• 14:39
  that organized, you know, the proper events and everything
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  like that. And there's still just, as you
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  know, in a different sense, mean spirited or mean hearted.
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  It just manifested, I guess, in a different way.
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  But that was funny, Paladol, that popped up in my head while
• 14:53
  you were describing that. How many, how many students did
• 14:55
  you interview? How long did you run this, run
• 14:57
  this, run this for this, study for it?
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  So we interviewed I'm, I'm having a hard time remembering
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  precisely it was somewhere between 70 and 90.
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  I've done a number of additional studies since then, but it, it
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  was something like that. But, and, and I also wanted to
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  add, I'm sorry to preempt your next question, but you had, you
• 15:22
  had said that in one academic discipline, you experienced
• 15:29
  professors in one way, but some of your peers had experienced
• 15:34
  their professors differently in engineering and so forth.
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  And we did see some evidence of that.
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  So students knew which classes they wanted to avoid because
• 15:43
  they were kind of hopelessly leftist.
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  The word woke wasn't around at the time, so they didn't use the
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  word woke. But so we did see that there.
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  They felt like there was some variation between classes and
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  especially at the private elite university students said, look,
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  I just learned not to take a critical gender studies class.
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  Like why would I do that to myself?
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  I'm so much more conservative than the professor in there.
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  I'm not going to do that. So there was some evidence that
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  conservative students were selecting away from, from
• 16:20
  certain areas of, of learning. I'd also say, though, that at
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  the private elite university, students generally thought of
• 16:29
  their professors as being like experts in their field and like
• 16:34
  up on pedestals. And they would never would have
• 16:36
  been hired here if they weren't like incredible professors were
• 16:40
  very respectful of incredible students like me.
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  So they didn't complain as much about their professors as a
• 16:50
  students at the public university did who thought that
• 16:53
  there was just unbridled leftism in some of their classes.
• 16:58
  So that was a really interesting difference as well.
• 17:00
  I and I the way that I explain it is that the greater the
• 17:07
  anonymity on classes, the more you don't know your classmates,
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  the more you don't know your professors, the more mistrust
• 17:15
  can arise both ways, and the more basically the more
• 17:22
  polarization can occur because you don't know and trust other
• 17:27
  people on campus. So I'm curious, just in response
• 17:32
  to that, perhaps I would think that if I didn't know what my
• 17:38
  professor was thinking, then I would be afraid to say anything.
• 17:41
  I don't know that I would get necessarily get more polarized.
• 17:44
  I would be more likely to keep my opinions to myself and I
• 17:48
  actually have a story. So I, I, I in 2016, I voted for
• 17:53
  the first time I did happen that year.
• 17:54
  I did vote for Trump. I was more conservative minded
• 17:56
  back then. And, and my professor, who I was
• 18:01
  very close with from the previous year.
• 18:03
  He's my, the creative writing and literature teacher that I
• 18:06
  give him a ton of credit for getting me involved in the, in
• 18:08
  the literary world and teach me incredible things.
• 18:10
  But he abhorred Trump, absolutely hated him.
• 18:15
  And and at a certain point, I was actually TA ING for him and
• 18:19
  he was going and his classes would turn into almost 45 minute
• 18:22
  monologues about, you know, about Trump and the issues that
• 18:25
  it, that, that, that the country has and why, you know, we've
• 18:27
  become the country that we are. And at this point I'm, I'm
• 18:30
  conflicted because I'm very close with him.
• 18:33
  I like him a lot. I'm A and I and, and I know, and
• 18:35
  I, I and I completely disagree. And quite frankly, I'm more
• 18:38
  interested in the creative, creative writing aspect of, you
• 18:41
  know, what the class is supposed to be anyway.
• 18:43
  And so I went to him out after class one time and only I only
• 18:47
  felt comfortable because I knew him and I was ready to hang for
• 18:49
  him. And it was a real, you know,
• 18:50
  we're relatively close. I said, professor, I was like,
• 18:52
  I'm just, you know, Joe, I I love you, man.
• 18:54
  I I just letting you know, like between the two of us, I did
• 18:58
  vote for Trump. And I totally get why you don't
• 19:00
  like him. I totally understand.
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  But like, it's killing me that like, you're just going on about
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  this nonstop. And he said, and like, you could
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  see he was very, very conflicted for a brief second.
• 19:09
  And they said, you're absolutely correct.
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  And then from then on, it's actually very funny.
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  During his monologues, he would take great care to say, and This
• 19:16
  is why the system's in the gutter.
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  And This is why we had people like Trump and they'd look at me
• 19:19
  and go and Hillary and Bernie, and he's like, they're all a
• 19:22
  bunch of Kirks. And and he really did go out of
• 19:24
  his way to, you know, try, I guess, to not be as isolating
• 19:29
  perhaps. But I think and you know, and,
• 19:32
  and on a similar note, I've heard people make this argument.
• 19:35
  I don't know whether I quite buy it or not.
• 19:37
  But also with the with gun use, particularly in Florida where I
• 19:42
  live, people say it's always safe to assume that the I always
• 19:46
  add that the person you're dealing with has a gun.
• 19:48
  Just to be extra safe, you know, just to just to not try to
• 19:51
  provide, you know, provoke anything more intense than it
• 19:54
  could ever possibly get, God forbid to that point.
• 19:57
  And I would imagine that. Sometimes that might happen.
• 20:02
  That might you know that I, I think that the used to be kind
• 20:05
  of a, a bridge between what people's political opinions were
• 20:08
  and what they would do in the public eye, right.
• 20:12
  Well, you know, I'm thinking a lot about this example of your
• 20:15
  professor, a trusted faculty member, mentor.
• 20:20
  And, you know, I, I don't know the situation better, but I
• 20:24
  really that concerns me that he was politicizing the classroom
• 20:29
  in that way. And I think it's incumbent on
• 20:33
  professional scholars teaching young people not to bring their
• 20:39
  politics into the classroom. You know, one of the things that
• 20:42
  I heard at public was the public university was that.
• 20:48
  So this was the year that these were the years leading up to
• 20:54
  Obama. And I can't remember who he's
• 20:59
  running. It wasn't Romney in 2008.
• 21:02
  Oh, McCain, McCain. And and there were protests
• 21:07
  against the war in Iraq. And the students said that their
• 21:12
  professors actually left them out of class to join the
• 21:16
  protest. And I thought that that was
• 21:18
  terrible. You know, like they can go to
• 21:21
  protest to the protest on their own time, but as a faculty
• 21:27
  member, you are condoning certain political activity and
• 21:31
  thought and not other political activity and thought.
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  And I don't think that is a professional stance to take.
• 21:42
  And interestingly so, there are a lot more people in the public
• 21:46
  university among the conservatives who said that
• 21:49
  there faculty members were less professional than what we heard
• 21:55
  at the private elite university. I don't know, you know, I don't
• 21:59
  know what that's about. If there's, you know, not only
• 22:04
  is there a legacy style for students at the university, but
• 22:08
  there's also a legacy style for faculty at these different
• 22:11
  institutions. That's probably true, but I
• 22:15
  thought that, you know, in general, what was happening at
• 22:19
  the elite private sounded better than what was happening at the
• 22:24
  public. And so, you know, one of my
• 22:27
  takeaways from that book was that faculty have an obligation
• 22:32
  to be very careful about portraying their own politics in
• 22:37
  class and that they to the best of their abilities, they should
• 22:40
  not do that. You said that you voted for
• 22:44
  Trump in 2016. I did not.
• 22:47
  I grew up in a liberal family. You know, I'm, I'm like many of
• 22:51
  the faculty at my university and, and left of center, But you
• 22:58
  know, I would be extremely upset if I heard that conservative
• 23:01
  students or libertarian students or students further to the left
• 23:06
  then I am felt uncomfortable in my class because of my political
• 23:10
  stances. So I try with the best of my
• 23:13
  ability not to bring politics into the classroom.
• 23:17
  That's really awesome. I really can do that.
• 23:19
  That's really great. I the other thing I was thinking
• 23:22
  while you were just responding about the public universities is
• 23:26
  I was also wondering, and you know what?
• 23:28
  I so when I was in high school, I, I started off in a small
• 23:31
  private, all boys school and I switched to a much larger, it's
• 23:35
  also a private school, but a Co Ed school about halfway through
• 23:37
  high school. And one thing my mom had warned
• 23:40
  me about, because she was very hesitant to send me there,
• 23:44
  probably rightfully so. My mom typically has known best
• 23:46
  throughout my life. So I trust her.
• 23:49
  I trust her for almost everything.
• 23:50
  But one thing that that she had said was there's going to be a
• 23:54
  lot more shenanigans going on in this bigger school.
• 23:57
  And she's like, even if hypothetically it's the same
• 24:01
  percentage, just the fact that you're surrounded by so many
• 24:04
  more people, just the fact that the population is so much larger
• 24:07
  will probably mean that you're going to just be exposed to more
• 24:10
  of it. And it's, it might be a little
• 24:12
  bit more regular. I'm curious if that's the case.
• 24:14
  I mean, if you're, if you're a university that has 10,000
• 24:16
  undergrads or 15,000 undergrads, and then you're a public
• 24:19
  university with 100,000 students or whatever, whatever number it
• 24:22
  may be, you're going to, you're going to have to hire a lot more
• 24:26
  people. And you know, and especially
• 24:28
  with that kind of sense of exclusivity that that these
• 24:31
  private schools or Ivy League's have had for so many years, you
• 24:35
  know, it almost seems, it almost seems inevitable that something
• 24:38
  like that would. Happen.
• 24:40
  Yeah, I think that's right. I, I, I do think that the
• 24:42
  smaller the community, the, you know, in many ways the easier it
• 24:47
  is to have high quality conversations.
• 24:51
  The analog to that is like social media versus like people
• 24:55
  you actually talk with, right? Like the more anonymous it gets,
• 24:59
  the fewer guardrails there are for talking.
• 25:05
  So I think that's right. I think the other thing that
• 25:07
  happens when you're on a big more anonymous campus is that
• 25:12
  you try to you, you gravitate to people who are within your
• 25:21
  community, right? And so then you get that whole
• 25:26
  dynamic of an echo chamber. So it's like US against the
• 25:30
  world. And I think that that probably
• 25:33
  also exacerbates a sense of like, we need to fight back and
• 25:38
  we need to fight that card. So yeah, those things happen as
• 25:43
  well. I in my in my my personal
• 25:46
  experience, I've found that a remedy to that type of thinking
• 25:49
  is to actually try to engage in a lot of different types of
• 25:52
  communities. So for example, I jog, I love
• 25:57
  craft beer, I do jiu jitsu, I write, you know, I teach it, I
• 26:01
  teach high school English, I do this podcast, I do business and
• 26:06
  I do sales. And so I find myself in a lot of
• 26:09
  different worlds and I find myself having to relate to
• 26:12
  people on, you know, very fundamentally different ways.
• 26:15
  But really seeing that like people are so good for like I
• 26:18
  can so many different ways too. And like, you know what, like
• 26:21
  dude, as the dude at the brewery that tends to be a little bit
• 26:23
  more left-leaning says something that I don't agree with about
• 26:25
  foreign policy. OK, you know what?
• 26:28
  We're still having a beer and hanging out and it's a Sunday
• 26:29
  afternoon and watching a sports game.
• 26:31
  It's a good time. And the same thing on the
• 26:33
  jujitsu mat. If someone tends to be a more
• 26:34
  conservative minded and says something I don't agree about,
• 26:36
  about the current war that we're, you know, that we're in,
• 26:38
  then then OK, you know what? We're here to roll.
• 26:41
  We're here to have a good time. And you know, I totally get
• 26:43
  where you're coming from and like, let's, let's keep like we
• 26:45
  still, we still have this relationship and establish
• 26:47
  connection despite the disagreement.
• 26:49
  And I think that with social media also like what you say,
• 26:52
  what you're saying and maybe what you're even implying is
• 26:55
  that this cut the social media bubbles of echo chambers
• 26:58
  actually started earlier in the early 2000s with college
• 27:01
  campuses. Is that something that you that
• 27:02
  you think would be accurate? Yeah, I, I mean, I don't know
• 27:09
  the deep history of this. We know that Facebook started at
• 27:12
  Harvard so that Mark Zuckerberg and like, right, how cute women
• 27:17
  were or girls were. So some of that was beginning.
• 27:22
  I think that you see this in social life all the time as
• 27:25
  people find like minded people and the more they feel at odds
• 27:31
  with the larger society, then they'll cluster together.
• 27:35
  I I just think that's what we do.
• 27:37
  I mean, that's what ethnic tribes are.
• 27:40
  That's what race tribes. That's why they're women's
• 27:42
  organizations. You know, like we do that kind
• 27:45
  of thing, but the question is how bad do we think the other
• 27:50
  people are on the other side of that boundary are right?
• 27:54
  If you haven't read Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone, I
• 27:58
  would recommend that you read that.
• 27:59
  This is an older book, but it's really about how the kinds of
• 28:04
  community organizations and associations that you were
• 28:08
  talking about, you know, breweries, jujitsu gyms, you
• 28:16
  know, golf clubs, whatever, you know, places, people where
• 28:20
  people associate the the frequency with which people do
• 28:25
  this has absolutely plummeted, absolutely plummeted.
• 28:29
  And the beauty of a thing like a bowling league was that it
• 28:33
  wasn't just working class people by themselves.
• 28:38
  Like these associations were more, you know, cross class
• 28:44
  places. And so people were seeing each
• 28:46
  other more. They were like, it creates more
• 28:49
  interdependence, It creates more trust.
• 28:52
  Is it more social capital? And the more we kind of hive off
• 28:56
  into these like minded little pods, you know, I think the
• 29:02
  worse it is for for society. Right, right, right.
• 29:07
  I totally agree. I completely agree.
• 29:09
  And I think that I think that there are things that we could
• 29:11
  do to kind of get ourselves out of it.
• 29:13
  And I, I, you know, and I, I think at events, I think in
• 29:18
  person events, and I've been saying this, my podcast for a
• 29:20
  while. Every time I, I have a
• 29:22
  psychology series and I, you know, every single time I talk
• 29:24
  to someone that know that understands people, they all say
• 29:29
  the same thing. They all say isolation is one of
• 29:33
  the worst things that we can do and we're effectively self
• 29:37
  imposing it on ourselves almost since 2020, you know, since
• 29:40
  COVID has pretty much been, you know, and I, and I was, and I'd
• 29:44
  spoken to, you know, and unfortunately, you know, after
• 29:47
  the horrible, you know, variety of school shootings or mass or,
• 29:51
  you know, murders or whatever that's happened to, you know,
• 29:53
  throughout the year. I, I, one thing that I can't
• 29:56
  help thinking about is how long that student, you know, this
• 30:00
  19/20/21 year old, they were 1718 when COVID happened.
• 30:05
  They're locked in their house away.
• 30:06
  They're locked away in their house.
• 30:07
  Rather they get out of, you know, they're, they're trying to
• 30:09
  find a job that they, maybe they're in school remote, maybe
• 30:12
  they're working remote. I mean, we don't even know how
• 30:14
  often do these people even have any kind of relationships or
• 30:16
  friends and to be blasted. And you know, I, I just deleted
• 30:19
  my Twitter again, again 2 days ago, you know, because I was,
• 30:23
  really, was really weighing me down.
• 30:24
  And two days later, I feel incredible and, but I can't
• 30:27
  imagine just the isolation and the, and, and the stress and
• 30:31
  just being bombed from all sides by, you know, by, by, by, by
• 30:35
  horrible, you know, divisive news.
• 30:38
  You know what living in that living that guy girl's head
• 30:41
  would be like, you know, and, and so I'm immediately
• 30:45
  overwhelmed with just sadness of the scenario that took place
• 30:49
  that even allowed this to, to, to fester for so long and the
• 30:51
  end and accumulate and something so terrible.
• 30:54
  Yeah. And I, I think, you know, we're
• 30:58
  talking about universities in higher education, college
• 31:01
  campuses and university campuses are great labs for trying to get
• 31:07
  people off their devices and involved with other people.
• 31:13
  And ideally with people who aren't just thinking about
• 31:17
  politics or thinking about social issues or thinking about
• 31:20
  masculinity or femininity or war or peace or whatever.
• 31:24
  Like get them talking to one another.
• 31:27
  And it's not easy, you know, once we go down the route of
• 31:34
  being more isolated from one another, what other, you know,
• 31:38
  whether that's like individually isolated or within our own like
• 31:42
  minded communities, it is hard to bring people back into the
• 31:46
  fold. So you really have to design
• 31:49
  activities and design class work and design events so that you're
• 31:56
  trying to overcome the hurdle that that we've placed on
• 32:00
  society. But but I think universities are
• 32:03
  really good places for that. They cannot be the only places
• 32:07
  for that because only about 30% of the population goes to
• 32:11
  universities and most of them are, you know, between the ages
• 32:15
  of 18 and 26 or so. So we have to be that creative
• 32:23
  and think about how universities aren't the only places for this,
• 32:27
  but they can be good test cases, right?
• 32:30
  Like, try things there and then think about transporting those
• 32:36
  models that you developed on campus out into other parts of
• 32:40
  society. Totally, totally.
• 32:42
  And I think that for what it's worth, the most valuable part of
• 32:45
  university for me was the fact that I'm living in a town, a
• 32:51
  complete city, literally a city full of just people my age.
• 32:55
  Like there was No Fear of like, you know, like, you know,
• 32:58
  walking through the street, you know, walking through campus
• 33:00
  AT2O clock in the morning. There was no like, like everyone
• 33:03
  around me is like my peer. Everyone around me is someone
• 33:06
  that's in a similar position to me, that's around my age, that's
• 33:09
  just trying to do the same thing, which is me, which is
• 33:11
  trying to figure themselves out and how they're going to support
• 33:14
  themselves in this world. And like, and into how the
• 33:16
  entire world where you grow up with people around that were
• 33:19
  you're in a, you're kind of in a huge, so it's, it's a huge
• 33:22
  social playground and it's a huge opportunity to branch out
• 33:28
  and experience and, and so many people try so many wonderful new
• 33:30
  things. Even, you know, and I want to
• 33:32
  even just take away the education aspect for just a
• 33:36
  second, even though it's hard to, you know, it's hard to do.
• 33:38
  It's college, you know, just, you know, I, I tell students, if
• 33:41
  they say, what's the, you know, what's the point of going to
• 33:42
  college? I said, honestly, it depends on
• 33:44
  what you want to do. I was like, but there is so much
• 33:48
  value in spending three or four years on a campus in a city with
• 33:51
  a bunch of people your age and just discovering yourself,
• 33:54
  having fun and getting to meet you got to know people.
• 33:56
  Like just that end of itself is worth it, is worth spending a
• 33:59
  couple of years of your life on. I agree.
• 34:01
  When I went off to college a long time ago in 1982, I really
• 34:06
  thought of it as, OK, this is a great opportunity to break out
• 34:13
  of whatever shells I was. Yeah, I've been pretty high in
• 34:16
  high school. And I was like, I can, I can put
• 34:21
  that aside. I can be a completely different
• 34:23
  person. Nobody knows me here.
• 34:25
  All right? You know, if there are a couple
• 34:26
  people from my high school here, fine.
• 34:29
  I'll just avoid that. Like, I get to become a new
• 34:34
  person. I mean, this is one of the
• 34:35
  reasons why I called that book Becoming Right was because I
• 34:42
  didn't think that people were already set in stone when they
• 34:45
  step foot on campus. I figured that they were
• 34:49
  becoming certain kinds of people.
• 34:52
  That's what college is, right? Like, I mean, that's what all
• 34:55
  parts of our lives are. It's just really concentrated in
• 34:59
  the college years, if you let it be.
• 35:01
  And I mean, you know, to your point as well, seeking out
• 35:06
  people who are more different from you is very rewarding,
• 35:09
  right? Like there's a way to approach
• 35:12
  college and do it in a, in a safer way, right?
• 35:17
  Like you gravitate toward people who are more like you, whether
• 35:20
  that's in sororities and fraternities or on sports teams
• 35:23
  or whatever. But, and and I'm not saying that
• 35:27
  that's a bad thing, but also do the thing that is less
• 35:33
  comfortable is less obvious. Meet those other people, meet
• 35:38
  the weirdos, meet the jocks, you know, like meet the people who
• 35:41
  don't agree with you politically, who don't go to the
• 35:43
  same church or synagogue or temple or mosque or whatever,
• 35:47
  you know, or none at all, you know, like talk to those people,
• 35:50
  learn from them. Also learn what they're learning
• 35:53
  in class. That was a real benefit for me
• 35:56
  because like, I enjoyed my classes, but I learned a lot
• 36:00
  about what but other people were learning in their classes and
• 36:03
  that was just thrilling you. Know, I didn't know anything
• 36:07
  about college when I got started and I was very quickly so
• 36:12
  excited about how many cool titles of classes there were.
• 36:17
  And so my favorite question to ask people when I was on campus
• 36:20
  was what class do you take in this semester as towards the end
• 36:22
  of the semester, what do you signed up for next semester?
• 36:24
  What are you excited to, you know, what class did you try to
• 36:26
  get into that you got locked out of because everyone's flocking
• 36:28
  to that teacher, whatever it is because, you know, I mean it's,
• 36:32
  it's it's incredible how much you know, I mean, you know, the
• 36:35
  word has obviously a stigma to it now, but diversity there is
• 36:38
  in in the approaches of ways of of of studying, of studying
• 36:42
  anything. I mean, it's really incredible.
• 36:44
  I'm doing a podcast in a couple of weeks with a professor, with
• 36:47
  a professor that's a Bob Dylan scholar, you know, and as I'm a
• 36:50
  huge Bob Dylan fan. And so this is, this is great.
• 36:54
  But I would, I, I, I, I would, if I knew in high school that I
• 36:58
  could be a professor teaching Springsteen and Bob Dylan
• 37:01
  literature, you know, lyrics as literature and like describing
• 37:05
  the American dream or politics through the, you know, through
• 37:08
  the zeitgeist of, of, of, of lyrics and, and literary works
• 37:11
  like that. I'd be like, this is the best
• 37:13
  freaking thing in the entire universe.
• 37:15
  I can't believe how wonderful this is.
• 37:16
  So I think that we have to give ourselves shots too.
• 37:19
  Right. And as a student, I was an
• 37:21
  anthropology major. I became a sociologist later for
• 37:24
  my PhD. But the best class I took was a
• 37:28
  American art since 1945. You know, it gave me a whole new
• 37:34
  lens for understanding visual art.
• 37:38
  It gave me a language. And, you know, it gave me a good
• 37:42
  cocktail conversation. Like, do you prefer Pollock to
• 37:45
  the Cooney? You know, like there's all of
• 37:47
  the stuff and, you know, it was was visually inspiring and the
• 37:51
  professor was incredible. And and so I remember more from
• 37:56
  that class than I remember from any other class that I took in
• 38:00
  my major or in a more, you know, social science adjacent.
• 38:07
  So yeah, if we're trying to get the word out there about how to
• 38:11
  approach college, it's to be very open minded and to
• 38:15
  experiment a lot and and experiment widely, I would say.
• 38:19
  Yeah, and nothing is set in stone for anything.
• 38:23
  That's the other thing. And you know, I mean, you can
• 38:26
  try something and say it's not for me.
• 38:27
  And you could say, you know what?
• 38:28
  I, you know, I wanted it. I, I, I checked this out, this
• 38:31
  class or this teacher and even the fact you could drop classes
• 38:33
  and pick one up again for like a month, a month and 1/2 at the
• 38:36
  beginning of this semester is such a blessing.
• 38:38
  It's so cool. You know what?
• 38:40
  I took this professor for two weeks.
• 38:41
  I thought it was going to be cool.
• 38:42
  Wasn't my speed. He was way too filling the the
• 38:45
  blanks, you know, you know, better or for worse.
• 38:47
  And I'm going to do something else and you can't Don, you
• 38:50
  know, like it literally like, you know, I think that I think
• 38:53
  that that's the other thing. I'm not going to like it.
• 38:56
  Well, if you don't, you could switch in a week or a class or
• 38:58
  two classes, whatever you want. But I digress on one.
• 39:03
  Yeah. Yeah, I would just add to this
• 39:05
  conversation that some of the research that I've been seeing
• 39:10
  about people being fearful about what they say in class is more
• 39:15
  related to their concerns about their peers than it is about
• 39:20
  their concerns with their professors.
• 39:22
  So I, you know, I'm, I'm worried about saying the wrong thing
• 39:26
  politically, for example, because I feel like I won't be
• 39:30
  respected or I don't belong here.
• 39:33
  And I think as we move forward, that's something that all of us
• 39:39
  should take seriously. It's not nearly to the extent
• 39:43
  that some would have us believe. I've, I've seen surveys of
• 39:46
  students, including one here at Johns Hopkins where about, you
• 39:52
  know, like 5% or 7% or 10% of students talk about this, not
• 39:57
  90% even. So, you know, 10% is too many to
• 40:03
  be worried about being kind of castigated.
• 40:07
  If they say the wrong thing, but I think there are ways that we
• 40:10
  can kind of construct conversations or create
• 40:13
  opportunities for people to feel more comfortable about
• 40:16
  expressing themselves. And, and I think at a place like
• 40:20
  Johns Hopkins, part of it is that they're just afraid of
• 40:23
  saying not the politically sensitive thing, but just like
• 40:29
  the wrong answer we have such like.
• 40:32
  Yeah. These are students who, like,
• 40:36
  have thought of themselves as overachievers their entire
• 40:39
  lives, and so they just don't want to get the wrong answer.
• 40:42
  But, you know, in many of these conversations that we have about
• 40:46
  politics or social issues, there isn't a wrong answer, right?
• 40:50
  So we just have to get people feeling more comfortable about
• 40:53
  expressing themselves, and that opens up a conversation that can
• 40:57
  be more fruitful. That's awesome.
• 41:00
  It's awesome. I wanted to lead into and I
• 41:03
  think just because it would be an absolute sin to not
• 41:07
  acknowledge this for the sake of our podcast, but what does among
• 41:11
  campus from the left and the right and the libertarians, I
• 41:15
  suppose because you know, it's interesting that your research
• 41:20
  started at a particularly intensive time.
• 41:24
  And I was young. I was born in 95, so I was only
• 41:27
  1012 years old when you were when you were doing this
• 41:29
  research. But I've since become aware of
• 41:32
  the fact that, like you said, Obama was starting to run for
• 41:36
  president. And we were in Iraq and it
• 41:38
  looked, you know, and we were just starting off and we weren't
• 41:41
  sure what we thought about the wars.
• 41:42
  And, you know, and I know that the public was split, was split.
• 41:45
  And I know that Bush's presidency, I, I don't know what
• 41:48
  his popularity was like by 2006 or 5 or 6, but I know that right
• 41:52
  after 911 it shot up. And then Trump kind of comes and
• 41:58
  literally, it feels like shakes up campus.
• 42:00
  And this is actually when I'd, you know, when I've been there,
• 42:03
  he shook up college campuses. And, you know, there's a huge
• 42:08
  difference between Trump one and Trump two.
• 42:10
  I would say that, you know, as far as the presidencies, I would
• 42:14
  say that when he was running initially, I think a lot more
• 42:17
  people were a lot more hesitant to express their opinions and
• 42:21
  perspective. I know that I certainly was.
• 42:23
  I was terrified to tell anyone that I that I'd supported or
• 42:25
  voted for Trump. And I know that a lot of my
• 42:28
  friends felt either like their grades or social standings would
• 42:32
  be at jeopardy if they if they'd made that known.
• 42:35
  And then it kind of became like an act of, and then the club
• 42:41
  kind of became an act of defiance, I think around COVID
• 42:44
  time. And, you know, the transition to
• 42:48
  the Biden presidency, once Trump had lost, had, you know,
• 42:53
  students had kind of been much more comfortable expressing
• 42:57
  themselves, perhaps because they now saw themselves as the
• 42:59
  underdog and as as opposed to, you know, this just blatantly
• 43:02
  obnoxious presence. But there was, I mean, there,
• 43:07
  there was a huge shift, I'm sure culturally and on campus between
• 43:11
  Trump one and Trump 2 over the last 10 years.
• 43:13
  And so I'm curious what your thoughts on that in general are.
• 43:18
  And then what do you think is the next thing?
• 43:20
  Because I mean, I think he's running.
• 43:21
  I, you know, he's especially if the if the midterms turn out the
• 43:23
  way that it looks like they will, it doesn't look like he
• 43:26
  has much time to do much else. So what do you think, you know,
• 43:31
  is something that's going to affect college students in the
• 43:33
  future now that Trump's time is kind of up?
• 43:38
  Yeah, I. Love.
• 43:41
  It by the way, the only thing I would like if possible is just
• 43:44
  to get an update on the is just left and right perspectives and
• 43:48
  and then what's next? And you can take it from there
• 43:51
  however you want. OK, it sounds good.
• 43:53
  So when I was conducting research for my last book, this
• 43:59
  is called the Channels of Student Activism, How the left
• 44:02
  and right are Winning and Losing on Campus politics in Campus
• 44:06
  politics today or some like terribly long title.
• 44:10
  Trump had just been elected. This was in 2017 and this was
• 44:15
  the first administration, obviously.
• 44:18
  And as you know, he really was shaking up students on the left
• 44:24
  and the right and really the student clubs on the on the
• 44:30
  right especially. So there are a lot of students
• 44:34
  that we talked with who were definitely Trump advocates and
• 44:41
  they thought of the College Republicans as being hopelessly
• 44:47
  behind the times and really boring.
• 44:49
  And they were kind of going headlong into into this new
• 44:53
  president. And they, they actually use the
• 44:55
  words that you use, which is that the Republican Party needed
• 44:59
  shaking up, right? And so, and this is especially,
• 45:02
  I've always been very attentive not only to what students are
• 45:05
  doing on campus, but also what outside organizations are doing
• 45:09
  to mobilize students on campus. And this is right at the time
• 45:13
  that Turning Point USA was, you know, getting founded and and
• 45:22
  getting on campus. Yes, this was so we were on
• 45:27
  campus in 2017 and 2018. OK, gotcha.
• 45:30
  I just went to that reference. OK, gotcha.
• 45:32
  Yeah, yeah. And and students were kind of
• 45:35
  the conservative students were self segregating somewhere
• 45:42
  gravitating to our college Republicans and some are going
• 45:45
  to Turning Point USA. And they had quite a bit of they
• 45:53
  did not respect one another very much.
• 45:55
  They saw themselves as very different people.
• 45:58
  We did, we did. Well, I won't go into the weeds
• 46:01
  on that. So the yeah.
• 46:06
  And the students who are left of center, either leftist or
• 46:12
  liberal, who I I think it's very important to differentiate
• 46:16
  between as well. Yeah.
• 46:20
  So when we asked students to identify themselves, like, you
• 46:26
  know, how how do you you know what?
• 46:29
  What? What do you call yourself?
• 46:32
  Students who called themselves Democrats were very likely to
• 46:36
  call themselves liberal. Students to the left of liberal
• 46:41
  eschewed the democratic label. They did not call themselves
• 46:46
  liberals. They did not call themselves
• 46:48
  Democrats. Maybe they were, you know,
• 46:50
  democratic socialists. Maybe they were more anarchic,
• 46:55
  but they really, you know, many of them said that they really
• 46:58
  didn't even see a difference between Republicans and
• 47:02
  Democrats. And among the Liberal Democrats,
• 47:04
  that was complete anathema, right?
• 47:07
  Like a horse there differences Republicans, but but but it's
• 47:12
  very important to see these cleavages on both sides of of
• 47:16
  the political spectrum. And then libertarians, you asked
• 47:20
  about libertarians. I mean, it was really in this
• 47:23
  project when I realized you really can't clump libertarians
• 47:27
  on the right in the way that most people do because they are
• 47:32
  orthogonal to conservatism in a bunch of ways.
• 47:35
  But they also don't agree with the left in a bunch of ways.
• 47:39
  So like really as, as some of them would say, we don't fit in
• 47:44
  at all. So so we were looking at how
• 47:47
  they were mobilizing as well. So in terms of now, I mean, it's
• 47:55
  interesting. I see maybe students on the
• 48:02
  right being and my, my, I haven't done research on this.
• 48:10
  So my experiences more on one campus alone, but students on
• 48:16
  the right here at Hopkins are I've met very few who say that
• 48:25
  they are unbridled Trump supporters.
• 48:27
  It's. Hard to be now if you were
• 48:29
  voting for him last year. Right, right.
• 48:34
  And yeah, not I mean that like meaning the fine.
• 48:39
  I don't know if I don't know if that's too politically partial
• 48:42
  to say, but it did not see it. It does not seem as though at
• 48:45
  the moment that the agenda that he found that a lot of people
• 48:48
  were excited about were is getting carried out yet
• 48:51
  necessarily is what I meant to say rightly.
• 48:53
  Yeah, yeah, I think there are some Trump supporters on campus.
• 48:57
  I know that a few students have started a Turning Point USA Camp
• 49:02
  club on campus and so they see themselves more mega than
• 49:08
  Republican. So there are there are a few,
• 49:11
  but the more politically active folks I think maybe are seeing
• 49:16
  life after mega. And in the same way that those
• 49:21
  Eastern elite students were worried about their future, they
• 49:27
  didn't want to, they don't want to cast their lot with the Trump
• 49:32
  administration. You know, I'm not exactly sure,
• 49:34
  but I, I think that's going on. I'd also say that there's kind
• 49:42
  of less conversation about the troubles that students have on
• 49:51
  campus now. And it's more just like full
• 49:54
  bore anti university rhetoric when it comes to higher
• 49:59
  education. So in a sense, like students
• 50:02
  have maybe gotten less important to the whole left, right
• 50:09
  discourse. You know, basically, you know,
• 50:12
  folks like Chris Ruffo or Max Eden or JD Vance seeing
• 50:17
  universities as the enemy and wish to see higher education
• 50:24
  completely kind of obliterated in its current form.
• 50:30
  And so there's less kind of talk about about what the role of
• 50:34
  students is and what's happening to students.
• 50:38
  That's I'm curious. Oh, man, that's really
• 50:40
  interesting because I'm, I'm just curious, do you think that
• 50:46
  it that's the case because students are always interested
• 50:50
  or because the students are just not interested in the two in the
• 50:53
  in either party at the moment? Meaning I think that right now
• 50:56
  they just feels like there's like I think more people are
• 50:59
  politically homeless as I would probably consider myself at the
• 51:03
  moment that like, hey, I'm not listen, you know, I'm not
• 51:08
  marrying myself to either side of them.
• 51:09
  I don't think that either one of them are right.
• 51:11
  I think that you have, whether you have Obama, whether you have
• 51:13
  Bush or whether you have Trump, whether you have Biden, it's
• 51:16
  still hard to buy a house. It's still hard to, you know,
• 51:18
  it's still hard to get a job. I still have a lot of student
• 51:20
  debt. I still have a lot of credit
• 51:21
  card debt. So I think a lot of people were
• 51:23
  told that a system was supposed to help them succeed in a
• 51:27
  certain way. And that if you, if you take
• 51:29
  these steps, then perhaps there will be an outcome that is more,
• 51:34
  that's more favorable to you. And I think that after X amount
• 51:38
  of years of hearing that doesn't happen, whether that's five
• 51:40
  years or 10 years or 15, I don't really know how long that's been
• 51:42
  going on for. I know that I've been saying
• 51:44
  that for probably a decade now where I say, unless you, unless
• 51:47
  you're studying something specifically like engineering or
• 51:49
  you're willing to, or you, I, I don't think you should go to
• 51:52
  debt. If you're going to study the
• 51:53
  arts or the humanities personally, I think that you
• 51:58
  should, if you could find a way to pay, you pay your way through
• 52:00
  it and it's something you want to do because you want to pursue
• 52:02
  it. And I don't, but, but I the
• 52:04
  opportunities are so small out of out of college.
• 52:08
  And I tried every trick in the book when as an English major, I
• 52:11
  would take a business. I think I used to take the
• 52:15
  business school's portfolio case and put my resume in it and go
• 52:20
  to the business fair and give my resume out to different
• 52:23
  companies. And they'd look at it and they'd
• 52:24
  look at my resume and they'd see I was an English major and walk
• 52:26
  me out, even though I had, even though I had real estate
• 52:30
  experience or I, you know, I was on the project management side
• 52:33
  or I was a broker. And they just said, listen, we,
• 52:36
  you know, it's, we're just not, you know, we're not interested
• 52:38
  and it's not the way we're going to hire.
• 52:40
  So I, I, I, so I think that, and I think that a lot of times
• 52:44
  political, you know, politicians would where are, you know, the
• 52:47
  youth vote is obviously extremely important and the
• 52:49
  college vote has been important throughout American history.
• 52:52
  You know, whether it's protests, whether it's rallies, whether
• 52:54
  it, you know, whatever it may be, the students make themselves
• 52:57
  heard. You know, they always have.
• 53:01
  So I know that they're valuable for politicians.
• 53:03
  I wonder if this is more of an indictment on the system than it
• 53:06
  might be on the students, that the students are just saying,
• 53:09
  hey, we just don't want to be part of your game anymore.
• 53:12
  Yeah, I I definitely see some evidence of that.
• 53:16
  At the same time, you know, if you look at how college students
• 53:22
  vote, I mean, you still see more people voting for Democrats, but
• 53:29
  that doesn't mean that they're deeply invested in the
• 53:32
  Democratic way, right? Like, that could just be a vote
• 53:36
  against the other person. And a lot of, you know, a lot of
• 53:40
  what polarization means these days is it's not so much that I
• 53:44
  like my party, it's that I hate the other party, right?
• 53:48
  That that is affective polarization that you're very
• 53:52
  negative about the other side. So I think there's probably some
• 53:55
  of that. I think there is some holding
• 53:57
  your nose and voting, but maybe not being as invested on a
• 54:04
  day-to-day basis. And, you know, it could be that.
• 54:11
  I mean, there are lots of reasons why a lot of students
• 54:14
  have decided to major in STEM. That's where they think the jobs
• 54:20
  are. That's where they think higher
• 54:22
  pay is, you know, all of that kind of stuff.
• 54:24
  But it also might be true that STEM is a deep politicized.
• 54:29
  I mean, in some ways it's not really.
• 54:31
  I mean, it's very political. And so far as you know, this
• 54:36
  administration has made funding for medical research or
• 54:43
  alternative energy or whatever it is they, you know, that's
• 54:46
  become very politicized too. But it could be that students
• 54:51
  decide to major in engineering or, you know, do a pre Med major
• 54:59
  because those are seen as less politically salient.
• 55:06
  I don't know. I, I, I think it's more about
• 55:08
  the job market than anything else.
• 55:11
  But you know, when I was talking with students way back in 2000
• 55:17
  and six, 2007, the conservative ones, they said that their
• 55:24
  science classes were less politicized than than certainly,
• 55:29
  I don't know. There's there's probably some
• 55:31
  combination. Yeah, and I, and I, and I get
• 55:33
  that by the way, especially because, for example, you know,
• 55:36
  and as a, I'm an English teacher now it, you know, I'm teaching
• 55:39
  high school English and a lot of the, a lot of the material is
• 55:43
  interpretation. A lot of the material.
• 55:45
  You're reading Brave New World, you're reading, you know, 1984,
• 55:48
  you're reading Great Gatsby and you're saying to yourself, and
• 55:51
  you say to yourself, how am I going to, how am I going to pass
• 55:55
  the message? You know, how am I going to
• 55:57
  relate this information over to the kids in a way that makes the
• 56:00
  most it's most relatable to them that I think is the most
• 56:03
  effective and the most valuable. You know, a lot of times, and,
• 56:07
  and this is also interesting because I think politics is
• 56:09
  almost it has pervaded every aspect of life.
• 56:13
  You could talk about sports and you can end up talking about
• 56:15
  politics and you can end up talking about, you know, you got
• 56:17
  to talk about business, end up talking about regulation and
• 56:20
  politics end up talking about medication and oh, you know
• 56:22
  what? I have AI have a rash into my
• 56:24
  armpit. Oh, well, it's politics.
• 56:25
  You know, they're like, OK, well, talk.
• 56:27
  About verbal halftime show and you're talking about politics,
• 56:30
  right? Right.
• 56:31
  Exactly, exactly, exactly. And and so, so it's almost
• 56:35
  become, you know, I did a podcast at someone the other
• 56:37
  week and they had a great line that politics was Hollywood
• 56:41
  would for less attractive people.
• 56:43
  And I thought that was very funny.
• 56:45
  But if it almost feels, you know, I think that a lot of this
• 56:50
  is show, it is a lot of shows. And who's willing to speak to
• 56:53
  the youth? I think that Momdani winning in
• 56:55
  New York, for example, and his brilliant method of just going
• 57:00
  to the communities had flipped to Trump and saying, Hey, what
• 57:02
  are the most important aspects that caused you guys to change
• 57:05
  your minds and vote for Trump? Because I want to, I want to
• 57:08
  help acknowledge that that's all he had to do.
• 57:10
  And like, all you had to do is acknowledge the fact that the
• 57:14
  youth and you know, and Trump and Biden, I think both did this
• 57:16
  or both, you know, Trump's doing this now.
• 57:18
  They say the economy is great when you know, when, when, when
• 57:21
  every other indication says otherwise.
• 57:24
  And some people are. So at least there's a shred of,
• 57:27
  of honesty and of the, you know, I think that people like
• 57:31
  breaking the 4th wall if you are in Hollywood.
• 57:33
  And I think that if you are in a play, there's something fun to
• 57:35
  someone looking at the camera and waking at you and saying,
• 57:38
  Hey, I got you covered over here.
• 57:39
  And you know, and I think that that's kind of, and it's easy to
• 57:45
  kind of pop up in college. I but it also, I think it's just
• 57:50
  become part of everyday life for a lot of people.
• 57:53
  Yeah. And it used to be if you knew
• 57:56
  that somebody liked NASCAR, for example, you wouldn't
• 57:59
  necessarily know what their politics were.
• 58:02
  It used to be that if somebody liked, you know, name any of a
• 58:09
  million other cultural things that we engage in or eat or
• 58:15
  whatever, you wouldn't necessarily know what their
• 58:17
  politics are. But now we have so many stacked
• 58:20
  identities on top of 1. You like Taylor Swift, you're a
• 58:23
  Democrat, you know, you like, you know, like all of it.
• 58:29
  It's just so it is. It really has infused
• 58:32
  everything. And, you know, talk about a way
• 58:36
  to keep separate people separate from one another.
• 58:39
  When you know the things you wear, the things you eat, the
• 58:43
  things you listen to, the car you drive, the sports you watch,
• 58:47
  you know all of it is coated with left, right and jeez,
• 58:53
  that's hard. Much better if we went and
• 58:56
  bowled together. Definitely.
• 59:01
  I, I mean, you know, it's interesting because I stopped.
• 59:03
  I used to be a huge NBA fan and it did, NBA got too political
• 59:08
  for me. And I'm like, you know, I just,
• 59:10
  I just, I just want to watch the people play the game that I love
• 59:13
  the most at the highest level. Like that's, that's, that's what
• 59:16
  I'm here for. You know, I want to do that.
• 59:17
  UFC became the same way UFC, you know, I mean, obviously you can
• 59:22
  kind of guess that a martial martial combat sport, martial
• 59:25
  arts combat sport like that will probably attract more of a right
• 59:28
  leaning audience and a left-leaning audience.
• 59:29
  But Trump became the face of the UFC while he was while he was
• 59:32
  running essentially. And so, you know, and Obama, you
• 59:36
  know, used to pop up to basketball games all the time
• 59:38
  and he was personally very invested in basketball.
• 59:40
  And so like you and what I think it's interesting because I'm
• 59:45
  sure Obama's not saying, hey, maybe he is, maybe isn't.
• 59:47
  I'm sure I would be charitable and say the man loves
• 59:50
  basketball. You know, like the man just
• 59:51
  wants to go to a basketball game and like, you know, in the
• 59:54
  league wants to if the league wants to be in the president of
• 59:56
  United States is good graces, then you're going to adopt his
• 1:00:00
  mentality or his perspective on things.
• 1:00:01
  And same thing with Trump. Now you know with the UFC Where?
• 1:00:05
  But, but what I give UFC a lot of credit for is that they're
• 1:00:09
  really great about free speech and, and people say anything
• 1:00:13
  they want on there. And Dana, Dana White, who will
• 1:00:16
  get on an interview and be like, that guy's a moron.
• 1:00:18
  He reserves the right to be a moron.
• 1:00:20
  I don't agree with anything he says, but he reserves the right.
• 1:00:22
  He won the fight. The microphones in his face, he
• 1:00:25
  can say whatever he wants. And they've been very good about
• 1:00:27
  that. As opposed to college campuses,
• 1:00:30
  which I have been a little bit let down by as far as free
• 1:00:32
  speech violations. Yeah.
• 1:00:36
  And I think it goes back to what we were saying about change over
• 1:00:41
  time. I do think that universities are
• 1:00:45
  playing catch up and in the speech area, I think a lot of
• 1:00:51
  them have looked at what their practices have been, what speech
• 1:00:56
  codes have been, what their positions on institutional
• 1:01:01
  statements, department statements have been, and it's
• 1:01:07
  tardy. You know, it would have been
• 1:01:10
  better if some of these issues have been treated more seriously
• 1:01:13
  sooner. I don't think it's just lip
• 1:01:16
  service. I think universities realize
• 1:01:18
  that they have to do some things differently.
• 1:01:22
  But also within universities, there are many different
• 1:01:25
  stakeholders and some people are not in support of change at this
• 1:01:31
  time. And they see universities as
• 1:01:34
  being political actors and they should be left coded political
• 1:01:40
  actors. So there's tension within
• 1:01:42
  universities too. But, and, and these are very,
• 1:01:46
  very, very large bureaucratic structures.
• 1:01:51
  And large bureaucratic structures don't move very fast.
• 1:01:56
  And so it's going to take some time for universities to correct
• 1:02:01
  course in some areas. I mean, in some areas they're
• 1:02:04
  absolutely magnificent institutions, right?
• 1:02:08
  You've had a great experience. I had a great experience.
• 1:02:11
  I hope I teach my students well. We produce the best research in
• 1:02:18
  the world of all kinds, from humanities to, to to Cancer
• 1:02:26
  Research. So I hope that people are
• 1:02:30
  patient with the universities. I hope universities can regain
• 1:02:33
  the trust of the of the population.
• 1:02:36
  I mean the the amount that universities have lost trust
• 1:02:41
  from among them. Yeah, I think that they're going
• 1:02:43
  to have to show that they they're going to have to earn it
• 1:02:44
  back. I think.
• 1:02:45
  I mean, I don't think this is something that you just
• 1:02:48
  apologized for in general. I think the feeling is the Yeah,
• 1:02:51
  I think the feeling amongst the youth is you guys, you guys, you
• 1:02:56
  know, we're we're in a ton of debt.
• 1:02:58
  We have a very, you know, we have very little job market, you
• 1:03:01
  know, very little job opportunities rather.
• 1:03:03
  I'm sorry and, and every, you know, and, and, and also I just
• 1:03:07
  and, and I don't know what happened around COVID time.
• 1:03:10
  I mean, I do know what happened, but around COVID time,
• 1:03:12
  institutional faith collapsed, you know, and, and in general,
• 1:03:15
  anytime that anyone, I mean, from now, and it's a shame, but
• 1:03:18
  I hear Harvard now and I think, you know, like, I think, you
• 1:03:21
  know, like I think I, I, you know, I hear, I hear big
• 1:03:24
  prestigious places and I'm like, yeah, but come on.
• 1:03:27
  How full, how full of crap could they be, You know, after, you
• 1:03:30
  know, after X amount of years of doing X amount and targeting
• 1:03:33
  students so much money and getting so much federal funding
• 1:03:35
  on, you know, and you know, and like you say, these are enormous
• 1:03:38
  bureaucracies that their tentacles do really go in so
• 1:03:41
  many different places. It's really, you know, it's
• 1:03:44
  really. They have many, many, many
• 1:03:46
  different constituencies to please as well.
• 1:03:50
  Parents, students, trustees, faculty, administrators,
• 1:03:55
  funders, donors, the government, other nations, you know, you're
• 1:04:02
  you just I, I don't know why anybody would ever take the
• 1:04:07
  position of university president.
• 1:04:09
  That just seems horrible and. Tough.
• 1:04:14
  Yeah, tough. Extremely tough.
• 1:04:16
  I want to ask you, I want to, I want to kind of end on 2
• 1:04:18
  questions. I want to talk about
• 1:04:20
  libertarians a little bit because I do.
• 1:04:21
  And I think that the, IT looks like to me at the moment that
• 1:04:25
  the future of the right at the moment is a combination of
• 1:04:29
  libertarian MAGA as opposed to neoconservatives.
• 1:04:33
  Just based on, I think that reading, you know, reading
• 1:04:37
  social media, the room and I appears the last X amount of
• 1:04:40
  years, last three or four years, I would say.
• 1:04:43
  And folks like Thomas Massie and the Paul's and they're getting
• 1:04:47
  a, they're making a lot of noise, getting a lot of traction
• 1:04:50
  for talking about things that feel very relevant to everyday
• 1:04:54
  people. For example, Thomas Massie,
• 1:04:56
  first of all, an absolute hero with the Epsom stuff.
• 1:04:59
  Him and Khan are absolute heroes, you know, putting
• 1:05:02
  themselves on the line. And it's one of the most
• 1:05:04
  dangerous positions that they could possibly put themselves
• 1:05:06
  into some of the most dangerous people in the world.
• 1:05:08
  So they deserve all the credit in the world's real Khanna and
• 1:05:11
  Thomas Massie. But even the Paul's talking
• 1:05:13
  about, hey, what's the spend? How as Massey as he ever sees
• 1:05:16
  his invention that he has that just constantly keeps track of
• 1:05:19
  the national deficit in real time.
• 1:05:21
  And and he walks around every time he goes to Washington, he
• 1:05:24
  wears this pin that keeps track of the national deficit and says
• 1:05:27
  this is how much money we're spending.
• 1:05:29
  This is how hard of a time we are going to have paying things
• 1:05:31
  back. And what the future of our
• 1:05:33
  student, of our students and people's economic possibilities
• 1:05:37
  are, is going down into the gutter with every number that
• 1:05:40
  this goes up again. I didn't realize that he was
• 1:05:44
  libertarian leaning. I know him more as an anti Trump
• 1:05:49
  Republican. I don't know what his voting
• 1:05:52
  record is. I mean, he's certainly been out
• 1:05:53
  on the front lines on the Epstein case and some of the
• 1:05:56
  other, you know, tariffs and things of that sort.
• 1:05:59
  Yeah. So I think he would call himself
• 1:06:01
  part of the libertarian right. I understand that there was a
• 1:06:04
  libertarian left and right, which is kind of, I mean, it's
• 1:06:10
  almost like moderates is what I, it's like my, I think that a lot
• 1:06:12
  of people that call themselves libertarian left or right or
• 1:06:14
  really just some of the people that we say that we said kind of
• 1:06:17
  fell out between the political camps and don't know what to
• 1:06:19
  call themselves now. But what I'm curious about is
• 1:06:23
  you think that there's any chance of a third party.
• 1:06:25
  You think the parties will just morph from being, you know, 1,
• 1:06:28
  you know, two parties, one of them being primarily
• 1:06:31
  neoconservative and, you know, liberal the way that, you know,
• 1:06:33
  we used to in the early 2000s, to being whatever it is today.
• 1:06:38
  And do you think or do you think it's going to change or you
• 1:06:40
  think that there's room for a third party?
• 1:06:43
  Well, I mean, if you take the historical view, it seems like
• 1:06:47
  the US is very allergic to 3rd party.
• 1:06:51
  So that's tough. And currently the Libertarian
• 1:06:54
  Party is a mass, you know, we, I did research with Libertarian
• 1:07:01
  scholars, so not folks in the Libertarian Party.
• 1:07:04
  I actually know somebody who's very good who studied the
• 1:07:07
  Libertarian Party in New Hampshire and Los Angeles.
• 1:07:09
  If you want to, yeah. I would love to.
• 1:07:11
  I would. Love to he's a postdoc at USC,
• 1:07:15
  University of Southern California.
• 1:07:17
  Sure, but so I know less about the party.
• 1:07:20
  Certainly the scholars I talked with by and large just want to
• 1:07:25
  keep as much distance between themselves and the Libertarian
• 1:07:29
  Party, which actually varying oddly and counter intuitively
• 1:07:35
  made a big maggot kind of turn right with what is called the
• 1:07:40
  Mises Institute or not the Mises Institute, the Mises caucus
• 1:07:44
  within the party. And they just became even less
• 1:07:49
  attractive, I think to most people.
• 1:07:53
  So if a third party emerges, it's probably not going to be
• 1:07:58
  from the foundations of the Libertarian Party per SE.
• 1:08:02
  But you know, some of these some of the issues that libertarians
• 1:08:06
  support open borders, very not mega right, but also not not
• 1:08:14
  Democratic either, you know, gun rights, not democratic, more
• 1:08:22
  conservative. No doubt you've heard the phrase
• 1:08:26
  like I am economically conservative and socially
• 1:08:32
  liberal. And that's where a lot of the
• 1:08:34
  libertarian students we talked with.
• 1:08:37
  So if somebody can find that lane, there probably are a lot
• 1:08:41
  of people out there who would support candidates like that.
• 1:08:46
  And it really depends how much the party, the party bosses or
• 1:08:54
  the party leaders are able to tamp down.
• 1:08:58
  But it would seem to me like there's been talk, especially
• 1:09:02
  among Democrats, to, to like, widen the tent more and to not
• 1:09:12
  have the social issues that so many people in the party have
• 1:09:17
  been kind of obsessed with OK, for the last number of years.
• 1:09:22
  You saw that. I think it's a lot of clip on
• 1:09:24
  that. Right, right.
• 1:09:26
  And I think there's a lot, I think that I think that there
• 1:09:28
  was also a very visceral reaction to because I mean,
• 1:09:31
  this, it was kind of building since probably the late 2002
• 1:09:35
  thousand, 2010 to 12 I imagine is really when what people would
• 1:09:39
  call woke kind of started, you know, gaining power or getting
• 1:09:43
  traction, right? 10 years of a lifespan, I think.
• 1:09:49
  And it still exists, but I think in a much more docile way than
• 1:09:52
  maybe 5 or 6 years ago. Yeah.
• 1:09:55
  And that's, you know, that's some of the contentiousness
• 1:09:59
  within universities as well as, you know, folks really did have
• 1:10:03
  a foothold in universities and that's dissipating some, but
• 1:10:10
  there's some people who are still very, very, very committed
• 1:10:12
  to it. So you get a lot of tensions
• 1:10:15
  within these structures, whether it's a political party or a
• 1:10:19
  university, about which direction to move in the future.
• 1:10:25
  Probably very interesting to see how young people get involved in
• 1:10:29
  this. And I'm also very curious as to
• 1:10:34
  how college educated and people without a college education work
• 1:10:40
  together and if there can be a generational cohort rather than
• 1:10:44
  just like a college educated cohort and a non college
• 1:10:47
  educated cohort. And if those issues can in some
• 1:10:53
  way be coordinated. I think that's a very strong and
• 1:10:56
  very strong contingency. Well, I think that there are a
• 1:10:59
  lot of issues that both I think that and this, that was a great
• 1:11:03
  way to describe it. Because one thing that I did
• 1:11:05
  notice was that I felt growing up at least that a lot of PA lot
• 1:11:09
  of political divide was based on having the same premise and
• 1:11:14
  different approaches to how to solve it.
• 1:11:16
  And I think that that changed for a little while throughout 10
• 1:11:19
  years that changed 1012 years. We couldn't even agree on what
• 1:11:23
  the same problems in the country were.
• 1:11:24
  You know, like the same things are trying to resolve and the
• 1:11:26
  same things are trying to fix. I think now we know that whole,
• 1:11:30
  you know, housing is an enormous issue that the left and the
• 1:11:33
  right are trying to work together.
• 1:11:34
  We see mom Donnie working with Trump on that, you know, meeting
• 1:11:37
  with him a bunch of times, even though he's a self-proclaimed
• 1:11:39
  democratic socialist and calls Trump a fascist, you know,
• 1:11:41
  pretty much his face. He's like, you know what?
• 1:11:44
  We still need to live somewhere like, you know, it's, it's a
• 1:11:47
  luxury to be able to call each other these terms, you know,
• 1:11:51
  and, and then obviously I got what I mentioned with Thomas
• 1:11:54
  Massie, the economic feasibility in the workforce.
• 1:11:56
  So I think that I hope that what you're saying is correct in the
• 1:11:59
  sense that people will kind of say, hey, you know, that's why I
• 1:12:03
  think that libertarian, I think that the right will probably be
• 1:12:05
  a little bit more libertarian leaning and the left will
• 1:12:07
  probably look a little bit more democratic socialist within the
• 1:12:11
  next 5-10 years. Just because that kind of gets
• 1:12:14
  us back still to the same kind of questions where we can all
• 1:12:17
  agree the issue exists in the same way.
• 1:12:19
  And then the answer on how to deal with it is going to just be
• 1:12:22
  a matter of opinion. It's such a nice vision to think
• 1:12:27
  about people working on something in meaningful ways.
• 1:12:32
  I I sure hope you're right. Me too, me too.
• 1:12:35
  Last quick question for you. I'm sorry.
• 1:12:37
  And then I'll let you go. Thank you so much.
• 1:12:39
  This has been so much fun. You mentioned Turning Point as
• 1:12:43
  an outside influence for conservatives on campus.
• 1:12:47
  Can you mention a couple of on either end of the on either end
• 1:12:50
  of the aisle of big institutions that do have an impact on
• 1:12:53
  college students just for people to know about, because I do.
• 1:12:57
  I do know about Turning Point, but I don't know about a lot of
• 1:12:59
  other in general, I think that companies are these, these
• 1:13:03
  organizations tend to be pretty in the background and subtle
• 1:13:07
  about their influence. So maybe a couple of a couple of
• 1:13:11
  different ones on either side. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:13:14
  It's a wonderful question. So on the right, there are many
• 1:13:18
  more organizations and they differentiate among themselves.
• 1:13:23
  So Turning Point is not the first organization that really
• 1:13:29
  occupied that niche. There are other organizations
• 1:13:32
  like, you know, Young America's Foundation, the Leadership
• 1:13:36
  Institute, which we're doing some similar kind of training in
• 1:13:42
  the activist mentality, training people to enter into politics in
• 1:13:47
  various ways. And then Turning Point arrived
• 1:13:51
  on the scene and Charlie Kirk was able to amass so many
• 1:13:54
  resources and Turning Point just 8.
• 1:13:57
  These other organizations launch basically.
• 1:14:02
  So in terms of more like culture issues, anti left, those are the
• 1:14:11
  organizations I'd named Turning Point Leadership Institute,
• 1:14:14
  Young America's foundation. I don't know how much they're
• 1:14:16
  around these days. Prager you is around making
• 1:14:19
  videos in this in this area. Hire some of the same people,
• 1:14:25
  have some conferences and then there's kind of establishment,
• 1:14:30
  right, not mega. And there's some organizations
• 1:14:36
  like the American Enterprise Institute, for example, that
• 1:14:40
  hosts summer programs, conferences, week long programs
• 1:14:45
  for students who want to learn about conservatism, more
• 1:14:49
  intellectual conservatism. And they also have student clubs
• 1:14:56
  on campus. I can't remember exactly what
• 1:14:59
  they're called, but they that people can look that up.
• 1:15:04
  And then on the left, one of the things that I and my co-author
• 1:15:08
  Jeff Kidder discovered is that students left of center are left
• 1:15:15
  much more to their own devices on campus.
• 1:15:19
  So they look to their colleges and universities for
• 1:15:22
  mobilization opportunities, multicultural centers, even
• 1:15:28
  academic disciplines, but there aren't things outside
• 1:15:32
  organizations that really mobilize them, not nearly to the
• 1:15:37
  same tune in terms of money or summer programs or conferences
• 1:15:41
  or whatnot. And so one of the things that we
• 1:15:44
  found as a result of that is that students on the left really
• 1:15:48
  don't have the same kind of conveyor belt from their college
• 1:15:51
  activism into the world of politics as the right leaning
• 1:15:55
  students do. Interesting.
• 1:15:57
  They're much less supported, they're more insular, it's more
• 1:16:00
  inward looking. And I would love to see some
• 1:16:04
  progressive organizations take a lesson out of the rights
• 1:16:10
  playbook just to try to create some more opportunities for
• 1:16:14
  students to get involved in politics, because those could be
• 1:16:17
  really good potential leaders in the future.
• 1:16:21
  And, and it would be absolutely wonderful if this could happen,
• 1:16:25
  you know, in the moderate area and or independent area and in
• 1:16:32
  the libertarian space as well. I think students really do need
• 1:16:35
  those kind of stepping stones from their political commitments
• 1:16:39
  in college to out into the labor force.
• 1:16:43
  Right. Do you think is a part?
• 1:16:45
  I don't know, I'm just asking, is it possible that there's not
• 1:16:48
  as many, I guess, external organizations the way you're
• 1:16:52
  putting it for left-leaning students?
• 1:16:55
  Because a lot of the universities offer programs that
• 1:16:59
  tend to, you know, have professors or faculty offer
• 1:17:02
  programs. It's already kind of, you know,
• 1:17:04
  in that, in that world for them. And so they, they, they don't
• 1:17:08
  feel necessary. So if I was an organization that
• 1:17:11
  wants to go to University of Miami and influence students to
• 1:17:14
  become lefties, I wouldn't, I wouldn't need to spend, you
• 1:17:19
  know, too much time and money doing that.
• 1:17:21
  I imagine that a lot of a big percentage of the student
• 1:17:23
  population or the OR the faculty is already there.
• 1:17:25
  So I wouldn't necessarily even get my money there, right?
• 1:17:29
  Yeah. So we thought about that quite a
• 1:17:30
  bit. That was a hypothesis that we
• 1:17:33
  were working with as well. I think that's true.
• 1:17:37
  I think progressive organizations have felt
• 1:17:41
  complacent about it. Like the kids are doing all
• 1:17:44
  right in college, so why should we spend any of our hard earned
• 1:17:48
  treasure on them? The problem that I see is that
• 1:17:53
  it means that students, when they're looking to graduate and
• 1:17:58
  enter political or social jobs, they don't have that leg up that
• 1:18:04
  students on the right do. They don't have that immediate
• 1:18:08
  connection between their college activism and, you know, in the
• 1:18:14
  world of actual politics. And I would also say that this
• 1:18:21
  means that their politics themselves when they're on
• 1:18:24
  campus can be very campus oriented and.
• 1:18:29
  Good point. Does it testing against?
• 1:18:33
  Yeah. The people that they're
• 1:18:35
  protesting against are actually often times university leaders
• 1:18:38
  and that, that just seems like insular, right and.
• 1:18:43
  Really good point. And it doesn't get them, you
• 1:18:46
  know, off their trajectory of being in the college Malia.
• 1:18:51
  And I think the more we can get people kind of focusing on
• 1:18:56
  whatever social issue or social problem they think needs
• 1:19:00
  addressing, but to get that outside the walls, university is
• 1:19:04
  really important. It's like teaching my, it's
• 1:19:06
  like, it's, it's like teaching a kid to ride a bike on training
• 1:19:10
  wheels as opposed to teaching them how to wiggle and waggle on
• 1:19:12
  two wheels 1st. And like you'll eventually get
• 1:19:14
  there and when you do, you're good to go.
• 1:19:16
  But if you're learning on training wheels, you're going to
• 1:19:18
  have to adjust to taking those wheels off and then having to
• 1:19:20
  deal with that eventually anyway.
• 1:19:23
  Really just go down a couple times.
• 1:19:25
  That's right. That's it.
• 1:19:26
  By the way, Scrapes, not breaks, is what I've read.
• 1:19:29
  There's a policy, you know, you got to bruise yourself up a
• 1:19:31
  little bit. As long as you don't break
• 1:19:32
  anything, it's OK. That's right.
• 1:19:34
  You have to give people real experiences out in the world so
• 1:19:38
  that you know, so that people on the left are not just looking at
• 1:19:46
  university leaders to fix problems that aren't university
• 1:19:50
  leaders problems to fix. Right, that too.
• 1:19:53
  That's that's also a wonderful point.
• 1:19:56
  Yeah. Yeah, certainly.
• 1:19:59
  Amy, this has been so much fun. I loved picking at your brain
• 1:20:03
  for all this stuff and, and your insight has been really, really.
• 1:20:08
  A lot of fun, very educational and really thought provoking.
• 1:20:11
  You give me a lot to think about, definitely.
• 1:20:13
  So thank you so much for the time and I hope to be in touch
• 1:20:16
  and this is really, really wonderful.
• 1:20:19
  Thank you. Well, thank you for the
• 1:20:21
  opportunity to talk with you. You asked fabulous questions and
• 1:20:24
  pushed me to think harder about some of the things I thought I
• 1:20:27
  knew, so I hope we can stay in touch.
• 1:20:30
  Yes, thank you so much. All right, bye everyone.
• 1:20:33
  Take. Care.