Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "The University Echo Chamber" with Katy Barnett

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"The University Echo Chamber" with Katy Barnett · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get a human welcome space for dangerous ideas and to permission to think uncomfortable conversations
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  as collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney where we have conversations that
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  push the boundaries of academia with guests who know a lot about the role of the university
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  in public life and foster the kinds of conversations the universities ought to have Professor
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  Alan Davison, who's the Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology
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  Sydney is doing a remarkable job trying to make UTS the place where independent thinkers can come
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  and can debate and can be free from being pilloried and free from groupthink and have actual
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  intellectual freedom and intellectual clarity and resurrect the sort of ancient notions of debate
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  that universities are supposed to embody instead of being echo chambers for people who already
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  agree with each other. And this is kind of the hobby horse of our guest today, Professor Katie Barnett.
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  She's a law professor and she's written about activist scholarship and her worries about
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  activism entering the academy and contaminating what she regards as being the fundamental
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  principles especially of law in addition to being of academia. Robust debate, tolerance of other
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  people's opinions but no tolerance of nonsense, you know, a willingness to advocate for a position
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  but to respect the authority of the court, the legitimacy of the court, the legitimacy of the
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  rules of the game and of debate above your particular belief about what your political position
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  or what your particular argument is. Katie started out at Melbourne Law School as a lecturer.
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  She has, I won't go through her long and illustrious history but basically she's a mother,
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  she's lived in Australia and England, she's published a lot of academic publications in private law
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  and she's been a visiting scholar at one of the Oxford colleges. She worked in the courts as a
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  researcher and associate to judges and also as a solicitor. So I hope you enjoy as much as I did
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  this conversation with Dr. Katie Barnett.
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  What is activist, scholarship, Katie? Okay, so when I use word activist, I have a very particular
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  kind of a meaning for it. So I went to the Merriam Webster dictionary and it says that an activist
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  means a person who uses or supports strong actions such as public protests in support of an opposition
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  to a controversial view. You should know by now that any debate that begins with the dictionary
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  definition of the term is X automatically loses the debate unfortunately. Yeah, that's true.
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  paraphrase. So I guess what it means to me, I guess that's when I initially introduced this
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  last year, people were like to find what you mean by it. So basically it's people who take a really
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  strong point of view and anyone who argues against them is evil and it is justifiable in taking
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  that strong point of view to take strong even violent actions against it. So that's what I'm saying.
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  And the scholarship component means that you're doing this in the context of an academic institution
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  or a class or what's the scope of this? The scope of it is in both academic work, research and
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  in class. So you're presenting a view where someone's not allowed to present a contrary view
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  because that contrary view is actually in some way forbidden evil not allowed to be heard
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  just wrong. You're talking about how your in your piece about how your grandfather used to
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  have arguments with you and he sounds like quite a forceful person with strong opinions perhaps.
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  Tell us about that. So my grandfather was the kind of person who had yes extremely strong opinions
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  but if you dared to disagree with him he would firstly shout at you then he would tell you
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  that you were stupid and then if you still kept going he was deaf so he used to take out his
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  hearing aid and put it on the table so that he didn't have to hear him anymore. So
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  and then if you argued with him enough he would say oh you know I don't want to associate with
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  you anymore. I mean he was social media before social media he could mute you by taking out his
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  hearing aid and he could block you by just walking out of the room and saying anyone
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  talked about a conversation this was predating Twitter. Oh well and truly this is when I was a
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  child so he was social media before social media existed. I love it. Literally muting people
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  with a hearing aid. Yeah and would I assume that you found that to be an unconstructive form of
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  argumentation? Extremely unconstructive. I can't think that I ever learned anything from that kind
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  of an argument because you can't even you can't even discuss anything when someone does that it's
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  just like they shut you down everything you say is wrong and if you dare argue with them you risk
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  being cut off. Do you think that that influenced your going into law? I mean you were law professor
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  because you don't want that kind of style of disagreement. I think it did. I am I have always been
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  argumentative. My dad likes to say that I began arguing with him before I could even speak.
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  I am not someone who tends to accept someone's big theory wholeheartedly so my grandfather had
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  particular political views and I would question them and I've been like that since I was very very
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  small and yeah I suppose that's why I'm an academic that's why I'm a lawyer because I like
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  arguing I like discussing things too. Constructive argument is actually a wonderful thing.
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  It's funny that you have to add that caveat about constructive argument because I too come from
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  a family where argument was a positive thing a constructive thing an intellectual thing a pursuit
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  a discipline a love of knowledge a striving towards argumentation for the for the purposes of
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  trying to build on each other's case and poke holes in it and find good arguments and the idea is
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  that you're in a dance which is leading to a to a better theory than either of you could establish
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  individually and hopefully one person sees the other person's side eventually but if not they
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  have good reasons for for not doing so and I'm married someone whose whose family examples of
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  argumentation had been the opposite had been corrosive examples of argumentation and obstinacy
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  and people digging in their heels rather than trying to concede and find common ground and I wonder
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  if you think that there's something instinctive about our relationship to argumentation our capacity
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  for tolerating different ideas. Definitely I think there's something intrinsic so at one point I
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  did a psychological test by the psychologist Karen Stenner who's written something on the
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  authoritarian dynamic and I came out unsurprisingly to anyone who knows me as extremely open-minded
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  so basically I will talk to anyone I will try most things once I am extremely open-minded I think
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  other people well I know for sure other people are not so open-minded and they find anyone
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  challenging their view to be a threat to their status so to be a threat to their kind of whole
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  identity and being I don't usually feel like that about arguments so in terms of my family arguing
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  we usually had constructive arguments where you know we'd all discuss things and we'd come to this
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  better point of view it was just once my grandfather got involved that it was unconstructive so I guess
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  I had both examples. It's fascinating that you say that some people feel instinctively that
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  an argument is a threat to their being or that someone disagreeing with their ideas is a
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  person who's attacking them as a human because more and more that interpretation is actually
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  getting an intellect getting intellectual legs or so it's practitioners as think in the sense that
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  we hear more and more about sorry I'm just being distracted by your paper rustling in the
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  background. Sorry, there's a lot of bad papers that keep throwing me off my scent let me go back
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  and find where that was because increasingly people seem to be making that case literally
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  like what they will say that there are acts of violence taking place on social media when someone
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  disagrees with them you know or that hate speech becomes a form of violence and of course the
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  scope of what constitutes hate speech could be I don't know simply saying that there are biological
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  differences between men and women or something like that my existence is being erased if you
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  disagree with me about you know whether or not same sex marriage should be legal or there's a
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  literal genocide being committed against LGBTQI plus children if you know people with penises aren't
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  allowed into women's shelters if they identify as women or whatever the hot button you know culture
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  war issue might be is that are we are you noticing that an expansion of the figurative sense of
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  a threat to someone's being to a literal one oh absolutely so it is actually kind of it's part
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  of this kind of status thing so I read this book by Will store called the status game and he says
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  different people seek status in different ways so some people by kind of domination
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  but some people seek it by virtue and a third group of people seek it by competence
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  I realized upon reading that and just looking at myself that the way in which I tend to seek
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  status is by competence by saying well I'm a very good arguer therefore I'm a good lawyer
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  some people however I'm trying to seek status in society by saying I have the right beliefs
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  my beliefs are right and I am I have more virtue than others and I am contributing in a better way
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  to society now this isn't just a left-right thing it's not even simply related to current
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  culture wars stuff I can think of instances in my own academic field where there were very violent
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  disagreements from the kind of late 1980s onwards where people were called people who disagreed with
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  them evil so this is pre social media it's just kind of been exacerbated why do you think
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  I do think part of it is social media so because it's about social media for some people is about
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  signaling whether they're part of a particular group or not it produces a particular kind of
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  tribalism and people don't want to be ostracized by their friends or have their job threatened or
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  lose their job and in some ways I can see why people kind of feel sometimes that getting
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  really harsh feedback is almost it is actually really upsetting so it's happened to me several times
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  I guess I'm a little bit endued to it now but what happens getting really bad feedback
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  yeah on things that I've written for the newspaper or things that I've written for this and that
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  sometimes you get very very aggressive feedback oh I can think of an example which is an interesting one
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  so it was in lockdown in Melbourne and I've got cerebral palsy so I went I'd had Botox injections the
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  day before that actually helps my muscles relax and I've been told I must go for a walk but we had
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  only one hour so mum and I went for a walk my mum lives down the road and when we got to the
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  bottom the hill I was really tired and I stopped and mum bought me a cup of coffee and then the police
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  came along and they said move along and some part of me was actually quite excited I've been given
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  a move along order but I also wanted to argue with them but my mother dragged me away but the
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  interesting thing was the response that I got to that on social media so some people actually
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  said to me that I was making up my disability that I was falsifying it that I'd made the whole
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  story up it was quite extraordinary again so I suppose the attitude I've taken to this kind of
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  stuff is it says more about those people than it says about me like they can say oh you're not
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  really disabled or you're not really this or you're not really that I know what the truth is
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  it doesn't actually change the truth of what happened no but I think part of it is related to
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  this idea of social proof so where our views are uncertain you know where things are not clear
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  the way in which we try and get certainty is to seek social proof to try and persuade other people
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  that what we think is true and therefore the more other people who think it's true the more it
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  must be so so that's why people kind of go around seeking social proof and there's actually
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  advanced psychologists who documented this with cults right so cult members seek social proof by
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  trying to go out and convert other people so they infiltrated a cult and that's what they found
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  social media I think has kind of exacerbated that aspect of social proof so everybody
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  feels uncertain they don't like that feeling of uncertainty I suppose I don't mind feeling uncertain
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  I know that I don't know everything I know that there's a lot of things which are unclear I'm a lawyer
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  everything shades of grade to me but some people really hate it and so in order to kind of make
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  themselves feel better they must persuade other people to reflect their view back at them
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  and in that way it's like their views are confirmed interesting and so what how are you seeing
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  that come out in the academy where are you seeing this this quest for certainty and the sort of
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  righteous activism spill out can you give examples oh let me think I mean obviously some of the things
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  you've mentioned already so the whole kind of gender wars stuff that's not something I'm
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  personally involved in but it's something where the academy has certainly split into polarized
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  camps one another area with which I've had a long involvement actually is interests in things
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  like indigenous activism and things like that so I was involved in that back in the 1990s but I
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  actually got out of activism because the way in which people behave when they're activists
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  it seemed to me was not compatible with getting to a compromised solution right you're not always
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  going to get everything you want but if someone's an activist it's like we must get everything we
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  want if anyone disagrees with us they're evil and and then some of the people I got the feeling
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  so I remember I was involved in the native title activism group and one of the girls there said
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  I've never met an Aboriginal person but what I think should happen is and I thought
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  what are you doing here okay I don't think you are actually in this to help people I think you
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  are in this whether you admit it or not for other reasons you're in this to show other people
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  that you're a good person or in this to make yourself feel better you're in this to signal certain
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  things but if you haven't actually spoken to any indigenous people how can you know what they want
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  and then there were some other people who they said to me oh are you also in this activist group
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  and that activist group and that activist group and I said no I'm in this particular one because
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  it has meaning to me because of the students I taught and because I am a lawyer and they were like oh
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  why aren't you in all these others it was like it was actually like collecting baseball cards
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  yeah pretty much and it was more it seemed to me it was more about them about them projecting
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  a certain image of themselves outwards that it doesn't go for all of them so I'd say you know 40
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  to 50% of people were more interested in looking good looking like a good person and in policing
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  other people and then 50 to 60% of the people involved were genuinely good people who wanted to help
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  right so but I guess what disturbed me was there was this component which was more about I need to
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  signal that I'm good and close down anyone who disagrees right and since then I have to say I've
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  been a bit suspicious it is interesting so the I mean part of the problem here is also the drift
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  of the academy towards one political side rather than another I mean there has been a
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  market decrease in the number of people who identify as conservatives in institutions that may not
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  I mean what is that necessarily a bad thing from my point of view I think it is and I'll explain why
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  so I am kind of centrist left I'm very much what one would expect of a university lecturer but
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  as I said I am very open-minded and I have this very broad group of friends I have friends from
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  every single part of the political spectrum and I have actually learnt a lot
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  from speaking to people with different political or other views to me and I think we're all the
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  poorer if we don't speak to people who are different you don't have to agree but you can kind of
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  learn more of what other people are thinking about more over several of people who are more on
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  the conservative side said that they became really angry at university they felt like their
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  particular views were not reflected at all so some of them quit some of them lied I guess not lied
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  but misrepresented their views in assessment so that they'd still get good marks that felt really
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  resentful and now they say I'd like to close the academy down so if you have an academy which
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  isn't actually reflective of the full spectrum of views in society in my view you risk opening
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  yourself up to that you risk alienating 40 to 50% of the population I suppose I suppose only Katie
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  if you combine your partisanship with activism right I mean you could imagine yeah there's nothing
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  necessarily like you know people will often say of journalists or the media that the media has
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  left wing bias conservatives will complain about that I mean it is true that the kinds of people
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  who find themselves drawn to journalism are curious minded people and we tend to cluster less on
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  the rigidly conservative you know small sea conservative were more adventurous explorative
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  open-minded people and those people tend to cluster more on the political left however that
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  shouldn't be a problem in my point of view as long as you are fair yes right so if there was
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  you know if academic with academia was it was left wing but fair yes and it's the point of
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  people getting marked down for expressing a different view so what I say to my students in my
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  first class is I don't mind if you have a different view to me in fact I encourage it
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  please bring up different views with me because I won't learn otherwise I have my views
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  and students will pretty quickly work out what they are I can't stop having those views
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  but the important thing is that I'm able to step back from them and treat students fairly when
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  they disagree as long as they justify their argument I I don't actually care is that if
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  justified properly according to precedent and legal means of reasoning I don't care that they
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  disagree with me so in that sense that if if people behave like that it doesn't matter if
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  people are more left wing or whatever because I think you're right I mean there's a reason why
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  I've gone into the career that I have yeah finished that thought why I suppose because I am the
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  kind of person who asks questions and I am the kind of person who is open to all kinds of things
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  I've researched everything from contract damages to animal law to
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  Roman law you you know it and it wasn't necessarily something that fitted well with practice
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  so I do remember when I was young a law firm partner saying to me well your mind said it's not
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  suited towards a big firm and I think he was right hmm interesting you're not conformist enough
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  Katie no I'm not but I'm not conformist enough for anywhere yeah but that's what academia is
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  supposed to be for for yes yeah so advocacy is also fine so in some of my pieces I will argue for
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  well in fact most of them I will argue for a particular point of view I'm trying to tell people
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  why I think what I think but the important thing about advocacy is speaking as a lawyer is that
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  when you're an advocate you have to represent not only your own side but also note to the judge
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  anything that's on the other side you're you actually have a duty to the court as an ethical duty
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  above and beyond what your duty to your client is to tell the judge about anything that doesn't go
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  your way right so part of being an advocate is to say well I think the answer is this
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  but I just need to note that there are actually these other points of view and here they are
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  and in so doing you make yourself I think more trustworthy so I was a trial judge's associate
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  for almost three years and so I got to watch a lot of baristas and people who present things
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  really fairly who admitted when something went against them or things like that they're actually
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  you can trust them or I suppose how would I get people to think about that think about
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  a person whose view you really really really are likely to disagree with really strongly
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  how would you feel reading a very partisan article by that person would you trust it
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  I don't think about how you would feel if you read someone that you agreed but how would you
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  feel if you read an article by someone very partisan with whom you thoroughly disagree
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  who never raises the other side you're not going to trust it are you
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  such people I think are speaking to the conversion they're telling the rest of the tribe
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  that they're part of the tribe they're not actually they're not actually seeking knowledge they're not
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  actually trying to further knowledge in my view it's interesting to hear you say that they're
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  when you're advocating as a lawyer you have a duty to the court more that trumps your duty to
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  your client or your duty to making your case it reminds me a little bit of the there's a political
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  analog to this which is that you have to sort of agree to the rules of the game and it may be
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  even a conversational kind of analogy where like it's not just about you know that there are
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  several levels on which we're competing with each other when if you're on a sports field then
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  obviously you want to win the game but once you start cheating or you know not playing by the
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  rules then you're playing a different game you're playing a meta game of stepping outside of the
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  game and in a sense you know the objections to January 6th in the United States and Donald Trump's
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  questioning of the election have to I think it's a mistake when Trump supporters
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  equivocate about those and put them on the same level as for example the transgressions of
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  oh what about Hillary Clinton taking money from so and so or something like that which which
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  may all be part of the normal political tussle like to then question the actual the the the
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  functioning of democracy is to step off the court and to start I mean someone I think it was Matt
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  who said that during the the presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton
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  Hillary would spend it if you compared it to a boxing match Hillary would spend hours tying up her
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  gloves perfectly and making sure that her boxing shorts were on and then they'd step in the ring
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  and Donald Trump would pick up a chair and whack her over the head like which is not the rules
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  the boxing you're not allowed to do that but he found that very effective and similarly
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  conversationally as well you know having having arguments within the context of a constructive
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  argument is one thing stepping outside of the argument and trying to get the person fired or
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  de-platformed or excluded from polite society because they were engaged in that argument or
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  because they were throwing around those ideas is for me a little bit like having more of a
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  fealty towards your advocacy than to the court yes it is so it's and I think once you get into
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  violence I should emphasize that this is something that we see on both the right and left so both
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  the left love to still queues the right op at the right loves to accuse the left of it I've seen
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  it on both sides this point where it's like well we're under threat so we have to take strong
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  action up to and including you know violence like the whole storming the White House
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  thing that happened when Trump's election did not happen once you start to do that I think you
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  will in really dangerous territory I think we do have rules of engagement for a reason these
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  reasons are reasons of civility democracy that kind of thing once you're starting to get into that
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  I do worry that we're going to lose something
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  so yeah I suppose as academics we just have to be careful that we're not
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  we don't we don't lose the trust of people because one thing I guess I have been seeing particularly
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  actually since lockdowns and COVID is more distrust on a partisan basis of well I don't trust
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  experts anymore because and it like I've seen it on both sides I don't trust this expert I don't
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  trust that that expert whatever but once you start getting into activism once you start getting
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  highly partisan then I think you do actually lose the trust at least some people in society
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  not the people on your tribe you're talking to them but people who are in the middle or people
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  who are on the other side you actually lose their trust so that's one reason why I think it's
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  dangerous I also think it's dangerous because um yes I think it impedes students from learning if
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  they're scared to raise something because their lecturer is going to publicly humiliate them
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  then they're not going to learn I actually had a lecturer in first year who was like that if you
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  said anything he disagreed with you um he would just totally annihilate you in front of the whole
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  class I don't think I learned anything in that class it's interesting I mean I'm trying to
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  I'm just casting through my mind of at university the kinds of things that were taboo to question
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  there was certainly I mean I think when I was there it there was sexism was sexism 20 years ago was
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  today's racism in the sense of if you you know what was true it might be what might be taboo today
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  would be to say something like oh why do we do acknowledgements of country you know before
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  meeting or is reconciliation still really the goal I thought you know equality and you know
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  colorblindness was the goal and or something like that or you know do we need diversity equity
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  and inclusion mandates that could be considered yeah that would get you handed out of most university
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  social studies classes but when I was there it was it would have been saying something like
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  that women are more interested in certain certain things than men are and men are more interested in
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  in yep sciencey things and women are more interested in touchy-feely things because it was
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  the aggressive dogma was that there was no difference between men and women that that was
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  all culturally constructed what are the can you think of any other things today when you touched
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  indigenous stuff it just simply because a lot of people won't be at institutions right now so
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  they don't know what the contours of these conversations are I'm trying to think of issues again
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  racism so racism is a massive one yeah colonialism probably colonialism like the sections of religious
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  discrimination so if you criticize this your I don't know anti-Semitic Islamophobic
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  all right I say yes criticism is Israel is anti-Semitic yeah
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  cleaning out the failings of many Muslim theocracies in their treatment of women and gays is Islamophobic
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  yes exactly that's Islamophobic um then I'm trying to think what other kind of issues
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  are there yeah so the feminism one is still one so I had an incident in one of my classes where
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  we were discussing a case where a man assaulted a woman who got into his car so he offered her a
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  lift and then he assaulted her and one of the male students said oh wasn't it her fault
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  forgetting in the car and the class went absolutely bananas right um people were kind of
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  shouting at him saying you're sexist you're disgusting and I said hang on hang on hang on hang on
• 36:54
  stop so then I said to the student okay you think that in some way it's the woman's fault for
• 37:03
  getting into the car yes so it okay what if it was a woman driving and she did that to a man
• 37:14
  and he looked kind of shocked and said well that wouldn't be the man's fault
• 37:19
  and I said what if it was a man doing it to a man and he was like oh well oh and then I said what
• 37:27
  if it's man doing it to a child and said well the child didn't agree to that by getting into a car
• 37:33
  said aha so what we're getting to here is a fundamental principle that by getting into a car
• 37:41
  you don't agree to be assaulted by someone and it doesn't actually matter if it's a man doing
• 37:47
  it to a woman a man to get to a man woman to woman man to woman we have a fundamental principle
• 37:55
  which is the kind of rule of law principle that just by getting into a car even if you don't know
• 38:00
  the person it's not okay to just grab someone no but he presumably wasn't saying that that
• 38:06
  that it made it okay because the woman got in the car no he's like you're also reminding me he kind
• 38:12
  of seemed to think it was a bit of like he said wasn't she a bit foolish to do that and so I
• 38:18
  wanted to kind of dig down on that and I said well would you blame a man and he was like well no
• 38:25
  I said okay so and then at the end of it he said oh I see the fundamental thing is people
• 38:34
  just shouldn't grab someone like that in a car and of course but wait is that what he's saying
• 38:39
  because like I mean isn't that I don't think the fundamental I don't think the rule needs to be
• 38:45
  gender agnostic in that case the rule could be men are horny pigs in a way that women aren't
• 38:54
  and therefore don't if you're a person who is less physically strong than a male don't
• 39:03
  then a good rule of thumb a good heuristic is not to put yourself in an enclosed space with a male
• 39:08
  who can take you wherever they want to and that could be a true claim about the universe and it
• 39:15
  could also be true that men shouldn't rape people yes so I said to him look it's kind of like this
• 39:24
  would I get into a car with a man who was much larger than me who might didn't know would I as a
• 39:32
  woman no I wouldn't as a matter of common sense but the question is whether the law
• 39:40
  should not give her a remedy for that because of this and I think the answer to that is no
• 39:46
  so there's a difference between the kind of reality of no I probably wouldn't do that as a
• 39:53
  matter of common sense I might have done when I was younger though because I was more
• 39:57
  full hearted and I didn't have as much a dare of my own and it is one frustration of law
• 40:05
  enforcement at the moment that it's hard to articulate that to young women because of the
• 40:10
  precise objection that that guy in your class got I mean there was a I remember a specific case
• 40:15
  actually where a woman was sexually assaulted I think it was in Queensland this was within the
• 40:21
  past couple of years maybe during the pandemic and the the cop came out and was giving a press
• 40:26
  conference and said I do just I just want to remind you know young women that that's a dangerous
• 40:31
  part of town and not to walk through the park you know and just to keep your wits about you try
• 40:36
  to see if you can have a buddy and you know always text people and be safe and he got absolutely
• 40:43
  hounded the Queensland police had to apologize why why isn't he saying that young men shouldn't be
• 40:49
  assault sexually assaulting young women instead of telling young women that they should avoid
• 40:52
  being sexually assaulted you know he's blaming the victim it's tricky it wasn't
• 40:58
  blaming the victim yeah like is there any space anymore to articulate caution without it being
• 41:08
  read in the most ungenerous possible light I think that that word ungenerous really gets to something
• 41:17
  social media particularly something like Twitter leads to a lack of generosity like people
• 41:24
  leap on things and assess it in the least generous light if you said that women should take care
• 41:33
  walking through a park clearly you believe it's okay for men to go around raping people
• 41:40
  and clearly you're a sexist pig who must grovel and apologize or if you I mean you can kind of
• 41:49
  swing it the other way politically it it doesn't actually matter clearly you just prejudiced
• 41:56
  against men and blah blah blah people kind of taking statements in the most ungenerous way possible
• 42:04
  and then kind of piling on I think some people get pleasure from that they get pleasure from
• 42:14
  telling someone off they get pleasure from trying to cancel someone I suppose it's not
• 42:22
  something I've ever felt personally I don't operate like that for whatever reason
• 42:30
  um when you say cancel Katie I just want to put some get let's get a little bit specific
• 42:36
  about what we're talking about there because there's a school of there's an argument at the moment
• 42:39
  that goes that the cancel culture is a boogie man invented by right wingers and regressives who
• 42:46
  want to be able to say hurtful things without consequence that what's actually going on is that
• 42:51
  people are pushing back more and people are redefining the contours of what is and isn't acceptable
• 42:58
  public behaviour and we've always had cancel culture you know you can't go around calling
• 43:03
  people the n-word and you haven't been able to for some decades and you would rightly be quite
• 43:08
  unquote cancelled excluded from polite society not invited to parties anymore you know potentially
• 43:13
  lose your job if you were if you were doing that and so now we're just redefining what's okay and
• 43:17
  what's not okay and cancel culture is just what people who want to continue being offensive
• 43:24
  hurtful bourish and hateful call being called out on it what do you say to that I would say to
• 43:31
  that firstly I think sometimes people don't mean to be bourish offensive and hurtful sometimes
• 43:39
  they're just flippant sometimes they don't think through what the ramifications of what they say
• 43:45
  sometimes it's kind of disproportionate like someone says a flippant joke and because now social
• 43:53
  media everyone can see it they get absolutely cained whereas in the past it might be some people
• 43:59
  said oh mate that's bit too much but also I would point out that being inundated by hate male
• 44:07
  regardless of whether you're left wing or right wing I've known people on both sides who have been
• 44:12
  is really unpleasant having people ring up and ask for you to be sacked is incredibly unpleasant
• 44:21
  worrying that you're going to lose your job is actually awful and then I've spoken to people
• 44:30
  who have lost their jobs it destroyed them because I suppose I was brought up in a kind of old
• 44:39
  fashion labour way and what one has to recognise is that someone's employment and someone's job
• 44:48
  is really important to them so taking that away from them is actually a really
• 44:59
  it's actually a really profound way of wounding someone and often what happens to
• 45:05
  is someone loses their friends they might lose money on legal action they might be ostracised they
• 45:14
  it's not just so I don't buy the argument that there's no cancel culture of course there has
• 45:22
  always been a cancel culture right I totally accept that it's just that perhaps in the past it
• 45:30
  might be the people in the next village wielding pitchforks whereas now it's a tuition mob
• 45:36
  descending on you saying you know you're unacceptable but as a remedies lawyer I think we have
• 45:44
  to be really really careful with that part of the reason why we have the law is to stop people
• 45:53
  taking the law into their own hands yeah because when people do that they can actually
• 46:02
  you know string people up lynch people become violent things like that it's actually something
• 46:11
  that we want to be very careful about unleashing it's not saying that someone can't be sacked
• 46:18
  for doing something inappropriate right so there was a case some years back where a police
• 46:24
  officer was head of the ethics department I can't remember what state but he was masquerading as
• 46:32
  someone else on social media and being racist sex as homophobic pretty disgusting right obviously
• 46:41
  well in the end I was decided he couldn't keep his job because you can't be head of the ethics
• 46:48
  department and do that kind of stuff right but the important thing is that a procedure was followed
• 46:59
  since just everyone piling on him going he should be sacked right now it was okay your role is this
• 47:09
  this is this okay legally speaking we have the law in part I think to take the heat out of
• 47:17
  debate like if you've been to court it's actually most non lawyers are pretty sad it's a bit boring
• 47:25
  my children definitely sad boring but that's the whole point right the whole point is to take the
• 47:34
  heat out to take out that desire to hurt other people or to destroy them or whatever so we have
• 47:44
  processes in place to make sure decisions are fair that the ramifications are not disproportionate
• 47:52
  or so for example there was a case the other day involving a monash university lecturer who
• 48:00
  used the N word in an academic context and it seemed to be for some kind of pedagogical reason right
• 48:13
  I guess you can't just piling him and say he is totally wrong for using that word there was some
• 48:19
  reason behind it there was a pedagogical reason he was reading out something or he was referring
• 48:25
  to something it wasn't just I'm going to be offensive and hurt any persons of color in my class
• 48:34
  it actually had a reasoning behind it it turned out his wife was African he had no intention
• 48:43
  of hurting any um hmm yeah I mean the fundamental question for me in the case of that word or any
• 48:51
  word that's a slur is were you using it to refer to people or were you using it to refer to the word
• 48:57
  yeah and yeah so that's the whole thing if you're using it to refer to students by goodness
• 49:05
  you know yeah I mean there's a clear difference I mean I think everyone can understand we just
• 49:10
  pretend not to understand the difference between talking about a word and then using that word
• 49:15
  to refer to things outside of the word out in the real world out there you know if you
• 49:20
  if you call someone a faggot who's and you shout out them walking down the street we all know
• 49:24
  that that's different than saying the word faggot's a terrible word that you shouldn't call
• 49:28
  people like that yeah the fact that it's the same mouth sounds is does not make it the same thing
• 49:34
  or even this piece of literature mentions the word you know insert word here um yeah
• 49:43
  yeah if you're and you're discussing that and perhaps discussing the impact of it that's
• 49:49
  actually got a pedagogical and learning purpose how does that make you feel what is the point of
• 49:55
  that it's actually different to calling someone that and so what was the upside of that of that case
• 50:04
  um the university found that the lecturer had not contravened any code of conduct actually
• 50:11
  well give that a few years and we'll see whether or not that interpretation continues
• 50:16
  yeah well it'll be interesting to see which way are we going to go because one thing I do worry
• 50:22
  about I suppose is that we're going to polarise further and further that people are not going to
• 50:28
  be comfortable speaking to people who have different views from them that we might go more far
• 50:38
  left and then have a far right backlash or the other way around I suppose I just worry about
• 50:48
  when you have extreme and polarised people involved um it's dangerous for society
• 50:59
  I also think there's an important difference when we're talking about cancel culture
• 51:04
  between responding to someone's offensive well firstly is what they're saying offensive
• 51:11
  because they're making an argument or are they just being a dick you know I mean like uh
• 51:15
  is there an argument are they actually they're making a point are they trying to make a point
• 51:19
  that you disagree with and it might be a horrible point it might be let all Jews should be
• 51:24
  gassed and killed right but that's still an argument it is still a point right it's not simply
• 51:31
  because hate speech to me I suppose that is hate speech by any broad measure of the of the term
• 51:37
  but the kind of speech that you you could legitimately be summarily dismissed for
• 51:44
  and excluded from public society and sent out onto the ice flow to die a horror death without
• 51:50
  due process would be instances of vilifying and attacking and dehumanising individual human beings
• 52:00
  to make an argument I think the response the correct response to a terrible hateful argument
• 52:07
  is to answer that argument with an account for argument and I mean this was a point that was
• 52:12
  pointed out to me by Peter Singer who was saying like this is the difference that with cancel
• 52:18
  culture at the moment that you know you may think that what I'm saying is offensive the remedy to
• 52:22
  that is to is to argue against it but if yours if your remedy to it is to disengage and say you're
• 52:28
  not going to talk to me at all or explain why what I'm saying is wrong or offensive and you're
• 52:34
  simply going to try to destroy me where does that end up leading exactly collectively I was actually
• 52:44
  thinking of singer when you because he got into that issue regarding utilitarian arguments
• 52:55
  and disabled people like I'm a disabled person I can deal with the fact that someone has suggested
• 53:03
  that view yeah and then just to clarify for people who don't don't know it he got into trouble
• 53:09
  initially in the 90s with the religious rights with the Christian right because he's written about
• 53:15
  he's a utilitarian a consequentialist and has talked about abortion and euthanasia and these
• 53:22
  provocative things including infanticide you know he thinks that on balance you should be able
• 53:26
  to not only terminate pregnancies up until the point of birth but probably within the first few
• 53:31
  months of a child's life that it should be a woman's right to kill the child there's all very
• 53:36
  kind of outside the box things and one of his one of the things that he was getting pilloried for
• 53:41
  was I think the yeah the claim that that in the case of severely handicapped people so he's
• 53:49
  talking about people for example with no brain where it's just a a human being who's kept alive
• 53:56
  by life support and there's no there's no sentience there's no conscious life these are real
• 54:01
  examples of of real people who get kept alive debt for decades sometimes to the horrendous trauma
• 54:08
  of their family members because they are not a person in any meaningful sense of the word there
• 54:13
  a shell and his argument is that it's ridiculous to keep that thing that has no conscious life
• 54:19
  alive because it's a member of the species homo sapiens and to display such cruel disregard for
• 54:26
  other primates or we put and mammals and so on and keep them in factory farms and so on when
• 54:31
  they have much higher capacity to experience pain than the brainless lifeless body on
• 54:39
  you know there's been kept alive artificially in a hospital and then that extended to then
• 54:45
  there are boundary cases where you know okay well what if the what if the person has some form of
• 54:51
  conscious flickering that's going on in this in the brainstem or something like that and you get
• 54:56
  to all of these thorny issues of well when would it be okay to extinguish a human life and what
• 55:02
  level of of disability would be justified he has never suggested that people living with
• 55:08
  disabilities should be killed or something you know through some eugenic kind of argument
• 55:13
  not he was portrayed as being obviously people who oppose abortion and who are right to life
• 55:17
  sanctity of life as in the 90s had a field day with him and what he said to me was interesting Katie
• 55:23
  he said that controversy went away as the religious right sort of went off and kind of got bored of
• 55:29
  and it's actually in the past 10 years that he started enduring more and more on campus you know
• 55:37
  cancellations and riots and things when he attends to speak and that's coming now from the left
• 55:42
  not from the religious right that's coming from yeah social justice quarter yes yeah because that's
• 55:49
  I felt that what happened there was unfair also as opposed to an animal more person I'm familiar with
• 55:58
  his work certainly I don't have any issues with him raising questions like that I don't you know
• 56:08
  someone was kind of saying well if you knew what it was like to be disabled you would feel erased and
• 56:14
  I said I've had cerebral palsy since birth no one's trying to erase me he's just asking a question
• 56:24
  and it happens that I would draw the line possibly differently for various reasons but
• 56:31
  I can have a civil discussion with him about why that is I suppose that's that's what worries me
• 56:41
  that we can't we don't seem to be able to have a civil disagreement so much anymore and
• 56:50
  ultimately it's kind of deleterious to academic freedom which means that we see
• 56:58
  less and less less less development of ideas so yeah and I mean coming back to what I was saying
• 57:09
  about argumentation building on the other person's idea to reach us a kind of better argument than
• 57:15
  either of the interlock it has had to begin with you know part of what is good about universities
• 57:21
  is supposed to be that the exchange of ideas and the pushback and the wrestling it leads to
• 57:27
  something better and you don't really know your own I mean it's the old adage isn't that that you
• 57:32
  you know if you don't know your opponent's argument then you also don't know your own you
• 57:36
  you know very you know you build a better and more robust version of your own social justice argument
• 57:43
  or you know socially conservative argument or whatever it might be by bumping into arguments
• 57:50
  that you disagree with great with so I have a colleague at the University of Sydney and we
• 57:56
  basically have never really agreed about contract damages okay an issue which a very small
• 58:02
  proportion of people in the world care about but we've had this ongoing academic discussion for
• 58:10
  years where I'll write something he'll push back he'll write something I'll push back and we both
• 58:18
  actually really enjoy it and find it productive because he's made me think of things that I've never
• 58:25
  thought of before and he says I've made him think of things that he's never thought of before and
• 58:31
  both our work has become better a more nuanced and actually sharper as a result so it's it's a very
• 58:42
  friendly thing I'm waiting for his next salvo I know it's coming well I actually do hope so I'm
• 58:54
  looking forward to seeing what it is because their my own work can be improved because he'll see
• 59:00
  something that I didn't see and I've learned a lot through talking to him so yeah it is that whole
• 59:13
  thing of actually advocating for a point of view and kind of talking to other people about why
• 59:20
  what you believe makes your work better it actually makes it it means I can't be sloppy I know I know
• 59:30
  it'll be onto me if I gotta check everything and likewise but it also means that I think my work
• 59:41
  is more rounded because he made me think of certain things that I'd never thought about before
• 59:46
  hmm Katie do you get any pushback for holding this kind of attitude towards free speech
• 59:55
  yes yes I do so I mean I think I've been attacked on Twitter several times
• 1:00:07
  been told that I don't deserve to be made a professor um be told that I punched down against
• 1:00:13
  minorities um that I'm generally pretty evil but I mean again I just have to sit back and think
• 1:00:24
  this says more about other people than it says about me if we get back to what I was saying at the
• 1:00:30
  start about conversation they're concerned about social proof and they're kind of concerned
• 1:00:37
  to signal to other people it's not really about me at all it's about them and their own insecurities
• 1:00:45
  and their own uncertainties so I just kind of trundle along as I say so I spent my childhood
• 1:00:53
  being unable to walk properly I'm quite used to people calling me horrible names I don't really
• 1:00:59
  I mean up to them really that's their problem and if people don't want to talk to me if people
• 1:01:07
  want to block me people don't want to be my friend that's that's their prerogative I have a small
• 1:01:16
  a small group of actually very very politically religiously everything different countries different
• 1:01:26
  professions with whose opinions I really really trust if they say to me oh Katie what you've said
• 1:01:34
  has flaws I will really listen but if some random person on twitter comes to me and goes
• 1:01:41
  you're you've made a bad take and you're a white supremacist or something I'm just like yeah whatever
• 1:01:49
  or yours some kind of liberal shield and you're trying to drive drive us all into social justice
• 1:01:56
  wars I'm just like whatever and I've had it from both sides I've had it from both the left and the
• 1:02:02
  right um possibly because I don't really uh tow the line with anyone but um just have to kind of
• 1:02:12
  I suppose ride that out and think if anyone does that it says a lot about them
• 1:02:22
  it doesn't and if they don't engage with my argument it actually says very little about me at all
• 1:02:30
  Katie I wish you all the the greatest success in your mission to uh to de-activise the academy
• 1:02:38
  um thank you so much we'll take it in five years and see whether or not we've been able to to pull off
• 1:02:42
  the page see if I've been cancelled or not exactly that's right um thanks so much for your time it's
• 1:02:48
  lovely to talk to you lovely to talk to you too Josh thank you so much