Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Amna Khalid: Campus Craziness

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Amna Khalid: Campus Craziness · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  What's going on with universities? Are they just hot beds of crazy, woke, vulnerable students
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  wailing about their feelings and how vulnerable they are and being panned to by bureaucrats
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  and administrators? Is it necessary for the swinging arm of right-wing justice in the form
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  of Governor Rhonda Santas in Florida to slap around those institutions and whack them back into
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  shape, get all the wokies off campus? This is an important issue. How are educating young people
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  and the ways in which the ideas that they're educated in then bleed into the rest of society?
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  Amna Cullid is fascinating. She was brought to my attention by Alan Davison, who is the wonderful
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  Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney, which is
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  responsible for this collaboration. Every once in a while, 8-12 episodes over the course of
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  12-18 months. We do a collaboration with UTS. I'm a visiting fellow there and this is called
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  Permission to Think. These subsets, which we'll really try to get our hands dirty understanding.
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  Some of the things that motivate the best in higher education and the best in free speech on campus
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  and try to run a counter-vailing force against what can sometimes be orthodoxies and dogmas
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  on campus. Amna is fascinating because she is a professor herself. She is a historian herself.
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  She lives and works in Minnesota, but she was born in Pakistan, so she has in addition to her
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  expertise in South Asian history and in history of medicine and so on. She has a deep understanding
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  of and interest in the global history of free expression in all of its forms. She's lived under
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  military dictatorships. She lived in places where free speech was not available. She studied
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  history at Oxford University. She knows her stuff. She now has a blog called Banished and a podcast
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  called Banished, which deals with censorship in the past and in the present. And she recently
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  put together an Amicus brief, or an Amicus brief, different people in different countries,
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  say differently, basically a submission to the courts. In opposition to what the governor of
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  Florida is trying to do to higher education in that state. And if you don't know much about that,
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  he's a right-wing guy who has bought this idea that universities are hotbeds of crazy,
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  woke young people who are worried about having their feelings hurt and who are only being
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  indoctrinated with ideas about America's past, which say that white people are guilty for everything
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  and everything is white supremacist and they should have to pay reparations to victims of slavery
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  or whatever it might be in genocide and so on. And he's gone, we're going to come in and we're
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  going to redress this by requiring educational institutions not to teach that kind of nonsense.
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  To teach a nice, sunny vision of what really happened in America's past, which was full of
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  rivers of milk and honey and whatever. Anyway, ordinarily, many of the people who are against these
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  kinds of reforms can be a little bit wokie and hysterical and black arm band view of history
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  themselves. The great thing about Amner is she's not. She is an equal opportunity offender,
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  an equal opportunity critic. She has no truck with a cancel culture. She believes it's a real problem.
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  She thinks there's no place for this kind of sensoriousness on the left and at the same time,
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  she's putting her money where her mouth is and saying that politicians, bureaucrats and even
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  voters should not have any say over the way that we run academic institutions. It's a fascinating
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  chat. I hope you enjoy as much as I did this conversation as part of permission to think in
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  collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney with the one and only Amner Cod.
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  We start with cancel culture because I thought you wrote a very interesting case on your
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  subs back. Debunking some of the myths about the myths from people who deny that cancel culture
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  exists. Right. I think there are a number of myths. To begin with, I wrote that piece with my colleague
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  Jeff Snyder and one of the kind of motivations for it was when we brought to people's attention or
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  we started a conversation about cancel culture, people would either say it doesn't exist at all
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  or the alternative was it's worse on the other side. I think that is how we decided to write that
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  piece because the fact of the matter is it does exist. People use, I mean, I can go through it in more
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  detail if you want, but people use examples like, well, so and so has a big platform. They continue
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  Dave Chappelle as continuing to have his comedy shows being watched and he has not been canceled
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  therefore. But the question really is that what do these cancellations, these high level cancellations
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  do for those who are not as popular and who are not in the limelight. And what we found is that
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  remarkably, you know, well, it shouldn't be remarkable, but that notably, there are many, many people
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  who are being silenced. So it's not about one particular celebrity or one particular idea, but it
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  what the cancellation of that does to the wider environment for having a conversation. And I would
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  argue, cancel culture is incredibly strong in the US right now. It's very much on the upswing.
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  Sometimes I'm feeling more hopeful and I think we've reached a tipping point, but I haven't really
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  seen many reasons to confirm that hope of mine. And I do think that the right, I don't want to say
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  is only responding to the left in terms of what's happening in Florida. I think there have been
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  tendencies on the right to censor for a long time, but I do think I can understand that some of
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  it is being fed by this cancel culture, which is on the left. Yes, yes. I mean, cancel culture on
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  the, I mean, this is what's so peculiar, I think, about the current moment is that I assume that
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  the right has always been responsible for cancel culture. I mean, McCarthyism was cancel culture.
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  The religious rights censoring things they found offensive was cancel culture.
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  Monty Python being pulled off the airwaves and having huge controversies for the life of Brian
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  was right wing, cancel culture. Like we just assume that conservatives are more conservative about
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  what people can say and have tended to be more punitive about people who try to break out of the
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  boundaries of what polite society dictates. What's interesting about the current moment is that
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  you do seem to see that tendency towards puritanism, a certain kind of puritanism on the left.
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  I certainly think that is then feeding into it's pouring fuel on the fire of whatever that
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  instinct is on the right. You call, let's go through those myths. You've just thought of the first
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  one, which you call the Chappelle myth, the Dave Chappelle myth. In other words, you know, if Dave
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  Chappelle is still alive, you know, if Louis CK is still selling out Madison Square Garden,
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  then where is this cancel culture that you speak of? I've sometimes called this myth the, well,
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  they still have hands myth. We haven't chopped their hands off. I mean, so they're still, you know,
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  so the only way that you could successfully pull off cancel culture in this worldview is if you
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  beheaded Louis CK, then he wouldn't be able to do his Madison Square Garden show. But if he
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  still has a face and he still has hands, then yes, apparently cancel culture doesn't exist at all.
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  Well, I think it's not even about Louis CK. The question is how many things have become taboo
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  now for comedians who are doing stand up who are not Louis CK? I'm not really that interested in
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  Louis CK and David Chappelle. They have a platform they will almost always have hands, right? Even if
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  you behead them, they'll have hands. But the question is, what is it doing to the general culture of
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  comedy if we're talking about comedy? What is it doing to the ability of people to kind of ask or
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  broach topics, which are, you know, a little off color or a little on the edge? And without having
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  that ease to explore areas, whether it's in comedy, whether it's in thought more broadly,
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  it really, we are talking about a reigning sensoriousness. And that, I think, is what we need
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  to be paying attention to. Yes. And this is a point that I make often, which is that it's the,
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  it's the, it's the evolution of a way of speaking with each other that requires much more
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  treading on eggshells and much more inauthenticity actually and much more hypercautiousness, which
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  impedes the flourishing exchange of ideas because everybody has the examples of the high profile
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  people who were canceled to, as caution retails. But another point that you make about this is that
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  when you, when you point to these high profile people who were quote unquote canceled but who are
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  doing fine JK Rowling or whatever it might be, there are, there's a survivor's bias here. You make
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  the point because we're only selecting from the group of people who did end up being okay. There's
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  a whole bunch of people who are less high profile, who were canceled, who are not okay. We can't
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  point to, you mentioned someone who I've never even heard of, which is some bloke called Daniel
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  Elder, who was a composer in Nashville. Yes. Can you just tell what happened to him?
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  Well, Daniel Elder had, it was a composer, very promising composer and I'm trying to remember
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  there's so many controversies. Honestly, I can't remember which one he spoke out. He, it was,
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  it was George Floyd. It was the protests where there were protesters who tried to burn down
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  the courthouse in Nashville. Right. And they were white protesters.
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  He critiqued the kind of violence that was happening and he was saying he's, he supports Black Lives
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  Matter but he doesn't quite get, does it have to be this violent and does this kind of lawlessness
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  is justified. And it was that and they led to a complete cancellation of him and he had like
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  very promising contracts upcoming that were canceled and now no one's heard of him. This is
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  someone who was going to be someone but because of the kind of outcry that happened, Daniel Elder
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  is no longer composing and in fact, I think a while ago I asked him if he would come onto my
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  podcast and at that point he was so dreaded that he didn't even want to come onto the show
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  because he didn't want to make more of a mess in the process and be further kind of dragged into
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  this controversy. So he's someone, like you said, you haven't heard of.
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  I think it was only 11 words that he put on Instagram. He said, enjoy burning it all down,
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  you well intentioned blind people. I'm done. And with that, a career becomes incinerated,
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  doesn't take much. I mean, as someone who has had his own share of experiences being
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  pilloried for things that I've put on social media, it's extraordinary how swift and misrepresentative
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  it can be. The other point that you make of that cancel culture, what's that?
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  And I said how damning it is and how kind of conclusive that cancellation is, there's no
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  kind of going back from it. There's no there's no context. And there's no explaining on social media
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  either. The more you explain, the more you, I don't know if you've heard the story of David Vlodzkov
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  who is a journalist who got a job on the Seattle Times editorial board and moved his whole family
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  from Georgia to Seattle to take up this job. And after his first article for the op-ed page,
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  he wrote that foolishly that Lenin was worse than Hitler on social media because he'd written
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  a piece about a Lenin statue that they have in Seattle. Or maybe it was Portland. I think it was
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  Seattle. And he tried to explain what he was talking about on Twitter to the haters and of course
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  ended up getting fired. And now he has no job. And now the first three pages of Google results are
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  all about how he defends Hitler because he was defending Hitler supposedly against people who
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  were maligning Hitler. I mean, he's a Jew. He's not pro-Hitler. He's trying to make a nuanced point
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  on social media like an idiot. I'd bad him on this podcast. Social media doesn't lend itself
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  to no one's firstly. And that's unfortunately that's kind of been reflected in our public discourse
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  now is that there is no room for no one's because most people are beginning to talk on social media
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  platforms with each other. But the other thing is it is the ways in which things are being interpreted
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  is very binary. It's like, oh, you're saying, oh, if you're saying Lenin is worse than Hitler,
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  then you must be a supporter of Hitler. The absolute conclusion that is drawn from that is
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  so misplaced and there's so little, it's very binary. There's no room for kind of adding any other
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  context or, you know, seeing why someone might be saying something. So the conclusions that people
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  jump to I feel are predetermined and they're scripted. You're so right. And it is building out of
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  social media. I mean, I had a moment on this podcast recently where I was talking to a ferocious
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  critic of Israel. And he was talking about ethnic cleansing. And at one point I said, I made the
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  point that there are worse and better forms of ethnic cleansing in that if you were going to
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  it's hard point to make. But you could either irradiate people and kill them all or you could say
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  you have to leave this area within 72 hours and we're taking your homes. Yeah. I mean, I probably
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  just say there are more brutal ways of doing it and less brutal ways. Maybe maybe you fell into
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  the better trap. Right. Maybe. And I think we'll hear that in a particular way. There's no open
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  or room for kind of making a mistake or misusing a word. You just kind of believe for what you said.
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  So the other point that is worth making on the console culture is this argument that it's not
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  actually cancel culture. It's just criticism that what people who shout about cancel culture want
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  is a world free of consequences when an actual fact or cancel culture or cancel culture is is you
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  say something that is no longer acceptable that we've communally decided is no longer acceptable.
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  And you face the consequences just as you always have what's wrong with that claim.
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  There's a lot wrong with that claim that you just that it's a matter of I mean it's not a matter
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  of consequences. It's a matter of silencing and silencing someone isn't a consequence that
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  is censorship. It's really that simple in my mind. So it's not consequences. It's not something
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  that has been there is only one consequence is the point right in this case and that the
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  consequences that you are erased that your voices are raised and that in itself is not a
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  consequence that is silencing its censorship. Right. But isn't that I mean count the same if you
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  put it into other examples you know if someone were to say to stick on a Israel theme that
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  Jews are inferior and should be rounded up and heard it into gas chambers wouldn't it be an
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  appropriate thing to just silence that person like to be like okay you don't get to have a Twitter
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  account you don't get to give a speech at our college. Okay there's several problems with that
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  right one is once you silence one point of view who makes the decision about who is getting
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  silence. There is a judgment call that's being made over there. So today if you're on the left
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  and you decide a particular view is unacceptable in a different context at a different time in
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  other view will become unacceptable. Let's go to the Florida case where we have the Stop Work Act
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  and in fact the judge in the initial proceedings asked the state lawyer if this meant that when
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  Democrats are in power they can decide decide which ideas are divisive concepts and decide that
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  those need to be censored out of the classroom and the response of the lawyer was yes right so that
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  really highlights how this kind of idea of silencing works which is if it's the approved orthodoxy
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  today that's going to rain but that can shift who makes that decision is a crucial point when we get
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  to deciding what views are absolutely not worth hearing. What views are there views that are
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  absolutely not worth hearing? Not mine what mine but I'm saying if that's the logic you take
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  right like if you say. I mean are you that much of a free speech absolutist that you know a neon
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  Nazi claiming that we should incinerate all Jews is right to cry found. It depends on what
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  it's being made. Yeah if it's being made in a public square I am that much of a free speech
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  absolutist that I think that there should be a lot to make that claim. I think the entire rationale
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  behind the neon Nazi march and Skokie as justified by the ACLU as as worth defending was exactly this
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  that in a public state we're going to. I'm not talking about passing laws against that speech. I'm
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  talking about you know going back to the Dave Chappelle or Louis CK example that person being booted
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  off media platforms being having their television shows withdrawn being cancelled in the in the
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  colloquial cultural sense in other words they're sort of memory hold by by culture but we're not
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  putting them in jail for saying that. You know I'm not going to I mean I think it really depends on
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  the society or in in the context or in and of course social communities have the right and they
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  have dynamics which ostracize people. So I'm not saying that they can or like I'm not making a
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  judgment on what a private institution should do I'm not making a judgment on what a particular
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  society should do but legally I do think that we in order to have the freeest possible society where
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  we can have a conversation about everything and anything I don't think that someone like that
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  should be banned out of the public square or I don't think that it isn't I don't think it's a very
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  healthy healthy speech culture if we're going to begin to silence views even if they are the most
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  reprehensible views so in my mind an open society would have space for even those ideas that I
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  think are absolutely utterly you know disgusting but I would want them to be there because I worry
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  about what would happen once you start banning things and this is one of the things that I think
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  is currently a problem in the kind of conversation we're having in the US I don't think people have
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  a living memory of what it feels like or what how it pans out when you begin to silence particular
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  points of view what they don't appreciate because they haven't lived it is that it goes downhill
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  very quickly you know I can go to Orwell I can make several other references right now but something
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  might seem like a good idea I don't I'm not endorsing those views by allowing them to be to be
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  broadcasted but at the same time I feel that censoring them is actually more dangerous and comes to
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  bite us in more kind of significant ways than allowing them does that make sense it does make sense
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  but I do feel like there's still a dodge somewhere in there which I want to tease out which I think
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  has to do with me I want to be why I think it I think let's set aside the legal questions right and
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  let's let's agree that we don't that we think that that we're against hate speech laws that we
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  don't think that governments should be in the business of dictating what people say and I don't
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  think we're going to get to the knob of what's wrong about the current moment of hostility towards
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  free speech without granting that there are some circumstances in which the vast majority of
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  people would be okay with private organs like social media companies websites publications
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  you know movie studios television networks even academic institutions from excluding people from
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  there from having their platform their platforms or their megaphone's so for me there needs to be
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  some differentiation between why are we okay with the virulent neo nazi being booted off those
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  platforms but we're not okay with what's going on at the moment on the left and the right and for me
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  maybe the solution is less about the content of what people are saying but the mechanism by which
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  we make the adjudication about silencing them I mean to me that the unseemliness of the current
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  moment is that people seem to be making these adjudications about what can and can't be said
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  in a knee-jerk reaction to mobs to social media frenzies to political to political expediency
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  to pandering sure what's the alternative you're proposing like in which case do you think it would be
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  okay to in terms of the mechanism right so I mean so yes well I don't I don't know but I could
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  imagine a mechanism whereby you know CEOs and deans are have a less aren't touch pussies
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  apart in the franchise and they have a mechanism by which they are committed to ideals of
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  free speech first and foremost a set of principles that they have to abide by were they to throw
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  those free speech principles overboard that would have to show some kind of real harm not just
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  them responding to a petition that got cobbled together by a bunch of students in a frenzy or
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  you know being shouted down or something like that see I'm very skeptical of things in part
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  because not because I deny that things can be harmful I actually believe words can be extremely
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  harmful but it's again about the adjudication of who decides what's harmful let me be clear just
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  just to kind of clarify the conversation further so we can move productivity is I think any
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  any private organization if it decides and chooses to ban certain kinds of speech on its platform
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  is a is a perfectly viable decision that they can make I'm not you know so I'm not saying that Twitter
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  has to be totally free for everyone that is not my place and my position to call let me bring bring
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  us back to the academic context which is where I think some of these things are playing out
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  I actually don't think that there is any view that is off the table in the academy or should
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  be off the table however and here's the distinction I don't think there's any view that that's
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  unutterable but I think it's about whether it's being endorsed in a particular way so let's say
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  we're in a geography classroom and your geography professor walks in and starts teaching that the
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  earth is flat as the truth there is no room for that that is actually what we would call educational
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  malpractice right that is that is teaching or giving a concept weight which it doesn't deserve
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  however if you're in a geography classroom and a professor is like well you know there are people
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  there is a theory or there are people who believe this which has been debunked but students still
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  want to get a sense of how is it that someone in this day and age can be a flat earther and this
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  person says you know what there's someone I know I'll call them to class you can have a conversation
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  that to my mind is an educational moment where you can actually delve into how is it that
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  in light of this evidence people are still believing that the earth is flat or you can put this in
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  you know it's anti-vaxxers or you can put it in any kind so no idea in the academy to my mind
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  is unutterable nothing should be taboo yet endorsement or teaching it as the truth is something that
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  requires expertise and something that goes so it's not just uttering it is an in itself should not
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  be sanctionable unless it is being endorsed as the truth so in that case there are limits on speech
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  but no matter what these limits are don't we fall back into the trap of what you were just saying to
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  me which is who decides the limits yeah and we're falling back in the context of academia onto the
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  decision that is made by a contingent of experts in a particular area right so it's to my
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  mind that's a very different appear reviewed kind of opinion being aired is very different from
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  something that's off the cuff that I've just decided to share with people so those are not
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  those are not just views that are just views of the cuff but those are those ideas that have been
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  substantiated that have the kind of weight of scholarly expertise behind them and yes this is not
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  to say that every question is settled in any area you will see that there are disagreements and
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  there are kind of heterodox ideas and those should be allowed to be aired provided they are based
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  on some kind of evidence and some kind of consensus within the it is a certain section of the community
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  that brings to it you know the heft that is required to have an academic debate in discussion
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  so in order to have an academic debate you can't just get up and you can't say the Holocaust never
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  happened that is not a viable point of view among historians however you can get up and have
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  a conversation about you know there are other things that are hotly debated and and and
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  violently debated among historians which is you know what is the impact of ex in why I mean I'm
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  struggling to come up with an example right now well I mean at one example might be that you
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  could certainly have a conversation about the historiography of Holocaust denial I mean you
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  could certainly talk about the you know you talk about the idea that the Holocaust didn't happen
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  you just have to have that as a meta conversation rather than using that claim as a as a fact
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  so yeah let's talk I don't want to run out of time before we before we get stuck into the right
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  wing here because sometimes I can be mistaken by casual listeners who aren't paying attention as
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  someone who's agitated about left wing cancel culture or something and I'm really not I just
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  feel that I'm part of the left and so I'm interested in interrogating the phenomenon of what's
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  happening to progress and I'm going to respond to that and say I hear what you're saying in terms
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  of how you're charged with that I get that a lot as well and I actually believe that as someone
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  who's on the left I have every right to critique the left and I have actually more of a right
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  to critique it and to reform it because I'm committed to those ideals it bothers me more when
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  it's happening on the left because like you said on the right were used to censorousness being
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  a tactic and a mode of operation whereas on the left and it's depressing for me coming to the US
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  and seeing this happening and being kind of this kind of cancellation on the left
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  precisely because I've always looked to the left as the liberators as the ones who would
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  argue for more freedom and it's troubling it's not surprising I guess given historically we've
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  seen this happen before but it is surprising in the US context which is you know positioned
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  itself as the bastion of freedom and also positioned itself in many ways as against communism
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  so kind of carving out that space which which calls for freedom in ways that are distinct and
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  different yeah and not only do I want to refuge in a viable left but I'm also terrified of the
• 27:23
  far right and what I can do to Western civilization and to all of us my grandparents are Holocaust
• 27:31
  survivors I'm in a same sex marriage there are all kinds of reasons why I would not fare well
• 27:36
  if we were to provoke the far right into the kinds of extremes that it has seen historically so
• 27:43
  let's just talk about this phenomenon and you again if people haven't already noticed I mean
• 27:48
  you would be the kind of person who people might expect to be superficially in favor of getting
• 27:55
  wokeness out of universities you write about cancel culture you've written about the futility of
• 28:00
  trigger warnings you don't have much time for current social justice fads and yet you're a
• 28:09
  ferocious critic of what DeSantis is doing in Florida what is DeSantis doing in Florida
• 28:15
  he's doing what Orban has successfully done elsewhere he's basically trying to limit the scope
• 28:25
  of what is thinkable and what is he's trying to constrain the parameters of academic inquiry
• 28:36
  and it's the tragedy is that it's it's tragic at all levels I would argue K through 12 as well
• 28:43
  but in terms of higher education what's interesting is that he's violating academic freedom which
• 28:51
  arguably is not a constitutional right in the US but it is the one thing that has made the
• 28:58
  US academy the envy of the world because it is allowed for people to speak truth to power it
• 29:03
  is allowed for people to ask and interrogate opinions or views that are unfashionable
• 29:11
  yet have been extremely kind of feel defining once they've been given the space to be interrogated
• 29:18
  and explored so what DeSantis is doing is he's trying to limit the freedom to think in public
• 29:23
  institutions across the entire state and for people who aren't up on the news of this what
• 29:28
  what specifically so there's a there's an act called the stop work act right and you have and
• 29:33
  you're you're putting your money where your mouth is you've actually written an amicus brief or
• 29:36
  an amicus brief depending on how one pronounces it for to this to the courts in opposition to this
• 29:42
  what does the act specifically do the stop work act is basically saying that their eight concepts
• 29:48
  which are considered divisive concepts by the state which they are forbidding to be taught in
• 29:53
  classrooms and the crux of it is it's those concepts which make white people feel any kind of guilt or
• 30:02
  responsibility for the actions of their ancestors in the grand scheme of things if you don't know the
• 30:09
  context it it's not a bad idea to say we don't want to be teaching students how to teaching students
• 30:16
  that they need to feel guilty for things that they've not done nobody's going to argue with that
• 30:20
  but in the context of the US and how US history is taught what it's basically saying is that we don't
• 30:26
  want people to teach about the kind of atrocities that were committed during the time of slavery
• 30:34
  and it's a way of kind of saying those are not ideas that we want for to be discussed in the
• 30:40
  classroom or to be explored in the classroom so those are ideas that are being constrained so inquiry
• 30:45
  is being constrained so the stop work act is basically saying that those would be considered
• 30:50
  illegal to talk about those things now when you think and the the interesting thing about it is
• 30:57
  it's not just saying that these are ideas that you can't endorse that would be one thing it's
• 31:02
  saying you can't even advance these ideas in the classroom I don't know how you can teach
• 31:07
  any kind of history without referring to primary sources which are advancing these ideas I
• 31:13
  cannot offer you a critique of something without presenting to you whatever that thing is but
• 31:18
  according to this law you would be running a foul of state legislation if you even advance documents
• 31:26
  or expose students to ideas that you then want to critique which which the state names as inappropriate
• 31:34
  so that would make the teaching of history and frankly teaching a lot of other stuff primarily
• 31:41
  in the humanities and social sciences but not exclusive to those fundamentally impossible so if you
• 31:47
  this is not an educational enterprise then this is indoctrination so the irony is that they're saying
• 31:53
  that we're indoctrinating students in our classrooms and it's precisely to counter that indoctrination
• 31:57
  that they need to put into place laws that will ban certain ideas from being discussed where it
• 32:02
  is actually in effect what is happening is they are the ones who are proposing a form of indoctrination
• 32:08
  which would be in play at public institutions if this law is actually passed and the courts kind
• 32:16
  of find in favor of it now this to me sounds flagrantly in opposition to the spirit of the
• 32:25
  First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guaranteeing people the right to speak
• 32:29
  to say whatever they want is the reason why that doesn't apply because there are public funds
• 32:34
  in play and so the state would withhold funds or something well that's that's the idea that the
• 32:41
  rhetoric that's being used by the right is that this is something if the public doesn't want this
• 32:45
  to be taught it ought not to be taught public funds should not be going towards it that's I've written
• 32:50
  again on that with my colleague Jeff Snyder that that's a misuse of the idea and the word public and
• 32:55
  how that's being used because that's often the one that's being invoked but your question was
• 33:00
  something else hang on I can just pause on that thought for a moment because I liked that I
• 33:03
  did read that piece and I thought it was interesting the difference between public as yeah the two
• 33:08
  ways in which we use the term public right look you know it's it's there many ways in which we use
• 33:14
  the term public but there's something that could be public in that the public is financing it
• 33:18
  something could be public in that it is for the public good right it doesn't mean that the public gets
• 33:23
  to decide exactly how what each element of it is going to be and the kind of analogy that we came
• 33:29
  up with which I think is very effective is that you know we pay funds we have municipal taxes
• 33:34
  for road maintenance that's fine we pay experts to decide which kind of tar they're going to use
• 33:40
  to fill holes but we don't have a say in what that tar is going to be or what that kind of mechanism
• 33:47
  is going to be to fix the roads similarly when we're dealing with academia academia or education
• 33:52
  public education is a public good in that it is for the public it is easily an access of you know
• 33:58
  at a low cost whatever depending on which country you're in available to the public but it's not
• 34:04
  public in that the public gets to decide what's good thought that's not how this works especially
• 34:09
  in higher education in in the kind of K through 12 system in the US it is a little bit different states
• 34:13
  have more control over the curriculum and one can argue that that that shouldn't be done there either
• 34:19
  and I would argue that it shouldn't be done there either but the setup is very different
• 34:24
  than from higher ed which is where our amicus brief is what it's focusing on which is the kind
• 34:30
  of constrained by the analogy just to interrupt there and the analogy that I thought of which you
• 34:34
  didn't raise but which is an apt one for people outside of the United States in places like
• 34:38
  Australia and Canada and the UK is public broadcasting it is the I work for the public broadcaster
• 34:44
  the public broadcaster right is funded by public funds for the benefit of the public
• 34:50
  and explicitly must have no interference from the democratic institutions of democracy the whole
• 34:56
  point is that it is free from it from voters and free from politicians that's what it's there to do
• 35:02
  yeah exactly so what I'm finding and it's really interesting how the writers using this idea of
• 35:08
  the public and they're like well the public pays for it why should the public be paying for ideas
• 35:12
  that they find divisible that's not how this is this has ever been done and if that's called
• 35:17
  authoritarianism it's called democratic authoritarianism if you will but it's not it's not democratic
• 35:23
  and it's not in the spirit of a public good the ways in which the way in which it's intended to be
• 35:29
  or was intended to be so that's the explanation of the public but there was a bigger question you
• 35:35
  were asking that I yeah well I think it just had to that my next question and I don't know if I
• 35:41
  didn't get to it yet was it strikes me that there are two criticisms that I hear of what's going
• 35:48
  on in Florida one is that this is going to make the teaching of history impossible and another is
• 35:58
  even if it were the case that these reforms are going to enhance the teaching of history as a
• 36:04
  useful pushback against the insanity of woke professors using the to using the organs of the
• 36:12
  state would not be a legitimate way to achieve that and you would need cultural and educational
• 36:19
  remedies instead yes absolutely the state needs to stay out of this the state has no
• 36:26
  business interfering in a classroom and dictating the curriculum whether that enhances or hinders
• 36:31
  the educational process that is not the business of the state they really should not be in that
• 36:36
  business so what do we say to the Chris Rufos yeah well what one says to the Chris Rufos of the
• 36:47
  world is is a difficult question because the Chris Rufos of the world are politically motivated
• 36:52
  there's nothing you can they're not amenable to logic and argument so I don't speak to the
• 36:58
  Chris Rufos of the world but what I will say to those who are not is that you know
• 37:06
  I'm not denying that there is a problem in public education in the US today so let's just let
• 37:13
  that's why I'm such a fierce critic of the left and what's happening on college campuses
• 37:17
  I'm strongly in support of the need to do something but the need and
• 37:23
  this has to be an internal reform this cannot be state dictated that never goes down well
• 37:29
  I come from a country where we ruined our public education precisely when
• 37:33
  politicians started interfering in political influence started determining
• 37:37
  how and what could be taught so the the states role in this case and the public's role
• 37:44
  I don't think is an interfering in the curriculum however and this is where I think the state
• 37:48
  could play a role in the reform of these things is they could say we are in strong support of academic
• 37:55
  freedom and we will be supporting that so that would be already a way to kind of signal
• 38:02
  that any overreaches of the left that kind of hinder academic freedom would not be tolerated
• 38:08
  but the other thing is I think the state can say we want x percentage of our budget to be devoted
• 38:15
  to faculty instruction and not to administrators so instead of banning DEI programs which is what
• 38:21
  DeSantis is doing that's ideologically driven right say x percentage goes to administration
• 38:27
  the rest goes to faculty instruction instead of hand picking those programs or those administrators
• 38:33
  that you don't like I'm no fan of DEI programs yet at the same time I can't get behind DeSantis
• 38:39
  his approach of banning them so I think the public can they can say that our tax dollars are being
• 38:46
  we're giving them for education but not determining the tenor of the education right so therefore
• 38:51
  we want more of it towards actual instruction and not most of it going towards administration that's
• 38:57
  a very different proposition from the kind of proposition that DeSantis is making but that's not
• 39:03
  the kind of proposition that gets you votes so that's not one we're likely to hear coming from
• 39:09
  any side to be honest since you mentioned DEI you've written about this as well and you sometimes
• 39:15
  call it DEI ink when I use the term diversity equity and inclusion in Australia I'm sometimes
• 39:22
  misunderstood as talking about actual diversity and actual equality and actual inclusion
• 39:28
  what what do you mean what is DEI ink DEI ink is the raining set of policies and practices
• 39:39
  on college campuses but beyond college campuses even in corporate in the corporate world in the US
• 39:44
  which is you know the equivalent of saying we're going to do lip service to something but not
• 39:48
  actually do something meaningful so we're going to posture there's a lot of emphasis on performing
• 39:54
  your commitment to these as opposed to doing something meaningful or even being willing to question
• 40:01
  whether your policies are perhaps not going to be effective so there's no room for questioning
• 40:06
  it's very dogmatic and it is this idea that if you if you if you critique those policies then you're
• 40:13
  not in favor of diversity equity and inclusion like you were saying as concepts so DEI ink manifests
• 40:19
  itself in very many different ways on college campuses one of them are these diversity trainings
• 40:23
  which are extremely doctrine where there is a right answer so they're fundamentally not educational
• 40:29
  but they are intended to dictate what you say the second thing is so these trainings which are
• 40:36
  antiracism training and diversity trainings then there things like you know it's a whole package
• 40:40
  it's like bias response teams it's protecting minorities and the students who might be vulnerable
• 40:47
  by instituting trigger warnings it's a whole package that is predicated on the idea that what
• 40:53
  is happening on colleges can be deeply harmful to students so it's this framework of harm and it's
• 40:58
  harm mitigation which is what they're trying to do and anything that they perceive as being harmful
• 41:05
  must be mediated through this set or must be refracted through the set of what is considered
• 41:11
  safe creating a safe space on campus so that's a brief kind of overview of DEI ink but it is
• 41:18
  extremely doctrine yeah the yes I mean what's amazing is also just going back to your conversation
• 41:25
  about the amount that universities are spending on administration versus faculty and teaching
• 41:31
  that so many colleges in the United States lately have introduced new positions that make
• 41:37
  250,000 $300,000 a year who are just diversity officers who sort of impose this quasi-stalinist
• 41:47
  framework over everything adjudicating whether or not you're thinking correctly about such matters
• 41:52
  and whether there are any dissenters in the institutions who need to be corrected in their
• 41:57
  worldview just wrap us up with with with the fate of tertiary education higher education as
• 42:04
  Americans call it because one of the cruxes of your critiques is that universities are basically
• 42:09
  corporations that masquerade as educational institutions at this point what does what do you mean by that?
• 42:16
  I think a lot of universities have become highly corporatized even in the public sector you know
• 42:21
  they're driven by the logic of corporate development where administrative thinking has overtaken
• 42:28
  the kind of thinking that faculty are in the business of doing so we're in the business of
• 42:32
  problematizing something looking at it from different angles looking at the complexity of it
• 42:37
  you know sitting with a problem and thinking about it deeply whereas I think the logic that
• 42:41
  is now reigning on most college campuses is this here's a problem we need to solve it right there
• 42:47
  is a paper on my table and I need to push it out of the way so the administrative logic which I
• 42:51
  understand and I think it has a place but that should not be the dominant logic or the dominant kind
• 42:57
  of thinking in institutions of higher education so the fact I mean I don't think I need to say much
• 43:03
  more but to say that you can see that on university campuses right now there is renewed zeal
• 43:10
  for proliferation of DEI offices let's say or other administrative offices there's never any
• 43:16
  question of whether we should have them every institution has suddenly decided that that's the
• 43:21
  thing to do and we need to have them and like you said we're talking about six figure salaries that
• 43:25
  are being paid to these people meanwhile there's never any really concerted conversation about
• 43:32
  hang on why do we keep cutting faculty lines are we not an institution of higher education
• 43:38
  that needs to be prioritizing learning and teaching that's not a conversation that's being had
• 43:43
  why is it that 75% of the professoriate in the United States is adjunct and contingent faculty
• 43:50
  that's a really damning statistic when you think about the bulk of the population is being
• 43:56
  educated by people who do not have the kind of job security that is necessary to teach courage
• 44:05
  that's the bottom line because once you do not have job security the whole point of tenure is
• 44:09
  that you can speak truth to power right that you can you can bring to the fore heterox ideas
• 44:14
  which will challenge the status quo but when you think that 75% of the professoriate is contingent
• 44:20
  faculty and they don't have that job security not to mention that they're working multiple jobs
• 44:26
  just to make ends meet because it's so poorly paid well then what does that say about the state
• 44:32
  of tertiary education in the United States I think it's really dire and I think it's I don't
• 44:37
  feel particularly hopeful about the future of it if these trends continue I think there are two
• 44:43
  problems faculty core governance has been strongly undermined and administrative administration has
• 44:48
  become much much heavier and hence their logic is the one that dominates and the second thing I
• 44:55
  think is the tenure itself is being questioned in so many places and that's to the detriment of the
• 45:01
  culture of intellectual development in the United States and lastly when you say you're not very
• 45:08
  optimistic about the future of higher education in the United States how optimistic are you about
• 45:13
  the broader phenomena that are roiling culture education and politics if you fast forward in to
• 45:22
  20 years time are we in a better or worse place that's up to us I really do think if we let the
• 45:31
  trends carry on as they are I think we're in a worse place the only place where I do have hope is
• 45:37
  I think it's still I think it's still something we can do something about it's not a gone case
• 45:42
  and I think we need we need faculty to speak up a lot more and take control back in higher education
• 45:51
  and I think we need students who's learning who are really they at the end of the day they're the
• 45:56
  ones who lose at the most and have the most to lose so we need them to be more politically involved
• 46:01
  and engaged to reclaim their their learning and not let legislators from any political strike dictate
• 46:09
  what they're going to be taught. I'm now great to talk to you thank you for your time. Thanks so much, Josh.