Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Do Universities Punish Free Thinkers?" with Peter Boghossian

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"Do Universities Punish Free Thinkers?" with Peter Boghossian · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  G'day, humans! Welcome to the first installment of the collaboration between the University of
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  Technology Sydney and uncomfortable conversations with Josh Zeps. We're calling this permission
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  to think and today's guest, the inaugural guest of this series, is Peter Begosian. He's an American
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  philosopher. He teaches about teaching. He teaches about cultural studies and philosophy. He was an
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  assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University for 10 years and he taught about
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  atheism, critical thinking, scientific skepticism, and most importantly the secratic method,
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  the means of interrogating how we know what's true. And he's become increasingly concerned
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  about that, about how we interrogate what's true and how we get persecuted if we ask questions about
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  what's true, that run afoul of a new moral orthodoxy. So he quit. He quit his job.
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  He has written a piece called My University Sacrifice Ideas for Ideology. So today I quit.
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  He had been talking out against illiberalism that he felt had swallowed Portland State University.
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  And the more he spoke out, the more retaliation he faced. It's an incredible story that has ramifications
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  for free thought, not just in the United States, not just on university campuses, but for all of us
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  and if we care about the free exchange of ideas and if we care about liberal democracy. Please
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  enjoy this conversation with the one and only Peter Begoshan.
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  Peter, thanks so much for being here. I never thought I would start a conversation by saying,
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  tell me about the conceptual penis, but tell me about the conceptual penis.
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  So the conceptual penis following in the footsteps of Alan Sokol, who was a, or is still an NYU
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  math and physics professor wrote a hoax paper and he submitted to the number one post-modern journal
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  in the world. It was basically gibberish nonsense and he was concerned that they were misappropriating
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  scientific terms, particularly for political purposes. So he wrote this paper to expose that.
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  So the conceptual penis follows in Alan Sokol's footsteps and it's a more or less, it's not a
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  gibberish paper, but it certainly has a lot of gibberish in there, a lot of a lot of
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  vulgarities for the penis. And we basically argue that penises are constructs and while there may be,
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  well, there may be actual penises that we detail all the terrible things for which penises are
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  guilty and among those is climate change. So it's, it's a, it was a hoax paper and we did an
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  expose in skeptic magazine about it designed to show that there were problems in certain bodies
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  of literature or certain types of thoughts, things that are morally fashionable.
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  What is the problem that you're trying to tease out with the hooks?
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  Well, even if I may step back before that, so we, we published this paper and so many people
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  said this paper doesn't do what you think it does. If, if you really want to show that there's a
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  problem that the scholarship is not rigorous, that it's ideologically based, that there are,
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  it's not tethered to reality, there's insufficient evidence for these claims. What you really need
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  to do is you need to do A, B, C, D, E. So okay, let's do A, B, C, D, E. So my writing partner and I
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  did exactly, they gave us a roadmap and we followed the roadmap to a T, you need to publish more papers
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  and more journals and you need to make certain kind, we just thought we did everything they told us to
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  do. So the purpose of it when we wrote it up in area magazine was to expose the bankruptcy of,
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  much of the scholarship that's coming out of these fields and that's informing public policies.
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  And what are the fields that you're targeting that you're worried about?
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  Almost everything with the word studies in it.
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  That's a lot. What is one form of studies have been common with another form of studies that's
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  problematic? They're ideologically based. They're not, they start with their conclusions first and
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  they work backwards. That's not the way science works. That's not the way evidence ought to work.
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  You ought to have. But the cultural studies professor might say, well, that's because it's not
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  science. It's cultural studies. Well, it doesn't work according to a scientific method. It's
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  a great getting our hands dirty, reading various texts and trying to understand their relationship
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  to each other. Or great. Then don't, then don't claim it's true and don't form when someone wants
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  to form public policies on it. Say, no, no, no, this is basically just, these are just our musings.
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  Can you give us examples of things that are held to be true in these disciplines that you think
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  aren't founded on fact? Oh, I'll give you things that contradict fact. Now, one of the papers that we
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  published was, we termed it fat bodybuilding. We argued that there should be a classification
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  in professional bodybuilding where they don't use the word morbidly obese, but morbidly obese people
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  can come and display their fat in non-competitive ways and that bodybuilding competitions
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  need to allow this. It's the fight. I originally wrote in a big Star Trek fan. I wrote, this is the
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  final frontier of fat activism to penetrate into the world of professional bodybuilding. The
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  journal editor was upset at the word final frontier. I took it from the Star Trek reference, but she
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  looked at it as the slaughter of the Native Americans. So a great example would be in the journal
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  fat studies, for example, the entire journal is predicated on fat acceptance. It's not what
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  people would think. Is it about A1Cs? You know, the amount of sugar you've had in your blood or
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  how many macronutrients you should have or should you intimate and fast? It's about none of that.
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  The fat advocacy journal. And so when these articles come out, the professors assign the articles
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  in class and test students on these. So they're basically being asked right or wrong answers
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  to things that are factually incorrect. And that's just one small example. But I think it's an
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  example that shows it's directly how these fields can, they're kind of like toxins to people's
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  conceptions of reality, particularly young girls susceptibility to they call it healthy at every size.
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  And this of course spans not just in terms of body image, but across a whole suite of
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  I suppose potential type issues, right? And anyone who's done a university course in the past three
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  years is familiar with like when I was at uni, instead of Australian history, there was a subject
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  called making Australia, which where you learned to problematize and complicate traditional narratives
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  of Australian history from the perspective of oppressed groups like indigenous Australians,
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  which is a bizarre thing to do. But I didn't yet know enough Australian history to understand
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  even what we were doing. So we were deconstructing things that hadn't yet been constructed to my
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  19 year old mind. Is this just something that universities play around with and always have?
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  No, well, just on that to borrow from Derrida, one of the French intellectuals, Helen
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  Pluckrose is a wonderful piece, how French intellectuals were on the west. Derrida does have a few
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  nuggets. One of the things he says is before you can deconstruct a discipline, you have to know a
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  discipline. So you have to understand history, you have to understand the rudiments of what
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  you're talking about before you can attempt any form of deconstruction. So no, they're not playing
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  around with this. This is not fun and games. They're teaching these subjects are being taught
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  and the conclusions that they've come to are being taught as fact. And they're being told that
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  this is knowledge. And if you want, we can talk about idea laundering but why science phrase after
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  what he said to me at a party one night and I've published a few pieces about it.
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  Yeah, let's let's let's let's talk about that idea laundering. What is it?
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  So ideal laundering is a few people get together, they have an idea about something.
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  And if they're in the academy, if they're academics, then they they get together and they form
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  a journal. And so they discharge their moral impulses in the journal. So they go in the journal
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  as a feeling to have a moral feeling or a conclusion. And they come out the other side,
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  they're laundered, they come out as knowledge. So then you have all these disciplines
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  with all of these journals, with all of these articles making claims about reality
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  that are simply not evidence-based. They're not they're completely disconnected from reality.
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  And the point is that someone can come up with a handbrained idea and by putting it through the
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  process of peer review and getting published in journal, which in a scientific context carries a
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  lot of weight and and lends it a certain credibility. They're able to make it appear like it's a
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  stronger opinion than it is or that it's even not not even a scientific case. But that should be
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  the gold standard of knowledge with all this disinformation and fake news and what have you.
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  We have to have a source where we can look that we can trust. There's a crisis of confidence in
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  our institutions now. There's a legitimacy crisis. And if people can't look to the pure
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  reviewed literature, then where are they looking to? They're looking through their own ideological
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  sinkholes, right? They're on that they become absorbed and they fall down a rabbit hole.
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  So if you're so you come up with this idea of this hoax paper, the conceptual penis and
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  these other hoax papers and you submit them and they get published and then you use that as a way
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  of saying, look, these idiots will publish essentially anything and give it credibility.
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  Not anything. Many interrupt you because this is very, very important. This is the linchpin of
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  the whole thing. They won't publish anything. They won't publish papers that contradict the narrative.
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  They'll only publish papers that are written in alignment with the dominant world orthodoxy
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  that they're pushing. That's the kind of papers that they publish.
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  Got it. So it's not to publish anything. Right. So you titled the conceptual penis to inhabit a
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  worldview that you thought would be sympathetic to them. A worldview of patriarchy, a worldview of
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  misogyny, a worldview of the primacy. Yes. And more importantly, in this worldview and I've
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  been doing this for so long and I've read so much literature, I truly at this point understand
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  how they think about things. So for the conceptual penis, everything is a construct.
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  To all constructs. That's not to say that there's no objective reality. That's a fine point.
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  They're not denying objective reality. They're just saying that knowledge of objective
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  of objective reality is mediated through power relations and discourse. And so part of the
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  worldview is that everything is a construct. So if everything is a construct, well, then the penis
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  must be a construct. Well, if the penis is a construct, what follows from that?
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  Is it not true that our understanding of reality is mediated by power dynamics?
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  Yeah, to a certain extent it is sure. That doesn't mean you can't know reality. That doesn't mean
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  you know, when you go into a bank and you want to make change that you're going to say in your
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  reality, it's something different. That doesn't mean that getting back to the facts that is
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  example, one of the things they want to do to push a worldview or push a narrative and this has
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  been utterly devastating and it's completely genius is they change the meaning of words.
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  So for example, in the in the general facts studies, they don't use the word obesity.
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  The word obesity is a word that's used within medicine. It's a medical narrative.
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  Whereas fat is a descriptor. So they're saying that there are different narratives and they're
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  promulgating. They're pushing. They're forwarding the one narrative where they use the word fat.
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  And then that's a kind of discourse that people in which people engage.
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  Are you noticing a greater abuse of words?
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  Yeah, not only an abusive word, people are completely changing. This is you can take this
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  forward. It's worth. This is my opinion about how this is metastasized throughout our institutions.
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  It's not that they're making up words. They have neologisms or what have you. It's that they're
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  completely changing the meaning of meanings of words. And they're taking words with a positive
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  balance, changing the meanings of those words, and then and then instituting policies on the
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  basis of the new meanings of words. What kind of examples? What kind of examples?
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  To give you tons of examples. Equity is probably the most prominent example.
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  Most people don't know what equity means and in fact,
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  well, let me let me let me phrase that. Most people have heard of the word equity in terms of
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  you know, the amount of money you have in a house. So they've taken a term. It has a positive
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  balance. And my kid's school now, everything is equity. My former employer, Portland State
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  University, every email equity, equity, equity. But when you ask people, I was at a faculty
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  department meeting and somebody actually didn't know what equity meant. They looked it up and they
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  said fairness and they said, well, okay, it just means fairness. And I said, okay, well,
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  that you want to use the word fairness. Let's do that. Equity is the opposite of fairness. And
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  it's the absolute antithesis. See, antithesis of equality. Equalty is the opposite of fairness.
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  It's often constructed as in distinct to make it distinct from equality, where people critics
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  of equality say, well, it's all very well to let everyone start out the same place,
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  because of historically injustices and you know, to generational trauma and so on. It's
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  actually important to give people who are falling behind an extra benefit, which is not equality.
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  That would be equity because that's actually the fairest way to make sure that outcomes are
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  similar. Why is that not fair? Because you just two things. Did you see how you smuggled in outcomes
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  there? Yeah, I didn't smuggle it in. I intentionally put it in there because that's what they
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  said. Okay, but at no point in the conversation had outcomes previously come in. So equa, I mean,
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  it's relevant to people who think that fairness should be judged by outcomes, not just in inputs.
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  Okay, I guess in that case, I would have to ask how they derive their conception of fairness.
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  Is that a rationally derivedable conception of fairness? Like on what principle? So, you know,
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  we talk about John Rawls, we could talk about how, how is that notion of fairness? How do we get
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  that notion of fairness? Well, that's a good question. I mean, I'm not the one who's putting
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  forward this idea of fairness, but I think it comes to a lot of people instinctively that
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  if you have a system that is sort of a rigged game where you end up with outcomes that are
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  different for reasons that are trivial, such as say the color of one's skin or one's sex,
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  then it's fairer to try to modify those outcomes. Okay, so we know that they're consciously doing
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  a rulesy and adjusted theory of justice. Well, in other words, I'm trying to differentiate it
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  from, I'm trying to figure out where they get this notion, but okay, but let's just accept that
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  by fear. But even in that case, that means by definition that some people have to be treated
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  unfairly. By definition. Okay, so I mean, the people who have the privilege need to be treated
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  unfairly to create space for the unprovelled to end of the times. So then equity is by definition
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  not fair. I see. Yes, well, there's a differential treatment, but it depends on how you define
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  fair as you say, whether or not you're looking at outcomes or only inputs. Correct.
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  Traditional definitions of fair have, I mean, so again, these are conversations we're having
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  when we can, I'm happy to actually have this conversation, but one thing that I found to kind
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  of bring it up a level, I'll go down with it more if you want, is that people are using equity
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  as a synonym for equality, and they're using it as a broad paintbrush for fairness. And I'm saying
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  that it's the antithesis of equality, and it's not fair because some people have to be treated
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  differently. Now, if you want to claim that it's fair, for example, to discriminate against
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  Asians on the basis of their admissions to universities, particularly in math and sciences,
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  I'd like to hear that argument. I'd like to hear that because it's equitable, but it's not fair.
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  Since we're digging into the kind of what's underpinning the sort of moral philosophy of these
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  conceptions, and something that's just occurring to me, which is there are clearly differences in
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  people's conceptions about fairness as to whether or not you're looking at group outcomes or
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  individual outcomes. And it strikes me that there's been a shift in recent years from looking at
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  fairness towards individuals to emphasizing fairness among groups. And I wonder whether or not you
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  might mail that. Well, not everyone who participates in an identity group, for example, has the same
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  socioeconomic status. Jayden Smith will Smith's on, be an example, or OJ Simpson or what have you.
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  Now, that doesn't mean that the modes statistically of people don't fall into certain categories,
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  but you can't assume that because someone is white, a poor person in the Appalachias, that they
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  have any kind of substantive advantage, in fact, quite the contrary. So in a sense that this orthodoxy
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  has bartered socioeconomic status for identity markers. And I think that traditional leftism has
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  wanted to level the field in terms of the economic hierarchy. And now one of the things that you
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  see happening is the people who are in the orbit of walk ideology want to level the field
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  in terms of the privileged hierarchy. And I mean, look, it is a fact that some people have certain
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  unearned privileges. And it is a fact that some people just get to use a vulgarity. They just
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  get shafted. I mean, there's just no question about it. We have the answers to that. And the answers
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  are a quality of opportunity, for example, fixing our school system and giving. So here's my
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  question to you. I don't know how it is on your island, but have an in joke, the island reference.
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  But as you call it, right, on our island, you could call it a continent, which sounds more impressive.
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  That is, that is actually very, that is far more impressive.
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  So with all this talk about equity, has there been a single instance of a school or a school
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  system that's been fixed because of the talk of equity? I don't think so. And if you know
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  them one, let me know. I haven't heard of one. So people are talking about equity and they're
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  trying to jerry rig the outcome. Meanwhile, poor people, and again, I say poor people and you can
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  look at the overlap like Venn diagrams who happen to be, for example, African-American are still
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  suffering and struggling in those school systems. And what have we done to help them? We've tried
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  to jerry rig the outcomes. What we should be doing is giving every, again, I'm speaking only for
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  Americans, but I think this extends to the English-speaking world and beyond. I do think this is
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  the universal principle. We need to give all kids a public education of the first rate and not
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  worry about jerry rigging the outcomes. Wouldn't the defender of equity say, well, you can say it
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  hasn't succeeded, but this is a long struggle. And there is no finish line. And we've only been
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  trying this for the past three seconds in evolutionary time. And for most of history, Black students,
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  students of color, haven't had the same opportunities as white students. So it's time to regress that.
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  You guess so how? I think we already have an answer to that. And it's to adequately fund
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  schools and poor districts. This is not a mystery. This is not a secret. We know. And it's not just
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  funding. It's a complex, while Asher from Lewis and Clark has written extensively about this and
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  other people. I mean, we know pretty much what works at this point. For example, we know phonics as
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  opposed to whole language. I mean, we know discrete things that work and we need to start moving
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  not only it's not just a question of funding. I don't want to leave leave with that impression,
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  but it's a question of what are the best evidence-based practices? Which is another problem with
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  the ideology is you have a shift away from objectivity and evidence and towards subject which are
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  considered white conceptions and patriarchal conceptions and towards lived experiences.
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  This is it's a philosophy called a subjective turn. I turn away from the objective and turn toward
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  the subjective with lived experiences. And that makes it incredibly difficult to put an evidence-based
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  policies in our school systems. I mean, it's sort of a it's there are analogies there between
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  the shift from a focus on are we being fair and just to the individual to a conception of are we
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  being fair and just to this entire group which may involve strategies that are actually unjust and
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  unfair towards individuals because we're looking at proof dynamics instead of the individual.
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  And then in parallel, we've got this thing that you just alluded to which is transitioning from.
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  All right, let's look at the facts. Let's look at the data. Let's talk about the problem. Let's
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  assess what there's evidence for in terms of improving that problem. Two more of a
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  this is my lived experience. You have a insert identity here. Don't really have standing to talk
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  about this because you couldn't possibly walk a mile in my shoes and so on and so forth. And then
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  essentially who even gets to talk about what solutions we should be considering becomes
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  curtail. Correct. I want to go back to something you said before. I think that the difference between
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  individuals and groups is somewhat illusory. For example, if you privilege one group by definition,
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  another group has to receive this actually is systematic or systemic discrimination.
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  You can't just privilege one. If there are only so many slots, for example, in a in Yale's
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  civil engineering, for example, or particle physics or whatever, what have you? And by definition,
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  you would have to discriminate against some groups of people. And again, you see this happening
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  with Asians. So it's not like I'm making this up. This is the courts have legally decided this.
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  So I'm, I'm, you can. When you say this is happening to Asians just to clarify what you mean is
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  that there are actually fewer Asians admitted into top courses in the United States because they're
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  being discriminated against because they would otherwise be a high too high. No, because
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  Kenny Hughes book is written about this just an inconvenient minority. It's an amazing book that
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  I'd recommend reading. No, it's not that fewer admitted. It's actually that more admitted,
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  more Asians are admitted. I say this also as a father of the little girl who's,
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  who's Asian and I'm also thinking. No, I just mean if you are admitted, then would then
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  would be if they were a colorblind admissions policy. That's correct. Yeah. So they have to raise
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  the standards. So they raise the standards for some racial groups. So basically, it's a type of
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  systemic discrimination against people. And my claim to you is that that is unfair, even if the
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  reason is to redress past injustices. If you want to redress past injustices, the way to do it is to
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  truly make the school system a first-rate school system and provide everybody with
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  fun tasty lunches, education of the first rate breakfast. You know, I mean, you'd really need to
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  create the opportunities to allow people to flourish. But we're not doing that. We're too preoccupied
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  with outcomes and we're preoccupied with social grievances and we're preoccupied with
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  destroying our ripping down a system instead of, so the Arby Lloyd's phrase, I think, is very
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  useful here. The master's tools cannot disable the master's house. You know, the master's, you can't
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  disemble the master's house's patriarchy, white supremacy, etc. The tools that built the house
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  are reason evidence, epistemic adequacy, science. And so all of those conceptions are
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  considered to be null and void in terms of they just perpetuate the system. It's called
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  privilege preserving epistemic pushback. You just threw in a word, they're white supremacy,
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  that I just want to pick up before we move on. It's a term you didn't hear very much five or ten
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  years ago. It basically meant people in white hoods carrying flaming tortures through the streets
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  and neo-nazis. Now white supremacy is everywhere and nowhere. Do you know what it means?
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  Well, the semantic range of white supremacy has expanded significantly for that. And Helen
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  Pluckrose and James Lindsay and cynical theories talk about this. It's an important point.
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  And so there were, and there still are literal Ku Klux Klan members. Fortunately, that's decreasing
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  some wonderful work just parenthetically by Darryl Davis on that. If you haven't seen it, I'd
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  highly recommend Darryl Davis's work. He's a black guy who goes in to speak to Klans members,
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  be friends them, and they give him their abnegated hoards. It's an orderly mind, genuinely mind-blowing.
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  I don't know any other way to say it, but balls of steel.
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  You can say that. We're on an Australian,
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  there's an island. Okay.
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  All right. That's why I saw a scene in the image for today. So the range of that,
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  so now I publish an article, I think in 2014, that said privileges the original sin.
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  So it's a kind of whiteness as a kind of stain. And if you look at Ibrahim Kendi,
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  Tahana Hati-Koets, Robin D'Angelo, there's something intrinsic to the property of whiteness
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  that is inherently racist. And John McWater and Coleman Hughes and Glenn Lary have written very
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  elegantly, elegantly, rebutting that. But that's the problem if you don't buy into disputation
• 26:29
  and argumentation and debate and dialectic, because you don't even listen to that. Why bother
• 26:33
  you have your lived experience? Well, also they're not real people of color, because they're not
• 26:40
  talking the way that the orthodoxy would require them to. I mean, I, you know, I have many of
• 26:44
  those people and my friends and the amount of shit that they have to put up with online about being
• 26:49
  called, you know, Uncle Tom's or something, because I've heard from what they're supposed to
• 26:54
  think as good people of color. So correct. So lived experience is only lived experience
• 27:02
  and will relate to diversity, which is very important. It's only lived experience if it
• 27:07
  comports with the narrative. So when you hear diversity, you're not merely diversity,
• 27:13
  when you hear diversity, just translated as intellectual homogeneity. So excuse me, Larry Elder,
• 27:18
  who's running for governor of California after the recall of Gavin Newsom, he is not considered
• 27:23
  to be a diverse candidate because he holds views that just don't comport with the orthodoxy.
• 27:29
  So even there when you're talking about what is diversity, you know, what is what is the lived
• 27:36
  experience of it? Well, the lived experience of a black man means he's not really, he's not a
• 27:40
  true blood. I mean, what was the thing Biden said to you know, how can you vote for Trump, you know,
• 27:47
  or true black? I can't remember what it was. He said something like if you don't vote for me,
• 27:50
  then you're not real, you're not really black. Yeah, something utterly deranged as if, you know,
• 27:55
  you see the same thing with Muslims, you know, when people who aren't Muslims look at somebody
• 28:00
  and they paint the whole brush by the by the extremist section. So so someone's not a real
• 28:06
  Muslim unless they're blowing stuff up, right? So they so it's a kind of injustice that they do
• 28:11
  toward people who believe. And in fact, you can be, I know that this is a hard not not for you,
• 28:17
  I hope, but you can be black or white or Jewish or Asian, you can be Asian, not good at math.
• 28:23
  You get a friend of mine, I do Jiu Jitsu with told me a funny story, he was at a restaurant,
• 28:27
  he's a Korean, he's at a restaurant and they were giving up the bill at the end and they just
• 28:34
  hand it in the bill. He's like, what do you hand in me the bill for? And someone said, well,
• 28:38
  you're good at math, like the assumption was, he thought it was, he didn't think it was a
• 28:42
  micro-reshen, he thought it was really funny, but you know, you can be Asian and not be good at math,
• 28:46
  you can be black and be conservative, you can be white and have your identity marker tells you
• 28:51
  nothing about what you believe. That's right. And yet it does tell you something about some of the
• 28:57
  experiences that you might have had, which is what leads people to believe that they have greater
• 29:02
  standing to hold an opinion about something if they have a lived experience, right? I mean,
• 29:06
  I have just never experienced racism, I've experienced homophobia because I'm married to a man,
• 29:12
  I've experienced anti-Semitism because I'm a Jew, there are certain experiences that I've never
• 29:17
  had and when you talk about like, what about the disadvantaged working class white person who
• 29:22
  is supposedly carries around this white privilege? Well, then this person is not privileged in economic
• 29:29
  sense, but it is true to say that they have never faced the fact of racial discrimination for being
• 29:35
  a person of color. Right. So I would, I would put forth this. So let's say that you aggregate the
• 29:42
  lid again, but even to aggregate the lived experiences of people, you need to use some kind of science,
• 29:46
  you need to use surveys, you need to, you know, you're not, you just can't get around using the
• 29:51
  tools of science at some point, but okay, let's just go with it for a second. But even in those
• 29:55
  cases, if there's anti-Semitism or homophobia or some kind of a bigotry, just as a pedestrian,
• 30:03
  but important example in this country, because it comes up so frequently, are black people pulled over
• 30:08
  by the police more than white people? Right. This is not a difficult question to answer. In fact,
• 30:13
  it couldn't possibly be any simpler barring some wrenches that are in there. You can use the tools
• 30:18
  of science to test that. So if black people say, well, look, this is, you know, terrible, we're being
• 30:24
  pulled over by the police and we don't like it. But you don't hear those complaints by white people,
• 30:29
  what you would do is then you could conduct a study on it, right? Like you could look at body cams
• 30:34
  and you could correlate, because every time they pull someone over, they read the license
• 30:38
  into a database, like you can use the tools of science to figure out if those claims are true,
• 30:43
  and then you can make public policies say, okay, so this is a problem, so what do we do about it?
• 30:48
  You know, like how do we address these problems? But even then, the personal experience only
• 30:54
  leads you to think about what kind of tools of science you can impose to give policy makers the
• 31:01
  most accurate data before they make decisions. When things started erupting on university campuses,
• 31:08
  and I think one of the things, one of the incidents that a lot of people might recall is when
• 31:14
  Nicholas Christakis tried to appease his students and you may just want to tell a younger Australian
• 31:21
  audience what happened there. It sort of was an inciting incident, I suppose, in the university
• 31:27
  culture wars that have ended up with you in the position that you're in, which we'll get to in a
• 31:31
  moment, one of the things that one of the students yelled at him was, it's not your job to tell
• 31:36
  us what to know, it's your job to make us feel safe. And what you're talking about there about like
• 31:43
  black people pull over more than white people, you know, you can have questions about, you know,
• 31:47
  how, what proportion of the male population is committing domestic violence when you hear about
• 31:52
  allegations that all men are predators, you can have, you know, there are all these, and it's
• 31:56
  extremely sensitive to even broach these subjects because it sounds like you're being a defender
• 32:01
  of rapists or racists or worse. But when you actually, when you're digging down into the data of
• 32:09
  this stuff, there is a parallel conversation going on at the moment with a lot of people,
• 32:12
  which is like, who gives a shit about data? This is my life we're talking about. But you know,
• 32:16
  if I'm the girl who's shouting at Nicholas Christakis on university campus, I want to feel
• 32:21
  as though I'm safe. I don't want you as a partner and helping me to feel safe regardless of what
• 32:26
  that says. Thank you for saying that. That's part of the defense mechanism of the ideology.
• 32:31
  The ideology has multiple defense mechanisms, not only to keep it in place, but to keep other people
• 32:37
  from questioning the ideology at all. So racist is a tool that they have in the toolkit. If you
• 32:45
  contradict something, a harassment is another one for my former university, Portland State University,
• 32:51
  published a, or the Faculty of Resolution said that criticism of, and I'm happy to send you,
• 32:56
  there's these videos, and a Faculty Senate resolution that criticism of critical race theory
• 33:01
  is a type of harassment. And again, this is a public because of the coronavirus. These were all
• 33:07
  recorded and placed on on YouTube. And then they wanted the, they took it down and they wanted
• 33:11
  the National Association of Scholars to take down their commentary on it. One of my colleagues published
• 33:17
  a critique on, on myself and another faculty member that basically saying criticism of ideas
• 33:24
  is harassment. So when, when you criticize these ideas, you're harassing. I'm getting to your point.
• 33:29
  I published a piece in the Chronicle, criticism of ideas is not harassment. In fact,
• 33:34
  not only is it not harassment, it's the coin of the realm. This is what we do. We publish, we engage,
• 33:38
  we debate. So the ideology has certain things to keep it in place. One of another thing is
• 33:43
  platforming, saying, oh, you're providing a platform. You're talking to someone who has an
• 33:48
  odious view. And not only that, there's, there's platforming by proxy. So it's not that you don't want
• 33:57
  to have a conversation with someone, they don't even want someone to have a conversation with you.
• 34:02
  So you're guilty by association. So that all of those things keep the ideology from experiencing
• 34:08
  any external criticism. They keep it in place. Safety is now, so that's the contextual
• 34:15
  background for your question. So safety is in is another thing. And we see this all the time now,
• 34:20
  people say, I feel unsafe. Okay, so if you feel unsafe, you should probably take a creative writing
• 34:26
  class, right? An ethics class in philosophy is not the place for you, right? Maybe you should,
• 34:31
  you know, sing on a street corner with a guitar or something, but you really to really make a
• 34:36
  substantive engagement of moral questions and moral issues, you have to take a sincere look at
• 34:42
  the other side. I mean, you just have to, because if you don't, you're validating the conclusions
• 34:48
  that you came in with in the first place. And the purpose of an educational institution, the
• 34:52
  purpose of an education period should not be to, to deepen people in the beliefs they have in,
• 34:58
  that they come into the classroom. I mean, you know, Plato's book seven of the republic,
• 35:03
  it's to lead people out of, right? It decarate to lead out of to lead. It's not to put stuff in,
• 35:07
  it's to lead one out of a state of ignorance. And to do that, you have to have some kind of
• 35:12
  challenging of the beliefs that you have. If not, you just kept in the cave. Where does safety
• 35:17
  is another, we're doing the greatest hits of words that have become abused in recent times.
• 35:21
  You mentioned equity, you know, we went to diversity. Our diversity is also interesting,
• 35:25
  because in the, in the States, I mean, this was a usage of the term diversity that I hadn't
• 35:30
  quite encountered. But when I, when I was, I lived in the States for a while, one of the first
• 35:34
  periods that I was there, I saw, I read a review about this great new diverse show, which was
• 35:40
  super diverse. And it was, I think it was Black-ish, where every single cast member is an African
• 35:46
  immigrant. Correct. And I turned it on and I didn't even understand, I thought there must have
• 35:49
  been a mistake, because diverse would mean people from lots of different cultures. Correct.
• 35:54
  And I should turn it in. There was just, it was the least diverse show on television,
• 35:57
  in terms of the, of the word, but that's just another, another way that words change. And
• 36:02
  safety is another one now that we've, yeah. And let's, let's, can we, can I, so can I also
• 36:09
  put another one that dovetails with safetyism that, that will help us understand safetyism,
• 36:13
  is inclusion. So I have a series of videos that I'm putting out now. We'll be out next month. I
• 36:21
  have a, a nonprofit that I just started, since I left my job, National Progress Alliance. And
• 36:27
  one of the first things that I'm trying to do is to clarify the meanings of words. And I do this
• 36:31
  in 60 seconds in very basic language. So let's, let me prep to see how good this is. Okay.
• 36:37
  So inclusion basically means it doesn't mean what you think it means. So you, so maybe you know,
• 36:43
  because you're in this space, but as someone in the, in the crew over there, what they think
• 36:46
  inclusion means, and they'll probably almost definitely tie well, you know, including different
• 36:50
  people. That's not what inclusion means, tell you what inclusion means. Inclusion from the literature
• 36:57
  means making people feel safe, making people feel welcome. If people are not welcome, they do not
• 37:05
  feel safe. How do we make people feel safe? Well, how do we make them feel unsafe? How do we make
• 37:10
  them feel unwelcome? Well, if somebody says something that is offensive to somebody or bothers someone
• 37:16
  or disturbs someone, then they won't feel welcome. But we want people to feel welcome. So inclusion
• 37:23
  means restricted speech. That's what inclusion means. Every time you hear the word inclusion,
• 37:29
  you should translate that in your head as restricted speech, because that's the only way people
• 37:33
  can feel welcome is if you restrict their speech. That's a form of seeing the counterpoint to that.
• 37:40
  Well, we're restricting speech, but we're restricting hate speech. We're creating an inclusive space.
• 37:44
  And if you want to come in here, peddling homophobia, transphobia, racism, and so on, then we'll
• 37:50
  exclude that. But that's in the service of a more inclusive environment. Yeah, that's the, I'll be
• 37:55
  very blunt with you. That's the kind of thinking that people who they're using a blunt instrument,
• 38:02
  and they haven't truly thought about it. And it's a pretty easy line to make. If something is an
• 38:07
  immutable property of a person, then don't criticize it. But all ideas should be criticized. For
• 38:13
  example, I have gray hair. That's an immutable property. I'm 55 years old. That's an immutable
• 38:17
  property. Because I can't change it, there's no point in criticizing it. I'm had a resexual. I
• 38:23
  can't change that. I never like, Oh, you know, 15 on decided. I've made this thought. But even if I
• 38:27
  could make that thoughtful decision, there's a difference between a property of an immutable
• 38:31
  property of a person and an idea. And we need to be absolutely ruthless with ideas. And
• 38:37
  there's no criticism of immutable properties of people because they can't change it.
• 38:42
  Right, but some ideas make people who possess certain immutable properties uncomfortable,
• 38:47
  because it would leave them with the the short end of the stick, so to speak. Like if you
• 38:53
  were an example, which people were saying that someone of your age and your hair color should
• 38:59
  not receive the same tax benefits as everybody else, then you would feel like that was not an
• 39:04
  inclusive place for you. I'll tell you a quick story. A few years ago, I tried an experiment.
• 39:13
  This was before the pandemic. I had white hair back then as well. They don't call it gray
• 39:21
  hair anymore. They call it silver here. I like that because I can just see it coming on the side,
• 39:27
  so they call it silver here. So I tried an experiment just just for fun. I think it's the first
• 39:32
  time I've ever told anybody this, but I like to stretch because I think stretching is important.
• 39:38
  And I go to a local gym here, it's like one of those, it's like the McDonald's of gyms,
• 39:43
  and they have basketball courts everywhere. And I would always sit on the basketball court
• 39:49
  just as an experiment stretching to see if I would get picked. And then I would tell people,
• 39:53
  I don't want to play because I just marched in stretching, but it was an experiment. It was for
• 39:57
  science. So what I would do is I would see when I would get picked. And invariably, I'd either get
• 40:03
  picked dead last, or I wouldn't get picked at all. Now, the question is, if your goal is to win,
• 40:11
  is it unfair? Is it unjust to not pick me because of my immutable characteristics?
• 40:20
  Well, the answer, that's the kind of exactly the kind of thing that you need to have a conversation
• 40:25
  about. And if you cannot have a conversation about whether or not, look, the solution to all of
• 40:31
  this is have a conversation, is have a dialogue, is to kind of make a moral infrastructure from
• 40:36
  what you can formulate your public policies. But that moral infrastructure, like when you started
• 40:41
  the conversation about equity, that moral infrastructure has to be rooted in rationally
• 40:47
  drivable principles, or it's just arbitrary. You're basically just making shit up, right? So we need
• 40:54
  to have a way to think, okay, well, that's a person. What if I say, what if some evidence comes
• 41:01
  out that there are racial differences in IQ? Does that mean that we don't let people from a certain
• 41:07
  country in or from your continent see how elevated you to a continent we find. Thank you so much.
• 41:13
  I appreciate the increase. We found that people from Australia or what have usually
• 41:18
  be racial groups, but I was just saying that because it makes it more palatable.
• 41:23
  So does that mean we don't have that conversation? Does that mean that that's just off the table?
• 41:28
  So here's the, here's the consequence of not having that conversation when confronted with data.
• 41:34
  Somebody, there will be people who are more than willing not only to have that conversation,
• 41:42
  but to come in with answers to those problems. So there will be people almost always on the extreme
• 41:49
  political spectrum who have answers or will claim to have answers to those questions. And if you've
• 41:54
  not prepared yourself or how to have those conversations, that's my book, how to have impossible
• 42:00
  conversations, then you simply won't know what to say. And that's the situation in which we find
• 42:06
  ourselves now, although with less morally contentious and difficult topics, with even the lowest
• 42:12
  of low hanging fruit, we're producing generations of students, I think generation and a half at this
• 42:16
  point, who are utterly incapable of making, of even knowing what the other side is to have a
• 42:26
  substantive rebuttal of those criticisms. And that's a problem for all of us because they're bringing
• 42:31
  that into the classroom. Yeah, I mean, and I think you've really hit on the crux of things there,
• 42:37
  because even if people don't care about being intellectually rigorous, and even if they only want
• 42:42
  their own side to win, and they want safetyism and comfort and inclusion to take dominance over
• 42:49
  difficult conversations, at the end of the day, their side isn't going to win if they don't know
• 42:54
  how to articulate their position against the things that they disagree with.
• 43:01
  This reminds me a little bit of the sense of safety or unsafety around the gay marriage debate
• 43:07
  that took place in Australia in 2017, unlike the United States, where it was a judicial decision
• 43:13
  here, it was a referendum, and everybody voted. And there were a lot of people saying this makes
• 43:19
  me feel unsafe as a member of the LGBTQI plus community. This should not even be a conversation,
• 43:27
  this should not be a conversation, because this is a human right. And my position was always,
• 43:31
  how do you know that it's a human right, unless you talk about why it's a human right? And
• 43:35
  hear the people who don't think that it's a human right. So I had the Archbishop of Sydney on
• 43:39
  my radio show, and we, you know, hashed it out. He didn't have any very good reasons as to why it
• 43:43
  shouldn't, why gay marriage shouldn't exist. But the existence of the conversation whilst difficult
• 43:50
  was more valuable than my remaining safe. Correct. And that's what, so you handled that like an adult,
• 43:58
  right? You had him on, and hey, listen, awesome that he came on your show, right? I mean,
• 44:03
  that's fantastic. So kudos to him and kudos to people who are honest with you. And they say,
• 44:09
  you know, someone says, I don't like gay, I don't think they should be married. You might disagree
• 44:13
  with him, but that's a person who's honest. You can have conversations with people who are honest
• 44:17
  like that. But when people are, I mean, the other, the other thing, the other thing, switch that
• 44:22
  happens is that if the person does like gays, but just doesn't think that they should be married,
• 44:27
  because they have a religious objection to that, you know, they want to preserve that particular
• 44:31
  institution, but they're not all homophobic. That position is now erased from the landscape
• 44:39
  altogether. And that person is by definition a homophobic. You know, similarly, if you don't,
• 44:44
  if you dispute what should be done, maybe to address racial inequalities, then you are, by
• 44:50
  definition, a racist, even if you're definitely not a racist, which brings us to that word. We've
• 44:55
  talked about these other words that I just want to come back to white supremacy and racism.
• 44:58
  Okay. All right. So you just, you just said so much there. I think we need to, we can
• 45:04
  disambiguate terms in a minute. Let's, let's slow down. Okay. So we know, we know that the way to
• 45:12
  come about consensus and move forward in the democracy, we know it's to, it's town halls,
• 45:19
  it's to hash out issues. It's, I'm not a fan of debating myself because I think that it forces
• 45:25
  people to stick to a conclusion that they, they think might be wrong. And so there's a kind of a
• 45:31
  win element. And so I think conversations are far better than debate. But okay, whatever debate,
• 45:36
  conversation, we know that's, that's, we need that to move forward just like when you have the
• 45:41
  bishop on. And again, good for the bishop for coming on. I think the first thing I would have
• 45:44
  said to him is thank you for coming on my show. I really appreciate it. Because right now we have
• 45:49
  people who simply won't talk to you about anything. They're completely convinced they know the right
• 45:52
  answers to moral questions. And so how do we address that problem? So that is not an epistemic
• 46:01
  problem. That's a moral problem. That's a problem of, as Jonathan Height says,
• 46:06
  and the righteous mind, the morality binds and blinds, morality binds, so to solve that problem,
• 46:14
  we need to change the moral mind about how people view dialogue and safetyism. And what's
• 46:20
  happening now is this idea that they think that they should feel safe is trumping the idea to have
• 46:29
  honest, open civil conversations. Was that clear? That was absolutely clear. Now let's take that to
• 46:36
  the next, uh, the next point into my multi-pronged octopus of a question, which was about racism,
• 46:45
  white supremacy, and those terms. Okay. So the meaning of racism has changed. We've, we've
• 46:51
  brought in power to the equation, whereas before it was discriminating against someone on an
• 46:56
  individual on the basis of a racial stereotype, that was what the definition has been for a long time.
• 47:02
  And I think there's, there ought to be, that's a rationally drivable idea that this ought to be
• 47:07
  universally morally repudiated and it is fundamentally odious, but you've added the idea of power.
• 47:17
  And when you add the idea of power, you again, from the postmodern notions, and the best,
• 47:23
  really the best source for this is Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay Seneca theories, which I
• 47:27
  mentioned before. When you add the notion of power into the equation, it completely changes it. So
• 47:32
  for example, that's why on this new definition, people in the majority or people in positions of
• 47:39
  power like white people, um, only they can be racist, but people absent that power cannot be racist,
• 47:45
  like, for example, trans people would have in the oppression hierarchy. And so that's a meaning
• 47:52
  of a word that's recently changed. I mean, look, you can ask, well, what about what about white
• 47:57
  farmers in Zimbabwe? They don't have power. I mean, you can just think of some pretty, pretty simple
• 48:04
  examples of how to work through this. But again, that's maybe that's the emerging theme in this
• 48:11
  conversation. In order to even do that, you have to know what the opposing side is. You have to know
• 48:18
  with the best and not just a straw man. That's why it's good that you invited the bishop. Like,
• 48:22
  you have to invite in really smart people who are true believers to have those conversations with
• 48:27
  them. And that is not happening in the university. What is happening in the university?
• 48:35
  It's lost its north star or its north star has ceased becoming truth and becoming an ideology
• 48:43
  male. And so, for example, the president of Portland State University, as Stephen Persia said,
• 48:49
  that the primary mission of the organization, I think that's the quotation, but look it up, is
• 48:59
  racial justice. Really? He said this publicly. That's the primary mission of the university.
• 49:08
  Not balanced budgets, not teaching excellence, not research, not, I mean, that's an absolutely
• 49:16
  astonishing statement. And so, look, when you have a, when there is a primary purpose of an organization,
• 49:28
  every other purpose is subordinate to the primary purpose. So if there's a conflict,
• 49:35
  so for example, like in the Bible, if there's a conflict between commandments, they're not
• 49:41
  hierarchically organized, whereas just if John Rawls... Okay, let me take it back. John Rawls'
• 49:49
  theory of justice has principles that are hierarchically organized. I'd like to take a moment that I've
• 49:56
  been meaning to say this for a while. I really wanted to thank Alan for this series, The Dean. And I
• 50:01
  think that's... When Dean Davidson even puts these things together, that's trying to change a
• 50:08
  culture in which reorient the institution's north star toward truth, to an open dialogue,
• 50:16
  toward the free of exchange of ideas. Because students are coming to the university, not to
• 50:21
  deepen the beliefs they already have, but to learn, to questions, challenge, etc. Okay, so back to the,
• 50:27
  the... If the north star of the institution is racial justice, then if there's a conflict,
• 50:35
  then the primary mission of the university has to trump that. So if the conflict, for example,
• 50:40
  is with free speech, then that's always subordinate to racial justice. So every time you come out and say,
• 50:46
  well, this is a... The primary mission of the institution is racial justice. You're basically
• 50:51
  telling people exactly what you feel about free speech, and that's what they did in the faculty
• 50:56
  resolution, and that's why they're claiming that criticism of critical race theory, for example,
• 51:00
  is harassment. Well, they have to do that, because how also they're going to buttress the idea
• 51:04
  that the primary mission of the university is racial justice. And that's the other thing. That's the
• 51:11
  thing, one thing on that, the further one's belief is from being rationally drivable,
• 51:21
  the more slack you have to make to keep the belief in place. So for example, if you want to forward a
• 51:28
  moral idea that is not... Let's say you're forwarding an idea, it doesn't even matter with the idea
• 51:36
  abortion, or it doesn't even matter with the ideas, and you're extremely confident that the idea is
• 51:40
  true. Like on a 1 to 10, you're 9.9 confidence, but you only have sufficient reason and evidence
• 51:47
  to get you to like a 5 or a 6. Then that slack has to be made up somehow in the Islamic world,
• 51:55
  it would be a blasphemy law in the university. It would be a speech restriction or political
• 52:02
  correctness, or you can claim to be offended. But you have to... Systems of belief have to make up
• 52:11
  that slack somehow. That's a fascinating definition of what offense is. I haven't thought about
• 52:18
  that way, but that's quite nice, isn't it? To interpret one's offendedness as a way of bridging
• 52:24
  the gap between what they can logically argue and the emotional component of their response. Correct.
• 52:35
  How did you get yourself into the pickle at your end, or should I say the liberty and freedom that
• 52:40
  you now enjoy? Tell us about how your trajectory of having run-ins with academia began. I like the
• 52:46
  latter framing much better and much happier now. I'll give you that framing if you give me a
• 52:52
  continent. I'll give you that. I was going to end the interview by giving you that. I'll tell
• 52:57
  my friends, my friends that immediately. Oh, and the other thing is if anybody wants,
• 53:03
  speaking of my friends on your continent, Mike Naina, N-A-Y-N-A, has a wonderful series that
• 53:09
  bridges the gap between the theoretical and the practical with his videos of Brett and Heather
• 53:14
  from Evergreen and some of the madness that's consuming universities. But he does a meticulous job
• 53:19
  in documenting those and I they're free and on YouTube about how they recommend those.
• 53:23
  So I got in truly it just by asking questions. I just was curious about these new orthodoxies. I
• 53:33
  was just curious about these new policies and I couldn't figure them out. Actually, Peter, maybe
• 53:37
  we just back us up about how you got into academia, what you wanted to do, what interested you as a
• 53:41
  young guy. What did you want to do with your life? What did I want to do with my life when I was a
• 53:46
  young guy? Say, not a young guy anymore. So what did I want to do with my life? I wanted to,
• 53:55
  I wanted to explore ideas. I wanted to figure out what was true. And as I went along that path,
• 54:03
  I figured out that the process of figuring out what was true was more important than figuring
• 54:10
  out what was true. Because it's very easy to, as Feynman says, the easiest person to fool
• 54:17
  is yourself. So you have to make sure that you have a rigorous process. And so one of the things
• 54:23
  subsequently to that that I've learned is I almost never asked somebody why they believe something
• 54:29
  anymore. I know that this is a heresy, but one of the things that I've learned from studying
• 54:34
  belief for my whole life, writing about it, reading about it, delving into the literature about
• 54:41
  it is that when you ask somebody why they believe something, they'll give you reasons for why they
• 54:46
  believe it. And what they're actually, what's actually happening in that process is they're talking
• 54:51
  themselves into a higher confidence level because they're hearing themselves talk about why they
• 54:57
  believe what they believe. But what you should be doing is giving them the gift of doubt, is,
• 55:02
  is enabling them to, is enabling them to doubt their own confidence in their belief.
• 55:09
  And you do that with a very simple question. Under what conditions would you be willing to change
• 55:14
  your mind? Like what evidence would I have to show you to change your mind? When you do that,
• 55:18
  people don't talk themselves into their own into more, particularly in the moral domain,
• 55:23
  more confidence. So I got into philosophy. I've always loved Socrates. I love, I used to read
• 55:29
  the platonic dialogues as a kid. I got into it through this cratic method. I'm convinced. I just
• 55:36
  didn't interview it and someone said, what's the greatest, the greatest technology that we have,
• 55:40
  the greatest invention of humanity? And I said, there's just no question, it's a cratic method,
• 55:45
  just a hands down. And so I was fascinated by this idea of how do we come to truth? How do we figure
• 55:52
  out what's true? And what is the cratic method? Oh, it's a way of asking
• 55:59
  questions. Socrates does it with other people. But ultimately, it's a way of asking questions
• 56:04
  to your, to yourself. And so a way of asking you if your beliefs are, if you believe that what
• 56:13
  you, what you claim to believe, so it has five stages, you know, it begins in wonder. And then
• 56:17
  somebody will pose a hypothesis like what is justice? You're wondering justice in the hypothesis
• 56:24
  justice is paying your debts. And then it has an elincus or a counter example. And someone,
• 56:29
  the next thing, well, this is from Plato's Republic, first three books of the Republic.
• 56:32
  Someone will say, well, what if I, what if I borrow a knife? Well, maybe in this modern context
• 56:40
  will be a gun. What if I borrow a gun from somebody who later becomes criminally insane? Do I give
• 56:45
  him back the knife? Then you go to the next stage? Yes, you do. Okay, then we've held that as
• 56:53
  provisionally true. Or no, you don't. So then you go back with another hypothesis. It's a way
• 56:58
  of thinking through difficult questions. Honestly, it's so alien to the, to the state of conversation
• 57:06
  at the moment, in our hyperpartisan, hysterical, tweeterfied discourse. Correct, that's because
• 57:13
  people aren't a lot of reasons for that. But social media is contributed to it. But we have, we have
• 57:18
  lost the sense of truth. We've lost understanding why that's important. And the moral mind in many
• 57:27
  senses was overriding the rational mind. And we're seeing the consequences of that everywhere.
• 57:33
  When you say we've lost the sense of truth, I'm just trying to imagine the pushback to that.
• 57:37
  And the pushback, I suppose, would be we are seeing a demotion of a very stuffy old-fashioned
• 57:46
  narrow, data-driven, scientific version of truth in favor of bigger moral truths, like the great
• 57:56
  arc of oppression that certain groups have endured. And we're trying to remedy those. What do you
• 58:02
  make of that? Well, that's Martin Luther King's idea, the Moorlock Benz, towards justice, and Michael
• 58:09
  Sharmer's written a wonderful book, and Stephen Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature. He writes about
• 58:14
  that very eloquently. I don't see even those conclusions themselves were brought on by, in
• 58:22
  the case of Sharmer and Pinker, rigorous scholarship. And so, look, have there been injustices? Yes,
• 58:30
  have there been narrow focuses on, or has there been a too narrow of a focus on, I don't know, some
• 58:38
  aspect of human well-being, or what have you? Yeah, sure. But all of the answers to those
• 58:46
  questions have to take place within a framework of reason rationality and evidence. And the farther
• 58:53
  you stray from reason rationality and evidence, the more arbitrary your beliefs become.
• 59:00
  Okay, so let's salute back to you. You're a, you're a surprising nerd boy who loves this,
• 59:06
  this stuff as a younger man, and you're going to academia, and you begin, yeah, you begin to wear
• 59:11
  and teaching what? Well, I taught in the prisons from my dissertation, I used the Socratic method
• 59:18
  to help prison inmates to reason morally and think critically and thus to assist from criminal
• 59:25
  behavior. So not just not, not go back in, in other words, not recidivate, but to actually
• 59:31
  assist and stop criminal behavior by making, by making better moral decisions, by giving them
• 59:36
  the tools to do that for themselves, to self-empower them. And so then I've been teaching,
• 59:42
  teaching at many, many universities for many years online, I've been teaching
• 59:48
  on ground, I've taught just many, many, many universities. And where did you start getting a sense
• 59:54
  that things were going awry? That's a really good question. I thought initially that when I started
• 1:00:03
  teaching a Portland State that there must just be a lot of people who had mental health issues
• 1:00:08
  because of the way they were acting, I never connected that to anything larger, like any, any
• 1:00:16
  zeitgeist or system problem initially, maybe like 2011, 2012. And then solely over time, I started
• 1:00:25
  to put the pieces together. What was happening? What was happening? How can I possibly explain this?
• 1:00:40
  What was happening? The institution was being engulfed by certain moral principles that were
• 1:00:52
  overriding traditional educational conceptions of what an education is and why it matters.
• 1:00:59
  That's the broad, that's the low-death version of what was happening.
• 1:01:03
  How did you respond?
• 1:01:06
  By asking questions, which is the evidence for this, I'm unclear. Under word conditions,
• 1:01:13
  would you be willing to revise the belief that trigger warning, safe spaces and microaggressions
• 1:01:18
  are good for kids? I remember once I was at a faculty meeting and I asked one of the main
• 1:01:25
  proponents of this, very sincere question, I said, do you, and I'm going to be careful because I'm
• 1:01:31
  trying intentionally not to dox anybody. I said, do you really believe, and because I'm curious,
• 1:01:38
  this guy said, I'm trying not to say, he had all the credentials to make any reasonable person
• 1:01:44
  to be like, wow, I said, do you believe that it's only been in the last five years of, you know,
• 1:01:52
  2400 years of recorded history that we've figured out that cultural appropriation is wrong?
• 1:01:59
  And he said, yes, I do. And I said, so nobody thought of that before or that was never in
• 1:02:07
  Kant or never in any of the even the obscure thinkers or never. And he said, yes, I do. And so
• 1:02:15
  from those conversations, and to his credit, he said that as opposed to being offended or accusing
• 1:02:20
  the of a microaggression, which has happened on so many occasions. So I started to see this madness
• 1:02:28
  overtake my my colleagues and overtake public policies in the administration. And I started to see
• 1:02:35
  the weaponization of offices in the university against dissonant voices. And all along the way,
• 1:02:42
  I just kept thinking, which is, you know, maybe there's something I don't understand. Like I just,
• 1:02:46
  this was, you know, before the conceptual penis in this, maybe there's just something I don't get
• 1:02:50
  here. And so I just kept, I'd go to a diversity panel and everybody had the same opinion. I'm like,
• 1:02:55
  wow, what kind of diversity panel is that? So I just didn't, I wasn't
• 1:03:00
  figuring it out. And I started asking questions. And the more questions I had,
• 1:03:06
  I could tell by the responses from people that something wasn't right. Instead of just answering
• 1:03:10
  the question, almost anything else would happen. So that's what really took me on.
• 1:03:17
  So let's, let's talk about what's happened now. Then you've resigned.
• 1:03:22
  I have a resignation letter. You said that the university has basically become a place that
• 1:03:28
  takes in grievances and victimization and puts out a certain ideology on the world rather than
• 1:03:34
  a place for critical free thinking. What was the straw that broke the camel's back?
• 1:03:40
  Oh, I tell you exactly what the moment is. So, so the camel was, I'm trying to extend that a
• 1:03:45
  little bit. So the camel, the camel was weighed down by, by an astonishing amount of straw.
• 1:03:52
  I think that the, the, the one moment that made me realize that I, I couldn't do it anymore.
• 1:03:59
  Because I had really tried to make a meeting with the president of the university. And he refused
• 1:04:05
  to meet with me. And I said, look, five minutes. And his staff kept saying, oh, he's too busy. He
• 1:04:10
  can't do it. He's too busy. So I managed to get like just a very brief meeting with a dean
• 1:04:16
  in my college. And I, I said to the dean, I said, you know, Portland State University made the list,
• 1:04:24
  the, from Greg Lukainovs, he wrote the calling of the American Myod Jonathan Hyte, that he has an
• 1:04:30
  organization called Fire, F-I-R-E foundation of individual rights and education. And Portland
• 1:04:36
  University made the list of the worst colleges for freedom of speech. And this person said to me
• 1:04:44
  with total sincerity, it's a good thing to be on those lists. And that utterly blew my mind.
• 1:04:51
  Like, because up to that point, I naturally assumed that this was a horrible bug of the system,
• 1:04:58
  but not a feature. And this individual is telling me that this is a feature of an actual feature
• 1:05:05
  of the system. And it just blew my mind. And then I said, I cannot be complicitist anymore.
• 1:05:11
  I'm compromising my integrity. I mean, I knew at that point, but I always justified it to myself
• 1:05:16
  to think, well, if I left, who would the students have, right? Who would be pushing back on this?
• 1:05:22
  But at that point, I just realized, well, it was that, that was really the point. But then it was just
• 1:05:28
  the constant investigations. And I mean, the last investigation was so fucking insane that I just
• 1:05:34
  was just like, that's it. Like, okay, you want, you're really trying to throw me out and disgrace.
• 1:05:38
  I got it. Like, I got it. I was on this call. They were upset that on my Twitter feed, I used
• 1:05:44
  the word investigation. And they, they started, they were claiming that to use the word investigation,
• 1:05:49
  you need to go to the IRB to get some kind of permission from human subjects. And I just,
• 1:05:55
  and I said, well, I'm doing this as a private citizen. I'm not, I'm not doing this. And an individual
• 1:06:02
  who is on the call, I will not name the individual, said, yeah, but at the time of my, my Twitter feed,
• 1:06:06
  I had my, a link to my book, how to have impossible conversations. Now I have my website.
• 1:06:10
  This individual said, yeah, but if you go to the, if you click on your book and then you scroll
• 1:06:16
  down to the author page, it says Portland State University in your bio. And I, I just realized,
• 1:06:24
  at that point, I just realized what, like you are digging, like you, so they might, they're basically
• 1:06:30
  making my life, you're untenable. They made life impossible for you essentially.
• 1:06:34
  Well, yeah. And for what? For what? Why? I mean, I've been criticized a lot. Oh, you should have
• 1:06:43
  stayed there or you should have left earlier or you should, like, look, man, I did the best that I
• 1:06:48
  could. And I'm constantly being harassed all over the place I have. But, but I also want to make
• 1:06:53
  something extremely clear. I am not a victim in this. I am not a victim in this. I fought back
• 1:07:00
  against a bunch of things. I fought back against in a liberal, sensorious ideology. I fought back
• 1:07:06
  against the people who hired me to do a job that prevented me, that they themselves prevented
• 1:07:13
  me from doing. I fought back against the institution. And ultimately I lost. Like there was only so much
• 1:07:20
  I can do. I brought in diverse speakers to challenge the orthodoxy. I had, I mean, I could go on,
• 1:07:28
  but there was simply no point to just stay there indefinitely. I mean, why, why would I want to
• 1:07:33
  subject myself to that? It's a form of insanity. So Peter, what do you think is going to happen in
• 1:07:38
  the longer term and in the broader picture here? I mean, universities have historically tried to
• 1:07:44
  play a role of being a place where you can argue for anything. You can say anything. It's a,
• 1:07:49
  it's a hot, it's a hotbed of different ideas of crazy ideas where, you know, the misfits can come
• 1:07:55
  and flesh things out and try to figure out what's true. If, as you say, they're now becoming places
• 1:08:00
  that are committed to the opposite of that ideal, to at least in your experience, a place that
• 1:08:05
  many of us can leave values and antipathy towards free speech in favor of racial equity or
• 1:08:13
  justice or whatever they conceive it to be. Right. And what becomes of universities?
• 1:08:19
  Well, I don't have an answer to that question. I mean, I can, I can speculate either the ideology
• 1:08:25
  will burn itself out. In which case, you will see an absolutely historically unprecedented gas
• 1:08:31
  lighting where you, you'll have people, I never believe that. I never believe that. I just had
• 1:08:36
  nothing to do with it. So the ideology will burn itself out, which I think it will. It's, I'm sure
• 1:08:42
  it will. I don't know the damage it will do to the institutions, but it, it, it is inherently
• 1:08:47
  unsustainable because for an ideology to sustain itself and either need some kind of a state power
• 1:08:52
  or a state control in which they mandate the have some kind of a speech code or speech restrictions.
• 1:08:58
  And ultimately, that has to be by force. So they could try to do that. There are technological
• 1:09:02
  fixes around that. But in order to keep an ideology in place, its proponents need an apology,
• 1:09:08
  they need a, a defense of the faith. Like they needed, they need to know the opposite
• 1:09:12
  sides of the argument. They need a first Peter 315. They don't have that. So the ideology is
• 1:09:16
  inherently unsustainable. So that's the first thing. The second thing is I think what you'll see
• 1:09:21
  happening is exactly what's happening now is that parallel architectures will emerge in which there
• 1:09:27
  are just as in the, in the 90s, the media empires were crumbling. Now today, the internet is
• 1:09:34
  revolutionizing and changing things. And it's particularly the pandemic at X, it's expedited
• 1:09:38
  that. So we don't really need to work or teach from home anymore. So I think that one of the things
• 1:09:43
  that you'll see happening is the emergence of new institutions. And I welcome those institutions
• 1:09:48
  to, to give people a choice from the corruption that we, we have now. I also think that the
• 1:09:54
  legitimate legitimacy, if you, I wish you had asked me a few years ago, what are you giving
• 1:09:59
  the same answer now? But it's less, it seems less prescient now that I know the outcome. The legitimacy
• 1:10:05
  crisis will deepen the crisis of confidence in our institutions, you know, like people,
• 1:10:10
  conservatives, for example, fundamentalist evangelical conservatives will come up to me and
• 1:10:15
  when I'll, when I'll talk about global climate change and they'll say, well, why should I believe
• 1:10:18
  that? You know, 99% of all done it. This is a truth from the National Association of Scholars
• 1:10:24
  donations to political parties from Portland State University. And you can, I heard your
• 1:10:29
  defect check this, which to the Democratic Party. So we know most professors are liberal. So why,
• 1:10:35
  this is just a bunch of liberal people. That's the other reason we need a diversity, ideological
• 1:10:39
  diversity in our institutions. And so when people point to these bodies of literature and
• 1:10:44
  scholarships, look, this guy's a Muslim, this is a Mormon, this guy's gay, this guy's straight,
• 1:10:49
  this guy's, but they also have these views that it's not just a bunch of liberals telling you
• 1:10:56
  that the earth's warming is anthropogenic. So anyway, so I think you're going to see a deeper,
• 1:11:01
  I think you're going to see a deeper crisis of legitimacy in our institutions. I don't, I think
• 1:11:08
  we'll survive it, but I'm more pessimistic now than I've ever been without question.
• 1:11:13
  When you say Peter that the ideology will burn itself out because one reason why it might not
• 1:11:20
  would be if it had state sanctioned power, enforcing speed codes and so on. My worry is that you
• 1:11:28
  don't need the state there and that there can be a self-enforcement mechanism where ideas,
• 1:11:34
  I mean, we've seen throughout history in so many different places where there's a kind of an
• 1:11:39
  elevation of a certain group think or a mythology and to transgress becomes an almost quasi-blasphemous
• 1:11:46
  experience and you just get shunned, corporations just don't want to have to deal with people who
• 1:11:52
  are squeaky wheels and so they they fire people for racism if the person would just articulate
• 1:11:58
  a difference of opinion about the quotas or something and it becomes self-perpetuating cultural
• 1:12:04
  So the problem is that the I can't just walk in and teach in a K through 12 system. I don't know
• 1:12:10
  about on your continent if you can do that, but on this continent you need to go through teacher
• 1:12:15
  certification programs. All of those teacher certification programs now have been compromised
• 1:12:20
  by world ideology. They're all predicated on one book, Paula Ferris-Petagogy of the Oppress,
• 1:12:25
  you teach for liberation, you teach to overcome oppression. So even if you had a wand and you could
• 1:12:30
  wave the wand and you take out all wokeism out of the K through 12 system, it would repoculate
• 1:12:35
  with people who have been indoctrinated from the existing K through 12 teachers.
• 1:12:40
  And for us, right? And K through 12 is just the primary and secondary school system
• 1:12:44
  we had kindergarten to year 12. Okay, so so we have a problem with the ideology is not going away
• 1:12:52
  anytime soon. As long as the colleges of education are controlled and I would urge you to read
• 1:12:57
  Lyle Asher, he's a S-H-E-R, he's a professor of at Lewis and Clark. He's just a wonderful work
• 1:13:05
  on colleges of education. So we have a complex set of problems in which there is a moral value,
• 1:13:14
  a moral imperative that people don't know the other side of the issue or they're not taught the
• 1:13:19
  other side of the issue. And to even get published to enable you to get tenure, you have to publish
• 1:13:25
  morally fashionable things. You simply cannot publish something that goes against the dominant
• 1:13:30
  moral orthodoxy. Now, also on your continent, Peter Singer has the Journal of Controversial Ideas,
• 1:13:36
  maybe that will emerge as something. But right now, this is the situation we're looking at.
• 1:13:41
  That was an example of a parallel architecture that I was talking about. So it would be outside of
• 1:13:46
  the traditional norm or the mainstream. And as those, those norms have broken down, new norms
• 1:13:54
  will emerge. The decentralization, you see that happening. So I don't hold up much hope for
• 1:14:02
  the university system in its current incarnation. I think that there's been a erosion of confidence
• 1:14:09
  in public trust in those institutions and that will continue. And the people in power are either
• 1:14:15
  in the orbit of the ideology or their true believers and they have jobs for life and they hire
• 1:14:20
  people who also now they have, they want diversity statements. So the problem is actually getting
• 1:14:25
  worse. I don't know when our engines of knowledge production are compromised. If you think America's
• 1:14:32
  bad, wait until you see the new hedge moment. All right, let's end on optimistic note. What's the
• 1:14:38
  what's the best thing about free speech? It enables you to figure out what's true. And it even
• 1:14:45
  enables you to figure out why you need free speech. It's any society absolutely, let me phrase it
• 1:14:52
  too positive. Yeah, the best thing about free speech is that enables you to figure out which true.
• 1:15:00
  And it's free. You just have to be honest with yourself and find a person with whom you can
• 1:15:06
  have conversations in which it's okay. You can let friends be wrong. You don't have to agree
• 1:15:12
  on everything. It's completely okay if you and your friends have a disagreement. In fact,
• 1:15:17
  it's actually good because then you can test and challenge each other's beliefs and good faith
• 1:15:22
  from position to friendship. And once you're advised to young people who feel that they have to
• 1:15:26
  tread on eggshells about what they think and they can't flesh out complicated ideas for fear that
• 1:15:31
  they're going to trigger some tripwire and you know attract the eye or of people who accuse them
• 1:15:38
  of thinking the wrong thing or pedaling hate speech. Your integrity is worth more than that.
• 1:15:43
  Always speak honestly and bluntly with people and be open with them. The only way that you can have
• 1:15:51
  relationships that matter is that if you speak honestly, if you're not honest with someone,
• 1:15:58
  then they won't know what you mean. And so they'll formulate a relationship with someone
• 1:16:02
  who they think you are or who you are not. And so if you want an actual
• 1:16:07
  relationship that's based on virtue and trust, then you have to be open and honest with people.
• 1:16:12
  The consequence of that, of course, is you'll see it is bad, particularly if you're young
• 1:16:18
  because you'll lose all of your friends. But they weren't your friends and scare quotes.
• 1:16:22
  They were people who just happened to be convenient. Your friends are their people who love you
• 1:16:27
  and the people who will tell you if you say something wrong or they disagree with
• 1:16:31
  and that won't challenge the the the basis of the relationship. So stand up and fight back and
• 1:16:38
  be bold. The Greeks called Parahesia, speaking truth in the face of danger. Things are worth
• 1:16:43
  fighting for. Relationships are worth fighting for reason. It's worth fighting for evidence. It's
• 1:16:47
  worth fighting for free speech. It's worth fighting for. So make a choice to not be a coward and fight
• 1:16:53
  back and speak boldly.