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Can Academia Be Repaired? | UK Column Interviews · UK Column Radio

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to UK Column Studio too. I'm delighted
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: to have Ben Rubin with me and we're also joined
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: by Diane Rasmussen on the on the remote link.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Diane, Welcome, Thanks Brian, A little bit greet Diane.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Y So, this is going to be an interesting discussion.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: We've we've all been paying attention to the frauor I
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: think we can describe her as around Jason our Day,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the Cambridge professor who's come under pressure recently, and we've
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: covered it on the UK Well, we just touched on
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: it really on the UK Column News reports, but all
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: three of us were very interested in what had actually
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: been going on. There is a lot to it, and
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: there's all so sensitivity because the Caulter Rock legal team
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: have been engaged at at least one point. So this
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: is going to be an interesting dialogue. But I think
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: there's enough there that the audience will want to learn
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: a bit more and understand maybe a bit about what
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: we think.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Diane, you.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Picked up on the fact that we just covered it
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: a little bit on UK column News. Just give us
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: that summary of how youse all thinks.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Well. I was watching this with great interest last week.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Brian as it sort of unfolded. As our longer time
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: audience will know, I am a professor myself, and I
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: came to this from the perspective of someone who actually
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: worked for decades to earn that title of professor. Just
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: to put it into perspective for people who might not
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: understand the academic system. Jason was appointed as professor of
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: Sociology of Education at Cambridge University in Jesus College in
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty three. To get appointed to professor the way
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: how to breaking this down Essentially, you know, maybe ten
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: percent of academics who go in as a lecturer or
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: above in UK university system get appointed as professor, So
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: we're talking about ninety percent of academics who don't make
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: it to that level. It is a highly respected title.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: It's not easy to obtain and for those of us,
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: such as myself who did earn that title through years
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: and years of hard work and dedication, it was actually
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: quite insulting to see that someone with the academic record
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: that Jason Arday had, or even claimed to have, would
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: even be considered for appointment to level of professor. There
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: are a lot of allegations around it, and I'm not
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: saying anything that hasn't been covered elsewhere. But we can
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: see starting from his PhD, which he gained from Liverpool
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: John Wuars University in twenty fifteen, I believe he was
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: people how were putting his dissertation through some plagiarism checkers
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: and found that a large percent of his dissertation was
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: the same sentences and passages as other work. And that's
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: been shown. These reports have shown up all over social
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: media and over the internet in the past few days.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: And so that was twenty fifteen when he supposedly earned
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: his PhD. He has a very weak publication record, certainly
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: not at the level that we would expect to see
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: someone appointed to be professor. And how he got to
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: be professor and share of sociology of education with such
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: a short academic record and with very little credentials behind him.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: It's actually very difficult for those of us who did
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: earn it, and called into question a lot of things
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: about the entire university system in general.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So okay, thank you for that. I'll just say to
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: for a little bit of summary on this, and I'm
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: coming in really absolutely is the lay person having never
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: engaged in academia. I didn't go to university, but I
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: was on the receiving end as opposed to part of
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: the part of the staff. So against him, there are
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: allegations of plagiarism and that's come from a number of
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: different directions and there's a number of levels. And then
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: there's also been questions about his biography and credentials, things
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: that he said about himself and claimed. And then we've
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: got a political element to it, which is about how
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Cambridge has reacted to accusations really that it hasn't included
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: enough black and minority ethnic people into the system. And
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: I believe there was an open letter signed at one
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: point where black members of the university were demanding a
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: larger number of black professors. So there's three seems to
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: be three key elements as to what's actually taken place,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: and then the whole thing's been compounded because there have
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: been investigations carried out. Initially, Cambridge didn't want to investigate
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: because they said the initial accusations of plagiarism had taken
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: sorry that would have taken place when he was at
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: John Moores University. So it was pushed from Cambridge in
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: the direction of John Moowes University. They say we investigated,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: but there wasn't a problem. And then the next thing.
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: We investigated ourselves and we found that we'd done nothing wrong.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, and then its then it comes back to Cambridge
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: and then the sort of thing has grown. So it's
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: in some ways it's simple and in other ways it
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: seems to be that this is quite complex and Shade Grave,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: what's your thoughts, Ben.
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: Well, it's certainly been picked up by certain factions in
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: the political discourse.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: You know, which is unsurprising.
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: You know, it's become it's become very heavily racialized, you know,
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: just to get right to the point of it, and
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: it's extraordinary to think that he was appointed to a
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: professorship as as diasteris described, but also at Cambridge University,
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: one of the largest, most established colleges in the university
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: is one of the top research universities in the world.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: In fact, it's been.
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: In the top position and certainly hovering around the top
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: three for decades.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: This is you know, this is an elite institution.
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: So the idea that we're going to be installing people
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: at a very young age without an established trap record
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: into positions of leadership, academic leadership inside the institution without
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: apparently it would seem doing a proper due diligence on
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: the academic track record. And as you've just kind of described,
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: it's not really Cambridge's job to make sure that John
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: moorees in Liverpool are doing their job. But if people
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: on the Internet, as is common these days, given the
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: powerful tools we have the II tools that can be
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: used to go in and look at it and do
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: text analysis and compare it to other sources across the Internet.
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: If you can do that, if people operating off substacks
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: or you know, elsewhere on the Internet as independent operators
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: can do that, then why can't Cambrise do that? And
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: that's your answer is they could do that and they didn't.
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: So that's a huge institutional failing on the part of
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: the university. I would say, in terms of the way
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: that this chapter has been installed, it's an insult to
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: the students because you've got people who are investing a
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: huge amount of time and energy and money, a significant
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: amount of money in purchasing investing in what should be
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: a leading world class education, which is being delivered to
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: them now by someone who, it would appear, is not
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: properly qualified to do so. And actually I've heard that
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: there are now students looking to sue Cambridge, and there
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: are comments appearing in terms of feedback from students who
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: were in this lectures who are basically describing it as substandard.
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: And actually, I think nonsensical was one of the terms
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: that I used, which isn't that surprising, by the way,
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: given that he's a profession of sociology, because a lot
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: of sociology is just gobbledygoot in my experience, because I
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: did some sociology lectures about twenty years ago, when I've
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: gone twenty five years ago now, when I was at university,
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: and I remember this stuff.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: It was really quite dense and.
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: Difficult to kind of absorb and understand the best at
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: the best of times.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Many people would would throw the challenge that actually it
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: isn't to science.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Well, certainly, and I would tend to agree with that.
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: Yes, well, there's been a proliferation of these kind of
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: pseudo this pseudo disciplines, sciences, whatever, you know, They're all
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: over the place, you know, even things that people appealed
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: to on a day.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: It's like economics, for.
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: Example, that's a relatively new thing, has only been around
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: for about one hundred years. Initially it's not particularly scientific,
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: right in the same way that you're describing. So that's so,
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: you know, I don't think anyone's coming out of this
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: smelling a roses, whether it's him, whether it's the institution itself.
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: They're hiring policy the way that they've approached this since
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: these accusations have come to light. But also beyond that,
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: he's an extraordinary character. You know, almost if you put
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: aside the academic claims, he comes across as as a fantasist,
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: as a compulsive liar. I mean a lot of the
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: statements that he's coming up with, they're very easy to disprove.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Giant. What does your take.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: All that.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: And his stories?
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Well, essentially yes, although just just let me add that
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Ben talked about things that he said and claimed there
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: was obviously people looking at that.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: The first.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Challenge to him, I think came from a from an
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: academic working in Marjohn University in Plymouth.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's it was a former academic who started
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: looking at him as looking at our day as an academic.
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: And I don't I'm not sure that I remember or
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: have I read why started. But basically he took sort
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: of a journalistic approach, and well, he.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: I'll just add that from what I've read, he he
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: actually picked up on some some some of our our
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: days claimed research work and became aware that some of
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: the terms being used and some of the the analytical
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: statements in it seemed to have come from somebody else's work.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: So he seems to be the first academic that put
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: a challenge in all the basis that our Day's claimed
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: work for his own work appeared to be based on
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: that of other academics. And then and then the thing
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: seems to have grown from there.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if you I mean, if you are familiar with
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: any particular field, it's it's if you are a well
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: read academic in your field, it's it's pretty easy to
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: see through things. And I used to say this to
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: scare students when they started a program where when I
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: used to be a program director for library and information
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: science and informatics, because it's a very small field. And
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: so I to say, well, if you didn't actually read
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: the papers that you're citing in a paper that you
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: write for me, and you've mentioned a person and what
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: they've said or wrote about something or their own research,
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: if it's not accurate I will probably see through that
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: because I probably not only know them, but I've probably
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: been drunk with them at a conference. So it's pretty
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: difficult to hide behind seeing somebody said something when you're
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: like me and you you know, we're in the field
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: for over twenty years and you know the people, and
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: it's so it's pretty easy as well to look at
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: even major theories. Even if sociology does well. Sociality does
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: have theories, they don't necessarily make sense to anyone who's
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: outside of the field, but you would at least if
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: you can look at it and you can read, go
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: back to the original sources that they've cited and look
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: at the papers and try to figure out, well, is
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: this actually cited correctly? Is this the right way to
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: discuss this paper? So it's it's pretty easy once you
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: know how to read things, especially if you've done lots
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: of peer review and lots of academic supervision, all of
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: these things over the years, to be able to see
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: pretty quickly through a paper that is not truly authentically written,
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: which is a problem with AAI. You know a lot
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: of the AI tools. We talk about AI all the
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: time on UK column, but one of the things that's
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: happening now is and has been happening even before I
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: left academia. Students using AI to write their papers, and
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: you know, it's pretty easy to verify. For example, with AI,
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: it'll say that, well, you've excited this journal and if
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: you look up that journal on that article title, well
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: that was actually a fake citation because they've put what
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: sounds like a real journal name and a real title
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: and names of real authors. They don't actually exist if
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: you go search for them. So there are lots of
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: ways now that it's it's more difficult to spot it
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: quickly if you don't know what you're looking for. So
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: academics are spending loads and loads of time who are
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: actually trying to stop the AI from happening, trying to
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: research are these citations real? Were these real references? And
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: so there's lots of people trying to get around the
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: system and whatever ways our day has used to get
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: around this for not only has PhD, but also anything
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: he tried to publish after is being called into question
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: at the moment.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So, Diane, do you think one of the key
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: things this case has done is well to both of
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: you really is focused back on the intense pressure being
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: put on that has been put on academic institutions as
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: a result of DEI policies, that universities have not been
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: allowed to carry on choosing their own academic leadership based
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: on their own selection process. Is that along has come
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: a a political policy and that that has really come
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: home to roots. So the universities are looking at people
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: deciding to include people that they wouldn't normally have chosen
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: under their own system.
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: Is that yeah, I think that it's not just in academia,
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: this is everywhere.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: It's the decision.
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: Making criteria for recruitment into any technical position have been
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: deliberately changed in order to deliver a political and a
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: social outcome. There's got nothing to do with the state
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: of the art, or the state of the science.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: Or the delivery of value.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: If you're thinking about how what companies are for, you know,
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: so those things are becoming secondary to what is essentially
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: window addressing. You know, we need we need to look different, right,
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: And actually I find it distressing that even I've got
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: a BBC arting in front of me where it describes
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: our day. As he became the university's youngest ever black
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: professor in twenty twenty three. I don't understand why we
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: have to why his race should be of any interest
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: to anyone. Yeah, Like, if he's and this is not
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: true just true for him, he's true for everyone. Why
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: am I supposed to care about his ethnic background?
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: What is that go to do with anything?
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: Like he's in position as a professor to be at
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: the absolute leading edge of academic research and teaching, that's it.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: And this introduction of.
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: Its immutable characteristics into the selection criteria for these roles
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: and this kind of box ticking exercise that the institutions
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: have been forced to go through, and actually they're not
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: necessarily being forced to go through. They have embraced this. Yeah,
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: let's be honest. From within a lot of the time,
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: it's completely irrelevant to what those institutions and the individuals
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: in them are supposed to be doing. And he's and
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: he's degrading everything.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: I would say, Yeah.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, honestly, I wish there was a
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: way that academic hiring could be done based on completely
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: anonymous applications, and unfortunately that's not possible because one of
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: the things that you're interested in is their publication record
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: and their service records and their you know what positions
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: have you held. So obviously name recognition is really important
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: because you want to see that person standing in the field,
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: which you want them to be at the top of
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: their field, to be appointed to a chair, to professor.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: And you know, that's one of the things that when
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: we look at these identity issues, and I'll say this
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: as a woman who honest we have been traditionally underrepresented
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: in leadership positions and universities. But I just really hope
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: and pray that I did not get my title because
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: I am a woman. I want it because based on
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: the merits on my record that I created as an individuals,
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: as an academic, not as a woman. And I really
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: hope that that's the case. But you know, when we
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: have these these kinds of people who are saying, well,
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: you know, it's I think it's actually very regressive. Even
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: they call it progressive, it's actually very regressive to sort
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: of say, well, I'm black and therefore you know it's
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: this isn't fair. Well, no, you should be at the
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: same level as everyone else. It shouldn't matter what you know,
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: what your identity is. And I've said that as a woman,
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: and one of the things we're seeing as well. Now
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: even the gender the trans issues are coming up, and
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: they're actually I've actually seen applications well I saw it
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: in Australia a few days ago saying they were specifically
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: looking for either friends or CIS. Women were only allowed
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: to apply, So all you got to do is declare
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: yourself to be a woman and you can apply. But
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: you can't be a man, and you know you can't be.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: It shouldn't matter. And so we're seeing this agenda just
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: getting deeper and deeper into looking at the hiring practices
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: and not relieving matter what the what the research record is.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: But I will say, you know, when I went through
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: my hiring process to be appointed as professor, when I
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: because you know, you hire, you interview on a front
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: of a very large committee. You get maybe three or
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: four people interviewing you for a lecture or lower a
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: reader associate professor, but for full professor you have a
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: panel of maybe ten people interviewing you from inside your
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: the university where you're trying to get hired, and from
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: other universities so external reviewers as well. And I remember
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: on the morning of my interview coming into that room
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: and seeing people had printed out my entire stack of publications,
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: and they were sitting in front of them that they
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: had actually read them, and they were asking me specific
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: questions about the work that I had done, and why
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: did you choose this journal? Tell me about your mythology?
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: Is like very detailed questions about my work. And if
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: you look at Jason Arday's CV where he's you know,
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: he's actually lied about a book that he published which
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: was never published. That was one of the things right said,
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: well he wrote this book. Well, no, there was a
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: proposal written, but it was never published. And so how
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: how did he get past the panel when I actually
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: know firsthand what that process is like and it's very rigorous.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: So how did he get through it? Well? Was it
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: because of you know, he's like you say, he's got
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: this identity he's throwing, you know, accusing people of white privilege,
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: which has been out there, and so I really I'm
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: still completely confused about how he managed to get through
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: all that, despite how bad I know DEI is in
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: the universities incredible.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: It's an interesting There's an interesting comment, Diane, because one
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: would have expected they always say they are the top universities,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: say Oxford and Cambridge that anything that you went through
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: in becoming a professor facing a panel of ten people
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: that would have been multiplied in order to get into
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: that position in a top university. Absolutely, and so what
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: I wonder is whether, come back to your angle, Ben,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: is really was Cambridge were they under pressure to meet
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: these politicized quotas. Was that what was going on?
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Or was it was.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Your other point that Cambridge is actually desperate to help
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: promote this political bias in order in getting different what
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: it regards as different people in order to balance ound
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: society in the university's educational hierarchy. Which is it, are
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: they under pressure and they crumbled or are they a
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: willing participant in this crazy political doctrine.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, I'd like to hear Ben talk about this,
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: because he talks about this topic pretty well. This issue
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: of measurement and scoring, so ESG scores related to hiring practices,
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: and this is true for hiring as well as for publications.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: You know, and I've reported on this as well that
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: you know, basically nowadays, if your research, your interest, et cetera,
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: doesn't align with Sustainable Development Goals or Agenda twenty thirty
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: or ESG compliance, then you're not allowed to do the research.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: And that is directly tied into the university system. So
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: if you've got someone doing one of these trendy topics saying, well, well,
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: I'm interested in researching white privilege, I'm underprivileged as a
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: black man. I didn't learn to read until I was eighteen,
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: and now suddenly I'm forty and ready to be a
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: full professor. But you know, he's doing the right top
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: he's talking about critical race theory, he's talking about, you know,
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: promoting sustainable development goals. He ties into goals three, seven,
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: and ten whatever. Then obviously he's going to have a
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: much better chance at appointment than someone who's looking at,
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: for example, you know, gender critical views, who's then just
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: going to get counseled from Acadania completely. So that's tied
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: into those measurement goals, is actually tied into what needs
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: to be your research and teaching agenda. And if those
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: don't tie in together, then you're not going to have
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: a chance anymore of getting anywhere. Luckily, I got into
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: the system before it got this bad, which is how
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: I got to where I got to. But then of
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: course it became you know, I couldn't do it any longer.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: But I know we look at measurements in terms of
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: citation numbers, in terms of you know, promoting particular agendas.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: All that stuff is. That's something that Ben talks about
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: really well. So I'd like to hear from Bed for that.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: But I think that's part of why he was into this,
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: is that you could have one paper on critical based
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: theory and be a black man. You could be like
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: me and have thirty papers on uninformation retrieval systems and
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: not get anywhere as a white person because it's the
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: wrong topic and I might be the wrong demographic. So
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: I think those things are very important.
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean to answer your quock question, Brian, I'd
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: say it was both. So they're getting external pressure and
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: Diane's talks about adherence to newer and sustainable development goals,
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: which is permeated the entire university system. So actually, any
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: kind of academic research the professors or other academics in
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: the system.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Do has to tie into an SDG.
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: They actually have to tag in so this research relates
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: to this sustainable development goal and that's built into the
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: software that they use in order to administrate the university system.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's.
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: There's there's absolutely a kind of forced compliance that's coming
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: from the outside. But on the flip, on the flip
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: of that, you've got probably an entire managerial and leadership
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: class inside academia, certainly for the past ten, fifteen, twenty years,
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: who are completely on board with this stuff. The university
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: system has been completely captured by well, I essentially neo
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: Marxist ideologies. I mean stuff as driving this identity politics,
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: critical race theory. This is all Frankfurt School neo communist
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: theories that came out of Germany in the nineteen twenties,
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: nineteen thirties. Yeah, and they've gone on to infect absolutely everything. Right,
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: So the Frankfurt School left Germany, went over to the US,
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: I think they were in California, and then embedded themselves
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: into factory at Columbia University, which is still absolutely a
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: hub of this stuff.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: It's how it's getting put.
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: Disseminated around the US system. But from there it's it's
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: it's gone into absolutely everything and and it's and it's
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: extremely political that these people are and I'm not just
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: talking about mister r Day, but the the kind of
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: the entire zeitgeist of leadership inside the university system are
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: increasingly uninterested in actual academic achievement and output, and increasingly
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: interested in basically taking control of the institutions and playing
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: political games in order to capture those institutions in order
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: to redeploy them for their own ends, and and and
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: and a lot of.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: The time to completely wreck what's gone before.
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: So I remember a couple of years ago, now there
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: was coming out of Cambridge University, the same university that
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: we're talking about here.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: We miss are they the proposition that we needed to
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: I think remove the term.
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: Anglo Saxon from the from the canonical record of British
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: history because it was divisive to talk about the Anglo Saxons,
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: you know, And that this this idea of decolonization of
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: the curriculum and the and the rewriting of history, the
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: transformation of language, the capturing of terms like equity for examples,
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: prime example very relevant here, right, because equity historically has
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: meant equal treatment in front of the law. That's what
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: equity is, right. But now in this kind of neo
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: communist new speak, equity means equal outcomes for everyone.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: So he would have been hired on a on a
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: on a DEI agenda diversity, equity and inclusion, which means
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: they want to deliver a uh.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Equal outcomes regardless.
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: Of of of capability or or or suitability for for
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: for the position. Now, this is this is not a
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: minor issue in Cambridge or anywhere else.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Like I say, this is this is.
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: The mindset that is that the entire leadership class is possessed.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: Of dian that this is a good point.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Isn't it that this doctrine or this policy, this approach
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: has It's not just come into one or two universities.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: It swept through the whole university academic system.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: And you sorry, just and you.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: Have it.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: You know, you can say that you've also seen this
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: on the American side of the pond. We're now here
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: in the UK. It's happening here. So this isn't some
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: isolate that sort of hit onto Cambridge University. This is
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: something that's come as a flood across the whole of
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the university academic and higher education system.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: Now that I've worked in universities in three different countries,
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: well four, because if you count my visiting appointment that
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: I had in the University of Sydney in Australia. So
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: having several different university experiences. A lot of them are
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: quite similar. Different countries have different approaches to sort of
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: what they think of as measuring outcomes, right, so this
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: is all a part of This is not something that
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: I was aware of when I entered academia, and it
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: certainly came up very quickly in terms of their official measurements,
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: which might be nationwide. So specifically in the UK we
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: have the Research Assessment Framework, which is the REF. I
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: would I highly recommend to people to if they want
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: more detail on things like the REF, to look at
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: the new book that just come out by Professor Norman Fenton,
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: which is called The Capture of Academia, which was just
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: published a couple of weeks ago, and I read it recently.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: I read it down in a few hours because I
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: couldn't put it down because it's so relatable. So she
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: goes into detail about these kinds of things such as
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: the reef where every university in the UK has to participate.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: The only that doesn't participate is University Buckingham, which is
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: the only private university in the country. And so basically
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: just to show you how things are measured, you have
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: to It's all very it takes the humanity out of research.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: It's all very mechanistic. So you have to submit what
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: are called outputs. They're not even papers or books, they're
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: called outputs. It sounds like a computer a boute them
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: outputs that you have written for the past seven years.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: And so you go through this exercise every seven years,
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: and every year university is required to participate, and your
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: department your university is judged based on the quality of
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: the outputs, which are raked by a number of stars.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: So the ultimate goal is to get four star of research,
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: and four stars means you've done something incredibly internationally significant,
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: which of course is not reality. Not every paper can
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: save the world, but that's essentially what they're looking for.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: And every department every unit of assessments, so there's unit
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: assessment for certain subjects, and then a panel of so
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: called experts, so senior professors in every field will take
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: all of these papers together, look at them and rank
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: them from every paper from one to four stars. And essentially,
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: if you are ranked even internally as having two star
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: one star papers, or even three star in some cases,
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: then you might have your academic status threatened. They might say, well,
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: if you can't produce four star papers. We're putting you
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: on a teaching only contract. So the fear is constantly
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: there to produce so called world class outstanding research. And
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: so ultimately, after going through this exercise every seven years,
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: which takes a huge amount of time and money and
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: causes a lot of people a lot of stress, they
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: then allocate funding from the government into universities. So of
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: course it's stacked in favor of the Oxbridge, St Andrew's
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: Edinburgh the top level of universities because they are thought
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: to have the top level of research, which means that
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: they get the most money allocated to them from the
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: UK government and therefore they have more money to do
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: whatever it is that they want to do, so that
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: small universities that might be working really hard to increase
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: themselves in the rankings don't have a chance because it's
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: it's automatically skewed toward those people at the top. And
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: so how Jason Ourday's types of papers get ranked for
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: star Well, I certainly wouldn't rank them, but not a sociologist.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: Sociologists might look at them and say, oh, this is wonderful.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: Somebody's written, you know, this paper on white privilege and yes,
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: we have to give us a four start, because if
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: we don't, then we'll be accused of being white supremacists.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: And therefore the system is rigged in favor of those
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: people with those identifying characteristics that make them h you know,
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: protected under DEEI. I guess you could say I need to.
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: Be I need to be artificially elevated by the system
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: in order to make up force opposed historic oppression and all.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: This kind of stuff.
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: And you can see that that that racial dynamic in particular,
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think there's a lot of academics.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: And you can see this in the corporate world as well.
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: It's exactly the same who were terrified, absolutely terrified of
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: of being canceled and censured and pulled up by these
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: people and kind of you know, talms pieces in the
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: public square, cast out of their profession. You know that
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: they've worked decades to elevate themselves up with it, and
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: you know, as this happened to Diane, and there are
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: some absolute thugs operating in the system who were enforcing
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: this on everybody. And actually I noted that are they
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: ran straight into the arms I posted on social media
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: yesterday of Lord Simon Woolley, who was the founder of
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: Operation Black Vote Back in the nineteen nineties and is
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: now the principle of Homerton College at Cambridge, and a
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: position that you know, I'm not qualified to say whether
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: he should be in that role or not, but having
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: reviewed some of his public output, it doesn't make me
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: wonder how he actually got into the position of running
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: a college at Cambridge, right because actually even his own
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: his own materials putting out himself with basic errors in
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: that were completely avoidable, and you would expect someone in
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: an academic position not to make those kinds of mistakes.
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: And he, you know, as I kind of touched on,
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: his entire career is built up around political organizing around race,
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: and he's now running a Cambe college and constantly pushing
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: divisive racial political discourse even at the Cambridge Union.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: So it didn't surprise me to see that there is
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: a network of leaders inside the institution who are.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: Running to defend Jason R.
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: Day and essentially to present this as some kind of
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: racially motivated attack, as opposed to understanding that it would
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: appear that he's plagiarized huge sections of his PhD thesis.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: And as I understand it. This question is about a
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: lot of his other output, as well as.
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: Presenting this life story that he's almost, you know, completely unbelievable,
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: and and that he is somehow victim in this, and
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: that he needs to be protected as opposed to him
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: being a perpetrator of not a crime, but certainly let's
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: let's call them wrongdoings.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't think he's.
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: Behaved in an inn acceptable fashion, and it's got nothing
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: to do with his with his with his ethnic identity,
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: and his ludicrous to suggests that it has.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: This is this is a good point. Also in my
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: head while you're you were going through that little segment,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: was the fact that that Liverpool John Moores and the
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Cambridge are both they both say they've carried out an investigation,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: but of course none of that investigation has been made
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: public yet. I don't think so we've got all of
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: this controversy based on some pretty penetrating and simple questions
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: about plagiarism which ought to unseat him those if those
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: are proven, and never mind any other claims he's made.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: I would have thought, Diane, that would unseat him from
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: his role at Cambridge. But we've had investigations but none
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: of the information from those investigations comes out in public
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: to defend him. And yet you would have said, well,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: if these two key universities have established that there's absolutely
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: no wrongdoing, they would be falling over themselves to publish
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: the results of their investigations showing that. But the opposite
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: seems to happen. That goes into a very gray area,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: opaque area, the public doesn't know anything. And then they
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: will say start to turn to the to a defense
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: which you are describing, which is that people are being
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: unfair to this man and then making claims against him.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: There watching DEI.
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: Rules, yeah, and and and that somehow he is the
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: victim in all this because it is this BBC article
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: I've got here, there's a statement from him saying this
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: is not the end of my work and that he
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: needed time.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: He needs time to heal. So you so you need
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: time to heal.
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: So you, based on what appears to have happened, have
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: misrepresented your academic potential and credentials and and and manufactured
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: a bunch of stories about your life that on even
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: just basic interrogation, just don't stack up and and and
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: and now and now and and you're the victim. Right,
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: This is classic, is what they can. You know, are
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: you familiar with the stain DARVO d A r v
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: O deny tack, reverse victim and offender is a classic
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: tactic of the left and the and particularly these kind
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: of critical race DEI types that you find in academia
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: and elsewhere. You know, is exactly what's happened here. He's
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: denied it, he's gone on the attack. He said, no,
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: you're racist. And then and actually I'm the victim. Not
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: the students that have received a subpar education and what
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: is supposed to be the top well one of the
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: top research universities in the world that's going to have
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: an ongoing impact for them on their life. Now they're
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: not the victims. You're the victim, and because you've been caught.
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: Basically it's ludicrous.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: And my mind could say that this, this approach, Ben
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: is actually part of the tall material within the type
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: of sociology courses that exactly I suspect mister d Day
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: was providing. All right, now, that's that's just me looking
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: at a supposition about something.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: Because it's politically these are political games.
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: Is a game playing, This is about power, who gets
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: to dominate a situation who gets to dictate terms to
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: who yes, and and and and this inversion of meaning
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: the the the the these, this, this, this, this point
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: scoring this uh, this kind.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Of what do they call it, like.
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: Oppression olympics, Like who can be the most oppressed and
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: victimized and they're the ones that need to be protected
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: and artificially elevated by the system. So there's this constant
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: push to make yourself the biggest victim, because if you're
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: the biggest victim, then you will be the biggest winner
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: in the way that things get reordered by the administration
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: that comes into to mediate and to fix everything. And
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: it's just but it's but it's pathetic. It's absolutely pathetic behavior.
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: But Jane, it's very dangerous change. It's destroying the institute again. So,
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: like I said earlier, none of this has anything to
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: do with academic potential or achievement or delivery at all.
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: There's nothing to do with the things that we would
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: normally measure academic.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Prowess, prowess or it's a good word to use.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: Yes, Yeah, Dianne, coming in on the back of what
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Ben's just just said, why don't academics other academics and
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: the system see this, or do they see it and
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: they are too frightened to actually speak out. What do
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: you think.
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: I think some of them are brainwashed to believe that
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: they're doing the right things. I think some of them
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: probably do see it, but they're afraid for their jobs,
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: which you know, if you look at my career as
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: an example, there is good reason to be afraid if
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: you want stay in academia. It feels as well, and
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: I've said this for a very long time, as you know,
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: first a professional librarian and practice and then as an
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: academic of librariyan information science, is that it's very It's
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: almost like they can't resist following trends, which really goes
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: against flies in the face of what academics are supposed
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: to do in the first place, which is probably part
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: of why I got in trouble. That they see, well,
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: this is the current trendy topic that we need to
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: be concerned with, so right now it's DEI it was
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: something else a few years ago. Maybe hopefully it will
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: be something else in the future. But the whole point
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: is that they get in this group think where they're
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: concerned about getting published. So journal editors are looking for
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: certain topics, so they have to get published to keep
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: their jobs. They also have to get funding to keep
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: their jobs. And so the government and the EU and
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: the UK government and whoever funding them as well as
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: you know, the Welcome Trust or whoever is whoever these
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: organizations are providing the funding have certain things that they're
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: looking for, so they kind of do have to stay
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: in line with whatever the agenda is at the moment
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: if they want to continue working. And that's kind of
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: part of the game, is that if you're not willing
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: to play and say well, these are the because the
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: research councils will actually set out here's the topics that
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: we will fund for research for the next five years
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: and our new strategic plans. So if you look at
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: the Academic Social Research Council ESRC, which would be the
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: one most likely to fund sociology, for example, then they
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: will say, well, we're going to fund critical race theory,
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: We're going to fund you know, looking at the special
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: needs of people in the trans community, whoever it is.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: And so if you want to keep your job, you
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: better do research on that because otherwise you won't get funding,
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: you won't get published, which means that you're out, which
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: means you have to find something else to do, so
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: whether or not they believe in it, and it's through
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: all fields as well. I mean engineering, everything that they're
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: doing now has to be about net zero because if
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: they're not doing that zero and engineering to find sustainable
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: ways to do whatever the engineers need to do, then
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: they're not going to get funding from the people funding
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: the engineering research.
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: So this is.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Well, you tell me whether it's the right description, but
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: it's political control. It seems to me a perverted political
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: control of the higher education system, which you're saying a
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: lot of it comes about by the fact that the
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: money supplied to the universities is controlled within these new
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: favored subjects and agendas. So the people creating the funding
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: pool for the universities are clearly implicated in this undermining
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: of traditional university teaching and and striving for the hoist
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: academic output in favor now of what appears to be
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: an increasingly politically based academic output.
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, if you are going to be
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: one of the people like I believed for years, when
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: you know my entire life goal was to become a
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: professor for decades, you know that I spent two decades
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: trying to achieve that, and I really believe that once
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: I got into that position, I was so naive up
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: to the point to where I thought, well, once I've
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: become a professor, I can then use you know, my
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: status can be I can help shape the future of
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: the field, and I can ask the important questions that
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: maybe nobody is asking. And maybe that's my job. Maybe
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: that's both my honor and my responsibility to be able
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: to ask questions that nobody else is asking. Well, look
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: what happened was the opposite, and instead of asking the
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: questions that I thought needed to be asked to actually
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: move things forward into tellectually to make a difference. It
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: was my job was to push and support the agenda.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: And then when they saw that I wasn't able to
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: do that, I wasn't going to do that, then that
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: was it for me. That was the end. So that's
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: how they all get there. If you look at the
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: people that were active in the past few years, let's
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: say in the COVID era, Let's say that they were
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: you know, look at the people that did the vaccine
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: development and all the other things. They're the ones that
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: got all the that got the Sir, and the Dame titles. Right,
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: if we look at W. Shreidhar if we look at
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: all of the people following the right the right approach
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: during the time period, they were the ones who now
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: have the titles and and people like me very although
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: probably very few of us that actually did that are
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: not in the place where the rest of them are
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: because we weren't. We weren't playing the right game, essentially,
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: and so that's why they have to be aligned with
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: whatever this current agenda is, because that's how they that's
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: how their career progresses.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: This is a very good point. The answer can I
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: just start to questions as to follow upson now?
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: Though?
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: Do you think the university system can be saved at
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: this point?
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I had somebody asked me this question
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: a couple of days ago. Actually I think that there's
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: it's gone so far into it, I really don't know.
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: I hope it does not just for the sake of
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: people trying to maintain their academic careers, but just for
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: the future of our children, you know, the children of
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: the West who will be going into universities. I don't
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: know how to fix that, because regardless of what anyone
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: tries to do to save their children from this level
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: of indoctrination unless we do find a way to stop it.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: And I don't know how we do that other than
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: getting rid of these people that are truly pushing it
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: and starting over. I don't know how else to do it.
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: It would I will make the comment as well. I
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: know when you guys had Katie Joe Murphin on the
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: news last week and you were talking and she was
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: talking about homeschooling and kind of what they've been doing
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: down there in help Sussex, which is great, but what
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: happens when they if they do go to university. I
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: think she was saying she has a child about to
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: go to university. That person is not going to have
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: been exposed to it every day at school. So when
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: whether they go to university, whether they go to college,
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: whether they enter a trade, whether they go straight into work,
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: and they're faced with this, my concern is how they're
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: going to cope because it is everywhere, and no matter
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: what path they choose, when they, you know, become sixteen
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: or eighteen and go forward, you know, what option is
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: there for them?
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: John, This is a very interesting point and I was
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: thinking about it when Katie Joe was telling that particular story,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: I think my feeling is that, and it's a positive one,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: is that if you have a child that's brought up
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: under home schooling and that child gets a really good
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: grounding from the family, the family values and the mum
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: and dad work on providing a very good educational basis,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: including a lot of subjects and experience that wouldn't normally
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: be covered within the day to day school educational system.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: So I would hope that a child brought up under
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: home school and gets a lot more life knowledge, life
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: experience from their parents alongside being able to read and
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: read and write and do math, as you would say.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: And if they have that home school basis, it gives
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: them a strength that when they go into a perverted
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: educational university educational system, they would have the strength of character,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: albeit they're still at at a very young age, to
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: deal not only to see the corruption in the university system,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: but to deal with it.
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: They would have.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: That inner strength as a as a young person, and
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: also they would have the home installed academic strength to
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: see through the perversion in the universities. That was the positive.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Those were some of the positive thoughts that came into
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: my mind. But you could also imagine a very well
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: grounded child coming in from a home education system, goes
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: into the university and they get absolutely ridiculed and hammered
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: into submission. I could also imagine that happening into some
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: in some universities. So I do take you concern.
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's you know, it's interesting if we
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: look at it from a very cultural perspective. Uh, this
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: goes into what Ben talks about a lot as well,
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: which you know, which parts of the world. I mean,
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: it's easy to say, well, you know, while under the
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: human agenda or you know whatever. But just a few
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: years ago, uh, shortly before I left academia, I was
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: participating in an online presentation with other Western academics and
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: we were presenting to people in South Africa, and some
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: one of the South African attendees listening to our presentation
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: at the end, one of the first questions was why
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: do some of you have she her next to your name?
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, I'm not.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: Taking ignorance, is bliss?
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, And I was not. I was not
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: taking that question, you know. When you were we were
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: listening to their concerns about this was about was library
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: related work, but all about you know, they were talking
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: about translating policies and things into into the you know,
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: the official twenty five languages in South Africa or whatever
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: they have, and like, that's a real problem, right, that
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: that is a major concern. How do we make this
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: available to everyone? And then I was like, I'm not
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: answering that question, and then somebody else on the panel
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: with me said, well, it's because sometimes when you look
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: at people, you can't necessarily tell what gender they are,
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: so they put it there to help people, and just
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: complete silence from the people listening. So it was just
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: this thing of where, yeah, certain countries are doing this.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: Other countries have real things to think about, and pronouns
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: are not one of them. It was hopefully a bit
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: of a dose of reality for the other people who
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: were watching that interaction. But you know, it just goes
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: to show that not everywhere in the world is going
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: through all this like we are in the Western countries.
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: And I certainly hope that we can return to a
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: time one day where we are worrying about real concerns
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: and not about this stuff.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the dangerous point, and I think we are getting
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: very close to it is when, of course, you have
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: a generation of academics that have only known the corrupted system,
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: so they go not far off it. Yeah, and we're
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: not exactly, but we're not far off it. And this
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: is where the thing is very sinister, because you will
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: have people in academic posts, very senior academic posts, who
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: are not bad people at heart, but they've been brought
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: up in a corrupted system and therefore they don't have
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the experience of seeing how it used to be. And
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: the other thing that goes with it is that in
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: these new specialist areas don't think of the right subject.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: But you know, if I'm talking not just about sociology,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: but if we're looking at you know the point you've made,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: what is a man?
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: What is a woman?
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: There's a whole language associated with it. You've used the
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: term cis, which many people will not have a clue
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: what you're talking about. So not only do you have
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: a generation when in the future, maybe one more generation,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: you've got people who have been taught via a corrupted
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: system which will have undermined their ability to think clearly,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: but they've also been used to a language which prevents
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: them from actually thinking properly in order to understand how
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: their minds have been attacked. I know that's a bit
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: of a convoluted expression, but this is what the danger
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: is it twofold. It's the young people are being groomed
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: into a corrupted system and they're being denoyed proper language
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: to see, understand and express what's actually being done.
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: And it's all distraction, isn't it. You know, And distractions
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: could come in a lot of different forms, especially in
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: an environment where you're essentially paid to think right, and
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: that's ultimately what academics are supposed to be doing. But
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: even before all of this came up, not just in
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: the past few years, really with this you know, cysts
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: and the trends and all the other things that distracting everything.
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: And I remember, like my academic mentors, my supervisors were
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: just they just wanted to do their research. They wanted
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: to do what they were doing, and they didn't want
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: to be bothered with any of the admin. And you know,
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: Norman Fint wrote about this as well in his new
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: book about the level of admin that just keeps increasing, increasing, increasing,
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: to the point to where you can't do the your
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: actual job or what you thought your job was supposed
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: to be, which was supposed to be, do research and teaching,
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: because you're doing all this this admin work and you
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: kind of lose time and you lose sight of it.
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: Whereas you remember my academic mentors who were very senior
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: when I was doing my PhD twenty years ago, and
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: they were like, oh they were They would like close
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: their office doors if we were working on a project.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: I just want to work on this data. I don't
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: want to go to a community meeting. So they would
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: close the door and pretend they weren't there, you know,
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: because they saw those meetings as distractions from what they
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: were actually being paid to do and what they loved doing.
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: And I, you know, I'm very happy that I was
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: able to inherit that passion for research and writing and
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: thinking from them. But more and more you can't escape
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: the admin and that just drains your passion for whatever
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: it was that you went in to do a PhD
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: for in the first place. And I can see why
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: people drop out. It's too exhausting.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you call it ad me.
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: A lot of it is you know, eurograstic political game playing. Yeah, basically,
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: you know, it's he that's the way I would understand it.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: Yes, this is my Maybe we're coming a little bit
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: towards the clothes on this. I think it's been a
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: really interesting discussion off the back of Visa Ode and
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: what he has and has not done.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: But then you you.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: Just now are very much coming in at an angle
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: that this is essentially an attack on the academic system,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: on the system of learning. And I absolutely see it
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: as an attack because it's it's it's undermining the academic levels.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: It's as you said, Diane, it's preventing people thinking properly
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: and looking into subjects with a high level open mind,
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: and it's causing difficulties for all sorts of people in
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: the educational academic system, be it professors or people learning.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: So I look at it and I think I'm looking
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: at an attack. And you've mentioned the Frankfurt School, and
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: that gets us into a historical timeline of people who
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: are clearly working to subvert Western society. And then I
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: think to myself, how interesting it is that the security
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: services in the UK, whether we're talking am I six
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: or am I five, or through signals intelligence with GHQ.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: Overwhelmingly.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: The people at the top of those organizations tasked with
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: protecting the United Kingdom from subversion, Overwhelmingly they've come through
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: the very institutions that we're talking about, so the recruiting
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: ground for our intell agens and security systems.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: Overwhelmingly Cambridge in particular.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: Cambridge will say Oxford and Cambridge and Cambridge.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: The Tories for it, though, because obvious you've got the
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: Kim Philby and the Russians, Firings.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: The five, the famous five. This is true. But where
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: I'm coming to is that if you and I, all
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: the three of us, see that there's actually an attack
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: going on, that key elements of our society are being undermined, confused,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: degraded to the point that it is damaging not only
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: the academic and intellectual output, but it's also damaging the
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: minds and the well being of people in the system.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: If we can see this is an attack, surely the
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: people task with protecting the UK from subversion and harm
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: see it as an attack.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: And yet.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: If we look at both m I six and certainly GHQ,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: we've seen them running initiatives where they are also engaging
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: in these same DEI policies, and that then says to
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: me that actually we are under attack, but that our
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: own security and intelligence services are fully complicit in allowing
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: it to happen. Now, that might be a you know
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: you were completely agree.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: With you, bro, Yes, well it was.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: You know, it's been interesting over the years different a
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: couple of different programs that I taught in I had
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: recruiters coming into my classes to do guest lectures for well,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: one for GCHQ, one for you know, defense security agencies
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: in America when I was still working over there, and
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: they are so good at determining immediately. They can look
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: an entire class of thirty students and decide quickly if
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: they have the right profile to work at one of
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: these agencies. And it was always amazing to me when
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: I would have one of them in my class. They
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: would do a lecture about what they do and talk
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: about what it's like to work at GHQ or work
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: at the NSA or whatever. And then after the class
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: I would say, well, you know, well did you find
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: anyone that because they would always sort of recruit one
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: or two usually out of every year, and well, you know,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: here's this one was. Yeah, she was really good. I
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: really liked her. This one. No, absolutely, no way. They
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: asked the wrong questions. This one wasn't the way the
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: look on her face while I was talking, I wouldn't
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: talk to her. They are so good at immediately figuring
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: out whatever this personality, learning style, profile, whatever it is,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: and they know exactly who they want and they will
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: proceed from there to recruit them if they want to
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: come to work for the agencies. It was amazing how
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: quickly they could size up a group of kids.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well that is a very interesting commentary, you know,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: on how they work. But also it adds to the pool,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: doesn't it that they know who the right people are?
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: Well?
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: Who are the right people are? Are they recruiting people
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: who understand the need to defend their own country and
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: counter subversive forces of whatever form, or are they actually
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: recruiting people that they're going to be very happy to
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: turn a blind eye to what's actually happening in the
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: country and to help facilitate what seems to me to
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: be just an overwhelming attack to break down the structure
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: of the country. I didn't expect in this conversation, in
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: this discussion, to get into this area, right.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: I didn't.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: Plan this question at all, but it came through really
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: Ben starting to describe that, you know, if we look
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: at this with a cold intellectual mind, that the academic
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: system is being attacked, and I think it's right, and
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: the harm to the country is not only massive, it's
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: growing very quickly.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: It's difficult to calculate. Yes, yeah, the barbarians aren't at
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: the gate. Barbarians are inside the gate, and they're running
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: all of the major institutions of government, academia, finance, industry,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: whatever else you care to mention.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: Having said that, we might actually say that mister our
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: Day has actually been used as a useful idiot.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, so to some extent he has a pawn
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: in this.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree with that.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, that's why I you know, I can't say
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: that he wouldn't have got to where he got to
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: if it hadn't been various elements along the way that
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: him to that stage. You know, it wasn't It wasn't
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: just him. There were other people that, whether they were
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: complicit intentionally or otherwise, or just worried about meeting their
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: dei quotas or whatever it was. He didn't get there alone.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: And that's what fascinates me particular about him. And I'm
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: sure there are others like him out there that just
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: haven't been exposed at this level. But when we look
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: at how he got to that point and who warned
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: him this PhD that actually literally had a typo in
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: the title and then plagiarized to whoever percentage of it?
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: How does this happen? Who let him through to this point?
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: And then, you know, as Basil covered, I think we
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: should just mention this as well as Basil covered on
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: Friday's News and with Professor David Miller, who of course
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: has been a prolific writer for UK column. I know
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: this as commissioning editor. We published a lot of his
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: articles on his you know, substantial research into anti Zionist agendas.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: And I don't want to get into that discussion about
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: Zionism today on they're tired for that, but just to
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: say that it was I was so happy last week
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: when his employment appeal tribunal came through and said he
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: does have the right to hold and express anti Zionist
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: views as an academic and he is hoping to get
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: reinstated back at the University of Bristol hopefully. I don't
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: know what processes is involved in all of that, but
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: you know, he never should have been dismissed in the
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: first place. I think that that is also a major
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: step in last week's news and I want to see
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: that as a step in the right direction. I mean,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: we'll have to see what happens, but if people can
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: refer back to Professor David Miller's case now and say, well,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: he has the right to hold these views, he should.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: He should have the right to continue or to go
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: back to work and make up for the fact that
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: he's lost six years of his career. And as he
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: joked with with Mike Robinson in last week's news, well,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: writing articles for UK column is not the same salary
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: as being a professor at the University of Bristol. And
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: you know, but these are all, you know, interesting points
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: to consider and can can he get reinstated And if
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: he does, what does this mean for the future of
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: academic freedom of releasing the system from capture? Can it
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: be rebuilt? Can it get back to what it was?
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: I don't know, but I do want to see this
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: as one positive because I edited his article that we
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: published last week about the summary of the decision that
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: came through for him, and I was just I was,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: I was pretty much in tears, just because of knowing
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: what having been through it myself, what it feels like,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: and how how much relief I felt just for him,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: and potentially the positive that could come out of this decision,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: I want to say is one bit of hope I
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: would like to leave the audience with, if we can.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: Well, wonderful place to finish on. I think we're going
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: to be seeing a lot more about the our day case,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: and I also think we are going to see the
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: for all the argument around him polarized very much along
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: the lines you suggest, which is going to be the
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: nasty academic system.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: Of poor me, white supremacy.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: Supremacy probably, Yeah, But I think the minimum that our
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: discussion has really brought to the surface is that he
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: is symptomatic of something really nasty that's been gnawing away
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: at academia and the university system. And we know that
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: it's not just in UK, because it's effecting universities in
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: the West and in the States. As you say, and
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: this is a beast and it needs to be identified
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: for what it is.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: This is not to discount any problems that still exist
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: in terms of just any sort of discrimination. And I'm
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: not saying this to sound woke. I'm saying this because
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: if we look, for example, at the American system, having
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: worked in two of them, one of the first universities
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: I worked at was called Texas Women's University. That's where
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: I had my first full time academic appointment, which was created
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: in response to the fact that women were not admitted
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: into universities at the time when it was created, and
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: it was originally only for women, and then eventually they
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: opened it up to men as well, and I think
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: it's probably still around ninety percent women enrolled in the university.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: And I also worked for two years. That's what is
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: called I'm not sure if British people do with this
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: exists in America or not. It's called HBCU, which is
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: historically Black college or university, and again those were created
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: as a response to the fact that black people were
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: not allowed in universities for a long time. And I
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: worked at both of those, and I would say that,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: you know, they are still historically underfunded, they still have
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: a lot of concerns, are still massive corruption and on
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: a different scale than we see in sort of the
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: major high level of research universities in America. And I
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: found them incredibly disturbing experiences to work in because they
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: didn't even have funding for you know, you know, supplies
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: in the loo. Literally, I didn't have copy paper to
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: make copies of things for class because I was told
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: they didn't have money to buy copy machine paper and
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: just things where it just becomes impossible to teach and
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: in just in any sort of basic way.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: And yeah, so that to me emphasizes the point that
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: where people have been trying to make an absolutely appropriate
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: difference to affraid with the system to give equal academic
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: rights to black people, where there's been a proper attempt
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: to do that that's not supported, but when there's a
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: highly politicized and false path which says this is what
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: it's doing, but actually it's not. Money is no object.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know. And when I left, when I
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: announced that I was leaving that HBCU, and I did go.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: I did to go into a research university after that
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: that was not a sort of black university or women's university.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: I did so with a lot of reservation because when
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: I remember, I had students at the time who kind
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: of broke my heart that they were saying that they
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: were they wanted to start a petition to keep me
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: because they said, you're the only one that we've ever
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: had who actually cared whether or not we got an education.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: And they could sense from their professors and any teachers
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: they had before them that they had just been written off. Well,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: you know, you're the black kids. You're not going to
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: be anything anyway, So what's the point. We're not going
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: to put the effort into it. But I had to
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: explain to them, I'm not given resources to be able
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: to teach you. They won't buy software that you need
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: to learn to go forward to have a career in informatics.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: I can't teach you without those resources. And it was
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: very frustrating, and they were very upset to see me go.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: And it really was a very difficult decision because I
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: felt like I was abandoning them because they really did
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: want to learn, but they weren't given the opportunity. So
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying any of this that we've just discussed
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: to discount the fact that there are still real struggles
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: out there. There is still very much a racial divide,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: at least in America. And I could say that firsthand myself,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: being born in Detroit, where there's still very much racial division.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: That is still a very real thing. But I think
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: that what's happened is that they're turning back on themselves
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: instead of going forward and seeing everyone does get an
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: equal opportunity to have a good education and have a
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: successful career by saying, oh, you know, because we're seeing
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: this now with us, Oh it's well, you're black and
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: it wasn't fair and you didn't have No, everyone has
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: the same opportunity. It's just what you choose to do
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: with it. And that doesn't matter what demographic you're in.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: We all have that opportunity and we all have the
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: option to make a difference. And that goes for anyone
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: out there who's trying to decide what they're going to
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: do with your education.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well excellent, Thank you very much, Diane, Thank you Ben.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: I think we will be, as I said, hearing a
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: lot more about the style day and I think we'll
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: be able to discuss a lot more is this thing unfolds,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: But as a first discussion on it, I think it's
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: been very interesting. So thank you both very much.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 5: Absolutely, thank you attatatatatas assassssss