Kind: captions
Language: en
if the goal is the project of human
knowledge which is to know the world it
is you cannot know the world as it is
without knowing what people really think
and what people really think is an
incredibly important fact to know so
every time you're actually saying you
can't say that you're actually depriving
yourself of the knowledge of what people
really think you're causing what Tim
Quran who's on our Board of advisors
calls preference falsification you end
up with an inaccurate picture of the
world which by the way in a lot of cases
um because there are activists who want
to restrict more speech they actually
tend to think that people are more
prejudiced than they might be and
actually one very real practical way it
makes things worse is when you censor
people it doesn't change their opinion
it just encourages them to not share it
with people who will get them in trouble
so it leads them to talk to people who
they already agree with and group
polarization takes off
the following is a conversation with
Greg glucianov Free Speech Advocate
First Amendment attorney president and
CEO of fire the foundation for
individual rights and expression and
he's the author of unleashing Liberty
co-author with Jonathan height of
coddling of the American mind and
co-author with Ricky schlot of a new
book coming out in October that you
should definitely pre-order now called
the canceling of the American mind which
is a definitive accounting of the
history present and future of cancel
culture a term used and overused in
public discourse but rarely studied and
understood with the depth and rigor that
Greg and Ricky do in this book and in
part in this conversation
freedom of speech is important the
especially on college campuses the very
place that should serve as the
battleground of ideas including weird
and controversial ones that should
encourage bold risk-taking not
conformity
this is Alex Friedman podcast to support
it please check out our sponsors in the
description and now dear friends here's
Greg Luciano
let's start with a big question what is
cancel culture now you've said that you
don't like the term as it's been quote
dragged through the mud and abused
endlessly by a whole host of
controversial figures nevertheless we
have the term what is it cancel culture
is the uptick of campaigns especially
successful campaigns starting around
2014 to get people fired expelled
de-platformed Etc
um for speech that would normally be
protected by the First Amendment and I
say would be protected because we're
talking about circumstances in which it
isn't necessarily where the first
amendment applies but what I mean is
like as an analog to uh say things you
couldn't lose your job as a Public
Employee for and also the climate of
fear that's resulted from uh from that
phenomena the fact you can lose your job
for having the wrong opinion and it
wasn't subtle that this there was an
uptick in this particularly on on campus
around 2014.
um John Ronson wrote a book called so
you've been publicly shamed they came
out in 2015 already documenting this
phenomena I wrote a book called freedom
from speech in 2014. and but in but it
really was in 2017 when you started
seeing this be directed at professors
and when it comes to the number of
professors that we've seen you know be
targeted and lose their jobs I've been
doing this for 22 years and I've seen
nothing like it so there's so many
things I want to ask you here but one
actually just look at the organization
of fire can you explain what the
organization is because it's
interconnected to this whole
fight and the rise of cancer culture and
the fight for freedom of speech since
2014 and before
so uh fire was founded in 1999 by Harvey
sliverglade he is a famous civil
liberties attorney he's a bit on the
show he's the person who actually found
me out in my very happy life out in San
Francisco but knew I was looking for a
First Amendment job
um I'd gone to law school specifically
to do first amendment
um and he he found me which was pretty
cool his Protege Kathleen Sullivan was
the dean of Stanford law school and this
Remains the best compliment I ever got
in my life is that she recommended me uh
to Harvey and since that's the whole
reason why I went to law school I was
excited to be a part of this new
organization uh the other co-founder of
a fire is Alan Charles Coors he's just
an absolute genius um he is the one of
the leading experts in the world on the
Enlightenment and particularly about
Voltaire and if any of your listeners do
like the Great Courses
um he has a lecture on Blaze Pascal and
blaze of course is famous for the
Pascal's wager
and I left it just so moved and
impressed and with a depth of
understanding of how important this
person was
that's interesting uh you mentioned to
me offline connected to this that there
is a
that at least it runs in parallel or
there's a connection between the love of
Science and the love of the freedom of
speech Yes um can you maybe elaborate
where that connection is sure um I think
that for those of us who are really you
know who've devoted Our Lives to freedom
of speech one thing that we are into
whether we know it or not is
epistemology
um you know the the study and philosophy
of knowledge you know freedom speech has
lots of
um moral and philosophical Dimensions
but from a pragmatic standpoint it is
necessary because we're creatures of
incredibly limited knowledge we are
incredibly self-deceiving I always love
the fact that Yuval Harare uh refers to
the enlightenment as the discovery of
ignorance because that's exactly what it
was it was suddenly being like wow hold
on a second all this incredibly
interesting folk wisdom we got which by
the way is can be can be surprisingly
reliable here and there uh when you
start testing a lot of it
is nonsense um and it doesn't hold up
even our even our ideas about the way
things fall you know as you know Galileo
established like even our intuitions
they're just wrong
and so a lot of the early history of
freedom of speech um it was happening at
the same time as sort of the Scientific
Revolution uh so a lot of the early
debates about freedom of speech um were
tied in so certainly Galileo uh certain
you know um I always point out like
Kepler was probably like the even more
radical idea that there weren't even
perfect spheres but but at the same time
largely because of the invention of the
printing press you also had all these
political developments um and uh you
know I always talk about yanhus you know
from the uh a famous Czech
um uh the hero who was a
um who was burned at the stake and I
think in 1419
um but uh he was basically Luther before
the printing press uh before Luther
could get his word out you know he
didn't stand a chance and that was
exactly what Janos was but a century
later thanks for the printing press
everyone could know Luther thought and
boy did did they but it led to of course
this completely crazy hyper disrupted
period in in European history
well you mentioned uh to jump around a
little bit the First Amendment first of
all what is the first amendment and what
is the connection to you between
the First Amendment the freedom of
speech and cancer culture sure
so I'm a First Amendment lawyer as I
mentioned and that's what I uh that's my
passion that's what I studied and I
think American First Amendment law is
incredibly interesting in one sentence
the first amendment is trying to get rid
of basically all the reasons why
humankind had been killing each other
for its entire existence that we weren't
going to fight anymore over opinion we
weren't going to fight any more of
religion that you have the right to
approach your government for redressing
grievances um that you you have the
freedom to associate that all of these
things in one sentence were like nope
the government will no longer interfere
with you with uh with your right to have
these have these fundamental human uh
human rights and so one thing that makes
fire a little different from other
organizations is is however we're not
just a First Amendment organization we
are a free speech organization and so uh
and and but at the same time a lot of
what I think free speech is can be well
explained with reference to a lot of
First Amendment law partially because in
in American history some of our smartest
people have been thinking about what the
parameters of freedom of speech are
um in relationship to the First
Amendment and a lot of those principles
they transfer very well just as as
pragmatic ideas so like the biggest sin
in terms of censorship is called
Viewpoint discrimination that
essentially you allow freedom of speech
except for that opinion now it's and
it's found to be kind of more defensible
and I think this makes sense that if if
you set up a forum and like we're only
going to talk about economics to exclude
people who want to talk about a
different topic but it's considered
rightfully
um a bigger deal if you've set up a
forum from economics but we're not going
to let people talk about that kind of
Economics or have that opinion on
economics what most most particularly so
a lot of the principles from First
Amendment law actually make a lot of
philosophical sense as good principles
for when like what is protected and
unprotected speech what should get you
in trouble how you actually analyze it
which is why we actually try and our
definition of cancel culture to work in
some of the First Amendment Norms just
in the definition so we don't have to
bog down on them as well you're saying
so many interesting things but if you
can link on the Viewpoint discrimination
is there any gray area of discussion
there like what isn't isn't economics
for the example you gave yeah is it is
there uh I mean is it a science does it
or is it an R to draw lines of what is
and isn't allowed yeah you know if
you're saying that something is or is
not economics well you can say
everything's economics and therefore I
want to talk about poetry there'd be
some line drawing exercise in there but
let's say you at once you decide to open
up
um uh it's a poetry even
um it's a big difference between saying
okay now we're open to poetry uh but you
can't say you know Dante was bad
um like that's a that's a forbidden
opinion now officially in in this
otherwise open Forum that would
immediately at an intuitive level strike
people as a bigger problem than just
saying that poetry isn't economics yeah
I mean that intuitive level that you
speak to
I hope
that all of us have that kind of basic
intuition when the line is crossed it's
the same thing for like pornography yeah
you know when you see it I I think
there's the same level of intuition that
should be applied across the board here
um and it's when that intuition becomes
deformed by whatever forces of society
that's when it starts to feel like
censorship yeah I mean people find it a
different thing um you know if someone
loses their job simply for their
political opinion even if that employer
has every right in the world to fire you
I think Americans should still be like
well it's true they have every right in
the world and I'm not making a legal
case that maybe you shouldn't
fire someone for their political opinion
but think that through like what what
Society do we want to what kind of
society do we want to live in and it's
been funny watching
um you know and I I point this out yes I
will defend businesses uh First
Amendment rights of Association to be
able to have the legal right to decide
you know who works for them
um but from a moral or philosophical
matter
if you think through the implications of
if every business in America becomes an
expressive Association in addition to
being a profit maximizing organization
that would be a disaster for democracy
because you would end up in a situation
where people would actually be saying to
themselves I don't think I can actually
say what I really think and and still
believe I can keep my job and that's
where I was worried I felt like we were
headed because a lot of the initial
response to people getting canceled
um was uh very simply
um you know oh but they have the right
to get rid of this person
um and that and and that's that's the
end and be beginning and end of the
discussion and I thought that was a
Dodge I thought that wasn't actually a
very serious way of that if you care
about both the First Amendment and
freedom of speech of thinking it through
so to you just uh
clarify the first amendment is kind of
a legal embodiment of the ideal of
freedom of speech and then Freedom
satisfied the government in this very
specific applied to government and
freedom of speech is the application of
the principle to like everything
including like kind of the high level
philosophical ideal of what it of the
value of uh people being able to speak
their mind yeah it's an older Bolder
more expansive idea and you can have a
situation uh and I talk about countries
that have good free speech law but not
necessarily great Free Speech culture
and I talk about how when we sometimes
make this distinction between Free
Speech law and Free Speech culture we're
thinking in a very cloudy kind of way
um and what I mean by that is that laws
generally particularly in a common law
country it's the reflection of norms
those you know judges are people too and
in a lot of cases common law is supposed
to actually take our intuitive ideas of
fairness and and place them you know
into the law so if you actually have a
culture that doesn't appreciate free
sweet from a philosophical standpoint
um it's not going to be able to protect
free speech for the Long Haul even in
the law because eventually that's one of
the reasons why I worry so much about
some of these terrible cases coming out
of law schools
um because I I fear that even though
sure American First Amendment law is
very strongly protective of First
Amendment for now it's not going to stay
that way if you have generations of law
students
um graduating who actually think there's
nothing there's no higher goal than
shouting down you're an opponent yeah so
that's why so much of your focus
uh or a large fraction of your focus is
on the higher education or education
period is because education
is the foundation of culture yeah you
have this history you know uh 64. you
have the free speech movement on
Berkeley and in uh 65 you have
repressive tolerance by Herbert Marcus
which was a declaration of by the way
um we on the left we shouldn't we should
have Free Speech but we should have free
speech for us I mean I I went went back
and reread
um uh repressive tolerance and how clear
it is I I forgot I had forgotten that it
really is kind of like
um and these so-called conservatives and
right-wingers we need to repress them
because they're regressive thinkers it
really doesn't come out to anything more
sophisticated than the very old idea
um that our people are good they get
free speech we should they should keep
it
other side bad
um we should not have and we have to
retrain society and of course like it it
ends up being another he was also a fan
of Mao so it's not surprising that he
that of course the system would have to
rely on some kind of totalitarian
uh system but that was a laughable
um uh position you know uh say 30 40
years ago the I the idea that
essentially you know free speech for me
not for the uh as the great you know
Free Speech Champion that hentov used to
say was something that you were supposed
to be embarrassed by but I saw this when
I was in in law school in 97 I saw this
when I was interning at the ACLU in 99
um that there was a slow motion train
wreck coming that essentially there was
um these bad ideas from campus that had
been
taking on more and more steam of
basically no free speech for my opponent
we're actually becoming more more and
more accepted as and partially because
Academia was becoming less and less
Viewpoint diverse I think that as my
co-author Jonathan height points out
that when you have low Viewpoint
diversity people start thinking in a
very kind of tribal way and if you don't
have the respected dissenters you don't
have the people that you can point to
that I'm like hey this is a smart person
um this is like this is a smart
reasonable decent person that I that I
disagree with so I guess not everyone
thinks alike on this issue you start
getting much more kind of like only you
know only bad people only Heretics only
blasphemers only right Wingers you know
um can actually think in this way every
time you say something I always have a
million thoughts and a million questions
that pop up but since you mentioned
there's a kind of drift as you write
about in the book and you mentioned now
there's a drift towards the left in
Academia which we were also maybe draw a
distinction here between the left and
the right and the cancel culture as you
present in your book sure is not
necessarily associated with any one
political Viewpoint that there's
mechanisms on both sides that result in
cancellation and censorship uh in
violation of freedom of speech so one
thing I want to be really clear about is
the book takes on both right and left
cancer culture they're different in a
lot of ways and definitely you know
Council culture from the left is more
important in Academia where the left is
what dominates but we talk a lot about
cancel culture coming from legislatures
we talk a lot about Council culture on
campus as well because even though
um most of the attempts that come from
on campus to get People canceled are
still from the left there are a lot of
attacks that come from the right that
come from you know uh attempts by
different organizations and sometimes
when there are stories in Fox News you
know like they'll go after professors
and about one-third of the attempts to
get at professors punished that are
successful actually do come from the
right and and we talk about attempts to
get Books banned um in in the in the
book we talk about
um and uh I talk about suing the Florida
legislature Ron DeSantis had something
called the stop woke act
um which we told everyone this is
laughably unconstitutional
um they tried to ban you know particular
Topics in higher ed and we're like no
this is a joke like like this will this
will be laughed out of court
um and they didn't listen to us and they
brought it they passed it and we sued
and we won now they're trying again with
something that's equally as
unconstitutional and we will sue again
and we will and we will win can you
elaborate and stop woke X this is
presumably trying to limit certain
topics from being taught in school yeah
it basically woke topics um you know
it's more it came out of the sort of
attempt to get at a critical race Theory
um so it's topics related to race gender
Etc
um I don't remember exactly how they
tried the cabinet to um uh to CRT
um but when you actually the law is
really well established that you can't
tell higher education what they're
allowed to teach without violating uh
without violating the First Amendment
and when this got in front of a judge it
was exactly as uh he was exactly as uh
skeptical of it as we thought he'd be I
think he called this dystopian
um and it wasn't a close call so if
you're against that kind of teaching the
right way to fight it is by making the
case that it's not a good idea as part
of the curriculum as opposed to Banning
it from the Creator yeah it just the
state doesn't have the power to Simply
say to ban
um you know what what teacher what
professors in higher education teach now
it gets a little more complicated when
you talk about K-12 because the state
has a role in deciding what public K-12
teaches because they're your kids they
it's taxpayer funded
um and generally the legislature is
involved there is democratic oversight
of that process so for K-12 is there
also lean towards the left in terms of
the administration that manages the
curriculum yeah um there there
definitely is um in K-12 the the I mean
my kids go to public school
um I have a five and a seven-year-old uh
and they have lovely teachers
um but we have run into a lot of
problems with with education schools at
fire
um and a lot of the graduates of
Education school end up being the
administrators who clamp down on Free
Speech in higher education
and so I've been trying to think of
positive ways to take on some of the
some of the problems that I see in K-12
I thought that the attempt to just
dictate you you won't teach the
following 10 books you know or 20 books
or 200 books was the wrong way to do it
now when it comes to deciding what books
are in the curriculum again that's
something the legislature actually you
know can have some say in and that's
pretty uncontroversial um in terms of
the law but when it comes to how you
fight it I had something that since I'm
kind of stuck with the formula I called
empowering of the American mind I gave
principles that were inconsistent
um with the sort of group think and
heavy emphasis on uh identity politics
uh that um you know some of the critics
are rightfully complaining about in K-12
uh and we we that is actually in
canceling of the American mind but I
have a more detailed explanation of it
that I'm going to be putting up on my
blog the eternally radical idea is it
possible to legally this is a silly
question perhaps create an extra
protection for certain kinds of
literature 1984 or something to remain
in the curriculum I mean it's already
it's all protected I guess yeah I I
guess to protect against administrators
from fiddling too much with the
curriculum like stabilizing the
curriculum I don't I don't know what the
Machinery of the K-12 Public School in
K-12 you know the state legislatures you
know um they're part of that they're
part of that and they can say like you
should teach the following books right
now of course people are always a little
bit worried that um if you uh if they
were to recommend you know teach uh
teach the Declaration of Independence
you know that it will end up being well
they're going to teach the Declaration
of Independence was just to protect
slavery which yeah it wasn't yeah so
teaching a particular topic matters
which textbooks you choose which
perspective you take all that kind of
stuff yes there's like religion starts
to creep into the whole question of like
how you know is the Bible are you
allowed to teach into incorporate that
into education uh don't yeah I mean mean
I'm I'm an atheist uh with an intense
interest in religion I actually read the
entire Bible this year just because I do
stuff like that and I never actually had
read it begin from beginning to end um
then I read the Quran because you know
and I'm going to try to do the Book of
Mormon but you know well they started
hey you're so fascinating
um do you recommend doing that I think
you should
um just to know because it's such a
touchstone
um in in the way people talk about
things it can get pretty tedious but I
even made myself read through all of the
very specific instructions on how tall
the different parts of the temple need
to be and how long the garbs need to be
and what shape they need to be and what
like and those go on a lot
um there that surprisingly surprisingly
big chunk of Exodus
um I thought that was more like in
Leviticus and Deuteronomy
um but then you get to books like job
you know wow I mean job is such a read
and no way job originally had that
ending like job is basically you it
starts out as this perverse bet between
god
um and Satan about whether or not they
can actually make a good man renounce
God and initially they can't it's all
going very predictably and then they
finally really tortured job
and he turns into the best
why is God cruel how could God possibly
exist How could a kind God do these
things and he beats he turns into like
the best lawyer in the entire world and
he defeats everyone all the people who
come to argue with him he he argues the
pants off of them and then suddenly at
the end God shows up and he's like
um well you know uh I am everywhere and
uh it's a very confusing answer he gives
an answer kind of like I am there when
when when lionesses give birth and I am
there and by the way there's this giant
monster Leviathan that's very big and
it's very scary and I and I have to
manage the universe and I'm kind of like
God are you saying that you're very busy
is that it it it it it is that
essentially your argument to job and you
don't mention the whole you don't
mention the whole kind of like that I I
have a bet that's why I was torturing
you that doesn't come up and then at the
end he decided God decides like job's
like Oh no you're totally right I was
totally wrong uh sorry
um and I and God says I'm going to
punish those people who tried to argue
with you and didn't didn't win so
um so he gets rid of the I don't know
exactly what he does to them I don't
remember
um and then he gives job all his money
back and all and it makes him super
prosperous and I'm like no way that was
the original ending of that book like
because this would like this was clearly
beloved novel that they were like but I
can't have that happening okay so so
yeah it's a long way of saying I
actually think it's worthwhile uh some
of it was you're always kind of
surprised when you end up in the part
like um
there are parts of it that will sneak up
on you kind of like Isaiah has a trip
um Ecclesiastes Depeche Mode
you did you said you also uh the qurans
yeah which was fascinating so what is
there it'd be interesting to ask is
there a tension between
the study of religious texts or the the
following of religion and just believing
in God and following the the various
aspects of religion with the freedom of
speech
um in the First Amendment uh we we have
something that we call the religion
clause that I've never liked calling it
just that because it's two brilliant
things right next to each other the
state may not establish an official
religion but it cannot interfere with
your right to practice your religion
that's beautiful two things at the same
time and I think they're and I think
they're both exactly right and I think
sometimes the right gets very excited of
the free exercise clause and the left
gets very excited about establishment
and I like the fact that we have we have
both of them together now how does this
relate to freedom of speech and I was
right to the curriculum like we were
talking about
um I actually think it would be great if
Public Schools Could Teach the Bible
like in the sense of like read it as a
historical document but back when I was
at the ACLU every time I saw people
trying this it always turned into them
actually advocating for you know a
Catholic or a Protestant or some
Orthodox even kind of like read on
religion
um so if you actually make it into
something advocating for a particular
view on religion then it crosses Into
The Establishment Clause side so
Americans haven't figured out a way to
actually teach it so it's probably
better that you you know learn learn
about outside of a public school class
do you think it's possible to teach
religion
um from like uh world religions kind of
force without disrespecting the
religions I think the answer is it
depends on from whose perspective
um well like the practitioners say
you're like an orthodox follower of a
particular religion yeah
is it possible to not piss you off in
teaching like all the major religions of
the world for some people it the bottom
line is you have to teach it as true
ah um and with that under those
conditions then the answer is no you
can't teach it about without offending
someone at least don't you say these
people believe it's true can you reform
so you have to walk on eggshells
essentially you you can try really hard
and you will still make some people
angry but serious people will be like oh
no you actually tried to be fair to to
the beliefs here um and I I and I try to
be respectful um as much as I can about
um a lot of this I still find myself
much more drawn to both Buddhism and
stoicism though
where do I go okay let's
one interesting thing to get back to
college campuses is uh the fire keeps
the college free speech rankings yes at
rankings.thefire.org I'm very proud of
them I highly recommend because forget
that even just the ranking you get to
learn a lot about the universities from
this entirely different perspective than
people are used to when they go to pick
whatever University they want to go to
it just gives another perspective on the
whole thing and it gives quotes from
people that are students there and so on
like about their experiences and and it
gives different maybe you could speak to
the various measures here before we talk
about who's in the top five and who's in
the bottom five what what what are the
different uh parameters that contribute
to the evaluation so people have been
asking me since day one to do a ranking
of schools according to freedom of
speech and even though we had we had the
best database in existence of Campus
speech codes
policies that universities have that
violate the First Amendment or First
Amendment Norms we all also have the
best database of we call the
disinvitation database but it's actually
the it's better named the D platforming
database which is what we're going to
call it and these are all cases where
somebody was invited as a speaker to
campus and they were disinvited
disinvited or D platforming also
includes shouting down
um so they showed up and they couldn't
really speak yeah exactly
um and and uh and so having that what we
really needed in order to have some
serious social science to really make a
serious argument about what the ranking
was
um was to be able to one get a better
sense of how many professors were
actually getting punished during this
time and then the the biggest missing
element was to be able to ask students
directly what the environment was like
on that campus for freedom of speech are
you comfortable disagreeing with each
other are you comfortable disagreeing
with your uh with your professors do you
think violence is acceptable in response
to a speaker do you think shouting uh do
you think shouting down is okay do you
think blocking people's access to a
speaker is okay
um and once we were able to get all
those elements together we uh first did
a test run I think in 2019 about 50 and
we've been doing it for four years now
always trying to make the methodology
more and more precise to better reflect
the actual environment at particular
schools and this year the number one
school is Michigan Technological
University which was a a nice surprise
the number two school was actually
Auburn University
which was nice to see in the top 10 the
most well-known prestigious school is
actually UVA which did really well this
year University of Chicago was not happy
that they weren't number one but
University of Chicago is 13 and they had
been number one or in the top three
three years prior to that really so can
you explain it's almost surprising is it
because of uh like the really strong
economics departments and things like
this or what why they had a case
involving a student they wouldn't
recognize a chapter of Turning Point USA
and they made a very classic argument
um that we and classic in the bad way
that we hear campuses across the country
oh we have a campus Republicans so we
don't need this additional conservative
group and we're like no I'm sorry like
we've seen dozens and dozens if not
hundreds of attempts to get this one
particular
um conservative student uh student group
uh de-recognized or not recognized and
so we told them like listen this like we
told them at fire that uh you know we
consider this serious and they wouldn't
recognize the group so that that's a
that that's a point down in our ranking
and it was enough to knock them from
they probably would have been number two
in the rankings uh but now they're 13
out of 248 they're still one of the best
schools in the country I have no problem
uh saying that the school that did not
do so well
um at a negative 10.69 and negative
10.69 and we rounded up to zero was
Harvard and Harvard uh has been not very
happy with that result the only school
to receive the abysmal ranking yeah and
there are a couple oh Harvard oh Harvard
and there are a couple people who have
actually been really I think making a
mistake by getting very Harvard
um sounding by being like I've had
statisticians look at this and they they
think your methodology is a joke and uh
and like pointing out in this case
wasn't that important and that scholar
wasn't that scholar like one of the
arguments against one of the scholars
that we counted against them for uh
punishing was that that wasn't a very
you know famous or influential scholar
and I'm kind of like so your argument
seems to be snobbery like essentially
that like you you're not understanding
our methodology for one thing and then
you're saying that actually that scholar
wasn't important enough to count and by
the way Harvard
by the way Harvard
um if we yeah if we even if we took all
of your arguments as true even if we
decided to get rid of those two
professors
um you would still be in negative
numbers you would still be dead last you
would still be after Georgetown and Penn
and neither of those schools are good
for freedom of speech I should say the
the bottom five is the University of
Pennsylvania thank you said Penn uh the
University of South Carolina Georgetown
University and Fordham University all
very well earned that they have so many
bad cases at all of those schools what's
the best way to find yourself in the
bottom five if you're a university
what's what's the fastest way to that
negative to that zero a lot of
de-platforming
um that uh when we looked at the bottom
five uh 81 of attempts to get speakers
de-platformed were successful at the
bottom five um there were a couple
schools I think Penn included where
every single attempt every time a
student like objected a student group
objected to that speaker coming they
canceled this the speech and I think I
think Georgetown was 100 success right I
think Penn had 100 success rate I think
Harvard did stand up for a couple but
mostly uh people got D platform there as
well so how do you push back on
de-platforming well who who would do it
is it other students is it faculty is it
the administration what's the Dynamics
of uh pushing back of basically because
I imagine
some of it is culture but imagine every
university has a bunch of students who
will protest basically every speaker and
it's a question of how you respond to
that protest well here's here's the
dirty little secret about like the big
change in 2014.
um and and fire and me and height um
have been very clear that the big change
that we saw on campus was that for most
of my career students were great
um on freedom of speech they were the
best constituency for free speech
absolutely unambiguously until about
2013 2014. and it was only in 2014 where
we had these very you know kind of sad
for us experience where suddenly
students were the ones advocating for
de-platforming and new speech codes kind
of in a similar way that they had been
doing in say like the mid-80s uh for
example but here's the Dirty Little
Secret
it's not this it's just the students
it's students and administrators some
sometimes only a handful of them though
working together to make uh to create
some of these problems and this was
exactly what happened at Stanford when
Kyle Duncan uh a fifth Circuit Judge
tried to speak at my alma mater and a
fifth of the class showed up to shout
them down it was a real showing of The
of what was what was going on that 10
minutes into the shout down of a fifth
Circuit Judge and I keep on emphasizing
that because I'm a constitutional lawyer
if historical judges are big deals
they're one level below the Supreme
Court
um you know about a fifth of the school
shows up to shut them down after 10
minutes of shouting him down an
administrator a Dei administrator gets
up with a prepared speech that she that
she's written that's a seven minute long
speech where she talks about uh Free
Speech maybe the juice isn't worth the
squeeze and we we we're at this law
school where people could learn to
challenge these norms so it's clear that
there was coordination you know amongst
some of these administrators and from
talking to students there they were in
meetings extensive meetings for a long
time they show up do a shout down then
they take an additional seven minutes to
to to lecture the speaker on Free Speech
not being not the juice of free speech
not being worth the squeeze
um and then for the rest of it it's just
constant heckling
um after she after she leaves this is
clearly and this and something very
similar you know happened a number of
times at Yale where it was very clearly
administrators were helping along with a
lot of these disruptions so I think
every time there is a shout down at a
university the investigation should be
first and foremost did administrators
help create this problem did they do
anything to stop it because I think a
lot of what's really going on here is
the hyper bureaucratization of
universities with a lot more ideological
people who think of their primary job as
basically like policing speech more or
less they're encouraging students sorry
they're encouraging students who have
opinions they like
um to do shout Downs um and that's why
they really need to investigate this and
it is uh at Stanford the administrator
who who gave the prepared remarks um
about the juice not being worth the
squeeze she has not been invited back to
Stanford but she's one of the only
examples I can think of when these
things happen a lot where an
administrator clearly facilitated
something that was a shout down or
de-platforming or resulted in a
professor getting fired or resulted in a
student getting expelled where the
administrator has got off scot-free or
probably in some cases even gotten a
promotion and so a small number of
Administrators maybe even a single
administrator
could participate in the encouraging and
the organization and thereby empower the
whole process and that's something I've
seen throughout my entire career and the
only thing is kind of hard to catch this
sort of in the act so to speak and
that's one of the reasons why it's
helpful for people to know about this
you know
uh because
there was this amazing case this was at
University of Washington
um and we actually featured this in a
documentary he made in 2015 20 that came
out in 2015 2016. called can we take a
joke
um and this was when we started noticing
something was changing on campus we also
heard that comedians were saying that
they couldn't use their Good Humor
anymore this was right around the time
that Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock said
that they couldn't uh they didn't want
to play on campuses because they they
could they they couldn't be funny
uh but we featured a case of a comedian
who wanted to do a musical called The
Passion of the musical making fun of The
Passion of the Christ with the stated
goal of offending everyone every group
equally it was very very much a South
Park Mission
um and it's an unusual case because we
actually got documentation of
Administrators buying tickets for angry
students and holding an event where they
where they trained them to to jump up in
the middle of it and Shout I'm offended
like they they bought them tickets they
sent them to this this thing with the
goal of shouting it down now
unsurprisingly when you send an angry
group of students to shut down a play
it's it's not going to end at just I'm
offended
um and it got heated there were death
threats being thrown the um and the and
then the Pullman Washington police told
uh Chris uh Chris Lee the guy who made
the play that he they wouldn't actually
protect him now it's not every day
you're gonna have that kind of hard
evidence that that that of actually
seeing the administrators be so uh so
Brazen that they recorded the fact that
they bought them tickets and sent them
but I think a lot of that stuff is is
going on and I think it's the it's a
good excuse to cut down on one of the
big problems in higher education today
which is hyper bureaucratization
the new experience does their
distinction between administrators and
faculty in terms of uh perpetrators of
this of these kinds of things so if if
we got rid of all like Harvey's talked
about uh getting rid of a large
percentage of the administration does
that help fix the problem or is the
faculty also yeah small
percent of the faculty also part of the
encouraging in the organization of these
kind of cancel yeah and and that's
something that has been profoundly
disappointing um is that when you look
at the huge uptick in attempts to get
professors fired that we've seen over
the last 10 years
and actually over the last 22 years as
far back as our records go
um
at first they were overwhelmingly led by
administrators attempts to get
professors punished
um and that was most you know I'd say
that was my career up until 2013 was was
fighting back at administrative excesses
um then you start having the problem in
2014 of students trying to get people
canceled um and that really accelerated
in 2017 and the number so one way that
one one thing that makes it easier to
document is are the petitions to get
professors fired or punished and how
disproportionately that those actually
do come from students but another big
uptick has been fellow professors
demanding that their fellow professors
get punished and that to me really sad
it's kind of shameful you you shouldn't
be proud of signing the petition to get
your fellow professor and what's what's
even more more shameful is that we get
store this this is a this has almost
become a cliche within fire when someone
is facing one of these cancellation
campaigns as a professor I would get
letters from some of my friends saying I
am so sorry this has happened to you and
these were the same people who publicly
signed the petition to get them fired
yeah yeah
yeah integrity
Integrity is an important thing in this
world and I think some of it
I'm so surprised people don't stand up
more for this because there's so much
hunger for it and if you have the guts
as a faculty or an administrator to
really stand stand up
uh with eloquence
with rigor with Integrity I feel like
it's impossible for anyone to do
anything because there's such a hunger
it's so refreshing yeah I think
everybody agrees that freedom of speech
is a good thing oh I don't I don't well
okay sorry to say I don't agree the
majority of people even at the
universities that there's a hunger but
it's almost like uh this kind of
nervousness around it because there's a
small number of loud voices yeah they're
doing the shouting so I mean again
that's the where great leadership comes
in and so you know presence of
University should probably be making
clear Declarations of like this is not
this is a place where we value the
freedom of expression when it and this
was oh this all throughout my career
um a president a university president
who puts their foot down early and says
Nope you know we are not entertaining
fire English Professor we are not
expelling the student it ends the issue
often very fast although sometimes and
this is where you can really tell the
administrative involvement students will
do things like take over the president's
office and then that takeover will be
catered by the university people will
point this out sometimes as being kind
of like oh it's clearly like um my
friend Sam Abrams when they tried to get
uh tried to get him fired at uh Sarah
Lawrence College
um and uh that was one of the times that
it was used as kind of like oh this was
hostile to the university because they
the students took over the president's
office and I'm like no they let them
take over the president's office and I
don't know if that was one of the cases
in which the the Takeover was catered
but if there was ever sort of like a
sign that's kind of like yes this isn't
this is actually really quite friendly
well in some sense like protesting and
having really strong opinions even like
ridiculous crazy wild opinions it's a
good thing it's just it shouldn't lead
to actual firing or de-platforming of
people like it's good to protest it's
just not good to for the University to
support that and take action based on it
and this is one of one of those like um
tensions in in first amendment that
actually I think has a pretty easy
release essentially you have app you
absolutely have the right to uh devote
your life to ending freedom of speech
and ridiculing as a concept and and
there are people who who really are can
come off as very contemptible about even
the philosophy of freedom a speech and
we will defend your right to do that we
will also disagree with you and if you
try to get a professor fired we will be
on the other side of that now I think he
had Randy Kennedy Who I Really I love
him I think I think he's a great guy but
he's he criticized us for our
de-platforming database as saying this
is saying that that students can't
protest speakers I'm like okay that's
silly
um we fire as an organization have
defended the right to protest all the
time we are constantly defending the
rights of the rights of protesters not
believing the protesters have the right
to say this would like basically that
would be punishing the speakers we're
not calling for punishing um uh the
protesters but what we are saying is you
can't let the protesters win if they're
demanding someone be fired for their
freedom of speech so the line there is
between protesters protesting in the
University
taking action based on the protest yeah
exactly and of course shout Downs that
that's just mob censorship
um and that's something where the
university the way that the way you
actually you deal with that tension in
First Amendment law is essentially kind
of like the one positive Duty that the
government has the the first the
negative due to the thing that it's not
allowed to do is censor you
um but it's positive duty is that if if
I want to say awful things or for that
matter great things that aren't popular
in a public park
um you can't let the crowd just shout me
down
um you can't allow what's called a
heckler's veto
that's so interesting because I feel
like that comes into play on social
media somehow because you know there's
this whole discussion about censorship
and freedom of speech but to me the the
carrot question is almost more
interesting once the freedom of speech
is established is how do you incentivize
high quality debate and disagreement I'm
thinking a lot about that and that's one
of the things we talk about in
counseling of the American mind is
arguing towards truth and that cancel
culture is cruel it's merciless it's
anti-intellectual but it also will never
get you anywhere near truth and you are
going to waste so much time destroying
your opponents
um in in something that can actually
never get you to True through the
process of course of you never actually
get directly at truth you just chip away
at falsity yeah but everybody having a
megaphone on the internet with anonymity
it seems like
it's better than censorship
but it feels like there's
incentives on top of that you can
construct to
um yeah to incentivize better discourse
yeah it's like to incentivize somebody
who puts a huge amount of effort to make
even the most ridiculous arguments but
basically ones that don't include any of
the things you highlight in terms of all
the rhetorical tricks yeah to shut down
conversations just make really good
Arguments for whatever it doesn't matter
if it's uh communism for fascism
whatever the heck you want to say yeah
but do it with scale with historical
context with uh uh with steel man in the
other side all those kind of elements we
try to make three major points on the
book one is just simply cancel culture
is real it's a it's a historic era and
it's on a historic scale the second one
is you should think of cancel culture as
part of a um rhetorical as a larger lazy
rhetorical uh approach to what what we
refer to as winning arguments without
winning arguments and we mean that in
two senses without having winning
arguments or well have actually having
one arguments and we talk about all the
different what we call rhetorical
fortresses that both the left and the
right have that prevent you from that
allow you to just dismiss the person
or Dodge the argument without actually
ever getting to the substance of the
argument third part is just you know how
do we fix it but the rhetorical Fortress
stuff is actually something I've been
I'm very passionate about because it it
interferes with our ability to get at
truth and it wastes time and and frankly
it also kind of since Castle culture is
part of that rhetorical tactic it can
also ruin lives
it would actually be really fun to talk
about this particular aspect of the book
and I highly recommend if you're
listening to this go pre-order the book
now
uh when does it come out October 17th
okay the canceling of the American mind
okay so in uh
in the book you also have a list of
cheap rhetorical tactics that both the
left and the right use and then you have
a list of tactics that left uses and the
right uses yeah there's the rhetorical
the perfect rhetorical Fortress that the
left uses and the efficient rhetorical
Fortress that the right uses yeah first
one is what aboutism yeah maybe we can
go through a few of them that capture
your heart in this particular moment as
we talk about it and if if you can
describe examples of it or with uh
there's aspects of it that you see
they're especially effective effective
so uh what aboutism is defending against
criticism of your side by bringing up
the other side's alleged wrongdoing I
want to make little cards of these of
all of these tactics and start using
them on X all the time because they are
so commonly deployed and what aboutism I
put first for a reason you know it'd be
an interesting idea to actually
integrate that into Twitter X where
people you know instead of clicking
heart they can click which of the uh uh
which of the rhetorical tactics this is
and then because you know there's
actually Community notes I don't know if
you've seen on X there you people can
contribute notes and it's quite
fascinating it works really really well
but to give it a little more structure
yeah that's a really interesting method
actually yeah I actually when I was
thinking about ways that X could be used
for to argue towards truth I wouldn't
want to have it so that you know
everybody would be bound to that but I
think that I imagine almost being like a
stream within X that was truth focused
that that agrees to some additional
rules on how they would argue man I
would love that where like there's in
terms of streams that intersect and can
be separated the talking one where
people just enjoy talking oh okay
go for it and then there's like truth
and then uh I mean there like then
there's humor
then there's like Good Vibes like you
know I'm not like somebody who
absolutely needs Good Vibes all the time
but sometimes it's nice to have it's
nice to just log in and not have to see
like the drama the fighting the
bickering the the cancellations the moms
all of this it's good to just see uh
that's why I go to Reddit r ah or like
uh one of the cute animals ones whether
there's cute puppies and kittens and
it's like I just want to see Ryan
Reynolds singing with Will Ferrell I
mean like sometimes that's all you I
need that in my heart yeah not all the
time just a little bit then right back
to the the Battle For Truth okay so what
aboutism what about Islam yeah that's
everywhere um when you look at it uh
when you look at Twitter when you look
at social media in general
um and the first like what we call the
obstacle course is basically time tested
old-fashioned you know
argumentative Dodges that everybody uses
and what about ism is just bringing up
something uh you know like someone makes
an argument like Biden has corrupt and
and then someone says well Trump was
worse you know like and that's
not an illegitimate you know argument to
make back but it does it seems to happen
every time someone makes an assertion
someone just points out some other thing
that was going on and it can get
increasingly attenuated from from what
you're actually trying to argue and when
you and that you see this all the time
on social media and it's kind of you
know I was a big fan of Jon Stewart's
Daily Show but an awful lot of what the
humor was and what the tactic was for
arguing was this thing over here it's
like oh I'm making this argument at this
important problem oh actually you know
there's this other problem over here
that I'm more concerned about and it was
it you know and on the you know let's
let's pick on the right here so January
6 you know watching Everybody arguing
about
um chop you know like the um uh the the
occupied part of Seattle or the occupied
part of Portland and so and basically
trying to like oh you're bringing up the
the riot on January 6. um and by the way
I live on Capitol Hill so believe me I
was very aware of like how scary and bad
it was
um you know like if that just my dad
grew up in Yugoslavia and that was a
night where we all ate dinner in the
basement because I'm like oh when the
ship goes down eat in the basement it
was it was it was genuinely scary and
people would try to deflect from January
6 being serious by actually be making
the argument that oh well there are
crazy horrible things happening in all
over the country uh you know riots
that came from some of the social
justice protests and of course the
answer is you can be concerned about
both of these things and and find them
both problems but you know if I'm
arguing about chop you know someone
bringing up January 6th isn't super
relevant to it or if I'm arguing about
January 6th someone uh bringing up the
riots in 2020 isn't that helpful we took
a long dark Journey from what aboutism
yeah and uh related to that is straw
Manning and and steel Manning so
misrepresenting the the the the the
perspective of the the opposing
perspective and this is something also
uh I I guess it's very prevalent and
it's difficult to do the reverse of that
which is still Manning requires empathy
it requires eloquence it requires
understanding
actually doing the research and
understanding the the alternative
perspective my uh wonderful employee
Angel Eduardo has something that he
calls star Manning and and I find myself
doing this a lot it's nice to have you
know two immigrant parents um because I
remember being in San Francisco uh you
know uh in the weird kind of like ACLU
slash Burning Man kind of cohort and
having a friend there who was an artist
who would talk about hating Kansas and
that was his metaphor for Middle America
is what he meant by it and but he was
kind of proud of the fact that he hated
Kansas and I'm like you gotta understand
I still see all of you a little bit as
foreigners and think about like change
the name of Kansas to Croatia you know
change the name of Kansas to to some
that's what it sounds like to me and the
star Manning idea which I which I like
is is the idea being like so you're
saying that you really hate your
dominant religious minority like and
that's when you start actually detaching
yourself a little bit from it how
typical America is exceptional in a
number of ways but some of our Dynamics
are incredibly typical it's one of the
reasons why like when people start
reading Thomas soul for example they
start getting hooked because one of the
things he does is he does comparative
analysis of country's problems and
points out that some of these things
that we think are just unique to the
United States exist in
you know 75 of the rest of the countries
in the world Francis fukiyamas um the
book that I'm reading right now origins
of the political order actually does
this wonderful job of pointing out how
we're not special in a variety of ways
this is actually something that's very
much on my mind
and uh fukuyama of course uh it's a it's
a it's a great book it's not it's
stilted a little bit in its writing
because his term for one of the things
he's concerned about what destroys
societies is re-patrimonialization
which is the reversion to Societies in
which you favor your family and friends
and I actually think a lot of what I'm
seeing in sort of um uh in the United
States it makes me worried that we might
be going through a little bit of a
process of re-patrimonialization and I
think that's one of the reasons why
people are so angry I think having a I
think that the prospect that we you know
we very we very nearly seen
um to have an election that was going to
be you know Jeb Bush versus Hillary
Clinton it's like are we a dynastic
Country Now is is that what's kind of
happening but also it's one of the
reasons why people are getting so angry
about the about legacy admissions about
like how much you know certain families
seem to be able to keep their people in
the upper classes of the United States
perpetually and believe me like I I was
poor when I was a kid and I went and I
got to go to I got to go to one of the
fancies I got to go to Stanford
um
and I got to see how people
they treat you differently in a way
that's almost insulting like basically
like suddenly to a certain kind of
person I was a legitimate person and I
look at how much America relies on
Harvard on Yale to produce its I'm going
to use it very marks the sounding term
ruling class
and that's one of the reasons why you
have to be particularly worried about
what goes on at these Elite colleges and
these Elite colleges with the exception
University of Chicago and and UVA do
really badly regarding freedom of speech
and that has all sorts of problems
um
it doesn't bode well for the future of
the protection of freedom of speech for
the rest of the society
so can you also empathize there with the
folks who voted for Donald Trump
um because as precisely that as a
resistance to this kind of uh
momentum of the ruling class this uh
this royalty that passes on the uh the
rule from generation to generation I try
really hard to empathize with to a
degree everybody and and try to really
see where they're coming from
um and the anger on the right I get it I
mean like I I feel like the um the book
so coddling the American mind was a book
that I that could be sort of a crowd
pleaser to a degree partially because we
really meant what we said in the
subtitle that these are uh good
intentions and bad ideas that are
hurting people
um and if you understand it and read the
book you can say it's like okay this
isn't anybody being
malicious you know this is people trying
to protect their kids they're just doing
it in a way that actually can actually
lead to Greater anxiety depression and
strangely eventually posed a threat to
freedom of speech
but in this one we can't be quite uh me
and my uh oh I haven't even mentioned my
brilliant co-author Ricky schlatt the 23
year old
genius she's she's amazing I started
working with the one she was 20. who's
my co-author on this book um so when I'm
saying we I'm talking about me and Ricky
he's a Libertarian libertarian
journalist and a journalist he has a
brilliant mind yeah and but we can't
actually write this in a way that's too
kind because cancers aren't kind that
there's a cruelty and a mercilessness
about it I mean I start getting really
depressed this past year when I was
writing it and I didn't even want to
tell my staff why I was getting so
anxious and depressed it's partially
because I'm talking about people who
will
you know in some of the cases we're
talking about let me go to your house
Target your kids
um so so that's a long winter way of
saying the um
I I kind of can get what sort of drives
the right nuts to a degree in this I
feel like they're constantly feeling
like they're being gaslit
um
Elite Education is really insulting to
the working class
um like it part of the ideology that's
dominant right now kind of treats
almost 70 of the American public like
they're we talked we developed this a
little bit in the perfect rhetorical
Fortress like there to some some way
illegitimate
um and not worthy of
respect or compassion yeah the the
general elitism that radiates
self-fueling elitism that radiates from
the people that go to these institutions
and what's funny is the the the elitism
has been repackaged as a kind of
it
masquerades this kind of infinite
compassion that essentially it's based
in a sort of
a very
to be frank overly simple ideology and
over some believe a simple explanation
of the world and breaking people into
groups and
um judging people on how oppressed they
are on their on the intersection of
their various identities
um and it came to that I think initially
with with an appeal from a compassionate
core but it gets used in a way that is
can be very cruel very dismissive
compassion less and allows you to not
take seriously most of your fellow human
beings it's really weird how that
happened maybe you can
explore why a thing that has
kind of sounds good at first yeah can be
can creates
can become such a cruel weapon of
canceling and hurting people and
ignoring people I mean this is what you
describe with the perfect rhetorical
Fortress Yeah which is a set of
questions maybe you can
um elaborate I want the perfect
rhetorical fortresses yeah so the
perfect rhetorical Fortress is the way
um that's been developed uh on the left
to not ever get to someone's actual
argument
um I want to make a chart like a flow
chart of this about like here's the
argument and here is this perfect
Fortress that will deflect you every
time from getting to the argument
um and I started to notice this
certainly when I when I was in law
school that there were lots of different
ways you could dismiss people and
perfect rhetorical Fortress step one
and I can attest to this because I was
guilty of this as well that you can
dismiss people if you can argue that
they're conservative they don't have to
be conservative to be clear you just
have to say that they are
um so I never read Thomas Soul because
he was the right winger yeah I didn't
read Camille Paglia because I was I'd
someone had convinced me she was a right
winger there were lots of authors that
um and when I was in law school it among
a lot of very bright people
it really was already an intellectual
habit that if you could designate
something Conservative then you didn't
really have to think about it very much
anymore or take it particularly
seriously that's a childish way of
arguing but nonetheless I engaged in it
it was a common tactic and I even
mentioned in the book there was a time
when a um
uh a a gay activist friend who's I think
decided to leave to my left but
nonetheless had that pragmatic
experience of actually being an activist
said something like well just because
someone's conservative doesn't mean
they're wrong and I remember feeling
kind of scandalized at some level of
just being like well that's kind of it's
not the whole thing what we're saying is
that they're just kind of bad people
with bad ideas you can just throw uh oh
that guy's a right-winger you can just
throw that don't have to think about you
anymore yeah and then it can um if
you're popular enough it can be those it
can be kind of sticky yeah like and it's
weird because because it's effective
that's why it keeps on getting used it
essentially it it should have hit
someone's because because I you know I
have a great
liberal pedigree you know everything
from working at the ACLU to doing
Refugee law in Eastern Europe I was part
of an environmental mentoring program
for inner city high school kids in DC
you know I've been I've been I I I I can
ex you know defend myself as being on
the left but I hate doing that because
there's also part of me that's like okay
so what like are you really saying that
if you can magically make me argue or
convince yourself that that I'm on the
right that you don't have to listen to
me anymore and again that's arguing like
children and the reason why this has
become so popular is because even among
or maybe maybe especially among Elites
that it works so effectively as a
perfect weapon that you can use
uncritically if I can just prove you're
on the right I don't have to I don't
have to think about you it's no wonder
that suddenly you start seeing people
calling the ACLU right wing and calling
the New York Times right wing because
it's been such an effective way to
delegitimize people as thinkers you know
um Stephen Pinker who's on our Board of
advisors he refers to Academia as being
the left pole
um that essentially it's it's a position
that from uh from that point of view
everything looks to its right it looks
as if it's on the right
um but once it becomes a tactic that we
um accept it and that's one of the
reasons why I you know I'm I'm more on
the left I'm but I think I'm left of
center Liberal uh Ricky is you know more
conservative libertarian and initially I
was kind of like should I be really be
writing something with with someone
who's more on the right and I'm like
absolutely I should be I I have to
actually live up to what I believe on
this stuff because it's ridiculous that
we have this primitive idea that you can
dismiss someone as soon as you claim
rightly or wrongly that they're on the
right well uh I feel correct me if I'm
wrong but I I feel like you were
recently called right wing uh fire maybe
you by association because of the debate
the LA Times oh fun let's talk about the
LA Times so yes there's an article
there's a debate I can't wait to watch
it because I don't think it's available
yet to watch on video you can attend in
person I can't wait to see it uh but
fire wasn't part supporting and then LA
Times wrote um
a scathing article about uh that
everybody in the debate was basically
right leaning right okay uh so much that
I'm back there you know Barry Weiss has
this you know great great project the
Free Press I've been very impressed it's
covering stories that the that a lot of
the media right or left isn't willing to
cover
um and we did a uh we hosted a debate
with her
um uh and we wanted to make it as fun
and controversial as possible uh so
firing the the Free Press hosted a
debate did the sexual Revolution fail so
the debate was really exciting really
fun the side that said that sexual
Revolution wasn't a failure that that
Grimes and Sarah hater were on one
um it was you know a nice meaty
thoughtful night and we got a re there
was a review of it that was just sort of
scathing about the whole thing and it
included a line saying that uh fire
which claims to believe in free speech
but only defends viewpoints or degrees
with
I can't believe that I even made it into
the magazine because it's not just
calling us because of course you know
the implication of horses that we're
right-wing um which were not actually
the staff liens decidedly more to the
left and to the right
um but we also defend people all over
the Spectrum all the time like that's
something that that even the most
minimal Google search would have solved
so like we've been giving LA Times some
heat on this because it's like yeah if
you said in my opinion the right wing we
would have argued back you know um
saying Well here here's the following 50
000 examples of of of us not being but
when you actually make the factual claim
that we only defend opinions we agree
with first of all there's no way for us
to agree with opinions because we
actually have a politically diverse
staff who won't even agree on which
opinions are good and what opinions we
have but yeah I I had at one time when
someone did something like this and they
were just being a little bit flippant
about kind of like free speech being
fine I did a 70 tweet long uh thread you
know just being like hey do you really
think this is fine I decided not to do
that um on this particular one um but
the nice thing about it is it
demonstrated two parts of the book uh
canceling of the American mind if not
more one of them is dismissing someone
because they're conservative and because
that was the implication don't have to
listen to fire because they're
conservative but the other one is
something a termite uh that I that I
invented specifically for the way people
argue on Twitter which is hypocrisy
projection hi I'm person who only cares
about one side of the political fence
and I think everyone else is a hypocrite
um and by the way I haven't done any
actual research on this but I assume
everyone else is a hypocrite and you see
this happen all the time the the and
this happens to fire a lot where someone
where is fire on this case and we're
like we are literally quoted in the link
you just sent but didn't actually read
or it's like where is fire on this it's
like here's a here's our lawsuit about
it from six months ago
um so it's a favorite thing and also Jon
Stewart Daily Show like the the the the
the the the the
um what about ISM and the kind of like
idea that these people must be
Hypocrites is something that greatest
comedy but as far is actually a
rhetorical tactic that will get you to
truth just assuming that your opponent
or just accusing your opponent of always
being a hypocrite is not a good tactic
for truth but by the way it tends to
always come from people who aren't
actually consistent on Free Speech
themselves
so that hence the projection but
basically not doing the research about
whether the person is or isn't a
hypocrite and assuming others are a
large fraction of others reading it uh
will also not do the research and
therefore this kind of
statement becomes a kind of truthiness
without a grounding in actual reality
yeah it breaks down that barrier between
what isn't isn't true because if if the
mob says something is true it takes too
much effort to correct it and there are
three ways I want like you know I want
to respond to this which is just giving
an example after example of of times
where we just defended people on both
sides of every major ish basically every
major issue whether it's Israel
Palestine whether it's terrorism whether
it's gay marriage we have been abortion
we have defended both sides of that
argument the the other part and I call
these the Orphans of the culture War
I really want to urge the media to start
caring about Free Speech cases that
actually don't have a political valence
that are actually just about good
old-fashioned exercise of power against
the little guy or little girl or little
group
um on campus or off campus for that
matter because these cases happen a lot
of our litigation are just little people
there's regular people being told that
they can't protest that they can't hold
signs and then the last part of the
argument that I want people to really
get is like yeah and by the way uh right
Wingers get in trouble too
um and there are attacks from the left
and you should take those seriously too
um you should care when Republicans get
in trouble you should care when
California has a Dei uh program that
requires this on the California
community colleges has a Dei program a
policy that actually requires even
chemistry professors to work in uh
different Dei ideas from
intersectionality to anti-racism into
their classroom into their syllabus Etc
this is a gross violation of academic
freedom it it it it is as bad as it is
to tell professors what they can't say
like we fought and defeated in in
Florida it's even worse to tell them
what they must say that's downright
totalitarian and we're suing against
this and what I'm what I'm saying is
that
it when you're dismissing someone for
just being on the other other side of
the political fence you are also kind of
claiming making a claim that none of
these cases matter as well and I want
people to care about censorship when it
even is people against people they hate
because censorship of censorship
uh
if we can't take that tangent briefly
with Dei diversity equity and inclusion
what is the good and what is the harm of
such programs d i I know people are a DI
Consultants or some the actually I have
a dear friend who I love very much um
who does Dei
absolutely decent people what they want
to do
is create bonds of understanding
friendship compassion among people
people who are different unfortunately
the research on what a lot of di
actually does is often has the opposite
of that and I think that it's partially
a problem with some of the ideology that
comes from uh critical race Theory which
is a real thing by the way um that that
informs a lot of Dei that actually makes
it something more likely to divide than
unite well we talk about this in
coddling the American mind as the
difference between common Humanity
identity politics and common enemy
identity politics and I think that I
know some of the people that I know who
who do di they really want it to be
common Humanity identity politics but
some of the actual ideological
assumptions that are baked in can
actually cause people to feel more
alienated from each other
now when I started at fire my first
cases involved 911.
um and it was bad uh professors were
getting targeted professors were losing
their jobs for saying insensitive things
about 911 and both from from the right
and the left actually in that case
actually sometimes more a lot more from
the right
um and it was really bad and about five
professors lost their jobs that's bad
five professors are over a relatively
short period of time being fired for a
political opinion that's something that
you know would get written up in any
previous decades
we're now evaluating like how many
professors have been uh targeted for
cancellation between 2014 and uh middle
of this year July of of 2023. we're at
about well well over a thousand attempts
to get professors uh fired or punished
usually driven by students and
administrators often driven by
professors unfortunately as well
about two-thirds of those result in the
professor being punished in some way
everything from you know having their
article removed to suspension Etc
about one-fifth of those result in
professors being fired so right now
we're it's our it's almost 200 it's 190
um professors being fired
um so I want to give some context here
uh the the Red Scare is generally
considered to have been from 1947 to
1957. it ended by the way in 57 when it
finally became clear
um thanks to the first amendment that
you couldn't actually fire people for
their ideologies prior to that
a lot of universities thought they could
this guy is a very doc uh doctrinaire
communist uh you know they can't be just
waited I'm gonna fire them
um they thought they actually could do
that
um and it was only 57 when the law was
established so like right now these are
happening in an environment where
freedom of speech academic freedom are
clearly protected
um at public colleges in in the United
States and we're still seeing these kind
of numbers
um during during the the Red Scare the
biggest study that was done of what was
going on is I think this came out in
like 55 and the evaluation was that
there was about 62 professors fired for
for being communists and about 90
something professors fired for political
views overall
um that usually is it is reported as
being about 100.
um so 60 90 100 depending on how you
look at it I think the number is
actually higher
um but that's only because of hindsight
like what I mean by hindsight is we can
look back and we actually find there are
more professors who who were fired as
time reveals
we're at 190 professors fired and I
still have to put up with people saying
this isn't even happening and I'm like
in the nine and a half years of Castle
culture 190 professors fired in the 11
years of uh of the Red Scare
probably you know somewhere around 100
maybe probably more it's got the number
is going to keep going up um but unlike
during the Red Scare where people could
clearly tell something was happening the
craziest thing about cancer culture is
so I'm still dealing with people who are
saying this isn't happening at all and
it hasn't been subtle on campus and we
know that's a wild undercount by the way
because when we when we surveyed
professors
Seventeen percent of them said that they
had been threatened with uh threatened
with investigation or actually
investigated for what they taught said
or or their research and one-third of
them said that they were told by
administrators not to take on
controversial research so like
extrapolating that out that's a huge
number and the reason why you're not
going to hear about a lot of these cases
is because there are so many different
Conformity inducing mechanisms in the
whole thing yeah and that's one of the
reasons why the idea that you'd add
something like a d like requiring a Dei
statement to be hired or to get into a
school Under the current environment is
so completely nuts we have had a genuine
crisis of academic freedom over the last
you know particularly since 2017 on
campuses we have very low Viewpoint
diversity to begin with and under these
circumstances administrators to start
saying you know what the problem is we
have too much heterogeneous thought we
have we're not homogeneous enough we
actually need in we need another
political litmus test which is nuts and
that's what a Dei statement effectively
is because there's no way to actually
fill out a dais statement without
someone evaluating you on your politics
it's CR it's Crystal Clear we even did
an experiment on this uh Nate Honeycutt
he got something like almost like 3 000
professors to participate evaluating
different kinds of Dei statements
um and one was basically like the
standard kind of identity politics
intersectionality one one was about
Viewpoint diversity one was about
religious diversity and one was about
socioeconomic diversity as far as where
my heart really is it's that we have too
little socioeconomic diversity
particularly in Elite higher ed but also
in education period so we the experiment
was
a large participation really
interestingly set up and it tried to
model the way a lot of these Dei
policies were actually implemented and
one of the ways these have been
implemented and I think in some of the
California schools is that
administrators and go through the Dei
statements before
anyone else looks at them and then
eliminates people off the top depending
on how
they feel about their Dei statements and
the one on
um Viewpoint diversity I think like half
of the people who reviewed it would
eliminate it right out
um and I think it was basically the same
for religious diversity it was slightly
better like 40
um for socioeconomic diversity but that
kills me like the idea that kind of like
yeah that actually is the kind of
diversity that I think we need a great
deal more of in in higher education you
can agree with it's not hostile to the
other kinds by the way um but the idea
that we need more people from the bottom
you know of three quarters of American
society like in uh higher education I
think should be something we could all
get around that the only one that really
succeeded was the one that's that
sprouted back exactly the kind of you
know of ideology that that they thought
the readers would like which is like
okay
there's no way this couldn't be a
political litmus test we've proved that
it's a political litmus test and still
school after school it is adding these
to its application process to make
schools still more ideologically
homogeneous why does that have a
negative effect is it because
it enforces a kind of group think where
people are afraid
start becoming afraid to sort of
think and speak
freely liberally about whatever but one
it selects for people who tend to be you
know farther to the left
um in a situation where you already have
uh people a situation where universities
do lean decidedly that way but it also
establishes essentially a set of sacred
ideas that if you're being quizzed on
whether or you know what you've done to
advance anti-racism
um inter uh uh how you've been conscious
of intersectionality it's unlikely that
you'd actually get in if you said by the
way I actually think these are dubious
Concepts I think they're thin I think
they're philosophically not very
defensible basically like if if your
position was I actually I actually
reject
um these Concepts as being over simple
um you're not you're not going to get in
and and I think that um the person that
I always think of that wasn't a
right-winger that would be like go to
hell if you if you made him fill one of
these things out it's fine man I feel
like if you get if you give one of these
things to Richard Feynman he'd be like
he would tear it to pieces
yeah then not get the job
[Music]
yeah there's some element of it that
creates this
hard to pin down fear so you said like
the firing the thing I wanted to say is
firing a hundred people or 200 people
the point is even firing one person I've
just seen it it can create this quiet
ripple effect of fear of course that
single firing of a fact oh absolutely
has a ripple effect across tens of
thousands of people of educators of of
uh who's hired what kind of
conversations are being had had what
kind of textbooks are chosen what kind
of sell censorship and different flavors
of that is happening it's hard to
measure that yeah I mean when you ask
professors about you know are they
intimidated under the current
environment
um the answer is yes and particularly
conservative professors you know already
you know reporting that they're you know
afraid for their jobs in a lot of
different cases you have a lot of good
statistics in the book things like
self-censorship one provided with a
definition of self-censorship at least a
quarter students that they self-censor
fairly often or very often during
conversations with other students with
professors and doing classroom
discussions
25 27 and 28 respectively a quarter of
students also said that they are more
likely to self-censor on campus now
at the time they were surveyed then they
were when they first started college so
sort of college is kind of instilling
this idea of of censorship of
self-censorship and back to the Red
Square comparison and this is one of the
interesting things about the data as
well is that that same study that I was
talking about the most comprehensive
study of the of the Red Scare there was
polling about whether or not professors
were self-censoring due to the fear of
the environment
and nine percent of professors said that
they were self-censoring their research
and what they were saying nine percent
is really bad
um that's almost a tenth of professors
saying that they were actually their
speech was chilled when we did this
question for professors on our latest
faculty survey when you factor together
if they're we ask them are they
self-censoring in their research are
they self-centering in class are they
still censoring online Etc it's 90 of
professors so the the idea that we're
actually in an environment that is
historic um in terms of like how scared
people are actually of expressing
controversial views I think that it's
it's the reason why we're going to
actually be studying this in 50 years
the same the the same way we study the
Red Scare um it's not the idea that this
isn't happening is will just be
correctly viewed as insane so maybe we
can just uh discuss the Leaning the
current leaning of Academia towards the
left which you describe in various
different perspectives so one there's a
voter registration ratio chart that you
have by Department which I think is
interesting
can you explain this chart and can you
explain what it shows yeah when I
started fire in 2001 I didn't take the
Viewpoint diversity issue as seriously I
thought it was just something that right
Wingers complained about
um but I really started to get what
happens when you have a community with
low
um with low uh Viewpoint diversity and
actually a lot of the research that I
got most interested in was uh done in
conjunction with the great cast sunstein
um who writes a lot about group
polarization
um because as and the research on this
is very strong that essentially when you
have groups with um political diversity
and you can see this actually in judges
for example it tends to produce you know
reliably more moderate you know outcomes
whereas groups that are that have low
political diversity tend to sort of
spiral Spiral off in their own Direction
and when you have a super majority of
people from just one political
perspective that's a problem for the
production of ideas it creates a
situation where there are sacred ideas
um and when you look at some of the
Departments
um you know I think the ask the estimate
from the Crimson is that Harvard is has
three percent conservatives but when you
look at different departments there are
Elite departments that have literally no
um uh conservatives uh in them and I
think that's that's on a healthy
intellectual uh environment the problem
is definitely worse
um as you get more Elite uh we
definitely see more cases of uh Lefty
professors getting canceled at less
Elite schools it it gets worse as you as
you get down from the the elite schools
that's where a lot of the one-third of
attempts to get uh professors punished
that are successful you know do do come
from the right and largely from off
campus uh off-campus sources and we
spend a lot of time talking about that
in in the book as well
um it's something that I do think is
underappreciated but when it comes to
the low Viewpoint diversity it's you
know it works out kind of like you'd
expect to a degree you know economics is
what four to one or something like that
it's not as bad but then when you start
getting into some of the humanities you
know like there are departments that
they're literally none
is there a good why
to why did the universities University
faculty Administration move to the left
yeah
I don't love and this is an argument
that you'll sometimes run into on the
left uh just the argument that well
people on the left are just smarter
right and it's like okay it's
interesting because at least the
research as of
10 years ago was indicating that if you
dig a little bit deeper into that a lot
of the people who do consider themselves
on the left tend to be a little bit more
libertarian there's something that
Pinker you know wrote a fair amount
about the idea that we're just smarter
it it it is not an opinion I I'm at
least bit comfortable with
um I do think that that uh it that
departments take on
um momentum when they become a place
where you're like wow it'd be really
unpleasant for me to work in this
department if I'm the token conservative
and I think that takes on a life of its
own there are also departments where a
lot of the ideologies kind of explicitly
leftist
um you look at education schools a lot
of the a lot of the stuff that is
actually left over from what is
correctly called critical race theories
it is present and you end up having that
in in a number of the Departments
um and it would be very strange to be a
in many departments a you know a
conservative social worker Professor I'm
sure they exist but
it there's a lot of pressure to
shut up if you are so the process on the
left of cancellation as you started to
talk about with the perfect rhetorical
Fortress the the first step is
dismiss a person if they're just if you
can put a label of conservative on them
you can dismiss them in that way what
what other
efficient or what other effective uh
dismissal symptoms are there we have a
little bit of fun with uh with
demographic numbers but I run this by
height and I remember him being kind of
like I don't don't include the actual
percentage I'm like no we need to
include the actual percentages because
people are really bad at estimating what
what the demographics of the US actually
looks like both the right and the left
in different ways
um so we put in the numbers and we talk
about you know being dismissed for being
white or being dismissed for uh being
straight or being dismissed for being
male
um and we uh and you can already dismiss
people for being conservative and we so
we we give examples in the book of of
these being used to dismiss people and
oftentimes on topics not related to the
fact that they are male or whether or
not they're minority and then we get to
I think it's like layer six and we're
like surprise guess what you're down to
point four percent of the population and
none of it mattered because if you have
the wrong opinion even if you're in that
point four percent of the most
intersectional person I've ever lived
lived and you have the wrong opinion
you're a heretic and you actually
probably will be hated even more and the
most interesting part of the research we
did for this was just asking
every prominent uh black conservative
and moderate that that we knew
personally have you been told that
you're not really black for an opinion
you had
every single one of them was like oh
yeah no and it's kind of funny because
it's like oftentimes white lefties
telling them that's like oh do you
consider yourself black John McWhorter
talked about having a reporter um when
he talked about when he showed that he
dissented from some of uh what he'd
described as kind of like woke racism in
his book woke ideas the reporter
actually is like so do you consider
yourself black he's like he's like what
are you crazy of course I do and Coleman
Hughes had one of the best quotes on it
he said I'm constantly being told that
the most important thing uh to the how
legitimate my opinion is is whether uh
whether or not I'm black but then when I
have a dissenting opinion I get told I'm
not really black so perfect like there's
no way to falsify uh this argument
um that one really that investigation
really really struck me so and you lay
this out really nicely in the book that
there is this process of saying are you
conservative yes you can dismiss the
person are you white this Mr person are
you male you can dismiss the person
there's these categories that make it
easier for you to dismiss a person's
ideas based on that and like you said
you end up in that tiny percentage and
you can still dismiss and it's not just
dismissed we talk about this from a from
a practical standpoint the way the
limitations on you know reality and one
of them is time
um and a lot of cancel culture
um as as cultural norms as this way of
winning arguments without winning
arguments is about running out the clock
because by the time you get down to the
bottom of the uh of the or actually even
to get a couple steps into the perfect
rhetorical Fortress and you know where
has the time gone you know like it
you're you you probably just give up uh
trying to uh you know trying to actually
have the argument and you never get to
the argument in the first place and all
of these things are pretty sticky on
social media social media and
practically invented the perfect
rhetorical Fortress so the each one of
those stages has a virality to it yeah
so it can it could stick and it can get
people really excited it allows you feel
outraged and superiority yeah because of
that that at the scale of the virality
allows you to never get to the actual
discussion of the point
um so but you know it's not just the
left it's the right sure also so the
efficient rhetorical Fortress
uh so there something to be proud of on
the right it's more efficient yeah uh so
you don't have to listen to liberals and
anyone can be labeled the liberal if if
they have a wrong opinion
I've seen liberal and left and leftists
all used as a in the same kind of way
yeah that's leftist nonsense you don't
have to listen to experts yep even
conservative experts if they have the
wrong opinion
you don't have to listen to journalists
even conservative journalists if they
have the wrong opinion and among the
mega Wing there's a fourth proposition
there's a fourth provision you don't
need to listen to anyone who isn't
pro-trump yeah and we call it efficient
because it it eliminates a lot of people
you probably should listen to at least
sometimes you know like we we point out
sometimes like how cancel culture can
interfere with faith and expertise so we
get kind of being a little suspicious of
experts but at the same time if you
follow that and you follow it
mechanically and I definitely you know I
think everybody in the US probably has
some older Uncle who exercises some of
these it is a really efficient way to
sort of saw your uh to wall yourself off
from the rest of the world and dismiss
you know at least some people you really
should be listening to the way you laid
it out it made me realize that we just
take up so much of our brain power
these things it's literally time we
could be solving things and you get like
you kind of exhaust yourself through
this process of being outraged based on
these labels and you never get to
actually
there's almost not enough time for
empathy for like looking at a person
thinking well maybe they're right
because you're so busy
categorizing them and it's what's the
fun and empathy and I mean what's so
interesting about this is that
so much
um societal energy seems to be spent on
these nasty Primal desires where
essentially a lot of it's like please
tell me who I'm allowed to hate
where can I legitimately be cruel where
can I actually exercise some aggression
against somebody
um and it seems to sometimes be just
finding new justifications for that and
it's an understandable you know human
failing
um that sometimes can be used to defend
justice but again it will never get you
anywhere near the truth
uh one interesting case that you cover
about expertises with covid yeah so how
did cancer culture come into play on the
topic of covid yeah I think that covid
was a big blow to people's faith and
expertise and cancel culture played a
big role in that
um I think one of the best examples of
this is Jennifer say at Levi's
um she is a lovely woman she was a vice
president of Levi's she talked about
actually potentially could be the
president of Levi's jeans
and she was a big advocate for kids and
when they started shutting down the
schools she started saying this is going
to be a disaster this is going to hurt
the poor and disadvantaged kids the most
um we have to figure out a way to open
the schools back up and that was such a
heretical point of view and the typical
kind of cancel culture uh wave took over
is he had all sorts of you know
petitions for her to be fired and that
she needed to apologize and all this
kind of stuff
and you know she was offered I think
like in a million dollar Severance which
you wouldn't take because she wanted to
tell the world what she thought about
this and and that she wanted to continue
saying
um that she hadn't changed her mind that
this was a disaster for young people and
now that's kind of the conventional
wisdom and the research is pretty it is
quite clear that this was devastating to
to particularly disadvantaged youth like
people understand this now as being okay
and she was probably right but one of
the one of the really sad aspects of
cancel culture is people forget why you
were canceled and they just know they
hate you
um there's this lingering kind of like
well I don't have to take them seriously
anymore but by the way did you notice
they happen to be right on something
very important now one funny thing about
freedom of speech
freedom of speech wouldn't exist if you
didn't also have the the right to say
things that were wrong because if you
can't you know engage an idea for you if
you can't actually speculate you'll
never actually get to something that's
right in the first place but it's
especially galling when people who are
right were censored and you uh and never
actually get the credit that they
deserve
well this might be a good place to ask a
little bit more about the freedom of
speech and
so you said that included in the freedom
of speech is to say things that are
wrong yep
um what is your perspective on hate
speech
hate speech
is the best marketing campaign for
censorship
um and it came from Academia
um of the of the 20th century and that
when I talked about the anti-free speech
movement uh that was one of their first
inventions um there was a lot of talk
about critical race Theory
um and and being against critical race
Theory and fire will sue if you say that
people can't advocate for it or teach it
or research it because you do absolutely
have the right to to pursue it
academically however every time someone
mentions CRT they should also say the
very first project of the people who
founded CRT Richard Delgado Mary metzuda
Etc
was to go was to create this new
category of unprotected speech called
hate speech and to get it banned the
person who enabled this drift of course
was Herbert Marcus in 1965 you know
basically questioning whether or not
free speech should be a sacred value on
the left and he was on the losing side
for a really long time the Liberals you
know the way I grew up that was
basically being pro-free speech was
synonymous with being a liberal but that
started to be
etched away on campus and the way it was
was with with the idea of hate speech
that essentially oh but you should um we
can designate particularly bad speech as
uh not protected
um and and who's going to enforce it
who's going to decide what hate speech
actually is well it's usually
overwhelmingly can only happen in an
environment of really low Viewpoint
diversity because you have to actually
agree on on what the most hateful and
wrong things are
and there's a Bedrock principle
um it's referred to this in a great case
about flag burning in in the first
amendment that I think all the world
could benefit from You Can't Ban speech
just because it's offensive it's too
subjective it basically it's one of the
reasons why the these uh kind of codes
have been more happily adopted in places
like Europe where they have a sense that
there's like a modal German or a modal
Englishman
um and I think this is offensive and
therefore I can say that this is this is
wrong in a more
Multicultural and in a genuinely more
diverse country that's never actually
had an honest thought that there is a
single kind of American there's never
been like we had the idea of Uncle Sam
but that was always kind of a joke
um Boston always knew it wasn't Richmond
always knew it wasn't George I always
knew it wasn't you know Alaska like
we've always been a hodgepodge and we
get in a society that diverse that
You Can't Ban things simply because
they're offensive
um and that's that's one of the reasons
why I hate speech is not an unprotected
category of speech and I and I go
further my theory on freedom of speech
is slightly different than most other
constitutional lawyers
um and I think and I think that's
partially because some of the ways some
of these theories although a lot of them
are really good are inadequate they're
not expansive enough and I sometimes
call my theory the pure informational
theory of freedom of speech
um or sometimes when I want to be fancy
the lab and the Looking Glass Theory and
its most important tenant is that there
is that if the goal is the project of
human knowledge which is to know the
world it is you cannot know the world as
it is without knowing what people really
think and what people really think is an
incredibly important fact to know so
every time you're actually saying you
can't say that you're actually depriving
yourself of the knowledge of what people
really think you're causing what Timmer
Quran who's on our Board of advisors
called preference falsification you end
up with an inaccurate picture of the
world which by the way in a lot of cases
um because there are activists who want
to restrict more speech they actually
tend to think that people are more
prejudiced than they uh than they might
be and actually these kind of
restrictions there was a book called
racial paranoia
um that came out in about 15 years ago
that was making the point that the
imposition of some of these codes can
sometimes make people think that the
only thing holding you back from being a
raging racist are these codes so it must
be really really bad it can actually
make all these things worse and one
which we talk about in the book one very
real practical way it makes things worse
is when you censor people it doesn't
change their opinion it just encourages
them to not share it with people who
will get them in trouble so it leads
them to talk to people who they already
agree with and group polarization takes
off so we have some interesting data in
the book
um about how driving people off of
Twitter for example
um you know in 2017 and then again I
think in 2020 driving people to gab led
to you know greater radicalization among
those people it's a very predictable
Force sensorship doesn't actually change
people's minds and it pushes them in
directions that actually
by very you know solid research will
actually make them more radicalized so
yeah I think that the I think that the
attempt to ban hate speech it doesn't
really protect us from it but it gives
the government
such a vast uh weapon to use against us
that we will
regret giving them
is there a ways to sort of to look at
extreme cases to test this idea out a
little bit so if you look on campus yeah
what's your view about allowing say
white supremacists on campus to do to do
speeches okay KKK I think you should be
able to study
what people think and I think it's
important that we actually do so I think
that you know um let's take for example
Q Anon yeah Q anon's wrong
um but where did it come from why did
they think that what's the motivation
who taught them it who came up with
these ideas this is important to
understand history that's under
important to understand modern American
politics and so if you put your act if
you put your scholar hat on and which
you should be curious about kind of
everyone about where they're coming from
Daryl Davis who I'm sure you're familiar
with part of his goal was just simply to
get to know where people were coming
from and in the process he actually
de-radicalized a number of Clans members
when they actually realized that this
black man who would befriended them
actually was compassionate was a decent
person they realized all their
preconceptions were wrong so it can have
a de-radicalizing factor by the way but
even when it doesn't it's still really
important to know what the bad people in
your Society think
honestly in some ways it's for for your
own safety it's probably more important
to know what the bad people in your
Society actually think I personally I
don't know
what you think about that but I
personally think that freedom of speech
in cases like that like KKK and campus
can do more harm in the short term
but much more benefit in the long term
because you can sometimes argue for like
this is going to hurt yeah in the short
term but I mean Harvey said this is like
consider the alternative yeah because
you've just kind of made the case for
like this potentially would be a good
thing even in the short term and it
often is I think especially in a stable
Society like ours uh with a strong
middle class all these kinds of things
where people have like the Comforts The
Reason through things yeah
um but you know to me it's like even if
it hurts in the short term even if it
does create more hate in the short term
the freedom of speech has this really
beneficial thing which is it helps you
move towards the truth the entirety of
society towards a deeper more accurate
understanding of life on Earth of
society of how people function of ethics
of metaphysics of everything yeah and
that in the long term is a huge benefit
it gets rid of the Nazis in the long
term even if it adds to the number of
Nazis in the short term yeah well and
meanwhile just for for and the reality
check part of this is people always
bring up what about the clan on campus
I'm like they're never invited
um the the the I haven't seen a case
where they've been invited
um usually this the the clan argument
gets thrown out when people are trying
to excuse and that's why we shouted down
Ben Shapiro right and that's why you
can't have Bill Maher on campus that's
why you know and it's like okay
um you know and it's a it's a little bit
of that what about ISM again about being
like well that thing over there is
terrible and therefore this comedian
shouldn't come
uh so I do have a question Maybe by way
of advice sure you know interviewing
folks and seeing this like like a
podcast is a platform
in deciding who to talk to or not that's
something I have to come face to face
with on occasion my natural inclination
before I started the podcast was I would
talk to anyone and including people
which I'm still interested in who are
you know the current members of the KKK
and to me
there's a responsibility to do that with
skill yeah
um and that responsibility has been
weighing heavier and heavier on me
because you realize how much skill it
actually takes because you have to know
to understand so much because I've I've
come to understand that the devil is
always going to be charismatic yeah
um the devil's not gonna look like the
devil and so you have to realize you
have to you can't always
come to the table with a deep compassion
for another human being you have to have
you know like 90 compassion and
and another 90 percent deep historical
knowledge about the context of the
battles around this particular issue and
that takes just a huge amount of effort
but I don't know if there's thoughts you
have about this how to
handle speech
um in a way
without censoring bringing it to the
surface but in a way that creates more
love in the world I remember
um Steve Bannon got disinvited from The
New Yorker festival and Jim Carrey
freaked out and all sorts of other
people freaked out and he got disinvited
um from from the and and I got invited
to speak on Smerconish about this
and I was saying like listen he
you don't have people to your conference
because you agree with them
um like that's the the we have to get
out of this idea that that's because
they were trying to make it sound like
that's an endorsement of Steve Bannon
like that's nonsense like if you
actually look at the opinions of all the
people who are there you can't possibly
endorse all the opinions that all these
other people who are going to be there
actually have and in the in the process
of making that argument I got um and and
also of course my the the very classic
it's very valuable to know what
someone's deep end thinks you should be
curious about that and I remember
someone arguing back saying well what
would you want someone to interview a
Jihadi and I'm like because we're at the
moment like it was at the time when when
Isis was really and going going for it
um and I was like would you not want to
go to a talk where someone was trying to
figure out what makes some of these
people tick um because and but that
changes your framing that essentially
it's like no it's curiosity it it is the
is a cure for a lot of this stuff and we
need a great deal more curiosity and a
lot less unwarranted certainty and
there's a question of like how do you
conduct such conversations and um I feel
deeply under qualified who do you think
are especially good at that
I feel like documentary filmmakers yeah
usually do a much better job and the
best job is usually done by biographers
yeah so the more time you give to a
particular conversation like really deep
thought and historical context and
studying the people how they think
looking at all different perspectives
looking at the psychology of the person
yeah upbringing their parents their
grandparents all of this the more time
you spend with that uh the better
the better the quality of the
conversation is because you get to
understand the
you get to really empathize with the
person with the people he or she
represents yeah
um and you get to see the common
Humanity all of this and interviewers
are often don't do that work yeah
um so like the best stuff I've seen is
interviews that are part of a
documentary yeah but even now
documentaries are like there's a huge
incentive to do as quickly as possible
yeah there's not an incentive to really
spend time with the person there's a
great new documentary about Floyd Abrams
that I really recommend we did a
documentary about Ira Glasser called
Mighty Ira which was my video team and
my protege Nico Perino and Chris Malby
and Aaron Reese put it together and it
just follows The Life and Times of
um of Ira Glasser the former head of the
ACLU he's uh if you could just Linger on
that that's a fascinating story oh yeah
amazing
um Ira he wasn't a lawyer um he started
working at the nyclu the New York civil
liberties Union back in I think the 60s
he was I think Robert Kennedy
recommended that he go in that direction
um and he became the president of the
ACLU right at the time that they were
um suffering from uh defending the Nazis
at Skokie and Nico uh and and Aaron and
Chris put together this and they'd never
done a documentary before and it came
out so so well
um and it tells the story of the Nazis
in Skokie it tells the story of the case
around it tells the story of the ACLU at
the time and what a great leader Ira
Glasser was and what's one of the things
that's so great is like when you get to
see the Nazis at skogi they come off
like the idiots that you would expect
them to there's a moment when the when
the Rally's not going very well and and
the the leader gets uh flustered and it
almost seems like he's gonna like shout
out kind of like you're you're you're
making this Nazi rally into a mockery
and so it showed how actually allowing
the Nazis to speak it's Skokie kind of
took the wind out of their sails like if
they had they the whole movement like
everybody was kind of it all kind of
dissolved after that because they looked
like racist fools that they were they
were you know even Blues Brothers made
joke you know jokes about them and and
it didn't turn into the disaster that
people thought it was going to be just
by letting them speak and Ira Glasser
okay so he has
this wonderful story about how Jackie
Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and
how there was a moment when it was
seeing someone an African-American as on
there literally on their team and how
that really got them excited about the
cause of racial equality and and that
became a big part of what his life was
and I just think of that such a great
metaphor is expanding your circle and
seeing more people as being quite
literally on your team is the solution
to so many of these problems and I worry
that one that one of the things that is
absolutely just a fact of life in
America is like we do see each other
more as enemy camps as opposed to people
on the same team
and that was actually something in the
early days like me and will creely the
legal director of fire wrote about the
forthcoming Free Speech challenges of
everyone being on Facebook and one thing
that I was hoping was that as more
people were exposing more of their lives
we'd realize a lot of these things we
knew intellectually like kids go to the
bar and get drunk and do stupid things
um that uh that when we started seeing
the evidence of them doing stupid things
that we might be shocked at first but
then eventually get more sophisticated
and be like well come on people are like
that that never actually really seemed
to happen
um that that I don't think that I think
that there are plenty of things we know
about human nature and we know about
dumb things people say uh and we've
we've made it into an environment where
there's just someone out there waiting
to be kind of like
oh remember that dumb thing you said we
were 14. well I'm going to make sure
that you don't get into the to your
dream school because of that that's
offense archeology yeah that's not my
term though oh it's a great job that's a
great term we steal from the best
digging through someone's past comments
to find a speech that hasn't aged well
and that one's tactical like that that
one isn't just someone not being
empathetic they're like I'm gonna punish
you uh for this or and that's one of the
reasons why I got depressed writing this
book because you know it's already
there's already people who don't love me
because of God like the American mind
usually based on a misunderstanding of
what we actually said in coddling in the
American mind but nonetheless uh but on
this one you know like I'm calling out
people for being very cruel in a lot of
cases but put but one thing that was
really scary about studying a lot of
these cases is that once you have that
Target on your back what they're going
to try to cancel you for could be
anything you know they might go back
into your old uh your your old boats
find something that you said in 1995 you
know you know do something
um where essentially it looks like it's
this entire other thing but really what
they're what's going on is they didn't
like your opinion they didn't like your
point of view on something and they're
gonna find a find a way that from now on
anytime your name comes up it's like oh
remember this this thing I didn't like
about them and it's again it's cruel it
doesn't get you anywhere closer to the
truth and but it is a little scary to
stick your neck out
okay in terms of solutions yeah I'm
gonna ask you a few things so one
uh parenting yeah
five and seven year old
so I'm sure you've figured it all out
then oh God no from a free speech
perspective yeah from a free speech
culture perspective how to be a good
parent yeah
I think the First Quality you should be
cultivating in your children if you want
to have a free speech culture
is curiosity
and an awareness of the vastness that
will always be unknown and getting my
kids excited about the idea that's like
and it's fast
siding and endless and will never make a
big dent in it but the journey will be
amazing but only fools think they know
everything
um and sometimes dangerous fools at that
so giving the sense of intellectual
humility early on being also you know
saying things that actually do sound
kind of old-fashioned like but I say
things to my kids like listen
if you
enjoy study and work both things that I
very much enjoy I do for fun
um your life is going to feel great and
it's going to feel easy
um so some some you know some of those
old-fashioned virtues are things I try
to preach
um counterintuitive stuff like outdoor
time playing having time that are not
intermediated experiences is really is
really important
and little things like I talk about in
the book about when my kids are watching
something that's scary and I'm not
talking about like zombie movies you
know I'm talking about like you know a
cartoon that has kind of a scary moment
and saying that they want to turn the TV
off and I and I talk to them and I say
listen
I'm gonna sit next to you and we're
gonna finish this show
and I want you to tell me what you think
of of this afterwards and I sat next to
my sons
um and by the end of it every single
time I you know when I asked them was it
as scary as you thought it was going to
be
and there was like no daddy that was
fine and I'm like that's one of the
great lessons in life the fear that you
don't
go through becomes much bigger in your
head than actually simply facing it
that's one of the reasons why I'm
fighting back against this culture I
love you know for all of our kids to be
able to grow up in an environment where
people give you Grace and you know
accept the fact that sometimes people
are going to say things that piss you
off take seriously the possibility be
wrong and and uh be curious well I'm I
have hope that the thing you mentioned
which is because so much of young
people's stuff is on the internet that
they're going to give each other a break
because then everybody's kids are worthy
Generation Z hates cancel culture the
most and that's another reason why it's
like people still claiming this is even
happening it's kind of like no you
actually can ask you know kids what they
think of cancer culture and they hate it
yeah well I kind of think of them as
like the immune system that's like
that's the culture waking up to like
that this is not a good thing I I am
glad though I mean I I I'm one of those
kids who you know is really glad that I
was a little kid in the 80s and a
teenager in the 90s because having
everything potentially online uh it's
it's not a an upbringing a Envy well I
because you can also do the absolute
free speech
I like leaning into it yeah where I hope
her future where a lot of our
insecurities flaws
everything's out there yeah and to be
raw honest with it uh I think that leads
to a better world because the flaws are
beautiful I mean that's the flaws as the
uh the basic ingredients of human
connection uh Robert Wright he wrote a
book on on Buddhism
um and I talked about trying to use
social media from a from a Buddhist
perspective and like as if you're as if
it's the collective unconscious
meditating
and seeing those little like Angry bits
that are trying to cancel you or get you
to shut up and just kind of like letting
them go the same way you're supposed to
watch your thoughts kind of Trail off I
would love to see that like visualized
whatever the whatever the drama going on
going on just seeing the Sea of it of
the collective Consciousness just
processing this and having a little like
panic attack it's just kind of like yeah
breathing it in look look at the little
sort of hateful angry voices kind of pop
up and be like okay there you are and
I'm still focused on on that thing
because that is that that is one of the
things is
okay yeah actually this is probably late
in the game to be to giving my grand
theory on this stuff
um but uh never too late so so what I
was studying um in law school when I ran
out of First Amendment classes um I
decided to study censorship during the
tutor Dynasty uh because that's where we
get our ideas of prior restraint uh that
come from the licensing of the printing
press which was something that Henry
VIII was the first to do where basically
um the idea was that if you can't print
anything in England unless it's with
these uh your majesty approved printers
um it will prevent heretical work and
anti-henry VII stuff from coming out
yeah pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty
pretty
um efficient idea of nothing else
um and I always and so he started
getting angry at the printing press
around 1521 and then passed something
um that required prince prince to be
along with parliament in in 1538
uh and I always think of that as kind of
like where we are now
um because we have this we have the back
then we had the original disruptive
technology you know writing was probably
really bad but the next one which which
was the printing press which was
absolutely calamitous and I mean and I
and I say calamitous on purpose because
in the short term the witch hunts went
up like crazy because the printing press
allowed you to get that manual and how
to find witches
um that the religious wars went crazy
um it led to all sorts of distress
misinformation nastiness
and Henry VII was trying to put the
genie back in the bottle you know he was
kind of like I I can I can I want to use
this for good like uh like I feel like
it could it could be used
but he was in an unavoidable period of
epistemic Anarchy there's nothing you
can do to make the period after the
printing press come uh came out to be a
non-disruptive non-crazy period other
than like absolute totalitarianism and
destroy all the print presses which
would simply was not possible in Europe
so I feel like that's kind of like where
we are now that disruption came from
adding I think you know several million
people to the European conversation and
then eventually the global conversation
but eventually it became the best tool
for discomformation
um for getting rid of falsity for
spotting bad ideas and it's the benefits
the long-term benefits of the printing
press are incalculally great
um and that's what gives me some
optimism for where we are now with
social media because we are in that
unavoidably anarchical period And I do
worry that that there um uh that there
are attempts and states to pass things
to try to put the genie back in the
bottle like if we ban a tick tock or we
uh say that
um nobody under 18 can be on on the
internet unless they have parental
permission we're going at something that
no amount of sort of top down is going
to be able to fix it we have to
culturally adapt to the fact of it
in ways that make us wiser that actually
um and allow it potentially to be that
wonderful engine for disconfirmation
that we're nowhere near yet by the way
but think about it additional millions
of eyes on problems um thanks to the
printing press helped create the
Scientific Revolution the enlightenment
the discovery of ignorance
um
we now have added billions of eyes and
voices to solving problems and we're
just we're using them for cat videos and
canceling
but that those are just the early days
of the printing press it all starts with
the cats and the canceling is there
something about X about Twitter
which is perhaps the most uh energetic
source of cats and canceling it seems
like the collective unconscious of the
species I mean like
it's one of these things where the
tendency to want to see patterns in
history sometimes can limit
the actual batshit crazy experience of
what history actually is because yes we
we have these nice comforting ideas that
it's going to be like last time we don't
know it it it it hasn't happened yet and
I think how unusual Twitter is because I
think of it as like the uh because
because people talk about you know
writing and mass communications and uh
as being expanding the size of our
Collective brain but now we're kind of
looking at our Collective brain in real
time and it's filled just like our own
brains with all sorts of like little
crazy things that pop up and and and
appear like virtual particles kind of
all over the place of people
um you know reacting in real time to
things there's never been anything even
vaguely like it and it can be at its
worst awful to see at its best sometimes
seeing people like just getting euphoric
over something going on and cracking
absolutely brilliant immediate jokes you
know at the same time it can be it can't
even be a joyful experience
um I I feel like uh and uh I live in a
neighborhood now on X where I I mostly
deal with people that I I think are
actually thoughtful even if I disagree
with them
um and and it's not such a bad
experience I occasionally run into those
other sort of what I call neighborhoods
on X where it's just all canceling all
nastiness and it's always kind of an
unpleasant visit to those places I'm not
saying the whole thing needs to be uh
like like my experience but I do think
that the reason why people keep on
coming back to it is it reveals raw
aspects of humanity that sometimes we
prefer to pretend don't exist
yeah but also it's totally new like you
said yeah it's just the virality the
speed the news travels that opinions
travel that the battle over ideas
travels the battle over information too
yeah of what is true and not lies travel
the little Mark Twain thing pretty fast
on the thing yeah and then it changes
your understanding of how to interpret
information it could also stress you out
you know and I remember to get off it
sometimes the stats are pretty bad on
Mental Health uh with with young people
and I'm definitely in the camp of people
who think that social media is part of
that I understand you know the debate
but I'm pretty persuaded that one of the
things that is hasn't been great for
mental health I mean of people is is
just constantly being exposed yeah
absolutely I I think it's possible to
create social media that makes a huge
amount of money makes people happy to me
like it's possible to align yeah the the
incentives so in terms of yeah making
teenagers making uh every stage of life
giving you long-term fulfillment and
happiness with your physical existence
outside of the social media and on
social media helping you grow as a human
being helping challenge you just in the
right amount and just the right amount
of cat videos whatever gives this full
Rich Human Experience I think it's just
a machine learning problem it's like
it's not easy to create a feed so the
easiest feed you could do is like
maximize engagement yeah but that's just
like a really dumb algorithm yeah it's
like for the for the algorithm to learn
enough about you to understand what will
make you truly happy as a human being to
grow long term that's just a very
difficult problem to solve you ever
watch fleabag it's absolutely brilliant
uh British show
um and it sets you up one of the reasons
why like people love it so much is it
sets you up that you're watching like a
a raunchy British Sex in the City except
the main character is the the most
promiscuous one
um it's like okay and you kind of roll
your eyes a little bit it's kind of
funny and it's kind of cute and kind of
spicy
and then you realize that the person is
actually kind of suffering and having a
hard time and it gets deeper and deeper
as the show goes on and she will do
these incredible speeches about tell me
what to do like I just I know there's
experts out there I know there's
knowledge out there I know there's an
optimal way to live my life so why can't
someone just tell me what to do and and
it's this wonderfully like
um
accurate I think uh aspect of human
desire that what if something could
actually tell me the optimal way to go
because I think there is a desire to
give up some amount of your own freedom
and discretion in order to be told to do
the optimally right thing but that path
scares me to death yeah we see the way
you phrase it that's it miscares me too
so there's several things one you could
be constantly distracted in a tick tock
Way by things that keep you engaged yeah
so removing that and giving you a bunch
of options constantly and learning from
long term what results in your actual
long-term happiness so like which
amounts of challenging ideas are good
for you uh that you know for somebody
like me
just for but there is a number like that
for you yeah Greg like for me that
number is pretty high I love debate I
love I I love the feeling of like
realizing holy I've been wrong yes
but like you know and I would love for
the algorithm to know that about me and
to help me but always giving me options
if I want to descend into cat videos and
so on well the educational aspect of it
yes educational yes like the idea of
kind of like both going the speed that
you need to and running as fast as you
can yeah you know I mean there's that
you know the whole flow thing I just
feel it YouTube recommendation
for for better or worse if used
correctly it feels like it does a pretty
good job whenever I just refuse to click
on stuff that's just dopamine based and
click on only educational things yeah
the recommendation provides are really
damn good so I feel like it's a solvable
problem at least in this in the space of
Education of challenging yourself but
also expanding your realm of knowledge
and all this kind of stuff and I'm
definitely more in the we're an
inescapably anarchical period and it
will require big cultural adjustments
and there's gonna there's no way that
this isn't going to be difficult
transition is there any specific little
or big things that you would like to see
X do Twitter do I have lots of thoughts
on that with the printing press and
extra millions of eyes on any problem
can tear down any institution any any
person or any idea and that's good in
some ways because a lot of medievals
Institutions needed to be torn down and
some people did too and a lot of ideas
need to be torn down same thing is true
now and extra billions of eyes on every
problem can tear down any person ID or
institution
um and some again some of those things
needed to be torn down but it can't
build yet we are not at the stage that
can build yet but it has shown us how
thin our knowledge was it's one of the
reasons why we're also aware of the
replication crisis it's one of the
reasons why we're also aware of how kind
of shoddy our research is how much our
expert class is arrogant in many cases
but people don't want to live in a world
where they don't have uh people that
they respect and they can look at and I
think what's happening uh possibly now
um but we'll we'll continue to happen as
people are going to establish themselves
as being high integrity that they will
always be honest I think you are
establishing yourself as someone who who
is high integrity where that where they
can trust that person a fire wants to be
um you know the institution that people
can come to us like if it's free speech
we will defend it period And I think
that people need new uh need to have
authorities that they can actually trust
and I think that if you actually had a
stream that maybe people can watch in
action but not flood with you know
stupid cancel culture stuff or or dumb
cat means where it is actually a serious
discussion bounded around rules no
perfect Patrol Fortress no efficient
rhetorical Fortress none of the the BS
ways we debate I think you could start
to actually create something that could
actually be a major Improvement in the
in the in the speed with which we come
up with new better ideas and establish
and and separate truth from falsity yeah
if it's done well it can inspire a large
number of people to become higher and
higher integrity and it can create
Integrity as a value to strive for yeah
and like you know there's been projects
throughout the internet that have done
an incredible job of that but have been
also very flawed like Wikipedia is an
example of a big leap forward in doing
that it's pretty damn impressive what's
your overall take I mean I I'm mostly
impressed so there's a few really
powerful ideas for the people who edit
Wikipedia one of which is each editor
kind of for themselves declares
you know I'm into politics and I really
kind of a left-leaning guy so I really
shouldn't be editing political articles
because I have bias so they're great
they declare their biases and they often
do a good job of actually declaring the
biases but there will still like they'll
find a way to justify themselves like
something will piss them off yeah and
they want to correct it because they
they love correcting untruth into truth
but the perspective of what is true or
not is affected by their bias Ruth is
hard to know and I and and it is true
that there is a left-leaning bias on the
editors of Wikipedia so for that what
happens is on articles which I mostly
appreciate that don't have a political
aspect to them you know
um scientific articles or uh technical
articles they can be really strong even
history just describing the facts of
history that don't have a subjective
element a strong also just using my own
brain I can kind of filter out if it's
uh you know if it's something about
January 6th or something like this I
know I'm going to be like I'm not
whatever's going on here I'm gonna kinda
read it but most I'm gonna look to other
source I'm going to look to a bunch of
different perspectives on it's going to
be very tense there's probably going to
be some kind of bias maybe some
wording will be such which is one where
this is where Wikipedia does its thing
the way they word stuff uh will be
biased the choice of words but the what
Wikipedia editors themselves are so
self-reflective they literally have
articles describing these very effects
of how you can use words to inject bias
yeah in in all the ways that you talk
about it that's not healthier than most
environments it's incredibly healthy but
I think you could do better one of the
big flaws of Wikipedia to me that
Community uh notes on X does better is
the accessibility of becoming an editor
um is it's difficult to become an editor
and it's not as visible the process of
editing so I would love like you said a
stream yeah everyone to be able to
observe this debate between people with
Integrity of when they discuss things
like January Stakes a very controversial
topics to see how the processes the
debate goes as opposed to being hidden
in the shadows which currently is in
Wikipedia you can access that it's just
hard to access but and I've also seen
how they will use certain articles like
on certain people like articles about
people have learned to trust less and
less yeah because they'll literally will
use those to make personal attacks and
this is something you write about
they'll use uh descriptions of different
controversies to paint a picture of a
person that's
that doesn't to me at least feel like an
accurate representation of the person
it's like writing an article about
Einstein mentioning something about uh
theory of relativity and saying that he
was a womanizer and abuser and a like
controversy you know yeah he is Feynman
also you know not you know was that you
know they're not exactly the perfect
human in terms of women but like there's
other aspects to this human and to
capture that human properly there's a
certain way to do it I think Wikipedia
will often lean they really try to be
self-reflective and
try to stop this but they will lean into
the drama if it matches the bias yeah
but again
much better than the world I believe is
much better
uh because Wikipedia exists but
now that we're in these adolescent
stages we're growing and trying to come
up with different Technologies the idea
of a stream yeah is really really
interesting as you get more and more
people into this discourse that where
the value is let's try to get the truth
yeah
yeah and that basically you know you get
the little cards for nope wrong nope
wrong and the different the different
rhetorical techniques that are being
used to avoid actually discussing yeah
and I think I actually can make it a
little bit Fun by you get a limited
number of them
um you know it's kind of like you get
three what about some cards it's a
gamifying the whole thing uh absolutely
yeah uh let me ask you about
uh so you mentioned going to some
difficult moments in your life or
um
what what has been your experience with
uh with depression what has been your
experience getting out of it overcoming
it
yeah I mean the whole thing the whole
journey
um uh with coddling the American mind
began with me
um
in the at the Belmont psychiatric
facility in Philadelphia back in 2007. I
had called 9-1-1 In a Moment of clarity
because I'd gone to the uh the hardware
store to
um
make sure that when I killed myself that
I it stuck I wanted to make sure that I
you know had my head wrapped and
everything so like if all the drugs I
was planning to take didn't work that I
wouldn't be able to you know claw my way
out
it'd been a really rough year and I
always had issues with depression
um but they were getting worse
and frankly one of the reasons why this
cancel culture stuff is so um important
to me is that
the thing that I didn't emphasize as
much in cuddling the American mind which
by the way that description that I give
of trying to kill myself was the first
time I'd ever written it down nobody in
my family was aware
um of how of it being like that my wife
had never seen it and basically the only
way I was able to write that was by by
doing you know how you can kind of trick
yourself if
um and I was like I'm going to convince
myself that this is just between me and
my computer and nobody will see it it's
probably not the most public thing I've
ever written
um but what I didn't emphasize in that
was how much the culture War played into
how depressed I got because I was
originally legal director of fire then I
became president of fire in 2005 moved
to Philadelphia is where I get depressed
um and uh and just I don't have family
there there's something about the town
they don't seem to like me very much
um but the main thing was being in the
culture world all the time
um there was a girl that I was dating
um I remember you know she didn't seem
to really approve what I did and a lot
of people didn't really seem to and
meanwhile like I was defending people on
the left all the time and they'd be like
oh that's good that you're finding
someone on the left but they still would
never forgive me for defending someone
on the right and I remember saying at
one point I'm like listen I'm like I'm
I'm a True Believer in this stuff I'm
willing to defend Nazis I'm certainly
willing to defend Republicans
and she actually said I think
Republicans might be worse
um and that didn't that really shouldn't
go very well and then I nearly gotten
fist fights a couple times with with
people on the right um because they
found out I defended people who crack
jokes about 9 11. like this happened
more than once I'm not you know by that
time I'm in my 20s I'm not fist fighting
again
um but yeah it was always like that you
you see how hypocritical people people
compete you can see how friends can turn
on you if they don't like your politics
so I got an early preview of this of of
of what the culture we're heading into
by being the president of fire and it
was exhausting
um and that was one of the main things
that led me to be you know suicidally
depressed uh at the Belmont Center if
you told me that that would be the
beginning of a new and better life for
me I would have laughed if I could have
but I would you know I don't I you can
tell I'm okay if I'm still laughing and
I wasn't laughing
um at that point
so um I got a doctor and I started doing
cognitive behavioral therapy I started
having all these voices in my head that
were catastrophizing and
um you know engaging over over
generalization and
um uh fortune telling you know uh mind
reading all of these things that they
teach you not to do and it and what that
what you do when CBT is essentially you
you have something makes you upset and
then you just write down what the
thought was
um and you know something minor could
happen in your response was you know
like um well the date didn't seem to go
very well
um and that's because I'm broken and
will die alone and you're like okay okay
what what are what are the following you
know uh that's catastrophizing that's
mind reading that's a fortune telling
that's all the stuff
um and you have to do this several times
a day
forever I actually need to brush up on
it at the moment
um and it slowly over time voices in my
head that have been saying horrible you
know horrible internal talk it just
didn't sound as convincing anymore which
was a really kind of like subtle effect
like it was just kind of like oh wait I
don't buy that I'm broken you know like
that doesn't sound true that doesn't
sound like truth from God like like it
used to
and nine months after I was
planning to kill myself I was probably
happier than I'd been in a decade
um and that was one of the things that
you know that the CBT is what led me to
notice this in my own work that it felt
like administrators were kind of selling
cognitive distortions but students
weren't buying yet and then when I
started noticing that they seemed to
come in actually already believing in a
lot of this stuff that would be very
dangerous and that led to calling the
American mind and all that stuff
but the thing that was rough about
writing enhancing the American mind I'd
have mentioned this already a couple of
times I got really depressed this past
year
um because I was studying you know
there's a friend in there that I talk
about who killed himself um after being
canceled I talked to him a week before
he killed himself and I hadn't actually
um
I hadn't actually checked in with him
because he seemed so confident I thought
it would be totally fine because he he
had an insensitive tweet in June of 2020
and uh you know got got forced out uh in
a way that didn't actually sound as bad
as a lot of the other professors he
actually at least got a severance
package but they knew he'd Sue and win
um because he had before
and so I waited to check in on him
because we were so overwhelmed with the
requester helps and he was saying people
were coming to his house still and then
he shot himself the next week and I I
definitely and because everyone knows
I'm so public about you know my
struggles with this stuff
everybody
um who fights this stuff comes to me
when they're having a hard time and this
is a very hard psychologically taxing
business to be in and even admitting
this right now like
I think about like all the all the
vultures out there if they'll have fun
with it just like the same way when my
friend Mike Adams killed himself there
were people like celebrating on Twitter
um that that a man was dead uh because
they didn't like his tweets and but
somehow that made them compassionate for
some abstract other person so I was
getting a little depressed and anxious
and the thing that really helped me more
than anything else
um was confessing to my staff
that I you know I I books take a lot of
energy so I knew they didn't want to
hear that Not only was this taking a lot
of the boss's time this was making him
depressed and anxious but when I finally
told my the leadership of my staff
um you know people that even though I
try to maintain a lot of distance from I
love very very much
um it made such a difference you know
because I could be open about that and
the other thing was if you're at this
conference dialogue oh yes it's like an
invite-only thing it's Oren Hoffman
um runs it
um it intentionally tries to get people
over the political Spectrum to come
together uh and have off the record
conversations about big issues
and it was nice to be in a room where
liberal conservative none of the above
were all like oh thank God someone's
taking on Council culture and where it
felt like
it felt like maybe this won't be the the
disaster for me and my family that I was
that I was starting to be afraid of it
would be that taking the stuff on might
actually have a happy ending well one
thing I just stands out from that
is the the pain of cancellation
can be really intense and that doesn't
necessarily mean losing your job but
just even you can call it bullying you
can call whatever name but just some
number of people on the internet
and that number can be small kind of
saying
bad things to you yeah that can be a
pretty powerful force to the human
psyche which is was very surprising and
then the flip side also of that
uh it really makes me sad how cruel
people can be yeah it's such a thinking
that your your cause is social justice
in many cases can lead people to think I
can be as cruel as I want in pursuit of
this when it a lot of times it's you
know just a way to sort of
vent some aggression on on a person that
you think of only as an abstraction so I
think it's important for people to
realize that they're whatever like
whatever
negative energy whatever negativity you
want to put out there
like there's real people that can get
hurt like you can really get people
um
to one be the worst version of
themselves or two possibly take their
own life and it's not
as real yeah well that's one of the
things that we do in the book
um to really kind of address people who
still try to claim this you know isn't
real is we just quote we quote the pope
we call Obama we call James Carville we
quote Taylor Swift on cancel culture
like
um and Taylor Swift's quote is is
essentially about like how behind all of
this there's when it gets particularly
nasty there's this very clear you know
kill yourself kind of undercurrent to it
um and it's it's cruel and the problem
is that in an environment so wide open
there's always going to be someone who
wants to be so transgressive and say the
most hurtful you know terrible thing but
then you have to remember the
misrepresentation getting back to the
old idioms sticks and stones will break
my bones but names will never never hurt
me has been
re-imagined in campus debates in the
most asinine way people will literally
say stuff like but now we know words can
hurt and it's like now we know words can
hurt guys you didn't have to come up
with a special little thing that you
teach children to make her words hurt
less if they never hurt in the first
place it wouldn't even make sense the
saying it's a saying that you repeat to
yourself to give yourself strength when
the bullies have noticed you're a little
weird
might be a little personal
um the uh and it helps it really does
help to be like listen Okay are
going to say things
um and I can't let them have that kind
of power over me yeah
yeah it still is a learning experience
because it does it does it does hurt but
for the good people out there who
actually you know just sometimes think
think that they're venting you know they
think about it remember that there are
people on either side of it
yeah for me it hurts my kind of faith in
humanity
um I know it shouldn't but it does
sometimes when I just see people being
cruel to each other it kind of
it's uh it floats
a cloud over my perspective of the world
that don't I wish didn't have to be
there yeah that was always my sort of
flipping but uh answer to that if if
mankind is basically good or basically
evil being like the biggest debate in in
in in in philosophy and being like well
the problem with uh with the first is
there's nothing basic about Humanity
yeah what gives you hope about this
whole thing about about this dark state
that we're in as you describe how can we
get out what gives you hope that we will
get out
I think that people are sick of it
um I think people are sick of
not being able to be authentic
um and that's really you know what
censorship is it's basically telling you
don't be yourself don't actually be to
say what you think
um don't show your personality don't
dissent don't be weird don't be wrong
um and that's not sustainable I think
that
people have kind of had enough of it uh
but one thing I definitely want to say
to your audience is
oh
it can't just be up to us our viewers to
try to fix this
um we and I think that and this may
sound like it's an unrelated problem I
think if there were
highly respected let's say extremely
difficult ways to prove that you're
extremely smart and hardworking that
cost little or nothing
that actually can give
the harvards and the yales of the world
to run for their money I think that
might be the most positive thing we
could do to to deal with a lot of these
problems and why
I think the fact that we have become a
weird America with a great anti-elitist
tradition has become weirdly elitist in
this in in the respect that we not only
again are our leadership coming from
these few fancy schools we actually have
like great admiration for them we kind
of look up to them but I think we'd have
a lot healthier of a society If people
could prove you know their excellence in
ways that are coming from completely
different streams and and that that are
highly respected I sometimes talk about
there should be a test that anyone who
passes it gets like a you know a ba in
the humanities that it is like a super
ba like some something like someone not
a GED that's not what I'm talking about
I'm talking about something that like
you know one out of only a couple like a
hundred people can pass some other way
of actually
um uh of not going through these massive
bloated expensive institutions that
people can raise their hands and say I'm
smart and hardworking I think that could
be an incredibly healthy uh way I think
we need additional streams for Creative
people to be solving problems whether
that's on X or someplace else
um I think that there's lots of things
that technology could do to really help
with this I think some of the stuff that
Sal Khan is working on uh at Khan
Academy could really help
um so I think there's a lot of ways but
they exist largely around coming up with
new ways of doing things not just
expecting the old things that have say
40 billion dollars in the bank that
they're going to reform themselves and
and here and here's my you know I've
been picking on Harvard a lot but I'm
going to pick on a little bit more
um the and one and uh I talk a lot about
class again and you know there's a great
book called Poison Ivy um by Evan mandry
which I recommend to everybody it's
outrageous it sounds like me on a rant
at Stanford
um which was uh and I and I think the
stat is you know Elite higher education
has more kids from the top one percent
than they have from the bottom 50 or 60
depending on the school
um and when you look at how much they
actually like replicate class privilege
it's it's really distressing so
everybody should read poison ivy
and above all else
uh if you're weird continue being weird
and you're one of the most interesting
one of the weirdest in the most
beautiful way people have ever met Greg
uh thank you for the really important
work you do this was
this is let me watch kid Cosby
I appreciate the class the hilarity that
you brought here today man
um this is an amazing conversation thank
you for the work you do thank you thank
you and for me who deeply cares about
education higher education thank you for
uh holding the mits and the harvards
accountable uh for um doing right by the
people that walk their Halls so thank
you so much for talking today
thanks for listening to this
conversation with Greg lucianov to
support this podcast please check out
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let me leave you with some words from
Noam Chomsky
if you believe in freedom of speech you
believe in freedom of speech for views
you don't like
Gables was in favor of freedom of speech
reviews he liked so was Stalin if you're
in favor of freedom of speech that means
you're in favor of freedom of speech
precisely for views you despise
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time