0:00

Michael, Peter, have you read the

0:02

coddling of the American mind? I

0:04

have not because I'm a millennial and

0:06

I can't handle challenging ideas. Today,

0:23

we're talking about the coddling of the

0:25

American mind. A

0:28

book about

0:30

campus culture by Jonathan

0:32

Heights and Greg Lukianoff.

0:34

Finally, a couple middle aged men

0:37

complaining about what the kids are doing. That's

0:39

bravery. When I was doing background

0:42

research for this book. I ended

0:44

up becoming kind of fascinated with

0:46

the origins of our

0:49

modern campus culture discourse Oh.

0:51

If you go through all the op eds

0:53

and think pieces, you can

0:55

actually sort of see that

0:58

at some point during the first half

1:00

of twenty fifteen tea. There

1:02

was a wave of writers suddenly

1:04

talking about the hypersensitivity of

1:06

college students. There is

1:08

a march twenty fifteen New

1:11

York Times article about safe spaces

1:13

at Brown University that gets a ton of

1:15

attention and we'll talk about it bit later.

1:18

Vox publishes a piece titled,

1:20

I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal

1:23

students terrify me. National

1:25

review. Publishes a piece comparing

1:27

modern campus culture to both

1:29

Mcarthyism

1:30

and the Salem Witch trials.

1:33

Now we're talking, I love

1:35

a good the college students are snowflakes,

1:38

and that's why they're just like Hitler. Hitting

1:42

the kids exaggerate. And you had Jonathan

1:45

Shade riding a piece about the

1:47

the new political correctness for New York

1:49

Magazine. Oh. I don't know that this was

1:51

caused by anything as much as it's

1:53

just sort of the momentum of the discourse,

1:56

but it's probably worth noting that

1:58

in January of twenty fifteen, the

2:00

Charlie Epdo shootings happen?

2:03

I don't want to get too aggressive with

2:05

my cause of diagnosis here. But I do wonder

2:08

whether a discussion of

2:10

free expression migrated

2:13

into the realm of American campuses

2:16

and that's sort of what may really made

2:18

this take off.

2:19

Or Peter, the college students are just

2:21

terrible and we noticed. I was gonna

2:23

talk about the kids.

2:24

So to give you a little taste

2:26

of what this discourse was like

2:28

at the time, I'm gonna send you

2:31

a bit from that Vox piece. The

2:34

piece is by a professor writing

2:36

under the pseudonym Edward Schlosser.

2:39

He is purportedly hiding his

2:41

identity. Due to his fear

2:44

of retaliation from

2:46

students. He writes about

2:48

an incident where a student complained

2:51

about of his in two thousand

2:53

and nine. And the student called him

2:55

like a communist just based on some pretty

2:57

bland liberal takes about the recession.

2:59

Okay. And he tells the story of how

3:02

administration sort of quickly realized

3:04

that the complaint was bullshit. They

3:06

rolled their eyes a little bit and they disposed

3:08

of it. And that was that. Mhmm. So

3:10

now you can read this.

3:13

Okay. He says, in twenty

3:15

fifteen, such a complaint would not be

3:17

delivered in such a fashion. Instead

3:19

of focusing on the rightness or wrongness or

3:22

even acceptability of the materials we reviewed

3:24

in class, The complaint would center

3:26

solely on how my teaching affected

3:28

the student's emotional state. And

3:30

if I responded in any way other than

3:32

apologizing and changing the materials we reviewed

3:34

in class. Professional consequences would

3:37

likely follow. I love these

3:39

where it's like I've made up something in my head

3:42

gotten mad about

3:42

it. My wife has a friend who

3:44

absorbs way too much true crime content,

3:47

and as a result, is convinced that there's like

3:49

a real risk that she's going to get murdered.

3:52

Right. This is the academic equivalent of that.

3:54

Right? Where they are, like, reading

3:56

these little anecdotes about students gone

3:58

wild and getting professors

4:00

fired, and they're like, oh, no, I'm gonna

4:02

get fired. No, probably

4:04

not. And all of

4:06

this is probably based on you reading other

4:08

articles about people also imagining

4:10

a multiverse where they get

4:12

fired. Yes. It's just like a bunch of

4:14

arch conservatives like pooping back and

4:16

forth forever. So that's little

4:18

taste of the discussion that's happening.

4:21

This discourse carries on throughout the

4:23

summer of twenty fifteen, enter

4:26

our authors Jonathan Heights

4:28

and Greg Lukianoff. Hyatt

4:30

is a social psychologist, Luciano

4:33

is a constitutional lawyer for

4:35

fire. The foundation for individual

4:37

rights in education group

4:40

that's very

4:41

invested in free speech on

4:44

campus. Right. That basically exists

4:46

to promote this moral panic -- Yeah. -- and make this

4:48

seem like a problem worthy of national

4:50

concern. In September twenty fifteen, they

4:52

write a lengthy piece for the Atlantic

4:54

titled The Coddling of the American Mind

4:57

how trigger warnings are hurting mental

4:59

health.

5:02

Do you remember this piece? I have read

5:05

sections of this piece over

5:07

the years. It's I can't

5:09

place it on the timeline where it lands

5:12

in relation to the Oberland sandwich

5:14

story, which I think is a totemic

5:16

example of campus culture

5:18

bullshit. But this was

5:20

after a wave of scare stories

5:23

And really a lot of these aging,

5:25

middle aged dudes, grasping

5:27

around for, like, ways to substantiate

5:31

the feelings that they had. Mhmm. They couldn't

5:33

really come up with that many firings and

5:36

they couldn't actually find places

5:38

where people were having their

5:40

speech suppressed. So they landed on

5:43

trigger warnings. Right. It's just like something

5:45

nice that teachers started doing for students

5:47

like no schools required them. This

5:49

was, like, the only way they

5:51

could cast students as totalitarian.

5:54

Right. And

5:54

they just, like, leaned into it even though it makes a note.

5:57

Hi, Lukian off. What sets their piece

5:59

apart is that most of the

6:01

discourse to this point has centered around

6:03

professors. Professors are worried

6:05

about over sensitive students getting

6:07

them fired. Yeah. Hi, Lukie on

6:09

off. Her port to be focusing

6:12

on the students themselves. Saying

6:14

that the psychology

6:16

of modern students is counterproductive to

6:18

their own mental health.

6:20

Because what we're really in it for is to help

6:22

the students be better even though we've dedicated

6:24

our entire careers talking about how

6:27

the students are full of shit and too weak.

6:29

So that angle combined

6:31

with I think their ostensible expertise in

6:34

psychology and free speech law

6:36

lands them a book deal. And in

6:38

twenty eighteen, they published this book the

6:40

coddling of the American mind, how

6:42

good intentions and bad ideas are

6:44

setting up a generation for

6:46

failure. I wonder there's anything else that might have set up

6:48

that generation for failure. There. Any

6:50

economic trends? Notes have been

6:52

trigger

6:52

warnings. The first section of the book is

6:55

about the bad ideas. That

6:57

they believe are spreading on college

6:59

campuses, which they very dramatically

7:02

call the three great

7:04

untruths So let

7:07

me I will send them to you. Oh, okay.

7:09

I guess I guess I knew that the word untruth was

7:11

a

7:11

word. Yeah. If only we had AA3 letter

7:13

shorter word for such a thing, the opposite.

7:17

Okay. It says, one,

7:20

what doesn't kill you makes you weaker --

7:22

Mhmm. -- two, Always trust

7:24

your feelings. And three, life

7:26

is a battle between good people and

7:28

evil people.

7:29

Yeah. So my question to you, Mike,

7:31

is have you ever in your life encountered

7:34

a person who believes a single one of those

7:36

years? I was just about

7:38

to say, this doesn't sound Like,

7:40

it's a list of hegemonic ideas.

7:42

Right. This sounds like it's a caricature.

7:45

I'm deep in, like, left

7:47

wing weirdos in my life.

7:49

Same. And I have never met anyone

7:51

who who believes that you should always

7:54

trust your feelings or what doesn't

7:56

kill you makes you

7:57

weaker. Peter, I live in Seattle. It's

7:59

just my people. This is my world. I

8:01

have never in, like, the deepest,

8:04

darkest, Crystal Yoga

8:06

Instagram comments.

8:08

Seen anybody express anything

8:11

like this. You know, the idea that college students

8:13

are in a bubble

8:16

super prominent, but I

8:18

don't remember any time in my life where I was exposed

8:20

to more different ideas than college. Right?

8:23

And just sort of by the nature of it, the

8:25

people who are in bubbles are

8:27

like the forty eight year olds watching Fox

8:29

News every night freaking out about this

8:31

stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Or reading the Atlantic. Right. And also,

8:33

I mean, we talked couple weeks ago about

8:35

how clash of civilizations is

8:37

still one of the most commonly

8:40

assigned books on college

8:42

syllabi. Right. Like the idea that every kid

8:44

goes to college and just immediately goes

8:46

into, like, the gender studies program --

8:48

Mhmm. -- just completely ignores the fact a ton of

8:50

people go to college and go into like stem fields

8:52

or into economics. That's the thing. It's like

8:55

there is so much right

8:57

wing ideology in

9:00

the ideas that are considered like

9:02

worth entertaining by the institutions

9:05

who they hire, etcetera.

9:07

I I learned from a podcast called five to

9:09

four that law schools are actually quite conservative. Mhmm.

9:11

If you're familiar with that. Sounds like cool

9:14

cool podcast that people should subscribe

9:16

to. Would Hanson care?

9:19

I mean, to be clear, this is the entire

9:21

premise of the book. Right? It's built around the thesis

9:23

that these ideas are spreading on college

9:26

campuses and that we should all be worried.

9:28

Every other part of the book relies on

9:30

this being true. Right. You know, if the argument

9:33

is, well, look, I think that modern

9:35

college students have a

9:38

slightly different view of what harm

9:40

is relative to myself. That's

9:42

not a book. Right? No one's gonna buy that book.

9:45

You need that you need them to believe that

9:47

what doesn't kill you makes you weaker. Right?

9:50

And that is the first untruth that they start

9:52

off with, the untruth of fragility.

9:55

They call Mhmm. What doesn't kill you makes you

9:57

weaker? Now, again, no one

9:59

believes that nor

10:01

did they provide even one example

10:03

of anyone saying anything like this.

10:06

Oh, really? No.

10:08

No. They don't even bother. They just skip

10:10

straight to the debunking. Yeah. That said,

10:12

I will say, like, the thesis here is relatively

10:14

clear. They're arguing that, like, sometimes

10:17

injuries of of various types physical,

10:19

mental, emotional can actually make you

10:21

stronger and therefore efforts

10:24

to insulate yourself from

10:26

harm can be counterproductive

10:28

at times. Sure. They lead off with

10:31

an analogy about peanut

10:32

allergies. Oh, this fucking thing.

10:34

This is like a weird right wing sub

10:37

stack

10:37

trope that, like, peanut allergies or

10:39

fake or something. It is. Yeah. The

10:42

prevalence of peanut allergies among

10:44

children more than tripled between

10:46

the mid nineties and two thousand eight.

10:49

Some research has shown that it was likely

10:51

because parents and schools were avoiding

10:53

nuts in case any children were

10:55

allergic which in turn prevented

10:58

immune systems from developing resistance, so

11:00

allergy rates went up. Right?

11:03

So in the analogy, The

11:06

peanut is racist comments, and

11:09

you have to build up your immunity to

11:11

racist

11:12

comments. Otherwise, you'll end up

11:14

being allergic. I mean, look, I

11:16

am not allowed to sit in judgment

11:18

of anyone else's try hard metaphors,

11:21

unless mind be judged. But It's

11:23

both a totally asinine

11:26

metaphor because like human biology

11:28

does not work the same as like exposure

11:30

to ideas. But then also,

11:33

it's kind of a perfect metaphor because

11:35

if somebody says, hey, I'm allergic

11:38

to peanuts, And you're like, oh, somebody

11:40

didn't get enough as a kid. You're

11:42

just a huge fucking asshole. Right?

11:45

Some teenager who's like a member

11:47

of a minority group is like, hey, don't

11:50

say slurs around me.

11:52

And you're like, oh, can't handle

11:54

it, baby. You're just up.

11:56

Brick. This research on the heritability of

11:58

IQ is produced in a facility that also

12:00

produces racism. Yeah. But the reason

12:03

that you know this is a terrible analogy is because you

12:05

can easily just after the opposite

12:07

analogy. Right? Like, what about seatbelts?

12:09

Fleetbelts use was promoted and mandated

12:12

by law, injuries and fatalities, went

12:14

down. Right. If so facto being

12:17

cautious is good and

12:18

effective. Right.

12:19

Nobody's talking about building up their car crash

12:21

immune. Such

12:23

as stupid fucking analogy can't even believe.

12:25

That's unbelievable. What Hainluciana failed

12:28

a lot of this around is the idea of

12:31

cognitive behavioral therapy, which

12:33

involves exposure to

12:35

things that that bother you,

12:37

that that can trigger you, etcetera.

12:39

So what they're saying is, look, the way that

12:41

we treat a lot of trauma is

12:44

by exposing you to

12:46

things that trigger those traumas. And so

12:49

children are sort of doing the wrong thing.

12:51

They're doing this backwards. And it's like,

12:54

Okay. I I hear you in like this narrow

12:56

sense, but we're talking about

12:58

controlled therapy settings, not like

13:01

the discourse online or whatever

13:03

the book

13:03

or, like, you know, the discourse on college campuses.

13:06

Right. If somebody has arachnophobia, you

13:08

shouldn't just, like, go and put a tarantula on

13:10

them. No. And be, like, you're welcome. The

13:14

place where the analogy totally breaks down

13:16

is that being exposed to bad ideas

13:19

is not inherently worthwhile. Being exposed

13:21

to like flat earth Right. Or like SaaS

13:23

watch is real. That doesn't do anything

13:25

for you intellectually because those ideas are

13:27

fucking

13:27

wrong. And because you only have so much

13:29

time to entertain so many ideas. Maybe

13:31

we should narrow it down to some interesting

13:33

ones. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This entire

13:35

discourse is based around stripping

13:38

all of these concepts of all of their specificity

13:40

and saying just platitudes

13:43

like being exposed to challenging ideas

13:45

is good

13:45

thing. Well, it depends on which ideas

13:48

they are.

13:48

Right.

13:48

So it's like they don't actually believe

13:51

this. Cognitive behavioral therapy and their belief

13:53

in it is sort of a big underlying theme in the book.

13:56

It's their basis for the whole

13:58

coddling concept. Right? We're being too soft

14:00

on the kids. They need to be exposed to

14:02

bad unpleasant things sometimes because

14:05

that's how you learn to resist

14:07

them. The primary example that

14:09

they use of this type of thing

14:12

is from Brown University in twenty fifteen.

14:14

Where there was a debate held on campus

14:16

concerning rape culture. And some

14:18

students organized a safe space

14:20

room on campus with like

14:23

soothing music, blankets, cookies,

14:26

coloring books, Play Do and

14:28

people trained to handle trauma.

14:31

I I poked around on this from what

14:33

I can tell, the anecdote is true.

14:35

This this safe space existed as described.

14:38

And some students, at least one

14:40

student involved made a comment that was sort

14:42

of like, I needed to save space because

14:44

I was being bombarded with a bunch of ideas

14:47

that went against my closely held

14:49

beliefs. Conservative media latches

14:52

onto that quote, which is just one kid.

14:54

It was, like, nineteen talking -- Yeah. -- of

14:56

the cop to a reporter. And they're

14:59

like, look, these kids are literally wrapping

15:01

themselves in blankies to avoid

15:03

ideas they don't

15:04

like. But then what's so weird to me is, like, why isn't

15:06

this a challenging idea that the concern derivatives

15:09

need to be exposed to. I thought we were

15:11

into a challenging

15:11

ideas. That's a challenging idea. Like, let's

15:13

have blankets and play doh and therapists for kids.

15:16

That are rigged victims. The whole point is that

15:18

these people want to boost certain conservative

15:21

ideas. Right. But they don't

15:23

feel super comfortable defending those ideas

15:25

directly. So they shift the discourse

15:27

into, well, hear them out.

15:29

Right? They don't want to have to

15:32

get into conversation about rape culture.

15:34

So what do they do? They

15:36

move a step away from that conversation and

15:38

say, well, the real problem is that you won't engage

15:41

with the conversation. It also does overlook

15:43

the real very real problem

15:45

of sexual assault on college campuses.

15:47

Right. Like, it's very odd to sort of look at

15:49

the phenomenon of campus rape

15:52

and be

15:52

like, these are the people I'm singling out

15:54

for criticism. I think it's a way

15:56

of indirectly rolling

15:58

your eyes at someone's trauma. Right. Right.

16:00

Because maybe it's true that

16:03

some of those students or all of those students

16:05

are not processing the

16:07

trauma in a healthy way by creating a safe

16:09

space that looks like this. Maybe that's true. I'm I'm

16:11

not a psychologist. I don't know. Obviously, Jonathan

16:14

Hite thinks that that's true. But

16:16

that's not the shape that the discourse took. Right?

16:19

The discourse was sneering. Right. If you

16:21

sincerely believe that they're reacting

16:23

to trauma --

16:24

Right. -- that's not an empathetic response.

16:26

See at least.

16:27

It's focusing more on what

16:29

is annoying to you personally than what

16:31

is a problem societally. I mean, yeah,

16:33

there are twenty million college

16:35

students or so in this country. Right.

16:37

And if you wanna find a handful of examples

16:40

of them doing something stupid, you easily

16:42

can. But it doesn't prove a trend.

16:45

And when

16:47

they do try to use actual data

16:50

to show a trend, you can immediately see

16:52

that the argument is weak. Right. They point

16:54

to a twenty seventeen study

16:56

where fifty eight percent of the

16:58

students said that they agree with the statement

17:01

that it's important to be part of

17:03

a campus community where I am not

17:05

exposed to intolerant and offensive

17:07

ideas. Got them. That same study.

17:10

Found that ninety two percent

17:12

of students agreed with the following statement.

17:15

It is important to be part of a campus community

17:17

where I am opposed to the ideas and opinions

17:19

of other students even if they are different

17:21

from my own. Right. They don't mention that statistic.

17:24

I had to go pull it out of the study,

17:26

but keep in mind, they're writing a

17:28

whole book about how students

17:30

are increasingly rejecting the ideals of,

17:33

like, the free exchange of ideas. Right.

17:35

While the data that they are selectively using

17:38

shows that students actually overwhelmingly embrace

17:41

those ideas,

17:42

and they're not giving you any comparison to other

17:44

societal groups. Right? If this is something

17:45

-- Mhmm. -- about elite liberal colleges, then

17:48

you should compare it to other colleges. If this is something

17:50

about how colleges are coddling students, then you

17:52

should compare that to noncollege educated

17:54

students. And you should probably also compare

17:56

that to older people. Like, how many boomers

17:58

think that it's important to be exposed to other

18:00

ideas? That's the problem with these books and

18:02

these articles as they always present you this data

18:04

in a vacuum. On to

18:06

untruth number two, Always

18:09

trust your feelings.

18:10

This is the yoda untruth. Once

18:13

again, I have to preface this by saying that no

18:15

one actually believes that you should always trust your

18:17

feelings. No one things. have never witnessed

18:19

a single person even

18:20

in, like, the depths of social media.

18:22

Oh, sincerely say that. Facts don't.

18:24

Trust my feelings. Much of the chapter

18:27

centers around the supposed

18:29

epidemic of campus speakers

18:31

being disinvited. Based on their

18:33

controversial views. Love it.

18:36

They say that this is the product of students

18:38

acting emotionally and

18:40

they pose the rhetorical question Should

18:42

a student saying I am offended be

18:45

sufficient reason to cancel

18:47

a lecture?

18:47

This is such a funny example to use

18:49

for this because this is the opposite of Students

18:52

saying to trust their

18:52

feelings. This is students saying these ideas

18:55

are intellectually invalid. Yes.

18:57

But you only feel that they're invalid.

18:59

Yeah. You

19:02

feel based on your

19:04

review of the literature.

19:07

Right. On your reading, they're

19:09

sort of like operating out of this framework

19:11

that being offended is,

19:14

like, inherently irrational

19:16

or emotional. Right? Right. It's

19:19

reasonable to be offended by Nazis

19:21

--

19:21

Yeah. -- or by pedophilia or by someone who's

19:24

like killing puppies. One of the things that

19:26

changed my mind on this was I believe it was

19:28

a New Yorker article that actually interviewed

19:30

one of these oh so scary campus

19:33

activists who was protesting a speaker. And

19:35

what the protesters said was that a lot of these speakers

19:37

are invited to give commencement speeches

19:40

and other things that are mandatory for

19:42

students. Uh-huh. There's a huge difference

19:44

actually between just like a random person

19:46

comes to talk on a campus on like a Wednesday

19:48

night you can go or not

19:49

go. Versus to get your diploma,

19:52

you have to actually sit through a speech by I think it

19:54

was

19:54

Mondelez a Rice that they were protesting. And,

19:56

like, when college campuses

19:59

invite speakers to

20:00

talk. They are conferring some of their

20:02

prestige onto the speaker. If somebody says,

20:04

oh, I'm I'm regularly invited to give

20:06

talks at Harvard. That is some prestige

20:09

that that person is using. Right? And it's

20:11

actually quite reasonable

20:13

for members of this institution

20:16

to say, like, don't think that our prestige should

20:18

be shared with this person. This person does not deserve

20:20

it. Also, if you're just a

20:22

twenty two year old without access

20:24

to power, You only have so many opportunities

20:26

in your life to scream at Condoleezza Rice,

20:29

and I think you gotta take it. I've

20:31

sent you a chart from the book that

20:33

shows

20:34

disinvitation attempts by

20:37

year.

20:37

Oh, fuck off.

20:40

I know this shirt. I know this shirt very well.

20:42

I love this chart. God. Tell me what you're

20:44

seeing. Tell me what you're seeing. So okay. This

20:47

is a chart that tracks

20:49

this invitation attempts pioneer

20:53

and source of criticism over

20:55

time. So it starts in

20:57

two thousand and it goes to twenty seventeen.

21:01

And starting in two thousand eight, you can see

21:03

the lines diverge where

21:05

the left wing disinvitation attempts

21:08

start spiking, and the right wing disinvitation

21:11

attempts stay flat. So

21:13

what I'm supposed to be learning at a

21:15

glance from this chart Is

21:17

it

21:17

like, wow. The left the left has

21:19

really gone off the rails. Look at all

21:22

these disinvitations. Well, so The

21:24

bottom line is that in twenty

21:27

sixteen, there were forty

21:29

two attempted disinvitations. So

21:32

if you look at the numbers, that has approximately

21:35

doubled in the span of a

21:37

few years. On the other

21:39

hand, these numbers are

21:42

unbelievably insignificant.

21:44

It's like you think that the left hand

21:46

axis is some sort of truncation.

21:49

Like, it means, like, forty two thousand. Right.

21:51

It's forty two hundred or something. It's like,

21:53

no. It's it's fucking forty

21:55

two. Right. Forty two disinvitation

21:58

attempts. That's right. Right. Who

22:01

fucking cares? There are in

22:03

excess of four thousand five

22:05

hundred degree granting institutions

22:07

of higher education in the United States,

22:10

If each of them hosted twenty speakers

22:12

a year, which is an extremely low

22:14

estimate, that would mean that

22:17

for every twenty one hundred

22:19

or so speaker invitations, you're

22:21

getting one attempt -- Right.

22:23

-- to just invite a speaker. Right. That's

22:25

twenty speakers per college per year.

22:27

Yeah. If it's a hundred, then we're talking

22:29

about less than one in ten

22:32

thousand.

22:32

Right. These are unbelievably

22:35

minuscule numbers. This is this is one

22:38

of the weirdest things about the the quote unquote

22:40

data in this book. Is it like if you

22:42

actually look at

22:43

it, it doesn't illustrate their point.

22:45

It illustrates exactly the opposite.

22:46

Yeah. If there's tens of thousands of speakers

22:49

being invited to campus every year, A lot of those

22:51

people probably are really controversial, and a

22:53

lot of them probably just give their

22:54

talks. And everybody goes

22:56

home and like maybe there's tenths

22:59

Q and A

22:59

-- Mhmm. -- the mismatch between

23:02

left wing disintermediations and right wing disintermediations,

23:04

the most obvious explanation

23:07

for that is that there is now a

23:09

huge media apparatus that exists

23:11

almost exclusively to

23:13

freak out about left wing disinvitation.

23:16

So of course, you're going to

23:18

have more reports of disinvitation

23:21

attempts because there's like hotlines and

23:22

shit. Not just that, but this

23:25

is a time in which this

23:27

sort of, oh, liberal college

23:30

kids are trying to cancel speakers, that

23:32

discourse picks up. What that

23:35

results in is conservative

23:37

student groups trying to

23:39

troll liberal students by

23:42

engaging with speakers who they know are going

23:44

to cause a shit to do.

23:46

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. By the

23:47

way, did you catch the last sentence

23:50

in a little paragraph describing the

23:53

the chart.

23:53

Oh, god. Asterisk show where the solid

23:56

line would have been had Milo

23:58

Yiannopoulos been removed from

24:00

the data set. This

24:02

life this data set is so small

24:05

that they had to control for myeloid

24:07

analysis. For

24:09

the protest against someone who's, like, genuinely

24:11

extremely odious and, like, deserves to be

24:13

protested.

24:14

So all of these things are, like, feeding into

24:17

one another.

24:17

Right. To

24:18

drive these numbers up, and you still

24:20

only get to forty two. It is

24:22

very funny to me how much time conservative

24:24

spend, whining about the marketplace

24:26

of ideas behaving like a

24:28

market. Did I ever tell you that I was disinvited from

24:31

speaking at a school because of your tweets?

24:33

Peter, I would disinvite the shit of the FBI or

24:35

tweets. No. The the five to four crew

24:37

was once invited by a student group

24:39

to speak at a law school. And I will at

24:41

the at the request of the student

24:44

who thought he would get into trouble, I will not

24:46

name the law school. We were invited, and

24:48

then the student came back in a panic saying,

24:50

I raise this to administration for approval.

24:52

And not only did they say no, but

24:55

I might be in trouble here for even suggesting

24:58

it.

24:58

Oh, wow. Okay. So this is, like, hard no.

25:00

Like, really no. So, you know,

25:02

just to sort of, like, circle back on some

25:05

recent developments in my life, disinvited

25:07

from

25:08

campus, fired from my job.

25:09

Yeah. And for speech related things.

25:12

Where is my fucking Tucker Carlson?

25:15

No. Two

25:15

minutes. Right? But then this to me, this is,

25:18

like, so revealing of the entire

25:20

thing is that no one actually cares

25:23

about people being disinvited from fucking

25:25

campus starts. No offense,

25:27

but, like, you have a podcast that goes to tens

25:29

of thousands of people. Your views are

25:31

widely accessible. Yeah. Like, this is

25:33

a minuscule component of

25:36

whether or not speech is free,

25:38

especially now at a time

25:40

when like anyone can set up a social media account.

25:42

Anyone can set up a medium account. Anyone

25:44

can self publish a book. Right. Speech

25:46

has never been freer in literally

25:49

human history. Right. So it's

25:51

like, I I care so much about

25:53

free speech. That I've I've made it my

25:55

entire career as these guys basically have,

25:58

but I also care so little about it,

26:00

that I only care about this extremely narrow

26:03

slice of quote unquote

26:05

censorship. Mhmm. They they've chosen

26:08

the one place that conservatives

26:10

can claim

26:11

oppression. I I just remembered

26:13

that was also once invited to speak at

26:15

a law school on the condition that we'd

26:17

not make fun of any professors. And

26:22

we had, like, no plans too, but we just said no

26:24

as a matter of

26:24

principle.

26:25

Yeah. I think that's fair. I think that's fair.

26:28

Alright. Let's Let's move on

26:30

to untruth number three.

26:32

Life is battle between good people and

26:34

evil

26:35

people. Something

26:35

you hear all the time. That's something I learned at a drag

26:37

brunch. This one is about what

26:40

Hyatt and Lukian off say is students tendancy

26:42

to place people in one of

26:44

two categories either good or evil

26:46

and then act accordingly. And

26:49

that is sort of their

26:51

framework for a discussion of

26:53

identity

26:54

politics.

26:54

The kids are too into their groups. This is one

26:57

of the weakest parts of

26:59

the book. It lacks both anecdotes

27:01

and data, and they say

27:03

that there are two types of identity politics.

27:06

Shared humanity identity politics,

27:09

which appeal to shared morality

27:11

and use unifying language. And

27:13

were embraced by Martin Luther

27:15

King Junior. Okay.

27:18

And common enemy identity

27:20

politics, which involve mobilizing

27:23

one group against another and

27:25

were embraced by Adolf Hitler.

27:29

Again, this chapter is a critic of

27:31

films who supposedly act like

27:33

everyone is either good or evil.

27:36

And the authors are like, okay. So you have

27:38

two types of identity politics. The Martin

27:40

Luther King Junior kind and the Hitler

27:43

kind. There's two

27:45

kinds of nineteen year olds. The

27:48

two genders, Martin Luther King Junior

27:51

and Hitler. Like, do we really need

27:53

to invent cute subcategories of

27:55

identity politics to distinguish between MLK

27:58

and Hitler -- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. -- isn't the operative

28:00

distinction that one was

28:02

against oppression on the basis of

28:04

identity and one was for it.

28:06

Isn't this also the

28:08

argument against social change throughout

28:11

history? Was it like you're doing it wrong?

28:13

Right. I would be fine with this. If

28:15

you ask me, oh my god, it's John Grey.

28:18

It's

28:18

like, if you ask me, could you

28:20

not be racist? You

28:23

not be racist. But, like, that

28:25

is not how social progress works at,

28:27

like, any point in history. It's hard

28:29

to parse this and engage with

28:31

it seriously because, like, you're you're pointing out that it's

28:33

it's unserious. Right? Right. Now there are parts

28:35

of this chapter that I think are, like, relatively

28:37

inoffensive. They talk about the dangers

28:40

of group think and tribalism.

28:43

And how mentally categorizing someone as member

28:45

of the out group can lead to unfairly

28:47

characterizing their actions and their

28:50

intentions. But what they do

28:52

not do is provide any

28:54

data or research showing that this

28:56

is like a demonstrable problem among

28:58

college students in particular. Right. You know,

29:00

obviously, like tribal thinking pretty

29:02

prevalent across society. So

29:05

given the thesis of the book, the

29:07

obvious question is whether the younger

29:09

generation is more susceptible to this

29:11

stuff, they don't even try to

29:13

address that. It's also very funny to criticize

29:15

nineteen year olds for being too fragile and

29:18

then immediately be like, when

29:20

you call me racist, you're being like Hitler.

29:22

You guys are totally Hitler

29:24

right

29:24

now. The last thing I wanna add in this section

29:27

is that, like, a lot of what

29:30

they are ascribing to, like,

29:32

a new desire

29:34

among young people to

29:37

punish their opponents

29:39

frankly, I don't see a lot of evidence that

29:41

it's not basically one hundred percent

29:43

social media.

29:44

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A, the ability of some

29:47

college kid to like cause a

29:49

ruckus on campus is now

29:51

way higher than it was

29:53

when I was in college. Yeah. B,

29:56

someone who is on the right

29:58

is being constantly exposed

30:01

to the excesses of the left because

30:03

social media accounts are

30:06

taking that

30:06

content, filtering it, boiling it

30:08

down, and throwing it at their face.

30:10

Peter imagine if there was social media when

30:12

we were in college. One thing that I think the younger

30:14

generation doesn't understand is how often

30:16

our generation talks about

30:19

how glad they are that social media

30:21

didn't exist when we were

30:22

young. No shit, dude. Oh my god. This

30:24

is something I think about all the time.

30:27

My my libertarian phase

30:29

has been lost to history.

30:32

I when you said your libertarian phase, I

30:34

like flash back to Like,

30:36

one month in law school.

30:38

Yeah. And then you met other Libertarians. That's

30:40

basically what happened to me. Right. It's like a liquid.

30:42

Wow. Wow.

30:43

It's it's Phoebelia. Oh, inter

30:45

staying. See the You know

30:47

what? Like, when you first are exposed to

30:49

libertarianism Coddling from a left

30:52

ish perspective, you're

30:53

like, maybe I can do libertarianism

30:56

without the racism.

30:57

Mhmm. And

30:58

then you, like, absorb the literature a bit

31:00

and you're, like, No. You're

31:01

like, no. That's their whole thing. That's actually

31:03

You actually can't. That's they're coming at

31:05

this from the other direction there. They're

31:08

only trying to do the racism. Maybe

31:12

that's a good segue into the next portion

31:14

of this book. The first section

31:16

again was sort of the untruths And

31:18

this is this next section is the bad ideas

31:21

in action, the the untruths in action,

31:23

and they lead off with

31:25

intimidation and violence. Oh. In some

31:28

ways, not the most objectionable part of the book, but

31:30

there are some pretty dark

31:32

sides to this chapter. They

31:34

drive a series of violent or

31:36

semi violent reactions to campus

31:38

speakers all occurring in twenty

31:41

seventeen. They talk about the UC

31:43

Berkeley protests related

31:46

to myeloid anomalous, which started

31:48

off with a group of peaceful

31:50

protesters and then devolved when

31:52

a smaller group of mostly non

31:54

students turned violence. There's

31:57

only anecdotal evidence that any of those people

31:59

were students and the

32:01

authors sort of harp on that anecdotal evidence,

32:03

which mostly consists of some tweets. They

32:06

describe the Middlebury College protest

32:08

of Charles Murray the bell

32:10

curve author -- Mhmm. -- and Professor

32:13

Alison Stenger, who was there

32:15

to moderate. That occurred in

32:18

March twenty seventeen. There were

32:20

bunch of students that showed up to disrupt the

32:22

speech. When Murray

32:24

and Stenger left, they were accosted by

32:26

activists her hair was aggressively

32:29

pulled and the car that they were

32:31

in that was pounded on until officials cleared

32:33

a path for them to leave. I don't wanna

32:36

downplay these incidents -- Yeah. -- but it

32:38

is worth noting that in both cases,

32:40

the evidence shows the violence was driven by outside

32:42

groups, organized anti fascists, activists,

32:45

not students themselves. So

32:47

these the authors attempt to

32:50

characterize the violence as, like, reflective

32:52

of student ideology does

32:55

not feel honest. Right. They also talk

32:57

about Heather McDonald, an anti black lives

32:59

matter writer who spoke at Claremont McKenna

33:01

College in April of twenty seventeen, In

33:04

that one, protesters attempted to shut

33:06

it down. From what I could tell, no actual violence

33:08

occurred. So maybe they were

33:11

running low on spicy anecdotes here.

33:14

And then they get to Charlottesville.

33:16

Oh, what? So in August, twenty

33:19

seventeen, Unite the right rally

33:21

in Charlottesville attracts bunch of neo Nazis

33:23

and other alt right types. Right? There's

33:26

peaceful protests of the rally

33:28

and there are also outbursts of violence,

33:31

most notably. A right winger

33:33

drove his car into a crowd of peaceful

33:35

left wing protesters killing a woman

33:38

named Heather Hire. They

33:40

do condemn the violence that killed

33:42

Heather Hire. But what's very telling

33:44

is that the authors do not use this as an example

33:46

of the rights intolerance towards

33:49

alternate viewpoints and peaceful protests.

33:51

Instead, they quickly pivot

33:54

to saying that the left used Charlottesville

33:56

as an excuse to shut down speech

33:59

from the right. Can they extend the rest of

34:01

the chapter talking about that? Oh, my

34:03

fucking god. You have this, like, entire

34:05

book committed to the idea that these that Liberals

34:07

especially are engaged in an

34:09

unprecedented level of Sensorious

34:12

conduct on campus, and then they glaze

34:14

right over the fact that in all

34:16

of the modern campus culture

34:18

wars, the only person to be killed

34:20

was a peaceful left wing protester.

34:23

Right. I

34:23

thought that this was like the moral low point

34:25

of the book.

34:26

This is the thing with these kinds of books

34:28

is that, like, they want to cast one

34:31

kind of random anecdote as

34:33

indicative of a larger culture and

34:35

another kind of anecdote as just like a

34:37

random lone wolf event with

34:40

no further

34:40

significance. But, like, they're doing it exactly

34:43

wrong because if you look at the

34:45

incidents where left wing protesters went

34:47

too far, those incidents are almost

34:50

unanimously denounced by the

34:52

left. Right. Right? You have presidents

34:54

of universities. You have Heads of Student

34:56

Union saying, hey, don't send death threats

34:58

to this person. Don't throw bottles at this

35:00

person. Like, we condemn what

35:02

happened. Right? And then when you have these

35:04

outburst of right wing violence, you have them

35:06

celebrated by right wing

35:08

leaders.

35:09

Right? Like Kyle Rittenhouse is a fucking celebrity

35:11

on the right. Mhmm. Trump

35:13

RATHER FAMOUSLY DID

35:14

NOT PARTICULARLY DENENTS WHAT HAPPENED

35:16

TO HEATHER HAIR. RIGHT, SO THAT'S THAT

35:18

THE TRUMP COMMENTS THEY EVEN MENTIONED CRITICALLY.

35:21

This is when Trump famously said they were very

35:23

fine people on both sides. So the

35:25

authors talk about that briefly without acknowledging

35:27

that what they're saying. Is

35:29

that from the very top of the

35:31

Conservative political establishment is

35:34

implicit endorsement

35:35

of this violence You have absolutely

35:38

nothing like that on the left. Nothing.

35:39

They just have no argument that this

35:42

represents any kind of culture. They met

35:44

mention a report from fire,

35:46

the organization that Lukianoff works

35:48

for. Strike. They gloss right over this

35:50

and try to hand wave it away, but

35:52

very few students report that they might actually

35:54

participate in in violent actions

35:57

like this, two percent said that

35:59

they would be willing to disrupt a

36:01

guest speaker event by making noise during

36:03

the event. One percent said they'd be willing

36:05

to use violent action to disrupt it. Right. It's

36:07

like, whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Like, what

36:09

you're saying is that there's like a violence problem

36:12

and one percent of

36:14

people are willing to engage even

36:16

theoretically

36:17

in violence. Right. This is such a classic

36:19

pattern of the other articles about this

36:21

that I've read, where they cite this overwhelming

36:25

culture of violence that has, like,

36:27

taken over the left and, you know, they're about to

36:29

install authoritarianism and all slippery slope

36:31

stuff. And then Once you

36:33

boil it down, what we've basically

36:35

got here is two anecdotes

36:38

in which people who are not college

36:40

students behaved in an indefensible

36:42

way. Yeah. One anecdote

36:45

where violence almost happened, another

36:48

anecdote of right wing violence that

36:50

is far more severe than anything

36:52

a left wing people did. Right. And

36:54

a public opinion poll that shows

36:56

one percent of college students

36:59

say that they're okay with violence. Right.

37:02

Which brings us to the next section,

37:04

the next chapter titled witch hunts. And

37:07

they cite the sociologist Albert

37:09

Bergerson as saying that witch hunts have

37:12

three different characteristics. One,

37:14

they arise quickly and dramatically two,

37:17

they charge the target with crimes

37:19

against the collective and three,

37:21

the charges are often trivial or

37:24

fabricated. I guess it never quite hit

37:26

them this book and the broader reaction against

37:28

campus culture kind of fits this description

37:30

pretty

37:30

nicely.

37:31

At earlier, which one? Yep. Yeah. Going

37:33

after nineteen year olds with blue hair, but -- Yeah. -- fine.

37:35

They kick it off by comparing atrocities

37:38

in mouse, China. To modern day

37:40

campus culture

37:41

worship.

37:42

Oh, fuck off. This is a quote.

37:44

As historical events, the two movements

37:47

are radically different Most notably

37:49

in that the red guards were responding to

37:51

the call of a totalitarian dictator who

37:53

encouraged them to use violence -- Right. -- while the

37:55

American college students have been selforganized

37:58

and almost entirely nonviolent. Yep.

38:01

There are similarities too. For

38:03

instance, both were movements initiated

38:05

by idealistic young college students

38:08

fighting for what seemed to be a

38:10

noble

38:10

ideal. The fact that one of them

38:12

was top down and like killed

38:14

hella people and the other one is bottom

38:17

up and didn't do

38:18

anything. Yeah. There are some differences. One

38:20

one is a massive totalitarian

38:23

nation

38:24

state. Right. And the other is a small

38:26

group of nonviolent student activists

38:29

This is like me comparing you to Ted Bundy,

38:31

and being like, well, Peter didn't kill anybody,

38:34

and Ted Bundy

38:34

did. But there are similarities

38:37

Look, I have brown hair too. I get it.

38:39

I get the comparison. It's time

38:42

for little case study. As I've mentioned,

38:44

nearly the entire book. A collection

38:46

of anecdotes, many characterized

38:49

in ways that feel flagrantly dishonest.

38:51

Mhmm. One of those is about University

38:53

of Pennsylvania law school professor Amy

38:56

Wax. Mhmm. I thought it would be

38:58

worth exploring this one because

39:00

I happen to know a good amount about the controversy.

39:03

And part of that is because

39:05

I took a class with Amy Wrex when I was

39:07

in law school at the University of Pennsylvania. No way,

39:09

really? I do consider my self a bit of a

39:12

subject matter expert on this fucking lady.

39:14

So in August twenty seventeen,

39:17

wax and another law professor wrote an opinion

39:19

piece for the Philadelphia Enquirer titled

39:22

Paying The Price for the breakdown of

39:24

the country's bourgeois culture. Oh,

39:27

yeah. The piece argued that many

39:29

modern social problems could be traced

39:32

to the decline of bourgeois values

39:34

such as hard work, and getting

39:36

married before having kids. The

39:39

most controversial line was

39:41

all cultures are not

39:42

equal. Or at least they are not equal in

39:44

preparing people to be productive in an advanced

39:46

economy.

39:48

Oh. She claimed that this was about culture

39:50

and not race, but many people. Read it as

39:52

a pretty clear racist dog whistle.

39:55

The story that Hyatt and Luciano Tell is

39:57

at the next week, a collection of students,

39:59

alumni and Penn Law faculty, condem

40:02

the peace. They characterized this as

40:04

witch hunt and argue that

40:06

none of these people addressed the

40:08

substance of waxes claims.

40:10

But what they inexplicably leave

40:13

out is that almost immediately after

40:15

the op ed was published, wax did

40:17

an interview with the Daily Pennsylvania. The

40:21

Penn student newspaper where

40:24

she touted the superiority of

40:26

Anglo Protestant culture and said

40:29

quote, I don't shrink

40:31

from the word superior and

40:33

everyone wants to go to countries ruled

40:35

by white Europeans. Whoa.

40:38

Holy shit. So the dog

40:40

whistle is just like a whistle. Yeah. Hyatt

40:42

and Lukian off leave this out of the book. I

40:44

presume to make it look like waxes

40:46

colleagues were maybe unfairly assuming

40:49

that her statements were racist when in

40:51

fact she was openly endorsing the idea

40:53

that white European culture is

40:55

superior. All

40:56

she did was say that one race

40:58

was superior to another and these

41:00

kids. Is that what racism is

41:03

these days, folks? They also

41:05

left out some controversial portions of the original

41:07

essay, like she claims that the birth control

41:09

pill has contributed to social decline. Okay.

41:12

You

41:12

know, they they omit that presumably so

41:14

that the reader does not have to do double

41:17

take --

41:17

Right. --

41:18

and think a little bit about who they're defending.

41:20

A good sign when you're drawing

41:22

attention to a real societal problem is when

41:24

you have to constantly lie to

41:26

get people work out about it.

41:27

Their claim that no one Substantively

41:30

addressed her arguments is also

41:32

just an outright lie. Several

41:34

of her Penlaw colleagues provided detailed

41:36

rebuttals to her statements about, like, the

41:38

measurable impact of cultural values,

41:41

which height knows because one

41:43

of them, professor general Galbach, engaged

41:46

height in a blog debate on the subject

41:48

shortly after it happens. Oh, wow. They even

41:50

quietly drop a citation to

41:53

his rebuttal at the end of

41:55

the very sentence that claims waxes'

41:57

colleagues never rebutted the substance of her claims.

42:00

Transparently dishonest. As

42:03

someone who was very familiar with this whole

42:05

situation, I was like, no fucking way.

42:07

So

42:07

were you one of campus activists at the

42:09

time, Peter? No. No. When

42:11

I was at Penn,

42:14

racism was allowed and okay.

42:17

Okay. I will say this

42:19

about Amy Wax at the end.

42:21

First, she is one of those nightmare

42:24

professors that everyone fears because she

42:26

genuinely revels in making students

42:28

uncomfortable. Oh, god. If a student was

42:30

doing poorly during

42:32

like a line of questioning from her, she

42:34

would be far more likely to stick

42:37

with that student. Most professors

42:39

move on because they want

42:41

productive

42:42

discussion.

42:42

Human dignity. If she got the sense that someone was

42:44

out of their depth, she would just hammer them

42:47

continuously. She loved it. God. At the

42:49

time, although unbeknownst to administration.

42:52

She was engaging in debates

42:55

on a couple of blogs about

42:58

Race. Yeah. You know, she was having these

43:00

really weird conversations that basically

43:03

were about how she believed that

43:05

black students in her classes and

43:08

in her children's classes when they were growing

43:10

up tended to be more disruptive, lower

43:12

performers, etcetera. As

43:14

this this whole sort of debacle

43:16

unfolded in twenty seventeen, she

43:19

made the claim that no

43:21

black student has ever finished in the top of her class

43:23

and that she was unfamiliar with any

43:25

black student at Penn finishing

43:28

in the top twenty five percent of the

43:29

class, something like that. And, like, the

43:32

Dean immediately put out a statement being, like,

43:34

that's just not true.

43:35

That's just

43:35

that's just not true. It is very funny

43:38

to me in these books. About

43:40

the campus kids are

43:42

so terrible, whatever. All of

43:44

the anecdotes are basically like this

43:46

this person who is famously a piece of

43:48

shit experienced

43:50

consequences. First, they

43:52

came for the pieces of shit. When I first

43:54

read that, like, she was embroiled in controversy,

43:57

It just felt so affirming. I

43:59

was like, you mean the fucking worst person

44:01

I've ever met? Alright.

44:06

Case study number two.

44:09

Evergreen state college. Oh,

44:11

fuck off. This this is close

44:13

to home for me. I know many people

44:15

who went to Evergreen, and I'm vaguely familiar

44:18

with this. Isn't this the like, it was

44:20

like a white day of silence

44:22

Yes. Something something. Alright.

44:25

So small progressive college in Washington

44:27

state. Students don't receive grades.

44:30

But instead, narrative evaluations

44:33

of their work, they don't have majors, but

44:35

design their own course of

44:37

study. This has become like such a trope

44:39

on the right like this. They love shitting

44:42

on this college. And like every

44:44

time I wanted to defend

44:45

it, I do remember the person who

44:47

I know who majored in outdoor rec

44:49

creation. I

44:52

was like, oh, okay.

44:53

Well, look, that that is a bullshit major,

44:56

but I majored in political science.

44:58

So are are they

45:00

out of control? Perhaps. But

45:02

are majors real No. You can't

45:04

you can't tell me that majors are real. There

45:07

is an annual evergreen state college tradition

45:09

called The Day ofabsence, where

45:11

students of Color would stay off campus

45:14

to raise awareness about

45:16

their contributions to campus life.

45:19

In twenty seventeen, it was proposed

45:21

that the tradition be inverted and

45:23

white students and faculty be asked

45:26

to remain away from campus. A

45:28

reportedly well respected and

45:30

progressive at the time, professor, Brett

45:33

Weinstein, partially criticises

45:36

this idea. He speaks out and says that

45:38

there's a difference between students of color,

45:40

voluntarily removing themselves, and

45:42

then asking another group to go away,

45:45

which he describes as quote, a

45:47

show of force and an act

45:49

of oppression in and of itself.

45:52

Now, according to Hyatt and Luciana, the

45:54

day of that absence comes and goes without

45:57

incident, but a couple months later,

45:59

Students protest outside of Professor

46:01

Weinstein's classroom, many shouting

46:04

him down and calling him racist. They

46:06

then march on the administrative buildings

46:09

and confront the university president and

46:11

some others. The confrontation is

46:13

is aggressive. There's video of it. The

46:15

students are being pretty hostile toward the president,

46:18

making weird demands like that

46:20

he not use his hands while speaking.

46:22

Right. Students are purposefully blocking

46:24

off the exits so faculty can't leave.

46:27

Professor Weinstein goes on Tucker

46:29

Carlson. He goes with his concerns. And

46:32

things escalate. Right wing media

46:34

goes ballistic. Conservative groups

46:36

are coming to the college to

46:38

protest. Tensions exploding.

46:40

All around. I love how in these stories, like

46:42

the structure of these stories is like he was accused

46:45

of being racist in a later

46:47

op ed for stormfront.

46:49

Now if if you listen to that story closely and

46:51

that's the story that the authors here tell, you

46:54

might have noticed a slightly weird little fact.

46:56

I said they were two months between

46:59

the initial comments he made and the

47:01

student protest. That is not

47:03

how angry mobs tend to

47:05

work. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what happened

47:07

here What happened is

47:10

that his comments were made in March,

47:12

and there were no protests or anything like

47:14

that. But in May, There was a

47:16

cafeteria altercation that involved two

47:18

black students and a white student. The

47:20

two black students were removed from

47:22

their dorms and detained by police

47:25

in the middle of the night. While the white

47:27

student was not. A group

47:29

of students marched through the halls in protest,

47:32

Weinstein exited his classroom

47:34

to confront them. Contentious exchange

47:37

ensues, the students then proceeded

47:39

to march to confront the school president,

47:41

as I described. So Hyatt

47:44

and Luciana are narrating a story

47:46

where these students are angrily protesting

47:49

Weinstein's comments. That's the

47:51

whole point they're making. Right? That these statements are

47:53

responding to mere disagreement

47:56

with aggressive protests. But

47:58

that is just not true. What they're

48:00

protesting is what they believed

48:02

to be the mistreatment of black students

48:04

by police and campus administration.

48:07

Right. Sort of circling back, this

48:09

book is about ideas

48:11

and how students are so coddled

48:14

that they can't even tolerate different ideas.

48:17

But when those ideas are

48:19

directly wrapped up in material

48:21

differential treatment, Right. Are students

48:23

not allowed to protest that? Are they not allowed

48:25

to say, hey, I think that's racist? Right.

48:28

What are you saying these students are doing

48:30

wrong here? Right. I don't know how you can see

48:32

it any other way other than Hainlukianoff

48:34

are saying that there were certain opinions

48:37

that students should not be able to voice. Freely.

48:40

Right. Right. That's all that's all there is to

48:42

their position. Didn't Weinstein, like, get

48:44

did he get fired or something there was some, like,

48:46

loss suit eventually. Right? He became like as

48:48

huge

48:48

murderer. He and his wife, he

48:51

was also professor there, sued, and

48:54

they settled and

48:55

resigned.

48:56

Again, they get a big payout. It's like, what what's the

48:58

actual fucking, like, downside here? Right.

49:00

Nothing if you're if you're a conservative or

49:03

a quote unquote, progressive, making

49:05

a conservative turn, the absolute

49:07

best thing that can happen to you is to become

49:10

embroiled in a campus

49:11

controversy, like serious. Dollar

49:13

signs in your eyes as soon as it starts to

49:15

happen.

49:15

Yeah. Book deal, podcast.

49:18

Yeah. Alright. The next section of the book

49:20

is about the social

49:22

and political circumstances that have brought

49:24

us to this point, and they start off with

49:26

political polarization actually think

49:29

their discussion on this is pretty unobjectionable other

49:31

than being derivative. What I do

49:33

want to talk about is one piece of the chapter

49:36

subtitled outrage from the off

49:38

campus right, which chronicles some

49:40

of the ways in which these stories about left

49:42

wing campus outrage get

49:44

fed into the right wing media ecosystem,

49:47

and then turn into right wing

49:49

outrage. Okay. So they returned to Evergreen

49:51

State College. Where the comments

49:54

by Brett Weinstein supposedly sparked

49:56

outrage. Again, he was on

49:58

Tucker. And there was backlash

50:01

from the right. But here is where they actually

50:03

describe some of that backlash. Swastikas

50:06

show up on campus Multiple students

50:08

are docked by right wingers online.

50:10

Their identities and contact information spread

50:13

across right wing social media. Hundreds

50:15

of threats of violence are received by students,

50:18

including by, like, text messages, by,

50:20

you know, like, literally dozens and dozens and

50:22

dozens of text messages by from random

50:24

numbers being received by individuals. The

50:27

neo Nazi group Adam Waffin division

50:30

posted video of themselves walking

50:32

around campus at night, putting up posters

50:35

that say, join your local Nazis

50:37

and black lives don't matter. Holy

50:39

shit. You might notice

50:42

that this is considerably

50:44

more severe than anything you've

50:47

heard about students from this

50:49

either this ordeal or

50:52

any other ordeal they described, but

50:54

it is tucked away within a subsection

50:57

of a single chapter in the middle of the book. Right.

50:59

Just bizarre and frustrating how much right wing

51:01

violence directed at left wing speech

51:03

is treated like a side plot here. Given

51:06

that, like, every time it's described,

51:09

it's far more serious than any of

51:11

the anecdotes about the conduct

51:13

of the

51:13

left. The right wing stuff seems like organized

51:16

and, like, kind of top down too. Like, this

51:18

would all be coming from Tucker and various other right

51:20

wing

51:20

websites. None of whom presumably are, like,

51:22

condemning this. After the fact. Right.

51:24

I mean, and they what they seem to

51:27

just categorize it as like, well, this is

51:29

not stemming from campus. So

51:31

it's not what our books about. I

51:33

guess in a total vacuum, that might make sense. They're

51:35

like, well, we're writing about campus culture. But

51:37

when they were just talking about how, like, these students

51:39

were mean to the university president and then it's

51:41

like, Nazis with masks

51:44

put up signs around campus and, like, you know,

51:46

spray painted swastikas and shit. Right. Are

51:48

you really just, like, pretending that

51:51

the first thing is worse than the second

51:53

thing? It's,

51:53

like, if they're just saying that, like, oh, it's in

51:55

a category. It's like, well, then you should have

51:57

written about that fucking category. Yeah.

51:59

Absolutely. And, yeah, maybe now is

52:01

a good time to sort of question the overarching

52:04

narrative here. And in the campus

52:06

culture debates generally, which is that the left

52:08

in particular is trying to suppress

52:10

speech that it does not like on campus. Jeffrey

52:13

Sachs, a political scientist tracked instances

52:15

of professors in the US being fired

52:18

due to political speech. From twenty

52:20

fifteen through twenty seventeen and

52:23

found that more professors were fired for

52:25

liberal speech than conservative speech

52:27

by a factor of about three to

52:29

one.

52:30

Holy shit. Now I will float out

52:32

the possibility that there are just more liberal professors.

52:35

Yeah. It might be that that's not in and of

52:37

itself indicative of like a three to one bias.

52:39

Right? Right. But the media watchdog fairness

52:41

and accuracy in reporting fair

52:44

found that the New York Times dedicated

52:47

seven times as much space to stories

52:49

about the suppression of conservative speech

52:51

when compared to stories about the suppression

52:53

of liberal speech. So

52:55

the next few chapters of the book and we're sort

52:57

of we're we're rounding the bend

52:59

here. Describe an increase

53:02

in depression and anxiety among young people.

53:04

As well as the increase in

53:06

recent decades of overprotective parenting

53:09

styles and the decline in

53:11

unsupervised

53:12

play by children

53:13

I'm gonna have to agree with them on that, aren't

53:15

I? Oh, that bugs me. Yes. I this is

53:18

this section was sort of often interesting.

53:20

A little more directly in Heights Lane in terms

53:22

of his expertise. Right. Now, obviously, they

53:25

are trying to create a link in your mind between

53:27

these phenomena, which are pretty demonstrably

53:29

real and supported by data and the phenomenon

53:32

that they're describing on campuses, which are

53:34

not. But I did feel

53:36

like I was learning something for the first time

53:38

in the

53:38

book? I mean, I feel like the the percentage

53:41

of kids who walk or bike to school has gone

53:43

from roughly fifty percent to roughly ten

53:45

percent in the last fifty years. And like, I think

53:47

that's a genuine, like, American tragedy. Yeah.

53:50

But then there's no real, like, generational argument

53:52

to make because that has much more to do with, like,

53:55

suburbanization, the design

53:57

of roads, The way that policing

53:59

has become, like, much more aggressive on

54:02

unaccompanied minors. Like, there's

54:04

sort of specific things there and you

54:06

can't just

54:06

be, like, this generation's two Yeah.

54:09

It's very useful to them to have some to

54:11

be able to point to something for which there is

54:13

actual data where, like, you can you

54:15

can say, well, look, this is an actual

54:17

phenomenon and so maybe it's related to

54:19

what's happening on campuses. They

54:21

need something that's a

54:23

little more legitimate in the scientific

54:26

community to hang their head on here. Right.

54:28

Also, some of these chapters are just sort of, like, miscellaneous

54:31

complaints that they they couldn't fit into other

54:33

parts. Of the book? Like, they complain about title

54:35

nine gender equity requirements from the nineties

54:37

for a bit. Sure. Are we just airing out

54:40

whatever creative this is about social justice initiatives?

54:42

That we haven't touched on before. Yeah.

54:45

The last section of the book is called

54:47

wising up, and it's about the things

54:49

that we can do at the individual

54:52

and societal level to address the

54:54

pressing issues that they have raised throughout

54:56

the book. Am I supposed to just say slurs

54:58

to, like, seventeen girls that I see on the street?

55:00

Like, it's like peanuts kids just eat some

55:02

peanuts.

55:05

They list out six principles for

55:07

raising wiser children. Half of

55:09

which are practical little tips and half

55:11

of which are bizarrely abstract

55:14

conceptual principles. Okay. One

55:16

is limit and refine

55:18

device time. Cool. I'm sure.

55:20

Another is the line dividing good

55:22

and evil cuts through the heart of every human

55:24

being.

55:32

I love it just like they've made up this fake

55:34

thing that kids can't appreciate nuance

55:36

anymore. And they're like, give your kids

55:38

nuance. Jesus Christ.

55:40

Oh, man. It's just very telling how half

55:42

baked the prescriptive argument

55:44

here is -- Right. -- the one thing that they

55:46

give as a prescription, although it's

55:49

vague, but I think I should address

55:51

it because it's the best faith argument they make.

55:54

Is that they think that administration is

55:56

sort of facilitating students to

55:58

do this or, like, allowing them and they

56:00

they basically want universities to put

56:02

their foot down. Which at least

56:05

makes sense in the context of their argument

56:07

in the context of their broader case

56:09

here. I don't think that they actually

56:11

lay out how that would work Because the only thing

56:13

administrators could do is things like banning

56:16

protests of speakers, which is

56:18

like far more worrying than the students protesting

56:20

speakers

56:20

themselves. What they do is they portray

56:23

universities as, like, limply

56:26

collapsing under the weight of

56:28

every student protest. Right? Like, students

56:30

may these outrageous demands and the university

56:33

immediately caved. And basically, they don't want

56:35

universities to cave to those demands. Right?

56:37

And then if you end up looking into it, the demands

56:39

were like, relatively reasonable stuff about,

56:42

you know, about like police presence

56:44

on campus, etcetera. Right? But I think

56:46

that's that's what they want. They want universities

56:48

to take a hard line. Whenever students make

56:50

an ask of the university, the

56:52

the university says, go fuck yourself. You you bunch

56:54

of fucking

56:55

hippies. This is like this is what's so weird

56:57

about the contradiction at

56:59

the heart of these arguments because it's like

57:01

you want all of

57:02

this, you know, free exchange of ideas but

57:04

you don't want anyone to act on it.

57:06

Yeah. What if you invite a speaker and

57:08

that speaker has like Holocaust

57:10

denial publications in their

57:13

past? You would actually change

57:15

your tech in in that case. Right? You've received

57:17

new information.

57:18

Right. But it's like to them, they they've

57:20

established disinvitations of campus

57:22

speakers as some sort of like fucking

57:24

front line of like American free

57:27

speech

57:28

inherently bad.

57:29

Right. But it's like sometimes that's appropriate.

57:31

You know, I I thought about what about like Sam

57:34

Bankman Freed? Or -- Right. --

57:36

Elizabeth Holmes. Right? Like, what happens

57:38

when they busted for fraud and you

57:40

have a pending invitation. Are

57:42

you supposed to hear them out? Right. The idea

57:44

that, like, discourse is just inherently

57:47

valuable in every situation.

57:50

It's obviously bullshit. No one believes

57:52

it, but it it's like the fundamental

57:54

principle that under that undergirded

57:57

a lot of their arguments, and they don't actually

57:59

ever really defend it. It's just something that, like -- Right.

58:01

-- you're supposed to believe in your heart. Right?

58:03

Oh, right. So free speech is the core

58:05

of our of a free society.

58:08

Right? Yeah. Big picture,

58:10

I feel like I was kinda disappointed in this book

58:12

because