Lawrence Krauss explains academia’s self-destructive obsession with diversity
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Summary
In this episode, Dr. Bruce Partey and Dr. Lawrence Krauss discuss the growing trend of diversity and merit-based hiring in academic settings, and why this is a bad thing. They discuss a recent article in Nature and Science Magazine celebrating the rise in diversity hiring, and the reasons why this might not be so bad after all.
Transcript
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That is one thing that I am happy to always talk about on the show, the national sovereignty
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discussion, because it's one that is never spoken about. No countries have ever existed for long
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when they don't protect their own security and their own sovereignty. And we have increasingly
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countries that are willing to abdicate that and individuals that don't seem to care about it.
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But I want to return to that aspect we were talking about with Corporate Canada and Corporate
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Canada abdicating its responsibility. One of the things you also see is the immersion of these
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companies in the DEI world. And this is something that we see even more than in Corporate Canada in
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academic settings. Academic institutions have dropped even the pretense that they hire based
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on merit with more positions that are earmarked, not even just preferential hiring for DEI applicants,
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but positions that are only available to applicants that check off some box of being a member of some
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so-called marginalized group. Now, interestingly enough, when we're talking about candidates,
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say, with PhDs, we're not talking about people who have been truly marginalized in their lives.
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We're talking about the academic elites, regardless of whether you're trans or cis or black or white or
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anything. Now, it was quite interesting. There was a piece in Nature, which used to be an esteemed
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journal published in the United States, a piece in Nature that was celebrating the rise of diversity
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hiring, which comes obviously at the expense of merit-based hiring. Why can we not just return to the
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basics, return to allowing merit to govern who were hiring, especially when, as was noted in a column in
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the National Post by Professor Lawrence Krauss? There wasn't really any defense of why these things are
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working, or if they were. Professor Krauss joins us now. It's good to talk to you, Professor. Thanks for coming on today.
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It's good to be back with you. It was nice to see Bruce Partey on earlier. He's actually, I'm editing a book and he's
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Oh, wonderful. Well, I look forward to seeing that when it comes out here. This is, I mean, Science Magazine has, of course,
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published some of the most, you know, rigorously vetted, peer-reviewed scientific research in the
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past, and now there's not even a pretense of scientific basis for this. Explain what they're
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passing off here as justification for DEI over merit. Yeah. First, we should correct. You earlier
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said nature. Sorry, science. But it's all right. Nature's not equally bad. We could have an...
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Yeah, fair enough. Nature and the ridiculous editorials that have appeared there.
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Well, Nature and Science, which are two of the preeminent science journals in the
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world, or have been, and I have to say I've published in both, they're both coming out
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and not talking about science. And in particular, you'd think a science journal, when they talked
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about whether some action took place, they first talked about what the empirical evidence
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would be to support the action and what the consequences of the action are. But they didn't
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do any of those things. It was just a remarkable statement that suddenly, and it was like celebrating
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this remarkable fact that this university in Denmark had announced a policy where for the first six
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months of every year, they would only hire women. And they announced that, guess what? The number of
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women increased. Isn't that amazing? And again, what's also equally amazing, there was no discussion
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in the article about merit or about qualifications, except to say two things, that many of the women
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who were headhunted, they went out and sought women. This is an engineering school. Let's make that
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clear. So it has a low proportion of women. One of the reasons was that women don't seem to want to go
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into engineering. But that is never, ever discussed in this kind of article. The assumption is that somehow
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they're being kept out. So the school went out and headhunted women. And the only statement that was made,
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which kind of almost humorous, was that a number of the women who were headhunted said they were amazed to be
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headhunted because they didn't think they were qualified for the job. And, and then the president of the of the
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university said, you know what, women are just like that, you know, and so we have to take that into account. And you know what,
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women are less likely to apply for a job if they don't have all the qualifications. But so we're
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really happy that they're coming in. And when you read that, you think, okay, so we really want to
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take people who don't have qualifications for the job. And, and that's a good thing. And it also is
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sexist, because it's just, I mean, it's assuming that, you know, there aren't men in the world who
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say, well, maybe I really aren't qualified for this, or I shouldn't do this. And, but, and, and,
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and ultimately, the final question, which is, you know, what were the qualifications? What were the, the, was the bar
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lowered for these people? And, and how, how pervasive this is in academia was really put home for me with a colleague of
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mine, who's a professor at USC in California, pointed out that a colleague of hers who's Dutch, said to her, well, there's no, there's no
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discrimination here. Because, you know, we're, we're not keeping men out, we're just creating
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position for women. And, and, and it's like, that you could say that, without realizing what you're
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saying, and being academic in an institution, it's kind of remarkable.
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Let's assume for a moment that male and female engineers are both equally good, that there's no
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distinction between the two. So in any group of 100 male engineers, 100 female engineers, let's say that
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there are the same number that are qualified and the same number that are unqualified. But let's now
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say that there are 10% of the engineers who are women, and 90% are men, which is not actually that
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far off. So if you're hiring 50% of the positions being women, that means you're necessarily elevating
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people who are unqualified. And they're not unqualified because they're women, they're unqualified
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because you're manipulating your talent pool in a way that you wouldn't if you were just hiring
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the aptitudes. I mean, this is not, I'm not a, I'm not an eminent physicist like yourself. I'm not
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a scientist. I get foggy with numbers, but I don't think I'm missing anything here, but these people
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who are longer educated than I am seem to be. Well, you're taking the numbers as indeed correct
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in general. I mean, you know, there can always be exceptions, but it is a problem when, and actually
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this has happened in Canada in a number of cases, both in the number of people in the cabinet of the,
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of the current prime minister, but also in, in, in what the Canadian government is doing regarding
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the most prestigious chairs in, in academia, the Canada research council of Canada research,
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Canada research chairs. Yeah. And, and they're requiring that to match the demographics of the
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background society. Exactly. And therefore requiring among other things that only women can be offered
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these positions. And the real question is, and in order to do the statistics properly for what you said,
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your presumption is perfectly reasonable. A priori, if you don't know any of the numbers,
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it's more reasonable to assume what you assumed than to assume the opposite, but better still is
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to look at the pool of applicants, the pool of people who are, who are applying. If, if 90% of the
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people who are applying for positions are male and you take 50% of the positions and give them to
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females say, then clearly, then clearly you're doing something wrong. I mean, if there's equal
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application, if they're equal pools, that's one thing, but you have to look at the pools of the
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applicants. And there's lots of studies that suggest, and every time people have tried to enforce these
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demographic rules and say engineering, that they find that, that generally they attract less, fewer women,
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even, even if you try and do these things, there are other fields like, by the way, education, which are 80 or 90%
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women in, in, at universities and, and, and, and, and, in, in, in colleges. And, but no one tries to turn
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it around the other way. So the point is that there are predilections. And in fact, there have been
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studies of, you know, there's some societies, you might say that are more egalitarian, like ones in,
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in, in, in, in Scandinavia. And interestingly enough, those which seem to have fewer barriers for women
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doing things have even a larger gap between, in, in certain STEM fields, like engineering than,
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in, than in, in, in, in the West. So there are many people, what reasons why people may not choose
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to go into a field and to say that, to assume it's always sexism or racism is clearly to make an
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assumption that you, you have an obligation to show, first of all. But secondly, you're, you're, you know,
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you're, you're ultimately doing a disservice to everyone. If you, because you're also suggesting
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that you're being patronizing to women, you're suggesting that they, they can't compete, first
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of all, you know, in an open playing field. And, and it's also arguing that there are only certain
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fields that you want to put women in, and there, and there are other fields, you don't care that
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there are no men in. The whole thing is patronizing women, discriminating against men, and anti-merit.
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There's, on the surface, it makes no sense. Now I'm a scientist, and I'm, I'm perfectly happy to be
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proved wrong by data and evidence, but there's no such data and evidence applied here, or it's in
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fact, every bit of evidence I've ever seen suggests the opposite. That first of all, these kind of
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brute force affirmative action techniques don't work in general to affect the field. They also stigmatize
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the, the people who, who do get the jobs, because, you know, if they get a job because it's a women
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only job, then they're, your presumption is that's why they got the job, not because of their
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qualifications. And the last thing is, you're generally not doing what, I mean, all these things
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are well-motivated to try and, you know, increase the opportunities for people. But what, especially
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people who are really marginalized, but what you're doing when you're hiring faculty is you're not dealing
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with people who are marginalized. You're dealing with the elites, generally. You're dealing with
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people who've gone to get a PhD at a reasonable university. They were, and so you're not, you're
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not digging into the people who are really, you know, the, I used to live in Cleveland,
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the people, the kids in the public schools there who don't have textbooks because the schools are
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run down. And, and, you know, those are the people you want to try and give a leg up to. You want
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to provide opportunities, but at the highest end of academia, you're generally not.
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The idea that a Harvard educated black woman is more marginalized than a, you know, a white
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working class guy from rural Ohio or something is just not at all.
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It's discriminatory and it's, it's exactly the right. I mean, you're, so it's doing none of the
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things that, these are all well-motivated in principle, but it's not doing what you want.
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And then it's ill, ill, ill brought about. And the, and, and the net consequence hurt, as far as I can
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see, generally hurts everyone. The people who get the jobs are stigmatized. People who don't get the
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jobs, the men who don't get the jobs are, are hurt. If you're hiring people who aren't qualified or as
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qualified, you're fine. Your merit is going down. So what's the, what's the, the upside except for
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virtue signaling. That's what this is all about.
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Do the proponents of this in your experience argue that diversity is just in and of itself,
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the goal diversity is an established as a first principle positive, and therefore a more diverse
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faculty is better. Or do they argue that diversity inherently increases something else that it makes
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The claim, the claim is that diversity improves quality. Now, look, I can understand, look,
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the statement is always made that, you know, if you're, if you're a, let's say a woman and all
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your professors are male, maybe you, you, you feel, you don't feel as attached to the field and it's
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nice to have a role model. I understand all of that argument.
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It's a bit more esoteric, but there's a logic to it. Yes.
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Yeah. Yeah. But the notion that diversity somehow increases, improves the field is,
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as far as I can see, without evidence. And, and the, and, and the whole point is that you,
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it's what we really want is equality of the opportunity. It's not equality of outcomes.
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And I'm, and I'm all in favor and I'm, you know, I, my politics have, I'm sure to the left of yours
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or have been, but, but I really do think that we really need to work to try and ensure, you know,
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a poor working class single mother or a single father has opportunities and, you know, they got
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bigger challenges, but, and, and so we want to try and provide equal equality of opportunity,
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but that's different than equality of outcome. And that's what this kind of ridiculous policy
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is all about. And again, in academia, which is the last possible place, you know, the faculty,
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if you're hiring faculty at university, you've already taken a very select hand, hand-picked
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subset of the population who've gone to get a degree, gone to get a PhD, many of them at,
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at first rate colleges, they've already, they're, if you like, I hate to use the word,
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but they're already privileged in that sense. And, and, and, and so you, I don't like anything
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that's sacred that you can't question. And the claim that diversity improves quality
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and, and diversity, meaning diversity of identity. If we label these people and give them identities,
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either being female or trans or, or indigenous or black or, or whatever, if you label them by that,
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that somehow having enough labels makes it better. It's, it's demeaning, I think, to people and, and,
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and, and, you know, you need to see data and that's, what's, what it's all about. I think it's,
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yeah. And I mean, I, I would use, I used to, you know, years ago when I had this conversation with
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someone, I said, well, if you're, you know, going in for surgery, do you want the most diverse
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operating room or do you want the best? Now I would hesitate to even ask that question because I'm
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terrified of what some people would answer. Yeah. And that's, and, and, you know, that's the real
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problem, which is one of the reasons actually I'm editing this book specifically at universities
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is that nothing, I'm, I'm well known as someone who's not particularly religious and quite the
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opposite. And one of the things that I don't like about sacredness is that you can't ask questions
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that nothing is sacred. Everything should be subject to question, especially in science.
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And what's scary is you can't ask the question. Even the question is, is a more diverse operating
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room better for patients? I mean, maybe it is, but you can't even ask the question or raise a doubt
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without expecting to be ostracized or sometimes removed. And, and that's scary because not only
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are these policies taking place, but if faculty oppose these policies, then they're subject to real
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problems at universities. So people, so I suspect that many of these universities, faculty roll their
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eyes and say, look, we just want to get on what we're doing. We want to stay below the radar.
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And if we speak out, we're going to be, it's, it's going to end up causing us grief. And I want
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to just do my own thing. And I just, you know, let them do what they want. And that's fine. And,
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and unfortunately that's the way it is. I've, you know, professor for 40 years, and that's generally
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Yeah. Just get by. Uh, professor Lawrence Kress, president of the Origins Project Foundation,
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also host of the Origins Podcast. Thank you so much for coming on, professor. Good to talk to you.
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It's been, it's been a pleasure. You take care. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.
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