00:05:56.420You have the President Tate herself running around crying about the chronic underfunding, according to her, of the CBC.
00:06:05.600Meanwhile, the CBC is getting more than a billion dollars from taxpayers every single year.
00:06:11.040In the last budget, you had Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland shovel another $42 million at the CBC.
00:06:17.800So in what world are they chronically underfunded, not the real world?
00:06:22.140But think about this for a second, folks.
00:06:25.140If your organization was so chronically underfunded, and if you had to lay off hundreds of employees, well, then in what world are you still handing out taxpayer-funded bonuses?
00:06:37.400Andrew, off the top of the show, you mentioned that the CBC dished out $15 million in taxpayer-funded bonuses last year.
00:06:44.840Well, these taxpayer-funded bonuses at the state broadcaster have cost taxpayers $114 million going back since 2015.
00:06:53.760And now we learn that quietly, the CBC has just approved more bonuses, a fresh batch of bonuses for about 1,200 staff, including the non-union staff, the managers and the executives.
00:07:09.160And of course, Andrew, while we don't know the dollar figure, we do know that it's going to be a big sum of money charged back to the taxpayer.
00:07:15.820yeah and look it's one thing if you are in a private sector company that you could say one
00:07:21.340year wow we had a really great year based on profit we were efficient and we brought in more
00:07:27.100revenue and we made money and therefore we can use that money to fund some bonuses that's the way
00:07:32.380it's supposed to work cbc's revenue is from the taxpayers so when cbc has a good year financially
00:07:38.940it's not because they ran it as a good business it means they built you and i really really well
00:07:43.980that year so i guess maybe they do want to reward themselves for that well and another thing about
00:07:48.780the private sector and bonuses there might be bonuses there's also pay cuts and job losses
00:07:55.580but where in the government are there pay cuts and job losses in the government there's bonuses
00:08:00.860pay raises extra bureaucrats but like don't hold your breath waiting for pay cuts and job losses
00:08:07.420they're almost non-existent in the federal government but you know what's even crazier
00:08:12.700about this whole story, right? Number one, the fact that they just rubber stamped about 1200
00:08:18.380additional bonuses after the CBSC has been absolutely grilled by members of parliament
00:08:25.080and the public for months. But get this, Andrew, in that annual review where we found these bonus
00:08:31.920figures, the CBC acknowledges that there are some people in the public who are upset that they're
00:08:38.100taking our money and giving out fat bonus checks to the fat CBC cats well you got a shout out is
00:08:44.160what you're saying yeah well guess what though you know they're also hiring a consulting firm
00:08:51.400okay to review the compensation including bonuses at the CBC is it McKinsey please tell me it's
00:08:58.000McKinsey well we don't know who the consulting firm is just yet we will find that out but listen
00:09:03.300to this folks okay not only are they taking more than a billion dollars from you every single year
00:09:07.800Not only are they turning around and giving your money out as bonus checks, but now they're going
00:09:12.220to waste your money hiring a consulting firm to review their own bonuses. They don't need
00:09:17.900to review the bonuses. They need to end the bonuses. Yeah, I would agree with that. And
00:09:24.740you know, when you go back to what you had said a few moments ago about the plight of the public
00:09:28.620sector, the so-called plight of the public sector, when we saw massive lockdown, shutdowns,
00:09:33.600an economic downturn during COVID, it was the public sector that was insulated from that. It
00:09:38.060was the public sector that kept their jobs, that had accommodations that have remained long after
00:09:42.520any pandemic restriction, when you want to talk about working from home and stuff like that.
00:09:47.200And, you know, CBC, well, they've had to, of course, make quote unquote tough decisions.
00:09:51.840They're not the ones you see in the headlines laying off massive swaths of the workforce like
00:09:56.240CTV, like Global, because they, again, are given this sweetheart deal from the government that
00:10:01.620makes them just totally insulated from the realities everyone else in this country has to
00:10:05.820deal with. That's a great point, Andrew. I mean, during COVID in the last couple of years up until
00:10:11.940now, we've really seen a tale of two Canadas, one full of economic pain for businesses that had to
00:10:18.940shut down, businesses that struggled for quite some time to get their employees back, but also
00:10:23.800just workers in the private sector who were sent to the ranks of the unemployed by the thousands.
00:10:28.520And not to mention the fact that now normal Canadians can barely afford hamburger meat or a jug of milk.
00:10:35.260But all while the private sector has struggled, those shielded behind the golden gates of government have truly been more than comfortable, right?
00:10:44.280So like the Trudeau government has handed out more than a million pay raises over the last four years or so.
00:10:50.900there's been hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funded bonuses sloshing around the
00:10:57.120federal departments and crown corporations, including the CBC is one of them. But let's
00:11:02.260not forget that the fact that the Trudeau government has also added tens of thousands
00:11:06.420of extra bureaucrats in recent years. Okay. So while taxpayers have been struggling,
00:11:11.980the feds have been handing out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses. They've handed
00:11:17.080out hundreds of thousands of pay raises. They've added tens of thousands of extra bureaucrats and
00:11:22.400we still can't get good services from the federal government. Well, do you think that it's going to
00:11:28.160be defunded? Let's go there. Let's give some optimism. Well, I sure hope so. And folks,
00:11:34.040if you want to defund the CBC, I mean, you can head over to the taxpayer army, the growing
00:11:38.760taxpayer army at taxpayer.com. We've got a great petition there for you to defund the CBC. And if
00:11:44.080you sign up, give us your email. We'll let you know when there's some good time to put pressure
00:11:48.180on the federal government to defund the CBC, just like it's great time to put some pressure
00:11:52.600to end these bonuses right now. All right, Franco Terrizano, always a pleasure, sir. Keep up the good
00:11:58.320work. Hey, thanks, Andrew. All right, let's turn from the media to the corporate world, the real
00:12:05.620corporate world, not like the fake CBC government funded corporate world. We've talked about this
00:12:10.260on the show in the past, the ESG scores, and we see companies that are doing what I think is
00:12:15.840incredibly irresponsible, which is sacrificing their fiduciary obligation to their shareholders
00:12:21.040to embrace the world of woke, to embrace all of these nonsensical goals, things that are in many
00:12:28.360cases very pie in the sky, in some cases are antithetical to what they're doing. And there
00:12:32.420was a fantastic piece in the National Post written by the always fantastic Bruce Barty, who is the
00:12:37.360executive director of Rights Probe and a law professor at Queen's University.
00:12:42.340Corporate Canada betrayed capitalism. Now it has been betrayed. Bruce, good to talk to you as
00:12:48.460always. Thanks for coming on today. Oh, great to see you, Andrew. Always nice to talk to you.
00:12:53.680So you touch on something. You tell a story in two acts here. So let's start with act one,
00:12:59.560which is corporate Canada betraying capitalism. Because I'm of the mind that if you're a company
00:13:05.300that wants to put something other than profit as your goal, you should have the right to do that.
00:13:10.120There have been companies that have for years embedded in their existence, some form of giving
00:13:15.940back. Maybe it's for every bracelet you buy, we clean up the ocean a bit. And that's a part of
00:13:20.900what you're buying into as a shareholder. What you're talking about here is something else
00:13:25.620entirely, which is companies that have shareholders that want them to turn a profit, people who have
00:13:29.920invested their pension funds or their savings in these companies and expect them to be profitable.
00:13:34.420and the companies decide no no no no we it's it's not actually making money that we're worried about
00:13:39.740right now it's all of these other things that shareholders never really bought into
00:13:43.540right exactly you know we think that big business and capitalism are synonymous but they are not
00:13:55.120if you look at what what big business in canada have been doing past few years essentially they
00:14:01.960have more or less turned their back on the ideas that you just mentioned. They've decided that
00:14:07.840their fortunes lie with the powers that be that are opposing capitalism. They've signed on to
00:14:15.540all kinds of anti-capitalist notions like ESG, like stakeholder capitalism. Let's just be clear
00:14:24.460about what this means. Stakeholder capitalism, which is part of the ESG, the environmental,
00:14:29.560social and governance model of of running a corporation stakeholder stakeholder capitalism
00:14:36.440means that the directors and officers of a corporation are going to run it so as to respond
00:14:43.080to the interests not of shareholders not of their company's bottom line not of profits
00:14:50.200but in the interest of a much broader vaguely defined set of ideas including people on the
00:14:56.920street environmental concerns generally as defined by anybody you like uh by by a whole set of
00:15:06.360interests that you can't nail down so in other words and by activists who hate the company they
00:15:12.280are now stakeholders well anybody who wants to let's put it this way yeah everybody who
00:15:18.120wants to identify as a stakeholder that's right that's right self-identify stakeholders but but
00:15:23.800The most important thing is that the officers and directors are giving themselves now a license
00:15:29.000to do basically whatever they want without being accountable to the bottom line and to
00:15:37.760the interest of the people who have invested in their companies.
00:15:41.920And this was kind of a deal, like not an explicit deal.
00:15:45.360They didn't go into a room and sit down at a table and say, right, here's the deal.
00:15:48.620But over time, corporate leaders have made this unexpressed deal that if they sign on to these kinds of ideas, then they can be on the team of the progressives who are changing the nature of the country into something else, into a not capitalist, not Western country.
00:16:06.660And if they do this, these corporate elites will be protected from whatever comes down the pike, because now they're on the other team.
00:16:15.540and we don't think of of of corporations this way we think corporations are opposed
00:16:21.480these are the counterweight to the state but that's not so at least not in Canada they are
00:16:29.560they are basically both on the same team because they are both engaged in the management of our
00:16:35.220economy big companies now like to think that they help the government manage the economy
00:16:40.600they're not free enterprisers. They're colluding with the state.
00:16:46.500Yeah, and it becomes crony capitalism to the nth degree. And one of the observations I've made
00:16:52.120when I've covered the World Economic Forum is that this idea that the big corporations are in
00:16:56.920the one world, one side, and the big government is in the other side is just so wildly inaccurate
00:17:01.680because you see this very malign alliance between the two oftentimes where government is outsourcing
00:17:07.960things to the private sector, but not in a way that is reminiscent of the free market,
00:17:12.220in a way that just makes these companies, you know, the fourth branch of the government,
00:17:15.960basically. And, you know, I wanted to then push this into the oil and gas context,
00:17:20.200which leads us to your second act, because oil and gas companies, which have been just reviled
00:17:25.820by activists in a way that's not quite as bad as big tobacco was, but getting there,
00:17:31.620many of them have gone along with this as well. And you're saying this has now proven to be to
00:17:36.260their detriment yeah and but this has been a peculiar thing for a long time right if you if
00:17:41.200you go to the website of any major oil company you will see things like net zero being endorsed
00:17:47.280or certainly the idea of you know climate change and anthropomorphic climate change in particular
00:17:52.300and the idea that canada has to act to prevent climate change they have they are on the climate
00:17:58.460change bandwagon even though they are the ones selling fossil fuels you think well how is that
00:18:04.920your interests wouldn't would don't you think that you ought to push back on this narrative
00:18:09.800if it's not true and it and by the way it's not true uh but no they they they decided that their
00:18:16.440interests um were better better protected by signing on to this idea than to try to reassist
00:18:25.240it and and they've been carrying on like that for for a good while and so you have this sort
00:18:30.200of cognitive dissonance like how could it be that a major oil company uh is is is the one
00:18:37.080pushing us all to think that its products are causing a huge problem but that's where they are
00:18:42.520and now and now they get the results of this of this of this ill-advised bargain they've made
00:18:50.840because um a recent uh bill that that received royal assent c6 c59 contains within it two provisions
00:26:43.820So in that, we appear to lose the accountability between ourselves and our own elected representatives who don't want responsibility for making these calls and consider themselves sort of obliged because they're on that team.
00:27:02.080They've been told they're on that team.
00:27:03.460They are obliged to follow the directions from above.
00:27:06.420We don't want them to follow those directions.
00:27:10.580But that say is being taken away from us.
00:27:12.420Well, and do you remember when, I know YouTube was doing it, I suspect Facebook probably was
00:27:16.920as well. They were building their so-called misinformation policies around whatever the
00:27:22.300WHO said about COVID. So if the WHO said it and you said something different than that,
00:27:28.100that was misinformation. So you apply that to this context when you have governments now that
00:27:32.700are trying to regulate misinformation. And do you not see the risk of that same abdication
00:27:37.160you're describing there in all of these other areas? Oh, absolutely. And you see, this is sort
00:27:41.500this is sort of where these two issues we've been talking about come together or at least similar in
00:27:46.060the abstract right you have a narrative and you have various kinds of powerful parties signing
00:27:52.700on to the team with the narrative whether it's the who and the public health authorities or it's the
00:27:57.660government and the corporations everybody is colluding to the narrative and insisting that
00:28:03.340the story is true and if you oppose the story then you're not just expressing a different view
00:28:08.540you are wrong or worse you are insurrectionist or you are peddling misinformation you deserve to be
00:28:15.420censored you deserve to be stopped because you are now working contrary to the public interest
00:28:21.100as they have defined it and the more we go down this road the more collusion there is between
00:28:26.860international or global organizations and national bureaucracies and and domestic corporations i mean
00:28:34.300mean all of the institutions public and private are lining up on the same side and on the other
00:28:42.020side is really only the rank and file citizen and and that that is the division that's starting to
00:28:49.060and is well along the way of of of being cemented into our into our politics do you have a bit of
00:28:56.940optimism bruce that the treaty was not passed this may as it sounded like was a given a year ago
00:29:02.720Well, that is that is a good sign. So let's just let's just acknowledge this. So within these camps, there is not a singular interest. There are various interests that are sometimes in conflict with each other.
00:29:20.580And you see that, I think, with respect to the interest of the different countries and the different camps of countries who are trying to achieve different things with pandemic treaties and so on.
00:29:29.820You see this as well, going back to the greenwashing and the climate change.
00:29:33.820You see this as well with companies and governments who are who have been colluding together.
00:29:38.820But now you see the tension between them. So it's a good thing that they don't all agree.
00:29:43.820It's a good thing that the pandemic treaty didn't work.
00:29:45.940It's a good thing that some countries are disputing things within their own chambers, but you can't count on that.
00:29:54.180You can't count on that to defeat the idea that they will eventually come together and decide on what the story is going to be and how they're going to enforce it.
00:31:05.660because it's one that is never spoken about.
00:31:07.620But no countries have ever existed for long when they don't protect their own security and their own sovereignty.
00:31:14.200And we have increasingly countries that are willing to abdicate that and individuals that don't seem to care about it.
00:31:19.900But I want to return to that aspect we were talking about with Corporate Canada and Corporate Canada abdicating its responsibility.
00:31:27.680One of the things you also see is the immersion of these companies in the DEI world.
00:31:33.160And this is something that we see even more than in corporate Canada in academic settings.
00:31:38.720Academic institutions have dropped even the pretense that they hire based on merit with more positions that are earmarked, not even just preferential hiring for DEI applicants, but positions that are only available to applicants that check off some box of being a member of some so-called marginalized group.
00:31:58.760Now, interestingly enough, when we're talking about candidates, say, with PhDs, we're not talking about people who have been truly marginalized in their lives.
00:32:06.420We're talking about the academic elites, regardless of whether you're trans or cis or black or white or anything.
00:32:15.640There was a piece in Nature, which used to be an esteemed journal published in the United States,
00:32:20.700a piece in nature that was celebrating the rise of diversity hiring, which comes obviously at
00:32:27.360the expense of merit-based hiring. Why can we not just return to the basics, return to
00:32:33.280allowing merit to govern who we're hiring, especially when, as was noted in a column in
00:32:38.640the National Post by Professor Lawrence Krauss, there wasn't really any defense of why these
00:32:43.940things are working or if they were. Professor Krauss joins us now. It's good to talk to you,
00:32:49.100professor. Thanks for coming on today. It's good to be back with you. It was nice to see Bruce
00:32:53.620Party on earlier. He's actually, I'm editing a book and he's got a chapter in it. So it's nice
00:32:57.980to. Oh, wonderful. Well, I look forward to seeing that when it comes out here. This is, I mean,
00:33:03.380Science Magazine has, of course, published some of the most, you know, rigorously vetted, peer
00:33:09.020reviewed scientific research in the past. And now there's not even a pretense of scientific basis
00:33:15.160for this explain what's what they're passing off here as justification for a dei over merit yeah
00:33:21.160first first we should correct you earlier said nature um sorry science but it's all right nature
00:33:26.520is not equally bad we could have an yeah fair enough nature and the ridiculous editorials that
00:33:30.920have appeared there both nature and science which are two of the preeminent science journals in the
00:33:35.000in the in the world um or have been and i have to say i've published in both um they uh uh
00:33:44.040And they're both coming out and not talking about science. And in particular, you'd think a science journal, when they talked about whether some action took place, they first talked about what the empirical evidence would be to support the action and what the consequences of the action are.
00:34:00.940But they didn't do any of those things. It was just a remarkable statement that suddenly, and it was like celebrating this remarkable fact that this university in Denmark had announced a policy where for the first six months of every year, they would only hire women.
00:34:17.120and they announced that guess what the number of women increased isn't that amazing and it's like
00:34:24.120it you know it's it and and again what's also equally amazing there was no discussion in the
00:34:31.340article about merit or about qualifications except to say two things that many of the women
00:34:38.200who were headhunted they saw they went out and sought women this is an engineering school
00:34:41.800let's let's make that clear so it has a low proportion of women one of the reasons was
00:34:46.180that women don't seem to want to go into engineering but that is never ever discussed
00:34:50.420in this kind of article the assumption is that somehow they're being kept out so the school went
00:34:54.980out and headhunted women and the only statement that was made which kind of almost humorous was
00:35:01.460that a number of the women who were headhunted said they were amazed to be headhunted because
00:35:04.980they didn't think they were qualified for the job and and then the president of the of the university
00:35:11.220said you know what women are just like that you know and and so we have to take that into account
00:35:16.340and you know what women are less likely to apply for a job if they don't have all the qualifications
00:35:21.940but so we're really happy that they're coming and and when you read that i think okay so we really
00:35:26.580want to take people who don't have qualifications for the job and and that's a good thing and it
00:35:31.620also is sexist because it's just i mean it's assuming that you know there aren't men in the
00:35:35.460world who say well maybe i really am qualified for this so i shouldn't do this and but um and and
00:35:42.180and ultimately the final question which is you know what were the qualifications what what were
00:35:48.660the the uh was the bar lowered for these people and and how how pervasive this is in academia was
00:35:56.260really put home for me with a colleague of mine who's a professor at usc in california
00:36:01.060point out that a colleague of hers who's dutch said to her well there's no there's no discrimination
00:36:07.940here um because you know we're we're not keeping men out we're just creating position for women
00:36:14.980and and it's like that you could say that without realizing what you're saying and
00:36:20.180being academic in an institution is kind of remarkable let's assume for a moment that
00:36:24.980male and female engineers are are both equally good that there's no distinction between the
00:36:30.260the two. So in any group of 100 male engineers and 100 female engineers, let's say that there
00:36:35.120are the same number that are qualified and the same number that are unqualified. But let's now
00:36:39.540say that there are 10% of the engineers who are women and 90% are men, which is not actually that
00:36:45.980far off. So if you're hiring 50% of the positions being women, that means you're necessarily
00:36:51.800elevating people who are unqualified. And they're not unqualified because they're women, they're
00:36:56.240unqualified because you're manipulating your talent pool in a way that you wouldn't if you
00:37:01.060were just hiring the aptitudes I mean this is not I'm not a I'm not an eminent physicist like
00:37:05.760yourself I'm not a scientist I get foggy with numbers but I don't think I'm missing anything
00:37:10.420here but these people who are longer educated than I am seem to be well that you're taking the
00:37:14.280numbers is indeed correct in general I mean you know there can always be exceptions but it is a
00:37:20.080problem when and actually this has happened in Canada in a number of cases both in the number
00:37:25.660people in the cabinet of the of the current prime minister but also in in in what the canadian
00:37:31.040government is doing regarding the most prestigious chairs in in academia the canada research council
00:37:36.020of canada research canada research chairs yes yeah and and um they're requiring that to match
00:37:41.920the demographics of the background society exactly and therefore requiring among other things that
00:37:47.040only women can be offered these positions and the real question is and and in order to do the
00:37:52.000statistics properly for what you said. Your presumption is perfectly reasonable, a priori,
00:37:56.280if you don't know any of the numbers. It's more reasonable to assume what you assumed than to
00:38:00.500assume the opposite. But better still is to look at the pool of applicants, the pool of people
00:38:05.380who are applying. If 90% of the people who are applying for positions are male, and you take
00:38:14.32050% of the positions and give them to females, say, then clearly, then clearly you're doing
00:38:20.180something wrong. I mean, if there's equal application, if there are equal pools, that's
00:38:24.020one thing. But you have to look at the pools of the applicants. And there's lots of studies that
00:38:28.800suggest, and every time people have tried to enforce these demographic rules in, say, engineering,
00:38:35.440that they find that generally they attract fewer women, even if you try and do these things.
00:38:40.520There are other fields, like, by the way, education, which are 80 or 90% women
00:38:44.840in at universities and and and and in in colleges and but no one tries to turn around the other way
00:38:52.040so the point is that there are predilections and in fact there have been studies of you know
00:38:57.560there's some studies you might say that are more egalitarian like ones in in in in uh Scandinavia
00:39:03.480and interestingly enough those which seem to have fewer barriers for women doing things
00:39:07.720have even a larger gap between in certain stem fields like engineering than in in in in in the
00:39:14.320west so there are many people what reasons why people may not choose to go into a field and to
00:39:19.420say that to assume it's always sexism or racism is clearly to make an assumption that you you have
00:39:24.560an obligation to show first of all um but secondly you're you're you know you're you're ultimately
00:39:31.340doing a disservice to everyone if you because you're also suggesting that you're being patronizing
00:39:38.500to women you're suggesting that they they can't compete first of all uh you know in an open playing
00:39:43.460field and uh and it's also arguing that there are only certain fields that you want to put women in
00:39:49.780and there and there are other fields you don't care that there are no men in the whole thing
00:39:54.900is patronizing women discriminating against men and anti-merit there's on the surface it makes
00:40:00.580no sense now i'm a scientist and i'm perfectly happy to be proved wrong by data and evidence
00:40:07.780but there's no such data evidence applied here or in fact every bit of evidence i've ever seen
00:40:12.500suggests the opposite that first of all these kind of brute force affirmative action techniques
00:40:17.060don't work in general to affect the field they also stigmatize the the people who who do get the
00:40:25.020jobs because you know if they get a job because it's a women-only job then they're your presumption
00:40:31.600is that's why they got the job not because of their qualifications and the last thing is
00:40:35.900you're generally not doing what i mean all these things are well motivated to try and increase you
00:40:42.320know increase the opportunities for people but what especially people who are really marginalized
00:40:47.460but what you're doing when you're hiring faculty is you're not dealing with people who are
00:40:50.980marginalized you're dealing with the elites generally you're dealing with people who've
00:40:54.280gone to get a phd at a reasonable university they were and so you're not you're not digging
00:40:59.120into the people who are really you know the i used to live in cleveland the people and the kids in
00:41:04.040the public schools there who don't have textbooks because the schools are run down and and you know
00:41:08.360those are the people you want to try and give a leg up to you want to provide opportunities
00:41:11.960But at the highest end of academia, you're generally not what diversity is all about.
00:41:18.020The idea that a Harvard-educated black woman is more marginalized than a white working class guy from rural Ohio or something is just not at all.
00:41:26.480It's discriminatory and it's exactly the right.
00:41:29.520So it's doing none of the things that, these are all well-motivated in principle, but it's not doing what you want.
00:42:00.680Do the proponents of this, in your experience, argue that diversity is just in and of itself the goal?
00:42:06.560diversity isn't established as a first principle positive and therefore a more diverse faculty is
00:42:12.320better or do they argue that diversity inherently increases uh something else that it makes for a
00:42:19.280better education or a better faculty the claim the claim is that diversity improves quality
00:42:25.040now look i can understand look the statement is always made that you know if you're if you're a
00:42:29.920let's say a woman and all your professors are male maybe you you feel you don't feel as attached to
00:42:34.560the field and it's nice to have a role model i understand all of that argument it's a bit more
00:42:39.040esoteric but there's a logic to it yes yeah yeah but the notion that diversity somehow increases
00:42:44.160improves the field is as far as i can see without evidence and and the arc and and the whole point
00:42:52.640is that you it's what we really want is equality of the opportunity it's not equality of outcomes
00:42:57.520and i'm and i'm all in favor and you know i my politics have i'm sure to the left of yours or
00:43:02.880have been. But I really do think that we really need to work to try and ensure, you know, a poor
00:43:10.100working class single mother or a single father has opportunities and, you know, they've got bigger
00:43:16.340challenges. And so we want to try and provide equality of opportunity, but that's different
00:43:21.840than equality of outcome. And that's what this kind of ridiculous policy is all about. And again,
00:43:27.320in academia which is the last possible place you know the faculty if you're hiring faculty
00:43:32.520at university you've already taken a very select hand-picked subset of the population who've gone
00:43:38.440to get a degree gone to get a phd many of them at first-rate colleges they've already there if you
00:43:44.600like i hate to use the word but they're already privileged in that sense and and and uh and so
00:43:50.520i don't like anything that's sacred that you can't question and the claim that diversity improves
00:43:55.480quality and and diversity meaning diversity of identity if we label these people and give them
00:44:01.440identities either being female or trans or or indigenous or black or or whatever if you label
00:44:09.640them by that that somehow having enough labels makes it better it's it's demeaning i think to
00:44:15.960people and and and you know you need to see data and that's what's what it's all about i think it's
00:44:21.240Yeah. And I mean, I would use, I used to, you know, years ago when I had this conversation with someone, I said, well, if you're, you know, going in for surgery, do you want the most diverse operating room or do you want the best? Now I would hesitate to even ask that question because I'm terrified of what some people would answer.
00:44:35.180yeah and that's and and you know that's the real problem which is one of the reasons actually i'm
00:44:41.180editing this book specifically universities is that nothing i'm i'm well known as someone who's
00:44:46.860not particularly religious and uh quite the opposite and one of the things that i don't
00:44:51.420like about sacredness is that you can't ask questions that nothing is sacred everything
00:44:56.060should be subject question especially in science and what's scary is you can't ask the question
00:45:01.420um even the question is is a more diverse operating room better for patients i mean maybe it
00:45:06.140is but you can't even ask the question or raise a doubt without expecting to be ostracized or
00:45:11.820sometimes removed and uh and that's scary because not only are these policies taking place but if
00:45:18.300faculty oppose these policies then they're subject to real problems at universities so people so i
00:45:24.860suspect that many of these universities faculty roll their eyes and say look we just want to get
00:45:29.660down what we're doing we want to stay below the radar and if we speak out we're going to be it's
00:45:34.940it's going to end up causing us grief and i want to just do my own thing and i just you know let
00:45:40.140them do what they want and that's fine and and unfortunately that's the way it is i've you know
00:45:46.220professor for 40 years and that's generally the faculty's attitude about almost anything
00:45:49.980yeah just get by uh professor lawrence kress president of the origins project foundation
00:45:54.860also host of the origins podcast thank you so much for coming on professor good to talk to you
00:45:58.940it's been it's been a pleasure you take care all right you too you know my position on the
00:46:03.420the operating room question i think is a valid one and look at the end of the day i don't care
00:46:08.060and that's what we should be and i think generally speaking used to be striving for as a society with
00:46:13.340not caring now let me be perfectly candid i think there are areas in which diversity is providing a
00:46:18.780benefit but i would also say diversity of experience matters a lot more let's say you're
00:46:23.500trying to put together a group project and you want all of these different people in your group
00:46:27.900You don't want people that are going to think the same way.
00:46:30.840So someone from an urban setting and someone from a rural setting, irrespective of race,