#431 — What Is Happening on College Campuses？
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Summary
Wesleyan University President Michael Roth joins me in this episode to talk about what it means to be a liberal in the 21st century, and why we should all be concerned about what's happening in the ivory tower.
Transcript
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Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
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Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore
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it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're
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doing here, please consider becoming one. Well, I'm here with Michael Roth. Michael,
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thanks for joining me. Glad to be here. So you are the president of Wesleyan University
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and also a frequent contributor to the New York Times. Are there any other hats you wear that I'm
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not aware of? Well, I'm a grandpa and a dad and a husband, and those are the main things
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right now. I teach every semester still at Wesleyan and try to write books for mostly academic
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audiences, but more recently trying to broaden my reach. Yeah. So what do you teach? What was your
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intellectual and academic background? So I'm a historian, and I was, as a student at Wesleyan,
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I couldn't make up my mind between history, philosophy, and psychology. And I had a fairy
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god dean, as I describe him now, who was a substitute dean. That's the best kind. And at the time he said
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to me, why decide, man? And he allowed me to make up my own. What year was that accent from?
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1976. I remember the ferns in his office. I think they were ferns. And Charlie, Dean Charlie. And
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so he made up this major there called History of Psychological Theory, which I thought was I was
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getting away with something. And as it turned out, for the next 40 years, I worked on history,
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psychology, philosophy. So it turned out to be right. But as I left his office, he said,
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you ought to go to California, man. And I had never been west of the Poconos from growing up in New
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York. And so my girlfriend and I drove to California that summer. I bought a tent and then
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couldn't really decide always between philosophy and history, especially. So I became an intellectual
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historian. And my work has been on history of philosophy and psychology. Over the years,
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I did a my senior thesis at Wesleyan was on psychoanalysis and politics. And that became
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my first book. And then it became an exhibition at the Library of Congress. And then most of my work
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is in the scholarly world was about how people make sense of the past. So things about memory and
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historiography and how people deal with trauma. And then since I've been at Wesleyan, I've written a few
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books on liberal arts education and freedom of speech and safe spaces and things like that.
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Nice. Well, many of those ideas and areas of expertise will be brought to bear on the conversation
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we're going to have today, I imagine. I don't know how deep into the history of ideas we need to go,
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but certainly the recent history of ideas will be relevant.
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Well, so let's begin with the very broad question. How are things in the ivory tower these days?
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Oh, it's terrible. You know, I've been teaching undergraduates since 1983 on my own, I guess even
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before that as a TA. And I don't remember a time of such trepidation of really angst about government
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intervention and at the same time, a kind of reluctance by students and even by faculty and
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certainly by administrators to stand up for the things we've claimed to believe in for the last
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20 years or so. So it's been, it's a very odd feeling these days. We worried for the last dozen
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years or so about illiberalism from the left, especially. Many people have worried about that.
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And I, although I see myself on the left, I also worried about that. But to me, it has nothing
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in way of comparison to the authoritarianism that is now being marshaled against freedom of thought
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and freedom of inquiry, freedom of expression by the federal government. And so that's terrible.
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But what really bothers me more than, even than that, which bothers me a lot, is the reluctance of
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my colleagues to stand up for some basic freedoms that we until very recently took for granted.
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Well, I definitely want to talk about the creeping authoritarianism and the capitulation of the
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institutions. But before we jump into that, what are the legitimate concerns about the ideological
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capture of American universities by the far left and far left ideologies? I mean, there's this
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intersection of what is often goes by the name of wokeness, you know, what I would call a kind of
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social justice, moral panic in certain areas. Also a kind of quasi-Marxist ideology, perhaps
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informing that, and certainly an oppressor, oppressed ideology that has been mapped onto the protest
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movement around, or animated the protest movement around October 7th. What is the most charitable
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construal of the concern around all of that that many people, I think we're going to demur here,
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but I think many people think the Trump administration is simply just acting on that concern. It's just
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gone too far. There's been this leftist takeover of elite institutions and a resulting degradation of
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the quality of thought there, certainly ethical thought, political thought. What can you say in defense
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of that concern? Not much. I mean, to me, that's akin to saying that, you know, Putin has legitimate
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concerns about the Ukrainian threat against Moscow, that, you know, the Ukraine could have joined NATO
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and Russia would have been imperiled, or the Russians don't, you know, they have legitimate historical
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concerns in what is called the Ukraine or the Ukrainian entity. So I think it's vastly overblown,
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I think ideological capture itself is a misnomer. It doesn't really describe what's happened at most
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colleges and universities. Where the most popular majors remain economics and psychology, the most
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popular professions are the most desirable professions, especially at the elite schools,
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or in finance, or people wanting to go to Wall Street so they could work for a private equity firm,
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they could buy, let's say, a group of podcast entities like yours. I mean, this is not neo-Marxism,
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this is not progressivism. You know, the danger in higher education is more vocationalism.
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So I think that that's, it's important to not give in to the demands of the aggressor,
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just because, because there are some worries that people who thought they were on the left
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have to have. Michael, let me just take you back. So again, leaving aside the, I think the obvious
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maliciousness and malignancy of the response to this from the Trump administration, let's just talk
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about the problem. I mean, I remember first being alarmed by all of this when I saw Nicholas Christakis in
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the quad at Yale being hounded by a group of students who, um, not all of whom, but certainly
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several of whom, to my eye, were violating every norm of basic sanity on a college campus, short of
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punching Nicholas in the face. I mean, there was a, a none too implicit threat of violence there at some
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point. I mean, there was, it was actually, it was not clear to me that he could have safely left
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that crowd at a certain point, uh, without having to physically force his way to pass students. And
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those students got awards for their social justice activism, if I'm not mistaken.
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Oh, well, they also got death threats because the reason you're aware of this is because it was filmed
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by people who wanted to make propaganda out of that. And they did so very successfully.
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I wrote to Nick Christakis right after that and said, you know, this is horrific. I'm so sorry this
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happened. I don't know him actually. We've met more recently. So I don't disagree that that behavior
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was awful, but it would be like saying, I don't know, go to a fraternity party and see people
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vomiting and saying, Oh, American universities have been, there's an ideological capture by,
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I don't know, the alcohol industry. I mean, this is idiotic behavior at Yale where most people are
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trying to get good jobs on wall street, not destroy the system of free speech and liberal democracy.
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It was bad. I think it was the, the, the folks behave badly and there, there, and there was
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much too much tolerance for bad behavior on the part of colleges and universities. I think that's
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true, but I really don't think it, I don't think that's a serious concern. I do think there was a
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serious concern about, um, the lack of ideological or even intellectual diversity in, in the faculty
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at colleges and universities. And I've been writing about this for a long time. And, and I do think
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that's a serious problem and it's getting worse in, in many respects because folks aren't even going to
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graduate school if they're moderates or conservatives in especially humanities and social sciences,
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interpretive social sciences. And, and that just is a narrowing of education and narrowing of the
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kind of questions asked. So I see that as a real problem. I think like the, the, the Yale example,
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which is now what, 10 years old or eight years old and, or the Charles Murray at Middlebury example,
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these are bad things, but you know, there are Charles Murray probably gave a hundred lectures
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beyond aside from that one and which went without incident. So I, I just don't want to take those
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examples as exemplifying something much broader than I, it seems to me, they, they merit being
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used for it. I do think that the faculties at schools like mine have paid too little attention
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to ensuring intellectual and ideological diversity in the departments where that would really make a
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big difference like the humanities and interpretive social sciences. And it's hard to know exactly what
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to do about that. We've tried some things at Wesleyan with very small successes here and there, but
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that seems to me a real problem. The, when protests get out of hand, I think, I don't see that as big,
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as big a deal as some of my friends do or some of my colleagues do. It, it did seem to me that a lot,
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for a lot of people who thought of themselves as liberals, or at least moderates and liberals to be
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outflanked by young students who demanded things we didn't think were reasonable, that was upsetting
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to people. But that's kind of what happens as you get older. Young people ask you to do things that
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are dumb from your perspective. You don't have to do them. And I think when, when, when the schools
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actually stood up to protesters appropriately, acknowledging their right to protest, but not
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to harass people, I think things actually worked out pretty well at most schools. So the Yale example
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is a bad one. And there are probably, you know, two dozen other examples we can come up with.
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But I want to, I want to talk about the protests and what you recommend there. Cause my understanding
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is that Wesleyan navigated the moment post October 8th, slightly differently than campuses like
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Columbia or UCLA, or, uh, I forget, I forget the others that, that really had a problem. But, uh,
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before we do, so just on the point of viewpoint diversity that you just brought up,
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is there any daylight between you and someone like Jonathan Haidt or Steven Pinker, both very
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popular academics who've been, uh, you know, fairly voluble on, on the need here to somehow recruit
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people who are politically right of the, uh, of the, you know, the, the 10% mark on the, um,
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Well, I think Jonathan and I have, uh, worked together over the years on this issue. And though
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we don't always see things the same way, I'm one of the few people who was, gave a mixed review to
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the coddling of the American mind book, but I do agree with him that getting, bringing more ideological
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diversity into the university's faculty is really important. And I called in, I think, 2010 or something
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like that. Well, no, 15, I guess for an affirmative action program for conservatives and colleges,
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universities, which pissed off everybody really. I mean, the left, the left, even the conservatives.
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Oh, especially because they said, we don't need affirmative action. We just need, you know, merit.
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But I actually think we had to be very intentional about hiring libertarians, people with strong
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religious faith that was related to their scholarship and traditional conservatives. And I, I think,
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I do think it's really important. I, I was made aware of this by a trustee at Westing who became
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a friend, uh, who just kept pointing out to me all the ways in which things that seem normal to me,
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if you didn't share that ideological perspective, they were incredibly biased. And so I, you know,
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it was one of those moments where you say, oh my gosh, we, I am really biased. And so I need to
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correct for that. I mean, I'm not, I teach Aquinas, I don't, you know, I haven't converted to
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Catholicism, but I, I can teach Aquinas, but they shouldn't have only have Jews from Long Island
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teaching Catholicism. They should have people who have lived experience, I think. And as much as you
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can. And, and so I've tried to hire people from the military. I've hired people with different
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points of view than the standard graduate from an Ivy League humanities department. And I think that
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when I started this, there was a lot of skepticism to put it mildly on my, from my colleagues at
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Westland and elsewhere. Now there's, it's a robust conversation on campus about ideological bias.
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And that to me is, is really as much as I should do as the, as the president. I mean,
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I should get people to be more aware of their biases and then they're good people. They're
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professionals. They don't, they don't want to be acting with bias. And so I think there's been
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some correction. I, it could be greater. It could be, and I think that is a real issue.
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My understanding is that there were, I can only imagine we're past this point now as a shadow of
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the Trump administration, uh, imposed itself over all of our universities, but in the not too distant
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past perspective, hires or new hires were having to sign effectively, uh, you know, DEI pledges of some
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kind, right. They, they had to, I forget the actual verbiage, but it was something like, you know,
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I'm committed to it. Even if, even if their discipline was, you know, mathematics is I'm
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committed to, you know, rooting out, you know, racism in my field or whatever it was, you didn't
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see that as a kind of systematic way of, of filtering for, uh, and against the, the very people you would
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otherwise want to recruit. Oh, I do. I do think those were bad ideas, except when what you were
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trying to do is to make sure that somebody was able to teach a classroom of people from diverse
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backgrounds. That seems to me perfectly reasonable. In other words, we want to have professors or
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teachers who are able to teach a classroom with people who have different lived experiences, come
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from different backgrounds. That, that seems to me perfectly legitimate concern. If, if I'm hiring
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a crackerjack, uh, computer scientists who just is used to teaching in graduate school, other graduate
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students are very, you know, high-end majors at a great school and you put them in a classroom at a
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public university where people come from various backgrounds, you want to make sure that they're,
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they're able to deal with that. I mean, as a teacher, you'd have to adjust to the people in
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front of you and then have them adjust to you. So I think that's reasonable, but this idea that you
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would really want someone to make an ideological commitment to a program of diversity in order to
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teach math or history or whatever, that seems to me reprehensible. So where's the, the actual line
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here? Because, um, I mean, obviously no university would want to recruit a professor who is a closeted or,
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or, you know, out of the closet, neo-Nazi. So there's, there's some part of the, the, the ideological
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spectrum that is disqualifying from the point of view of, you know, you just, you, you don't want the
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brand damage. You don't want the influence on your kids. I mean, why would you want a neo-Nazi teaching
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history or anything else at your university? But by the same token, why would you want a Hamas supporter?
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Why would Columbia want a professor who is an unabashed supporter of, uh, a death cult, uh,
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masquerading as a group of freedom fighters? Where's the line there for you?
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So I, I think that a university shouldn't hire someone who is an active supporter of a terrorist
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organization. So I think that's, to me, that's pretty clear as someone who is an opponent of the
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occupation or of, of violence. That seems to me that that wouldn't be disqualifying, but I do think
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it would be disqualifying to hire someone, whether they were, let's say a radical anti-Zionist or a
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radical Zionist who thought their job in the classroom was to have more people like themselves.
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I mean, I think that's just disqualifying because that's not what your job is as a teacher is not to
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say, convert people to your view, whatever your view is. But to the question, like how broad the
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spectrum should be of opinion, I have a terrible answer, which is that's a pragmatic issue. There
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is no formula for that. I don't, I don't want a Nazi on, on my campus. And someone says, well,
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you say you're in favor of free speech. Do you have limits to your support for free speech? I do have
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limits. And those limits are defined really sociologically or historically. They're not,
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there's not a formula for it, but I do think it's a, it's illegal in the United, I know it's illegal in
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the United States to give material support to a terrorist organization. I think it should be
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illegal. And I would not want those supporters teaching in my university. There are times when
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you find out later on that somebody teaching whatever, I mean, they could be teaching, let's say
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math and they actually are strong supporters of Hamas because they feel it's not what you described as a
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death cult and a terrorist organization. I would agree with your description that they have a different
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view of it. I think that as long as they're teaching math, that's really not my business,
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what their idiotic views about politics are. Lots of people in my view have idiotic perspectives
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on politics. When they bring them into the, into the classroom in a way that discriminates against
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students or harasses students, then I think we should be fired. Is the line different for a guest
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speaker? I mean, if you have a student group that wants to bring in a controversial speaker,
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how do you handle that? And what is the, is the, the Overton window wider in that regard?
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I think it's wider, but again, I have this wishy-washy answer. I mean, it's a pragmatist.
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I don't think there's a formula for it. I'll give you an example. Years ago, before we, the word woke
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was used, uh, we had, uh, Antonin Scalia was invited to give a talk at Wesleyan. Um, we have the free
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speech series and I was asked to invite him. And, uh, and I thought the faculty were kind of baiting me
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to see, like, if I would not accept their recommendation because, um, they were to the
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left of me and I thought Justice Scalia had done more harm to the interpretation of the American
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constitution than almost anyone since the 1800s. But they're the committee that recommends someone.
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He's a Supreme court justice. You know, I invited him. I also thought he'd say no because he's a
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Supreme court justice. He's busy. He wrote back immediately. He said, I'd love to come to Wesleyan.
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And, uh, he mentioned that Larry Lessig had been there who have, of course, quite far on the left,
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but had clerked for him and Lessig had a great experience at Wesleyan. So I said, okay, he's
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coming. Now, if I hadn't invited him, I would have protested. I wouldn't have protested like to sort
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of stop him from speaking, but I would have stood outside with a sign saying, you know, uh, Justice
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Scalia is a bad guy or something, you know, something dumb. And, but instead I had to invite him.
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I had to introduce him because I issued the invitation. So I did that. And, um, and he gave
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a good talk. He spent the whole day on campus meeting with students. There were protests here
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and there, not to keep him from speaking, but just acknowledge that they were against
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the work he had done as a Supreme court justice. And we had a, it was actually a great day on campus.
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I allowed myself a reference to a critic of his in my introductory comments, a very,
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he's the only one in the room who understood, who got it. He did get it, who did, who would
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disagree with originalism. And, um, so I thought that was about as good as it gets. We had protesters
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who stood up in the room in orange jumpsuits because of Guantanamo at the, that was the issue
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of the day. We went around and said, you have to sit down or leave. You can't block the view
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of others. They sat down or left. He gave his talk. At some point when he was calling
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on people, a young student, she joked up and said, why don't you call on a woman? Cause
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he only called on guys. And then he said, okay, okay. And he called on a woman and it
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was fine. You know, I mean, people expressed themselves in a way that was honest, but that
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allowed for the conversation or debate to continue. I think that's, that's, that's to me,
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the, the, a great model. It's not always possible, but you know, at Wesleyan, I think
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we have developed a culture where people can be, they may be angry that we've invited,
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you know, Roth to come and speak or Schmidt to come and speak or whomever, but they, they
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have so far, knock on wood, they haven't forced us to cancel any events. If they did, we would
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discipline those students that that's, it's very clear to them that that's against our
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rules and we enforce our rules. And that's a really important rule because obviously if
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you keep from someone from being heard that you're really undermining the whole educational
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Yeah. So why do so many colleges get this wrong? I mean, I, again, they could be outliers, but
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many people in, in my audience will, uh, will have seen video after video of essentially
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an effective use of the Hector. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation,
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