The Joe Rogan Experience - June 02, 2017


Joe Rogan Experience #970 - Bret Weinstein

Topics
Day of Absence tradition mob mentality universities inequity reaction colleges community policing protests blockchain currency momentum nuclear waste fusion research
Hosted by
Joe Rogan
Guests
Bret Weinstein
Mentioned
Brett Weinstein Bitcoin George Schaller Jamie George Burgess Tucker Carlson Jane Goodall Jordan Peterson Bernie Sanders Stacey Brown Andy Siebert Fukushima Hitler Trump Douglas Turner Ward Andreas Antonopoulos Ronald Reagan Kathy Griffin Jesus Christ Lewis Leakey and 12 more
Joe Rogan Experience #969 - Andrew Santino Joe Rogan Experience - Fight Companion - June 3, 2017

Episode Stats


Length

2 hours and 26 minutes

Words per minute

162.4

Word count

23,756

Sentence count

1,797

Harmful content

Misogyny

15

sentences flagged

Toxicity

133

sentences flagged

Hate speech

23

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Day of Absence has been a long-standing tradition at Evergreen State College, but this year, white students were asked not to come back to campus for a day. Brett Weinstein, a black student of color, wrote a letter objecting to the decision. The letter caused a stir among the student staff and faculty, and was made public by the school paper, The Daily Evergreen. And now, the situation is back in the spotlight. Today, we talk to Brett about what happened, why it happened, and why it s important to remember that our racial backgrounds matter, and how we can work together to address the problem of racial identity in the 21st century. This episode is brought to you by the National Museum of American Jewish History and the Center for Civil Rights, and produced by the Equal Rights Campaign and the Human Rights Campaign. The opinions expressed in this episode are our own, not those of our employers, and do not necessarily reflect those of any employer, employer or employer relations organization. We do not own the views expressed in the letter or letter. We are not affiliated with any employer or organization. Thank you to Brett Weinstein for his courage and courage in standing up for our students, and for the courage to speak out against the decision to speak publicly about the day of absence. In this episode, we thank Brett for his letter and his courage in the controversy, and we are grateful for the support he has received from the community. and the support that has been shown by the community, and the people who have stood up for him. in response to the letter and the response he wrote to the response to it. It s been a privilege to have Brett's letter and to have the courageously stand up for the students who have spoken out and speak out about what needs to be heard and stand up to what matters. You deserve a chance to have their voice heard and speak their truth and speak up for what matters to them in the truth and not only their chance to speak up and speak for their own voice. of the truth. Thanks to Brett's courage and to everyone who has stood up to the truth, and to anyone who has been affected by the truth about what matters in this. to all of us in this story and their courage and their support in the process and to those who have been impacted by it. Thank you, Brett, for being brave enough to share their story and to speak their words.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Joe Rogan Experience" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Four...
00:00:06.000 Alright, we're live.
00:00:06.000 Brett, first of all, thanks for doing this.
00:00:08.000 Appreciate it, man.
00:00:09.000 Very glad to be here.
00:00:09.000 You look great.
00:00:10.000 Despite all this pressure, you're smiling.
00:00:14.000 For people that don't know what's going on, let's lay out all the events that have transpired.
00:00:23.000 Essentially, you were being asked to step away from your college for a day?
00:00:30.000 Is that what it was?
00:00:31.000 Is it one day?
00:00:32.000 Well, this goes back farther than that.
00:00:35.000 Yeah.
00:00:35.000 Let's lay out the whole thing.
00:00:37.000 Okay, so we couldn't possibly lay out the whole thing.
00:00:39.000 But it's just for people that have no idea what's going on, they're listening right now, and they're like, who's this Brett Weinstein guy?
00:00:46.000 So the core of it surrounds a tradition that we have at Evergreen called Day of Absence.
00:00:52.000 And this tradition stretches back long before I was ever at the college.
00:00:55.000 I've been there 15 years.
00:00:56.000 This tradition stretches back into, I think, the early 70s.
00:00:59.000 And it's built around a play written by Douglas Turner Ward, a black playwright.
00:01:05.000 And the play portrays events in a fictional town where the black population decides not to show up one day in order to emphasize their roles in the town that the white population is unaware of.
00:01:19.000 And as you would imagine, all hell breaks loose.
00:01:22.000 So anyway, it's an excellent play and some early faculty at our college decided that we should have a day that mirrored this event and that originally black faculty and students and then later people of color would leave campus for a day to emphasize the role that they play in our community and then they would later the tradition was amended and had a day of presence added to it where people would come back to campus.
00:01:47.000 And this has been going on, as I said, since the 70s and the whole time I've been there.
00:01:51.000 And then this year, it was announced by the organizing committee that the situation would be reversed.
00:01:59.000 And they asked white student staff and faculty not to come to campus.
00:02:04.000 And that did not at all sit well with me.
00:02:09.000 As I said in my letter to the person who had announced this, Rashida, who I should say is staff, and she has ended up at the center of this controversy, I think, wrongly, just because my letter and response is addressed to her, and then it was made public by our school paper,
00:02:25.000 so her name has been dragged front and center.
00:02:28.000 But in any case, my letter, I said that there was all the difference in the world between a population deciding to absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their role and a population deciding to absent another population from a shared space,
00:02:43.000 which I find unacceptable as a person, as somebody devoted to...
00:02:48.000 The gains of the civil rights movement.
00:02:51.000 I should also probably say as a Jew, when people start telling me where I can and cannot be, it rings alarm bells.
00:03:04.000 So that's the gist of the story.
00:03:06.000 And the letter caused quite a stir amongst student staff and faculty who responded, many of them quite angrily.
00:03:16.000 Privately, of course, people were much more divided on the matter, and there were plenty of people who agreed with my letter.
00:03:21.000 But publicly speaking, there was condemnation of the letter.
00:03:24.000 But the event itself, day of absence, was mostly uneventful.
00:03:30.000 I did go to campus, as I said I would in my letter.
00:03:36.000 And I actually...
00:03:37.000 It's neither here nor there.
00:03:39.000 It was accidental.
00:03:40.000 But while I was on campus, I ran into a student that I know very well.
00:03:45.000 Actually, a student that my wife and I were abroad in Ecuador with last year.
00:03:49.000 We were teaching abroad, and we had 30 students with us.
00:03:53.000 And so one of the students who had traveled with us to Ecuador happened to be on campus, too.
00:03:58.000 This is a student of color.
00:03:59.000 I'm going to stop this.
00:04:00.000 Right here.
00:04:12.000 That's alright.
00:04:15.000 That was going to go on.
00:04:16.000 That was going to drive me crazy.
00:04:17.000 Right.
00:04:17.000 I understand.
00:04:18.000 Let's keep going.
00:04:19.000 So, I ran into this student that I know well and care about quite a bit, and we had a very nice conversation, mostly not about Day of Absence.
00:04:29.000 As a matter of fact, I can't even remember if we did talk about Day of Absence.
00:04:33.000 There was something poignant to me about the fact that while I was being condemned for refusing to accept this new formulation, that I was able to meet with a student who is important to me and neither of our racial backgrounds is important.
00:04:51.000 Fund is primary in our relationship.
00:04:53.000 We know each other as people and that's really how I would like to see all of us interacting on campus.
00:04:59.000 We all have our backgrounds, they matter to us, but it cannot become the primary interface between us.
00:05:06.000 Let me stop you here and let me try to understand what the reaction was because you Rightly said that you think there's a huge problem with asking people to not show up simply based on their color of their skin exactly and What was the argument against that?
00:05:24.000 Like, when you said that, and I read your letter, and your letter didn't sound racist at all.
00:05:29.000 It sounded very well thought out.
00:05:31.000 It made a very good point.
00:05:33.000 But the response, the inflammatory response to your letter was so disturbing and shocking.
00:05:40.000 Was there anyone who had reasonable debate with you about this?
00:05:43.000 Was there anyone who said, well, we should take into consideration why they're asking us to do this, we should sit down with them, we should talk through this?
00:05:52.000 Was there anything reasonable or was it just dig your heels in the sand?
00:05:56.000 And then let the insults and the white privilege and all these accusations fly.
00:06:01.000 Well, like I said, there's a huge difference that you can't see unless you're at the center of one of these things between the public discussion and the private discussion.
00:06:11.000 Privately, I had very interesting discussions with many people that was not absent.
00:06:16.000 But if you were to look in on the discussion at the public level, it looked as if there was consensus united against me.
00:06:23.000 Now, when you say public and private, are the same people making contradictory statements in public that are commiserating with you in private, or is it just different people?
00:06:34.000 A few of them do that.
00:06:36.000 That actually is the thing I find most surprising, is that sometimes people will privately say one thing to you and then publicly do another.
00:06:43.000 Mostly it's different people.
00:06:45.000 And I should say the people who have talked to me privately and expressed concerns are actually quite a diverse group.
00:06:52.000 So it's not as if white folks are disturbed by this and people of color are united.
00:06:58.000 It's not at all like that.
00:07:00.000 Part of the hidden story here is that in order to advance certain policy proposals, it has to appear that the community is united behind them and that anybody who stands against them is standing against them for illegitimate reasons.
00:07:16.000 So that means that the number of people who are willing to express any sort of nuance about what's taking place has to be small, and they have to be dismissible.
00:07:25.000 So what they did is they called me a racist, which is ironic, because I'm an anti-racist.
00:07:33.000 I've gone out of my way to, first of all, study the question of why racism occurs, and I've I believe been pretty courageous in fighting against it where I've run into it.
00:07:45.000 So to challenge me with that particular epithet was a mistake on their part.
00:07:51.000 It was a strategic mistake.
00:07:52.000 And I kept trying to tell them while this was still internally being discussed in the college, I kept trying to tell them that they should really check the concept that I'm a racist.
00:08:02.000 They should ask.
00:08:03.000 Because if they did, they would discover that they were actually way off the mark, and then they would have an interesting puzzle on their hands.
00:08:09.000 Then they would have to explain to themselves why they had found themselves hurling this most poisonous term at somebody who not only isn't a racist, but is pretty nearly the opposite.
00:08:22.000 Well, it's a standard maneuver when someone wants to silence someone.
00:08:26.000 When someone wants to put someone in a category that's instantly recognizable, one of the best ones is racist.
00:08:31.000 Oh, absolutely.
00:08:32.000 And what I found is that people simply could not figure out what they would do if that term was applied to them.
00:08:44.000 Right.
00:08:44.000 They were able to preview in their minds what that would be like.
00:08:46.000 And so many people could see that there was no escape for them.
00:08:51.000 Right. 0.69
00:08:52.000 It's like being called a rapist almost.
00:08:54.000 It's like even if you are exonerated, there's still that cloud hanging above you.
00:08:59.000 Yes, but this also actually points to something pretty important, and for anybody who travels this ground themselves, they're going to discover this, that many of the terms that are being used have been redefined, but they haven't been fully redefined.
00:09:13.000 So one of the things that I've seen in several places is that a term like racist has been redefined so that the bar for being a racist is so low that you couldn't possibly help but trip over it.
00:09:25.000 But then once you've tripped over it and you have accepted that you are a racist, then the stigma goes back to the original definition.
00:09:33.000 So it is the dodging and weaving between the two definitions that actually does the heavy lifting.
00:09:39.000 Well, there's also a really disturbing idea that's being bounced around lately that it's impossible to be racist if you're anything other than white.
00:09:46.000 Right. 0.98
00:09:47.000 Which is ridiculous. 0.97
00:09:48.000 It's preposterous. 0.96
00:09:49.000 Anybody who looks up the actual definition of racism will discover that that's preposterous.
00:09:54.000 But yes, that does pass in certain places as logical.
00:09:59.000 Yeah, and just it's parroted in this very bizarre way that's supposed to be unchallenged.
00:10:05.000 And this is a fairly recent thing.
00:10:07.000 I mean, this is not something that existed two decades ago.
00:10:09.000 Right?
00:10:10.000 I agree.
00:10:11.000 And the pace at which it's moving in the last few years is very surprising.
00:10:16.000 It is surprising, but it kind of makes sense because you get into these groups of people, they have this confirmation bias, they lump up together, and they all reinforce their ideas in this echo chamber.
00:10:26.000 And they all do it inside the colleges.
00:10:28.000 And then when it gets out to the rest of the world, as we're seeing with your case at Evergreen, the rest of the world is like, what is going on over here?
00:10:36.000 Like, what is happening in school?
00:10:38.000 And people who are sending their children off to school are very concerned with the indoctrination of these ideas and adopting these very rigid mindsets that the rest of the world just simply could pick apart pretty quickly.
00:10:54.000 Well, this is the Is a million miles.
00:11:18.000 Inside of Evergreen, actually, we are descending further into madness.
00:11:22.000 The faculty are blaming the fact that the campus had to be suddenly closed due to a threat from the outside yesterday on me for having talked about this in the outside world,
00:11:37.000 specifically for...
00:11:40.000 Not to you.
00:11:41.000 I can't use that term yet.
00:11:42.000 Hopefully someday.
00:11:43.000 I hope it's soon.
00:11:46.000 And I must say, one thing that we haven't even talked about where I got thrust into the spotlight here, which your listeners are going to have to know in order to understand why I'm even sitting here...
00:11:58.000 But the intensity and the out-of-touch nature of the discussion inside the college simply reinforces the impression that something is desperately off,
00:12:15.000 that what we really have is a filter bubble that is so...
00:12:19.000 So strong that even when the world sends very clear evidence that you've missed something somewhere and it's time to rethink what you've been doing, they're not waking up.
00:12:29.000 And I love this college.
00:12:32.000 This college, maybe we'll get to talk about it, but...
00:12:35.000 The structuring of this college is so unusual and what one can do as a professor at Evergreen, if you're really dedicated to teaching, it is the place to be because you have unparalleled pedagogical freedom, more freedom than you'd have as a tenured professor at Harvard.
00:12:50.000 And you also have room to teach individually to students because our students take one program at a time.
00:12:57.000 They're full-time in one program, and the professors teach one program at a time full-time, and they can go on for a full year.
00:13:03.000 So imagine you've got 25 students, and you have them for a year full-time.
00:13:08.000 You really know every student in your class individually, not just by name, but you know how they think, you know their backgrounds, you know I think?
00:13:34.000 I watched the, is it the president of the school who gave the speech addressing all these issues?
00:13:40.000 George Bridges, yes.
00:13:41.000 It looked like a hostage negotiation.
00:13:44.000 It looked like he had a gun to his head.
00:13:46.000 He was literally a hostage.
00:13:48.000 It was so bizarre. 0.99
00:13:51.000 And kids are yelling things at him like, what the fuck are you gonna do? 0.99
00:13:55.000 And he just has to take it. 0.99
00:13:57.000 It's so strange.
00:13:59.000 It's such a bizarro world to view it from the outside.
00:14:04.000 And to view these preposterous allegations that these kids are throwing at him of being racist and everyone's being racist and no one's doing anything to protect them and everyone's acting like they're in danger and their ideas are in danger and their minds are in danger.
00:14:19.000 It's just so, there's so much grandstanding.
00:14:22.000 It's so preposterous.
00:14:24.000 Like, what is it?
00:14:25.000 Well, first of all, did you see the video in which Dr. Bridges, our president, is being challenged for his hand gestures?
00:14:34.000 And the protesters are actually policing his hand gestures?
00:14:38.000 No!
00:14:38.000 Oh, it's unbelievable.
00:14:39.000 What's wrong with his hand gestures?
00:14:41.000 He's not doing this, is he?
00:14:42.000 Don't do that.
00:14:43.000 No, no.
00:14:43.000 Can't even wave to a friend.
00:14:44.000 You can't even go like this to a friend?
00:14:46.000 Because they'll pause you right here.
00:14:48.000 They'll pause you right there in the middle.
00:14:50.000 No, I think his...
00:14:51.000 I mean...
00:14:52.000 I don't want to caricature this because I really think it's very important.
00:14:56.000 As preposterous as what's going on is, I think it's very important that we understand it.
00:15:02.000 It's very easy to dismiss it because it's so strange.
00:15:05.000 But it's very important that we get it right.
00:15:07.000 I think the complaint about the hand gestures was that they represented microaggressions, if you will.
00:15:14.000 I don't know for sure that that was the complaint, but I can't make heads or tails of it otherwise.
00:15:18.000 What was he doing?
00:15:20.000 Can you move your hands?
00:15:22.000 I think he was kind of gesturing like a person.
00:15:25.000 Just trying to talk with emotion.
00:15:27.000 Right.
00:15:27.000 So I do think there's a translation, which is...
00:15:32.000 This can be portrayed as a microaggression in some way.
00:15:35.000 How is this a microaggression?
00:15:36.000 Are you moving your hands around?
00:15:37.000 Well, we should talk about whether microaggression is even a good category.
00:15:41.000 But let's just say the protesters had enough control over him that he gestured, they didn't like it, they told him not to, and he capitulated, which he's been doing the entire time.
00:15:52.000 So I would say there's a huge amount of what's going on at Evergreen that is what I would call a show of force.
00:15:59.000 Is he afraid of losing his job?
00:16:01.000 Is he afraid of losing the support of the students?
00:16:04.000 What is he afraid of?
00:16:05.000 Well...
00:16:06.000 If you had a guess.
00:16:07.000 I think he is afraid of...
00:16:11.000 He's old enough.
00:16:12.000 He doesn't need another job.
00:16:14.000 He didn't need to take the job at Evergreen, which he took two years ago.
00:16:17.000 I think he is afraid that this is going to be the capstone of his career, a scandal in which he has allowed the campus to get out of control, which he did.
00:16:28.000 But...
00:16:28.000 Here's the crazy thing.
00:16:29.000 It's a non-scandal.
00:16:30.000 You're a non-racist who's been accused of being a racist.
00:16:33.000 All you did was say, hey, I don't think you should be able to tell people they can't show up for work if they're white.
00:16:38.000 They can't show up for school if they're white. 1.00
00:16:39.000 That seems kind of crazy.
00:16:41.000 And now, hand gestures.
00:16:42.000 This is how far we've sunk.
00:16:45.000 We're not at Kent State.
00:16:46.000 It's not the National Guard shooting students.
00:16:49.000 It's this.
00:16:50.000 Moving your hands around while you're talking with emotion.
00:16:52.000 That's a microaggression.
00:16:54.000 This guy's afraid of losing his job because of his hand motions.
00:16:58.000 Well, it goes beyond that.
00:17:01.000 When George came to the college, he studied us, which I can't hold him responsible for that.
00:17:08.000 That was a good move.
00:17:09.000 If he was well-intentioned, he would have done that.
00:17:10.000 But he studied us very carefully.
00:17:12.000 He had a friend interview hundreds of us to figure out what was going on at the college.
00:17:16.000 But then he set in motion policy proposals and committees that were empowered in a way that was completely at odds with the way the school has run traditionally.
00:17:27.000 How so?
00:17:29.000 So among the many unique features of Evergreen is the fact that the college is in large measure governed by the faculty and even the administration.
00:17:38.000 All of the deans are faculty members who have come from the faculty and when they're done being deans they go back to the faculty.
00:17:44.000 So the faculty has control over the college in a way that I don't think there's another college in the country that runs that way.
00:17:53.000 So what that means is that if you want to advance a policy proposal, the faculty has to agree to it.
00:17:59.000 And George wanted to do some things that the faculty would not have agreed to.
00:18:02.000 So I've told you about these full-time programs where students get this really personally tailored education and they join a community that everybody knows each other.
00:18:11.000 He wanted to take those apart.
00:18:13.000 Why?
00:18:15.000 I can't imagine.
00:18:16.000 I can't imagine why you would.
00:18:19.000 I mean, the most generous thing to say is that he did not understand what an important part of the evergreen model those programs are.
00:18:31.000 Whatever his reason, it was a terrible error.
00:18:35.000 And the only way to do it is to advance the idea as an equity-enhancing idea.
00:18:42.000 In other words, you can say that the full-time programs are anti-equity in the sense that if you are disadvantaged, you are less likely to be able to dedicate yourself full-time to a program because you may...
00:18:59.000 We're good to go.
00:19:18.000 Right.
00:19:31.000 Right.
00:19:46.000 Boy, that's convoluted.
00:19:48.000 You're telling me.
00:19:49.000 So he wants to sort of disassemble this very unique and very beneficial model that you guys are operating under.
00:19:57.000 So this is just one part of it.
00:19:59.000 Now, how does this get to this one suggestion that white people step down?
00:20:05.000 Oh, it doesn't.
00:20:06.000 The two are connected in the following sense.
00:20:10.000 The president empowered, he chose people to be on what's called the Equity Council.
00:20:16.000 The council has changed its name several times, so I'm not even sure what the current name is.
00:20:21.000 I think it's the Equity and Inclusion Council.
00:20:23.000 But in any case, he chose this council.
00:20:27.000 The council is...
00:20:29.000 If you count the two deans that are on it, it's only a third faculty member, so it's mostly students, staff, and less than half faculty.
00:20:39.000 And he empowered them to propose modifications to the college that would be equity-enhancing.
00:20:45.000 And the thing that they advanced, the Strategic Equity Plan, is extremely densely written, so it's hard to read, and most of the people on our campus have not read it.
00:20:56.000 Most of the people in the faculty have not read it.
00:20:58.000 In fact, when it was released, it was pretty clear that most of the people on the Equity Council hadn't read it because it was so full of errors, spelling errors and other things that would have been caught if people had gone through it.
00:21:08.000 But in any case, my wife, who also teaches at Evergreen, and I and several others did read it carefully and were very alarmed at what was in it.
00:21:16.000 So there were features of the document that would, for example, completely reorient our hiring.
00:21:23.000 So our hiring process, I would be up to see it revised and made better too, because I don't think we do it very well.
00:21:30.000 I think it's one of the things we were weak about.
00:21:32.000 But anyway, the proposal that they advanced was that, for example, every single hire would have to be justified on the basis that it was equity-enhancing, meaning racially equity-enhancing.
00:21:44.000 So imagine...
00:21:45.000 Racially equity-enhancing.
00:21:46.000 Right.
00:21:47.000 So not just...
00:21:51.000 Not just a policy of hiring all kinds of people and not being racially discriminatory, but being discriminatory in looking for certain people, people of certain colors.
00:22:04.000 You're discriminating towards...
00:22:07.000 I think beyond that.
00:22:08.000 When I read that, I thought, how exactly do you hire a physical chemist and justify that this is racially equity-enhancing?
00:22:18.000 So you would look towards, like say if you had ten chemists, you would try to only hire the ones that were of color?
00:22:28.000 Is that what they're saying?
00:22:30.000 Yes, I think so.
00:22:31.000 I mean, as I said, the document is so densely written that it's hard to know.
00:22:34.000 It really is set up, I think, to be dismissed so that it can be instituted and then we can find out what it really means.
00:22:42.000 But think about the model that I described about how we teach at Evergreen.
00:22:49.000 That is not a model that anybody trains to teach in.
00:22:53.000 And the people who do it well are very unusual.
00:22:56.000 So we're not looking for the same professors that would be best at Berkeley, for example.
00:23:02.000 We're looking for unusual people who will take...
00:23:05.000 Full-time programs and total pedagogical autonomy, meaning we actually literally are free to teach anything we want in any way we want.
00:23:15.000 So that freedom is a marvelous thing if you have a particular appetite for figuring out how teaching should be done that it's never been done anywhere else before and you're willing to try it out and learn from the experience and advance that way.
00:23:30.000 So we're looking for very unusual people who find that an appealing Challenge rather than somebody who wants to get a textbook and deliver the regular stuff.
00:23:41.000 If we're now going to prioritize race over everything else in our hiring, then finding those needles in a haystack who are actually well built to deal with that much pedagogical freedom and that much contact with the students is going to be that much harder because sometimes the right person for the job just simply isn't going to be dark skinned or who knows. 0.65
00:24:02.000 Right.
00:24:03.000 So anyway, I found the proposal, as did other people I talked to who had read it, quite alarming at the level of hiring in particular.
00:24:11.000 So is it meant to give the impression of diversity just by simply like, look, we've got our boxes checked.
00:24:19.000 Here's a brown woman. 1.00
00:24:20.000 Here's an Asian man.
00:24:22.000 I mean, is that what they're trying to do?
00:24:24.000 Like, look, we've got all our bases covered.
00:24:26.000 This school is diverse.
00:24:27.000 Well, I'd like to put a placeholder on Asian man because during day of absence, There was actually a, I guess you would call it a seminar held on how Asians might just be part of the problem here. 0.99
00:24:42.000 Yes, Asians and...
00:24:44.000 The problem?
00:24:45.000 Yes.
00:24:45.000 Did you air quote when you said the problem?
00:24:48.000 I didn't.
00:24:49.000 I'm not even sure if I should.
00:24:51.000 You know, the world has become so bizarre.
00:24:52.000 What does that mean?
00:24:53.000 Asians are part of what problem? 1.00
00:24:55.000 Well, I think the translation is that because Asians are a population, I don't know, that is succeeding in a particular way, at least from the perception of those who are deciding what these seminars look like, that they actually, I don't know,
00:25:11.000 have special obligations in this.
00:25:13.000 And I might say everything I've just said about Asians...
00:25:16.000 It could be repeated for women, especially white women, who are playing a special role in this equity battle on our campus, too. 1.00
00:25:26.000 So white women might be a part of the problem as well, as Asian men?
00:25:29.000 Quite clearly.
00:25:30.000 Right.
00:25:31.000 So the idea, I think, I mean, I have my own hypothesis about this, and that's really all it is, but it does fit everything I've seen so far.
00:25:39.000 I think?
00:25:55.000 That's too many people.
00:25:57.000 In order to utilize these structures to feed a certain set of populations, you can't very well have all women included. 0.99
00:26:08.000 And so what's happened is people who are perceived as, yes, having been historically disadvantaged in some way, but also at the moment being successful in some sense, are being shoved out of the coalition.
00:26:23.000 And then if they feel I think?
00:26:42.000 The subordination, we hear that a lot with the male feminist community. 1.00
00:26:46.000 The male feminists are supposed to be allies to women, and I even read a paper that was, or an article rather, that was telling white people, if you truly want to be allies, you should not take high-paying jobs, and you should only leave them to minorities. 1.00
00:27:02.000 Yes, my brother...
00:27:03.000 If you want to be a good ally.
00:27:04.000 Yeah, that's what a good ally subordinates, and that means stepping away from a job, etc.
00:27:09.000 So it's not an ally at all.
00:27:11.000 No, it has nothing to do with ally.
00:27:13.000 And in fact, this is the thing that is most troubling to me about my personal situation is that if they really wanted, you know, mind you, we're going to have to fill in what they means, but if this coalition really wanted an ally for a quest for real equity,
00:27:28.000 I would be an ally.
00:27:30.000 Right.
00:27:30.000 Real equity.
00:27:31.000 Real equity.
00:27:32.000 Right.
00:27:32.000 That's not what they want.
00:27:34.000 What do you think that means, then?
00:27:37.000 If they don't want real equity, what they want is a special advantage given to people of color, a special advantage given to people that were historically oppressed?
00:27:47.000 Well, let's put it this way.
00:27:50.000 I believe, so I believe that in general, at the moment, coalitions are unholy alliances between two things.
00:27:59.000 And in this case, you have the real equity movement, which are people who wish to end oppression.
00:28:04.000 And then you have another movement that wishes to reverse oppression.
00:28:09.000 And they don't know that they're different, because until you reach equity, they're pointing in the same direction.
00:28:14.000 I see.
00:28:15.000 So one is trying to balance it out by in some way pushing down against white people and people who have historically had privilege.
00:28:28.000 They're trying to reduce their role.
00:28:31.000 They're trying to literally oppress.
00:28:33.000 Think about the story we were just talking about where the president of the college is being told how to move his hands.
00:28:40.000 That's not so unlike a black person, a black man, let's say, being told that he's not allowed to look a white woman in the eye.
00:28:49.000 Right?
00:28:50.000 It's that kind of thing having been reversed.
00:28:52.000 This is people of color telling the president of our college how to move his hands. 1.00
00:28:57.000 So it was people of color that were telling him to do this with his hands?
00:29:01.000 Again, I've got to be really careful because, you know, I've seen the video only once, and I'm trying to remember if the people who are doing the asking are even on the screen.
00:29:09.000 So I don't want to project something that I don't know for sure.
00:29:12.000 But it was definitely the protesters, which were protesting on...
00:29:17.000 Some of them were white protesting on behalf of people of color, and some of them, many of them, were people of color...
00:29:24.000 But even there, we're in trouble with the complexity because the people of color coalition that is protesting is not synonymous with people of color at Evergreen.
00:29:33.000 There are many people of color at Evergreen who are either just simply bewildered by what's going on or very troubled by it.
00:29:42.000 Because you can imagine, I mean, just put yourself in the shoes of a person of color who came to Evergreen to get a really interesting education and didn't want to tell the president how to move his hands.
00:29:52.000 And then you see this happening in your name.
00:29:55.000 What exactly are you supposed to do then?
00:29:57.000 Well, there's also the problem, the very real problem with the mob mentality.
00:30:01.000 And it is a common thing with human beings when they get together in large groups and people start chanting and screaming and they feel very justified and they always want to escalate.
00:30:13.000 It's very weird.
00:30:15.000 It's a strange reaction that human beings have in large groups acting together, where they just want to ramp things up.
00:30:22.000 They want to take it to the next level. 0.99
00:30:24.000 They want to shut this motherfucker down. 0.99
00:30:26.000 It's a weird thing that people do, but I was watching it in your videos, where people were saying, you should resign. 0.99
00:30:33.000 Like, you need to resign.
00:30:34.000 Like, you need to resign.
00:30:36.000 Like, wow, you need to apologize to that woman for communicating with her the way you did.
00:30:41.000 Right.
00:30:42.000 In a very respectful and intelligent manner.
00:30:45.000 Like, they want to bully you around.
00:30:47.000 They want to push you around.
00:30:48.000 They want to take that professor, that guy who's been allowed to be the one who's talking and distributing all the information, and they want to shut you down.
00:30:55.000 It's flat-out bullying.
00:30:57.000 Yeah.
00:30:57.000 And what I'm seeing...
00:31:01.000 Is that almost nobody seems to know what to do about bullies, especially when they're armed with a super weapon like the accusation that you're a racist.
00:31:10.000 Nobody understands that capitulating to bullies may solve your problem in the moment, but it makes the problem vastly worse over time.
00:31:18.000 And so anyway, all I've done is apply that piece of knowledge that when a bully challenges you, not capitulating is just a prerequisite to getting anywhere.
00:31:29.000 Ideally, you want the bully to pay enough of a price that they don't continue what they're doing.
00:31:35.000 Well, ideally, you would like to have a rational conversation with these people and get them to see your perspective, and they should be able to consider it and say, okay, he's not racist.
00:31:44.000 Well, yeah, it is kind of ridiculous that we're asking people who didn't have a say in what color they were born to step away from something.
00:31:53.000 We're literally discriminating.
00:31:56.000 Under the guise of being anti-discriminatory.
00:31:59.000 We're discriminating.
00:32:00.000 Right.
00:32:00.000 I mean, that's...
00:32:01.000 And it's not even...
00:32:02.000 It wouldn't even be hard to have that conversation.
00:32:05.000 One-on-one.
00:32:06.000 Even...
00:32:06.000 I'd do it 20-on-one.
00:32:09.000 But don't you think that that's what happens?
00:32:10.000 They just start screaming and...
00:32:12.000 Well, I mean, A, you have to get used to the fact that you don't get there all at once.
00:32:18.000 You plant a seed that's enough to cause them to know something about what we're saying couldn't possibly be right or we wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing.
00:32:25.000 The problem here is that the mob that we're talking about is so large that even, you know, in the couple cases on last Tuesday, not this last Tuesday, I guess it was two Tuesdays ago now, You know,
00:32:43.000 somewhere below 100. I actually do think I made some progress, but I thought it was not durable at all, because as soon as the event was over, whatever progress was made got overwritten by whatever discussion happened next.
00:32:56.000 So it is possible to have these discussions, but there's something about the momentum that is in play here that makes it impossible to make any durable progress.
00:33:08.000 Durable progress is a very interesting description.
00:33:12.000 Durable progress.
00:33:14.000 Yeah.
00:33:14.000 Yeah, because you're fighting against...
00:33:18.000 This current movement of ridiculous ideas that's going on through schools. 0.80
00:33:25.000 And we saw it with Yale. 0.95
00:33:26.000 We saw it with those students screaming at, what was it, the professor?
00:33:31.000 Was it a professor?
00:33:32.000 Who was the guy that was?
00:33:36.000 Yes.
00:33:38.000 Yes.
00:33:41.000 Yes.
00:33:42.000 Yes.
00:33:50.000 Well, so first of all, he did reach out to me and his point was what you are going through is eerily reminiscent.
00:33:59.000 He's watched the videos and he was just pointing out how shocking it was.
00:34:03.000 I mean, even to the point of my wife having been dragged in here oddly in this discussion where she wrote an email internal to our distribution list Asking the college why they were not protecting me and my students who were being actively stalked on our campus,
00:34:22.000 harassed, doxxed.
00:34:24.000 Which students?
00:34:25.000 My current students.
00:34:26.000 But why?
00:34:27.000 Why are your current students being harassed?
00:34:29.000 Because my current students, like almost all of my former students, know that this charge is completely baseless.
00:34:35.000 And so they have been supportive.
00:34:38.000 So in defending you, then they're being attacked.
00:34:41.000 Absolutely.
00:34:42.000 Like they're little soldiers in some sort of a strange ideological battle.
00:34:45.000 They are being penalized for not falling in line.
00:34:49.000 Wow.
00:34:50.000 That's scary.
00:34:51.000 That's real scary bullying.
00:34:53.000 When someone says, hey, he's a good guy, and then someone comes after them and says, this is where this person lives.
00:34:58.000 Let's find them.
00:34:59.000 That has actually literally happened.
00:35:02.000 What has happened to the students once they do find them?
00:35:06.000 Well, so the students have been...
00:35:08.000 I think the idea is intimidation.
00:35:10.000 Right.
00:35:11.000 I've had students followed in the woods.
00:35:13.000 In the woods.
00:35:14.000 I've had students visited at home.
00:35:17.000 It's very scary.
00:35:18.000 And I should say, just in terms of putting the context here, as the college was pretending that nothing serious was going on, the police called me up on the Wednesday just after the Tuesday on which...
00:35:32.000 I had been challenged in my class and asked me, are you on campus?
00:35:37.000 And I didn't have class.
00:35:38.000 I said, no, I'm not on campus.
00:35:39.000 They said, don't come to campus.
00:35:40.000 I said, why?
00:35:41.000 And they said, because the protesters are searching car to car for what they describe as an individual, and we think it's you.
00:35:52.000 And the college has told us to stand down.
00:35:55.000 We can't protect you.
00:35:57.000 What?!
00:35:59.000 I know.
00:35:59.000 The college has told the police to not protect you.
00:36:04.000 The college told the police to stand down, which means the police were literally barricaded in the police station.
00:36:13.000 Despite their sense that they very much needed to be actively protecting people outside of the police station, the police were left with no choice but to barricade themselves in the police station because they answered to the college administration, which told them not to act, I think because it wished to prevent a news story.
00:36:33.000 But this meant people engaged in these protests were roving freely about the campus, looking for people, following them.
00:36:42.000 They, you know...
00:36:43.000 That's so incredibly aggressive.
00:36:45.000 Like, looking for individuals in a car.
00:36:48.000 Like, and to do what?
00:36:50.000 Well, that's the question.
00:36:51.000 My guess would be even they don't know.
00:36:54.000 Let's say that it was me that they were looking for, which would make sense.
00:36:57.000 I would imagine that they would have had the idea of, I don't know, taking me somewhere and getting me to acknowledge something that they think I should acknowledge.
00:37:06.000 Some sort of a hostage situation.
00:37:08.000 Right.
00:37:08.000 But...
00:37:10.000 I suppose I didn't want to acknowledge whatever it is that they wanted me to acknowledge, just as I didn't want to resign when they said I should resign.
00:37:18.000 I don't know if they had a backup plan, and it worries me that one of the things that unfolded on the campus was that people who had a very clear idea of how things should go were...
00:37:29.000 they were literally...
00:37:32.000 I mean, they were barricaded in the president's office with the president and a bunch of faculty members and staff.
00:37:38.000 And the story is that the president wanted to go to the bathroom and he was not even allowed to go privately to the bathroom.
00:37:45.000 He had to be escorted by two people.
00:37:47.000 Who?
00:37:47.000 President of the college.
00:37:48.000 But who are the people?
00:37:50.000 Protesters.
00:37:51.000 Protesters had to go with him to the bathroom. 0.99
00:37:53.000 Right.
00:37:54.000 So that, to me, sounds like literally kidnapping.
00:38:02.000 It's just stunning that he agreed to that.
00:38:06.000 All of it is stunning.
00:38:07.000 I can't believe I'm seeing it.
00:38:11.000 Well, this is PC gone amok.
00:38:13.000 I mean, this is what everybody's been worried about.
00:38:15.000 What you are right now is that you're the tip of the spear.
00:38:19.000 We are previewing where this goes, taken to its logical extent.
00:38:24.000 Yeah.
00:38:24.000 Yeah.
00:38:24.000 I mean, and could have been worse had you not been contacted by the police, had you been in one of those cars, had you been pulled out, had you been pulled into some sort of a hostage situation where they were trying to tell you, you can't go to the bathroom without us, like they did to the fucking president, and he agreed to it.
00:38:40.000 Yeah. 0.98
00:38:40.000 I mean, this is madness. 0.98
00:38:42.000 I mean, that's like, people should go to jail for that.
00:38:44.000 Well, so, okay.
00:38:46.000 That's kidnapping.
00:38:47.000 It's kidnapping.
00:38:48.000 I do think that the administration and certain faculty members have a lot of responsibility here.
00:38:56.000 So I think in some sense, yes, it's literal kidnapping.
00:38:59.000 The students, however, I believe, have become tools of something that they don't really understand.
00:39:05.000 Tools of what, though?
00:39:06.000 Of their own making?
00:39:07.000 I mean, is it an ideology outside of the school that they subscribe to, or is it their own...
00:39:14.000 I mean, what is it?
00:39:16.000 Well, I believe it is a militant belief structure and I do think, based on what we've seen on our campus, it is emanating from a subset of the black population.
00:39:35.000 Okay, so I'm not saying that this is black people doing this, but I'm saying that the people who are at the forefront of it happen to be in that part of the coalition of people of color.
00:39:45.000 And that they are advancing a set of assumptions and beliefs that they seem to imagine describe some future world that they would like to reach.
00:39:57.000 And it's a future world.
00:39:57.000 I mean, it's preposterous.
00:39:59.000 It will never happen.
00:40:00.000 What is the future world?
00:40:02.000 Where the 400 years of oppression of black people in North America results in a reversal of roles, I think.
00:40:14.000 I mean, I can't imagine having that thought and following it through and not realizing that this can't possibly be anything like a way forward.
00:40:25.000 This is something that they've described, this reversal of roles?
00:40:29.000 Well...
00:40:31.000 So I would imagine that your listeners, having heard me just say what I said, have to be wondering a little bit about me and where my sympathies really lie.
00:40:39.000 But what I've seen, and if your listeners go looking at the videos that came out of Evergreen over the last 10 days, posted by the protesters, I should point out.
00:40:56.000 Yeah.
00:41:08.000 And the meeting began with an announcement that the chairs and the food were for people of color and that white people shouldn't use them.
00:41:19.000 Yes, I know.
00:41:20.000 The chairs and the food were only for people of color.
00:41:23.000 Correct. 0.99
00:41:24.000 White people have to be hungry. 1.00
00:41:26.000 Right. 1.00
00:41:26.000 You can't sit down. 1.00
00:41:28.000 Right.
00:41:28.000 And I've also seen, you know, I don't remember where I saw it now.
00:41:32.000 I probably have a screenshot of it.
00:41:33.000 But I saw something where some activists put out a message, a broadcast message that said a person of color needed a power adapter for a computer.
00:41:44.000 Were there any white people who could fetch one or something like that?
00:41:47.000 Oh, Jesus.
00:41:47.000 I mean, the thing is...
00:41:50.000 It's preposterous, but it is also putting in danger the actual vision of a world in which race ceases to provide advantage.
00:42:00.000 Right.
00:42:01.000 So anyway, it's jeopardizing.
00:42:03.000 The idea that it should be reversed is just so crazy.
00:42:05.000 Like, we should oppress now.
00:42:06.000 Like, no, there should be none.
00:42:07.000 Right.
00:42:08.000 We should get past this.
00:42:09.000 Right.
00:42:09.000 We should be anti-supremacist.
00:42:11.000 Yes.
00:42:12.000 100%.
00:42:12.000 This idea, I mean, imagine if there was a college in North America that suggested that white people only should eat and white people only should be able to take the seats.
00:42:21.000 Is that what's going to happen 300 years?
00:42:23.000 So what if black people are pressed for the next 300, then white people come back and say, hey, we're going to have to turn this around again.
00:42:29.000 I mean, isn't the idea that 100 years from now, white people are going to be a minority in America?
00:42:35.000 Because the rates of birth with Latinos and black folks, there won't be this minority group anymore, that they will be, in fact, a majority.
00:42:44.000 All I can say is it's so obviously a wrong path just in terms of, A, it's not an honorable objective.
00:42:51.000 It's racist.
00:42:52.000 It's racist. 0.84
00:42:53.000 It's absolutely racist.
00:42:54.000 I mean, it's not even difficult to see that.
00:42:57.000 It just simply is racist.
00:42:58.000 But if you say that on my campus at the moment, you're the racist for not understanding why this is logical.
00:43:04.000 So how do people react when someone says, a person of color needs a power adapter?
00:43:08.000 Can a white person go fetch it?
00:43:10.000 Are there these white, air quote, allies that are running, these beta males, just running to go grab a white power adapter and give it to this person of color? 0.88
00:43:20.000 Is that what's happening?
00:43:21.000 That's the literal description of it.
00:43:23.000 Jesus Christ.
00:43:24.000 And then they have to, in a few years, they're going to have to go on to the workforce.
00:43:28.000 Well, and that's the thing that, well, this is a whole other side of the puzzle.
00:43:31.000 What this is really about, and not just at Evergreen, but this movement which has taken over so many campuses and shut down so many people who spoke with positions that were not somehow sanctioned, is really a battle.
00:43:45.000 Between two incompatible worldviews within the academy.
00:43:51.000 So on the one hand, you have the sciences and all of the things that function on the same assumptions that the sciences do about how you figure out what's true.
00:43:59.000 And then you have these postmodern disciplines, which basically argue that the tools that the sciences claim are about figuring out what's true are actually tools of oppression themselves.
00:44:11.000 And so, you know, another video...
00:44:15.000 Right, exactly.
00:44:18.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:44:19.000 So there's this video in the middle of the Tuesday, the first Tuesday of these protests, where the president barricaded with these protesters, is talking to them.
00:44:29.000 And the protesters actually flat out say, in referring to my email, that I mentioned the word phenotype.
00:44:40.000 And that that inherently tells you that I must be a racist to even be thinking about a scientific term in the context of this.
00:44:48.000 Which I find horrifying because these very students stand to gain a tremendous amount.
00:44:55.000 They will be most powerful in the world.
00:44:58.000 In pursuing equity, among other things, they will be most powerful in the world if they are...
00:45:03.000 Armed with a scientific toolkit, with an analytical toolkit that allows them to be forceful rather than to be preposterous.
00:45:12.000 What was the context you used the word phenotype again?
00:45:15.000 I forget.
00:45:16.000 Oh, I said that I would like us, in my challenge to the new day of absence formulation, I said I would like us to put phenotype aside, right?
00:45:28.000 I put phenotype aside, meaning that I did not want us discussing equity as teams, as different teams broken up by skin color.
00:45:36.000 And so the very fact that I said phenotype and that I suggested that I would be willing to give a lecture to anybody who wanted to come...
00:45:44.000 About what I understand to be the evolutionary context of racism.
00:45:49.000 And they did not want the lecture.
00:45:51.000 They assumed that if I said evolution and racism that I was going to give a eugenics lecture or something like that.
00:45:57.000 And so it's preposterous.
00:45:59.000 The way this works is they shut down the conversation before you can have it so that they don't actually know what you're going to say and therefore don't need to address it.
00:46:08.000 Oh, God.
00:46:09.000 Yeah.
00:46:09.000 It's quite frightening.
00:46:11.000 Well, it's bizarre because it's primarily occurring in universities.
00:46:16.000 It's not happening really in high schools very much.
00:46:19.000 It sort of bubbles up in high schools, it appears, by people that I've talked to that have been in high school and gone into universities that you see echoes of it.
00:46:27.000 You see the beginnings. 0.98
00:46:29.000 And then when it gets to college, you're away from your parents, you're in some new place, everyone gathers in groups, they dig their heels in the sand, and they go fucking crazy. 0.98
00:46:39.000 Well, I mean, there is something about college, and we all did some dumb stuff in college. 0.56
00:46:46.000 But I also think there's a hidden reason for it being colleges, which is that there is real inequity in civilization that needs to be dealt with.
00:46:54.000 I would say the thing that I find most troubling is the skew in policing and in the courts that results in disproportionate fractions of some populations being incarcerated, which has terrifically destabilizing impact on those communities.
00:47:11.000 So I think that that is a very real harm that would be hard to overstate and that absolutely has to be addressed just to even make any claim on being a fair society.
00:47:23.000 That said, it is very hard to attack the private prison complex, for example, right?
00:47:31.000 It's a difficult challenge.
00:47:33.000 On the other hand, the universities are a soft target.
00:47:36.000 They can't defend themselves and they already have sympathies in the direction of, you know, a view of a radically different enhanced world.
00:47:46.000 So, in effect, I think we're being challenged on the basis that the inequities on our campuses are completely intolerable, and that that is largely a fiction.
00:48:01.000 And that what really is happening is that this is displaced anger over a system that is fair, that's been pointed at something that can't defend itself.
00:48:10.000 That's fascinating.
00:48:11.000 So this is a reaction to the actual real inequities of the outside world, the systemic racism in places like Baltimore and what we're finding out about places where they literally would not sell homes to black people, communities that have just had generation after generation of impoverished people that are fighting off crime-ridden neighborhoods.
00:48:29.000 Right, or water you can't drink because it has lead in it.
00:48:32.000 Flint.
00:48:32.000 Right, exactly.
00:48:33.000 So, what's happening in the universities is sort of a misguided reaction to all the real inequity in the world.
00:48:41.000 I would say not misguided, it's misdirected.
00:48:44.000 Misdirected.
00:48:44.000 It's just pointed at the wrong thing, and the reason it's pointed at the colleges and universities is that they simply can't defend themselves.
00:48:52.000 That's fascinating.
00:48:54.000 And so this is occurring in universities all over the country and at a rate that's, according to people that I know that teach, pretty unprecedented that this wasn't the case 20 years ago, that you would have dissent,
00:49:09.000 you would have debate, you'd have discussion, but you wouldn't have these full-blown ideological mobs.
00:49:16.000 Yeah, I think the thing is it hadn't been operationalized yet.
00:49:20.000 The thought process that led to this was postmodernism has been around for decades.
00:49:29.000 And so there were places you could go if you wanted to have an absurd discussion.
00:49:33.000 You could go, for example, to cultural anthropology.
00:49:36.000 Cultural anthropology was captured by postmodernism 30 years ago.
00:49:40.000 And so, if you wanted to hear people say really crazy things about what's true, cultural anthropology was a place you could do it.
00:49:47.000 If you stepped next door to physical anthropology, it was just fine.
00:49:52.000 And so, anyway, that's been in the university.
00:49:55.000 And what's happened is it has been, how would one put it?
00:49:59.000 It has been operationalized or activated so that it is now...
00:50:05.000 It forms the core of a vision that college students are trying to bring about.
00:50:10.000 Not all of them, but enough of them that you can't run a college without either deciding to capitulate or figuring out how you're going to fight back.
00:50:20.000 Was there a way that this could have been stopped or nipped in the bud in the years past?
00:50:26.000 Or is there a way that this could have been sort of planned for?
00:50:30.000 Was there a lack of foresight?
00:50:33.000 Yeah.
00:50:35.000 This is exactly what I was talking about a few minutes ago.
00:50:38.000 If you give in to the bully, the bully comes back stronger.
00:50:43.000 We've been given in to the postmodern bully for decades, and it's now come back in a form that nobody knows what to do with it.
00:50:51.000 So what was the original reason to give in when it was a more mild argument?
00:50:56.000 Well, because it was an abstraction.
00:50:58.000 So originally, the idea that certain That based on their history, certain people who had been, for example, largely shut out of the sciences were entitled to think without having to deal with the structures that had been built around,
00:51:19.000 let's say, men and mostly white men over the course of Western scientific history.
00:51:24.000 So the idea that women maybe needed a place to discuss what was true that was not structured by men...
00:51:33.000 I get that.
00:51:34.000 And in fact, there's a very good example in my own field where the difference between the way men and women, I don't mean every man and every woman, but the difference on average, I think played a decisive and very positive role when Lewis Leakey empowered three women to go study the three great apes in order to figure out what was going on with them.
00:51:55.000 And so Jane Goodall And so it is a case where something about the way men look at the world had prevented people like George Schaller,
00:52:12.000 who had made his mark studying lions.
00:52:15.000 He didn't do so well with gorillas.
00:52:18.000 So anyway, Jane Goodall's female approach worked, and it is largely the reason that we understand chimps today. 0.99
00:52:25.000 On the other hand, Jane Goodall took the scientific toolkit and threw out the rules that had been biased, rather than rejecting the scientific toolkit, which is what the postmoderns are doing, which I think is just tragic.
00:52:40.000 What we should be doing is arming everybody who goes to college, and frankly, we should be arming everybody who Can't go to college with a scientific toolkit that lets them figure out what's true, especially now, because science is the ultimate bullshit detector. 0.98
00:52:55.000 And, you know, this era is, you know, hopefully this is peak bullshit, but they need the ultimate bullshit detector. 0.98
00:53:02.000 It does seem like peak bullshit, right? 0.98
00:53:04.000 And it seems like that's one of the reasons why it's so important for you to stand your ground, is that you are, you're being very clear about In what you perceive the situation to be. 0.98
00:53:18.000 And you're doing it in a very logical and a very rational, well thought out and clearly structured way.
00:53:25.000 You're showing everyone what's wrong with this.
00:53:28.000 It is a scientific approach.
00:53:30.000 You're literally using the very tools that you're trying to empower these young children.
00:53:35.000 Young children?
00:53:36.000 I feel like they are.
00:53:37.000 Yeah.
00:53:38.000 These kids.
00:53:38.000 You can say kids.
00:53:39.000 Young folks.
00:53:40.000 Yeah.
00:53:41.000 Youthful, exuberant human beings.
00:53:44.000 Millennials.
00:53:45.000 Yeah, millennials.
00:53:46.000 I hate those words.
00:53:47.000 I hate those generational terms.
00:53:48.000 But you're literally using, you're dealing with a dilemma, and you're using the very tools that you would like them to learn from this university and take forth into the world.
00:53:59.000 I mean, it is a very scientific approach.
00:54:01.000 You're saying, like, well, no, this is not, that's not racism, and this is racism, and what you're doing here is actually racism.
00:54:09.000 Right.
00:54:10.000 And in fact, you know, the irony is, so my students, and really my students, many of them are both my students and my wife's students.
00:54:18.000 We both teach evolutionary biology, and students bounce back and forth between our programs.
00:54:22.000 So, you know, we have people in our community who are empowered by having an understanding of how things function evolutionarily that gives them a window into all sorts of things, including...
00:54:36.000 You know, human social dynamics and other things that affect us all the time.
00:54:41.000 So anyway, yes, there is a way of thinking about virtually any of the issues that most people care about using scientific rationality, which does not mean that you put aside your humanity, but it means that you give your humanity a tool to understand what is going on before you figure out how you feel about it and whether something ought to be done.
00:55:05.000 How does this university survive this?
00:55:08.000 How does the community survive this?
00:55:10.000 How do these students come out of this with a new understanding of what went wrong and in some way that allows them to save face and still be a viable part of the community?
00:55:20.000 That is a beautiful question.
00:55:22.000 Thank you for asking it.
00:55:23.000 I really hope it works.
00:55:24.000 I got three things and I'm afraid I'm going to forget one of them.
00:55:27.000 But first of all, there's one clear first step.
00:55:30.000 The president of the college has to step down.
00:55:33.000 And there are two reasons he has to step down.
00:55:35.000 One, this is how things work.
00:55:37.000 I don't like how you're moving your hands while you're talking.
00:55:39.000 I'm sorry, John.
00:55:40.000 Microaggressions.
00:55:41.000 Is that better?
00:55:44.000 So he's got to step down because, A, when something has gone as crazy as we've seen things go on Evergreen's campus, there is an expectation that somebody will take responsibility.
00:55:55.000 So he has to step down to signal to the world that somebody's taking responsibility.
00:56:00.000 But in this case, He also absolutely must step down because this is his responsibility.
00:56:06.000 He set this in motion and he made this happen.
00:56:09.000 And so it is not an injustice at all that he should have to step down.
00:56:14.000 And I frankly am flabbergasted that it hasn't happened yet.
00:56:17.000 I do not understand how the Board of Trustees could allow him to maintain that position as long as he has.
00:56:23.000 But first thing is he has to step down.
00:56:27.000 At the point he steps down, that's going to flip a switch.
00:56:31.000 Suddenly the question is, okay, what now?
00:56:35.000 The next thing that would have to happen is the faculty of my college would have to evidence that they actually got something out of this rather than feeling that they had been wrongly portrayed in the media or something like that.
00:56:47.000 If the faculty, and there are many good faculty who do understand what's going on, so They have been quiet because, frankly, they're afraid of what happens to them if they're not.
00:56:58.000 But George has to step down or be fired, and the faculty have to rally and evidence that they learned something.
00:57:06.000 And then the third thing, and in some ways this is the one that is, I think, the toughest.
00:57:15.000 They came after me.
00:57:16.000 They came after two other people.
00:57:18.000 The chief of police of our police force, Stacey Brown, who they have been attempting...
00:57:23.000 She is a utterly professional, extremely good police officer who is also an Evergreen graduate and interested in cleaning up policing. 0.92
00:57:34.000 She wants... 1.00
00:57:35.000 She's aware of what bad policing is and what...
00:57:37.000 And this is campus police, correct?
00:57:38.000 Campus police.
00:57:39.000 So it's independent of the...
00:57:41.000 Right, which is why they were stood down, because they are part of the administration, has control over them.
00:57:47.000 But the police was demonized, and I mean, in the most disgusting way, it's posters of her wearing a KKK outfit in some sort of, I don't know, sexed-up garb was distributed.
00:58:01.000 This is a mother of three, right?
00:58:03.000 And what was the logic behind it?
00:58:06.000 Well...
00:58:07.000 No logic.
00:58:07.000 I hate to say it, but the logic, I think, was this saying that circulates, all cops are bad.
00:58:14.000 So she was literally, her swearing in was protested.
00:58:21.000 So at the very moment she took the job, she was already persona non grata.
00:58:25.000 They want no police.
00:58:27.000 And in fact, they advocated for that.
00:58:29.000 There was in the middle of this protest, there was a something like a police community review board.
00:58:35.000 I'm not sure exactly what it's called, but there was some sort of a gathering where suggestions about better policing were advanced.
00:58:40.000 And the protesters actually advanced not only the idea that the police be moved off campus, that they'd be disarmed, but that in fact that campus policing be turned over to what they call community policing.
00:58:51.000 So at the very same moment that you have protesters as judge, jury, and executioners searching cars for people, stalking them, they're telling us that actually they want official control over the policing of the campus.
00:59:06.000 It couldn't be more ironic.
00:59:11.000 Yeah.
00:59:25.000 Our grievance officer, Andy Siebert, is also an excellent human being who is very dedicated to her job and very dedicated to Evergreen and has been there for a very long time.
00:59:36.000 And one of the things that she's been accused of is not being sensitive to allegations of sexual assault.
00:59:44.000 Now, what she has not said in her own defense, she is so interested in protecting the college from its own worst instincts, that what she has not said in her own defense is that she runs a summer camp for girls who have been sexually assaulted.
01:00:02.000 And I think she funds it out of her own pocket.
01:00:05.000 So in all three cases, in my case, I'm accused of being a racist.
01:00:10.000 In Stacey Brown, the police chief's case, she's accused of being a brutal, biased cop. 0.99
01:00:15.000 And in Andy Siebert's case, she's accused of being insensitive to people who have been assaulted.
01:00:21.000 In all three cases, not only are these things wrong, they are the opposite of right.
01:00:26.000 And so I was just going to say the third thing that I wanted to say was George has to step down, the faculty has to wake up, and then everybody needs to take a look at the fact that three for three they've gone after people in classic witch-hunting style and the person in question was the exact opposite of what they were saying.
01:00:48.000 At the point you discover that you've been hunting witches and then it turns out the people in question are innocent, you have to step back and ask yourself how you got there.
01:00:58.000 How did that happen to you that you ended up hunting innocent people?
01:01:02.000 That should be a wake-up call for everybody involved.
01:01:04.000 Well, as soon as you start talking about searching for cars and searching for individuals, my mind immediately escalates to violence.
01:01:12.000 That's how my mind goes.
01:01:14.000 I know mobs, and I know people, and I'm...
01:01:18.000 I just have far too much experience with violence, and I know what happens when people ramp up ideas without a real predetermined goal.
01:01:26.000 They don't have, like, what we'd like to do is get Brett and talk to him one-on-one.
01:01:33.000 I want to invite him to have a debate, a one-on-one debate with someone without an audience, so they could sit down and hash out these ideas.
01:01:40.000 Well, hey, you're working with something.
01:01:42.000 Well, how do we find him?
01:01:43.000 Well, maybe he's in one of these cars.
01:01:45.000 Like, that's not what they're doing.
01:01:46.000 Right.
01:01:46.000 Right.
01:01:47.000 No, they go, we're going to find him.
01:01:48.000 But they don't have a step after they're going to find you unless they do. 0.99
01:01:53.000 And it might be fucking barbaric. 0.98
01:01:54.000 I mean, it might be, you know, we're going to kidnap him. 0.99
01:01:57.000 We're going to force him to read this letter. 1.00
01:02:00.000 You know, I mean, it's literally hostage shit. 0.99
01:02:03.000 I agree. 0.99
01:02:05.000 And I do think, you know, I don't know.
01:02:08.000 I'm not an expert on what happens when mobs ultimately do something wrong.
01:02:13.000 I think it's Mashal Khan who was killed by a mob over supposed blasphemy, I guess last month.
01:02:25.000 Was that in Turkey?
01:02:27.000 I thought it was in Pakistan.
01:02:28.000 It wasn't in Turkey.
01:02:29.000 Okay.
01:02:30.000 All right.
01:02:31.000 I'm sorry.
01:02:32.000 I should know.
01:02:32.000 That's all right.
01:02:33.000 That's a different world.
01:02:36.000 It's a different world, but nonetheless, the point is a mob thinks that it's on the right track, and it's so convinced of what it believes that...
01:02:47.000 It ends up doing something that it doesn't know it's capable of.
01:02:50.000 And there's also a diffusion of responsibility in the large group.
01:02:53.000 They're allowed to do much more horrific things you would ever do one-on-one to an individual.
01:02:57.000 100%.
01:02:57.000 So I don't think that anyone intends that, but I'm not sure that they ever do.
01:03:05.000 Well, the ramping up of things is what terrifies me.
01:03:08.000 I've just seen it too many times where people get together in large groups of people and things escalate and no one knows why.
01:03:14.000 And then all of a sudden it's chaos and there's a literal feeling in the air that violence can erupt.
01:03:20.000 And I don't know if there's...
01:03:20.000 Maybe you would be able to tell me.
01:03:22.000 Is there some...
01:03:23.000 Evolutionary echo of that from back in the day when we would get invaded by large groups of people and we had to switch over immediately to some sort of a warlike mindset.
01:03:31.000 I don't know what it is, but there's something really bizarre that happens to people in large groups.
01:03:36.000 And if you've ever been in a concert where a riot breaks out or a stampede where things go crazy, it's scary.
01:03:44.000 It's terrifying.
01:03:45.000 Well, you're absolutely right about the evolutionary roots, that these are programs that exist in us for circumstances.
01:03:52.000 And one of the things, you know, if I had been able to give the lecture that I proposed in the letter that got me in so much trouble with people, one of the things that I would say is that the most dangerous thing is that we have these latent programs that are waiting for evidence that it is the moment to do X,
01:04:10.000 Y, or Z. And because we haven't been in those circumstances until the moment those programs are triggered, we're not even aware that human beings are capable of some of the things they're capable of.
01:04:22.000 So we have to guard against these things at all costs.
01:04:26.000 If we really, you know, never again is a very important concept.
01:04:29.000 And if never again is to mean anything, we have to understand why it happens in the first place so that we can repair the world so it becomes impossible.
01:04:39.000 Yes, instead of giving in to the influence of these ancient programs, understanding that they're there and recognizing them when they go live.
01:04:46.000 Exactly.
01:04:47.000 In fact, maybe the thing that would be worth remembering is what happens to a drowning person.
01:04:54.000 When a person drowns, they're very dangerous, right?
01:04:57.000 Because their body switches on a drowning program that basically looks for anything that can be pushed down so you can get up to where the air is.
01:05:05.000 Which means that somebody can drown their closest kin by accident because a drowning program that they've never seen active until the first time they face drowning is suddenly online.
01:05:16.000 And so that's a simple one.
01:05:18.000 But there are other ones too.
01:05:20.000 There are ones for And I believe things like genocide, where populations that have successfully eliminated other populations have done well.
01:05:32.000 And so knowing that human beings are actually wired for genocide under some circumstances is...
01:05:40.000 Well, it's a sobering responsibility, but it's also hopeful to me, because if you know that it's there, you can figure out what triggers it, and I think we can rule it out by raising people in an environment where awareness of that program allows us to teach them in such a way that that program is deactivated.
01:05:57.000 And that might be the only way.
01:05:59.000 You must be aware of the fact that there is a potential to disassociate and decide that this group of people is the other, and that they are not you, and you could do horrific things to them.
01:06:10.000 And that this is literally a part of how human beings evolved to 2017, how we got through all the horrific things that have taken place in the past.
01:06:19.000 And if you think about the...
01:06:24.000 The religious innovations that have occurred in the history of most of the populations on Earth today, they involve a recognition at some point where the definition of self gets broadened to a larger group.
01:06:39.000 So if you think about, for example, the Golden Rule.
01:06:43.000 The Golden Rule has progenitors in the Hillel tradition. 0.51
01:06:50.000 But it is basically somebody saying that some large entity needs to be treated as some extension of self.
01:06:58.000 And really, this may sound funny to people, but if we are to survive the next century as a species, it's going to have to be through the recognition that actually all human beings are trapped on one tiny little planet and And we're in severe jeopardy.
01:07:15.000 And really, we have to start treating each other, not as other, because we will be fighting each other as the whole experiment goes to hell.
01:07:25.000 We have to recognize that we actually face a common enemy, which is the unintended consequences of the system we've built.
01:07:32.000 I never like to bring up Ronald Reagan as the voice of reason, but he had a fantastic quote way back in the day, one of his speeches during the Cold War, where he was talking about how we would bond together if we were approached by some alien life form from another planet that threatened us.
01:07:49.000 How we would all realize that we are all in this together.
01:07:52.000 I had no idea that he said that.
01:07:54.000 It was a great speech because the conspiracy theorists went crazy.
01:07:57.000 They're like, there's aliens, man!
01:07:59.000 Well, I think this is totally right.
01:08:01.000 And here's the even better part, I think, which is, yeah, if there was an alien race that came to invade the Earth, we'd rally.
01:08:11.000 If there was an asteroid that we had enough time to know that it was coming and that we would have to rally together to do something about it, we'd do something about it.
01:08:18.000 And so it is perfectly possible for the mechanisms that evolution built into us to fight each other, that caused us to cooperate to fight other groups, to be retargeted at things that aren't other groups, that are problems.
01:08:31.000 And so what frustrates me more than I think anything else is...
01:08:36.000 Right now, we do face a common enemy, and that common enemy is, you know, let's say climate change would be one facet of it, but it's the system that set climate change in motion, which has also given us nuclear reactors that are unstable and difficult to control.
01:08:54.000 It's given us economic policies that are going to cause us to destabilize as a result of the concentration of well-being and power in a small number of hands.
01:09:03.000 Those are common enemies.
01:09:04.000 And if we allowed the circuitry that is in us to be triggered that allows us to fight a common enemy, actually we would be quite united at the moment and for a good cause.
01:09:14.000 Which is one of the more disturbing things about Trump pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, is that what it says is that we're not in this together.
01:09:22.000 I mean, even more so than it says that these guys are...
01:09:26.000 I mean, he has...
01:09:29.000 Advisors and this EPA guy is a very dangerous character that's a climate change denier, and there's so much anti-science going on in this administration, you wouldn't even know where to begin, right?
01:09:38.000 But one of the real problems is that we're moving away from this group of people that's trying to figure out what to do about emissions. 0.90
01:09:46.000 What do we do about all this garbage?
01:09:48.000 What do we do about all this waste?
01:09:49.000 It's not even necessarily just about climate change.
01:09:52.000 It's about sustainability.
01:09:54.000 It's about what are we doing with the byproduct of civilization.
01:09:59.000 If there's one thing that should cut across political lines, it's that question.
01:10:04.000 What do we do about the things that jeopardize us all together?
01:10:07.000 And if it's one thing that should disturb us about capitalism, the number one thing is putting profit ahead of the environment that we literally need to sustain life.
01:10:17.000 And that's something they're trying to do. 0.99
01:10:19.000 Bringing back fucking coal? 1.00
01:10:21.000 Coal. 1.00
01:10:21.000 Of all things. 1.00
01:10:22.000 And they have these coal miners on TV and they don't even agree with it. 0.99
01:10:25.000 They interviewed a bunch of coal miners today that were President Trump supporters.
01:10:29.000 They were happy and they voted for Trump because he's going to bring back coal.
01:10:33.000 And they're like, well, I don't know about this.
01:10:34.000 Why is he stepping away from the climate change thing, though?
01:10:37.000 Like, even people in the coal mining industry are torn on this.
01:10:41.000 I mean, this is a very dark time in that way.
01:10:44.000 Very dark.
01:10:46.000 And, you know, and ironic too, because, I mean, we're now behind the eight ball because we've put this off for so long.
01:10:52.000 We should have started doing this 25 or 30 years ago.
01:10:55.000 But even now, it is actually not as hard as people think to figure out how the world might function that didn't create this jeopardy as a matter of byproducts of everyday activity.
01:11:08.000 It's actually not that difficult.
01:11:10.000 But the system is built to frustrate it.
01:11:13.000 So, you know, in the same sense, if you step back from the last presidential election and you think about how is it that we ended up with two such lousy candidates for this position with such power, something in the system has to be off that we don't end up with any viable candidates for that office.
01:11:32.000 And it's the same problem.
01:11:35.000 We are caught in loops that prevent proper solution-making.
01:11:39.000 It's not that solution-making isn't possible.
01:11:42.000 It's that solution-making is not someplace we can go from here because of mundane reasons in our system that are ultimately going to kill us if we're not careful.
01:11:54.000 Well, it's also such a complicated structure that outside of completely radical change, like restructuring everything from the bottom up, like tearing it down literally to the foundation and rebuilding it.
01:12:04.000 How else are you going to fix this thing with lobbyists and special interest groups and congressmen and representative government?
01:12:11.000 It's like there's so many different areas that allow for the possibility of corruption and influence and just Cronyism.
01:12:20.000 It's such a dark and twisted corridor that you enter into if you consider any kind of reform.
01:12:26.000 Well, it can't be reform.
01:12:29.000 And we can't tear it down either.
01:12:33.000 What will we do?
01:12:34.000 Well, that's an interesting question.
01:12:36.000 And I must say it's something that a number of friends of mine and I have been working on for some time.
01:12:42.000 There are answers which...
01:12:45.000 Five, seven years ago, I wouldn't have thought possible that I now believe actually are possible.
01:12:49.000 And so what we're really talking about, we can't have revolution, we can't afford it, nor will it work.
01:12:55.000 The power arrayed against revolution is so immense that it's inconceivable that it could function.
01:13:02.000 We also can't afford a disruption massive enough to cause the system to restructure on its own, if for no other reason than the fact that we've got more than 400 nuclear reactors on Earth today that require constant inputs of power or they melt down and spill not only the contents of the reactors but the contents of the spent fuel pools where we've stored decades worth of spent material.
01:13:27.000 So basically we have to restructure the system without letting it collapse and without confronting it in the traditional way.
01:13:36.000 So we need effectively revolutionary change without revolution.
01:13:40.000 However, notice that your life today doesn't look all that much like your life 30 years ago from the point of view of how you go about things, how you navigate around the world.
01:13:52.000 Things sweep across civilization in a market system based on utility.
01:13:59.000 And that model can also be used to replace the system that we have currently.
01:14:07.000 So in essence, if you think forward, what is the world going to look like 20 years from now?
01:14:14.000 It's very hard to know because you know how much change has come in the last 20 years.
01:14:18.000 So there will be revolutionary change.
01:14:20.000 At the moment, it will be dictated by a market and it will basically give us more of what we think we want rather than what we actually need.
01:14:28.000 However, the same mechanism that causes technologies to sweep across civilization can be utilized to have meaningful change in the way we interrelate with each other and the way we govern ourselves sweep across civilization.
01:14:43.000 So that's the project that we've been working on behind the scenes.
01:14:48.000 So what is the project?
01:14:50.000 How does it work?
01:14:51.000 Well, it involves different people with different expertise and there are those who are expert in the technological aspects.
01:15:00.000 In other words, identifying those technologies that actually stand a good chance of replacing the dangerous stuff that runs civilization now.
01:15:09.000 There are those of us who are involved in the game theoretic aspects of what it is that keeps the current system Stabilized as it is and what would have to change in order to replace it.
01:15:23.000 So anyway, it's a complicated effort, but it is not.
01:15:27.000 I'm hopeful in a way that I wasn't back during Occupy, let's say, because I no longer think that the only route forward is one of the traditional modes that we've seen.
01:15:41.000 So do you think it's going to be a slow integration of technology into people's lives to the point where it's going to affect the system itself, to the point where the current system, the way it works, just won't operate the way it does?
01:15:53.000 No, not really.
01:15:54.000 What are you saying specifically?
01:15:59.000 Shut out of the gains of civilization, and they have been fed a small portion of the phony growth that our system generates to placate them.
01:16:12.000 They've also been threatened with austerity, which is largely a false threat.
01:16:18.000 In other words, they've been told, yes, we could do something different, but you're going to have to give up most of the things that you So how about it?
01:16:27.000 And in fact, the world could be a very exciting place to transform.
01:16:35.000 If we were to recognize the real landscape that we face rather than the story that has been portrayed that has told us that we really don't have any good options, it seems that there is still time, though frankly the clock is ticking.
01:16:53.000 So, like, what would be the steps that would be taken in order to make this a reality?
01:16:57.000 Well, the question is, do I want to say that out loud here, where the entities that want to oppose it know exactly what it is before it comes?
01:17:07.000 I don't know how smart that is.
01:17:09.000 What I will say is that there are a good number of us working on the puzzle, we're serious about it, and we are The things that would typically be used to dismiss us ought not be.
01:17:24.000 We're not looking to be the head of some system that enriches us.
01:17:30.000 We're looking to make the planet function in a way that serves everyone.
01:17:35.000 So do you think there's some sort of conspiracy to stop this?
01:17:37.000 Like if you actually bring it up, you think that there would actually be people that would make or take active measures in order to hold it off at the pass?
01:17:44.000 I don't think it's exactly like that.
01:17:46.000 I think there is a structure that has emerged that exists.
01:17:56.000 Administrations come and go, but there's a structure that doesn't.
01:17:59.000 And it seems to have a central principle behind it, which is it doesn't like change that it can't control.
01:18:07.000 Change is one thing, change happens, but it's not interested in change that could happen.
01:18:14.000 So anyway, the reason that we end up with a battle between a non-viable Republican and a non-viable Democrat is that they have passed a test in which they do not threaten the fundamental structures underneath.
01:18:33.000 In fact, Trump may actually be a violation of that.
01:18:35.000 He may actually threaten those structures and they may be trying to figure out what to do about them.
01:18:40.000 But in general, what we have is a system that filters on the way towards the levers of power such that anybody who gets there wouldn't use them in a destabilizing fashion.
01:18:51.000 Which is why we saw the DNC conspire against Bernie Sanders.
01:18:55.000 Absolutely.
01:18:55.000 We saw them conspire in the most direct terms, and then we've seen them in court defend it by saying they had every right to do it rather than denying it.
01:19:02.000 Yeah.
01:19:03.000 So anyway, I'm not, you know, it's too easy to say conspiracy and it is too, it's too simplistic because it implies that people got together in a room and said things out loud.
01:19:15.000 And that does happen sometimes, but it also happens through another mechanism, a mechanism of what scientifically we would call emergence, where those structures that frustrate change outcompete structures that allow change.
01:19:31.000 So it may be that what we have are forces that resist change reflexively without knowing what they're doing, the same way, you know, a tree grows toward the light without knowing what it's doing.
01:19:43.000 Oh, okay.
01:19:44.000 Don't you think, though, that there'd be some benefit to discussing these potential...
01:19:51.000 Solutions to these issues out loud?
01:19:53.000 And people would sort of like pick it up and act on it, especially given this enormous platform?
01:20:00.000 I do.
01:20:01.000 So it's not that I don't want to talk about them.
01:20:04.000 I mean, in fact, we've we held a what was called an unconference in Palo Alto several months ago.
01:20:12.000 So it's not that we don't talk about them out loud.
01:20:14.000 What I'm concerned about is that, A, I'm only one of the people involved, and so I have my area of expertise in this group, but there are many other areas of expertise that I can't speak to as directly.
01:20:26.000 So anyway, I'm concerned about unearthing the thing in a place where it will be a cartoon version of something that's actually more sophisticated than that.
01:20:36.000 I understand.
01:20:36.000 But I'm not averse to answering questions if you've got them.
01:20:41.000 What would be the first step?
01:20:43.000 Well, the first step would probably involve a blockchain currency that had strengths connected to it that made it competitively superior to something like the dollar.
01:21:01.000 In other words, the dollar is a flawed entity in multiple regards.
01:21:06.000 But the dollar depends on our valuing it.
01:21:11.000 And the thing about blockchain currencies is that blockchain currencies can be exchanged between entities that have an agreement about...
01:21:23.000 So, for example, a group of people could decide to pay each other in blockchain currency of some kind based on ideals that are not the same ones on which our nation, for example, is founded.
01:21:38.000 So, you could agree to a higher set of standards for something and agree to prefer each other in the context of business, so you would do business with those who had also agreed to the same higher set of principles, and that currency could therefore displace something like the dollar.
01:22:00.000 Well, it'd be fascinating to see.
01:22:02.000 I mean, I know that Bitcoin and blockchain and a lot of these different cryptocurrencies are gaining momentum.
01:22:07.000 And in fact, Bitcoin, weren't we just talking about this, is higher now than it has been, like, literally in years.
01:22:14.000 Ever?
01:22:14.000 Ever.
01:22:17.000 So, there's some momentum in that regard.
01:22:19.000 It'd be nice to see them used side by side, you know, to see if it could be possible that it could gain more momentum to get to the point where it's...
01:22:27.000 I mean, right now you bring up, I'm going to buy something with Bitcoin.
01:22:30.000 People think you're a freak. 0.57
01:22:31.000 Right.
01:22:31.000 Like my friend Andreas Antonopoulos, who's big in the Bitcoin movement.
01:22:35.000 I've had him on the podcast a few times.
01:22:37.000 He's written books on it, and he does everything in Bitcoin.
01:22:40.000 He's paid in Bitcoin.
01:22:40.000 He buys his airline tickets in Bitcoin.
01:22:43.000 He pays his rent in Bitcoin.
01:22:44.000 I mean, he's deep.
01:22:46.000 But maybe, what, is one of a thousand people in the world that might do that?
01:22:50.000 Right.
01:22:51.000 Although, you know, everything transformative starts in a small minority of people doing it somewhere.
01:22:57.000 So what I would say is that the cryptocurrency isn't enough in and of itself.
01:23:01.000 You have to couple it with the structures that are capable of solving the other problems of civilization.
01:23:07.000 Like someone figuring out what to do with nuclear waste.
01:23:11.000 That would be a nice one.
01:23:12.000 That's a biggie.
01:23:13.000 Right.
01:23:13.000 That's a biggie.
01:23:14.000 And it's high on my list of, let's say, fears is that those nuclear reactors are so dangerous by virtue of what it is that keeps them stable day in and day out that really, if people understood the danger they face based on those reactors and the spent fuel that they have,
01:23:35.000 people would be alarmed.
01:23:37.000 Well, if people just paid attention to Fukushima.
01:23:39.000 I mean, just look at what's happening and know how many of those there are.
01:23:42.000 And here's the other issue.
01:23:44.000 You know, I've talked to people before, and there's this...
01:23:47.000 I mean, it's really funny how when you subscribe to a certain ideology, whether it's a liberal ideology or whether it's a conservative ideology, you immediately adopt a series of beliefs that go along with that.
01:24:00.000 And one of them on the right is that nuclear power is clean energy.
01:24:06.000 And my argument to that has always been, we've only had it for 60 years, and look how many places you can't even go anymore.
01:24:15.000 I mean, Fukushima, Chernobyl...
01:24:19.000 What is it?
01:24:20.000 Three Mile Island?
01:24:21.000 Three Mile Island.
01:24:22.000 I don't know.
01:24:22.000 Three Mile Island.
01:24:23.000 Can you go there now?
01:24:25.000 I wouldn't go there.
01:24:26.000 It'd be the best of those three, but we also have the Whip Project in New Mexico.
01:24:31.000 Yeah, the number of places on Earth you can just simply no longer go is growing.
01:24:34.000 And places in Nevada where they just bury the waste. 0.75
01:24:36.000 Where they just bury the waste.
01:24:38.000 Hanford just had a huge collapse.
01:24:42.000 So let's put it this way.
01:24:43.000 We now know how dangerous this technology is.
01:24:47.000 And we also know that what we were told when it was invented, I mean, everything we were told.
01:24:51.000 We were told electricity too cheap to meter, for one thing.
01:24:54.000 We were also told we'll figure out what to do with the waste.
01:24:57.000 Not true and not true.
01:24:58.000 Not true.
01:24:59.000 And here's what's really terrifying.
01:25:00.000 I mean, every now and then we, you know, they're digging in Mexico City and they find some ancient Aztec ruins and they have to stop construction because they didn't know it was there. 0.97
01:25:09.000 What the fuck happens if a hundred years from now they dig into the Nevada desert and just tap right into a chamber of spent fuel rods and kill everybody?
01:25:18.000 Well, in fact, that's one of the problems that they've tried to solve is how do you make a sign for people, you know, a thousand years in the future? 0.99
01:25:26.000 How about a hundred years?
01:25:27.000 Right.
01:25:27.000 We have no idea how you would warn them off.
01:25:31.000 Yeah.
01:25:58.000 Yeah, and there have been some solutions that someone – there was a really young kid, I believe, that came out with some radical proposal for taking the nuclear waste and converting it into energy that could power cities for thousands of years,
01:26:15.000 whether or not it's viable.
01:26:18.000 I mean, it's totally possible.
01:26:20.000 I mean, look, if someone can come up with nuclear energy in the first place, the ability to split an atom and power a city, maybe it is possible that someone can figure out what to do with that waste.
01:26:31.000 Some new sort of radical approach to looking at it.
01:26:35.000 But you can't just leave it.
01:26:37.000 No.
01:26:37.000 You can't just keep doing what we're doing over and over again and hope that we don't make more spots where you can't live.
01:26:42.000 Well, I mean, the first thing is...
01:26:44.000 There is one thing we can do with it that's better that we already have the technology to do, and there's no excuse for not doing it, which is that all of the stuff that's sitting in pools that has to be actively cooled, after something like five years it can be put in dry cask storage, which ain't perfect,
01:27:00.000 but at least it doesn't require some system to actively keep it from boiling.
01:27:04.000 And doesn't need electricity in order to cool it, which is the issue that happened in Fukushima.
01:27:09.000 And that's strictly a matter of money, right?
01:27:11.000 We could do that tomorrow.
01:27:12.000 We could just require it, and we should, because it's vastly safer.
01:27:16.000 We could also, potentially, there are ways to take the spent fuel and to burn it down that does involve other kinds of reactors.
01:27:24.000 But ultimately, ultimately, I can't understand why we have not made an immense investment in fusion production.
01:27:33.000 Were we to discover the ability to make viable fusion power, which I believe we know is possible, we not only would be able to power civilization without warming the climate, but we would also be able to pull carbon out of the atmosphere if it turns out that we need to do that.
01:27:51.000 If you have effectively an unlimited source of power, you can take carbon out of the atmosphere and you could turn it into Building materials that were stable for thousands of years.
01:28:00.000 And the tiny amount that we spend on fusion research is inexplicable to me.
01:28:07.000 Yeah, we've gotten way away from the original subject, but I think this is all very important stuff.
01:28:13.000 But I wanted to talk to you about evolutionary biology.
01:28:16.000 All right.
01:28:17.000 And to being someone who teaches that and being as that's your discipline and seeing all of these...
01:28:26.000 I mean, what is it like being a professor and being someone who's studying this stuff and then seeing all these weird...
01:28:34.000 Traits and all these weird personality aspects demonstrate themselves in these times of crisis, like seeing these situations.
01:28:45.000 You're talking about people?
01:28:46.000 Yes.
01:28:46.000 Well, that's an interesting question.
01:28:48.000 I have become fascinated.
01:28:50.000 I didn't start out studying people, but the longer I proceed in evolutionary biology, the more interested I am in people.
01:28:59.000 Let's put it this way.
01:29:01.000 Sometimes something is surprising, but in general, if you have the right tools to understand people at an evolutionary level, things make a certain amount of sense.
01:29:10.000 I have something I say to students frequently, which is if a situation is confusing with people, very often it makes more sense if you turn the sound all the way down so you can't hear what they're actually saying.
01:29:24.000 Because very often what's being enacted between people isn't really about the content of what they're saying.
01:29:30.000 It's about something else.
01:29:31.000 And so let's take, for example, My first project, when I was an undergraduate, I was studying with a very famous evolutionary biologist named Bob Trivers.
01:29:42.000 And I wrote a paper for his class, and it was about the Holocaust.
01:29:49.000 It was about the, really, I was testing the question.
01:29:53.000 At the time, it was relatively commonplace to hear that Hitler was insane.
01:29:58.000 And something about that didn't And I wanted to know, evolutionarily speaking, was he insane?
01:30:06.000 And in studying that question, it became very clear that insane was the wrong description, that he was a monster, but he was a rational monster from the point of view of advancing, um, German genes.
01:30:20.000 And that was a very troubling discovery to me that, um, in effect, what he was doing was, uh, I mean, I think?
01:30:57.000 I think?
01:31:11.000 So what I'm saying, this has to be dealt with carefully because people hear you say that and they think that you're justifying it.
01:31:18.000 But, you know, I'm of course a Jew, you know, whose ancestors were from Europe.
01:31:23.000 There's no part of me that is in any way okay with what happened.
01:31:27.000 Quite the opposite.
01:31:28.000 But understanding that even though the Darwinism that Hitler was deploying was deformed and not accurate and defensible in a logical sense...
01:31:39.000 The plan he was advancing was German genes attempting to take over a larger fraction of the resources that planet Earth has to offer than they had available to them at that point in the 30s. 0.97
01:31:54.000 So anyway, what I'm trying to say is that There's something that we often teach students first when we get to them, which is called the naturalistic fallacy.
01:32:06.000 It means that just because something is true doesn't mean it's good, that it ought to be true.
01:32:10.000 And so discovering the nature of something like the Holocaust is very important in the sense that it allows you to grapple with it logically.
01:32:18.000 But as you're grappling with it logically, people want to imagine that you're saying it was okay, and that's the opposite.
01:32:25.000 There are many things that are true for evolutionary reasons that are completely unacceptable, and understanding what those things are gives you a pretty good shot at preventing them from unfolding.
01:32:36.000 It also really is a problem when something becomes taboo to even consider or to look at.
01:32:42.000 You can't look at the idea that he wasn't insane and that he was in fact rational in rationalizing his horrific acts.
01:32:50.000 That there was some sort of a plan to it all and you would say that even by enacting that plan You'd be insane in terms of how you think of the world and I think of the world like if we found out that Jamie over here was thinking about starting a master race and killing everybody off We would go Jamie's gone insane.
01:33:07.000 I mean that's like the and to say no, he's not insane.
01:33:10.000 He has a rational plan Yeah, like immediately people would want to justify Any horrific thing they could say about you.
01:33:19.000 Yeah.
01:33:20.000 Just to be clear, though, Jamie's not doing that, right?
01:33:22.000 No, Jamie's a good guy.
01:33:23.000 Fair enough.
01:33:25.000 I like sports, that's all.
01:33:28.000 That's what kind of takeover he's into.
01:33:30.000 But having taboo subjects, or having things you cannot consider, even if you're clearly not a racist person, even if you're clearly not a person who advocates genocide, the idea that intellectual discussions cannot be pursued about specific topics...
01:33:47.000 Well, the first thing, if you're going to go into evolutionary biology, especially if you're going to get anywhere near human beings, you have to really put aside the idea of taboo in intellectual space.
01:33:59.000 You have to be able to consider everything because so much of the story is, you know, it goes from bizarre to horrifying, you know.
01:34:09.000 And there's also great beauty.
01:34:10.000 I mean, one of the important...
01:34:12.000 Things to remember is that the evolutionary, the adaptive process, the adaptive evolutionary process gave us not only our worst characteristics, our tendency to war and to genocide and to oppression, but it gave us our best characteristics to our capacity to love,
01:34:28.000 to empathize, to be compassionate, to sacrifice for others.
01:34:33.000 So all of those things are The message I try to convey to people when I talk about this is that we have to pick and choose which of the evolutionary products we want to honor and preserve and which of them we wish to bar from the landscape.
01:34:54.000 And this is really what civilization is about.
01:34:57.000 Civilization is about taking the whole spectrum of things that we're capable of and providing a landscape for the ones that are honorable and good and making the ones that aren't honorable and good so expensive that nobody would consider engaging in them.
01:35:12.000 Now, when you're in the middle of this crazy scenario that you find yourself in, And you know what you know about evolutionary biology and about the mechanisms behind human behavior.
01:35:29.000 How do you get back to work?
01:35:32.000 Well, I'm lucky in that the freedom that Evergreen offers me to teach what I want, how I want...
01:35:39.000 You can teach outside of the school?
01:35:41.000 Well, I mean, you'd be surprised.
01:35:43.000 My contract doesn't even mention biology.
01:35:47.000 I can teach what I want.
01:35:48.000 So you could teach, like, football scores?
01:35:50.000 I could teach dance.
01:35:53.000 Really?
01:35:53.000 I mean, I'm not a good dancer, so I can't.
01:35:55.000 But I could teach pottery.
01:35:58.000 Doesn't matter.
01:35:59.000 So what that means, from my perspective, is that I'm able to take the stuff I'm intellectually interested in And I'm able to make it my teaching life as well.
01:36:07.000 And that has worked beautifully.
01:36:09.000 I've really had a great time bringing students in on what I think is the cutting edge of evolutionary theory.
01:36:18.000 And many of them have rallied.
01:36:21.000 You know, it's a lot like having graduate students who are deeply interested in the same material and are able to play ball because, you know, they take on the toolkit, they learn to use it.
01:36:32.000 And so anyway, my intellectual life is quite rich and it involves undergraduate students, which is a pretty unusual thing, but it does work pretty well.
01:36:45.000 Um, how do you get back to work at your school, though?
01:36:49.000 Oh, is that what you're asking?
01:36:50.000 Yeah.
01:36:50.000 I mean, how does, does that even happen?
01:36:53.000 Ah, it's a tough question.
01:36:55.000 So you were confronted with the very real possibility that your days at Evergreen might be over.
01:37:00.000 Well, there's a practical question.
01:37:01.000 I don't think they can fire me because I haven't done anything wrong.
01:37:05.000 Right.
01:37:05.000 So that means I can go back to work in the fall and I don't have another plan.
01:37:14.000 On the other hand...
01:37:15.000 You're saying in the fall, like your school, how much longer does this semester have?
01:37:21.000 Well, my...
01:37:22.000 You had in June or July?
01:37:23.000 I unfortunately have a conference that I have to...
01:37:26.000 I mean, it's not unfortunate that I have it, but I have a conference that unfortunately interfaces with the end of the quarter such that I had to wrap my program up early, and I met with my program for the last time.
01:37:35.000 Yesterday, after the campus had closed, we met in the park again.
01:37:40.000 You met in the park?
01:37:41.000 Well, we weren't safe to be on campus, so we started doing that as an alternative.
01:37:45.000 How many students?
01:37:47.000 I'm supposed to have 25. I have 32. So, who are the extra ones?
01:37:53.000 People who begged to get into the program and I couldn't turn them away.
01:37:58.000 Oh, you're a sweetie.
01:38:00.000 Thank you.
01:38:01.000 So now you meet in the park.
01:38:03.000 Are you worried that someone's going to find out where you're meeting and you won't be safe there?
01:38:10.000 You know, I mean, I don't go anywhere without thinking about it.
01:38:13.000 So, yes, I'm concerned about that.
01:38:15.000 So it's really gotten that crazy in your mind that you have to worry if you're going to the supermarket or you have to worry if you're...
01:38:24.000 I never know what I'm going to encounter.
01:38:28.000 And, you know, I'm not a big worrier on that front.
01:38:33.000 I more or less feel like if I encounter somebody, they're probably going to be upset.
01:38:38.000 And especially if there aren't a large number of them, actually, I could probably talk to them and get somewhere.
01:38:44.000 On the other hand...
01:38:46.000 Given what people think is true about me and what they think the rules are with respect to what they are therefore entitled to do, I don't know.
01:38:55.000 I really don't know what could happen.
01:38:59.000 Well, what can be done or what should be done about some of the, I don't want to use the term crazy, but some of the more rambunctious students that are a part of this?
01:39:12.000 I mean, it doesn't seem like they're going to just change their behavior and go back to just being a normal, inquisitive, young person trying to figure out the world.
01:39:22.000 It's like they're so embroiled in this ideology, it seems And they've given them so much ground.
01:39:28.000 It's like, how do you stop this? 0.99
01:39:31.000 And when you've held the fucking president hostage and told him he can't go to the bathroom without representatives of your militant group watching him pee, where does it go from there? 0.99
01:39:43.000 Well, um... 0.99
01:39:47.000 I should say, what I said, I don't know, five, ten minutes ago, probably sounded a little utopian.
01:39:55.000 I'm not a utopian.
01:39:56.000 I think utopia might be the worst idea humans ever had.
01:40:00.000 The worst?
01:40:02.000 The worst in the Holocaust? 0.92
01:40:04.000 Well, I mean, the Holocaust was utopian. 1.00
01:40:06.000 I guess.
01:40:07.000 It was, right?
01:40:08.000 That was the idea.
01:40:11.000 So, yes, I think that...
01:40:14.000 But most people think of utopian as like some moment in time where we're all sort of like, oh, what are we doing?
01:40:19.000 Let's work together.
01:40:20.000 Let's all be nice.
01:40:21.000 Right.
01:40:21.000 Well, people, I mean, you know, utopia...
01:40:24.000 Yes.
01:40:25.000 Well, very impractical ideas.
01:40:27.000 A, they think they know enough about the way things work to describe a good state for things to reach, and they tend to focus on one thing that they want to make better and ignore all of the harms that will come if they engage in it.
01:40:41.000 So, anyway, I'm not a utopian, and what I'm about to say about what could happen at Evergreen is not utopian in nature.
01:40:51.000 But I do think Evergreen...
01:40:54.000 As you described earlier, is really the tip of something.
01:40:58.000 What happened at Evergreen is so extreme and the way it looks to the world is so preposterous that I do think, I do hope that the Academy is hitting bottom.
01:41:12.000 That in seeing this little preview of where these things go, if they are allowed to evolve their own accord, that people will wake up and they will realize, actually, as hard as it is to challenge this stuff, we have to do it, because if we don't, this is what happens.
01:41:27.000 Now, that said, on our campus, if we get rid of a few bad actors, starting with the president, and...
01:41:41.000 We recognize that we have ended up in some new landscape where up is down.
01:41:47.000 It is also possible that we could find a new kind of common ground.
01:41:55.000 Do you think you could find a new common ground with these students that are screaming in the streets, hey, hey, ho, ho, these racist teachers have got to go?
01:42:03.000 I know this is going to sound crazy, and some people are not going to understand why, when my family and students have been threatened, I would even talk like this.
01:42:14.000 And to be honest, I understand why they would say that.
01:42:18.000 But the difference is, can you talk to them in a small group of people where they could be reached, because indeed many of them are reachable, or do you have to talk to the entire mob?
01:42:29.000 In which case, yes, it's absolutely impossible.
01:42:31.000 Isn't it also a problem in that when people dig their heels into the sand and they decide that this is how things are, and then even when confronted with the possibility they may have been incorrect or wrong or acted irrationally, it's very difficult for people to admit that and reconcile and step back and maybe just self-assess.
01:42:54.000 Somebody has to blaze the trail.
01:42:57.000 In other words, I find myself accidentally in the position of blazing a particular trail of how do you stare down an accusation of racism.
01:43:06.000 So someone from that side has to blaze a trail.
01:43:09.000 Somebody from that side.
01:43:10.000 Someone has to realize, hey, Brett is the opposite of racist. 0.97
01:43:13.000 We're being silly here. 0.82
01:43:14.000 We all have a common enemy and the common enemy is real racism. 0.95
01:43:18.000 Ah, good.
01:43:19.000 And, I mean this is why I said, recognizing that you have been involved in a witch hunt, that's the moment at which, you know, you either level up or you don't.
01:43:30.000 When you realize you've been engaged in a witch hunt, that's the moment at which you can discover there's something fundamental that's wrong in my program somewhere that allowed that to happen.
01:43:40.000 Maybe that would be a subject that someone could teach as a course, you know, like how campus ideology goes amok.
01:43:47.000 Absolutely.
01:43:48.000 How things go amok.
01:43:50.000 I mean, in fact, it's not exactly that, and it was planned long before this protest erupted, but I'm scheduled next spring to teach with another professor a program on essentially the evolutionary origins of human violence.
01:44:06.000 Wow.
01:44:07.000 So when...
01:44:17.000 Well, I mean If they were willing to listen,
01:44:35.000 I could deal with it.
01:44:37.000 The thing that is, I think, hard to appreciate from the outside a little bit is that because I know that there's nothing to the accusation and because so many students know that there's nothing to the accusation, it doesn't hurt in the same way that it would if I had serious doubts about myself in this regard.
01:44:59.000 So if they were to come around You know, we could make it happen.
01:45:05.000 That said, that's not the direction things are going.
01:45:08.000 As of this morning, the internal list of the faculty and staff was headed in exactly the wrong direction.
01:45:18.000 What is the list?
01:45:19.000 Like, what are they trying to do?
01:45:21.000 Well, they imagine that this entire catastrophe, including the closing of the campus yesterday and today, is the result of the, I think it was six minutes I spent on Tucker Carlson.
01:45:36.000 Yeah, you got on Fox News.
01:45:38.000 You summoned the demon.
01:45:39.000 I mean, those airwaves are immoral.
01:45:41.000 Yeah.
01:45:42.000 So, have they literally said that?
01:45:44.000 That you should not have gone on Fox News?
01:45:47.000 Oh, that's beyond that.
01:45:50.000 Their point is...
01:45:51.000 Here we go.
01:45:53.000 Evergreen State faculty demand punishment of white professor who refused to leave on anti-white day. 0.84
01:46:00.000 Oh, it's anti-white day. 0.93
01:46:01.000 That's even more interesting.
01:46:03.000 A letter came out today.
01:46:04.000 It might have came out since we started the podcast, too.
01:46:06.000 I'm not sure when this hit.
01:46:08.000 What is it?
01:46:09.000 Thecollegefix.com?
01:46:10.000 Yeah, this is describing what's in the letter.
01:46:13.000 The contents of the letter are right here.
01:46:16.000 I've been tweeted it a few times.
01:46:17.000 Make that a little larger for me.
01:46:21.000 We acknowledge that all of us who have power within the institution share responsibility for the racist actions of others.
01:46:30.000 Furthermore, those of us who are white bear a particularly large share of that responsibility.
01:46:36.000 Oh, God.
01:46:37.000 We acknowledge that we have a great deal of work to do in order to honor and live up to the demands made by the student leaders.
01:46:43.000 Oh, the students are leaders!
01:46:44.000 Oh yeah.
01:46:45.000 They're leaders.
01:46:46.000 Like how in Yale, the students that stared down the professor and physically threatened him, they were actually given awards.
01:46:56.000 Wasn't one of them given some sort of an acknowledgement of being a leader?
01:47:02.000 We'll find that.
01:47:03.000 Jamie will find that.
01:47:04.000 We acknowledge we have a great deal of work to do in order to honor and live up to the demands made by the student leaders during last week's protests.
01:47:11.000 We acknowledge that students of color and others who are underrepresented and underserved Have been voicing their demands to us for some time through the students of color focus groups of 2014,
01:47:26.000 through their participation in anchoring the strategic equity plan for November in Cooper Point Journal, blah blah blah, and we have not yet truly listened and acted.
01:47:37.000 We acknowledge a student's right to protest and affirm President Bridges' recent decision not to use the misguided language of the current student conduct code to punish the protesters.
01:47:51.000 What is the language of the current student conduct code?
01:47:56.000 A, hell if I know, but B, I believe what they're talking about is the president said that students would not be held accountable for disrupting my class.
01:48:05.000 And then I believe he agreed to their demand for student authority over any changes to the conduct code.
01:48:13.000 So these students who are engaged in this, I hope this is right.
01:48:17.000 I don't want to say something that's untrue, but my understanding was that he agreed to that demand.
01:48:21.000 We vehemently reject the claim that students have been violent simply because they have been loud and emphatic.
01:48:27.000 There is a difference between exercising the right to freely voice an opinion and inciting violence.
01:48:32.000 And that difference has nothing to do with the volume or forcefulness.
01:48:35.000 That's not true.
01:48:36.000 Because they were upset that he was moving his hands.
01:48:40.000 They were calling that aggression.
01:48:42.000 And now they're saying that, on the other hand, children can scream.
01:48:46.000 I'm calling them children from now on.
01:48:48.000 We support the demands made by students and honor the positive institutional change they have already achieved through their protests.
01:48:55.000 That's hilarious.
01:48:56.000 Our most urgent demands below center on the safety of those individuals who are currently most at risk.
01:49:02.000 I mean, like, the professor?
01:49:04.000 At the same time, we acknowledge that in weeks and months to come, our attention will need to turn to the larger structural issues students have identified.
01:49:12.000 In solidarity with students, we commit ourselves to participating actively and self-critically in the annual mandatory trainings specified in the Memorandum of Understanding recently signed by the UF... What does UFE stand for?
01:49:28.000 That's our union, United Faculty of Evergreen.
01:49:30.000 And management bargaining teams holding each other accountable when we act in racist ways against our colleagues or our students. 0.99
01:49:38.000 Okay, well then why don't you hold yourself accountable that you acquiesce to a fucking anti-white day? 1.00
01:49:44.000 That's racist. 1.00
01:49:45.000 Right, but what's going to happen here is this is going to be intolerable re-education by people who, frankly, it pains me to say it, but they're the most racist people on the campus.
01:49:58.000 I mean, that's what this is.
01:49:59.000 This is racism.
01:50:00.000 It just happens to be in an unfamiliar direction, but it's racism.
01:50:03.000 And they also are going to be in charge of sensitivity training here, which, to me, is the height of insanity.
01:50:11.000 So, scroll up a little bit.
01:50:12.000 In solidarity with students, we call for the Evergreen...
01:50:15.000 This way?
01:50:16.000 Administration 2. Center...
01:50:26.000 Okay, do you have an alt-right movement at Evergreen?
01:50:33.000 If I read that correctly, I am now in the alt-right.
01:50:37.000 Oh, you're an alt-riter! 1.00
01:50:38.000 I guess so.
01:50:39.000 Are demonizing Evergreen and Day of Absence specifically.
01:50:45.000 Wow.
01:50:45.000 Persistent media approach.
01:50:47.000 What is the persis- Is that you going on Tucker Carlson?
01:50:49.000 That's- That must be it.
01:50:50.000 Yeah.
01:50:51.000 So we have to break this down like it's code.
01:50:53.000 Like we're not even speaking English. 0.99
01:50:54.000 We're reading fucking hieroglyphs here. 0.99
01:50:56.000 Persistent media approach. 1.00
01:50:58.000 Persistent media approach.
01:50:59.000 Oh yeah.
01:50:59.000 Am I alt-right?
01:51:00.000 I might be.
01:51:01.000 You are now.
01:51:01.000 I might be.
01:51:02.000 People think I am.
01:51:04.000 Because I've had alt-right people on. 0.99
01:51:06.000 But then conveniently, when I have liberals on, I'm a fucking raging liberal. 1.00
01:51:12.000 God damn it. 0.99
01:51:13.000 Take seriously the threats made to the individual community members. 0.99
01:51:16.000 Oh, aren't you an individual community member?
01:51:18.000 I think you're about to get to me here.
01:51:20.000 Use available institutional resources to protect them.
01:51:24.000 Demonstrate accountability by pursuing a disciplinary investigation against Brett Weinstein.
01:51:31.000 Oh! 0.60
01:51:32.000 According to guidelines in the social contract and faculty handbook, Weinstein has endangered faculty, staffs, and students, making them targets of white supremacist backlash by promulgating misinformation in public emails,
01:51:52.000 on national television, in news outlets, and on social media.
01:51:55.000 That is a very, very broad...
01:51:58.000 You should sue.
01:51:59.000 That's a hell of a bullet point, huh?
01:52:00.000 You should sue just for that.
01:52:02.000 Yep.
01:52:03.000 You have endangered faculty, staff, and students.
01:52:06.000 You see, the problem with that statement is someone can just read that now and use that as a quote and just start saying that as if it's fact.
01:52:16.000 Well, let's just deal with this for a second, can we?
01:52:19.000 Yes, please.
01:52:19.000 Okay.
01:52:20.000 So that is a very interesting bullet point.
01:52:24.000 The fact is, I have gone on media.
01:52:27.000 Media has come to me.
01:52:29.000 What I have done is I have pointed to videos that the protesters themselves put up that I've been fighting this for a year,
01:52:45.000 trying to point out to my colleagues that they were making terrible errors.
01:52:48.000 This is all the result of reforms put in motion by President Bridges.
01:52:54.000 So they are now blaming me.
01:52:55.000 And I should say, I do think there is jeopardy on the campus.
01:52:58.000 We had a threat yesterday from somebody.
01:53:00.000 I have no idea how serious it was.
01:53:02.000 But I do believe that there's jeopardy to people on our campus.
01:53:05.000 What specifically was a threat?
01:53:07.000 Was it a threat from a white supremacist group?
01:53:10.000 Was it a threat from a pro-protester group?
01:53:14.000 It wasn't specific, but all I can say is that I got what I was told was a transcript of the call.
01:53:21.000 I cannot vouch for it because I don't have access to, you know, somebody could be promulgating a hoax, I don't know.
01:53:27.000 But what it said was that they were coming to campus, I think with a magnum, and they were going to kill as many as they could, is what they said.
01:53:39.000 They do? 0.84
01:53:39.000 We could play the audio? 0.84
01:53:41.000 Okay.
01:53:42.000 Put your headphones on, let's listen.
01:53:46.000 Let's hear it.
01:53:48.000 Dispatch.
01:53:50.000 Hello?
01:53:51.000 Hello, Dispatch. 0.50
01:53:52.000 Can I help you?
01:53:54.000 Yes, I'm on my way to Evergreen University now with a.44 Magnum. 0.99
01:53:59.000 I'm going to execute as many people on that campus as I can get a hold of. 0.97
01:54:04.000 You have that? 1.00
01:54:05.000 What's going on there, you communist scumbag pound? 1.00
01:54:08.000 I'm going to murder as many people on that campus as I can. 1.00
01:54:11.000 Just keep your eyes open, scumbag. 1.00
01:54:16.000 Okay. 1.00
01:54:17.000 First of all, A, that guy's full of shit. 1.00
01:54:18.000 B, he's an amateur. 1.00
01:54:19.000 Right.
01:54:20.000 Because a.44 Magnum only holds six rounds, mostly maybe five.
01:54:24.000 Might even be five rounds.
01:54:25.000 Or is that a Desert Eagle? 1.00
01:54:26.000 That guy's a bullshit artist. 1.00
01:54:28.000 A.44 Magnum. 1.00
01:54:29.000 You don't specify the round that you're going to use.
01:54:31.000 Nor does that weapon make any sense.
01:54:34.000 But nonetheless, the point is...
01:54:36.000 He's Dirty Harry.
01:54:37.000 He thinks so.
01:54:38.000 Yeah, right.
01:54:40.000 But, you know, I don't want to belittle people's jeopardy.
01:54:43.000 I have to say that...
01:54:45.000 I agree.
01:54:45.000 He might have been crazy, and he might have actually been really wanting to do that, and he could have done it.
01:54:49.000 Right, and it could happen. 0.54
01:54:50.000 For sure.
01:54:53.000 I think the jeopardy to people on campus is real, and I live right adjacent to campus, and I must tell you, I brought my family with me because I don't feel that they are safe there at the moment.
01:55:04.000 The question is, how is it that we have reached the point of deciding that this jeopardy is from me?
01:55:11.000 Well, that's horrific.
01:55:14.000 What they've done is so irresponsible in releasing that and making it public.
01:55:18.000 It's so irresponsible and so... 0.93
01:55:22.000 It's so silly that they don't realize that other people are going to see through that so clearly. 0.94
01:55:28.000 Well, many people... 0.91
01:55:29.000 Misinformation?
01:55:29.000 Like, what?
01:55:31.000 Misinformation?
01:55:32.000 What specifically?
01:55:33.000 They should be very specific.
01:55:34.000 When they accuse you of misinformation, they should be very specific.
01:55:38.000 If they're going so far as to say that you are, somehow or another, summoning the alt-right and making misinformation public on mass media, what is that misinformation?
01:55:51.000 Well, I know because I've been watching the email traffic.
01:55:54.000 Right.
01:55:55.000 So their claim is that white people were not asked to leave campus, that there were only 200 spaces in the venue off campus, and therefore this was just supposed to be for a small subset of people, which is nonsense.
01:56:12.000 There were only 200 spaces if you wanted to go to the particular seminars that they were holding, for example, the one about why Asians were part of the problem.
01:56:19.000 So they had a seminar on Asians being a problem.
01:56:22.000 Or a presentation of some kind. 0.68
01:56:24.000 That is really racist.
01:56:25.000 I believe so.
01:56:27.000 But in any case, they are conflating the 200 spaces off campus with what was actually expected of us.
01:56:35.000 And it was quite clear.
01:56:37.000 In fact, one of my staff colleagues put out an email.
01:56:42.000 Boy, time has gone into some weird thing, but I think it was last night in which he detailed the several emails that we had seen in which the school did ask white people to leave for that day.
01:56:53.000 So, they are promoting falsehoods themselves designed to obscure what's going on, I think, because they finally understood that the world doesn't get what they were doing.
01:57:02.000 Well, do they not understand that this is a trail that's going to be released?
01:57:06.000 Like, that this is actual data, and that this data, when they accuse you of misinformation, and then you have all this data, and then you can just, like, release it to everybody.
01:57:14.000 Like, hey, this is the actual emails.
01:57:17.000 Clearly, this contradicts what you're saying. 0.99
01:57:19.000 It makes you a liar. 0.97
01:57:20.000 Right.
01:57:22.000 Several people, in fact many people, have now started to refer to what's going on in the staff-faculty zone here as a cult.
01:57:34.000 And I think, you know, on the one hand, that could be tongue-in-cheek.
01:57:38.000 On the other hand, the mechanisms at work that have people doubling down on absurdities rather than trying to get on the right side of history as quickly as possible, it is very cult-like.
01:57:52.000 And, again, you asked me what would have to happen for us to right the ship.
01:57:59.000 The second one is that my faculty colleagues have to wake up to the fact that their belief structure has become bizarre and unrecognizable from any normal position.
01:58:11.000 And very dangerous from the perspective of an educator.
01:58:14.000 If this is what an educated person who has gone through the entire system and now has a job in educating young people, if this is how you view the world and this is how you view facts and this is how you distort them and then disseminate them to the rest of these like-minded folks in this very bizarre echo chamber that's being rejected,
01:58:34.000 like almost universally outside of the college, I mean, it's not just Fox News it's rejecting.
01:58:41.000 It's the Washington Post.
01:58:42.000 It's the New York Times.
01:58:43.000 People are freaking out about your situation and recognize very clearly and very rightly that you are absolutely not a racist.
01:58:52.000 And this is...
01:58:54.000 This is kind of a lot of what I've said to Jordan Peterson when I had him on. 0.98
01:58:59.000 They fucked with the wrong person. 0.99
01:59:01.000 Again, they fucked with the wrong person. 1.00
01:59:03.000 And this is one of the most horrific things about what I find so troubling about what I think of as... 0.98
01:59:11.000 I used to think of myself as a progressive, but what I have a problem with all of this is that the left is attacking itself now.
01:59:19.000 It's like there's no one who's progressive enough.
01:59:23.000 No one.
01:59:24.000 Like every single thing you do is a microaggression.
01:59:27.000 Every single thing you do is based on white privilege and therefore you're racist.
01:59:31.000 And unless you somehow or another give up all your money and give up all your jobs, and there are people who are asking to do that, too, by the way. 0.96
01:59:38.000 There's people asking people to give their money and put them in black banks, give them to black people. 0.98
01:59:43.000 I mean, we're going crazy. 0.98
01:59:45.000 This is literally, it's not an individual psychosis, but it's a collective psychosis that we're watching.
01:59:51.000 And I believe that in literal terms.
01:59:54.000 We are watching a kind of group insanity.
01:59:57.000 Is this a problem with language?
01:59:59.000 In some ways, is this a problem with influence and charisma and people's ability to sort of change the way others view the world with dramatic interpretations of events?
02:00:15.000 And things like emails, where this is not a one-on-one debate.
02:00:18.000 There's a real problem with blogs and emails, and I've talked about this several times, but it's worth repeating.
02:00:23.000 There's a real problem when someone writes something like that specifically about another person like you, and just writes it, but you're not there to respond.
02:00:31.000 So they can write as much stuff that's not true.
02:00:35.000 And they can put it all down, and then it's there.
02:00:38.000 And then someone has to refute it, but it's still there.
02:00:40.000 So you don't even get to refute the actual document.
02:00:43.000 You write your own, and then someone has to go and read that at a different location.
02:00:47.000 It's a real weird way to distribute information, and it's contrary to the way human beings rationally discuss and debate ideas.
02:00:57.000 Well, I would say there are many rules that are written into the way we interact now that make it possible for this to happen.
02:01:07.000 So there was an instance where a faculty member accused those that were challenging any of these equity proposals as being part of a racist backlash.
02:01:18.000 And she was clearly talking about me because I'm the most prominent person.
02:01:24.000 Is this faculty member a white person?
02:01:26.000 No.
02:01:27.000 So anyway, she says in a faculty meeting that this is a racist backlash.
02:01:31.000 And I said to her in front of this faculty meeting, I said, somebody might want to check on the question of whether or not I'm actually a racist, because if you do check on it, you will discover I'm not.
02:01:44.000 And if you don't, this is going to blow up on you.
02:01:46.000 And the...
02:01:49.000 Chair of the faculty told me that the faculty meeting was not the place to defend myself against accusations of racism.
02:01:55.000 I said to her, that's fine.
02:01:58.000 It's also not the place to level the accusations.
02:02:02.000 But I said, where is the place?
02:02:03.000 And then the faculty member who had made the accusations said, you should not expect there to be a venue in which to defend yourself.
02:02:10.000 You should just get used to these accusations.
02:02:12.000 In a separate case, I was told...
02:02:15.000 Who said that?
02:02:16.000 A white guy or...
02:02:17.000 No, it's the same faculty member who made the accusations.
02:02:19.000 Wait a minute.
02:02:20.000 The person said that you should just accept these untrue accusations.
02:02:26.000 Yes.
02:02:28.000 And what was your reaction to that?
02:02:30.000 That this is not a place for you to defend yourself against racist accusations. 1.00
02:02:33.000 This is a place for you to just eat shit. 1.00
02:02:36.000 Right. 1.00
02:02:36.000 You just have to accept these accusations. 1.00
02:02:37.000 On a separate occasion, we were also told that to question an allegation of racism is racist.
02:02:47.000 Oh.
02:02:47.000 How convenient.
02:02:48.000 Yeah.
02:02:49.000 Try to wrap your mind around that one.
02:02:50.000 To question an accusation of racism is racist.
02:02:54.000 Right.
02:02:54.000 We have an obligation to believe them.
02:02:56.000 Wow.
02:02:57.000 I know.
02:02:58.000 I know.
02:03:00.000 Wait a minute.
02:03:01.000 That is crazy. 1.00
02:03:02.000 That is such stupid back-ass words thinking. 1.00
02:03:07.000 It's what the cult mentality sounds like inside. 1.00
02:03:12.000 It doesn't understand that when you say that to an outsider, it simply doesn't add up.
02:03:18.000 Or it's creating a structure that makes it impossible to defend yourself because these accusations are so preposterous that they realize that they have to have some sort of a bizarro world structure.
02:03:28.000 Absolutely.
02:03:29.000 Oh my god.
02:03:31.000 So what does this person teach?
02:03:33.000 They teach media.
02:03:36.000 How ironic!
02:03:38.000 Right.
02:03:39.000 They teach media.
02:03:40.000 They are currently running a program where she's teaching students to make documentaries, and that program, one of the students in the program filed a public records request.
02:03:52.000 Since we are a public college, you can request the emails of faculty and staff to If you want them and so she had a student file a public records request for my email to make a documentary in her program.
02:04:11.000 So you've got one faculty member searching another faculty member's email through a student looking for evidence of I don't know what, but...
02:04:20.000 Evidence of racism.
02:04:22.000 Well, presumably.
02:04:23.000 Yeah, God.
02:04:24.000 Yes.
02:04:25.000 What little half of a sentence is she's going to cut out a contest with a few dot, dot, dots afterwards? 1.00
02:04:30.000 I mean, in fact, if you can separate my letters from each other and reorganize them, I could have said all kinds of things.
02:04:35.000 Well, I think you should have a student ask for the emails that came from her.
02:04:40.000 I bet they'd be wonderful.
02:04:42.000 They could be very interesting.
02:04:43.000 I bet they'd be wonderful.
02:04:44.000 If she's telling you that you shouldn't have a venue to defend yourself and you should just accept the fact that you're going to be called a racist.
02:04:51.000 The idea that she can call you a racist in a meeting...
02:04:55.000 But you defending yourself against racism is not the place for that.
02:05:00.000 It's not the place for that.
02:05:01.000 And in fact, this whole exchange took place with the president of the college and the provost sitting there silently.
02:05:07.000 And what does he do?
02:05:08.000 Silently.
02:05:09.000 Didn't say a word.
02:05:10.000 Did he move his hands?
02:05:11.000 That's a really good question.
02:05:14.000 I don't remember him moving his hands.
02:05:17.000 I do remember him not releasing an email after that meeting saying that, in fact, accusations of racism without evidence will not be tolerated.
02:05:27.000 He never said that. 0.84
02:05:27.000 Yeah, well, that's pretty goddamn important. 0.84
02:05:29.000 It's pretty goddamn important. 0.62
02:05:31.000 And you just can't... 0.61
02:05:32.000 There's certain hot topics that...
02:05:35.000 You just gotta leave alone when someone levels an accusation.
02:05:38.000 This is the current progressive mindset.
02:05:40.000 The current, like, PC gone awry mindset. 1.00
02:05:44.000 It's fucking crazy. 0.98
02:05:46.000 We're all even. 0.99
02:05:47.000 We're all human.
02:05:48.000 That's it. 0.99
02:05:49.000 I don't give a shit where you're from. 1.00
02:05:51.000 I don't care if you're from... 1.00
02:05:52.000 Your ancestors are from one part of the planet or right next door.
02:05:56.000 It does not matter.
02:05:57.000 It's who you are.
02:05:58.000 And as soon as you try to gain some sort of a leverage position because of the fact that you think that you have suffered more oppression in your Families, ancestral history, we're way off track.
02:06:11.000 We're way off track.
02:06:12.000 The track should be equality today.
02:06:15.000 We're all on this.
02:06:16.000 And as soon as someone says, you're a racist, but you can't defend yourself, well, then we don't have equality anymore, man.
02:06:22.000 You're trying to have anti-equality in order to bring equality to people that have been treated unethically?
02:06:29.000 Is that what it is?
02:06:30.000 You're absolutely right.
02:06:31.000 It's structural inequity, which is the irony of the whole thing, is that people who were wrapped in the flag of equity I challenged them because I believe in actual equity and I was accused of being a racist for doing it.
02:06:45.000 But it also sounds like intellectual poverty too.
02:06:48.000 It's like the actual structure of the thoughts that they're presenting are so poorly worded and so it's so poorly thought out and you're not allowed to defend against it.
02:07:01.000 Well, that's what I was saying about the difference in assumptions and beliefs between the postmodern disciplines and, dare I say, the actual disciplines.
02:07:12.000 In the postmodern disciplines, the illogic of those arguments doesn't matter because logic isn't a thing.
02:07:18.000 It's a tool of oppression.
02:07:19.000 Duh! 1.00
02:07:21.000 Well, that's a cute way to just throw a monkey wrench into the gears.
02:07:24.000 Clank!
02:07:25.000 That's exactly what it is.
02:07:27.000 And what do they want to achieve out of this? 0.99
02:07:28.000 They just want to achieve all black professors and all white people on their knees as slaves. 0.88
02:07:34.000 I mean, what is the ultimate goal?
02:07:36.000 You know, just people running around fetching power adapters?
02:07:41.000 Yeah, I mean, I have to, again, I want to be really careful. 0.93
02:07:45.000 Most people of color, most black people, hold no truck with this. 1.00
02:07:50.000 They don't want this.
02:07:52.000 But a tiny number who do want this, or maybe think they want it until they see what it looks like, are writing the narrative.
02:08:00.000 And that can't be.
02:08:01.000 They're going to undo the civil rights movement, and that can't be allowed. 0.99
02:08:07.000 Well, not only that, the real problem with any of this really crazy shit is that it gives fuel to actual racists. 0.98
02:08:15.000 And that it makes actual racists think that these people that are involved in these protests, as misguided as they are, it makes them think that, see, look, we told you that these people are bad. 0.99
02:08:28.000 See, look, we told you that there's a reason why they're inferior.
02:08:32.000 And it just, as soon as you...
02:08:35.000 As soon as you open the door to that, you have real problems.
02:08:39.000 Yeah, this plays right into the cartoonish fantasies of the absurd left that the right believes in, which is a tragedy.
02:08:48.000 It is a tragedy.
02:08:48.000 But I will say there's a positive outgrowth of this, I think.
02:08:52.000 Which is, if I look in my various inboxes at the stuff that's coming in from people that I've never heard of before...
02:09:01.000 This wake-up call is uniting people across every known fault line.
02:09:07.000 So I'm getting letters from religious people, from very conservative people, from very progressive people.
02:09:14.000 Every known fault line is cut by this, and people...
02:09:19.000 They are galvanized by seeing something that doesn't fit any narrative they've seen before.
02:09:25.000 That is to say, staring down an accusation like this is not common.
02:09:29.000 Watching it stared down and the world not fall apart is encouraging.
02:09:37.000 And then, you know, you mentioned it yourself, to have the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times on the same page about this, that's pretty interesting.
02:09:46.000 So I do hope that what emerges from this is that all of the coalitions that exist will look at themselves and will recognize that they have, you know, maybe not every coalition has a noble part, but all of the ones that have a noble part will understand that it's paired with something that isn't noble.
02:10:04.000 And I'm hoping that people who find themselves ill-served by the narrative will join together and that basically a coalition of the reasonable might emerge.
02:10:18.000 Well, that's a beautiful hope.
02:10:20.000 And I share that hope with you.
02:10:22.000 I mean, I really hope that what's happening is that in these insulated environments of these universities and colleges where things just get crazy, that when word leaks out that they get crazy, it's very much like cults. 0.98
02:10:34.000 When you hear about Jonestown, you're like, hey, man, don't drink the fucking Kool-Aid. 0.95
02:10:38.000 Something's going on down there. 0.99
02:10:39.000 But these...
02:10:41.000 Group mindsets that people fall into, you know, oftentimes when you're in the hive and you're in the middle of it, it can all be very, very confusing.
02:10:51.000 My hope is that as more people find out about the preposterous behavior that's going on in these universities and colleges and how people are I mean, these are young people that don't have a fully formed frontal cortex and are about to enter into the world, and they're doing this with this ridiculous momentum of these silly ideas.
02:11:11.000 And there's people that want to enforce that more and more, and that these people, some of them, are actually professors at the very college where this is going on.
02:11:19.000 I mean, that, to me, is...
02:11:22.000 One of the weirder aspects of it and one of the things that scares people a lot is the idea that these people are going to live in these insulated environments and then they're going to go and get their graduate degree and then they're going to start teaching and they're going to go right back with these same ideas in this insulated environment and never really go out into the world Where the marketplace of ideas has roundly rejected a lot of these notions that they're trying to pass off through logic and debate and actual discourse,
02:11:48.000 not through shutting people down because of the color of their skin or lack of or, you know, excess amount of melanin.
02:11:54.000 I mean, that's not how human beings should be behaving in 2017. It's just not.
02:12:00.000 So when you see it so evident and so prominent and so commonplace in universities and colleges, There's so many people on the outside looking back, looking in at this rather, are baffled and for the first time enraged.
02:12:19.000 Well, I think what you just described is exactly how this happened.
02:12:22.000 The fact that the critical race theorists and the postmodernists are, you know...
02:12:29.000 Third generation by now.
02:12:31.000 And so this has matured into a movement that wishes to reformulate the world according to what it thinks it understands.
02:12:39.000 But it's so confused about the nature of reality that it's just...
02:12:45.000 It's hard to even describe how preposterous it looks as it tries to emerge.
02:12:51.000 Because they go from being at the university to eventually teaching at that same university.
02:12:56.000 Well, it doesn't have to be the same one.
02:12:58.000 Or A. Yeah, they come to maturity inside a field where these things sound reasonable, and then they go on to teach them to students.
02:13:06.000 And so, you know, the intensity and absurdity grows with each of those generations.
02:13:12.000 And I think...
02:13:15.000 And had they been exposed to the real world in the context of having to make sense in order to make a living, which, you know, I'm not a big fan of capitalism, but nonetheless, just even having to interface with the world and make enough sense to get by would enforce a kind of mental discipline that is not evident here.
02:13:37.000 Yeah, mental discipline is a good way to describe it too.
02:13:40.000 It seems like the idea that not only should there not be a level playing field, but you should force a playing field that's not level.
02:13:53.000 Permanently not level.
02:13:56.000 It's crazy.
02:13:57.000 And obviously the world agrees, or a good percentage of it.
02:14:01.000 It's not even, I mean, I'm sure there's some bias in who writes and who doesn't, but I would actually imagine there'd be some pressure if you were really angry with me out in the world to write to me.
02:14:10.000 And, I don't know, I must have...
02:14:15.000 A thousand highly supportive emails, all kinds of emails from amazing, interesting people all over the world now, and a few angry emails, and I think...
02:14:30.000 I don't know if it's three or four angry emails and two of them come from inside the college. 0.97
02:14:35.000 Yeah, I'm sure some of them must be some of the professors that realize that this is a fucking sinking ship that's on fire. 0.98
02:14:42.000 Like, you can't keep doing it. 0.98
02:14:44.000 Like, this is not going to end well.
02:14:46.000 You can't double down.
02:14:47.000 That's what they keep doing.
02:14:48.000 Well, they keep double down.
02:14:50.000 So what happens now?
02:14:51.000 Like, do you just wait for the dust to settle?
02:14:54.000 Do you...
02:14:55.000 Um...
02:14:56.000 I don't know.
02:14:59.000 I'm...
02:15:00.000 This has never happened to you before, so this is a very unique moment in your life.
02:15:04.000 Completely.
02:15:04.000 How old are you?
02:15:05.000 I'm 48. So your whole life, essentially...
02:15:09.000 Well, we should be careful there.
02:15:10.000 There have actually been a number...
02:15:12.000 Nothing like this has ever happened.
02:15:13.000 The intensity of this, the national nature of it is all completely unprecedented, and it's pushing both me and my wife to our absolute limit of what we can do, just even fielding all of the stuff that is coming across our desks and all.
02:15:27.000 That said, there is a precedent when I was a freshman in college, and I've had battles inside of my field.
02:15:40.000 And so what I would say is that when...
02:15:45.000 When one has deep principles and one acts based on those principles irrespective of the, I guess, what would be called optics, you find yourself the one against the many repeatedly,
02:16:01.000 just by virtue of the way the world works.
02:16:05.000 This is without precedent in terms of the magnitude of it, but it's not the first time that I've found that just simply proceeding from principles that I'm pretty sure are right based on careful work has resulted in something boiling over in some amazing fashion.
02:16:22.000 Have you explored the possibility of teaching outside of a university or college structure?
02:16:30.000 Have you explored the possibility of using new media, whether it's online video, audio, text, in terms of publishing things and maybe having a Patreon page or something along those lines?
02:16:45.000 Well, I would love to do it, actually, because at the moment, you know, the college has been a great place to do this because of the unusual teaching model.
02:16:55.000 But it's becoming less fun.
02:16:58.000 I mean, even if I wasn't at the center of this firestorm, the rules that are being instituted and the, you know, diversity sensitivity training that's coming and all of those things.
02:17:08.000 What is that?
02:17:08.000 What do they make you do?
02:17:09.000 Well, they haven't done it yet.
02:17:10.000 You need to learn how to not be racist.
02:17:12.000 Right.
02:17:13.000 So they have to assume that you have these issues in the first place.
02:17:16.000 Right.
02:17:16.000 So they, first of all, why would they ever hire you if they thought that you were discriminatory?
02:17:21.000 And then second, what is going to be done?
02:17:23.000 Has it ever been proven ever that you can change people through compulsory or compulsory remapping of their brain in anti-racist ways?
02:17:36.000 What is it?
02:17:38.000 It's like a two-day seminar thing?
02:17:40.000 Something like that.
02:17:41.000 Well, the thing is, none of this makes any sense.
02:17:43.000 Because, let's say this.
02:17:45.000 Let's say that all white people pick up racism from their environment developmentally. 0.62
02:17:50.000 They can't help it. 0.99
02:17:51.000 So we know you're a racist. 0.97
02:17:53.000 Okay. 0.98
02:17:54.000 Well, if we know you're a racist, then what's the remedy?
02:17:57.000 Okay, the remedy is going to be some sort of sensitivity training.
02:18:02.000 Well, but if sensitivity training works, then how do you know I haven't already had experiences that have done this for me?
02:18:08.000 How do you know?
02:18:09.000 Right.
02:18:10.000 So the whole thing is illogical.
02:18:13.000 And frankly, I think it's punitive.
02:18:15.000 I think the real purpose is we would like to lecture you.
02:18:19.000 Yeah.
02:18:20.000 So like that.
02:18:22.000 In answer to your question about have I considered working outside the college system, I've considered it.
02:18:28.000 The real question is how to operationalize it so that I don't strand my family.
02:18:33.000 Because Evergreen...
02:18:39.000 Yeah, I think.
02:18:59.000 Well, that's certainly true, and I wouldn't be averse to starting something like that while teaching at Evergreen.
02:19:07.000 I really hope you do, because I think you have some really interesting ideas, and you're a very smart guy, and obviously your heart and your mind is in the right place, and it seems like before all this boiled over with this new president, Things were going the way you would enjoy them going.
02:19:23.000 This individualized attention, the freedom to teach anything you want.
02:19:27.000 I mean, it sounds wonderful in the hands of the right person, and you seem to be the right person.
02:19:31.000 It's beautiful.
02:19:32.000 Yeah.
02:19:32.000 I just feel like the whole idea of going to a place and learning, I mean, it sounded like a great idea back when that was how it had to be done, but it doesn't take into account the wonderful internet that we all have.
02:19:44.000 I mean...
02:19:45.000 The ability that you have now with this platform, with the amount of attention that's on you right now to launch something, is really, you're never going to have anything like this ever again in your life.
02:19:54.000 Hopefully.
02:19:55.000 Yeah.
02:19:57.000 From your mouth to God's ear.
02:19:59.000 You know?
02:20:00.000 Yeah.
02:20:00.000 Okay.
02:20:01.000 Well, I'll take that as a piece of advice.
02:20:03.000 This is the moment to launch such a thing.
02:20:04.000 Listen, do it.
02:20:05.000 I'll help you.
02:20:06.000 I'll promote it.
02:20:07.000 I'll tweet it.
02:20:08.000 I'll put it on Instagram.
02:20:09.000 I'll put it on Facebook.
02:20:10.000 I'll let people know.
02:20:11.000 Wow, thank you.
02:20:12.000 Yeah, it's just...
02:20:13.000 I think that's the future.
02:20:15.000 I think the future is people educating anybody.
02:20:19.000 Like, anybody who wants it.
02:20:21.000 Whether you're, you know, here or there.
02:20:24.000 You don't have to be in a specific location.
02:20:26.000 And I think that...
02:20:29.000 Maybe a lot of this can be overcome if we don't have these groups of people that live in these echo chambers and constantly circulate in these same groups that reinforce these opinions and experience all this confirmation bias that makes them believe that this is all correct and the rest of the world is just misinformed and don't understand.
02:20:53.000 But clearly by that email, a big problem is the staff itself.
02:20:59.000 Yeah, I don't want to say the staff.
02:21:01.000 Or whoever.
02:21:01.000 The administrators and some faculty.
02:21:04.000 They're crazy. 1.00
02:21:05.000 They're crazy. 1.00
02:21:06.000 Calling you alt-right or saying this is alt-right and that you're racist and misinformation. 0.98
02:21:12.000 I mean, that's slander.
02:21:15.000 I mean, it really is.
02:21:16.000 Yeah.
02:21:16.000 Well, it's slander.
02:21:17.000 It's also, I think it's just worth pointing out, kind of funny.
02:21:20.000 Yeah, I mean, they should have something to back those claims up.
02:21:24.000 Those are just empty claims.
02:21:25.000 They're beyond empty claims.
02:21:27.000 I mean, you know...
02:21:30.000 I'm a Bernie Sanders voter.
02:21:32.000 If I'm alt-right...
02:21:35.000 I mean, where are they?
02:21:36.000 Yeah, Tucker Carlson tried to say you were a Hillary supporter.
02:21:39.000 I was like, no.
02:21:40.000 No, no, no, no, no, no.
02:21:42.000 What did you just say about me?
02:21:43.000 Oh, man.
02:21:45.000 It's just, have you thought about contacting an attorney?
02:21:49.000 I am getting offers and people are contacting me saying I should.
02:21:53.000 You should.
02:21:54.000 As long as they keep that guy as president, you should definitely contact an attorney. 0.99
02:21:58.000 And if they're going to put shit like that on the internet, because for every person like me who reads it and goes, this is nonsense. 1.00
02:22:04.000 There's going to be a possibility of someone reading it and go, oh, that Brett Weinstein guy is a racist. 1.00
02:22:08.000 Oh, that Brett Weinstein guy is alt-right.
02:22:10.000 Oh, he uses misinformation in the media, and he's actively sought out this attention.
02:22:16.000 And he's doing this to damage the relationship with the schools.
02:22:19.000 He's doing this out of spite because he was called out for being a racist.
02:22:22.000 And we have this professor who says he's a racist, and she said it to his face, and he didn't defend himself. 0.99
02:22:27.000 I mean, all that kind of shit, that's how it boils over. 1.00
02:22:29.000 Yep. 1.00
02:22:30.000 No, I mean, it's clearly justified.
02:22:33.000 And they won't listen to anything else.
02:22:36.000 I've tried everything else.
02:22:37.000 So maybe that's just simply the answer.
02:22:39.000 I really hope you do something alternative.
02:22:42.000 I really do.
02:22:43.000 Because I think if someone like you who has this unprecedented...
02:22:48.000 Platform where you you have been launched into the public eye because so many people are outraged about this I know you were on my friend Dave Rubin show and And you know I'm sure there's gonna be a thousand other requests after people hear this as well People people don't want this to be the case anymore and they want to do whatever they can to stop that and they also Want to support people that are brilliant people like yourself that have wonderful ideas that we would like our kids to learn if they do go to college somewhere and We'd like people to be educated in these unique facets of the world
02:23:18.000 and have a platform where you could teach evolutionary biology unhindered and unshackled by this fucking nonsense that you're dealing with. 1.00
02:23:28.000 Garbage. 1.00
02:23:29.000 Yeah. 0.99
02:23:30.000 Well, it's a great idea.
02:23:32.000 You know, I don't know.
02:23:33.000 It may be that the university system is so encrusted with this stuff at this point that it can't be freed.
02:23:40.000 That's what Jordan Peterson thinks.
02:23:42.000 Is that right?
02:23:43.000 And I've talked to quite a few other professors who think that as well.
02:23:45.000 Gad Saad, he believes it as well.
02:23:47.000 He believes like there's just a certain amount of time left in this system where it's just so caked up that maybe the only way to deal with it is to abandon it.
02:23:57.000 Well, and then we would have to reformulate it, which would be, you know, unlike civilization, the university system could be reformulated.
02:24:05.000 We could start with a fresh sheet of paper.
02:24:07.000 And it's probably very dangerous to not have a university system.
02:24:10.000 You can't not have it.
02:24:10.000 You have to.
02:24:11.000 It's the way we figure out what's true.
02:24:13.000 Right.
02:24:14.000 And there's got to be a way to save it while cutting out all these cancerous aspects of it.
02:24:20.000 Or start it afresh.
02:24:22.000 You know, we could leave the carcass to the postmodernists and build something that works outside where we don't have to let them in. 0.99
02:24:28.000 And then there'll be a whole group of people just talking about what a piece of shit you are that's locked in some classroom somewhere demonstrating all the different terrible things that you've done to bring horrible things upon the college. 0.99
02:24:39.000 It's just... 1.00
02:24:40.000 Boy, it's such a strange world you're in right now.
02:24:44.000 It is really...
02:24:46.000 It's almost more dreamlike than dreams are.
02:24:49.000 Are you sleeping?
02:24:50.000 That's a good question.
02:24:51.000 Usually I sleep pretty well.
02:24:53.000 This one...
02:24:56.000 I mean, partly it's just the number of hours trying to field everything means I go to bed late and then, you know, by the time the sun comes up, the question is how much more stuff is accumulated.
02:25:08.000 So less than I might.
02:25:09.000 I don't...
02:25:13.000 I guess the thing is, I'm worried about what's going on.
02:25:17.000 I'm worried about the danger to my family.
02:25:19.000 That gets in the road of sleep.
02:25:20.000 I know that what I'm doing makes sense, even if my colleagues don't understand that.
02:25:29.000 So, I'm not getting enough sleep, that's for sure, but I'm also not ripped apart by doubt.
02:25:35.000 Well, you've done nothing wrong, so you don't have that...
02:25:39.000 Blanket of guilt like why did I do that?
02:25:41.000 What could I have done differently?
02:25:43.000 Right.
02:25:43.000 You know, you're not You're not Kathy Griffin right now.
02:25:47.000 No.
02:25:48.000 You know what I mean?
02:25:50.000 So I really hope this works out well for you, and I'll be paying attention every step of the way.
02:25:56.000 And my offer is real.
02:25:58.000 If you need some help, if you decide to put something together and you need some help promoting it, I'd be more than happy to.
02:26:03.000 And I'm sure there's been a lot of people listening to this that would love to hear your ideas on things.
02:26:07.000 Great.
02:26:08.000 Well, thank you so much.
02:26:09.000 Thanks, man.
02:26:10.000 Thanks for coming in here.
02:26:10.000 All right.
02:26:11.000 I really appreciate it.
02:26:11.000 Yeah, me too.
02:26:13.000 That's it, folks.
02:26:14.000 We're done for today.
02:26:15.000 We'll see you next week.
02:26:16.000 Bye.