The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 164. Teaching and the Voice of Conscience ｜ Paul Rossi

00:00:00.940 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:06.480 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:12.740 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

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00:00:50.980 Welcome to the JBP Podcast, Season 4, Episode 17, with Paul Rossi.

00:00:59.320 This was recorded April 22, 2021.

00:01:02.580 Paul Rossi is a high school mathematics teacher and writer.

00:01:05.820 His April 21, 2021 essay titled,

00:01:09.320 I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated,

00:01:12.940 was published on Barry Weiss's sub-stack, Common Sense with Barry Weiss.

00:01:17.320 It's definitely worth a read.

00:01:18.780 Jordan and Paul discussed the controversy surrounding a recent article Paul wrote, that article.

00:01:24.240 It's become apparent that an anti-racism curriculum is being instituted in schools across the U.S.,

00:01:29.720 and that doesn't initially sound like anything but a positive change.

00:01:33.780 However, Dad had Paul on to share his concerns about this anti-racism curriculum

00:01:38.540 after working in one of the schools implementing it.

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00:02:35.060 Enjoy the episode.

00:02:35.780 Hello, everyone.

00:02:55.800 I'm pleased to have with me today Mr. Paul Rossi.

00:03:01.760 Paul Rossi is a high school mathematics teacher and writer.

00:03:06.240 He graduated from Cornell University with a BA in French literature in 1992

00:03:10.980 and from Hunter College in New York City with an MA in educational psychology in 2010.

00:03:17.940 He's been teaching mathematics, including algebra 2 and calculus,

00:03:21.720 at Grace Church High School in Manhattan since 2012.

00:03:26.720 His April 2021 essay, I refuse to stand by while my students are indoctrinated,

00:03:35.120 was recently published on Substack's Common Sense with Barry Weiss.

00:03:40.680 Ms. Weiss is a former New York Times journalist who resigned over differences with her employer 0.93

00:03:45.920 and began to function as an independent investigative writer on Substack.

00:03:50.460 Thank you very much for agreeing to talk with me today.

00:03:55.660 It's a pleasure to be here.

00:03:58.800 What's your life like at the moment?

00:04:00.660 Well, I have a little more time than usual at this point.

00:04:06.520 I would, you know, be teaching classes.

00:04:10.420 You know, I would have, you know, up to three classes a day,

00:04:14.080 but they've taken my classes away and assigned them to some other folks.

00:04:19.960 And so I basically have no more teaching duties right now.

00:04:23.720 Um, so I have a lot of time for volunteer work and some other, other things like this,

00:04:30.040 uh, which has been, you know, a good chance to, to tell my story.

00:04:34.540 Okay.

00:04:35.140 So you're working at, at Grace, um, at, sorry, it's Grace, Grace Church High School.

00:04:42.680 And walk us through what happened.

00:04:45.760 You, you're a mathematics teacher there and you published an essay with Barry Weiss, uh, last week.

00:04:53.320 And tell us about the school first.

00:04:57.780 Well, we're, uh, we're K through 12 school that opened up a high school in 2012.

00:05:04.060 So that, um, well, it was, it was K through eight and then they opened a ninth grade.

00:05:08.400 And then as the ninth moved to the 10th and they brought in another ninth grade.

00:05:12.380 And so we were, we had a complete high school by 2016.

00:05:16.660 And, um, you know, our high school is, um, it's a prep school.

00:05:21.500 Um, but over, over the course of the, you know, particularly the last five years, we've,

00:05:27.780 you know, five, six years, we've been implementing, um, an anti-racist, uh, curriculum programming,

00:05:34.040 uh, for our students, as well as, you know, because as we were told in 2015, diversity, equity,

00:05:42.120 and inclusion is not enough.

00:05:43.860 And, uh, we needed to move towards a so-called anti-racist, um, pedagogy and program.

00:05:49.940 So that was beyond diversity, inclusivity, and equity.

00:05:53.460 Right.

00:05:53.920 It's a private, it's a private high school.

00:05:55.820 Private high school.

00:05:56.640 That's right.

00:05:57.380 It's called independent.

00:05:58.300 The tuition is approximately how much a year?

00:06:02.520 I believe that's up to 57,000 a year, I think.

00:06:07.360 Um, I could, it's somewhere between 50 and 60.

00:06:09.600 And how big a school is it?

00:06:12.040 Uh, well, our high school has about 340 students in it.

00:06:17.140 Um, and, you know, maybe 100, 120 faculty.

00:06:21.540 I'm not really sure what the ratio is.

00:06:24.160 Um, faculty and staff.

00:06:25.620 Did you enjoy teaching there?

00:06:28.560 I did.

00:06:29.440 Uh, I love teaching math.

00:06:30.880 Um, I, it's just, it's a wonderful thing.

00:06:33.560 And I, you know, I didn't, I got into teaching math late.

00:06:37.120 Um, but it's, it's something that I really enjoy.

00:06:40.220 Uh, this year has been hard because we've been teaching.

00:06:42.400 I've been teaching hybrid, which means I teach both on Zoom.

00:06:46.360 Um, or, you know, I guess until recently, uh, and to students in the classroom simultaneously.

00:06:51.880 So that's been a technical challenge.

00:06:53.640 And it's also been, you know, a challenge to keep, you know, everybody engaged and also

00:06:57.220 to, to focus my attention where it needs to be.

00:07:00.700 Um, so this has been a difficult year.

00:07:03.860 Yes, I imagine so.

00:07:05.600 Um, would you have considered your relationships with your faculty peers and the administration

00:07:12.400 and the students?

00:07:13.180 Was that essentially positive during the duration of your tenure as a teacher there?

00:07:18.300 Yeah, I, I mean, I would say it, it has been positive.

00:07:23.300 I mean, my colleagues, um, um, they sort of know where I stand.

00:07:27.820 I haven't, I haven't sort of, I haven't taken great pains to hide my thinking.

00:07:31.980 Um, in some cases I've gotten into some spats with, with them over, you know, differences

00:07:38.120 in the way that the programming has been delivered.

00:07:40.840 Um, and, you know, the, essentially the foundations, the, the belief, the system of belief, which

00:07:48.140 animates it.

00:07:49.400 Um, but I will say, you know, I've had very cordial relations with, you know, the Dean

00:07:54.900 of Equity and Inclusion and the Office of Community Engagement as people, you know, I find, um,

00:08:01.160 yeah, I find to get along.

00:08:02.160 So, and with the students and the students, you know, I had a difficult first couple of

00:08:08.440 years as a teacher.

00:08:09.140 I did, took me some time to really settle on a personality that worked for me, but I kind

00:08:14.800 of, you know, by hook or by crook, uh, you know, worked out a kind of performative self

00:08:21.260 that, that functioned well, well enough, uh, you know, to, to teach, teach pretty well.

00:08:27.800 I mean, I won't say I'm, I'm, I'm excellent teacher.

00:08:30.660 I'm, I'm decent.

00:08:31.660 I'm pretty good by now, but you know, it has taken a while.

00:08:35.020 And is this something that you had planned to continue pursuing?

00:08:38.420 Did you see yourself apart from, let's say this incident, did you see yourself in the

00:08:42.720 teaching profession for the whole?

00:08:45.200 Yeah, I, yeah, I could, I could, um, I was thinking that I would, I would want to be a

00:08:49.360 teacher for the duration, you know, and, uh, and I, I didn't really ever consider leaving

00:08:56.800 teaching, um, until, until probably this year.

00:09:01.460 What did you like about teaching?

00:09:05.120 Uh, I like the energy.

00:09:08.080 Yeah, I, I like the energy of the students and I like to, to, um, you know, communicate

00:09:15.300 with them about, you know, what I find true and beautiful about mathematics.

00:09:19.220 Mathematics is, was for me personally, when I, when I got back into it and teaching, I

00:09:24.660 found that it was a sort of island in the storm, uh, the storm of the culture wars and

00:09:29.780 the sort of general epistemological, um, chaos, which, you know, which I find, you know, in,

00:09:37.700 in language and discourse.

00:09:39.300 Right, because you had a, you have a B, a BA in French literature and I, I can't, I don't

00:09:46.460 presume that your MA in ed psych was math focused, but I could be wrong.

00:09:50.800 Was it?

00:09:51.800 No, it was not.

00:09:53.100 It was not.

00:09:53.500 Okay, so it's interesting that you, that you ended up teaching math and also it's interesting

00:09:59.180 that you founded an island in a storm and I suppose that the way that you talk about

00:10:05.560 it makes it sound like that was a relief.

00:10:07.320 Yeah, very much.

00:10:09.360 And a relief from what exactly?

00:10:11.520 Um, well, uh, it's, it's, it's a bit of a long story.

00:10:14.880 Uh, at Cornell, um, I studied the humanities.

00:10:19.400 I had a history major, English major and French lit major as an undergrad and me and my, my

00:10:26.260 merry band of friends and cohort of, of, uh, you know, compatriots, we were really into

00:10:34.440 postmodernism.

00:10:35.220 Um, we really loved the, the paradoxes of language.

00:10:38.520 We studied Derrida and Foucault and, and Leotard and Baudrillard.

00:10:42.620 And there was a certain like enthusiasm, even a lust for paradox that we had.

00:10:48.720 And I, I personally had, um, reading texts and sort of finding out how words can mean

00:10:54.220 their opposite, how meanings can be, um, seem to be taken different ways.

00:10:59.720 And, uh, I guess I would say that my, I guess I had a kind of a breakdown, um, from that and

00:11:08.600 that I didn't really, once I realized I didn't want to become a professor or go into, um, you

00:11:15.060 know, the academic world, because I found that even then it was, I was being pushed to say

00:11:20.340 things I didn't believe, I, you know, I kind of drifted for a decade, uh, with, I would

00:11:26.960 say, trying to find something that was meaningful.

00:11:30.860 So back when you were an undergraduate, you found the postmodernists emotionally, motivationally,

00:11:37.480 intellectually engaging.

00:11:38.420 And you talk about that as, as something that was also true of the people that you were

00:11:42.460 associating with.

00:11:43.260 So I get the sense that there was some, uh, sense of intellectual adventure and what was

00:11:47.840 it, what, what, what did postmodernism mean to you and why do you think you were attracted

00:11:52.820 to it?

00:11:53.240 What was exciting about it?

00:11:55.440 Well, there was a poetic sensibility.

00:11:57.420 It was non-political.

00:11:59.040 In fact, um, you know, the, the true materialist Marxists that, you know, that were sort of in,

00:12:04.900 in our, in our, uh, social milieu.

00:12:08.420 They would, they would sort of scoff at us and say that we were bourgeois.

00:12:12.400 Um, Oh, that's what Marxists do. 0.92

00:12:14.860 Yeah.

00:12:15.160 Right.

00:12:15.560 So, you know, we were just playing with language and there really was no there, there.

00:12:19.480 And actually what, what would, what would deliver, deliver us, um, from our current predicament

00:12:24.980 was some revolution in terms of material circumstances.

00:12:29.240 And so, um, but I was really, you know, I was really drawn to the creativity of reading

00:12:35.840 a text in a, in a way it was.

00:12:37.760 I looked at it as a way, like I, I wasn't talented enough to be a writer, but I could

00:12:42.760 critique something in a creative way and sort of get my, get my revenge in a sense, like

00:12:50.020 on the text.

00:12:51.300 Right.

00:12:51.740 Because that's a hell of a way to, that's a hell of a way to put it.

00:12:54.360 When did you figure out that that's what you were doing?

00:12:56.420 Um, I think I kind of knew it at the time.

00:13:00.700 Um, but later on reflection, I felt when I tried to be a writer in my thirties and got

00:13:06.580 nowhere, um, and became very frustrated and despondent and depressed, I thought back at

00:13:12.400 that time.

00:13:12.840 And I realized that a lot of criticism itself is a kind of, the kind of criticism that we

00:13:18.300 were doing is a kind of shaking your fist at the creative process and sort of gaining,

00:13:23.860 gaining power over, over art by, by interpreting it in a way that, that you found, you know,

00:13:33.800 that, that I found, you know, fit my world.

00:13:37.580 And so it, it, it is, you know, what do you think the pleasure in, I mean, you're, you're,

00:13:43.040 you're making a case for the pleasure in that you said to some degree that you think it was

00:13:46.900 born out of, well, it's something like frustration at, and I don't want to put words in your mouth.

00:13:53.900 I truly don't.

00:13:54.840 I'm trying to extract out exactly what you're saying.

00:13:58.120 And so if I'm wrong, please correct me.

00:14:00.660 You, you had, and perhaps this is not rare among people who were studying literature at elite

00:14:05.740 colleges. I mean, you, you, you'd have some desire to think philosophically, to be seen as a

00:14:11.580 philosophical thinker, to be seen as a creative writer, to be a creative writer. There's a

00:14:15.400 romanticism about that. And of course, that ability is what the whole enterprise depends on.

00:14:21.280 So it's sort of at the apex, but you describe what you were enthralled by, at least to some

00:14:28.100 degree as revenge against not only the text, but against the creative process itself as, as a

00:14:33.100 consequence of, of what, what would the emotion be?

00:14:36.480 I guess it would say like, I didn't, I wanted to be creative, but I just couldn't, you know, I, I

00:14:41.260 didn't feel like I had anything to say. And I felt that my, my authority was deeply compromised

00:14:47.580 just by my privilege or my place in the world. But I could actually, I could reach back into

00:14:52.840 Shakespeare and reinterpret Shakespeare in a way that, you know, made me feel powerful.

00:14:57.740 You know, I could say, I could, I could expose the contradictions of,

00:15:02.500 Was that also true, do you think, of, of your, of your peers? And what about your professors?

00:15:07.160 You know, I, I think it was, I think it, I mean, I, I don't know their state of mind, but I,

00:15:11.560 I feel like a lot of what animated that high postmodernism, it was, you know, but it also

00:15:18.580 had an element of appreciation, you know, just like in the way that Marx admires capitalism.

00:15:23.180 It was also, it was, there was an element of, you know, wow, this is amazing, but it's kind of

00:15:28.400 actually saying the opposite and, and is just dwelling in that.

00:15:32.620 Right. You wouldn't be attending to it at all if you weren't in some sense in awe of it, right?

00:15:37.040 Because why, why attend to that and not something else? So that has to be there at least implicitly.

00:15:42.760 So, and, and then you, after you, you were finished with college, you said you,

00:15:50.160 you weren't sure exactly what direction to go in and you tried writing and, oh, you also mentioned,

00:15:55.360 let's get back to that a minute, but you also mentioned that you discovered that you didn't

00:15:59.560 have anything to say. And also you felt that your authority was compromised. Okay. So those are two

00:16:04.280 different things they're worth delving into. It's not that surprising that you didn't have anything

00:16:08.980 to say in some sense, because I mean, you were an undergraduate and what, what do you know when

00:16:14.360 you're an undergraduate? I mean, there are staggering geniuses that come along who,

00:16:17.880 who, who seem as an intrinsic part of them to just overflow with brilliant creativity, but

00:16:23.900 that's pretty damn rare. And it's, it's hard to have anything to say when you haven't lived much

00:16:29.560 yet, but then, so, so it sounds like you were hard on yourself because of that, but also your

00:16:37.820 authority, you said you thought it was compromised. What do you mean by that exactly?

00:16:41.260 Well, even then, I mean, there was in my, I took some creative writing classes and

00:16:47.160 even then there was a conscious of consciousness of identity politics and that the, the real stories

00:16:53.740 that would advance society would not come from a, a white male perspective. So I kind of bristled at

00:17:02.280 that and, but I didn't feel like I could experience wasn't, um, of what would you call interest? It

00:17:08.860 wasn't of redemptive interest. Right. Like I didn't have, I had things to say, but, but the,

00:17:16.260 you know, the people, people didn't really seem to value my perspective. So I kind of swallowed what I

00:17:23.540 had to say. Hmm. Uh, I had a friend, I wrote about him extensively in my, not this last book I wrote,

00:17:31.480 but the previous book, and he was very guilty for his existence as, um, this is years ago as a white 0.97

00:17:38.960 male. Um, and he virtually refused to participate in society at all because he had swallowed hook and 0.93

00:17:47.260 sinker. I suppose the proposition that any manifestation of ambition on his part was to be

00:17:51.820 viewed as part of the world destroying force. Now it eventually killed him there. It was complicated,

00:17:57.720 but that was certainly, uh, uh, a motivational, let's put it that way, or anti-motivational

00:18:05.320 in a very profound way. So some of that was his own cynicism, but some of it was a certain emotional

00:18:12.540 sensitivity to the potential impact his existence had on oppressed others, let's say, at least that's,

00:18:20.260 that's how he came to view it. So. Yeah. I mean, and I also had a lot of rage in that,

00:18:27.060 you know, I felt like I, when my friends were do, were organizing things like, or, you know,

00:18:33.040 Greenpeace and so on, I would be kind of a, a LARPing and they would call it LARPing today,

00:18:37.980 but I would, I would say, you know, Oh, well, you just tell me when you're ready to throw a bomb.

00:18:42.640 You know, and I was obsessed with things like, you know, uh, violent revolutions. I wanted, you know,

00:18:49.700 I was, I wanted to learn how to hack and freak with phones and, you know, without, without any real

00:18:55.700 goal in mind other than to, to, to disrupt and break things. Um, and so I, I guess, you know,

00:19:03.320 I'm actually lucky there wasn't an Antifa back then. I probably wouldn't have been a part of it.

00:19:07.120 And what, what do you think, what do you think attracted you to that? I'm very curious about

00:19:13.820 this because Antifa, for example, I, I understand the attraction. There's a romantic attraction to

00:19:19.160 revolution. You know, I was, I, I had a debate with Slavoj Zizek about hypothetically about

00:19:25.820 Marxism, although it didn't really go that way. But when I was unpacking the, the communist manifesto,

00:19:32.240 and I've mentioned that it was a call to bloody violent revolution and the crowd, which was a very

00:19:37.880 poorly behaved crowd in many ways, broke out laughing and clapped, which, which really took me aback

00:19:44.720 because I wasn't promoting violent revolution in any positive sense. And I knew exactly, or know

00:19:50.800 exactly where those revolutionary sentiments got us in the 20th century. But by the same token,

00:19:57.620 there is a romantic attraction to rebellion, right? I mean, and, and it's linked to something very deep,

00:20:04.840 which is the sense that we all have to some degree that we are, um, a minority of one against a

00:20:13.640 faceless bureaucratic tyrant, hell bent on at least shaping us into this, into the form that it

00:20:20.580 demands and commands. And that that structure is to be viewed, even realistically, with a certain

00:20:28.700 degree of skepticism and regarded at least to some degree as an arbitrary tyrant. And, and to stand up

00:20:34.500 against that, well, that there is something intrinsically heroic about that, although it can go very

00:20:42.040 dreadfully wrong. And it's something that, I mean, young people are called to that, I mean, that the

00:20:49.380 developmental psychologist Jean Piaget pointed out that there's a messianic stage of late adolescent

00:20:56.080 development where not everyone hits it, but a certain number of people hit it. And that manifests

00:21:02.980 itself in a laudable, perhaps concern with broader issues in the world as part of identity formation,

00:21:10.480 that all supposed to be catalyzed and shaped in universities. So it doesn't find channels that

00:21:17.940 are fundamentally destructive psychologically and socially. So anyways, back to you. So

00:21:25.220 you were stymied to some degree in your creative endeavor, and you found some outlet for that

00:21:31.300 frustration with postmodernism. But then there was also this, this deeper and darker attraction

00:21:37.320 to some degree that you just described. How have you made sense out of that in the intervening years?

00:21:48.660 I think it really was a resentment at not being able to be creative in my own life, not being able to

00:21:56.440 have a generative, healthy, creative life. I mean, a way to, to deal with certain impulses and channel

00:22:04.860 them productively. And why do you think you believe that that was the appropriate destiny

00:22:09.840 for you to begin with? Well, you know, the great thing is that, you know, I was able to, to work out issues

00:22:17.700 with my father. And, you know, if you have problems with, with authority, there's nothing more attractive than

00:22:25.620 I'm, I feel for myself anyway, like it is a moral, a blank check morally, because then if you're, if

00:22:32.880 you're doing things for the benefit of the world, well, then you can, you can take out all kinds of

00:22:37.880 debt, you can, you can say, well, I'm, you know, I'm, I don't have to be a good person, because I believe

00:22:42.820 in all the right things. And I can do whatever I do is instrumental to the, the coming of a better

00:22:47.960 world. So I, you know, I could, I made my mother's life miserable, I would argue my father, I was,

00:22:53.420 you know, I was posing, but I was inhabiting the pose so deeply that I would be that I would give

00:23:00.040 myself some, you know, I could justify anything by by the fact that everyone else was wrong, and I was

00:23:06.620 right. And, you know, I found that as a, as a way to, to deal with things. And I, it was, it's a real high, I

00:23:14.380 mean, it's a really wonderful, thrilling, um, thing to inhabit. Um, even though, you know, now

00:23:24.960 today, I look at it, I look at it very, I'm very embarrassed by it. Um, but it's understandable. I

00:23:31.520 mean, I don't, you know, it could have been no, no other way, really.

00:23:34.940 Why, why do you think you, why aren't you like that now? What changed for you?

00:23:42.980 Well, you know, um, I went through, uh, I would say teaching, teaching changed me a lot, because

00:23:51.320 teaching was a way for me to, to express myself creatively, and be engaged in the world in a

00:23:57.500 regular, habitual, productive way where I could tangibly see the benefits of my efforts. And it

00:24:03.920 was a social pro it's a social thing, teaching, and it's a performative thing, teaching, and it's

00:24:08.440 very creative. And, you know, every day would be different, there would be new kids, and they would

00:24:12.680 have different problems. And, you know, they would bring to me, um, you know, their own cultural

00:24:18.100 reference points. So it's almost, it's just constant renewal. Teaching is just a constantly renewing and

00:24:24.280 self-renewing endeavor. So I, you know, I, I realized that with other jobs that were technical,

00:24:29.640 or, you know, that were wrote, those became boring very, you know, within three or four years. But

00:24:36.640 after teaching for over, you know, six, seven years, I was like, this is, this still isn't boring. I

00:24:42.540 could do this forever. You know, I love this. So you found a way to, to contribute that was concrete

00:24:48.280 and habitual and regular and routine. And that actually suffice to satiate your creative impulse.

00:24:54.980 And that removed your resentment, would you say, or?

00:25:00.140 I would say it just, it just kind of, um, it tempered it and, and, uh, made me not worry about

00:25:07.800 it so much. I can't say it evaporated totally. I mean, I still have an oppositional, I guess I'm an

00:25:12.580 oppositional guy in some sense, but, um, as far as institutions go, but, um, I, I was able to just

00:25:20.720 focus on, on my work and on the kids and trying to be good at what I do and enjoying it, you know,

00:25:27.820 And were you teaching before you went back to, to Hunter College or after?

00:25:33.180 No, I had, I had, um, I had been tutoring for a while before that. And, you know, I turned to

00:25:38.680 teaching when I, you know, the, the reason why I actually got the degree in educational psychology,

00:25:44.780 it's a story in itself. And that was one where it was a jet, it was, it was a desperate attempt to

00:25:51.960 avoid suicide, essentially. Like I, I was so depressed at that point in my life that, um, I

00:25:59.140 felt just compressed into this tiny little ball and there was no way out. I was just,

00:26:05.000 you know, how I got to that point is all the other thing, but I, I just went on the internet and I was

00:26:10.540 like, what is the last thing that I remember enjoying in my life? What is the last time I

00:26:14.980 actually felt a part of something? And it was when I was tutoring, uh, kids in, in, uh, you know,

00:26:23.860 I had done some light tutoring and I was like, I, okay, that's really crucially important. So,

00:26:28.100 so, because what you just said is, you know, you were, you were in despair and then you were looking

00:26:33.820 for something that was genuinely redemptive and you were searching your memory for that.

00:26:38.580 And you found that in mentoring. Okay. Why, what was it about mentoring that had enough value that

00:26:48.300 it pulled you out of that pit or that you could see that as a pathway out?

00:26:54.620 It was just the experience that I remembered of being with someone and being able to give them

00:27:01.500 something that they could use and having, having that exchange be rewarding.

00:27:06.740 See, I've been, I've been very struck by the postmodern insistence that hierarchies are predicated on

00:27:17.260 power and are to be viewed with contempt as, as the manifestation of tyranny and as self-serving,

00:27:25.120 selfish institutions. And I believe that that is true when the hierarchies become corrupt, but

00:27:31.560 what I've observed as the appropriate counterposition is that the people that I've seen who I've admired the

00:27:39.100 most, who are working diligently in institutions, find the biggest pleasure in their life in mentoring.

00:27:46.900 And it's a profound pleasure. There's something about allowing the best in you to serve the best in others

00:27:55.700 that can't be beat by any other form of reward. And a hierarchy that's functioning properly,

00:28:03.420 I think, has the central aspect of a benevolent father, which is something like encouragement.

00:28:10.780 It's certainly not exploitation by power. And it's unbelievably cynical to make the case that

00:28:18.000 that's the central aspect of functional institutions. Having said that, I understand that institutions can

00:28:26.260 become corrupted by tyranny and power and deceit. But I don't, I do believe that the basis upon which

00:28:36.160 a stable and productive hierarchy must be instituted is something like the paternal care for the upcoming 0.90

00:28:43.700 generation. And I also believe that we do take the most intense pleasure in that. So it's very

00:28:49.020 fascinating for me to see that that when you were scouring your memory and, and inhabiting a place that

00:28:56.100 was quite cynical and resentful, that that turned out to be the doorway that you could pass, pass through.

00:29:01.980 And, and then you went to, you went back to university and it was a consequence of your

00:29:06.940 experiences with tutoring. Do you remember any particular episodes when you were tutoring that

00:29:12.140 stood out in your mind?

00:29:14.800 You know, it's just sort of an image that I have of being with, um, you know, with the, with the young

00:29:21.180 person and, uh, you know, having, having them focused on what they're doing and me feeling connected to

00:29:27.860 what they were doing and just that it wasn't even a specific image. It was just sort of a, you know,

00:29:33.980 something in my body that felt good. I mean, and I really wasn't thinking about it any more than that,

00:29:39.340 at that point. Like it was just, it was literally just totally selfishly. When was the last time I felt

00:29:44.620 any reward in life?

00:29:46.560 Right. Well, that's a, that's a dead serious empirical question. You know, if you're, if you're

00:29:52.260 seeing a good therapist, if you're depressed, one of the things that therapist will ask you to do is to

00:29:58.240 watch your life and see if there's anything that lifts you out of your miasma. And it's not a matter

00:30:06.180 of thinking about it exactly. It's a matter of paying attention. And it's often surprising. You

00:30:11.380 stumble across something and you think, oh, that makes me happy or that alleviates my misery. And,

00:30:17.740 and I really didn't notice that before. It wasn't part of my theory. You know, it just happened to

00:30:22.680 be a fact that I was overlooking. It's dreadfully important to, well, it can be life-saving as you,

00:30:28.940 as you found out. So, okay. So you went back to, you went to Hunter College and you, you, you,

00:30:36.280 you did an MA in educational psych. What was that like?

00:30:40.120 Oh, it was, you know, I, I almost, I almost bailed out of the application process. Well, I, you know, I,

00:30:45.540 I had, I had chosen education in the Google search, but then I think, well, I got to pair

00:30:51.140 it with something else that I like. So I just put psychology down. I was interested in psychology.

00:30:55.320 And I, the first thing that popped up was educational psychology degree. And I found like,

00:31:00.040 oh, it's, there's something here. It's a city college. It's, I can get the degree. And, you know,

00:31:04.540 if I spend $10,000, which I saved up for my previous job, I could get this thing. So I go,

00:31:09.720 I, I, I almost fill out the application and then I kind of, kind of get wobbly and tell her,

00:31:16.700 what's the point? I'm not going to, it's not going to do anything. And then, you know,

00:31:20.800 I remember calling my mother, my mother called me and she, you know, they worried about me because

00:31:25.840 I was, you know, really lost, you know, in my thirties and forties. And she said, you know,

00:31:33.720 you got to go through with this. You, you, you know, she kind of got hysterical because I think

00:31:38.100 she just couldn't, couldn't handle like another failed endeavor on my part or just getting my act

00:31:46.080 together. And I, you know, just to calm her down, I, I went through with it, you know, because just

00:31:52.160 to sort of, because she was getting hysterical and, um, well, it's good to have people around that

00:31:58.380 will actually support your attempts to move forward, especially when you're fighting with

00:32:02.800 yourself. And, and, you know, I've seen so many people, they're 51, 49 about moving forward,

00:32:09.760 you know, or 49, 51. And so they're not doing it and someone else can come behind them and give them

00:32:14.900 a little tap, but there are lots of people who don't have that. And so then they don't get that

00:32:19.200 little tap and, you know, it wouldn't have taken much to push them over the threshold. So.

00:32:24.080 Yeah, I was lucky. Um, so, you know, I got in, I, and then once I started moving, you know, I would go

00:32:32.540 to, I would go to classes. I was tutoring on the side and making money that way. And I was able to do

00:32:38.120 that. And then, you know, I was going to class, I was making friends. I was, I remembered how much

00:32:44.340 fun school was and I was doing assignments and I was like, Oh my God, I mean, I, I just have to write

00:32:49.580 this paper. Um, life made sense again, because it brought back sort of all of the, the enjoyment of,

00:32:56.440 of undergraduate life that I really liked, which is social. And so it really was just a momentum

00:33:03.540 thing, like just getting back into it. Um, and then, um,

00:33:10.880 And what was the curriculum like at that point?

00:33:13.520 Oh, it wasn't, um, yeah, it was, it was a little bit, um, you know, I guess

00:33:19.360 educational psychology, it was, uh, more of a research focused thing rather than an education

00:33:27.060 degree. So we were considered more, you know, a science, a sort of a science oriented research

00:33:33.960 thing, like, you know, um, but, and, you know, we studied research methods, you know, it was fairly

00:33:40.460 rigorous, uh, you know, compared to some education degree programs. So we didn't, you know, I didn't,

00:33:47.140 we were sort of, you know, insulated from a lot of the, the nutty stuff that was going on.

00:33:52.600 Right. So that's like an Island too. And in the same way, the STEM fields are, or were somewhat of

00:33:59.520 an Island. So, okay. So you came out of Hunter college and you were in better shape, I presume by

00:34:07.780 that time. Yep. Yep. And then, uh, I applied to some various teaching positions I teached, I kind

00:34:14.500 of made my bones, uh, you know, so to speak at, at some different places. Like I worked at a Hagwon, 0.98

00:34:22.360 uh, at a, um, I think it's called the Hagwon, a Korean, uh, summer school, eight hours a day,

00:34:28.540 drilling SAT, um, stuff. Um, I worked at a, at a failing school teaching, you know, tutoring SAT,

00:34:35.640 ACT, uh, for a while or ACT. Um, and that was, you know, really, really heartbreaking because,

00:34:42.040 you know, those kids, they hadn't had the same math teacher for longer than six months and they

00:34:47.420 were, they were seniors and they couldn't add fractions. It was heartbreaking. Um, and then I,

00:34:54.840 I applied to Grace Church school. It was a new school that was starting up and they,

00:34:59.520 I was able to sort of tell a little story. Um, you know, I had, I had also published a book out

00:35:05.940 of high school, um, called Up Your Score, The Underground Guide to the SAT with, with two friends.

00:35:12.600 And, um, you know, that was, uh, uh, that was kind of a fun little project and that, that book was still

00:35:20.120 selling a little bit. So I was sort of able to piece together a kind of out of my hodgepodge

00:35:24.680 life, um, make a little package and then I did a demo lesson and then they liked me and then I got

00:35:30.500 hired in the, uh, the inaugural faculty for the, for Grace Church school. And so what was it like

00:35:36.420 going to teach at Grace, at Grace Church school? Well, it was, it was really nice because, you know,

00:35:42.660 I was used to a corporate environment, I guess. I, you know, because of my time that I had done in a

00:35:47.640 previous job at HBO, um, I was a technical manager, it was a whole other career. And, you know, I, my,

00:35:55.440 I was, I was very concerned that I reported to the right people or, you know, what's the org structure,

00:36:00.120 you know, and they were just like, well, you know, just, you have colleagues and you can discuss

00:36:03.600 things with them and we're not going to make you do anything. You can, you can talk to us. It was,

00:36:08.100 it's a very friendly, um, environment. I mean, there were serious expectations like, you know,

00:36:14.560 uh, and, and everyone took their jobs very seriously, but there really was a sense of

00:36:19.720 belonging and community. They were very, that was, that was very welcoming actually. And very

00:36:25.920 energizing, I will say, because I wasn't used to that. I didn't expect it. And so I would be,

00:36:31.440 remain aloof from it, you know, at the beginning, like what's, what are these people? Why are they

00:36:36.100 always smiling at me? Like what's going on? You know, like, I don't know why I just, but gradually

00:36:40.800 loosen up and you, you know, I, it was kind of corny, but I would kind of go along

00:36:44.480 with it. And I, I, it's a good kind of corny. Yeah. And I did actually, you know, I warmed

00:36:50.460 up a little bit. I felt, I did feel like I was a part of things and I was able to sort

00:36:54.920 of transmit that to others too. And so what happened over time? Um, it was a very gradual

00:37:05.440 change that, you know, I would say, well, the, within the first three years, one of the

00:37:11.600 tenets of our, our school was that you, every employee and every faculty and staff member

00:37:18.480 had to attend a seminar called undoing racism.

00:37:23.360 That was your HR department, was it? Or who?

00:37:26.060 Yeah, it was, it was a, you know, it was a mandate from the Dean of faculty at the time.

00:37:31.460 And the, that was a requirement.

00:37:32.880 Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, um, so I went to that and that was a very interesting experience.

00:37:40.680 You know, it's hard to, um, what would you say? Refuse a call to anti-racism.

00:37:46.700 Sure. No, I mean, what kind of monster? Yeah. Um, and I, you know, you, I went into it and

00:37:52.860 I actually felt energized and I was converted. You know, I had a sort of, you know, I am white

00:37:58.800 and I'm privileged and you're right. We need to take care of this. And there were people in a circle

00:38:03.340 and people of all different races and backgrounds and it was facilitated. And, you know, later I

00:38:09.180 looked back on it and I, I realized sort of how they, how they did it. They did it in a very

00:38:15.220 interesting, seductive way. Um, and what way was that? Well, you know, as I recall, they, they started

00:38:24.580 out, um, well, it was sort of two parts. The first part was the history since, you know, the slave

00:38:31.520 ships landed on American soil and then throughout time leading up to the present. And then they

00:38:38.980 focused for the second half of the session, they focused on, you know, how to help a community

00:38:44.200 that has been shaped by all of this. And very early in the, very early in the session, they said,

00:38:50.320 we want you to withhold any judgment of anyone's choice or agency, anyone, you know, any of, you

00:38:58.640 know, the, the minority black populations that we're talking about here. We, we want you to simply

00:39:04.640 bracket or put, you know, hold, hold, withhold any analysis of the choices that people make, because,

00:39:12.700 you know, they, that will often lead to a misunderstanding or insensitivity towards what's

00:39:19.120 happening. So why do you focus on that specifically, that issue specifically? Well, because, you know,

00:39:25.620 it was as, as they retold the history and as they talk about the present circumstances, they never

00:39:30.760 actually revisited that. So you, you know, you're, you're constantly focused on the oppressed population

00:39:38.880 in, in terms of what is acting upon it, acting upon those individuals. And, you know, to me, that's

00:39:47.640 like denying a certain agency, right. And that, but they never actually lifted the blinders off at the

00:39:55.000 end. Like they, they would put these, everyone sort of acknowledged that they were going to go along

00:39:59.080 with this at the beginning. And I was like, really, we're going to do that. We're going to treat people

00:40:02.900 as less than human. Well, okay. I just, it must be like a temporary thing.

00:40:07.760 And why did you see that as treating them as less than human? I mean, I presume that the people on the other

00:40:12.540 side of the fence would say, well, you know, we're, we're, we're all caught like corks on the sea and

00:40:19.740 in the throes of vast social movements over which we have little or no control. And, and who are you

00:40:26.020 to cast judgment on people who have been the relative, relatively deprived in that regard compared

00:40:32.840 to you? It's possible to make a fairly stringent moral case that that's the appropriate mode of

00:40:39.260 behavior, but you were, there was something in you that objected to that. And you remember that now.

00:40:45.820 Yeah. Despite the fact that you said that you were energized by this and pulled in by it. Why do you

00:40:50.720 think, why do you think it caught you as well? Well, it was a social thing, right? It was, it's a people

00:40:58.960 in a circle and people are talking about their experiences and people are saying as a black person,

00:41:04.500 I have, this has happened to me. And at one point they asked, they actually, you know, and they it's,

00:41:10.100 it's empathy, right? You, you care about people. You, you feel if you're sitting face to face with

00:41:15.580 someone, of course, you're going to be, I'm going to be sympathetic and empathetic and, and people are

00:41:20.040 narrating. You know, but the problem I think is generalizing that to groups and, you know, getting

00:41:27.400 you to make a different set of assumptions about those groups based on a sort of, you know, selective

00:41:33.260 way that the empathy is leveraged, I would say. Well, there's also the implicit, there's the

00:41:39.200 implicit, what would you say, the implicit perceptual and categorical structure that comes

00:41:46.180 along with it, which is the a priori assumption that the appropriate classification for human

00:41:51.400 beings is by group. Yeah. And, and that, that, that's so implicit, but so pervasive that it in

00:41:58.140 some sense never needs to be stated. And as soon as you assume that the group level is the appropriate

00:42:04.380 level, then you're bound to minimize or even forbid discussion of such things as individual agency.

00:42:12.740 So there's something, if you believe in individual agency, there's, there's something. Yeah. I mean,

00:42:18.800 I guess I do. Yeah. And I don't, you know, I, um, I remember at one point they said, you know,

00:42:27.160 what, what do you like about being white? That was, that was sort of a gotcha question that they asked

00:42:32.760 the white people. Hmm. How did you answer that? Well, I mean, I'm trying to think of how it's some

00:42:39.920 of these questions, these questions seem to come up in our society right now that, that no one's ever

00:42:44.640 asked, you know, like, well, justify marriage. It's like, well, wait a sec. I don't know how to

00:42:49.100 justify it. We just sort of took that for granted and maybe that was appropriate. Right. Right. And

00:42:54.740 so it's very hard when you're put on the spot like that. Okay. So you're white. What's so great about 1.00

00:42:59.780 that as far as you're concerned? Well, I kind of knew what that, I kind of knew what they were

00:43:04.440 expecting. So I kind of tried to play games with it a little bit because I, you know, they,

00:43:08.840 they, what they were trying to do, they're trying to go through the embarrassment of saying, well,

00:43:12.660 I have, there's nothing special about me being white. There's nothing special, but I was just 0.95

00:43:15.880 like, no, it's great. I walk into a room and everyone pays attention to me and everyone thinks

00:43:20.060 I'm an expert. And I said it because I knew that they, it's kind of what they wanted. Um, but you

00:43:27.740 know, I, I don't usually feel that way, but I knew that's kind of what they wanted, but then I said it

00:43:33.520 to like proudly. And then I made some other people upset. Like some people like, sounds like you

00:43:38.820 really, really like being white. And I said, well, you know, I, I'm not, that's just how I've 0.55

00:43:44.520 been socialized. And then it was turning to kind of an argument. And then the facilitator had to defend

00:43:48.780 me because I actually had told him what he wanted to hear. And, uh, it turned into kind of a, uh, a bit

00:43:55.780 of a difficult moment. Um, so I had to, I had to say that, that it was good to be white, but not be too 1.00

00:44:03.100 happy about it. Do you think it's a, is it a reasonable question? I think the, I think the

00:44:11.600 unreason, the unreasonable part is more interesting. Like it's reasonable. If you take certain like a

00:44:17.400 true postmodernist, if you take it, if you take racial identity as well, this is gets into a whole

00:44:27.280 identity thing that I, I could talk about, but please do. Okay. So, so, you know, we know that

00:44:33.540 race is a folk taxonomy. Okay. It's not, it has, you know, groups as, and it correct me if I'm wrong.

00:44:41.040 This is my understanding. You know, I'm not an expert. I'm a math teacher. So this is what I've

00:44:44.740 learned. No matter what you say, you're wrong. I'm sure I'm wrong. Um, but take it for what it's

00:44:49.440 worth is if you don't like it, just stop watching now. Um, you know, as I understand it from my

00:44:56.300 racism, folks like taxonomy groups or individuals vary more within the groups and between the

00:45:02.820 groups. Um, it doesn't correspond in any meaningful way to, you know, I guess IQ changes over time and

00:45:10.040 things. It just doesn't have a lot. It's a, it's, it's not a true thing. It's not a true thing.

00:45:17.760 So when people say, you know, you know, what do you like about being white? It requires you to 0.99

00:45:22.760 accept resemblance category. And so a family resemblance category, it's a very strange sort

00:45:28.940 of category. So imagine that there's a category of 11 items. And if you have four of them, you're

00:45:34.660 in that category. What that means is that two P two things in that category can have two different

00:45:40.960 sets of four attributes and still be in the same category. Psychiatric diagnostic categories are like

00:45:46.520 that. So maybe there's 11 symptoms. And if you have four, you're in the category. So it's kind of,

00:45:52.760 it's got edges like a, like a proper set, which are the categories that we usually use in science,

00:45:59.360 like triangles, you can define completely and you can tell what is and what isn't a triangle.

00:46:04.720 There aren't shades of triangle, essentially. And they're very distinguishable from squares,

00:46:10.620 but family resemblance categories, we use a lot, but they're, they're not scientific categories.

00:46:15.340 They have their utility and we use them a lot. So, okay. So anyways, back to race.

00:46:22.440 So, you know, there, it's something that's not true. And if you require someone to identify with a

00:46:30.500 lie, you are, you are creating this sort of fundamental distortion. Now I understand that racism is

00:46:37.700 real. That is it. This lie is instantiated in the world. And it's as a social construct, people

00:46:44.540 have had tremendous effects on history. But I've often wondered, what is the utility?

00:46:54.460 It's not even that obvious that racism exactly is real, because it's hard to distinguish from

00:46:59.380 in-group preference, for example. You know what I mean? And, and fear of novelty, for example,

00:47:05.160 it's complicated. I'm not saying that there's, obviously, I'm not saying that racial bias has

00:47:12.320 never existed, but when you delve into it, it becomes extremely complicated. And it's very

00:47:17.140 important. If you look at things like the, the hypothetical racism that the implicit association

00:47:23.000 test measures, it's by no means obvious that what it's measuring is only, well, racism at all,

00:47:28.940 but only racism, because of all these other issues. And it is different, difficult, we, we tend to be in

00:47:37.140 favor of in-group favoritism in certain situations, and they're very, and very violently opposed to it

00:47:42.220 in others. So it's complicated and murky. But your fundamental point is, well, there's, there's an

00:47:49.300 insistence, perhaps that race is socially constructed and arbitrary, and yet it's the most fundamental

00:47:54.180 attribute that defines a person. Right. And, and that, you know, in our school, after we adopted a

00:48:00.920 curriculum, you know, in sixth grade, and maybe even earlier, but I happened to notice this in the

00:48:07.240 curriculum, there is, there is an exploration of identity where, you know, and I would actually

00:48:13.000 really like to hear your thoughts on this. You know, the individual identity is sort of acknowledged,

00:48:18.800 right, your interests, you know, preferences, dreams, aspirations, personality, character, all of those

00:48:24.820 things are really important. And you are also have a social identity. And your social identity is how

00:48:31.340 other people see you, and you're born into this world where certain social identities are valued more

00:48:36.480 than others. And so they kind of lead you outside the house of your self-understanding into this

00:48:43.920 world of social, you know, social impinging. And, and gradually, you sort of become separated. I think

00:48:51.980 that the effect of this is you should prioritize how other people see you when you, when you have a

00:48:58.960 self-concept. Before you even really know who you are, you've been, you really have developed

00:49:05.840 yourself, you're, you're supposed to sort of, I think the kids are supposed to sort of hold it in

00:49:11.180 abeyance and then, um, prioritize, you know, how other people view you. And I don't think that's

00:49:17.380 healthy. What did you see the, what did you see the, what did you see as the consequences of that

00:49:24.140 in the school? I mean, obviously this is starting to bother you as this, you buy into it to begin with

00:49:31.240 and, and you're enthusiastic about it to begin with. And you attribute that to, well, the mechanics of

00:49:37.060 the initial, uh, education, let's say, um, it's, it's a, it's a group phenomenon. It capitalizes on

00:49:44.680 empathy. It, and it sounds benevolent, certainly. Um, in fact, it's, it's the very essence of benevolence

00:49:52.280 in some sense. So it's, it's, it's a, it's going to be seductive regardless of whether or not it's

00:49:59.980 correct, but you, you become uncomfortable with it. Well, the first thing you're uncomfortable with

00:50:05.260 is that you were implicitly asked to produce a falsehood in relationship to your own identity,

00:50:15.680 which was when you were asked the question about what you liked about being white and you said that

00:50:21.400 what you said wasn't right exactly, or wasn't correct, wasn't true. It was something that you

00:50:27.160 whipped up on the spot because of the nature of the demand of the situation. And you remember that.

00:50:32.500 So obviously that's significant. I think I was just meeting what I thought was an absurdity with

00:50:37.320 an absurdity. You know, like I felt the question was a little bit absurd. It's sort of like a hot,

00:50:43.520 the premise, right? The premise is what do you call it? Like how, how long have you been beating

00:50:48.060 your wife kind of question? You know, so the premise of whiteness is you're supposed, you have to 1.00

00:50:54.960 accept the premise in order to answer the question. I really have never been comfortable with the

00:50:59.360 premise period because I don't think that it, you know, I understand. Right. And it takes a lot of

00:51:03.140 presence. It takes a lot of presence of mind when you're asked to question, to question the question,

00:51:10.480 especially when you're the student and it's the teacher that's, so to speak, it's the authority

00:51:15.780 figure that's posing the question because you immediately have to rebel and you have to do it

00:51:20.000 in an extremely sophisticated way. Yeah. And, you know, this could get back to the school and I might not

00:51:26.040 have passed the class and, you know, I'm, I'm white. So that would have been problematic. And why are

00:51:30.820 you, why are you, and that would, might, might've had job repercussions or, you know, promotions or

00:51:35.420 whatever, you know, you just, you realize that to question the question, mandatory. Yeah. And to

00:51:41.080 question the question in these circumstances is, you know, the, the risk of that is so much greater

00:51:47.100 than the, the triumph of, of dismantling the question that you're just not, you're never going to,

00:51:52.120 and you may see, you may even fail at dismantling the way, like your little, your little rebellion

00:51:56.580 may lead nowhere and you may be wrong, you know, which is the hesitation that anyone would have

00:52:01.380 with an objection, just that you might be wrong. And so, of course, you're just going to fall on that

00:52:05.680 side of the equation. I mean, that's what I did. Some people don't, but that would, you know, I know,

00:52:10.040 most people do. Yeah. And no wonder. Right. It's hard, not like you, you outlined a bunch of reasons

00:52:16.220 why it's difficult to, you know, come up with exactly the right response at that second. It's not like

00:52:21.320 it's a question you're prepared for. Right. Right. And, you know, um, I think the, I think the

00:52:26.940 students do it all the time, you know, because there's tremendous social cost to challenging any

00:52:33.060 of the assumptions of our anti-racist programming or the, the manner in which it's delivered.

00:52:39.180 And what are the costs for the students? Um, yeah, social, you know, social opprobrium. Um,

00:52:47.840 you could have, you know, teachers write recommendations for them if they get a reputation

00:52:54.660 that there's a fear that it could affect their applications. Um, students have, have come to me

00:53:02.240 with, you know, concerns and examples of papers that they wrote. They, you know, on, on taking a

00:53:09.420 position that went against the orthodoxy and they've, you know, suffered a grade hit from it. And I've,

00:53:16.340 I've asked them, like, are you sure it just wasn't a good paper? You know, are you sure? And then

00:53:20.900 like, like, no, I actually cited this, this, and this. And I said that, you know, and so I think,

00:53:26.820 um, I think they're real. I think that they're real. And there's actually been, you know, stories

00:53:34.740 that I've, that they brought to me that are, you know, someone defends capitalism or something,

00:53:40.360 and then they have a big talking to after class or something like that, which is just,

00:53:43.760 well, yes. I mean, how could you possibly defend capitalism while you're going to a $55,000 a year

00:53:49.880 private school? Right, right. Um, I mean, what's the probability that your parents are capitalists?

00:53:57.380 A hundred percent. Very high, very high. So basically you're, you're being, you're being set to task

00:54:03.420 because you have the goal to defend the very attribute of your parents that enabled you to go

00:54:09.900 to the school in the first place. And that of course enabled the school.

00:54:14.160 Right. And it's so, it's such an ironic thing that both the administration and most faculty

00:54:18.940 have such contempt for the very thing that makes them have a job. You know, like they,

00:54:27.780 they believe that if in order to achieve.

00:54:30.100 Why do you think they have contempt for that? Given that it's the very thing that allows them to have

00:54:34.820 a job. I mean, this is associated with the question we discussed earlier, right? About

00:54:39.140 you being resentful back when you were an undergraduate. It seems to me, and I, well,

00:54:44.200 let, let me let you answer. I won't, I won't push.

00:54:47.600 Yeah, no, I think that's a good connection to make. I mean, we all, you know, if you, if you have

00:54:52.780 baked in a resentment of authority and, and, and see all order as tyrannical, well then,

00:55:01.660 you know, even the hand that feeds you is going to be a tyrant. And so.

00:55:05.960 Well, it's also so convenient, you know, I've watched among my professorial peers. I've worked

00:55:11.220 with business schools, for example, quite frequently, and I have my own companies and did

00:55:16.300 while I was a professor. And, um, I'm not an anti-capitalist and many of my colleagues would

00:55:22.600 sneer at my involvement with the business school. And I thought, okay, so what's going on here?

00:55:30.720 It's like, I know lots of businessmen and like, look, there's plenty of businessmen who have

00:55:34.840 contempt for academics. So it's not like it's a one-way street. And, and I feel just as dubious

00:55:41.300 about the capitalists, let's say the entrepreneurs who sneer at the ivory tower, as I do about the

00:55:48.420 ivory tower inhabitants who sneer at the capitalists. But my sense always was, it was something like,

00:55:53.220 well, look, I have an IQ of 145. And I'm not getting paid $700 an hour, like my corporate

00:56:02.120 counterpart on Bay Street and or Wall Street. And I work just as hard, which is true, by the way,

00:56:08.360 because top rated professors work, you know, 60, 70, 80 hour weeks to keep on top of the research,

00:56:15.360 just like the high end lawyers do in, in, in, in corporate law offices, but they're not

00:56:22.080 rewarded financially to nearly the same degree. And so to me, it was always just a matter of

00:56:27.520 straight out envy. It's like, well, if this society was structured properly, professors would

00:56:32.340 make a hell of a lot more than corporate lawyers. It's like, well, yeah, except you have tenure and

00:56:38.240 complete creative freedom. And, you know, that's actually worth something. So, and how dare you

00:56:45.140 complain when you're a tenured professor, because you have the best job in the world. So anyways, so

00:56:52.500 back to the back to the faculty at the high school. Yeah, you know, I think, well, you know, I, this is not

00:57:01.940 the case for all of them. And I really don't want to generalize too much. But it does seem that in

00:57:07.600 certain of the humanities subjects, it tends to be more, you know, radical questioning of,

00:57:18.480 you know, the, the, the foundations of, you know, what, what creates inequity in the, you know,

00:57:26.280 over at these schools, which are, you know, it's almost like the more, the more opportunity schools

00:57:32.880 offer, the more they're part of a problem, I think, is the view, in the sense that, you know,

00:57:38.940 it's, if you're offering some opportunity, right, like, if you're offering this opportunity to these

00:57:43.420 elite kids, well, then what about all the other kids, which is a good question. But then, you know,

00:57:50.040 instead of sort of figuring out, you know, the best ways to, to help the people that need it,

00:57:56.040 the focus is on sort of, you know, questioning and interrogating the, you know, the, the, the,

00:58:04.240 the site of the top end of the inequality.

00:58:07.600 Well, it's an interesting moral conundrum, right? If you're working at an elite private school,

00:58:12.060 and you're, and your conscience is bothered by inequality. And I mean, virtually everybody's

00:58:18.060 conscience is bothered by inequality. There's very few people that walk down the street and celebrate

00:58:22.800 tripping over a homeless person. You know, the typical person would rather set the world up so

00:58:29.440 that people didn't fall out of the system in such a painful manner. So you have that plaguing your

00:58:35.740 conscience, but it seems like, and so maybe that does provide a way out is you can continue doing

00:58:41.560 what you're doing, but you can also critique the system as a whole and regain some ethical

00:58:46.300 equilibrium in that manner. Yeah, I think that's a bit, that's a lot of it. Yeah, for sure.

00:58:51.040 Um, all right. So you're initially a, uh, an advocate of this, you're excited about it,

00:58:57.860 but what happens, what, as it rolls out over? And so when did that start? How many years ago about?

00:59:05.180 I kind of kicked in 2015, I believe. Okay. So it's about six years we're talking about.

00:59:10.480 Yeah. And so, you know, that the, the word came down, there was a diversity, as I understand it,

00:59:15.720 this is, you know, um, pieced together, but there was a dive, there's a diversity task force on the

00:59:20.720 board. There was this, there was a, a retreat, a board retreat, um, that was led by, uh, something

00:59:27.300 called the Carl Institute. Um, the Carl Institute, um, is, um, this outfit, one of these outfits that,

00:59:37.140 uh, that stands for critical analysis of race in learning and education.

00:59:40.960 And, you know, they're, you know, influenced by critical theory, I believe. And then they,

00:59:48.180 you know, they, they sort of pitched their tent with anti-racism as, uh, as a philosophy.

00:59:54.820 And they started to, you know, talk to the faculty a little bit, um, you know, the, what,

01:00:01.920 what later became the office of community engagement, or, which is the sort of the bureaucratic

01:00:09.240 arm that, you know, is essentially a sort of ethical priesthood, uh, of how to behave

01:00:15.740 properly in, you know, the school environment and, you know, how to be a good anti-racist.

01:00:22.220 Uh, but they would ask, they, they had meetings, but they would ask us things like, well, what does

01:00:26.020 anti-racism mean to you? And that's a perfectly innocuous question. And me, you know, to me,

01:00:30.480 I was like, it means not being racist. It means not differentiating, you know, individuals based

01:00:35.620 on the color of their skin and treating people with respect and dignity, no matter, you know,

01:00:41.500 what their, what their skin color is. And, and, and, and, uh, they said, well, that's interesting.

01:00:48.260 You know, well, you know, that's very interesting, you know, okay. Well, they, and then they just heard

01:00:53.300 people out and some people had more, you know, I guess I would say advanced ideas about, you know,

01:00:59.780 being aware of systemic oppression and understanding different perspectives based on how you might

01:01:05.540 assume a child had been, you know, had developed given their circumstances and those were rewarded,

01:01:12.040 you know, much more. And those are not bad ideas. You know, we haven't, we haven't got to the bad

01:01:17.060 stuff yet. Um, uh, but it started to become apparent to me. I sort of had the realization that

01:01:24.520 this was really going in the wrong direction when we, we had a professional development meeting and

01:01:29.900 they, they passed out the, you, I'm sure you've seen it, the pyramid of racism, also known as the

01:01:36.880 pyramid of white supremacy. And it, it had this, a schema, it was a schema arranged in the form of a

01:01:42.860 pyramid with genocide at the top of the pyramid. And then various layers that had categorical names

01:01:49.740 like overt racism, covert racism, minimization, indifference. Um, and then various, there must

01:01:58.120 have been about 50 or 60 things sprinkled on the pyramid at various levels. And some of the things

01:02:04.000 on the pyramid, um, I actually thought were, you know, in many cases, virtues. Uh, so things like,

01:02:13.860 um, being apolitical or things like, you know, um, um, you know, there are two sides to every story.

01:02:21.460 Um, things that were contradictory, like, um, you know, not believing POC, but also thinking,

01:02:32.700 well, my black friend said dot, dot, dot. So the idea that these two things were next to each other 0.66

01:02:40.380 seemed interesting to me. Um, also things that were just, um, you know, political party plat,

01:02:48.380 you know, platforms, things like. Minimization. We all belong to the human race. Right, right. That

01:02:54.800 was, that was a big one. Post-racial society. Why can't we all just get along? Prioritizing 0.97

01:03:02.400 intentions over impact. That's a nice one. Yeah. Yes, we could, we could talk about that for about

01:03:08.980 three weeks. Yeah. Not believing experiences of people of color. Two sides to every story. 1.00

01:03:19.560 Right. Yeah. Well, it's very interesting when you look very carefully at the words that are

01:03:24.320 lumped in with the other words, let's say. Right. Guilt by association. Okay. So you had this pyramid

01:03:32.980 of white supremacy. And I was asked, you know, what do you, how do you respond to this? What do you

01:03:37.160 think about this? And I just, I said, I think this is extremely destructive and horrible schema

01:03:43.160 to put in front of a child and I will never do it. And I think that it's, I just, no. And

01:03:49.160 I said, I went to the office, I said, I'm not teaching this. And so this was when you were

01:03:53.620 teaching math. Well, you know, uh, yeah, I should explain it at our school. All the teachers,

01:03:58.860 teachers, um, have other duties that are really important. Like you have an advisory and the,

01:04:05.120 the advisor shepherds, you know, maybe eight to 10 kids through the four years. So they come to you

01:04:12.460 with problems and you can help them out. You can help them out academically. So this would have been

01:04:16.980 something that I would needed to share with, with the advisory. And I think they actually,

01:04:23.140 so you, you registered your objections. I did. This is, this is the first time I kind of registered

01:04:28.120 my objection because I felt, why did you do that? I mean, look, look what you just told me.

01:04:32.420 I remember what you just told me. You said that at one point in your life, you were like dangerously

01:04:38.480 lost and you found your way out through mentoring that put you into the education field. Then you got

01:04:44.500 a good job that you liked with people you cared for that was meaningful to you and it structured your

01:04:50.060 life. And then you bought into this anti-racist, uh, movement, let's say. And, but now you decide

01:04:57.840 you're not going to do it. So like why you have a lot at stake at this point, a lot. So what, why,

01:05:05.340 what, what's bugging you about this so much? Yeah. I, I think it, I think some things that happened

01:05:11.680 before this, where I had spoken to the head of school, um, prior to this and, and warned him, I,

01:05:21.420 I, cause I immediately thought of, I was just thinking about anti-racism, anti-racism. Why does,

01:05:26.880 that should be a good thing. Why, why does that bother me? And I, what bothered me was that I knew

01:05:31.540 that racism was a concept that had undergone enormous creep, that the people had very different

01:05:37.300 ideas about what was and wasn't racist. To some, the American flag was racist, uh, things that were,

01:05:45.040 you know, perhaps, um, innocuous to some would have been considered racist to others. And then how

01:05:52.400 would you, how would you adjudicate what you were actually against? And I saw this as a real threat

01:05:57.600 because it would lead to real problems in determining what it was that you should be anti. And if you,

01:06:05.540 if you frame, if you frame in your mission, something which is anti something vague,

01:06:11.240 you're really setting yourself up for a witch hunt. And I just sort of, especially look, especially,

01:06:15.500 so we look at this pyramid of white supremacy, right? And at the top we have genocide.

01:06:22.740 So it's like the ultimate evil. Okay. So that's what we're talking about. We're talking about the

01:06:28.440 ultimate evil. Okay. So then you might say, well, maybe your definitions matter when you're talking

01:06:35.160 about the ultimate evil. And so maybe being vague about exactly what that evil is, especially if

01:06:41.780 it's convenient for you to be vague, perhaps that's a little bit ill-advised, perhaps particularly when

01:06:48.800 you're teaching children. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and you know, I, I said, well, is this the, is this the

01:06:57.440 comprehensive list of things that belong on the pyramid? Are there other things that we don't know

01:07:01.280 that are on the pyramid? And they said, well, you know, there could be, I said, well, that's nice.

01:07:06.200 So now we have other stuff that's just in the margins that could be thrown onto this pyramid.

01:07:11.660 Who knows what they'll be? Um, maybe, maybe. And who knows who will decide. Exactly. Like this is,

01:07:19.240 okay. So this list is not exhaustive. Um, and that actually scared me more. Um, well, because it meant

01:07:26.860 that no one could anticipate where the lines were, I mean, kids need boundaries. And so how are the kids

01:07:33.900 supposed to know what is and isn't if they just have this grab bag of all these possible things that

01:07:40.180 could be, you know, associated with the ultimate evil, um, you know, that it just setting up this

01:07:47.260 whole tripwire situation where they're just, how are they supposed to know how to trust, um, what is and

01:07:55.020 isn't falling into the schema that comes out of their mouth or they have a thought that they didn't

01:08:00.740 want to articulate it, how, how you're just setting that you're setting them up to, for anxiety and,

01:08:06.000 and tension and, you know, who it means that you're really, you know, and I began to see this in actual,

01:08:15.180 in actual, um, discussions people have about it. People, kids were restricting themselves to a very narrow

01:08:22.240 set of things to say that they felt were okay to say, you know, and it was all the jargon,

01:08:28.920 you know, it was saying, well, then, you know, we need to acknowledge our privilege. Yes, we are

01:08:33.880 privileged. You know, that privilege makes, makes us unable to understand. Okay. So what you saw,

01:08:40.820 what you saw as people's attempts to deal with the ambiguity was that they just stopped saying

01:08:46.940 anything that wasn't approved. Yeah, exactly. Because that is the way out of it, right? If,

01:08:52.920 if what's negative is ill-defined, but what's positive is listed, then you just stick with the

01:08:57.460 list. You stick with the list. Yeah. You stick with the list. Um, and, um,

01:09:05.600 and then there were... And so what's the problem with that exactly? So the kids stick with the list. Why,

01:09:09.660 why is that bothering you? Well, it's, it's, it's because it means that, you know, events,

01:09:17.560 the, the multiplicity of possible reasons for things that, that change, that are different

01:09:21.840 depending on the actual incident, get reduced to this script of, of explanations. And only those

01:09:28.500 explanations, you know, fit the paradigm and only those explanations will be considered. And, and

01:09:34.400 that means that you're not making sense of the world for yourself. You're following a script.

01:09:42.120 I don't think that's right. Okay. So now you're, you're watching this. It's having an impact on you.

01:09:49.000 It's having an impact on the students. What's the impact on the students?

01:09:52.000 Personally too. I felt, okay. Some of it was personal, but also I was seeing it in the students. Um,

01:09:58.240 um, and particularly in the most recent years, it, it, um,

01:10:05.160 it's sort of like when you go to a meeting and, you know, everybody is the people, there are people

01:10:15.620 that are silent and there are people that are, that are talking and the people that are talking

01:10:20.440 are saying all the right things. And the people that are silent are listless and disengaged

01:10:25.700 and just waiting for it to end. And then that listlessness and disengagement is being framed

01:10:33.700 as resistance by the people who are running the meeting of the people that are in charge of

01:10:39.140 delivering the anti-racist programming. And then there's, there are meetings about how to get,

01:10:43.840 because that's indifference. Yeah. And so they actually call it pyramid of white supremacy that

01:10:49.860 in a pyramid, every brick depends on the ones below it for support. If the bricks at the bottom are

01:10:55.480 removed, the whole structure comes tumbling down, which means that if you face down indifference,

01:11:01.780 you eradicate genocide. Right, exactly. And so it's, it's a way to use a structural metaphor

01:11:08.480 to transfer all of the, like all of the, the weight of genocide onto all the little things.

01:11:18.620 Um, I am not saying it very well, but I think, you know what I mean? Um, so white, so we would 1.00

01:11:25.320 get, we've got an email. I remember getting an email from the office of community engagement

01:11:30.140 that said, we were looking for ways to target white, white disengagement and white was in brackets,

01:11:38.180 right? It's almost as if I'm, we were embarrassed to say it, but it's, it's white, it's white disengagement. 0.71

01:11:45.020 Right. And that's sort of like, we're going to say it, but we don't really want to say it.

01:11:51.220 And that just made me a little bit even more upset because it meant that if you're not, you're not

01:11:57.360 even going to be honest about what you're calling it, you're going to try to have it both ways. Um,

01:12:04.180 so. And what's happening among your colleagues at this point, you're, you're becoming dissatisfied.

01:12:10.140 Yeah. What's the nature of your private conversations? Are you starting to be isolated?

01:12:15.600 No, I mean, I, I, I, I still getting along well with, with the colleague, with my colleagues. And,

01:12:20.780 you know, there are, there are some that I have conversations with and they'll, you know,

01:12:24.980 they'll say, well, I won't go as far as you, but I definitely think there's something not so great

01:12:29.480 about this. Um, you know, I think it's, you know, they, other, other colleagues were concerned

01:12:35.840 about the same things I will, I was, I think free expression and the ability to entertain,

01:12:41.420 to have different ideas and to talk about the framework and, you know, and maybe challenge

01:12:45.880 it, the whole thing. Um, so yeah, I was, I wasn't alone in my doubts for sure.

01:12:54.180 Did you ever wonder if it was you going off the rails?

01:12:57.280 Sure. Sure. I mean, I, I still felt, um, you know, I still felt like it was perhaps me,

01:13:10.080 you know, in the way that, um, you know, cause I have had privilege in my life. I've had,

01:13:17.880 I've had substantial privilege in my life. Uh, I would call it, you know, opportunity and I'm

01:13:23.780 grateful for it. And one of the things that I learned about studying the aftermath of the

01:13:30.140 Russian revolution was that privilege creeps too, because it's very, very hard to find someone who

01:13:36.960 isn't privileged in some manner. Like the only person who isn't privileged in some manner is

01:13:42.560 the person in the world who's suffering more than anyone else. And there's only one of him or her.

01:13:48.460 Everyone else is privileged. And so you can expand the net of guilt indefinitely by

01:13:55.100 focusing on privilege. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't like the way that it was being used to discount

01:14:02.340 people's, people's ideas. You know, I mean, if you're, if you're, if you have an educational

01:14:06.740 institution, ideas are the whole, are everything, you know, and, and the, there should be,

01:14:14.000 you should be talking about ideas based on what make ideas sound or unsound, not a, not the person

01:14:21.100 who's saying them. So I was seeing situations where, um, you know, white students would make

01:14:29.560 a claim and then that claim was discounted by someone else because of their privilege.

01:14:34.700 Right. But you're making, of course, the white supremacist assumption that there are such things

01:14:39.280 as ideas and that they can be rancored in terms of quality and that the purpose of discursive

01:14:44.240 speech is precisely to do such things and et cetera, et cetera.

01:14:48.320 Yeah. And so the whole solipsistic nature of it, I was like, this is, you can't even have a

01:14:53.180 conversation. This is not, this is not a way to have a functioning. You're not, you're not preparing

01:14:59.120 people to function in a, in a truly vericiated world of ideas. It's not.

01:15:04.580 Well, it's, it's worse in some sense is that the claim, fundamental claim is that there's

01:15:08.740 no such thing as a conversation. There's just different discourses of power. There's no

01:15:14.660 conversation. Conversation assumes ideas and the free flow of ideas and the, and a rational

01:15:19.780 individual actor and the capacity for logos and, and the individual as the central unit and,

01:15:25.400 and so on and so forth. People who hold the critical race position, let's say, don't, uh,

01:15:33.000 it's not that they avoid confrontational conversations. They don't believe that there's

01:15:38.340 such a thing as a conversation. It's not part of the system. So it's a fundamental dispute.

01:15:44.980 Yeah, no, that's true. I mean, and I, I, and then the little things, like I remember talking

01:15:50.700 to a colleague about a new, about a new hire. And then, and, and she said, um, I said, well,

01:15:57.460 well, what's he like this new guy? And she said, well, he's like you, he's like me. Well,

01:16:03.720 what do you mean by that? And she was like, oh, he's white.

01:16:06.460 I was like, okay. All right. You know, this is not a person that's a total stranger to me either.

01:16:14.640 And I kind of walked away and like, really? So, okay. And, you know, I also, I also hear the

01:16:21.420 objection to my, to my objection, which is, you know, see how it feels white man, see how it feels

01:16:27.080 to be treated as your race. That is, it's, it's a, you know, she might've been trying to teach me a

01:16:33.020 lesson in some sense, like now, you know, how it feels, but that's not, you know, okay. That's,

01:16:41.820 that's a point that you're making, but that's not, that's not a healthy thing. And that's not,

01:16:48.380 that's not good because it doesn't actually, um, reduce the sum of misery in the world.

01:16:55.260 Yeah. I mean, yeah. Um, all right. So you're starting to get, feel disquiet and you

01:17:02.740 actually make this known. Yes. And I, I make it known in 2019. I make it known in, in 2020. I

01:17:12.280 talked to the assistant head. I talked to the head of school. You're married. I I'm recently

01:17:18.540 married. I was, I've been married over a year, just over a year. Do you, do you have any children?

01:17:23.460 No children, no children, but you are married and okay. So I'm just wondering what you have

01:17:28.200 resting on your job. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I didn't, you know, I'm, I'm, I have to say that,

01:17:33.760 you know, not having kids is, is a, is a huge part of why I feel like this is happening,

01:17:40.400 that I've been able to, to stick my neck out. Um, and you know, I'd not, not, um,

01:17:51.060 I don't judge anyone for, for, for balancing their duty to the truth and their duty to their

01:17:56.960 family in whatever way that works for them, because both of them are important, um, or to

01:18:03.860 put things at risk. You know, that's, that's a personal choice and that's, I can, I can't speak

01:18:10.340 to any of that, but I think it definitely not having mouths to feed and, and, you know, having,

01:18:16.980 having some savings from my previous job and, and things, um, being smart with my money and not

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01:21:25.000 All right, so how are you being treated by the administrative officials to whom you're

01:21:30.000 registering your objection? Are you doing that in writing? Are you doing that in person,

01:21:34.760 you know, mostly in person? And, you know, I'm not writing anything official. I'm,

01:21:39.120 I'm in the grumbling in my beard phase, I guess. I'm in the griping phase,

01:21:43.000 where I would go and I would say, you know, this is wrong. Like, why, why can't we teach,

01:21:48.180 you know, a broad range of viewpoints? Why do we always have to teach this ritualistic thing?

01:21:52.800 That's just a litany of, you know, basically far left ideas. And, you know, some of, some,

01:21:59.600 some of the administration were very sympathetic, like even overly. So like, I remember talking to

01:22:06.940 the assistant head, he pulled down a copy of Jonathan Haidt off the, off the bookshelf and was like,

01:22:11.740 I'd love to teach this in my closet. You know, I, I really want to make this happen. I want to teach,

01:22:16.000 you know, so, you know, more, more than I was sort of, or maybe just modeling it or humoring me or

01:22:21.380 something. But he had the book. He had the book. That's right. And he knew the book and he knew where

01:22:26.560 it was on his shelf. I know, I know. So like, but, you know, then in public, you know, or in,

01:22:31.300 in public, in the, in front of the community, you know, not saying nothing about it. Right. So I think

01:22:36.280 there's a tremendous amount of preference falsification still going on there, you know,

01:22:41.440 well, you, you outlined why. I mean, you lost your job. Yeah. So, you know, these are high stakes

01:22:49.560 games and you make a mistake and, and a mistake, you, you veer outside the, the realm of acceptable

01:22:57.500 behavior, let's say. And what happens? Well, you get disproportionately punished for it. And there's a

01:23:05.420 moral element to it too, which is, well, there's no bloody way someone like you should be teaching.

01:23:11.000 So not only did we fire you, but we're right to do so. Yeah. So, and you know, that's very hard

01:23:17.140 thing to withstand, which is something I also want to talk to you about. I mean, you know, confident

01:23:22.660 though you may be, or anyone may be when your institution sheds you and surrounds that with

01:23:31.360 accusations about the nature of your character, if you're not a complete psychopath, it tends to

01:23:36.780 strike you to your heart. Because there's always the possibility that you're wrong.

01:23:43.220 Right. Right. But I, I really, I really knew I wasn't because, you know, coming out, there was this

01:23:49.480 meeting and I referred to it in the article or my essay, the self-care through an anti-bias lens meeting,

01:23:56.360 which is what kicked off the whole past two months for me. It was a, it was a meeting where

01:24:05.440 students were ostensibly going to learn how to take care of themselves during the pandemic,

01:24:10.320 how to manage their emotions, how to take deep breaths and cope with things. And in that meeting,

01:24:20.720 you know, after some, some mind relaxing exercises like meditation and, and stuff, they put up the

01:24:27.900 white supremacy, you know, aspects of white supremacy culture slide.

01:24:32.920 And that's different than the pyramid or this is different than the pyramid. And this is,

01:24:37.260 you know, this is elements of white supremacy. Right. Right. It's actually, um, you know,

01:24:41.620 they, there's different forms of it, but essentially, you know, it's, it's fairly common in this,

01:24:49.260 in this thing, as you know, and, um, uh,

01:24:53.440 yes. So here's some professional and transactional relationships versus relationships based on trust,

01:25:04.280 care, and shared commitments, protecting power versus sharing power, culture of overworking

01:25:09.280 versus culture of self-care and community care, competition and struggle for limited resources

01:25:14.740 versus collaboration and working to share resources. That's all white dominant culture. So 0.94

01:25:20.860 yes, yes. And so some of the things that were on this particular slide were objectivity,

01:25:28.220 individualism, um, either or thinking. Right, right. And, uh, I know that one there was, um,

01:25:37.960 you know, the, the thing that rankled me the most was right to comfort

01:25:42.080 because, you know, how, how are you giving a self-care workshop where the 200 kids that are in

01:25:51.720 there in this racially segregated workshop are challenged that they might not, you know, that

01:25:59.140 having, imagining that you have a right to comfort is associated with a, you know, genocidal evil.

01:26:04.180 So Kenneth Jones and Tima Okun, Dismantling Racism Workbook, 2001. God only knows what that is,

01:26:10.960 but it's everywhere. The characteristics of white supremacy culture, perfectionism,

01:26:15.640 which is an element of conscientiousness, which is a fundamental trait, sense of urgency, defensiveness,

01:26:21.780 quantity over quality, worship of the written word, paternalism, either or thinking. Notice this

01:26:28.200 is all written in words, by the way, power hoarding, fear of open conflict. Um,

01:26:34.180 individualism, which seems to be run somewhat counter to the fear of open conflict. Progress

01:26:39.800 is bigger and more. Objectivity, right to comfort. Yeah, it's, uh, it's quite the grab bag of

01:26:46.580 conceptually unrelated items. It's incoherent at every possible level of analysis, as well as being,

01:26:54.200 it's, it's, it's impossible to parody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I saw it and I, you know,

01:27:02.640 I had been thinking for a couple months prior to this because there had been some meetings that

01:27:07.200 really upset me and I was thinking, well, and my head of school had actually said that if I was in

01:27:13.320 an appropriate forum, I should feel free to ask questions. By this point in the meeting, I think

01:27:19.700 maybe 30 minutes in before this popped up, other faculty had been saying things in the chat area of

01:27:25.260 the zoom meeting. So, you know, is that anonymous? Is that anonymous in the zoom? No, it's, it's,

01:27:31.140 they were, oh, so they were under their own names, under their own names. Yeah. Um, and so I thought,

01:27:37.640 well, why, you know, when the, when the facilitator had mentioned that if you looked at this slide,

01:27:44.620 I think she said, I think she said, you know, you might have some white feelings. Um, and I said,

01:27:52.220 I just kind of blurted out. I didn't, I didn't blurt it out angrily. I didn't blurt it out. I,

01:27:58.060 I don't think I was too upset. Of course, you know, I, I don't know how it was perceived of course,

01:28:02.960 but I said, well, what do you mean? But what is a white feeling? What is a white feeling?

01:28:08.120 And I, you know, what came back was, I think she said something that defensiveness was a white

01:28:13.020 feeling. I said, well, these feelings can belong to people of any race. And, you know, I think that

01:28:18.200 it's, I don't know whether it's, I don't understand why it's being attributed to a particular

01:28:24.600 white people. Um, and, you know, I had that kind of opened the gates a little bit and kind of 0.88

01:28:34.940 broke the ice, I think, because in the chat, other kids started to ask questions. There was a debate

01:28:40.780 about whether I should be allowed to ask the question. Um, there were some other,

01:28:45.580 you mean the question about the white feeling question. Um, there were also some, there was a

01:28:51.360 lot of capitalism bashing in the chat. And I said, you know, I believe capitalism is anti-racist

01:28:56.260 since it's done more to, to lift people of all races out of poverty, um, than any, any alternative.

01:29:03.860 Um, and, you know, I, I wasn't monopolizing the chat. I was dropping in little things and there

01:29:10.500 was a lot of activity in the chat. And then, um, the, the, the facilitator actually went with me and

01:29:18.600 she, she explained stuff, you know, her perspective on it. And I thanked her and, you know, she moved

01:29:24.480 on some more. And, um, I think I, I asked another question, but I really, as, as she said later in a

01:29:31.820 meeting about the meeting in front of the whole faculty, she felt that I, you know, I was asking

01:29:37.140 out of curiosity. It didn't, I wasn't, you know, on a rant or saying it, you know, to, to be

01:29:42.520 antagonistic. I think some of the, some of my faculty members felt that I was, but the facilitator

01:29:48.480 herself didn't feel that way. So, and she was the one I was talking to. So I think that definitely

01:29:53.420 counts. No, that's quite remarkable. I would say, because it's very difficult in a group like that,

01:29:57.620 when you know, the implicit ethos to be able to say something that's questioning without

01:30:05.100 having anger build up as a motivation, right? Cause you need something to break through your

01:30:10.420 resistance. Yeah. So to be able to say it without upsetting the, the, uh, yeah, I mean, I was

01:30:17.420 passionate, but I wasn't, I don't think I was like enraged or anything like that. Um, it's, you know,

01:30:22.800 I was trying to modulate what I was really upset at was the, was the either or thing, because I was

01:30:27.060 like, well, if either or thinking is a, is a characteristic of white supremacy, well, then

01:30:31.840 Ibram Kendi has got to be the whitest person in public life because his entire philosophy is so 1.00

01:30:37.220 Manichaean. I mean, anyway, so, but I didn't say that of course, cause that would have been

01:30:43.080 inflammatory, but, um, what I really wanted to do, I've been thinking about an opportunity because I

01:30:49.520 wanted to model for the students that you could ask questions that someone who, who was a teacher

01:30:55.420 or someone who was an authority figure could ask a question and it was okay. And, and did, and how

01:31:01.620 did the students react to, it was, it was phenomenal. I mean, I was really gratified in that they confirmed

01:31:07.000 that my, it confirmed that I was doing the right thing because things came out in the chat. They

01:31:13.360 started to ask a broader range of questions. I received the transcript later and, you know,

01:31:19.300 it was like night and day kids were asking questions like, well, I don't feel like I'm

01:31:23.020 ignorant just because I'm white or, you know, I don't like to be reduced to my race. And then

01:31:27.100 faculty joined in. So several faculty members also started to ask questions. Um, you know,

01:31:33.320 and I don't think the point was that they, people even necessarily wanted their questions answered

01:31:38.120 in the forum. They just wanted to ask them. I got, you know, and they don't know what your

01:31:43.360 question is until you ask. Exactly. Like this, this, that's why I think intent is so,

01:31:49.400 it's kind of a silly thing because you never really, it's only an ex post facto explanation.

01:31:55.440 If you're called on it, I think like a true question, there may be no intent.

01:31:59.700 Like it just bubbles out of you. If you're, if you're truly in a, in a conversation, I'm not

01:32:04.560 thinking about, okay, I'm not, it's not like I'm plucking this little thing out of the inside of my

01:32:09.200 head and like, well, I intend this to be, you know, that's not communication. That's not,

01:32:13.900 if it's a genuine conversation, no, you don't have time for that in a genuine conversation.

01:32:18.400 No, yeah, of course not. And so, you know, but I was really gratified. I was on a natural

01:32:24.220 high from the experience. Um, why? Well, because I felt that I had, you know, I had done something

01:32:31.300 good. Like it was just self-evidently good to me. Like it just, when I reflected on it,

01:32:37.320 this is a positive thing. Um, now there were one of the, my colleagues got very upset with me,

01:32:43.120 with my influence on this. And, um, because at one point I did say, you know, why, you know,

01:32:50.000 I don't identify as white. Must I internalize society's delusions about me? Um, which is,

01:32:59.880 you know, like, it's kind of like the neutron bomb to this entire belief system. But I, I was on a,

01:33:06.480 I was on a, you know, I felt like it was something that I wanted to put out there

01:33:09.420 so that kids could see it and, you know, understand, you know, that maybe this is a

01:33:14.720 point of view, you know, I'm not saying I'm right. I'm at, I'm asking a question. Um,

01:33:20.260 and you know, the, the feeling was that this was, you know, anti-racism 101.

01:33:24.860 Give them some defense. Yeah. Like I could, I was just morally obligated to accept these

01:33:31.020 characterizations. Right. Which is kind of the whole point of anti-racism is that you're not

01:33:36.060 obligated to accept arbitrary racial categories that are unrelated to the task at hand.

01:33:42.880 Yeah, it should be. Um, but, uh, you know, then a colleague got, got upset with me and said,

01:33:51.600 kind of got on his high horse and said, uh, you know, I can't believe that I may be miss,

01:33:56.740 you know, paraphrasing here. And if I am sorry, but he said, I believe, you know, I can't believe

01:34:02.920 that a member of our, you know, or one of my colleagues doesn't understand that we are white,

01:34:07.320 that we are white since birth. I am white since birth, that this has carries with it implicit 0.54

01:34:11.440 biases that are unavoidable. And we must affirm that, you know, and, and that's who, that's who we

01:34:17.800 are. And that's who I am. And I just, it kind of interrupted him because I felt like he was

01:34:20.940 kind of making me look, I don't know, he's being kind of, kind of a jerk. So I interrupted him and 0.99

01:34:27.380 said, um, you know, I'm sorry, you're stereotyping yourself. I think it's sad. Uh, and, you know,

01:34:36.260 that kind of was a very awkward moment because it was in front of students. And he said, you know,

01:34:42.080 he expressed his dismay. Um, and I remained silent. And then after the meeting, I said, I apologized to him.

01:34:49.580 I said, you know, that was unprofessional. Was it? Well, you know, I, I understood, I felt it.

01:34:56.240 I felt that there might've been a better way that I could do it. Maybe wait till he finished and then

01:35:00.980 asked, you know, to respond. I, I, I'm, I'm also suspicious of my own, you know, because I am,

01:35:09.540 I have been somewhat oppositional. I'm not exactly like a Mr. Go long and get along guy

01:35:14.360 with this stuff that I don't always have the best reality check on my own behavior.

01:35:19.660 And so I, you know, I, I, I was just saying, well, okay, if I, if I did cause offense, then,

01:35:27.340 you know, I, I feel like it's okay to apologize. And there probably was a better way for me to do

01:35:31.180 this. And so I did apologize and, you know, thought about it, you know, nothing against that,

01:35:37.100 nothing wrong with that. And then he accepted. And, um, you know, I figured that was, that was it.

01:35:42.340 There was a lot of processing after the meeting, I think that went on for hours afterwards. My phone

01:35:48.180 died. It was on my phone. And so when I went home, um, you know, I logged back into the meeting and

01:35:53.280 people were still there talking. So I talked to them, but I, I underestimated the effect of this

01:35:58.540 because apparently, um, some of my, some of my comments, you know, were leaked or may work or

01:36:05.100 transmitted to other people that weren't in the meetings, people that were in the, the BIPOC

01:36:09.260 meeting, you know, particularly my, my BIPOC is a black and indigenous people of color.

01:36:17.100 So they were having their separate meeting of faculty and students where they received different

01:36:21.760 content. And why was it separate? Um, the rationale as I could, as I can understand it is so that

01:36:30.500 the groups that have been marginalized won't be exposed to, you know, they'll have their own

01:36:36.920 things so that they're not exposed to the, uh, I think the insensitive, possible insensitivity of

01:36:43.680 the, uh, oppressors. It's the best I can understand the rationale. Um, but it wound up happening

01:36:53.440 anyway, because it would be rude of me to point out that that's somewhat paternalistic, you know,

01:36:59.960 just as an observation. That's a good one. Um, yeah, I mean, yeah, totally. Well,

01:37:06.720 I guess that is a characteristic of white supremacy culture though. Paternalism.

01:37:11.340 Yeah. So I, I guess it's quite accurate. Well, as long as it's in a good cause,

01:37:15.900 then I guess it's forgivable. Yeah. Okay. So that was how long ago that meeting?

01:37:20.780 That was February 24th. Oh yes. Okay. So things are starting to snowball.

01:37:26.420 Yeah. This year. And that was referred to after the fact as the events of Wednesday. Like they

01:37:32.160 couldn't even really, it was sort of like nine 11. They couldn't actually, they had to come up with a

01:37:37.400 euphemism for it, I guess. Um, so the events of Wednesday, and so they had meetings about the

01:37:43.640 events on Wednesday. Well, the office of community engagement, coupled with the Dean of student life.

01:37:48.780 And there, there, there are Dean level positions that exerted a lot of effort and energy because I

01:37:57.620 did not make their lives easy, um, to, to address the things that were said and raised in the meeting,

01:38:05.680 not just by me, but by, you know, lots of different people on students, students, you know, spoke up as

01:38:12.080 well and faculty. And so, um, what I found it so interesting because the day after the meeting,

01:38:20.160 there was an email that was released that said healing resources, you know, healing resources

01:38:26.600 that will help you come to terms with what happened. And the first healing resource

01:38:33.560 on the list was a CNN interview with a poet named Damon Young. Um, and, um, Damon Young, uh, you know,

01:38:47.880 in this interview said things like, you know, we, we need to get rid of all of capitalism.

01:38:54.540 Um, we will have to do a carpet bombing, not a carpet cleansing of society. And it was incredibly 0.96

01:39:01.660 radical statements that were, I would imagine would be frightening to, to many people. And that

01:39:08.380 was listed as a healing resource as well as long as the carpet bombing only targets the malevolent

01:39:13.940 people. Well, yeah, I guess. And then things, there was a Robin DiAngelo article that said, you know,

01:39:19.940 what white people need to be made or kept uncomfortable. Um, how can we become more 0.56

01:39:25.560 uncomfortable? Um, also, you know, really kind of, I would just say racist characterizations of white

01:39:33.200 people in these links. Um, things like, you know, all white people have never had to be guests in this 0.73

01:39:40.460 country. And, uh, like the Irish, for example, they weren't really white to begin with though. So

01:39:48.080 yeah. Yeah. Um, and so I found this very ironic and then I had a series, I had two meetings. I had

01:39:55.700 a meeting with my head of high school and the assistant head, and I had a meeting with the head

01:40:01.960 of the whole school. And then, you know, I, the head of the meeting with the head of high school,

01:40:09.560 they called you in at that point. Yeah. I mean, they, what's happening around you is this is

01:40:13.920 growing. This is this. Well, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of agitation. There's meetings

01:40:18.020 about meetings. There's student diversity council meetings. Um, there are, um, there's just a lot of

01:40:25.980 agitation in the community, I would say, uh, and, and meetings about meetings. So some of the things

01:40:32.640 that would happen would be in the week in the end, as the week continued, there was a faculty meeting

01:40:38.200 about it. Um, I had some advisory circles, circle practice was taken away because they felt that it

01:40:47.660 would be, the students would be upset if I was a part of it. So the team is what? Um, well, it was,

01:40:55.980 it's a, it's a practice that we've started this year where, um, activities, um, where you,

01:41:05.100 you put up a slide and you talk about an issue and then everyone has to go around and speak

01:41:09.300 one by one about a question and then you kind of do it around twice. And then, you know, this is to

01:41:15.360 sort of manage discussion. Um, and I've done a couple of these.

01:41:20.240 You're not your persona non grata at this now because of your toxic influence on the students.

01:41:25.660 Right, right. And so, you know, I got a, I got an email saying, you know, under current

01:41:30.020 circumstances following yesterday's meeting and your role and what transpired, you, you know,

01:41:34.300 I've asked you to recuse yourself. Um, then, you know, there were subsequent meetings. There was a

01:41:42.700 faculty meeting. Uh, I think at that faculty meeting, uh, a colleague said, well, this is,

01:41:48.160 this could be terrible. This could undo everything we've ever taught them,

01:41:51.460 which I thought to myself, please, please. I hope so. Um, but, uh, the, uh, and there were,

01:42:03.100 How are you, how are you reacting to all this?

01:42:05.440 Well, I'm on a natural high. I mean, I, I know that I feel like this is something that I've finally done

01:42:10.840 to, to, to open up something like some daylight. And I, all of this churn is going on around me,

01:42:20.940 but I'm going about my day and I'm teaching my classes. Uh, I am, you know, I, I did feel the

01:42:29.740 need to address my classes. So I said at the beginning, you know, I am an anti-racist. Um,

01:42:36.240 you know, I want you to feel safe. And then I would just sort of teach the class. And then I

01:42:40.380 was told not to address it with the class, with anyone in the classes I had written. I had sort

01:42:45.940 of had a sort of, I guess, a manic kind of outbreak at this point. Like I felt so much energy and,

01:42:52.240 and enthusiasm that I was writing in my notebook a lot. And I developed a kind of,

01:42:57.380 I had a sort of creative outpouring through all of this. Um, I, I don't know whether it's maybe like

01:43:03.960 a cyclothemic reaction or something to it because I felt like my soul has kind of awakened. No,

01:43:10.920 I was having a lot of trouble sleeping. I was, you know, maybe getting three hours a night and I

01:43:14.560 would wake up, I would wake up at like four in the morning, just being like wide awake. And I'd go

01:43:20.080 and I'd start writing and I'd write a lot of ideas down and I felt like it was really productive.

01:43:26.560 And what do you think of the ideas that you were producing during that time?

01:43:29.660 Um, I've, this type of thing has happened before and I've, I've looked at them with later eyes and I

01:43:37.920 don't think that I I've kind of felt the despair that they weren't, um, that there wasn't much value to

01:43:43.840 them, but this time, one thing I might point out is that, you know, writing, writing is overproduction

01:43:49.860 followed by culling. Right. And so you'll have periods of overproduction and you probably throw

01:43:56.360 90% of that away, but maybe you keep 10% and that's a lot more than zero.

01:44:04.020 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, mostly what I was doing was illustrating a kind of geometry. Like I had,

01:44:08.680 I had, um, these two axes and I was sort of laying things out on them because I was trying to make sense

01:44:14.300 of, of the whole problem of, of racism and, um, the difference between reality and truth

01:44:22.160 and, um, how those things are kind of orthogonal. And I kind of laid out a schema that made sense to

01:44:28.800 me that would, that was kind of explaining the whole problem. And, you know, I, it still does make

01:44:34.600 sense to me and I still think that there's a tremendous value in it and I just need to want to keep

01:44:39.320 working on it. Um, but yeah, well, it's common that those, those, those periods of, of creativity,

01:44:45.600 you know, they're, they're revelatory thinking and that can be over-emotional and somewhat tangential,

01:44:52.180 but, but it's, it's grift for further milling. Yeah. Yeah. And it, it did grist for further

01:44:59.120 grist. Yeah. Grist, great gristle. Um, so I, all of this was happening around me, but I felt like a

01:45:07.780 kind of stoic indifference to it because I, I felt a sort of awakening in me that, that,

01:45:12.280 that made all of the hubbub, uh, sort of irrelevant. Now, it sounds like you had decided to do this.

01:45:22.380 Yeah. I think I, I think I had been waiting, sort of unconsciously waiting for an opportunity. And

01:45:28.300 when it happened, when I blurted things out and it's, it, it happened, then I embraced it. And I

01:45:34.000 realized that I had, I was not ashamed and I was not contrayed and I was proud. I was actually proud.

01:45:42.700 And when, so now, and then when did you write the essay that, that, that, that was, oh yeah,

01:45:47.580 Barry Weiss. Um, I don't want to rush you if there's more to unpack. I'd like to hear it.

01:45:51.760 I, I realized that, you know, I don't want to, you know, tax you as either, but, um,

01:45:57.980 I had, um, I knew I wanted to write about the whole thing. So I, I, I had taken a lot of notes

01:46:08.100 over the years. And so my first draft was about 5,000 words and it contained a lot of information

01:46:15.680 centered around the actual zoo meeting. And then, you know, the effects on the students, um, and,

01:46:23.600 you know, what had happened to me. And then I realized like, what, the reason why I did, why I

01:46:28.680 said the thing in the meeting in the first place was because I was trying to model for the students

01:46:32.680 and that was what was animating me. And so I, I, you know, I, I handed it off to a friend who edited

01:46:40.440 it and really hacked it way down, you know, cut out a lot of the, this, the stuff. And then I did

01:46:45.680 another draft where I was really trying to get to the main ideas and boil them down as crisply as I

01:46:52.440 could. And then Barry took a look at it and, and she made a few changes through the fair, through fair.

01:46:59.440 Cause I had been volunteering with them, um, for a couple of months now and fair, just so everyone

01:47:05.040 knows is, is a foundation against intolerance and racism. And, you know, we, you know, I was in the

01:47:11.860 process of, I still am, you know, helping to build the organization and, and select chapter leadership

01:47:19.380 in various States so that we can really, we're in this sort of networking phase because I'm calling

01:47:25.000 people have given us their names and I'm calling people. And, and what I'm finding is that everyone

01:47:30.700 has a story. So I can't just be on the phone with them for 15 minutes and all of the volunteers are

01:47:36.580 finding this, that there's a tremendous outpouring. It's very emotional. They'll talk about what's

01:47:41.620 happening with their kids. They'll talk about the data. They didn't suspect that anything was wrong

01:47:45.920 in the culture until maybe a year ago. And now it's clear to them and they want to do something.

01:47:50.800 And so you really have to do, you really have to listen before you can, you know, just operationally

01:47:56.800 try to plug people in. And, you know, a lot of times it's, it's, it really feels like I'm not a

01:48:02.860 therapist, but it feels like at the peak, I was making like five calls a day and each of those were

01:48:08.580 about an hour and you, you wind up really having, having an engagement with another human being.

01:48:15.260 So this is starting to inform your writing as well and the way you're thinking about what's going on

01:48:19.560 at the school. Yeah. And so I'm starting, I'm starting to feel like I have a lot of people that

01:48:26.960 I'm, you know, that are, that this is something that's becoming kind of a duty, like almost a moral

01:48:36.720 duty. So, yeah, so that's kind of the, the background to that. And then, and then the article

01:48:48.660 came out and I, I waited and there's just a tremendous, I've had an email at the bottom

01:48:57.940 of the article and I was expecting like 50% positive, 50% negative. I would be happy if it

01:49:05.220 was 50% positive. Now I realized later it's on Barry Weiss's Substack and it's mostly her fans,

01:49:10.360 but I put, I put the email on some other places and, and I was just amazed that, you know, maybe

01:49:18.740 500 emails in the first two days and, and long emails, like people writing, you know, some of them

01:49:26.700 are just a word or a subject line, but people had a lot to say, a lot of stories. And I've spent

01:49:33.260 a couple hours each day since then going through them and responding to everyone because it's really

01:49:40.800 important to do that. I think that, you know, I feel, I feel like it's just, I can't just, you know,

01:49:47.900 ignore them or just give like a one sentence thing because some of these, some of these,

01:49:53.320 uh, I try to, you know, I try to respond in at least one or two sentences in a way that addresses

01:50:00.340 their particular situation. And then I, and I try to direct them to FAIRs as, as, you know, as,

01:50:06.140 as an organization that can help. Um, and all people of all different backgrounds, uh,

01:50:13.420 people wrote in from other countries. And what are they telling you in the main?

01:50:18.740 They're just a lot of what I'm getting. I'm just getting a lot of pats on the back,

01:50:22.600 just like, yes, you know, good for you. Bravo. Like, you know, this is amazing. Keep doing it.

01:50:29.680 I keep doing what you're doing. I support you, you know, a hundred percent. This is a huge problem,

01:50:34.920 you know, and you're standing up for it and what you're doing is right. And,

01:50:38.420 you know, and, and, uh,

01:50:45.360 Okay. So you publish this in Barry Weiss's substack and the school reacts.

01:50:52.700 Mm-hmm. And what happens?

01:50:55.560 Well, they make the claim that, um, um, that I, you know, some of what I've written is,

01:51:02.180 is a mischaracterization.

01:51:07.020 And, uh,

01:51:08.260 you know, they're not trying to, you know, they, they, I think it's a little blurry to me now,

01:51:15.040 actually, because so much has happened since. So I kind of have to reconstruct what happened, but,

01:51:21.380 um, uh, in this time. So the article came out on the, I believe on the 13th

01:51:31.240 and, um, you know, I had a contract assigned for the following year.

01:51:37.700 And part of that contract, my contract is up. This current contract is up at the end of August,

01:51:43.480 but the deadline for me to sign next year's contract was April 15th. And as one of the

01:51:50.640 stipulations of my contract was that I had to attend restorative justice practices designed by

01:51:55.780 the school to address the harm that I had caused students of color and other students.

01:52:02.300 I see. So you were obliged to be guilty enough to go to be retrained.

01:52:05.680 Right. And, you know, the details of the, of this process would be revealed to me after I signed.

01:52:12.520 So I was signing something that I didn't, you know, I wouldn't know what I was signing.

01:52:18.040 Um, so I waited.

01:52:19.340 Apart from an admission of culpability and guilt.

01:52:22.160 Right, right.

01:52:23.160 Of unspecified nature.

01:52:24.880 Right. And now participation, I thought about, I was like, well, participation doesn't mean

01:52:29.860 that I have to, you know, say mea culpa, I can participate in it.

01:52:35.680 Um, maybe it's an opportunity for me to engage, you know, um, and I thought about it, but then I

01:52:40.620 said, well, that would mean that I was signing onto it mean that I was legitimizing it by signing

01:52:45.920 it. And so I decided not to sign it because if I, if I put my word on it, then it would mean that I

01:52:51.300 was saying that that was an appropriate request to make of someone.

01:52:55.580 How in the world did you manage to make that decision?

01:53:01.880 Well, I just really just delayed it and thought about it.

01:53:05.100 And then I talked to friends about it.

01:53:08.320 And then I, I realized that, no, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna let it lapse because,

01:53:14.920 you know, I'm, I'm, uh, I've reinvented myself before.

01:53:19.320 I've had several careers.

01:53:21.040 I, I have math skills, coding skills.

01:53:24.440 I figured, you know, if I didn't work for grace, I could find, I could land on my feet

01:53:28.620 somehow.

01:53:28.960 Now I didn't, I know I don't have kids.

01:53:31.540 So there, there were, I had, I felt like I had options, you know, I felt like no matter

01:53:36.380 what happened, I, I had faith that I would be okay.

01:53:41.040 Um, so I, you know, I felt like I could kind of decide whether this was, this was right for

01:53:47.280 me or not.

01:53:47.820 And I could teach somewhere else, maybe not, you know, in New York, maybe I could find

01:53:52.820 like a private boarding school or something that was more aligned with my views or my values.

01:53:57.960 Have the offers come flooding in?

01:54:00.400 Yeah.

01:54:00.920 I mean, since the article, uh, you know, places in Coral, Coral Gables was like, come to Coral

01:54:06.300 Gables.

01:54:06.820 We'll give you, you know, we'll, we needed someone for our math program, Texas, Arizona,

01:54:11.920 Pennsylvania.

01:54:12.640 Oh, well, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, oh, I'm very pleasant and surprised to hear that.

01:54:16.960 Yeah.

01:54:17.260 And, you know, I, my fears of being canceled are completely obvious, you know, blown away

01:54:25.120 because, you know, that it's the opposite of that.

01:54:29.100 I would say, um, now I'm sure, I'm sure there are people that wouldn't touch me with a 10

01:54:33.440 foot pole, but do I want to work for them? 0.99

01:54:36.440 I mean, it's sort of like a self-selecting thing.

01:54:39.000 Now, you know, I did this thing, the world has sorted itself out.

01:54:43.080 Um, there are people that would hire me.

01:54:47.760 Um, and so those are the people that I will, that I could work with.

01:54:52.100 And then what's, what do I need to, why do I need to worry about people who don't want

01:54:57.060 me?

01:54:57.680 You know, it's kind of like, all right.

01:55:00.980 So, and I, and also have to move forward on false pretenses.

01:55:06.460 Yeah.

01:55:06.980 Yeah.

01:55:07.300 Yeah.

01:55:07.540 And, um, but I think my main, my main gratitude that I feel is that, uh, is that I made, you

01:55:24.120 know, I made my dad proud and, uh, and my mother is not with me, not with us anymore, but she

01:55:29.840 would have been proud of me.

01:55:30.660 Why did it matter to you?

01:55:31.820 Um, well, you know, he's, uh, I consider him to be very important person and, uh, he

01:55:43.380 taught me so much.

01:55:44.120 He taught me how to write.

01:55:45.020 He taught me how to think he's, uh, he's a law professor.

01:55:49.380 He was until he retired recently.

01:55:52.020 And, um, he was a great, he was a real teacher.

01:55:55.380 He wasn't a, he wasn't so much of a publisher.

01:55:57.480 He was a teacher and he was very popular, um, very talented.

01:56:04.480 And, uh, and he would always engage me in Socratic discourse.

01:56:09.840 And he always wanted me to think for myself.

01:56:12.700 And, um, you know, I did, I do feel like I've probably been a disappointment, um, more

01:56:20.200 than months to put it, to put it mildly over the years.

01:56:23.500 And so having the opportunity, you know, he's 88, having this chance to sort of do this

01:56:33.340 thing, you know, maybe this one act, maybe I won't write anything ever again, but at least

01:56:39.420 I've done this thing, um, and talking to him about it and it's, uh, it's a good feeling.

01:56:48.220 Um, now the school has stopped you from teaching apart from the fact that you've not signed the

01:56:56.460 upcoming contract, right?

01:56:58.040 They had, they offered me, um, they offered me something I thought was kind of creative.

01:57:02.660 They offered me the chance to participate in a subcommittee of the institutional culture

01:57:08.720 committee, um, which is a committee that's centered around designing an anti-racist culture

01:57:14.720 for the school.

01:57:15.500 Um, now I would work on the direct supervision, uh, supervision of the assistant head.

01:57:21.920 Um, but it would, they, they wouldn't let me teach math.

01:57:26.120 They wouldn't let me have an advisory.

01:57:27.320 They would take away all my teaching duties.

01:57:29.080 And that's basically what I would do for the next, um, you know, the next five months

01:57:35.420 until my contract expires.

01:57:36.880 Um, so I thought of that, I, I think that what it really is, is just a way to co-opt me

01:57:44.940 and to sort of put me in a kind of rubber room.

01:57:47.860 I mean, I don't have any confidence whatsoever that any of my, you know, any of my, um, suggestions

01:57:55.540 or, or contributions would be taken seriously, um, which would involve like complete upending

01:58:02.260 of the entire program, um, to account for free expression and a viewpoint diversity and, you

01:58:09.220 know, different, completely different epistemology.

01:58:14.000 Um, I don't feel that they're going to take that seriously.

01:58:16.340 And so if, you know, I'm not sure if my, my continued, um, employment, you know, I, I don't

01:58:23.920 think that's going to be helpful.

01:58:24.480 And what were the grounds for stopping you from teaching?

01:58:28.760 Well, how was that framed exactly?

01:58:30.380 Yeah, that was an interesting thing.

01:58:31.680 So I received a threat from a member of the community.

01:58:35.140 It wasn't a physical threat.

01:58:36.840 It was a menacing threat that was centered around my, my employment, my livelihood.

01:58:44.540 You know, it said a lot of things like, don't dare come back to the school.

01:58:48.580 Your life is going to change.

01:58:50.700 Your future is, you know, you're going to be canceled.

01:58:54.680 You're, you're never going to be able to work anywhere.

01:58:56.940 You know, the, this, we will see to it that you're.

01:58:59.680 Yeah, it was, it was a menacing email.

01:59:02.520 So I reported this email to the school and, um, you know, the school got back to me or

01:59:09.120 the head of school got back to me and said, well, you know, if you don't feel safe as you

01:59:14.260 don't feel safe.

01:59:15.140 Um, we don't ask that we, we, we, you might, we think it's a good idea if you stayed home

01:59:21.100 and taught remotely, you know, only over zoom and don't come onto the school grounds.

01:59:26.760 And I wrote back to them and I said, well, actually I do feel safe.

01:59:30.520 I want to come to school.

01:59:33.680 Um, I like to teach in person.

01:59:36.040 Um, and you know, I, I expect, I was simply bringing this to your attention so that you

01:59:41.860 could take care of this problem.

01:59:44.140 Um, and then they wrote back saying, well, as you know, we will be polling the students

01:59:51.360 and, and community members to find out whether this opinion is shared by other people.

01:59:56.680 So they treated this menacing email as an opinion and, and they said, you know, subsequent

02:00:02.080 to that, they said, well, since the school, you know, community feels that they can't participate

02:00:08.620 in your classes because they were probably objecting to your right to comfort.

02:00:12.860 Yeah, probably, you know, and I, I said things like, well, I fully expect you to maintain

02:00:16.980 order and security in the school.

02:00:18.500 I mean, that's, that's something that you should.

02:00:21.020 And I find it rather odd that if, if, you know, someone who sent a menacing email,

02:00:26.680 to me should not have to stay home, but I should have to stay home.

02:00:30.300 What is the, you know, why am I the one that has to stay home?

02:00:33.480 Why, why isn't this other person staying home?

02:00:35.960 So, but they didn't have much sympathy for that point of view.

02:00:38.520 So rather it was this, this threat was taken as a kind of, um, you know, example of people's

02:00:48.080 feelings of, of insecure, unsafeness around me.

02:00:52.880 So I was, I was asked to stay home.

02:00:54.920 Right.

02:00:54.940 You provoked them to that degree.

02:00:56.900 Right.

02:00:57.280 Exactly.

02:00:58.040 Um, now you also exchanged an opinion or two publicly with the, if I've got this right,

02:01:06.260 with the headmaster, you said that in a conversation, he had indicated his agreement with your proposition

02:01:13.220 that white people, but children in your formulation to begin with, were being demonized by the curriculum.

02:01:21.680 And you made that claim and he said that was not true.

02:01:25.320 And then you released the audio.

02:01:27.680 Right.

02:01:28.000 Which I reviewed and which seems to clearly indicate that he did in fact say exactly what you said he said.

02:01:33.800 That's right.

02:01:34.660 That's right.

02:01:35.200 What was the consequences for him of, of that?

02:01:40.600 Well, I have no idea because I haven't heard anything in the, in the two days since the audio

02:01:44.720 has been released at this point.

02:01:46.360 So it's, so he's been radio silent as far as you know, as far as I know.

02:01:50.720 Yes.

02:01:50.980 I don't know what's happening there.

02:01:52.680 Um, I'm, I'm not privy to, I mean, I still have email.

02:01:56.880 My email account is still active, but I don't, you know, I, I haven't seen any communications

02:02:02.540 about anything.

02:02:04.560 So, um, I don't know his situation.

02:02:10.100 There hasn't been any statement from the school at this point.

02:02:13.660 Okay.

02:02:14.040 So a couple of things that we should cover before we stop.

02:02:17.360 Um, what do you, what are your feelings about the importance of what is transpiring around

02:02:24.920 you to broader, let's say educational society?

02:02:29.820 Let's, let's start with that, with, with, with regard to teachers and students in private

02:02:36.100 and public institutions, high schools, junior highs, elementary schools in your state and

02:02:42.820 across your country.

02:02:43.800 What, what do you see this, if anything, what does this indicate?

02:02:49.940 Well, I have hopes, you know, I, I feel that if, if students can, if I, if, if the type of

02:02:58.220 you know, willingness to ask a question, it, in response to some of these, you know, what

02:03:07.380 I consider to be indoctrination, frankly, at other schools.

02:03:11.120 And you think that's happening at other schools?

02:03:13.620 Yeah.

02:03:13.920 I mean, I, it's no question because of the, the calls that I've received in the conversations

02:03:18.560 I've had with people all over Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, you know,

02:03:24.220 their, their parents are very concerned with their children and they've seen it because

02:03:27.860 of the pandemic through their, through the zoom, zoom classes, they've witnessed what's

02:03:33.420 being taught to their kids and they're very, very concerned and they have specific receipts

02:03:40.180 to back it up.

02:03:40.960 And, you know, they're sending me curriculum.

02:03:45.620 So, you know, I, I have, this is not simply a, a, a rarefied independent school problem.

02:03:54.020 This is happening at, you know, school boards and districts all over the country.

02:04:00.660 A lot of it spurred by the, you know, the George Floyd killing and the reaction to it.

02:04:06.700 Um, I believe it was taken as an opportunity to, you know, redress, um, that with a misguided.

02:04:16.680 Yeah.

02:04:17.180 An opportunity for what?

02:04:18.420 It's like, I'm trying to figure out, I keep trying to figure out cause I've been concerned

02:04:22.280 about this for long time and, uh, I still can't get to the bottom of it.

02:04:28.620 It's like, I don't understand exactly.

02:04:31.200 I know there's a resentment element to it, but I can't understand exactly what's driving

02:04:35.500 this and, and why it's, despite the fact that it's clearly the view of a very small minority

02:04:41.920 of people, perhaps 5%.

02:04:43.720 That's what the survey seemed to indicate.

02:04:45.940 I cannot understand why it's making the headway that it's making at the rate that it's making

02:04:51.540 and what it's really aiming at.

02:04:55.200 What do you think about that?

02:04:57.440 Like, what's your sense?

02:04:58.860 Cause obviously it's bothering you.

02:05:00.560 Yeah, I think I have a sense why, and maybe it's a theory.

02:05:06.180 It's not just my theory, but it's, I've seen in other places or hinted at in other places.

02:05:11.360 I think when you sort of, you know, over the past few decades, you have a gradual sort of

02:05:19.380 leeching from the soil of society of sort of a moral sense, a moral tradition, moral grounding

02:05:27.600 and, you know, long, long religious traditions, essentially, when they depart from the public

02:05:33.320 sphere, it leaves a kind of vacuum.

02:05:36.600 And, you know, wokeness is, is a way to sort of, sort of paint by numbers, moral righteousness,

02:05:43.400 and it gives people the sense that they're good people.

02:05:46.360 I think people have an almost, you know, I don't know whether it's evolutionarily based,

02:05:50.720 but they have a need to have a moral character and sense of themselves.

02:05:55.120 And if, and if something comes along, which is going to offer that and give you that thing,

02:06:01.640 well, then there's a, there's a tremendous hunger for it.

02:06:04.760 So people will adopt it quickly.

02:06:06.260 And so you can have, you know, a very small percentage of the population that's pushing

02:06:11.340 it can have a real powerful outsized influence.

02:06:14.660 Do you, do you have a traditional religious belief of any sort?

02:06:17.660 And are you a practicing religious person?

02:06:21.680 I am, I am, it's a really good question.

02:06:25.380 I am, I was raised Catholic.

02:06:27.940 And I, you know, was, I've lapsed.

02:06:31.660 You know, I have a joke that I, I use sometimes, you know, I'm so lapsed, I'm prolapsed.

02:06:36.340 But basically, I, you know, was a functioning agnostic, then atheist.

02:06:44.180 Uh, and, um, but I, I don't feel like I really need a lot of God, but I do need to have something

02:06:55.360 which is like a conscience.

02:06:56.720 Like, I guess I believe in a conscience.

02:06:58.820 I believe in some little mirror of the divine, which sort of is, is in me.

02:07:04.740 It's not like above me or around me, but it is within me.

02:07:07.820 And so it's sort of like a reflective thing that I can, and it's sort of reactivated,

02:07:13.600 I guess, and as part of this whole experience.

02:07:16.660 So I can, I can take in the world and the world of reality, but I can reflect it against

02:07:22.580 something which is not of this world.

02:07:24.860 I don't know how else to describe it.

02:07:26.380 And then.

02:07:27.120 That's pretty good.

02:07:28.160 What comes back.

02:07:29.180 I'm, I'm satisfied with that answer.

02:07:31.540 You know, like what comes back is something that I should attend to.

02:07:35.100 It's something that is, it is, it is something important.

02:07:38.100 And that is the, you know, and, and now that I feel like I have that or own awareness of

02:07:43.600 that, you know, I, it's just like, you know, ah, you know, okay.

02:07:49.820 Like I've got, it's been there.

02:07:52.220 Exactly.

02:07:52.700 Thank God.

02:07:53.220 I want to say thank God, but I don't, I don't, I don't know.

02:07:56.100 I don't know that there's a God with a capital G.

02:07:59.880 I just know that there's something which is, which is not of this world, but is in

02:08:05.260 this world.

02:08:06.820 And it's, it's, it's not out there.

02:08:09.360 So what do you think?

02:08:10.480 Okay.

02:08:10.800 So what about.

02:08:13.560 When I read your, oh, I have two questions.

02:08:16.280 The first question is why did you, one of the questions is why did you agree to talk

02:08:20.880 to me?

02:08:21.280 And the second question is what do you have to say to teachers who are wrestling with

02:08:29.260 their conscience in relationship to this issue?

02:08:32.360 So let's start with that one.

02:08:35.820 Start with the second one.

02:08:37.340 No.

02:08:37.660 Yeah.

02:08:37.880 With the, with the teachers, what do you have to say?

02:08:40.300 I mean, you already said you're not interested in judging people for their decisions, but

02:08:45.780 no, you've been through this.

02:08:47.480 You've thought about it.

02:08:48.320 Like what's your conclusion and what, and your, your hope, or if it's not a recommendation,

02:08:54.140 maybe it's a hope.

02:08:55.920 I would just say, you know, stand up for the truth and in whatever way you can, if you,

02:09:00.360 if you feel, if you have that same reflective process within yourself, or you, if what I'm

02:09:06.540 saying makes sense to you in terms of your, your sense of right and wrong, if you feel

02:09:12.120 that what you're being asked to teach or what your students are being, are going through

02:09:17.900 is wrong, then weigh that, like, like do it smartly, but, but really take it seriously.

02:09:25.820 And, and, and why, why, why, why, because, because it's crucial.

02:09:31.260 It's, it's, it's, it's, it's what will save us.

02:09:34.100 If we don't, if you don't stand up.

02:09:36.840 Crucial.

02:09:37.320 That's a hell of a word to use in that context.

02:09:41.060 Yeah.

02:09:41.680 Right.

02:09:42.260 Yeah.

02:09:42.480 The root of that.

02:09:43.340 Yeah.

02:09:43.560 Um, you, you, you, you know, the, you're being asked, you're being called to do something

02:09:53.360 and, you know, it doesn't mean that you have to like run around and, and, and proclaim,

02:10:04.200 you know, and, and save the world.

02:10:05.580 It just means that you have to do something in a way that is constructive and well thought

02:10:10.140 out and, and will, that will help the immediate circumstances in which you find yourself and

02:10:18.640 help to, you know, set an example.

02:10:23.080 And if you don't, and if you don't, um, well, then it's, you're leaving it up to the next

02:10:27.280 guy.

02:10:27.640 Maybe the next guy isn't up to it.

02:10:29.120 And maybe the next guy isn't up to it.

02:10:30.800 And maybe the next guy isn't up to it.

02:10:32.260 And then what happens then?

02:10:34.440 Then you, then you've, you may not get it.

02:10:36.280 You may not get a chance.

02:10:37.460 You may not get a chance.

02:10:38.180 What you can teach is the words on the appropriate list.

02:10:40.940 You could just be replaced by the list.

02:10:44.560 Yeah.

02:10:45.320 Yeah.

02:10:45.780 You know, I mean, the thing that's so wonderful about teaching is that you get to make contact

02:10:49.640 with someone else with you.

02:10:52.400 And so if that's being whittled away in favor of the approved list, then there isn't a hell

02:10:59.160 of a lot of room for you.

02:11:00.980 And it's kind of hard for me to say, see how you could take any, derive any source of meaningful

02:11:06.980 engagement from your job.

02:11:08.660 If you've been reduced to a set of moralistic platitudes, especially when extreme punishment

02:11:15.400 accompanies deviation from them.

02:11:19.140 So that's the thing I always noticed when I was a clinical psychologist, I always brought

02:11:22.980 up because I don't practice now for a variety of reasons.

02:11:28.480 There's a price to speaking, but there's a price to remaining silent when you have something

02:11:34.600 to say.

02:11:36.380 So you get to pick your price.

02:11:39.260 Yeah.

02:11:39.700 So why did you agree to talk to me?

02:11:46.380 Well, I wanted to talk to you because, you know, you've, you've been a pretty big influence

02:11:52.180 on my, on my life.

02:11:55.020 I followed you from the, you know, from the Bill C-16 video and your, your biblical lectures 0.91

02:12:03.080 were very, very moving to me.

02:12:04.820 I mean, I, I had never thought of, I never imagined even that there was a way to sort

02:12:12.060 of harmonize, you know, evolution and religion in that way.

02:12:19.480 It seemed just like a remarkable achievement to, to sort of kind of find a third way out

02:12:28.780 of the, you know, along another dimension from the, the conflict of, you know, is it true?

02:12:34.000 Is it not true?

02:12:34.660 Is it true?

02:12:35.040 Is it not true?

02:12:35.540 It does.

02:12:35.880 And sort of saying, it doesn't matter.

02:12:38.340 That's not the question.

02:12:39.460 The question is like, why does this matter?

02:12:44.540 And, and, you know, what, I don't know the way you did it.

02:12:48.520 It was just like, it apparently matters.

02:12:50.540 The question is why it seems to matter.

02:12:53.020 And it, it sort of reframed it in a way that I couldn't, that I couldn't ignore and that

02:13:02.200 it, because I was raised with these stories, but they didn't really make sense in the modern

02:13:08.760 paradigm that I've been, you know, that, that I experienced as a kind of drifting away.

02:13:14.460 I think that my, my experience in, in relating to your work is quite common.

02:13:20.080 I think a lot of people have this experience listening to your work and your lectures.

02:13:23.940 Um, and that finding a way to sort of connect with myself as, you know, when I, when I was

02:13:31.840 a boy, I was an altar boy.

02:13:33.340 I studied the Bible.

02:13:34.280 You know, these were things that, that were important to me, but I didn't understand them

02:13:39.920 and finding a way to understand them in a, in a new and better way.

02:13:43.660 It was just marvelous.

02:13:45.720 It was marvelous.

02:13:46.600 And that, that it would have meaning for me as an adult is something I never would have

02:13:50.060 even imagined was possible.

02:13:53.140 Um, so, you know, that was very important to me.

02:13:57.400 And also that the importance that there is, you know, I don't, I don't know, it seems that

02:14:06.300 I don't, it almost doesn't matter what your religious thing is.

02:14:11.180 Um, but it, it is important that there's something, there's something important about truth.

02:14:17.720 The truth is important and it's not the same as reality.

02:14:21.020 And people think that reality is truth.

02:14:23.620 And a lot of it is, but there's some of it that's not.

02:14:26.940 And that you, and that being able to say, I don't know whether this is something that,

02:14:30.400 that, that I'm getting from you or that you actually said, but I thought that you might,

02:14:35.600 you might be someone that kind of understood that where I was coming from about that.

02:14:41.180 And I felt the sort of kinship there.

02:14:44.840 And that's why, that's why it was really important for me to go on your show.

02:14:50.380 Thank you for talking to me today.

02:14:53.720 Thank you.

02:14:55.540 Thank you for having me.

02:14:56.980 My pleasure, man.

02:14:58.000 Thank you.

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - April 29, 2021

164. Teaching and the Voice of Conscience ｜ Paul Rossi

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