In this episode, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson talks about the movie Pinocchio, and how the story of a marionette who becomes a real boy is a perfect example of what it means to grow up in a culture that censors speech. Dr. Peterson's new series on Depression and Anxiety provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward. If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better. Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. B.P. Peterson on Depression & Anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. With decades of experience helping patients with depression and anxiety and a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way - Dr. P.B. Peterson offers a roadmap toward healing. In his new series, he s created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling Depression and anxiety. 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. and offer a moment of support. Thank you for listening to the JBP Podcast, and may you find a way to feel better and find a place of support in your life that can help you heal. . Dr. JBP is a podcast that could help you feel better, and is dedicated to helping you get a better night out of this dark place you re in the dark place. If you re struggling with anxiety, depression, or are struggling, let me know what you need to do to help you can do to get a good night out. JBP podcast, and I ll send you a message to someone who needs it. I ll help you get some good rest and get some rest and a place to rest, too. - Thank you! - MJBP - - thank you, MJB Peterson and much love, - Elyssa Peterson - JBP - Michaela Peterson, PhD . . . JBP, JBP , JBP. , MJBP, -- & so much love & support, , and much more! , ( ) ? is a , . , & ... JB, .
00:00:01.000Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.000Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.000We 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.
00:00:19.000With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:27.000He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:00:35.000If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:00:41.000Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:00:47.000Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:00:52.000Welcome to episode 246 of the JBP podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson.
00:01:00.000This is part one of a new compilation series on free speech.
00:01:04.000The episode begins with Dad's clip describing the trials Pinocchio had to overcome to reach maturity, followed by people like Brett Weinstein, Julie Ponnese, Arif Ahmed, and Yunmi Park, describing how they've all been affected by free speech or censored speech in their own unique ways.
00:01:32.000It's a journey to the depths, so it's a journey to the underworld.
00:01:35.000It's the consequence of a collapse in previous personality and the disintegration of that previous personality into a chaotic state prior to rebirth.
00:01:49.000Now, what happens in Pinocchio, which, by the way, was released at about the same time that World War II was brewing, and which also contains one of the best representations of the individual motivations for fascism that I've ever seen anywhere.
00:02:07.000That's the scenes that are associated with Pleasure Island.
00:02:10.000Remember, all the puppet is trying to become a real boy, right?
00:02:15.000Something else is pulling his strings.
00:02:18.000Well, for Jung, that's your habitual state of being.
00:02:23.000Something else is pulling your strings.
00:02:26.000Even the idea that you're autonomous is the consequence of something else pulling your strings.
00:02:31.000And for Jung, what you needed to do was find out exactly who and what is pulling your strings and decide if that's the direction in which you want to go.
00:02:40.000And that's really what happens to Pinocchio, because we're going to watch Pinocchio part of it in the Pinocchio story.
00:02:53.000So he's a marionette with a benevolent puppeteer.
00:02:56.000But as soon as he develops some autonomy, then he becomes prey to forces that are elements of the demonic archetype.
00:03:04.000In fact, the worst bad guy in the entire movie turns into Satan himself at one point in the movie.
00:03:10.000He basically has horns and a bright red face.
00:03:13.000And he manifests himself as so terrifying that the coyote, coyote, wolf, fox, and the cat that are trying to corrupt Pinocchio are terrified.
00:03:25.000Because they're criminals, they're petty criminals and deceptive and so forth.
00:03:29.000But when they get a look at who's pulling their strings, it's enough to terrify them.
00:03:33.000And so, Pinocchio goes through a series of temptations of various sorts, including a Freudian temptation.
00:03:40.000And the Freudian temptation is to remain weak and sickly instead of becoming a real person.
00:04:12.000And the other taking the easy way out and hyper valuing all your pathology so that you become dependent.
00:04:21.000So anyways, and then another mode of pathological development is offered to Pinocchio.
00:04:29.000Which is to do nothing but engage in short term impulsive and destructive play.
00:04:35.000And that's on Pleasure Island but when he goes to Pleasure Island he finds that it's actually ruled by demonic forces with faceless entities who are transforming all the pleasure seeking marionettes to braying donkeys who are slaves.
00:04:54.000So Pinocchio escapes from that and he does it basically by jumping into the unknown and that's where we're going to start our exposure to his initiation.
00:05:10.000I'd like you to walk me through what's happened to you since the events in Evergreen and bring everybody up to date on my end.
00:05:21.000So maybe you could start with what happened at Evergreen although I suspect many of the people watching this do know.
00:05:56.000The classes were always over full and we accepted more people than we had to and had to turn some away anyway.
00:06:03.000And then in actually 2016, the new president of the college, George Bridges, began an initiative or a set of initiatives surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion.
00:06:15.000And these initiatives included the impaneling of a committee that was supposed to look into racism at the college, its impacts and to propose solutions.
00:06:28.000And as it became clear what they were alleging and proposing, Heather and I became very alarmed.
00:06:37.000And I began to speak out at first in faculty meetings.
00:06:41.000And then when the ability to speak out in faculty meetings became non-existent, I took to our faculty and staff email list to talk about the threat to the college that was created by these initiatives.
00:06:56.000And that, of course, brought about exactly what you would imagine, which were accusations that I was motivated by some kind of racism or white supremacy or white fragility or who knows what the accusations were exactly.
00:07:09.000But in any case, I fought back anyway.
00:07:14.000And my sense was I had tenure and I was well liked and I was well known at the college.
00:08:59.000And what is, I mean, I have a bunch of questions that come out of that.
00:09:03.000I mean, so I'm going to lay out three.
00:09:06.000Why in the world did this bother you enough so that you took a stand, especially given your political leanings?
00:09:13.000Because you were, which I'm not criticizing, by the way, I'm just stating that it isn't obvious to begin with why it would be you that would take a stand, say, rather than someone else.
00:09:24.000You did. And so I'm curious about why.
00:09:42.000You don't have your job at the university anymore.
00:09:44.000Either of you, despite the fact that you were tenured professors, it's not an easy thing to get another toehold in academia.
00:09:51.000Once you've been a tenured professor somewhere, especially if you've gone through what you went through, because no hiring committee anywhere is going to give you any consideration once you've been once you've been tarred by scandal, regardless of what your role in it was.
00:10:07.000They're far too conservative to ever do anything like that.
00:10:10.000And so, okay, so let's, I don't know if I can remember the order in which I asked those questions, but I think the first one was, why in the world did you, why in the world were you compelled to, to object, to object?
00:10:25.000And what is it that you were objecting to, do you think?
00:10:28.000Well, it's a funny, a funny question for you to pose to me because I have the feeling that the answer will be entirely native to you.
00:10:38.000I literally don't believe I had any choice.
00:10:42.000People frequently ask me why I stood up.
00:10:45.000And my sense is if I think through the alternative, I simply can't live with it.
00:11:35.000My sense is I hope to see change that makes civilization good enough that I get to be a conservative, that I get to say, actually, we're doing so well that we have no choice but to preserve this.
00:11:49.000If we try to improve it, we'll mess it up.
00:11:52.000But what I'm discovering is that the bedrock of my liberalism is nothing like the underpinnings of the so-called liberalism of most of the people on the left side of the political spectrum.
00:12:08.000My liberalism comes from a sense that, yes, compassion is a virtue, but that policy must be based on a dispassionate analysis of problems.
00:12:21.000It is based on an understanding that the magic of the West comes from a tension between those who aspire to change things for the better and those who recognize the danger of changing them at all.
00:12:36.000And so, in any case, I think the short answer is we look around the world and everybody makes arguments that sound as if they come from first principles, but most people do not arrive at conclusions from first principles.
00:12:56.000If they extrapolate at all, if they extrapolate at all, they don't do it very well.
00:13:00.000And that results in severe compartmentalization of thought.
00:13:06.000And that means that when confronted with changes that threaten a system on which we are dependent, most people don't recognize it.
00:13:19.000And if they do recognize it, they wouldn't know what to do about it.
00:13:28.000I had no choice because I was as if on a ship where somebody had proposed to fix our course through a field of icebergs and navigate based on some absurd theory with no grounding in fact.
00:13:47.000And I was a little surprised at how few and far between the objectors were.
00:13:53.000But, you know, if I'm to be totally candid about it, at the point that things went haywire at Evergreen, I had watched video of you reacting to protesters in Toronto.
00:14:07.000And it had made so much sense to me at a number of different levels.
00:14:13.000You know, I recognized you as somebody who knew that although the initial proposals were arguably symbolic, that they were connected to things that ultimately were very much about an exercise of power and a transfer of well-being.
00:14:31.000And that it was therefore, you know, you felt obligated to stand up and say no, which resulted, as you know, better than anyone in you being mocked for overreacting.
00:14:59.040It wasn't possible to see what would happen with specificity to you.
00:15:04.220But am I correct in seeing that you knew that something very dramatic was likely to come from your standing on principle and that that didn't provide any license to do anything but make that stand?
00:16:45.500And all hell broke loose and continues to break loose for that matter, which is one of the things that's so bloody strange about it is it doesn't seem to end.
00:16:53.580And I would have thought when it first started, I thought, oh, well, you know, I'd be a flash in the pan for a week or something or two weeks or a month or six months or a year or two years or but it doesn't stop.
00:17:08.920It's it's it's beyond my comprehension.
00:17:11.140Now, I guess it's partly because I continue to communicate my thoughts to some degree, even talking to mainstream media people, although increasingly less and perhaps not at all from here on in.
00:17:24.700I mean, I had an interview with The London Times.
00:17:28.400Two weeks ago, three weeks ago, it was published.
00:17:30.420And, you know, it was just another complete, absolute bloody nightmare for my family, my daughter in particular, because they took her to task in an extraordinarily nasty way.
00:17:41.560And, you know, and the journalist who did the interview was completely.
00:17:49.120You know, not only the way she she she was she was so deceitful in what she did, but I learned more about her background afterward as a consequence of another journalist who wrote about her.
00:17:58.820And, you know, she's a very singular person, to say the least.
00:18:05.540And so I did feel at the time, like you did, I guess, that I was more afraid of not speaking than I was afraid of speaking.
00:18:13.400And I have something against being told what to say.
00:18:15.980It's like I'll pay the price for what I have to say.
00:18:20.240I'm not going to pay the price to say what you want me to say.
00:18:23.480You go say it yourself and see what the hell happens.
00:18:26.680And, you know, maybe that's just a kind of incomprehensible stubbornness in some sense.
00:18:36.840Although I did, I think I did see what has, I did see the beginnings of what has unfolded since then, although I can't even really put my finger on what it is that's happening.
00:18:49.900So, well, I wonder a little bit about, you know, in some ways, you know, there's nothing good about why you were absent from the scene.
00:19:00.680But there may be something good about your having not been there for every moment of it and being able to come back to the discussion with something like fresh eyes.
00:19:13.380Because a lot of this is developmental and, you know, you say you're surprised that this is continuing.
00:19:23.980And I must say I'm having the same experience.
00:19:25.940I feel like I was picked up, you know, my whole family was picked up by a tornado and we haven't been put down.
00:19:31.400And, you know, I sort of feel like we rejoined in the tornado during 2020.
00:19:36.260It was such a crazy year that a lot of people whose lives were continuing in some normal fashion are suddenly aware that things are wildly off kilter.
00:19:46.480Going online without ExpressVPN is like not paying attention to the safety demonstration on a flight.
00:19:52.020Most of the time, you'll probably be fine.
00:19:54.060But what if one day that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead and you have no idea what to do?
00:19:59.760In our hyperconnected world, your digital privacy isn't just a luxury.
00:20:04.740Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel or airport, you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it.
00:20:14.220And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.
00:20:17.420With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins and credit card details.
00:20:24.800Now, you might think, what's the big deal?
00:21:42.400And, you know, I was I was very concerned that I reported to the right people or, you know, what's the org structure, you know?
00:21:49.600And they were just like, well, you know, just you have colleagues and you can discuss things with them and we're not going to make you do anything.
00:22:52.780It was a very gradual change that, you know, I would say, well, within the first three years,
00:23:00.180one of the tenets of our our school was that every employee and every faculty and staff member had to attend a seminar called Undoing Racism.
00:23:12.580That was your H.R. department, was it?
00:23:14.740Yeah, it was it was a you know, it was a mandate from the dean of faculty at the time.
00:24:09.640Well, you know, as I recall, they they started out.
00:24:14.800Um, well, there was sort of two parts.
00:24:16.740The first part was the history since, you know, the slave ships landed on American soil.
00:24:23.440And then throughout time leading up to the present.
00:24:27.420And then they focused for the second half of the session.
00:24:30.140They focused on, you know, how to help a community that has been shaped by all of this.
00:24:36.260And very early in the very early in the session, they said, we want you to withhold any judgment of anyone's choice or agency.
00:24:45.640Anyone, you know, any of, you know, the minority black populations that we're talking about here.
00:24:51.640We want you to simply bracket or put, you know, hold, hold, withhold any analysis of the choices that people make because, you know, they that will often lead to a misunderstanding or insensitivity towards what's happening.
00:25:08.640And so why do you focus on that specifically, that issue specifically?
00:25:12.980Well, because, you know, it was as, as they retold the history and as they talk about the present circumstances, they never actually revisited that.
00:25:21.740So, you know, you're, you're constantly focused on the oppressed population in, in terms of what is acting upon it, acting upon those individuals.
00:25:34.640And, you know, to me, that's like denying a certain agency, right.
00:25:41.120And, but they never actually lifted the blinders off at the end.
00:25:44.540Like they, they would put these, everyone sort of acknowledged that they were going to go along with this at the beginning.
00:25:49.540And I was like, really, we're going to do that.
00:25:51.400We're going to treat people as less than human.
00:25:54.100I just, it must be like a temporary thing.
00:25:56.180And why did you see that as treating them as less than human?
00:25:59.500I mean, I presume that the people on the other side of the fence would say, well, you know, we're, we're, we're all caught like corks on the sea in, in the throes of vast social movements over which we have little or no control.
00:26:13.580And, and who are you to cast judgment on people who have been the relative, relatively deprived in that regard compared to you?
00:26:22.700Well, it's possible to make a fairly stringent moral case that that's the appropriate mode of behavior.
00:26:28.900But you were, there was something in you that objected to that.
00:27:01.380You, you feel, if you're sitting face to face with someone, of course, you're going to be, I'm going to be sympathetic and empathetic and, and people are narrating.
00:27:09.820Um, you know, but the problem I think is generalizing that to groups and, you know, getting you to make a different set of assumptions about those groups based on a sort of, you know, selective way that the empathy is leveraged.
00:27:25.680I would say, well, there's also the implicit, there's the implicit, um, uh, what would you say the implicit perceptual and categorical structure that comes along with it, which is the a priori assumption that the appropriate classification for human beings is by group.
00:27:43.240And, and that, that, that's so implicit, but so pervasive that it in some sense never needs to be stated.
00:27:49.080And as soon as you assume that the group level is the appropriate level, then you're bound to minimize or even forbid discussion of such things as individual agency.
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00:31:37.700Like, I was really thinking, I'm writing, you know, I'm using, during the pandemic, my in-laws or my parents sometimes with some issues.
00:31:46.440Or writing about the Beirut explosion, I interviewed friends about what they are going through, the financial crisis, you know, things like that.
00:32:23.400I can tell you, but I want to say, yes, I'm extremely happy.
00:32:25.860Even in the pandemic, even despite the Beirut explosion and everything, like, I'm finding my ways of, you know, living, coping, where New Brunswick is amazing, or Canada.
00:32:36.380But we're also lucky to be in the semi-rural areas where even the pandemic did not hit us as hard as Tron or bigger places in Montreal.
00:32:47.060So, in that sense, I was all okay until that February 22nd, where I can tell you that story because it's my story.
00:34:53.460And, like, it was, it was a big thing on social media.
00:34:56.820Like, and there has been also at one point, you know, a threat of violence on social media and things like that.
00:35:03.580So, it was, it was then, I don't want to forget that part.
00:35:08.300When the, there were three student organizations asked for my removal from my position at my university and also affiliations elsewhere, like University of New Brunswick, University of Moncton, as well.
00:35:38.320And they're students who are part of student organizations.
00:35:41.800And do you, and then the student organizations themselves, three of them, are contacting your, the people that you're working for or with, suggesting that you're not the sort of person they should be associating with and asking for your removal.
00:36:13.240Well, the reason I'm asking is because one of the things I'm curious about is just how many people have to complain before complaints are taken with some degree of seriousness.
00:36:23.040Now, I've dealt with ethics boards, for example, at my own university, and they have a policy that every complaint should be investigated thoroughly.
00:36:31.340And I'm not very fond of that policy, particularly, because there are a lot of people who cause a fair bit of trouble for absolutely no reason.
00:36:40.400And it seems to me that complaints need to pass something approximating a reasonable threshold before they're dealt with, let's say, seriously.
00:36:48.220And so, you know, it's striking when you're talking about this that you don't know how many people actually came after you because they came after you on social media.
00:36:57.560And it's certainly not in the hundreds.
00:36:59.640It's unlikely to be, and correct me if I'm wrong, it's unlikely to be in the dozens.
00:37:08.360And were they students who were actually in your classes, or were they just people who read your blog?
00:37:13.160And what were they objecting to in your blog exactly?
00:37:16.620What did you say that was in principle?
00:37:18.640Or do you even know what it is that they're upset about?
00:37:22.180What I've read is that you made some claim that Canada wasn't systemically racist, that that wasn't the right way of looking at the country.
00:37:29.700And to me, that means now, is that the case now that at a university, if I stand up and say that I don't believe that the lens of systemic racism is the proper way to analyze Canada, especially compared to other countries, that now I'm so reprehensible that I deserve to be suspended?
00:37:46.920If a couple of people object, is that the situation that we're looking at?
00:37:51.420Or am I being too hard on the university?
00:37:53.720Well, I think it's hard to answer that question.
00:37:58.780The numbers that I know of now, I know them because of what happened and how many people, but before I didn't know anything.
00:38:05.500I personally found it amazing that my university, my employer that I love and respect, you know, did not call me to tell me what was happening, that I learned it in that way.
00:39:22.020You're still not sure what it is that.
00:39:23.680Okay, so you're not sure exactly who you offended or how many of them there are, and you're not exactly sure why you offended them.
00:39:31.760And you're so unsure that what you say is that as far as you're concerned, you can't safely write down what you think, despite the fact that you have your opinions, given where you came from, given the fact that you've immigrated here, that you can take a look at Canada from the perspective of an insider and an outsider.
00:40:12.360Okay, and you said your university didn't even call you when all this blew up, which is typical in my experience of the way institutions are reacting to this sort of thing.
00:40:20.940So an unnamed number of students made comments that you have used that are in some sense reprehensible, even though you don't know what they are, and the response of your university, despite the fact that you have tenure, that you're an accomplished scientist, that you're a popular undergraduate researcher, that you have tenure, the response of your university was to not call you but suspend you for the fall, what, pending an investigation.
00:40:47.580Have they told you what you did wrong?
00:40:49.360Of course, I saw those complaints, and I can tell you, I think that part I can say is most of them are related to the blog, and that's fine.
00:41:00.180People have the right not to like what you say, what I say, what anyone else is saying.
00:41:06.580But when we get into false allegations, it's a different story.
00:41:13.520There's also a difference between having the right not to like what you say on your blog and aggregating behind your back and conspiring to contact all your employers and to insist that you be removed because you're reprehensible and hypothetically a danger to the, let's say, the safety of students.
00:41:32.000And to have you removed from your position and have your reputation dragged through the mud and have you exposed in the media.
00:41:39.060I mean, that's not merely not liking what you said.
00:41:43.580And it's amazing to me that this handful of students, an unspecified number, has the power to move the administration to produce such a dramatic response.
00:41:55.440And you keep wavering in some sense as to the nature of your crimes.
00:42:00.880You said you think it might, you think it's likely the blog, but I guess there are allegations that go outside the blog as well.
00:42:06.700Have you ever had trouble with your students in classes that have resulted in complaints?
00:42:49.120Well, it doesn't seem to me that it's something that needs to be justified.
00:42:52.280I mean, first of all, you're a citizen of a free country.
00:42:55.600You have a right to express yourself any way that you see fit.
00:42:58.900Second of all, you're a tenured professor and your thoughts are actually protected to a fair degree.
00:43:04.340And it's protected broadly so that you can think broadly.
00:43:08.220And the fact that this has happened despite your tenure...
00:43:11.040Well, I guess part of the question that people who are watching might be asking is why the hell should they care about this?
00:43:16.160And the reason I believe that people should care about this, first of all, is that what happens in the universities ends up happening everywhere else very, very rapidly.
00:43:23.640And if it can happen to someone like you, it seems to me that it can happen to anyone at any time in any place.
00:43:30.080And this unbelievable cowardice that our institutions show in the face of unwarranted allegations, as long as they're the right flavor, is something that should be tremendously worrisome to everyone.
00:43:42.200Tell us about No Safe Spaces first and then tell us about, you know, your attempts to get it distributed or the attempts to get it distributed.
00:43:49.980Well, I'll start with the movie and then Dennis will go on to the attempts to be distributed.
00:44:07.320You know, Dennis and I are very different.
00:44:11.680We have very different backgrounds, but we do have common sense in common.
00:44:17.460And I have found more and more, and I'm assuming you guys feel the same way, which is just finding someone with common sense seems to trump all the other characteristics that we're constantly talking about.
00:44:31.220About, you know, where, what region you're born in or who your team is or what color your skin is.
00:44:37.160Dennis and I always had common sense in common and we struck up a great friendship.
00:44:46.140We've always had a great time in each other's companies.
00:44:48.880And so when the producers came to us with this idea, I immediately jumped at it just because it selfishly seemed like we could spend a lot of time together talking about a subject that we're both pretty passionate about, which is free speech.
00:45:03.960And since the time we made this movie, I feel like things have gotten much worse.
00:45:10.980I think the movie was a bit ahead of its time in terms of what it is, the subject matter.
00:45:18.960And now I feel like in just the three or four years since we started, this free speech issue has gone into overdrive.
00:46:28.700I should, I'd like to point out too, just, just as an advertisement of sorts, there's a Canadian equivalent to that movie called better left unsaid that has faced the same sort of distribution problems that you guys have faced.
00:46:40.220And it focuses on issues that are more germane to Canada, although also relevant to the U S and so, um, well, they deserve a note.
00:47:42.100Uh, all you need really in, in, at Netflix or Walmart or any of these is one or two people who are woke, uh, to tell, uh, you know, we can't do this.
00:47:54.240Uh, and, and then, you know, what, what is it to Netflix not to listen to somebody who says, Oh, Dennis Prager.
00:47:59.300We know, we know for a fact that it was my name.
00:48:02.160That was the trigger, which is an interesting thing, which I, one day would be fascinating to discuss.
00:48:08.620Uh, because whenever my name is, is raised, uh, as this bugaboo, I always say, well, can you say anything in 35 years of broadcasting 10 books, literally 1000 columns on the internet, plus tens of thousands of hours of, of the radio recorded.
00:48:26.440Say one thing that I have ever said that strikes you as extreme.
00:48:40.660In fact, they says that Prager suggested.
00:48:43.380And I always tell people if they don't say said, don't believe the line suggested is the New York times, not what I said.
00:48:51.860And then they had no quotes, but anyway, I've had the same experience, Dennis, you know, I have, I know that I can't find a thing you've ever said that is an ennobling.
00:49:06.280I wrote the, I wrote the introduction to your biography.
00:49:09.500I had, uh, I had this experience as well.
00:49:14.280And then I have another thought, which is, uh, I got into a lot of trouble and I got out of favor with critics because, um, it was widely said that Adam Carolla said women weren't funny.
00:49:30.920And you guys have experienced a version of this.
00:49:33.300I did an interview years ago and the person said at the end, who's funnier men or women?
00:49:41.780And I said, well, I think men are, I think it's based on them trying to have sex essentially.
00:49:48.540So they had to exercise that muscle a little bit, but I know many female comedians that are funnier than anybody, any guy ever went to high school with that then turned into Adam Carolla said women weren't funny.
00:50:03.300And then they just ran with it and that's up there with that.
00:50:08.400Well, look, it's, it's pretty, pretty credible what you say, because my sense is, is that there's been a couple of things I've said that have been blown up in the press, you know, and they were exaggerations of the sort that you're describing taken out of context.
00:50:22.980I think that in the current climate, if you've ever said anything reprehensible on public record, that you will be slaughtered for it.
00:50:31.000And so if you haven't been slaughtered for it, the probability that you haven't said anything reprehensible is pretty damn high because people are combing over the, the utterances of people like you trying to find a smoking pistol.
00:50:44.300So I don't know if you can comb over things to find a smoking pistol, but.
00:50:48.060I was at a Senate subcommittee on the suppression of free speech, testifying about what's happening to PragerU, where hundreds of our videos are placed on the restricted list.
00:51:01.280Meaning if you have a filter against pornography and violence, you actually can't see the video.
00:51:06.520So one of them was in fact one, one that I had given, I only give one 10th of the videos, 90% of other people, but I, I have given a number of videos on the 10 commandments, for example.
00:51:17.940And so Senator Ted Cruz asked the representative of Google, why did you, you, people could see this on YouTube, it is still there.
00:51:26.840Why did you, why did you put Mr. Prager's talk on, on, on the 10 commandments on, on the restricted list?
00:51:37.860And the man looked at Senator Cruz and said, because it mentions murder.
00:51:46.360And I remember, I remember humming the twilight zone theme because I, I felt I had entered an alternate universe.
00:51:55.700So what do you think the reason was, Dennis?
00:51:58.240I mean, obviously, look, that's got to be a bit of a PR nightmare for Google to do something like that.
00:52:03.680So it, it smacks of a certain degree of incompetence to begin with.
00:52:07.360And I, I like to hypothesize incompetence before malevolence.
00:52:11.560So, so why do you think it was censored that specifically?
00:52:15.040And then why with regards to, is it reasonable to call what's happening with PragerU censorship?
00:53:05.540Because, you know, I'm a Canadian, and I suppose, along with the Scandinavian countries, we're tilted a fair degree to the left compared to the U.S.
00:53:14.280And so, I mean, freedom of speech is in reasonable shape in our countries, those countries that I mentioned.
00:53:21.800And so when you talk about the left, tell me more specifically what you mean and how you would define that particular sake.
00:53:29.800Because you're not talking about the Democrats per se, I can't imagine, or perhaps you are.
00:53:34.880The Democrats used to be, I was a Democrat.
00:53:40.260The Democrats, when I was a kid in the 70s, Nazis, real Nazis, not people they just call Nazis, real Nazis with swastikas, demonstrated in Skokie, Illinois, because a lot of Jews lived there, especially Holocaust survivors.
00:53:58.080And Jewish groups, the ACLU, liberal groups, the Democratic Party, all defended their right, because in America, anybody could say anything except yell a fire in a crowded theater.
00:54:49.200Actually, there were two other episodes on my mind, one of which sort of confirmed my theory about what was happening in your case, the other of which suggested different sorts of motivations.
00:54:58.520So one of them was a case that occurred around the same time as yours, which was a case of a research fellow at St. Edmunds College here in Cambridge, who was doing research.
00:55:07.560He was a sociologist, a very well-known respectable sociologist.
00:55:10.960He had work profiles in The Economist, in top journals.
00:55:15.700He was fired because there was, again, there was a mob protesting about his associations, conferences he'd been to, journals that he published in, in which other people that they found distasteful had published in, and so on.
00:55:54.880The other case was slightly different.
00:55:56.260So there was another case that concerned me, which was a case where it was an event for the Palestinian society, where there was a chair from that society, which the university threatened to shut down because they thought they were worried that the chair might be an extremist or something.
00:56:10.520She was a respectable academic from SOAS.
00:56:13.440And the university imposed its own chair on that.
00:56:17.340Now, that was slightly different because that was responding to another threat of free speech, which is the government's legislation on prevent and anti-terrorism.
00:56:24.960But those three events were sort of coalescing in my mind around the time that I tried to change the university's free speech policy.
00:56:32.840Okay, so what did, so let's talk about the change in the free speech policy.
00:56:39.920And then it took a couple of years, as I understand, to really get this through.
00:56:44.160And I also understand from James that it wasn't that easy to get people to speak in favor of your proposal, but that it was passed.
00:56:52.960And we need to go into that by an overwhelming majority of the people who were concerned and able to legislate such things, so to speak, for the university.
00:57:23.320They just wanted to put it straight through.
00:57:25.080And it was a policy which I found concerning, especially in life of these incidents.
00:57:28.680One part of it was that it mandates, said that we have a right to free speech, but we must always exercise respect for other people's identities and opinions.
00:57:46.440I mean, it seems terrible, because it just, it just removes the first part of protection for free speech.
00:57:52.560I mean, if you have to be cautious about other people's opinions, much less their identity, well, we should reverse that.
00:57:58.880Their identity, much less their opinions, well, who decides when that's respectful and what, yeah, yeah, it's just weasel words that.
00:58:05.240Exactly. And the bit about identities, I bet they had you in mind when they were saying that, actually.
00:58:10.800But whenever anyone says, I believe in free speech, but that's a good sign to me that they don't believe in free speech.
00:58:15.940And that was the impression that this policy gave off.
00:58:18.780Other parts of the policy, which may not have been directly explicitly new, but which certainly brought you and those other cases, for instance, the Palestinian society to mind,
00:58:26.180were rules which said that the university could stop speaker events if they thought they would threaten the welfare of students.
00:58:32.480Notice that welfare is defined again, undefined, and could be interpreted broadly.
00:58:37.080And indeed, allowed the university to stop events under pretty much any circumstances that they liked, speaker events, for instance.
00:58:44.240So that was the proposed policy in March 2020.
00:59:01.120And I'm always curious about people's motives.
00:59:03.340It's like there's lots of professors at Cambridge.
00:59:05.780Why do you think this was your problem?
00:59:09.600Well, you flatter me about being young.
00:59:11.040But I will say that I guess there were two things.
00:59:14.780One of them was philosophical and one of those more to do with the nature of the job.
00:59:17.860So philosophically speaking, my basic philosophical position is what you might call classical liberal.
00:59:23.080So my basic value is individual liberty.
00:59:27.720And, you know, in terms of what I do, my political engagement, even my professional engagement to some extent, you know, that's the ultimate and most important value.
00:59:39.900It touched something that was the core of my identity, if you want to use that appalling word.
00:59:44.360The other aspect, which I said was professional, was simply to do something I alluded to earlier, which was what is this job for?
00:59:51.060It's part of your duty as an academic, I would have thought.
00:59:54.300You know, academics are normally cautious, as they should be.
00:59:56.380But the one thing that they shouldn't be cautious about is defending the ultimate purpose of the academy.
01:00:01.420And that cannot be pursued without free speech and without the ability to question freely beliefs that are held by the majority, also beliefs that are held by minorities, and without worrying about who you're going to offend, who's going to be hurt by your words, especially in a subject like philosophy.
01:00:17.840And I dare say in a subject like yours and certainly in a subject like James's, you can't have free discussion if every time you talk about something, you're frightened that you're going to offend the other person.
01:00:26.600And then they might report to you and you might get in trouble.
01:00:30.980I don't expect you can, if discussion is curtailed in that way.
01:00:34.400No, scientists can, because that freedom of inquiry and the freedom to upset traditional truths, let's say, well, in a really fundamental sense, that's what science is all about.
01:00:45.540And as a, let's say, a creative scientist, you're always working against what's established, because otherwise what you discovered wouldn't be new.
01:00:55.680And you're always going to be facing people who are upset for one reason or another by your hypotheses and your research.
01:01:09.820But that still doesn't explain why you made it your problem, say, when so many people were perfectly willing to remain silent.
01:01:17.940Well, one thing I would say is that I was slightly surprised when I wrote.
01:01:23.280So after the university's policy came out, there was a discussion.
01:01:27.600What's called a discussion in Cambridge University really means that you write a paper and it's published in the university magazine.
01:01:33.980And so I sent a short paper off proposing some changes to these policies and stating my objections.
01:01:40.240And I had expected, this being Cambridge University, that many other people would do the same, because I didn't think I was alone in being concerned about this.
01:01:50.620So I was, that was the first point at which I realised.
01:01:53.820So there was no, there was no real bravery on my part, because I had expected at that point that a lot of people, a lot of other people would be, would be jumping in.
01:02:32.200So some people, some people wrote to me, in fact, quite a few people wrote to me at the time saying that they agreed with my concerns, which sort of made it even more surprising that nobody had actually said so in public.
01:02:43.300Some people wrote to me saying they agreed with my concerns, but weren't willing to say anything in public.
01:02:50.300James was, as always, was brilliantly helpful.
01:02:53.320James has always been really supportive.
01:02:54.760And James has been publicly supportive throughout this process.
01:02:57.700But it's because there have been a few courageous people like James and a few others, you know, in Cambridge at that stage.
01:03:08.100So I had people saying, you know, you might get, you know, you might get some kind of disciplinary procedure, you might get some kind of investigation.
01:03:14.040I didn't expect anything at that stage.
01:03:16.080And indeed, nothing happened to me at that stage.
01:03:18.920And I'm pleased to say there'd be no investigations or anything out of me, of me since.
01:03:23.240So that's really interesting in two ways, isn't it?
01:03:26.040Because it shows you how loathed people are to do this because they're afraid.
01:03:31.020And we shouldn't make light of that because this is actually no fun.
01:03:34.800You know, if you do something like this and it explodes in your face, like it probably took me, oh, it took me a long time to recover from the disinvitation, especially the way it was handled.
01:03:47.440And my health and my wife's health were extremely compromised at the time.
01:03:51.520And so it came at a particularly bad time.
01:03:56.060We had just received news that she probably had terminal cancer.
01:04:01.460Now, luckily, she survived, thank God.
01:04:04.240But, you know, it was a harrowing time.
01:04:07.040And so I see why people can be cowed like this, because, you know, you don't know when this is going to explode and when it's going to tangle you up so deeply that while your job's gone, that's what happened to the Weinsteins, for example, at Evergreen.
01:04:19.660And I mean, that was really that did them a tremendous amount of damage.
01:04:32.440And you can get seriously taken out if if something like this goes wrong.
01:04:36.600So but then that ties into this issue we discussed a bit earlier, which is how a small minority of, you know, people who whose wrath knows no bounds in some sense can be so dominant.
01:04:47.460Yeah. Yeah. So it was it was it was in some ways a calculated risk.
01:04:52.180And I can't imagine how difficult that must have been for you, Jordan.
01:04:55.420It was, you know, it must have been horrific.
01:04:59.020I mean, one thing I saw happening in Cambridge, not quite then, but a little bit later, was the treatment that was meted out to not an academic, but to a member of the university staff.
01:05:08.540So we have we have college porters in Cambridge and these are these people who work at the colleges, often that they're sort of, you know, retired policemen or military or something really helpful.
01:05:19.420They do all kinds of jobs around the college.
01:05:25.860There was one at a college in Cambridge who was also a Labour councillor who who resigned on political grounds, which was to do with his view about about trans issues.
01:05:36.740So he thought it was, you know, there was a there was a motion about trans issues that he thought, you know, threatened women's safety.
01:05:43.000And so he resigned on a point of principle.
01:07:33.840Well, Solzhenitsyn was convinced that a totalitarian state could not exist unless everyone was participating in the lie and that the most potent anti-authoritarian action is to tell the truth.
01:07:49.700And that means to say something when you have something to say, not because you're brave, but I think, but because the alternative is worse.