The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 325. The Downfall of the Ivy League

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00:00:57.420 Hello everyone. I have a guest today that I've wanted to talk to for a long time, Dr. Victor Davis Hanson.

00:01:14.780 He is the Martin and Illy Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, with his focus in the classics and military history.

00:01:23.640 He's an accomplished academic professor and author. He's taught at Stanford, Hillsdale College, the U.S. Naval Academy, and Pepperdine University.

00:01:32.200 His books, many of them, 26 I believe, include The Second World Wars, The End of Sparta, The Soul of Battle, Carnage in Culture, and The Case for Trump in 2019.

00:01:44.540 But I think we'll start today with a discussion about citizenship. I'll just make a couple of comments.

00:01:50.180 One of the things I've noticed over the last, I suppose, the span of my life, really, is that during my lifetime, the word citizenship or citizen seemed to be replaced by the word consumer,

00:02:03.240 which I always thought was a bad replacement, given that citizen has this, you know, it's got a stalwart and traditional and dignified connotation that the word consumer seems to lack entirely.

00:02:15.820 Well, you wrote a whole book about citizenship recently. And so I thought we might weave our way through that.

00:02:22.140 And you contrast citizens with pre-citizens. The book, by the way, is called The Dying Citizen, How Progressive Elites, Tribalism and Globalism, Are Destroying the Idea of America.

00:02:33.980 And you start that book off, well, first of all, decrying that destruction, but also contrasting the modern idea of citizenship, of citizen, with the pre-modern idea of, say, peasant or resident or tribe.

00:02:51.400 And so let's delve into that a little bit.

00:02:53.660 Yeah, well, I mean, the idea of citizenship's pretty recent in the long history of civilization.

00:03:00.800 It appeared somewhere around 700 B.C. in rural Greece and swept pretty quickly.

00:03:09.020 And so by the 5th century, there were 1,500 city-states.

00:03:12.720 And what it was was the first time that citizens were self-governing.

00:03:16.960 And that meant that they were pretty clearly defined.

00:03:21.040 They made up their own militias.

00:03:23.520 They adjudicated the circumstances under which they would go to war.

00:03:27.880 They voted for their own officials.

00:03:31.560 And more importantly, they had property rights.

00:03:33.680 They could pass on property.

00:03:35.080 I think that was a catalyst for citizenship, the right of inheritance that the state couldn't expropriate or own property from the individual.

00:03:42.820 And then that long odyssey brought us to, of course, the founding of the United States.

00:03:51.500 And there were clear distinctions between a resident that happened to live in the United States and a citizen.

00:03:59.220 A citizen alone could vote.

00:04:01.700 A citizen alone could hold office.

00:04:04.100 A citizen alone could leave the boundaries and come back into the United States on his own volition.

00:04:10.980 A citizen alone was eligible for federal services in most states.

00:04:19.240 And a citizen served in the military.

00:04:22.800 I don't think any of those still apply, those distinctions between a resident and a citizen, with the exception of holding office.

00:04:30.840 And that's under assault.

00:04:31.880 I know here in California, people who are not just non-citizens but here illegally can vote, say, in a Berkeley school board election.

00:04:41.980 And now there's efforts to make sure that people can run for office who are not citizens.

00:04:47.320 Non-citizens serve in the military.

00:04:49.360 Non-citizens actually can go across the border with greater facility than you or I could probably.

00:04:55.260 And so we are a nation, we've never had this before, of 50 million people in the United States that were born in a foreign country of different statuses.

00:05:07.040 Some are legal residents, some are illegal residents, some are citizens.

00:05:11.640 Some are migrants back and forth.

00:05:14.340 And that's the highest in actual numbers and in percentages of the population.

00:05:18.680 And unfortunately, it comes at a time when we, the hosts, have lost confidence in the traditional melting pot of assimilation, integration, intermarriage.

00:05:28.100 And so we're starting to revert to a pre-civilizational tribalism.

00:05:32.500 I think large swaths of the United States are tribal now.

00:05:37.680 Okay, so let's start approaching that anthropologically and psychologically.

00:05:42.740 So 600 BC, something like that, you seem to get something like a transformation of the idea of the tribe, which actually wouldn't have been an idea, right?

00:05:52.640 A tribe isn't an idea.

00:05:54.220 A tribe is a natural offshoot of our primate heritage.

00:05:57.840 That's a good way of thinking about it.

00:05:59.320 And a tribe would have been something like an extended kin group.

00:06:02.580 And there was, that was bound together by our primate social biology, somewhat akin to a chimpanzee troop or maybe a Bonobo troop.

00:06:12.720 And then as we became more capable of abstract formalization, that idea of, or that reality of tribal membership got transmuted into something that actually had statable properties.

00:06:27.300 And that would be the idea of a citizen.

00:06:28.940 And so you get a layer of abstraction on top of that, that starts to lay out technically and explicitly what it means to be the member of a group.

00:06:38.900 And then along with that, you get a set of rights and responsibilities that are associated with that group, but also the possibility of expanded, both expanded and limited membership that's also formalized.

00:06:51.260 And so, as the Greeks did with so many things, they took something that was part and parcel of our biological proclivity.

00:07:00.220 So that proclivity for kinship and tribalism and turn it into an explicit philosophical notion.

00:07:06.640 And out of that, I suppose, developed both the idea of intrinsic human rights and human responsibilities.

00:07:12.420 And that was all tied up in the notion of citizenship.

00:07:15.620 And even now when you hear people talk about citizenship, they concentrate a lot more about the rights on the rights than on the responsibilities.

00:07:23.760 They do.

00:07:25.140 The big breakthrough was that a person replaced their primary allegiance to either someone that had blood ties or looked like them or the same locale.

00:07:34.220 And they transferred that to an abstraction of the state.

00:07:37.360 And what that meant was, for the first time, there was an embryonic sense of meritocracy.

00:07:44.180 You know, and you can really see it today.

00:07:46.000 I've traveled almost, I think, to every Middle East country except Iran.

00:07:49.880 And I'm always curious, when I was in Libya or Egypt or Tunisia, why they don't work, even given some countries have enormous natural resources.

00:07:59.700 And I always would hear a refrain, well, you know, we hire our first cousin or we hire our second cousin, that there is still a tribal loyalty.

00:08:09.840 And what's tragic about the United States is that meritocracy and that multiracial, what became a multiracial, multireligious body politic,

00:08:21.600 was united by a primary allegiance to the idea of America, where people, you know, where they enriched America with their food or their fashion or their art or their music.

00:08:33.340 And that made America culturally rich.

00:08:36.140 But they didn't import Mexican ideas of constitutional government such as they were.

00:08:42.280 Or they didn't bring in Russian ideas of individual liberty.

00:08:45.420 They didn't touch the core.

00:08:47.100 And that core united us.

00:08:48.500 And now we can see that that's no longer true, that people are re-tribalizing and they're starting to identify with either their kin group or their ethnic group or their religious group.

00:09:03.060 And what's scary now in the United States is that we've seen when you have a geographical force multiplier,

00:09:10.620 and we're starting to see that with red-blue migration.

00:09:14.700 It's sort of analogous to what happened in the 1850s where there was a Mason-Dixon line, so to speak, of a very different culture that bifurcated from the north.

00:09:27.240 And if this continues, I think we're going to see a sort of a traditionalist America that claims that it follows the founding principles in red states of limited government, less regulation, small taxation,

00:09:43.620 and the idea of a citizen giving up their primary allegiance to the state versus the blue state model, California, Illinois, and New York,

00:09:54.840 in which a number of identity politics groups or special interest groups all lobby for influence.

00:10:02.940 And you can see what happens in the L.A. City Council hot mic scene where all of these Latino council people got caught on a hot mic where they were explicitly defining the new idea of a citizen,

00:10:16.720 and that was that their primary identity group was at war with people from Oaxaca, it was at war with blacks, it was at war with gays,

00:10:25.700 and they were angry because of their representation was not demographically proportional to their numbers in the population.

00:10:33.700 So they said, and I think that was a future for the country, and it's what's going on in California in the present.

00:10:41.240 Yeah, so you worry about what you might describe as a reversion to this more implicit tribalism that's predicated on,

00:10:50.540 well, it would be predicated on religious identity or skin color or linguistic identity.

00:10:55.700 Or perhaps shared philosophical identity, although that would be rarer, and that that's the counterposition to this more abstracted notion of citizenship.

00:11:03.200 So let's delve into that for a minute, because I think we could lay forth the proposition that unless there's a higher order principle

00:11:11.300 that unites people, either psychologically or socially, then they're disunited.

00:11:17.440 And if they're disunited, they're anxious and confused and aimless and conflict-laden,

00:11:22.520 like the natural state of human beings in the absence of a unifying principle isn't peace, it's war.

00:11:28.940 And so then we might ask, is there a unifying transcendent principle that's valid, that isn't just another narrative?

00:11:37.440 You know, because the postmodern critique is that all unifying narratives are, what would you call it,

00:11:42.080 expressions of arbitrary power and domination.

00:11:45.020 And I don't really think that's true.

00:11:46.620 I don't think that's true of Western societies, and the reason I think that's technically untrue is because

00:11:52.840 there's an idea in Western society that I think is fundamentally, well, it's logos-based,

00:11:59.240 it's partly Greek, and it's partly Judeo-Christian,

00:12:02.020 that the individual is the proper level of analysis in some real sense,

00:12:06.160 and that the individual has intrinsic worth and dignity.

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00:13:48.180 It's necessary for that intrinsic dignity and worth of the individual to be recognized and set apart by law in some sense, honored by law,

00:14:03.900 because the individual has something to offer to the group.

00:14:07.640 And that's the uniqueness of their being, let's say.

00:14:11.540 And that if you allow people to be free or encourage their freedom, then they can trade that uniqueness with everyone else in freely.

00:14:20.460 And that in that trade is to be found both peace and, let's say, and abundance.

00:14:26.680 And I think that principle isn't merely another narrative.

00:14:29.980 I think that is the predicate both of peace and of economic well-being.

00:14:35.100 And so, but conservatives and, okay, okay, do you comment on all that?

00:14:42.740 Or another way of putting it is the United States was based on an idea of equality of opportunity,

00:14:48.320 that because we're not born equal or we have different life experiences or we inherit or don't inherit or we're healthy or we're long-lived or not,

00:14:58.580 we don't try to even that out in terms of economic recompense.

00:15:03.360 So we just let people follow their own trajectories.

00:15:07.900 And then we have other methods to appeal to their magnanimity.

00:15:12.680 So the philanthropic, the religious, the humanism.

00:15:18.900 We have all these ways that if people do better than other people,

00:15:21.820 we allow them to be creative and to try to bring back, give back to the society or at least use their talents,

00:15:29.660 even if it's profit-minded, to build a better bridge or a dam, rather than the alternate,

00:15:35.500 which is a strain in Western civilization.

00:15:37.680 It starts, actually, the socialist impulse starts with the Greeks.

00:15:41.940 There is a strain of that with the Pythagoreans.

00:15:43.860 But the other idea, and that's what we're, I think, fighting now, is the woke equality of result,

00:15:49.640 that we're going to appoint some platonic guardians and give them untold power.

00:15:54.760 And in their infinite wisdom, they're going to do two things.

00:15:59.000 They're going to force people to be equal, what they call equity.

00:16:03.020 And they're never going to be subject to the consequences of their own ideology

00:16:06.940 because they need special exemptions given their enormous responsibilities and their talent.

00:16:14.000 And so what we see now is this bi-coastal elite in the United States

00:16:18.180 is starting to mandate behaviors and principles and issues and policies

00:16:25.640 that they themselves would never follow and would have no intention of following.

00:16:30.380 And it's based on that every single person has an innate right to be the same as another person.

00:16:38.880 Or it was that Aristotle said, once a man in democracy, and he feared this,

00:16:43.560 feels that he's equal in voting with another man,

00:16:46.500 then he feels, by extension, he should be equal in all other aspects of his life.

00:16:52.020 And that was the philosophical worry about democracy,

00:16:55.720 that it was so, it always evolved to a more radical form of equality.

00:17:01.260 I think we're now at the end stage

00:17:02.940 where almost everybody feels they have a grievance against the state

00:17:07.640 and therefore they're entitled to compensatory or repertory money or land.

00:17:16.000 Here in California, when we were discussing reparations,

00:17:19.100 suddenly people were bidding in the Oakland City Council

00:17:22.420 and suggesting that they were owed $800,000.

00:17:26.840 And they had a grievance, apparently,

00:17:28.980 even though they were six generations away from slavery

00:17:31.620 and maybe four from,

00:17:34.320 they were in the fourth generation of the Civil Rights Movement,

00:17:37.920 they had grievances against people who had never had slaves.

00:17:41.140 And California, for example, had never been a slave state.

00:17:44.220 But it was that mentality.

00:17:45.420 And, you know, a lot of people warned us about this.

00:17:50.920 Tocqueville said the problem that we would face in the United States

00:17:55.440 is that most people innately would rather be poor and equal

00:17:59.920 than all better off, but some more better off than others.

00:18:04.520 And he felt that if that...

00:18:05.660 Yeah, well, that's...

00:18:06.520 That would be a very dangerous development.

00:18:09.820 I think we're pretty much there now.

00:18:11.380 Yeah, well, that's, I suppose, to some degree

00:18:14.740 why there's an injunction against covetousness

00:18:18.160 in the Ten Commandments, you know,

00:18:21.440 that you're not supposed to covet or envy

00:18:23.660 your neighbor's donkey or his wife or his house.

00:18:26.680 And, I mean, part of the reason for that

00:18:28.460 is that if no one can have anything more than anyone else,

00:18:31.860 then no one can have anything at all.

00:18:34.020 And that's generally been the state of humanity

00:18:36.040 for the longest reaches of human history.

00:18:38.420 It looks very much like if we're going to allow

00:18:42.100 a rising tide to raise all boats,

00:18:44.300 we have to allow some people to rise faster than others

00:18:46.820 in multiple dimensions.

00:18:48.220 And so, and I don't see any way out of that.

00:18:50.580 And certainly not the case that

00:18:52.060 these hypothetically egalitarian systems of governance

00:18:55.860 like communism ever produced anything

00:18:57.860 that had less of a Pareto distribution

00:18:59.920 or an unequal distribution than capitalist societies.

00:19:04.020 I mean, everyone was much poorer,

00:19:05.420 but the rich were still much richer than everyone else.

00:19:08.420 And there's also something in there,

00:19:10.220 you talked about identity,

00:19:11.600 and I've watched this happen on the,

00:19:14.380 what would you call it,

00:19:16.140 inevitable consequences of pathological thought front.

00:19:20.260 So the leftists who were pushing for equality of outcome

00:19:24.820 insisted that if there were differences

00:19:28.080 in socioeconomic outcome

00:19:30.760 that you could identify by group,

00:19:32.820 then that was a prior evidence of systemic oppression, let's say.

00:19:37.200 But they fell astray of a certain peculiarity

00:19:42.240 with regards to group identity,

00:19:43.660 which is that group identity is actually infinitely fragmentable.

00:19:47.480 And so out of the initial identity political theorists,

00:19:50.840 you got the intersectionalists

00:19:52.260 who made the case that,

00:19:54.500 well, you were oppressed,

00:19:55.380 let's say if you were Latino,

00:19:56.700 and you were oppressed if you were female,

00:19:58.320 but the joint interaction between Latino and female

00:20:02.740 made you even more especially oppressed,

00:20:05.180 and then you could add gay to that or whatever other.

00:20:08.100 And so, and what you see happening on multiple fronts,

00:20:11.340 in consequence,

00:20:12.040 is that the litany of potential ethnic groups increases,

00:20:16.780 the number of them,

00:20:17.960 and then the number of interactions increases,

00:20:20.240 and that increases exponentially

00:20:22.160 as you add more identity categories.

00:20:24.820 And what that essentially means

00:20:26.060 is that the problem of computing equity

00:20:28.420 starts to become technically impossible

00:20:30.440 because every single person's identity

00:20:32.760 is so complex on the intersectional front

00:20:35.300 that there isn't even a hypothetical way

00:20:37.420 of deciding whether any given socioeconomic outcome

00:20:40.940 is equitable.

00:20:42.880 And so when I walked through that,

00:20:45.120 I thought, well,

00:20:45.920 Western culture had actually solved that problem

00:20:48.200 several thousand years ago

00:20:49.980 by pointing out that the appropriate level of analysis

00:20:52.800 is the individual

00:20:54.560 because the individual has a unique identity

00:20:57.460 that is in some sense

00:20:58.900 a consequence of all their multiplicitous group identities,

00:21:02.980 but singularly,

00:21:04.700 what would you say,

00:21:06.660 singularly representative of each individual.

00:21:09.220 And so then you let individuals compete

00:21:11.080 and cooperate in a fair market,

00:21:13.500 and that's the best possible way

00:21:15.000 of moving towards the right balance

00:21:17.380 between equity and wealth.

00:21:19.120 That's what it looks like.

00:21:20.660 I think that's right.

00:21:23.160 And you can see that where this leads to,

00:21:26.060 it's logical that you would end up

00:21:28.540 with a Ward Churchill or Elizabeth Warren

00:21:30.860 that by needs would fabricate a victimized identity.

00:21:35.400 She was the first, quote-unquote,

00:21:37.620 Native American professor of law at Harvard

00:21:40.240 on that basis alone.

00:21:41.620 And then on the other realm,

00:21:43.660 when you start to replace class interest

00:21:47.020 or economic status with race,

00:21:50.940 then the left really hit on something.

00:21:53.460 I think it was really Barack Obama

00:21:55.980 in between 2009 and 2016.

00:22:01.080 He took a rather ossified word, diversity,

00:22:03.800 and he recalibrated it to mean

00:22:05.800 we're not going to look for victims

00:22:08.660 on the basis of their income anymore

00:22:10.700 because that's mutable.

00:22:11.980 In fact, Marxism never worked in the United States

00:22:14.620 because this free market capitalism

00:22:17.120 and a lot of free land in the 19th century

00:22:19.860 was always a movement of upward mobility,

00:22:23.620 and therefore you would never have

00:22:25.240 a continually oppressed class.

00:22:27.280 In fact, today, people go up and down,

00:22:29.500 out and in of the middle and the upper middle classes.

00:22:32.540 So what I think Obama did was

00:22:34.660 he redefined race in America

00:22:37.940 as not a binary between 88% white and 12% black,

00:22:42.960 but he came up with this word diversity

00:22:44.760 that replaced class differentiation

00:22:46.840 or class oppressions or class grievances.

00:22:50.500 And he said it's 30% of the population.

00:22:53.660 We're going to call them non-white

00:22:55.380 and therefore they're diverse.

00:22:57.300 And then where we ended up,

00:22:58.980 it was this ridiculous situation

00:23:00.960 where to take a caricature,

00:23:03.520 you have Meghan Markle,

00:23:05.900 the duchess who is half black,

00:23:10.080 lamenting to Oprah Winfrey,

00:23:12.580 who is a multi-billionaire,

00:23:14.420 about their shared grievances as being non-whites

00:23:17.980 or LeBron James complaining.

00:23:21.100 And so that was a very brilliant thing the left did

00:23:23.720 because once they made race the arbiter of oppression

00:23:27.700 and being the oppressed and the victimized,

00:23:30.860 then class didn't matter anymore.

00:23:32.740 And now we have this elite

00:23:34.660 who says that they're not white in a particular percentage

00:23:38.300 and all of a sudden we don't really care

00:23:40.120 about the circumstances of their home,

00:23:44.640 their car, their wealth, their income.

00:23:46.620 It doesn't matter anymore.

00:23:47.600 They're going to be perpetual victims

00:23:49.840 on the basis that they are diverse.

00:23:52.820 And the left really massaged that in such a way

00:23:55.940 that I don't think anybody quite knew what was going on

00:23:58.660 until they sprung it on us.

00:24:00.920 Well, there's a real attraction

00:24:03.100 to a kind of deep narcissism there.

00:24:05.700 And I think I first encountered that

00:24:07.520 probably at Ivy League schools in the U.S.

00:24:10.960 So I'm a Canadian

00:24:11.780 and not that familiar

00:24:13.100 with the more differentiated class structure in the U.S.

00:24:17.200 and so when I went down to teach at Harvard,

00:24:19.560 it was an anthropological adventure for me

00:24:21.680 as well as a, let's call it a research-oriented adventure

00:24:26.580 and an intellectual adventure.

00:24:28.620 And I didn't understand as much as I do now

00:24:32.620 how, what dynamic the Ivy League schools played in the U.S.

00:24:36.980 in terms of ensuring upward mobility.

00:24:39.820 And I knew at Harvard, I believe it was

00:24:41.600 when I was there in the 90s,

00:24:43.060 the estimate was that 40% of Harvard undergraduates

00:24:46.020 would be billionaires by the age of 40.

00:24:48.720 And that was, you know, that was 30 years ago.

00:24:51.760 And so that was quite a substantial amount of money then.

00:24:54.040 And the whole point is,

00:24:55.200 is that if you got into an Ivy League school,

00:24:57.500 as soon as you got in,

00:24:59.480 you were basically a member of the 1%.

00:25:01.220 Now you might've been a junior member,

00:25:02.960 but you were definitely a member.

00:25:04.860 And I thought that was perfectly fine

00:25:06.540 because in some sense,

00:25:07.720 because the Ivy Leagues did a damn fine job

00:25:10.940 of merit-based selection.

00:25:14.100 Now it wasn't perfect.

00:25:15.120 There were legacy students, for example,

00:25:17.720 and, you know, there was a bit of play in the system there.

00:25:20.140 But fundamentally, Harvard and the other Ivy Leagues

00:25:23.200 had transformed themselves into,

00:25:24.940 from old boys clubs in the 1960s,

00:25:27.640 into highly elite intellectual institutions by the 1990s.

00:25:32.540 But then what I saw too,

00:25:33.980 and this was so interesting,

00:25:35.040 was that being junior members of the 1%,

00:25:39.320 with, you know, almost certain hallmark

00:25:41.960 of long-term success

00:25:42.980 as a consequence of Ivy League admission,

00:25:45.280 wasn't enough for many students

00:25:47.260 and their idiot professors.

00:25:49.120 They had to have the label of oppressed

00:25:52.560 working for them too.

00:25:54.580 So you had this strange spectacle,

00:25:57.120 as far as I was concerned,

00:25:58.160 of these unbelievably fortunate Ivy League students

00:26:01.900 who were offered an opportunity that,

00:26:03.560 well, is really unparalleled in human history,

00:26:06.880 not only benefiting as a consequence

00:26:10.160 of being the beneficiaries of this amazing system,

00:26:12.660 but simultaneously claiming the status

00:26:15.100 of the poor and oppressed,

00:26:17.180 and claiming at the same time

00:26:19.640 to be avatars and representatives

00:26:21.580 of that oppressed group.

00:26:22.920 And I thought, Jesus, you guys,

00:26:24.940 like being rich and powerful

00:26:26.420 in junior form isn't enough for you.

00:26:28.960 You have to have all the virtues of the rich

00:26:31.000 and all the privileges and opportunities,

00:26:32.640 and you have to have all the virtues

00:26:34.820 of the poor and oppressed at the same time.

00:26:37.300 It's like, that just seems to me to be a bit much.

00:26:39.400 And you see that reflected

00:26:40.600 in the people that you're describing,

00:26:42.560 who have this unbelievable wealth and opportunity,

00:26:46.640 and who yet put themselves forward

00:26:48.360 as, you know, canonical victims

00:26:50.280 of an oppressive system.

00:26:51.600 I think we're going to see in our lifetime, though,

00:26:54.900 the end of the Ivy League, Stanford,

00:26:57.740 Berkeley cattle brand

00:26:58.880 as a mark of entree into the 1%.

00:27:03.120 And by that, we're no longer into,

00:27:06.160 when we had proportional representation

00:27:08.460 in admissions and hiring,

00:27:10.040 that was sort of the modus operandi

00:27:12.880 until George Floyd.

00:27:14.200 So 12% of the student bodies

00:27:16.920 were African-American,

00:27:18.300 even if they had, on an average,

00:27:20.680 200 points less than Asian students on the SAT,

00:27:24.040 or we had about 65% white.

00:27:28.140 Asians were, of course,

00:27:29.880 treated like Jews in the 1930s.

00:27:31.940 They were discriminated against,

00:27:33.220 so their numbers would only be about 20%,

00:27:35.720 where otherwise they would have been 40,

00:27:37.500 and Latinos are about 12.

00:27:38.760 But after George Floyd,

00:27:40.560 we went into a radical compensatory

00:27:43.060 or repertory admission.

00:27:44.920 So Stanford, where I work,

00:27:47.440 just announced their new class profile.

00:27:51.420 It's 23% white,

00:27:54.360 and out of that,

00:27:56.240 54% are women,

00:27:58.180 and you have about 12% white males.

00:28:02.120 And the SAT, to accommodate that,

00:28:05.660 became optional rather than mandatory.

00:28:08.760 But here is what was interesting

00:28:10.100 about some of the statistics.

00:28:11.440 They would not allow anybody

00:28:14.260 to have information

00:28:15.820 about how many students

00:28:17.600 that were admitted this year

00:28:20.080 actually took the optional SAT.

00:28:23.400 They wouldn't release that.

00:28:24.440 But they did, for some reason,

00:28:26.640 release the fact,

00:28:28.460 and I think they were proud of it,

00:28:30.140 that of those very rare students,

00:28:32.200 I think it's 0.1 or something,

00:28:34.440 who get a perfect score,

00:28:36.460 which is almost impossible to do

00:28:38.200 on the SAT in math

00:28:40.580 and in the analysis

00:28:43.640 and, of course,

00:28:45.580 in English and composition.

00:28:47.920 They rejected 70% of them.

00:28:50.880 70%.

00:28:51.800 Wow.

00:28:52.280 And so what we're seeing,

00:28:54.300 you can see it in free fall

00:28:55.520 because what's happening

00:28:56.540 when you bring a lot of students

00:28:58.520 that were not competitive

00:28:59.840 through K through 12

00:29:01.180 and almost instantly and arbitrarily,

00:29:03.840 you declare that they are

00:29:05.240 Ivy League students,

00:29:06.200 then they go into these classes

00:29:09.560 and then the professors

00:29:10.860 are in this dilemma

00:29:11.800 because they either have

00:29:13.660 to do one of two things,

00:29:15.340 one of three things.

00:29:16.420 They either have to change

00:29:17.900 radically the curriculum

00:29:19.220 to facilitate people

00:29:21.220 that were not properly prepared,

00:29:22.840 and they're doing that some,

00:29:24.440 or they're going to have

00:29:25.600 to radically change

00:29:27.660 the grading system

00:29:28.800 so that a person

00:29:31.240 who would have gotten a D or C

00:29:33.240 gets a B or A,

00:29:34.380 and they're doing that

00:29:36.060 in some cases.

00:29:37.140 Or a few feel

00:29:39.580 that they are going to die

00:29:41.060 on the altar of standards

00:29:42.420 and they're starting to grade

00:29:44.800 according to what people

00:29:46.260 actually earn,

00:29:47.380 but when we have

00:29:49.080 15,000 administrators

00:29:51.080 or administrative staff

00:29:53.140 and 16,000 students,

00:29:56.020 you can see that

00:29:57.020 we've got kind of

00:29:57.860 a commissar system,

00:29:59.040 and many of these

00:29:59.720 are these new

00:30:00.520 diversity, equity, inclusion czars,

00:30:03.020 and so then if a faculty member

00:30:05.080 does cling to standards,

00:30:06.660 cling I guess is a good word,

00:30:08.280 then he has a systemic

00:30:09.700 racist pedigree

00:30:11.620 because he's deliberately

00:30:13.060 giving grades lower

00:30:14.500 in this narrative

00:30:15.620 to people of color,

00:30:17.820 and the result,

00:30:19.020 how it all works out,

00:30:20.260 I think in the end,

00:30:21.560 is that Silicon Valley

00:30:23.260 and all these people privately,

00:30:24.900 when you talk to them,

00:30:26.720 they're either preferring,

00:30:29.260 say, a coder

00:30:30.160 from Georgia Tech

00:30:31.480 than from Stanford

00:30:32.380 or themselves,

00:30:35.220 they're actually

00:30:36.540 giving tests

00:30:37.620 to people stealthily,

00:30:39.120 so if you want to go

00:30:39.940 to work at Google

00:30:40.940 or you want to go

00:30:41.640 at a startup

00:30:42.240 and you come with

00:30:43.780 a Stanford bachelor's degree,

00:30:45.340 that no longer

00:30:46.160 is entree anymore

00:30:47.580 because they know

00:30:48.660 that the degree

00:30:50.060 is not competitive

00:30:51.080 with Cal State,

00:30:52.720 San Luis Obispo,

00:30:54.080 or much less

00:30:55.480 Hillsdale College,

00:30:57.120 and so what they're doing

00:30:58.540 is they're offering

00:31:00.300 tests themselves

00:31:01.380 or I should say

00:31:02.340 requiring it,

00:31:03.340 and so I think

00:31:03.860 in a very brief,

00:31:05.620 Yale let in 50%

00:31:07.120 of its student body

00:31:08.560 was white,

00:31:09.500 and I think it was

00:31:09.980 55% female,

00:31:12.400 so about 25%

00:31:14.540 was white male

00:31:16.520 of that campus,

00:31:17.920 and so they've deliberately

00:31:20.000 taken a whole demographic,

00:31:22.240 and when you,

00:31:22.760 I think you wisely

00:31:23.620 pointed out

00:31:24.460 legacies and athletes,

00:31:27.200 so out of that

00:31:28.240 small reduced demographic

00:31:29.660 are many or if not

00:31:31.080 the majority of legacies,

00:31:32.580 so what we've done now

00:31:34.120 in the space

00:31:34.880 of three years

00:31:35.680 is pretty much

00:31:36.460 disenfranchise

00:31:37.660 the white working class

00:31:40.040 male who had a chance

00:31:42.360 to go to these

00:31:43.160 blue chip universities

00:31:44.480 on the basis

00:31:45.160 of meritocratic

00:31:46.160 SAT scores or GPAs,

00:31:48.720 and they're no longer

00:31:50.200 on campus anymore.

00:31:51.160 They've disappeared

00:31:51.820 in the space of,

00:31:53.000 there's no room for them

00:31:54.100 given the demands

00:31:55.360 on this identity profile.

00:31:58.520 So we could,

00:31:59.660 let's talk technically

00:32:01.940 for a minute

00:32:02.520 so that everybody

00:32:04.360 can understand

00:32:05.040 what these selection

00:32:05.880 criteria actually mean.

00:32:07.200 So you could define

00:32:09.140 a meritocratic

00:32:10.080 selection process

00:32:11.700 technically.

00:32:12.860 Say, imagine you have

00:32:13.800 an outcome,

00:32:14.860 so you need an outcome

00:32:15.680 first, which might be

00:32:16.720 job performance

00:32:17.580 or net lifetime

00:32:19.080 productivity,

00:32:20.280 something like that,

00:32:21.100 and you can very much

00:32:22.140 argue about what

00:32:22.860 the outcome variable

00:32:23.740 should be,

00:32:24.260 but it's generally

00:32:24.860 associated with

00:32:25.660 something like

00:32:26.180 economic productivity.

00:32:28.180 And having made

00:32:29.160 that measure,

00:32:30.320 so that might be income,

00:32:31.940 it might be number

00:32:32.660 of people you employ

00:32:33.700 in your lifetime,

00:32:35.140 might be number

00:32:36.100 of businesses

00:32:36.760 that you generate,

00:32:37.820 might be number

00:32:38.360 of creative enterprises

00:32:39.740 that you engage in.

00:32:41.900 There's a variety

00:32:42.440 of different measures

00:32:43.280 of, say, lifetime

00:32:44.820 productive and creative

00:32:45.900 output.

00:32:46.840 And then you could say

00:32:47.800 that you use

00:32:49.020 a meritocratic

00:32:49.960 selection process

00:32:51.020 if you use

00:32:52.020 a statistical procedure

00:32:53.520 that has been linked

00:32:55.760 to that outcome measure.

00:32:57.460 And so you might say,

00:32:58.280 for example,

00:32:58.860 are there things

00:32:59.500 we can measure

00:33:00.180 that predict

00:33:01.260 lifetime creative

00:33:02.760 or productive capacity?

00:33:04.900 And the answer is,

00:33:06.260 well, yes,

00:33:06.900 we actually know

00:33:07.600 what they are.

00:33:08.260 So one of them is

00:33:09.320 general cognitive ability,

00:33:11.580 which is often assessed

00:33:12.680 with IQ tests

00:33:13.640 or SATs

00:33:14.580 or MCATs

00:33:15.360 or GREs,

00:33:17.020 standardized tests.

00:33:18.500 And the other

00:33:19.040 is personality.

00:33:19.980 personality

00:33:20.480 with a secondary,

00:33:23.900 what would you say,

00:33:25.180 contributor of interest.

00:33:26.620 And so people

00:33:27.700 who are productive

00:33:28.480 have high

00:33:29.920 general cognitive ability,

00:33:31.520 which can be assessed

00:33:32.320 quite rapidly.

00:33:33.380 They tend to be conscientious,

00:33:35.100 which is a personality trait,

00:33:36.380 and that makes them

00:33:37.020 good managers

00:33:37.620 and administrators.

00:33:38.620 Or they tend to be

00:33:39.700 high in openness,

00:33:40.600 and that makes them

00:33:41.780 creative entrepreneurs.

00:33:44.360 And it also helps

00:33:46.440 to some degree

00:33:47.120 to be somewhat free

00:33:48.140 of negative emotion.

00:33:49.120 And those are basically

00:33:50.540 the category of predictors.

00:33:52.500 On the interest front,

00:33:53.540 you have interest in people

00:33:54.840 versus interest in things.

00:33:57.040 And the interest in things

00:33:58.200 types tend to be

00:33:59.120 more frequently male,

00:34:00.260 and they tend to pursue

00:34:01.240 the science, technology,

00:34:03.040 engineering,

00:34:03.420 and mathematics streams.

00:34:04.960 And so we actually know

00:34:06.820 how to select people

00:34:07.840 on the basis of merit.

00:34:09.620 We do general cognitive ability

00:34:11.260 testing and personality

00:34:12.420 and interest,

00:34:13.020 and you can provide

00:34:15.020 a very economically

00:34:17.400 valuable service

00:34:18.740 to each individual

00:34:19.960 and to the state at large

00:34:21.600 by selecting according

00:34:22.660 to those criteria

00:34:23.520 because you then select

00:34:25.160 people who can benefit

00:34:26.220 most radically

00:34:27.380 from being put

00:34:28.640 with their peers

00:34:29.320 and from education.

00:34:30.320 And the data on this

00:34:31.600 are crystal clear.

00:34:33.460 Now, the alternative,

00:34:34.960 I've talked to people

00:34:35.640 like Adrian Wooldridge

00:34:36.620 about this,

00:34:37.280 and you touch on it as well

00:34:38.540 in your book

00:34:39.160 on citizenship.

00:34:40.540 You might say,

00:34:41.060 well, what's the alternative

00:34:42.040 to meritocracy?

00:34:43.600 And Wooldridge's hypothesis

00:34:45.580 was that in the absence

00:34:47.460 of a technical meritocracy,

00:34:50.200 you reverted to dynasty,

00:34:52.640 so it's aristocratic

00:34:53.640 transmission of status,

00:34:55.300 or nepotism,

00:34:56.820 which you talked about

00:34:57.780 already in relationship

00:34:58.660 to kinship.

00:34:59.460 And so as soon as you

00:35:00.620 abandon the merit principle,

00:35:02.800 you open up the grounds

00:35:04.840 in all likelihood

00:35:05.840 to all sorts of corrupted

00:35:07.120 mission processes.

00:35:08.320 And so the universities

00:35:09.060 are going to be

00:35:09.640 wrestling with that.

00:35:10.740 They already are, eh?

00:35:11.860 Because one of the ways

00:35:13.200 they discriminate

00:35:13.840 against Asians,

00:35:14.860 which is everyone's loss,

00:35:16.140 right, to not maximize

00:35:18.600 our exploitation

00:35:19.800 of the productive

00:35:21.180 and competent Asians,

00:35:22.660 let's say,

00:35:23.640 the way they discriminate

00:35:24.820 against them

00:35:25.600 is by deeming

00:35:27.180 certain stereotypical

00:35:29.620 Asian personality traits

00:35:30.980 as not appropriate

00:35:31.980 on the personality front.

00:35:34.200 And so, and they do that

00:35:35.080 to gerrymander

00:35:35.860 the admission criteria

00:35:37.020 on the basis of race.

00:35:38.960 And I think they've even

00:35:40.400 in the last two years

00:35:41.560 evolved beyond that.

00:35:42.900 The old complaint

00:35:44.160 against them was

00:35:45.560 in this triad

00:35:46.500 of the admissions profile,

00:35:48.520 standardized test scores,

00:35:50.800 GPA,

00:35:51.580 and what they call

00:35:52.420 community service

00:35:54.800 or personality,

00:35:56.020 whatever you want

00:35:56.560 to talk about.

00:35:57.280 It was amorphous.

00:35:58.220 So they would go after

00:36:01.560 Asian students

00:36:02.560 at that,

00:36:03.400 with that,

00:36:03.860 and they'd say,

00:36:04.420 well, they're robotic

00:36:05.260 or they have,

00:36:07.100 they're one-dimensional.

00:36:08.240 Okay.

00:36:09.060 But now,

00:36:10.380 they've gotten rid of

00:36:12.240 all standardized tests

00:36:15.060 and they don't even make any,

00:36:17.660 they don't need

00:36:18.280 to do that anymore.

00:36:19.160 So basically,

00:36:20.580 they've upped the,

00:36:22.400 they have the Asian admissions

00:36:24.000 between 20 and 25

00:36:25.440 on the principle

00:36:26.440 that they're about 12%

00:36:28.040 of the population.

00:36:29.040 They won't sue

00:36:29.740 if they're 20 to 25

00:36:31.040 and they can exclude them

00:36:32.380 any way they want now

00:36:34.000 because there is no SAT.

00:36:37.080 And there's,

00:36:38.520 and what the next horizon is,

00:36:41.140 as you saw,

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00:37:53.760 I think in Cornell

00:37:55.020 right now

00:37:55.640 there's a big movement

00:37:56.420 to abolish grades

00:37:57.600 and at the new school

00:37:59.020 everybody

00:37:59.980 in New York

00:38:00.900 everybody wants

00:38:01.900 to have an A

00:38:02.800 an automatic A

00:38:04.160 at the new school

00:38:04.960 and we're going to

00:38:06.040 see that

00:38:07.200 because

00:38:07.560 what's happening

00:38:08.920 on these Ivy Leagues

00:38:10.200 very rapidly

00:38:11.080 it's almost amazing

00:38:12.380 at kind of

00:38:13.960 the speed of light

00:38:15.160 that graduation

00:38:16.560 and admission

00:38:17.880 are now synonymous.

00:38:19.240 In other words

00:38:19.740 once you're admitted

00:38:21.000 and that was true

00:38:22.000 to some extent

00:38:22.860 in the past

00:38:23.680 when the

00:38:24.340 we're kind of reverting

00:38:25.640 back to this

00:38:26.320 what you mentioned

00:38:27.080 the old boy

00:38:27.680 gentleman C

00:38:28.560 Ivy League

00:38:29.440 of the 40s

00:38:30.240 or 19th century

00:38:31.920 and now

00:38:32.920 we're saying

00:38:33.900 if you get into

00:38:34.820 Harvard or Yale

00:38:35.620 or Stanford

00:38:36.260 and you can't

00:38:37.840 do the work

00:38:38.400 you have a right

00:38:39.080 to graduate

00:38:39.660 it doesn't matter

00:38:40.360 and we will make

00:38:41.200 the necessary adjustments.

00:38:42.900 You have to get

00:38:43.600 something for your

00:38:44.480 $300,000 in tuition

00:38:46.660 and so why not

00:38:48.500 so you can think

00:38:49.700 about it

00:38:50.060 think about it

00:38:50.700 this way

00:38:51.120 you can think

00:38:51.620 about it biologically

00:38:52.580 like I tend to think

00:38:54.220 that

00:38:54.800 it's a funny metaphor

00:38:56.720 but I tend to think

00:38:57.620 of whale carcass

00:38:58.620 and here's why

00:39:00.260 so it takes a whale

00:39:01.940 a long time

00:39:02.560 to build up

00:39:03.120 a whole whale body

00:39:04.120 and then if it washes

00:39:05.000 up on the beach

00:39:05.800 there's plenty

00:39:06.360 for everyone to eat

00:39:07.260 for a while

00:39:07.900 and so

00:39:09.440 you see this happening

00:39:10.580 in all sorts

00:39:11.140 of big organizations

00:39:12.080 is that

00:39:12.680 they build a brand

00:39:14.020 and the Ivy League's

00:39:15.080 definitely built a brand

00:39:16.420 in the US

00:39:16.920 and that brand

00:39:17.700 has tremendous value

00:39:19.060 for a long time

00:39:20.220 because the Ivy League

00:39:21.340 admission standards

00:39:22.560 were so high

00:39:23.820 you could be

00:39:24.980 virtually certain

00:39:25.820 that if you hired

00:39:26.480 a graduate

00:39:26.920 they were going to be

00:39:27.800 statistically likely

00:39:29.040 to be top performers

00:39:30.200 and that was all

00:39:31.360 a consequence

00:39:31.900 of the admissions

00:39:32.840 the stringency

00:39:33.900 of admissions policy

00:39:35.080 very little

00:39:35.980 a consequence

00:39:36.520 of the quality

00:39:37.120 of education

00:39:37.700 by the way

00:39:38.220 it was almost all

00:39:39.260 and all the business

00:39:40.220 schools know this too

00:39:41.220 they know perfectly well

00:39:42.320 that a huge proportion

00:39:43.400 of the value

00:39:44.420 they offer

00:39:45.000 prospective employers

00:39:46.220 is a 99th percentile

00:39:48.800 score on the MCAT

00:39:50.040 at admission

00:39:50.740 for their MBA students

00:39:52.220 they bloody well know that

00:39:53.640 I've talked to dozens

00:39:54.460 of them

00:39:54.860 and so

00:39:55.640 for a long time

00:39:56.960 because the Ivies

00:39:58.140 were so meritocratic

00:39:59.400 they could justify

00:40:00.860 what they were charging

00:40:01.880 and they could justify

00:40:03.000 their stringent selection

00:40:05.280 because there was

00:40:07.420 an immense demand

00:40:08.280 for their graduates

00:40:09.020 especially on the

00:40:09.880 financial industries front

00:40:11.740 right

00:40:11.980 most of the kids

00:40:12.720 that I taught

00:40:13.480 at Harvard

00:40:14.040 strangely enough

00:40:15.360 went off

00:40:15.880 to pursue careers

00:40:17.060 in finance

00:40:17.720 which I thought

00:40:18.580 was kind of a shame

00:40:19.340 you know

00:40:19.580 because Harvard

00:40:19.960 wasn't producing

00:40:20.540 many scientists

00:40:21.200 for example

00:40:21.720 but whatever

00:40:22.620 their cognitive capacity

00:40:25.200 and their work ethic

00:40:26.280 were highly valued

00:40:27.140 by potential employers

00:40:28.220 well so now

00:40:29.020 you have a pool there

00:40:30.120 that's basically

00:40:30.780 a brand right

00:40:31.780 and it's value

00:40:32.480 for the taking

00:40:33.180 and so because

00:40:34.460 the Ivies

00:40:35.940 have generated

00:40:36.700 this reputation

00:40:38.400 of high quality

00:40:39.640 that can be exploited

00:40:41.020 and what's happening

00:40:42.500 right now

00:40:42.960 is a huge invasion

00:40:43.980 of parasitical exploiters

00:40:46.120 and a huge portion

00:40:47.720 of those

00:40:48.020 are the administrators

00:40:48.820 you said

00:40:49.260 what there's 15,000

00:40:50.560 administrators

00:40:51.260 at Stanford

00:40:51.960 for 16,000 students

00:40:53.300 that's hilarious

00:40:54.380 that's hilarious

00:40:55.980 there's no way

00:40:56.980 that can last

00:40:57.840 man

00:40:58.200 so

00:40:59.000 no I mean

00:40:59.820 it's very similar

00:41:00.940 to the Russian army

00:41:02.440 in its disastrous year

00:41:06.020 in 1940

00:41:06.800 latter part of 41

00:41:08.560 when we had

00:41:09.160 they had so many commissars

00:41:10.740 that were overseeing

00:41:11.580 military operations

00:41:12.780 that had no intrinsic worth

00:41:14.540 other than

00:41:15.780 to impede

00:41:16.680 and supposedly

00:41:17.400 make sure

00:41:19.520 that everybody

00:41:20.020 was a proper

00:41:20.780 Marxist-Leninist

00:41:21.940 that the German army

00:41:23.140 almost got to Moscow

00:41:24.240 and then of course

00:41:24.940 Stalin stopped it

00:41:26.060 in extremists

00:41:27.620 he said

00:41:27.940 you know what

00:41:28.320 we're going to

00:41:28.840 start getting people

00:41:30.120 like Konev

00:41:30.960 and Zhukov

00:41:31.760 and go back

00:41:32.680 to a merit system

00:41:33.680 and what's sad

00:41:36.240 about the university

00:41:37.240 they're adopting

00:41:38.020 almost something

00:41:39.340 like the commissar system

00:41:41.380 where we have

00:41:42.320 these intrusive

00:41:43.320 and here in California

00:41:45.880 almost every university

00:41:47.300 has a diversity oath

00:41:51.300 where a faculty member

00:41:52.840 has to state explicitly

00:41:54.300 what they have done

00:41:56.240 and what they will do

00:41:57.140 to encourage

00:41:57.920 diversity

00:41:59.120 equity

00:41:59.480 inclusion

00:42:00.000 and every candidate

00:42:01.200 has to make a statement

00:42:04.120 about what they have done

00:42:05.700 in the past

00:42:06.400 to show their commitment

00:42:07.800 kind of like the loyalty oaths

00:42:09.300 as you remember

00:42:09.880 in the United States

00:42:10.600 in the 50s

00:42:11.400 this destruction of meritocracy

00:42:17.580 is taking on

00:42:18.560 all of the aspects

00:42:21.100 in the past

00:42:21.840 that were failed

00:42:22.560 so we have a commissar system

00:42:25.040 that failed

00:42:25.560 we had the loyalty oath

00:42:27.320 that was

00:42:28.120 you know

00:42:29.520 it was a war

00:42:30.240 it was a

00:42:30.860 antithetical to meritocracy

00:42:32.560 and then by getting into these

00:42:34.980 on the basis of race

00:42:37.180 and then not having to be

00:42:39.340 subject to meritocratic

00:42:40.520 performance standards

00:42:41.640 it's kind of like

00:42:42.740 the British Army

00:42:43.520 in the 19th century

00:42:44.720 or late

00:42:46.180 especially the late 18th century

00:42:47.940 where you could buy

00:42:48.940 a captaincy

00:42:49.900 in fact

00:42:50.220 to be an officer

00:42:52.100 you had to put up money

00:42:53.200 and the irony was

00:42:55.040 one of the reasons

00:42:55.720 of the startling success

00:42:58.100 of the Napoleonic system

00:42:59.620 was that

00:43:00.220 after the revolution

00:43:01.660 they did have

00:43:02.280 a meritocratic standard

00:43:03.320 for officer corps

00:43:04.340 and the marshals of France

00:43:05.720 were not all aristocratic

00:43:08.300 they were merit based

00:43:09.360 and the French Army

00:43:10.520 ran wild

00:43:11.260 for 15 years

00:43:12.320 on that basis

00:43:13.240 until it was exhausted

00:43:14.400 but the point

00:43:15.740 I'm getting at

00:43:16.380 is

00:43:16.600 if you thought

00:43:17.620 you couldn't come up

00:43:19.400 with a better system

00:43:20.700 if you planned

00:43:21.920 for years

00:43:22.520 how to destroy

00:43:23.400 this Ivy League

00:43:25.160 brand

00:43:26.660 than

00:43:27.460 destroying

00:43:29.560 standardized tests

00:43:31.860 admitting people

00:43:33.800 that could not

00:43:34.980 take the test

00:43:36.420 and perform

00:43:37.800 at a level

00:43:39.140 that would

00:43:39.640 that would be

00:43:41.060 I guess you would say

00:43:42.400 admissible

00:43:42.900 at almost anywhere else

00:43:44.260 where else

00:43:45.300 I taught at Cal State Fresno

00:43:46.800 and Cal State Fresno

00:43:48.500 for 20 years

00:43:49.320 I taught there

00:43:50.140 those standards

00:43:51.300 at that time

00:43:52.560 that I was there

00:43:53.720 were

00:43:54.000 the admission standards

00:43:55.260 are more rigorous

00:43:56.060 than the Ivy League now

00:43:57.320 everybody had to take

00:43:58.700 the SAT

00:43:59.220 you don't have to do that

00:44:01.220 anymore

00:44:01.940 and

00:44:02.800 we never had

00:44:04.780 people

00:44:05.220 it was

00:44:06.160 politically correct

00:44:08.600 but we never had

00:44:09.560 people

00:44:10.020 looking over our

00:44:11.520 shoulder

00:44:11.880 we never had

00:44:12.640 students that would

00:44:13.420 report us

00:44:14.160 for

00:44:14.660 untoward language

00:44:16.900 or

00:44:17.440 unwoke language

00:44:19.080 or we never had

00:44:20.360 a dean call us up

00:44:21.360 and said

00:44:21.580 you're late on your

00:44:22.520 diversity statement

00:44:24.220 and so

00:44:25.360 it's inviting

00:44:27.380 a level of

00:44:28.100 corruption

00:44:28.560 the corruption

00:44:30.000 of this system

00:44:31.300 is just

00:44:31.820 because we have

00:44:32.820 these people

00:44:33.400 who are writing

00:44:35.180 these statements

00:44:35.920 and I've seen them

00:44:36.760 and I mean

00:44:37.120 it's tragic

00:44:38.220 if not pathetic

00:44:39.900 what they're saying

00:44:40.680 and when I was

00:44:41.980 eight years old

00:44:42.860 I sat on a bus

00:44:44.300 with people

00:44:44.760 who weren't white

00:44:45.600 or

00:44:46.020 on the other hand

00:44:48.260 when I was

00:44:48.800 15 years old

00:44:49.860 somebody called me

00:44:50.780 a name

00:44:51.340 and ever since

00:44:52.660 I've been

00:44:53.780 cognizant of

00:44:54.820 the racist nature

00:44:55.940 of America

00:44:56.540 and nothing

00:44:57.520 none of this

00:44:58.180 has anything

00:44:58.880 to do with

00:44:59.720 being able to

00:45:00.920 teach a classical

00:45:02.240 language

00:45:02.720 or build a bridge

00:45:03.900 or design

00:45:04.600 a coding system

00:45:05.580 and it's

00:45:06.500 going to have

00:45:07.680 consequences

00:45:08.380 if it hasn't

00:45:09.700 already

00:45:10.080 I think it

00:45:10.520 already has

00:45:11.240 well I know

00:45:12.680 that in the

00:45:13.180 UCAL system

00:45:14.060 that 75%

00:45:15.740 of applicants

00:45:17.180 for junior

00:45:18.440 faculty positions

00:45:19.580 have their

00:45:21.260 applications

00:45:22.080 rejected

00:45:22.980 on the basis

00:45:24.180 of inadequate

00:45:24.980 DEI statements

00:45:26.440 before their

00:45:27.620 research dossiers

00:45:28.800 are evaluated

00:45:29.760 and so it's

00:45:31.720 well here

00:45:32.500 I guess is the

00:45:33.540 optimistic side

00:45:34.440 so tell me

00:45:35.240 what you think

00:45:35.700 about this

00:45:36.120 so I'm

00:45:36.600 starting

00:45:37.000 I'm involved

00:45:38.280 in two new

00:45:39.140 university enterprises

00:45:40.540 one's at

00:45:41.320 Ralston College

00:45:42.140 in Savannah

00:45:42.740 we're trying to

00:45:43.940 build a humanities

00:45:44.680 research

00:45:45.580 or humanities

00:45:46.520 institute there

00:45:47.400 and we had

00:45:47.900 our first class

00:45:48.600 this year

00:45:49.040 and that went

00:45:49.660 extremely well

00:45:50.920 very very

00:45:52.100 carefully selected

00:45:53.120 students

00:45:53.580 we had an

00:45:54.220 applicant pool

00:45:54.940 of a thousand

00:45:55.660 so that we

00:45:56.760 could choose

00:45:57.140 25 students

00:45:58.200 and we

00:45:58.800 we screened

00:45:59.980 them in every

00:46:00.520 possible manner

00:46:01.440 and had a

00:46:02.000 bang up class

00:46:02.880 and so that's

00:46:03.920 sort of a

00:46:04.280 bricks and mortar

00:46:04.940 institution

00:46:05.560 and we'll see

00:46:06.000 how that goes

00:46:06.600 because that's

00:46:07.080 complicated

00:46:07.480 but I'm going

00:46:08.600 to start an

00:46:09.140 academy

00:46:09.580 my daughter's

00:46:10.620 working on

00:46:11.120 this in

00:46:11.720 November

00:46:12.100 we've got

00:46:12.620 about 30

00:46:13.120 professors on

00:46:13.920 board now

00:46:14.480 called the

00:46:15.280 Peterson Academy

00:46:16.080 and we hope

00:46:17.260 to drive down

00:46:18.100 the cost of

00:46:18.900 a bachelor's

00:46:20.480 degree

00:46:20.800 we'll start

00:46:21.300 with the

00:46:21.860 humanities

00:46:22.440 and the

00:46:22.880 social sciences

00:46:23.580 to $4,000

00:46:24.580 in total

00:46:25.460 now it's

00:46:27.080 hard to

00:46:27.520 replicate

00:46:27.980 the social

00:46:29.460 element of

00:46:30.140 university

00:46:30.680 and that's

00:46:31.360 a huge part

00:46:32.620 of university

00:46:33.180 is the new

00:46:33.820 peer group

00:46:34.360 and the people

00:46:34.860 you meet

00:46:35.360 and all of

00:46:35.800 that

00:46:36.100 and the

00:46:36.380 apprenticeship

00:46:36.800 element

00:46:37.280 it's hard

00:46:37.880 to virtualize

00:46:38.600 that

00:46:38.840 but when I

00:46:39.780 hear the

00:46:40.140 sorts of

00:46:40.520 things that

00:46:40.960 you're talking

00:46:41.520 about

00:46:41.900 then what

00:46:43.480 leaps to

00:46:44.160 my mind

00:46:44.640 in some

00:46:45.740 part is

00:46:46.420 market

00:46:47.040 opportunity

00:46:47.680 because the

00:46:49.420 fact that

00:46:50.260 students are

00:46:50.840 now paying

00:46:51.600 an insane

00:46:52.980 amount of

00:46:53.560 money

00:46:53.800 hundreds of

00:46:54.640 thousands of

00:46:55.220 dollars

00:46:55.580 to go to

00:46:56.400 an Ivy League

00:46:57.040 institute

00:46:57.520 that is

00:46:58.120 simultaneously

00:46:58.720 failing to

00:46:59.620 educate them

00:47:00.440 siphoning their

00:47:01.720 future earnings

00:47:02.500 into the

00:47:02.980 pockets of

00:47:03.560 greedy

00:47:03.800 administrators

00:47:04.480 and ever

00:47:05.200 more of

00:47:05.720 them

00:47:05.900 and sabotaging

00:47:07.560 their own

00:47:07.940 brand

00:47:08.260 simultaneously

00:47:09.080 it just

00:47:09.540 looks to

00:47:09.940 me like

00:47:10.340 that is

00:47:11.160 not a

00:47:11.500 sustainable

00:47:11.900 model

00:47:12.400 and you

00:47:12.840 said

00:47:13.220 you know

00:47:14.000 that you

00:47:14.320 believe that

00:47:14.980 the larger

00:47:15.840 companies

00:47:16.360 for example

00:47:16.980 Google

00:47:17.420 and other

00:47:18.240 companies

00:47:18.680 that are

00:47:18.980 actually

00:47:19.320 concerned

00:47:19.860 with

00:47:20.080 performance

00:47:20.560 still

00:47:21.200 are going

00:47:22.060 to stop

00:47:22.480 regarding

00:47:22.900 an Ivy

00:47:23.300 League

00:47:23.540 degree

00:47:23.860 as a

00:47:24.300 brand

00:47:24.600 of

00:47:24.880 capability

00:47:25.760 and so

00:47:26.320 that means

00:47:26.860 over a

00:47:27.980 10 year

00:47:28.360 period

00:47:28.720 or 15

00:47:29.160 year

00:47:29.360 period

00:47:29.620 they're

00:47:29.800 going to

00:47:30.000 scuttle

00:47:30.300 their own

00:47:30.580 economic

00:47:30.980 model

00:47:31.380 maybe there's

00:47:32.160 all sorts

00:47:32.640 of opportunities

00:47:33.360 for new

00:47:33.920 education

00:47:34.380 I think

00:47:34.540 there is

00:47:35.080 I agree

00:47:36.140 with you

00:47:37.020 entirely

00:47:37.540 there's

00:47:38.140 650,000

00:47:39.480 fewer

00:47:39.960 students in

00:47:40.640 America

00:47:41.000 than last

00:47:41.580 year

00:47:41.920 and

00:47:43.060 about

00:47:44.080 2 million

00:47:45.520 fewer

00:47:46.080 than 10

00:47:46.900 years ago

00:47:47.580 and

00:47:49.060 I mean

00:47:49.880 they say

00:47:50.240 it's

00:47:50.460 demographic

00:47:51.060 but it's

00:47:51.600 not

00:47:51.840 demographic

00:47:52.400 because the

00:47:52.880 country

00:47:53.220 increases

00:47:54.020 by about

00:47:54.600 2 million

00:47:55.060 people

00:47:55.500 per year

00:47:56.120 and

00:47:56.680 what's

00:47:57.440 happening

00:47:57.780 is

00:47:58.280 especially

00:47:59.640 I think

00:48:00.020 with the

00:48:00.400 Zoom

00:48:00.940 phenomenon

00:48:02.560 during the

00:48:03.100 COVID

00:48:03.320 lockdowns

00:48:04.000 we're getting

00:48:04.420 people

00:48:04.940 like what

00:48:05.960 you and I

00:48:06.580 are doing

00:48:07.060 or what

00:48:07.620 your podcast

00:48:08.560 or the

00:48:09.100 Prager

00:48:09.400 University

00:48:09.980 that offers

00:48:10.580 an alternative

00:48:11.300 for

00:48:12.660 autodidacts

00:48:13.640 and people

00:48:14.060 who want

00:48:14.420 continuing

00:48:14.960 education

00:48:15.700 and then

00:48:16.500 we're getting

00:48:17.360 a big

00:48:18.060 much greater

00:48:18.720 emphasis

00:48:19.100 on vocational

00:48:19.960 education

00:48:20.700 is

00:48:21.040 when the

00:48:22.160 lockdown

00:48:22.480 happened

00:48:23.080 we weren't

00:48:23.800 saved by

00:48:24.360 sociology

00:48:24.960 majors

00:48:25.500 that were

00:48:26.060 you know

00:48:26.400 take six

00:48:26.980 units

00:48:27.300 over eight

00:48:27.840 years

00:48:28.280 with

00:48:28.980 you know

00:48:29.520 $60,000

00:48:30.500 in student

00:48:31.160 loans

00:48:31.540 we needed

00:48:32.440 skilled

00:48:33.320 carpenters

00:48:33.980 and plumbers

00:48:34.700 and electricians

00:48:35.920 and roofers

00:48:37.100 and they pay

00:48:37.920 and real dollars

00:48:39.060 are making

00:48:39.500 more than ever

00:48:40.060 so we're getting

00:48:40.600 a larger group

00:48:41.400 of people

00:48:41.820 who say

00:48:42.340 I don't want

00:48:43.160 to be encumbered

00:48:43.820 by these

00:48:44.160 student loans

00:48:44.820 and I'm going

00:48:45.840 to have

00:48:46.300 a vocational

00:48:46.980 and then

00:48:47.700 as you say

00:48:48.240 the third

00:48:48.780 alternative

00:48:49.520 are these

00:48:50.420 schools

00:48:51.560 a college

00:48:52.900 like Hillsdale

00:48:54.000 traditionally

00:48:54.660 had about

00:48:55.620 a thousand

00:48:56.120 students

00:48:56.800 I think

00:48:57.820 it's up

00:48:58.120 to 1600

00:48:58.760 and their

00:48:59.320 dilemma

00:48:59.720 right now

00:49:00.260 as I understand

00:49:00.900 it

00:49:01.180 and I teach

00:49:01.900 there

00:49:02.160 a couple

00:49:03.160 of weeks

00:49:03.480 every year

00:49:03.980 for the last

00:49:04.500 20 years

00:49:05.080 is

00:49:05.340 they are being

00:49:06.280 flooded

00:49:06.820 by

00:49:08.220 applicants

00:49:09.300 that

00:49:10.380 have not

00:49:11.020 gotten

00:49:11.360 into

00:49:11.640 Harvard

00:49:12.040 or Yale

00:49:12.700 or Princeton

00:49:13.300 or Stanford

00:49:13.960 and they

00:49:14.600 require

00:49:15.260 SAT

00:49:16.680 they had

00:49:18.100 already

00:49:18.620 sort of

00:49:19.460 been

00:49:19.820 in terms

00:49:21.340 of

00:49:21.600 academic

00:49:22.540 rigor

00:49:23.120 or

00:49:24.120 admissions

00:49:24.800 rigor

00:49:25.260 comparable

00:49:26.140 to

00:49:26.640 Oberlin

00:49:27.560 or Williams

00:49:28.140 or Amherst

00:49:28.720 but now

00:49:29.200 they've got

00:49:29.560 a real

00:49:29.820 dilemma

00:49:30.200 because

00:49:30.700 they have

00:49:31.560 this

00:49:31.900 traditionalist

00:49:33.380 I think

00:49:33.740 quite

00:49:34.160 deservedly

00:49:36.020 so

00:49:36.280 this idea

00:49:36.860 that they

00:49:37.260 teach the

00:49:38.000 whole person

00:49:38.620 so if

00:49:39.060 you go

00:49:39.260 to

00:49:39.400 Hillsdale

00:49:39.760 College

00:49:40.260 you learn

00:49:41.060 how to

00:49:41.400 shoot

00:49:41.740 and study

00:49:42.420 the

00:49:42.620 second

00:49:42.840 amendment

00:49:43.260 you

00:49:44.020 and lift

00:49:44.700 weights

00:49:45.080 you lift

00:49:46.220 weights

00:49:46.680 absolutely

00:49:47.420 it's a

00:49:47.900 it's a

00:49:48.420 hundred percent

00:49:49.600 360 degree

00:49:50.800 24-7

00:49:51.660 citizenship

00:49:52.300 idea

00:49:52.940 but when you

00:49:53.980 bring all

00:49:54.580 of these

00:49:54.920 people in

00:49:55.800 that are

00:49:56.200 now looking

00:49:56.760 at a

00:49:57.080 Hillsdale

00:49:57.480 because it

00:49:58.020 is

00:49:58.200 meritocratic

00:49:58.800 and because

00:49:59.780 it has

00:50:00.180 high standards

00:50:00.840 but many

00:50:01.460 of them

00:50:01.800 are not

00:50:02.900 in any

00:50:03.620 way

00:50:03.840 conservative

00:50:04.420 and so

00:50:05.760 what do

00:50:06.120 you do

00:50:06.380 if you're

00:50:06.660 Hillsdale

00:50:07.160 when you

00:50:07.880 I think

00:50:08.380 they are

00:50:09.600 interviewing

00:50:10.580 them

00:50:11.000 and you

00:50:11.320 mentioned

00:50:11.860 that's

00:50:12.280 why I

00:50:12.520 thought

00:50:12.640 it was

00:50:12.840 fascinating

00:50:13.260 that you're

00:50:13.680 interviewing

00:50:14.180 their

00:50:14.480 applicants

00:50:14.920 they're

00:50:15.500 interviewing

00:50:15.980 95%

00:50:17.100 of the

00:50:17.600 people

00:50:17.860 that are

00:50:18.160 applying

00:50:18.620 and they

00:50:19.000 have to

00:50:19.420 now

00:50:19.700 well they

00:50:20.860 have a

00:50:21.240 code of

00:50:21.580 order

00:50:21.840 that they

00:50:22.220 enforce

00:50:22.620 quite

00:50:22.960 rigorously

00:50:23.560 at

00:50:23.760 Hillsdale

00:50:24.160 and

00:50:24.380 we're

00:50:25.020 also

00:50:25.320 in

00:50:25.600 discussion

00:50:26.060 with

00:50:26.380 Hillsdale

00:50:26.880 with regard

00:50:27.600 to

00:50:27.900 potential

00:50:28.400 accreditation

00:50:29.140 for these

00:50:29.580 online

00:50:29.960 courses

00:50:30.440 because I

00:50:31.240 really like

00:50:31.620 the

00:50:31.760 Hillsdale

00:50:32.160 model

00:50:32.540 and

00:50:32.760 here's

00:50:34.420 too

00:50:34.780 on the

00:50:35.740 technology

00:50:36.540 front

00:50:37.160 so

00:50:37.440 you know

00:50:38.180 I learned

00:50:38.680 I spent

00:50:39.260 a lot

00:50:39.740 of time

00:50:40.200 analyzing

00:50:40.760 the relationship

00:50:41.520 between

00:50:42.040 psychological

00:50:42.640 testing

00:50:43.180 and

00:50:43.520 productivity

00:50:45.140 and creativity

00:50:46.200 across the

00:50:46.920 lifespan

00:50:47.300 and so

00:50:48.000 I know

00:50:48.680 a fair bit

00:50:49.320 about that

00:50:49.780 I suppose

00:50:50.160 and one

00:50:51.220 of the

00:50:51.400 things I

00:50:51.780 did learn

00:50:52.240 was that

00:50:52.840 part of

00:50:53.880 the reason

00:50:54.240 the universities

00:50:54.920 have

00:50:55.920 their degrees

00:50:56.980 are valuable

00:50:57.500 is because

00:50:58.000 they

00:50:58.340 were very

00:50:59.920 careful

00:51:00.260 in terms

00:51:00.780 of meritocratic

00:51:01.480 admission

00:51:01.920 and they also

00:51:02.440 have a

00:51:02.800 hammerlock

00:51:03.320 on accreditation

00:51:04.240 and so

00:51:05.440 once you

00:51:06.000 have an

00:51:06.220 MBA

00:51:06.520 obviously

00:51:07.020 you're

00:51:07.300 accredited

00:51:07.860 as an

00:51:08.340 MBA

00:51:08.640 graduate

00:51:09.080 from a

00:51:09.500 given

00:51:09.680 school

00:51:10.020 and that

00:51:10.360 means

00:51:10.540 you had

00:51:10.740 a certain

00:51:11.060 peer

00:51:11.320 network

00:51:11.780 and a

00:51:12.120 certain

00:51:12.440 level

00:51:13.140 of

00:51:13.360 intellectual

00:51:13.840 proficiency

00:51:14.520 even to

00:51:15.080 get into

00:51:15.420 the program

00:51:16.020 certain degree

00:51:17.600 of conscientiousness

00:51:18.740 to rigorously

00:51:19.720 pursue the

00:51:20.480 program

00:51:20.880 and pass

00:51:21.500 it

00:51:22.700 so the

00:51:23.480 value

00:51:23.840 in the

00:51:24.220 universities

00:51:24.740 in large

00:51:26.020 part

00:51:26.340 is nested

00:51:28.000 inside the

00:51:28.560 accreditation

00:51:29.280 now you

00:51:30.140 could imagine

00:51:30.800 and I don't

00:51:31.820 think this is

00:51:32.380 technically

00:51:32.760 impossible

00:51:33.280 you could

00:51:34.160 imagine a

00:51:34.740 system of

00:51:35.340 blockchain

00:51:35.860 accrediting

00:51:37.060 tests that

00:51:38.280 would be

00:51:38.620 freely available

00:51:39.360 to people

00:51:39.980 you know

00:51:40.420 I would do

00:51:41.420 this on a

00:51:41.860 for-profit

00:51:42.340 basis but

00:51:43.280 so that if

00:51:43.780 you wanted

00:51:44.880 to claim

00:51:45.440 bachelor of

00:51:46.100 arts equivalents

00:51:46.980 with regards to

00:51:48.240 your knowledge

00:51:48.640 of the

00:51:48.920 humanities

00:51:49.360 that you

00:51:50.240 could take

00:51:50.960 a set of

00:51:51.680 objective

00:51:52.160 tests that

00:51:52.920 couldn't be

00:51:53.340 mucked about

00:51:53.840 with by

00:51:54.300 administrators

00:51:54.880 and gain

00:51:55.920 your proxy

00:51:56.480 by that

00:51:56.940 manner

00:51:57.240 so imagine

00:51:57.920 this it's an

00:51:59.140 enterprise that

00:51:59.740 I've envisioned

00:52:00.320 and we're

00:52:00.800 pursuing at

00:52:01.360 the moment

00:52:01.680 imagine I

00:52:03.260 could gain

00:52:04.280 produce a

00:52:06.400 data set

00:52:07.000 of 10,000

00:52:08.340 multiple choice

00:52:09.020 questions

00:52:09.580 say in

00:52:10.580 American history

00:52:11.420 and I could

00:52:12.440 do that by

00:52:12.980 buying multiple

00:52:13.680 choice tests

00:52:14.440 from high

00:52:15.740 school and

00:52:16.240 university

00:52:16.760 professors all

00:52:17.460 across the

00:52:17.900 country

00:52:18.220 okay now we'd

00:52:19.460 have to administer

00:52:20.100 them to several

00:52:20.960 thousand people

00:52:21.760 and then we

00:52:22.260 could analyze

00:52:23.180 each question

00:52:24.080 with regards to

00:52:25.380 its accuracy

00:52:26.160 as a predictor

00:52:27.120 of general

00:52:27.840 knowledge domain

00:52:28.620 you can do

00:52:29.180 that you can

00:52:29.820 rank order

00:52:30.260 them then

00:52:30.980 imagine you

00:52:31.420 have a program

00:52:31.920 that can

00:52:32.320 randomly pick

00:52:33.620 equivalent level

00:52:35.640 of difficulty

00:52:36.420 questions from

00:52:37.160 that whole set

00:52:37.760 of 10,000

00:52:38.480 you could set

00:52:39.340 up a system

00:52:39.880 that could

00:52:40.360 produce

00:52:41.200 random tests

00:52:43.220 so they

00:52:43.720 couldn't exactly

00:52:44.420 be faked

00:52:45.320 or cheated

00:52:46.100 easily and

00:52:47.860 you could rank

00:52:48.860 order people in

00:52:49.560 terms of their

00:52:50.260 knowledge domains

00:52:51.280 with regards to

00:52:51.960 those tests and

00:52:52.660 you could

00:52:52.880 blockchain it so

00:52:53.660 it would be

00:52:53.980 completely

00:52:54.380 impenetrable to

00:52:55.340 administrative

00:52:56.180 interference and

00:52:57.440 you could steal

00:52:58.000 the accreditation

00:52:58.680 away from the

00:52:59.220 universities and

00:53:00.460 I can't see any

00:53:02.220 reason at all that

00:53:02.900 that's not

00:53:03.340 technically possible

00:53:04.320 but that's been

00:53:05.900 raised before in

00:53:07.040 the United States

00:53:07.640 and that's the

00:53:08.200 third rail as far

00:53:09.360 as universities are

00:53:10.180 concerned because I

00:53:11.220 think they suspect

00:53:12.220 that given the

00:53:14.360 state of education

00:53:15.280 today higher education

00:53:16.960 that a person's

00:53:18.140 entering SAT score

00:53:19.860 may be static or

00:53:21.220 actually go down

00:53:22.020 after four years

00:53:23.040 right and that the

00:53:24.140 idea that everybody

00:53:25.280 would take an SAT

00:53:26.420 as an exit exam

00:53:27.680 and it's quite

00:53:28.580 logical because

00:53:29.540 remember what they

00:53:30.760 said about the

00:53:31.440 SAT in the 50s

00:53:33.060 and 60s this was

00:53:33.960 a meritocratic

00:53:34.800 device so that

00:53:36.760 people of different

00:53:37.820 backgrounds economically

00:53:39.440 deprived or racially

00:53:40.960 and they didn't go to

00:53:41.980 competitive schools

00:53:43.040 they wouldn't be

00:53:43.740 punished so even

00:53:45.300 though they got

00:53:46.200 they got A's

00:53:48.320 Harvard would say

00:53:49.160 well you got A's

00:53:50.160 from Fresno

00:53:51.140 but it's not the

00:53:52.460 same as St.

00:53:53.220 Paul's and then

00:53:54.400 they answered back

00:53:55.580 and said but we

00:53:56.200 took the SAT

00:53:56.980 test and this

00:53:59.100 student did as

00:53:59.840 well and but

00:54:00.980 when you you get

00:54:02.160 rid of all of

00:54:02.920 that and you

00:54:04.060 say okay you

00:54:07.060 you introduce the

00:54:08.140 SAT because you

00:54:09.280 said that there

00:54:10.720 were different

00:54:11.180 levels of prior

00:54:12.740 education at high

00:54:13.820 schools we want to

00:54:14.640 reintroduce it on

00:54:15.580 the back end

00:54:16.200 because we feel

00:54:17.080 that there's

00:54:17.880 different levels

00:54:18.740 of instruction

00:54:19.480 caliber quality at

00:54:21.080 universities so

00:54:22.500 just as you

00:54:23.140 suspected high

00:54:24.020 schools were of

00:54:24.700 uneven quality we

00:54:26.180 now suspect that

00:54:27.260 colleges i.e.

00:54:28.580 Stanford Harvard

00:54:29.300 Yale are of

00:54:30.200 uneven quality and

00:54:31.900 we can't the BA

00:54:32.880 would mean nothing

00:54:34.000 just like you said

00:54:35.640 the GPA was mean

00:54:37.000 nothing unless it

00:54:37.860 was coupled with

00:54:38.880 its SAT score so

00:54:40.320 to get a BA everybody

00:54:41.580 has to take the test

00:54:42.820 that you outlined

00:54:43.680 whether you went to

00:54:45.080 school or not and

00:54:46.760 another thing you

00:54:47.440 talked about

00:54:47.920 accreditation if we

00:54:49.300 could just give every

00:54:50.440 student graduating in

00:54:52.040 the United States the

00:54:52.940 choice you can go

00:54:54.440 through the school of

00:54:55.180 education and that's

00:54:56.340 really the catalyst

00:54:58.740 for wokeness because

00:55:00.280 it trains all of

00:55:01.440 our K-12 public or

00:55:03.100 you have the

00:55:05.820 alternative of going

00:55:07.080 and get a master's

00:55:08.040 degree for one year

00:55:08.820 in an academic

00:55:09.360 subject in chemistry

00:55:11.200 biology English I

00:55:12.920 think the vast

00:55:14.040 majority of BAs would

00:55:16.280 prefer to go get a

00:55:17.740 master's degree in an

00:55:18.960 academic subject and I

00:55:20.180 think well let's talk

00:55:21.540 about that let's talk

00:55:22.740 about that for a

00:55:23.480 minute so and I've

00:55:24.600 talked to Larry Arnn

00:55:25.540 about this who's the

00:55:26.460 president of Hillsdale

00:55:27.520 so from what I

00:55:29.320 understand at the

00:55:30.440 moment about 50% of

00:55:32.860 American state budgets

00:55:34.140 are dedicated to

00:55:35.160 education broadly

00:55:36.280 speaking so that's an

00:55:37.440 awful lot of money

00:55:38.240 now interestingly

00:55:39.760 enough and let's say

00:55:41.560 pathologically enough

00:55:42.760 the faculties of

00:55:43.980 education have a

00:55:44.880 hammerlock on teacher

00:55:45.900 accreditation and that

00:55:47.640 strikes me as

00:55:48.320 absolutely preposterous

00:55:50.040 it's it's it's a form

00:55:51.280 of monopoly that's

00:55:52.560 that and there's no

00:55:53.680 excuse whatsoever for

00:55:54.780 it now I've watched

00:55:56.460 faculties of education

00:55:57.520 for 60 years and they

00:55:59.280 are not a credible the

00:56:01.800 faculties of education

00:56:02.800 are not credible academic

00:56:04.220 institutions by and

00:56:05.300 large they have been

00:56:06.420 responsible for some of

00:56:07.640 the worst frauds ever

00:56:08.840 perpetrated on the buying

00:56:10.480 public so whole word

00:56:11.740 reading is a good

00:56:12.420 example of that the whole

00:56:13.700 bloody self-esteem

00:56:14.700 movement which was a

00:56:16.000 complete catastrophe the

00:56:17.940 idea of of different

00:56:19.420 learning styles the idea

00:56:21.340 of multiple intelligences

00:56:22.840 etc we can lay that all

00:56:24.460 at the foot of the

00:56:25.120 faculties of education

00:56:26.100 and generally they

00:56:27.220 attract pretty damn bad

00:56:28.760 students and there's no

00:56:29.940 evidence whatsoever that

00:56:31.200 their so-called education

00:56:32.400 training produces better

00:56:33.580 teachers they have been

00:56:34.680 100% not only derelict in

00:56:37.920 their duties for like 60

00:56:39.500 years but they've actually

00:56:41.020 been what they've done has

00:56:43.480 been antithetical to the

00:56:44.980 general research tradition

00:56:46.180 very very low quality

00:56:47.380 research most of it

00:56:48.760 irreproducible most of it

00:56:50.460 based on idiot ideology

00:56:51.860 and definitely not in the

00:56:53.380 public interest so here's

00:56:54.900 an idea how about every

00:56:56.940 governor in the united

00:56:57.840 states just scraps the

00:56:59.400 requirement to have a

00:57:01.080 teaching certificate to be

00:57:02.360 able to teach you wouldn't

00:57:03.120 even need a master's degree

00:57:04.280 you could you could say we

00:57:05.480 will open up the teaching

00:57:06.680 profession to anybody who

00:57:08.400 graduated in the top 20% of

00:57:10.360 their class and then poof

00:57:13.160 you don't have faculties of

00:57:14.380 education anymore and you

00:57:15.740 don't have these

00:57:16.380 institutions like if you

00:57:18.160 think about the idea of the

00:57:19.340 long march through the

00:57:20.240 institutions the place where

00:57:22.040 that's being focused most

00:57:23.800 intently and with most

00:57:25.380 efficiency with regards to

00:57:28.440 the propagation of woke

00:57:29.480 ideology is definitely

00:57:30.580 through the faculties of

00:57:31.580 education and the only

00:57:32.760 reason they have a single

00:57:33.980 cent of dollar value is

00:57:35.980 because they have a

00:57:36.600 monopolistic hammerlock on

00:57:38.160 teacher certification and

00:57:39.700 that should be scrapped

00:57:40.880 there's a teacher shortage in

00:57:42.000 the u.s. anyways and

00:57:43.260 there's no bloody evidence

00:57:44.260 at all that the faculties of

00:57:45.460 education have produced

00:57:46.760 teachers who know how to

00:57:47.760 teach we have this

00:57:49.660 orwellian system in the

00:57:52.040 united states in which you

00:57:53.780 can be 18 years old in may

00:57:56.200 in a high school graduating

00:57:57.600 and your teacher has to have

00:57:59.300 a credential and then over

00:58:01.220 the summer you will enroll for

00:58:03.440 the fall in a community

00:58:04.900 college supposedly at a

00:58:06.380 higher level of instruction

00:58:07.540 education and the community

00:58:08.860 college teacher does not

00:58:10.260 need a credential they need

00:58:12.080 a master right in some

00:58:13.060 cases they can get

00:58:13.860 exemptions so there's no

00:58:15.900 logic to it other than

00:58:17.140 than the self-interest of

00:58:19.320 the teachers union but I

00:58:20.960 guess what I'm getting at is

00:58:22.160 that one of whether it was

00:58:23.840 the COVID lockdown or the

00:58:25.400 George Floyd ignition of the

00:58:28.120 or the acceleration of the

00:58:29.740 woke movement we're in

00:58:31.360 really revolutionary times as

00:58:32.900 far as higher education and

00:58:35.220 the economy I don't think is

00:58:36.700 given the smaller pool of

00:58:38.560 applicants and people not

00:58:39.900 choosing go to come there's

00:58:41.420 no there's no economic

00:58:42.700 rationale to support these

00:58:45.120 universities in their

00:58:46.100 present course and I think

00:58:47.780 there's going to be a

00:58:48.720 radical change radical change

00:58:51.300 I used to talk to people in

00:58:52.780 Silicon Valley and they'd say

00:58:54.180 Victor we know that Stanford

00:58:56.620 doesn't teach very well but

00:58:58.080 they do one they do one

00:59:00.400 priceless bit of research for

00:59:03.240 us when we hire a Stanford

00:59:05.340 graduate we know that they

00:59:07.540 had to be very very bright on

00:59:10.340 test scores and GPA and yeah

00:59:12.340 and now if you take that

00:59:13.900 away they have no reason to

00:59:16.180 to tap their graduates since

00:59:17.680 they're not going to learn very

00:59:18.600 much and their admissions are

00:59:20.600 no longer meritocratic and so I

00:59:22.500 I don't know yeah well that's

00:59:23.980 and then the other thing that

00:59:24.820 they sold was they they sold

00:59:27.140 one they said to the employer we

00:59:30.900 will train people and you will

00:59:32.640 like them but even if we don't we

00:59:34.680 were so stringent and careful in

00:59:37.000 our admissions you're going to get

00:59:38.120 somebody that's naturally talented

00:59:39.800 but then they also with a wink and

00:59:42.360 a nod said this to the parent and

00:59:44.980 we're going to get the seons and the

00:59:49.100 children of the elite and we're going

00:59:51.020 to have them all here and so you

00:59:52.620 mentioned the social interaction of a

00:59:54.420 campus experience yeah but they

00:59:57.540 can't even offer that anymore

00:59:58.960 because if you are making your

01:00:02.400 criteria based on gender and race and

01:00:05.220 sexual orientation and not merit for

01:00:09.220 whatever reason then the chances are

01:00:11.600 that people are not going to at

01:00:14.280 Harvard or Yale or Princeton have a

01:00:17.100 roommate whose father had a

01:00:18.980 corporation that he wanted to work in or

01:00:21.100 a coder all of those ties that they

01:00:24.860 would the wink and a nod sell the

01:00:26.260 parent because they're not they're

01:00:27.880 not even a clearinghouse for the elite

01:00:31.340 anymore where they make these

01:00:32.560 relationships that last throughout

01:00:34.940 their entire life to their own

01:00:36.500 right benefit and advantage they can't

01:00:39.300 even sell that so in a very you know

01:00:42.480 just disinterested fashion I don't see

01:00:46.360 what they have to offer anymore to

01:00:48.280 anybody well let's I don't really agree

01:00:50.160 what they let's I don't let's pursue

01:00:52.100 that a little bit farther because

01:00:53.580 there's other points of failure on the

01:00:56.180 university front that we could

01:00:57.360 concentrate on too so as I progressed

01:01:00.580 through the ranks at Harvard and then at

01:01:03.080 the University of Toronto I also watched

01:01:05.180 the multiplication of adjunct faculty and

01:01:08.480 so just so everyone who's listening knows

01:01:10.580 most departments abetted by their

01:01:13.660 administrators but also pursuing a very

01:01:15.920 narrow and foolish self-interest have

01:01:18.280 farmed out a lot of their teaching to

01:01:20.020 so-called adjuncts and so at some places

01:01:22.420 that's 50 percent of the teaching

01:01:24.440 population so now if you're a full

01:01:26.660 professor at a heavy-duty research

01:01:29.020 institution you have to conduct research

01:01:32.280 so you need a lab you have to have

01:01:33.840 graduate students who are pursuing

01:01:35.240 original research and you have to teach

01:01:37.740 you have to do a certain amount of

01:01:39.200 administrative work and you're evaluated

01:01:40.900 on the basis of your research your

01:01:42.800 teaching and your administrative work

01:01:44.440 basically in that order now if you are

01:01:47.500 a full professor you're in the tenure

01:01:49.640 stream and you'll be guaranteed a

01:01:51.060 certain degree of job security after

01:01:52.800 putting in your apprenticeship but if

01:01:55.580 you're an adjunct professor so that's a

01:01:57.640 part-time professor and that's 50 percent

01:01:59.580 of the professors now you don't have a

01:02:01.740 research enterprise you don't have any

01:02:03.340 graduate students you don't have a

01:02:04.700 permanent office and you don't get paid

01:02:07.200 anything you get just paid an absolute

01:02:09.800 pittance nowhere near enough to live on

01:02:12.580 you and you do 50 percent of the

01:02:15.260 teaching at the universities now this is

01:02:16.900 very convenient for the administrators

01:02:18.340 because the adjunct faculty have zero

01:02:20.320 political power like zero or less than

01:02:23.080 zero even and they can be fired or dealt

01:02:25.380 with in any manner whatsoever at a

01:02:27.840 moment's notice with no problem and as

01:02:31.860 there are more and more adjuncts there are

01:02:33.420 fewer and fewer full-time faculty and so

01:02:35.660 not only are the universities failing to

01:02:38.800 assess the students properly and then

01:02:41.260 group them together in peer groups that

01:02:44.260 would be of some economic utility across

01:02:46.460 time and elevating the tuition fees

01:02:48.960 completely beyond comprehension at the

01:02:51.940 same time they're also radically

01:02:54.060 decreasing the quality and the influence

01:02:57.600 of the professoriate at precisely the

01:03:00.240 same time as well as not hiring enough of

01:03:02.280 them because administrators have

01:03:03.760 multiplied like rabbits and faculty

01:03:05.700 numbers have remained relatively constant

01:03:07.760 so they're whittling away the quality of the

01:03:10.080 students on the one hand as fast as they

01:03:11.920 possibly can but they're doing exactly the

01:03:14.260 same thing to the faculty on at least two

01:03:16.260 fronts the DEI front plus the adjunct faculty

01:03:19.220 front and you know I complained about this at

01:03:22.220 the University of Toronto for years I used to

01:03:24.200 tell my colleagues like why don't we require

01:03:26.980 that the administration set a cap to

01:03:29.300 adjuncts like 20 percent of the faculty

01:03:31.520 force them to hire more full-time faculty

01:03:34.220 equivalents because that's who should be hired to

01:03:37.280 serve the students properly and the response

01:03:40.280 from my colleagues was always something like

01:03:42.000 well you know it's pretty convenient for us to

01:03:44.420 have these adjuncts pick up the excess teaching

01:03:46.520 load we don't want to put too much pressure on

01:03:48.380 the administration I thought that's fine

01:03:50.640 guys that's a hell of a good long-term

01:03:52.560 strategies like good luck with that over 20

01:03:55.220 years and so here we are now the universities

01:03:58.100 are making I would say 10 fatal errors on the

01:04:02.080 business front not just one they're just

01:04:04.660 there's so many errors that it's almost

01:04:06.520 it's a it's a miracle of incompetence and I do

01:04:10.100 think it's going to produce a precipitous

01:04:11.740 collapse I do too and I think just in

01:04:14.920 conclusion that this is all done by

01:04:17.660 egalitarians these are people who are very

01:04:19.760 critical of Walmart and the gradations in

01:04:22.780 pay but in fact there's far greater degrees

01:04:25.700 of inequality and exploitation in the

01:04:28.020 university by so-called liberal people than

01:04:30.940 there are in the in the American workplace

01:04:32.980 that's what's so ironic about it I'm

01:04:35.040 speaking as a person who was farming and

01:04:38.240 then was a as an adjunct faculty for for two

01:04:41.440 years and suddenly they made me a tenure track

01:04:44.600 professor and I just noticed I was teaching

01:04:47.800 the same teaching load but I made three times

01:04:50.040 four times the amount of money and I had

01:04:51.820 benefits and all of a sudden I was allowed

01:04:54.080 to use the xerox machine which I hadn't been

01:04:56.180 allowed to before and all of a sudden I

01:04:59.400 hadn't changed in anything but I for the

01:05:04.060 rest of my teaching career I was very

01:05:06.020 sympathetic to these people who lived in

01:05:09.680 their cars and they went from one community

01:05:11.460 college to state college and they were

01:05:13.640 exploited and this was all done by very

01:05:15.600 very left-wing enlightened people so to

01:05:18.520 speak and that's another story but you

01:05:21.180 said so many things wrong you said

01:05:22.540 something very interesting there like and I

01:05:25.020 just want to call this out so you just

01:05:28.260 said that after you were promoted from

01:05:30.640 like peasant adjunct professor living in

01:05:34.080 your car so to speak to you know reasonable

01:05:36.880 tenure stream faculty member you got to use

01:05:40.840 the photocopying machine so this is the

01:05:43.480 level of petty tyranny that these people

01:05:45.780 what would you say encounter in the

01:05:48.260 university system you're an adjunct faculty

01:05:50.160 you're so far down the bloody social

01:05:52.320 totem pole that it's almost incomprehensible

01:05:54.920 and for someone to implement a rule like

01:05:57.220 just imagine the mindset that it requires

01:05:59.400 to implement a rule which is well our

01:06:01.520 adjunct faculty are of so of so little

01:06:03.780 use that it's perfectly reasonable for the

01:06:06.280 administrators to forbid them from using

01:06:08.400 the photocopier because you know how often

01:06:10.480 people just do that for fun they wouldn't

01:06:13.000 be photocopying like handouts for their

01:06:14.880 students or anything like that they'd just

01:06:16.540 be sitting in there I don't know what

01:06:18.240 playing with the photocopy machine which is

01:06:20.080 exactly what adjuncts do if you don't

01:06:21.960 supervise them 100% of the time and that's

01:06:25.540 a good snapshot of exactly how universities

01:06:28.000 treat their adjunct faculty man it's it is

01:06:31.240 beyond pathetic and the fact that it is

01:06:33.400 these hypothetical egalitarians doing it

01:06:36.200 indicates to me that what we're seeing is

01:06:39.340 much more a war on the idea of competence

01:06:42.360 and quality itself than it is any push

01:06:44.960 forward for some hypothetical bloody

01:06:47.040 egalitarian utopia it's like we'll destroy

01:06:49.820 the universities in the name of egalitarianism

01:06:52.220 and and the universities are participating

01:06:54.860 on mass in their own destruction you know

01:06:57.680 it's it's hard not to sit outside and think

01:06:59.860 you people so to speak you're going to get

01:07:03.100 exactly what you're aiming at and isn't that

01:07:05.600 going to be something yeah I think not that

01:07:09.760 they were I mean I was a big at a point in

01:07:12.680 my life I started a classical languages

01:07:15.100 program at a state college for mostly

01:07:17.000 minority students and I felt that it was it

01:07:19.860 gave an enormous advantage to people who

01:07:22.520 had been disadvantaged to mastered

01:07:24.620 languages archaeology history literature but

01:07:28.340 I don't that was a different era and I

01:07:31.080 don't I can't see that the university is a

01:07:33.520 positive force in society anymore it's

01:07:35.620 pathological almost every bad idea that

01:07:39.080 is reified the United States has its origins in

01:07:42.640 the university whether it's critical legal

01:07:44.400 theory or critical race theory or critical

01:07:47.600 penal theory or you name it it came it came

01:07:52.460 from university I was watching a clip of a

01:07:56.400 break smash and grab in San Francisco was on

01:07:59.640 YouTube yeah yeah and I and I remember a

01:08:01.800 conversation I had with a professor 20 years

01:08:05.440 ago when he was trying to explain critical legal

01:08:08.320 theory and he said you know what we're going to

01:08:09.960 change the legal system because the only reason

01:08:13.000 it's against the law to take a candy bar out of a

01:08:16.200 store is because rich rich white male heterosexual

01:08:21.160 Christians don't need to steal candy bars so they

01:08:23.760 made a law and I said no no no no theft is innate as a is

01:08:28.620 innate to the human species as pathological you can't have a

01:08:32.060 civilization without of any sort and but that idea that was

01:08:37.460 common has filtered down to the street and that's why the

01:08:41.140 universities are they're a drag on the economy they're a

01:08:44.460 drag on the culture their drag on the collective morality and

01:08:47.820 they either have to be radically changed or destroyed

01:08:50.420 those ideas are so pathological that only a half-rate

01:08:53.100 intellectual could possibly believe them so I

01:08:55.420 studied the development of antisocial behavior in

01:08:58.500 children criminal behavior a for a long time and so one of the

01:09:02.900 things we found so antisocial behavior is extremely stable and

01:09:07.060 once it's um manifest say it's very very difficult to do

01:09:11.140 anything about it to ameliorate it there's there's virtually no

01:09:14.180 evidence on the psychological front of any successful programs in

01:09:18.260 relationship to the amelioration of antisocial personality and so my

01:09:22.260 research team I didn't run it but it was a research team I was

01:09:24.980 associated with at mcgill and at the university of montreal kept

01:09:29.060 pushing back into childhood development to find the origins of

01:09:32.260 antisocial behavior because you see childhood

01:09:34.580 conduct disorder in children as a precursor to

01:09:37.140 adult criminality and we could push it back

01:09:40.420 we being the broader research community

01:09:42.580 to two years of age so at two years of age

01:09:46.580 there's a subset of children they're almost all male

01:09:50.980 about five percent of males who are temperamentally quite

01:09:54.500 predatory in their aggression and so they kick hit bite

01:09:58.500 and steal and if you group kids together in age-matched groups the most

01:10:04.260 violent offenders are two years old

01:10:07.140 and the violent two-year-olds are a subset of the two-year-olds

01:10:11.460 and so it you see that kind of in adult life because about one percent of the

01:10:15.300 criminals are responsible for 65 percent of the crimes

01:10:18.580 typical Pareto distribution but you do have a subset of kids who

01:10:22.900 will use predatory aggression as their primary mode of adaptation

01:10:26.740 now it turns out that the vast majority of those two-year-olds are

01:10:31.220 socialized by the age of four but some of them aren't

01:10:37.700 and the ones that aren't get rejected by their peers

01:10:40.820 because who the hell wants to play with someone who kicks hits

01:10:43.940 bites and steals and then maybe also has tantrums if they don't get their way

01:10:48.260 that doesn't make you popular it doesn't give you friends and so what

01:10:52.020 happens to those kids is that they fall farther and farther behind in

01:10:56.020 their social development because they don't get into the peer networks

01:10:59.380 and they retain their primordial predatory aggression as their central means of

01:11:04.580 adaptation and so the idea that theft and criminality

01:11:09.460 are a secondary consequence of a pathological social system seems to be

01:11:13.780 well i imagine there are cases where that's true but fundamentally it seems

01:11:17.940 to be flawed right there is a proclivity to predatory

01:11:21.860 aggression that's part and parcel of the

01:11:23.860 panoply of human possibility and most people are socialized out of that

01:11:28.340 so you know the reverse is a kind of bizarre

01:11:31.620 russellianism right that proclaims that every single

01:11:34.900 human being is innately good and it's only the corrupt social system that

01:11:38.580 introduces any pathology into into reality at all and that you know and

01:11:42.980 only an idiot french intellectual could believe that

01:11:45.700 and of all their american acolytes i think what's worrisome about all of what

01:11:50.340 we're talking about is that it's not abstract

01:11:53.300 it has real consequences that filter down

01:11:56.340 and by that i mean it's so ubiquitous the u.s military now

01:12:01.940 uh has lowered physical standards in combat and special forces units to

01:12:07.060 accommodate women that have innately on average not in every case but

01:12:11.860 less physical rigor and strength and they feel there will be no downside

01:12:16.660 they have spent about five million hours

01:12:20.500 going through the ranks collectively to search out uh

01:12:26.500 what mark milley and lloyd alliston in their congressional testimonies

01:12:30.100 characterizes white rage and white supremacy and white privilege

01:12:35.700 and the funny thing about it is they have not met their recruitment

01:12:39.780 standards suddenly none of the three branches and they

01:12:42.420 haven't met their the academies have not

01:12:45.540 met their enrollment targets this year and the reason probably

01:12:49.460 and there's no scientific data but i think most people agree is that

01:12:53.780 for one reason or another the military almost like the british who relied on the

01:12:58.180 gurkhas or the indian army relied on

01:13:01.220 seks you could argue that the u.s army relied on rural americans mostly white

01:13:08.260 males and south of the mexican diction line in fact if you look at the

01:13:12.020 fatality records in iraq and afghanistan they died at about

01:13:17.220 75 percent of all combat deaths were white males

01:13:22.260 and yet they only made up 35 percent of the population so here were milley and

01:13:26.740 austin suggesting that they were going to be proportional on every aspect of

01:13:31.540 the military a repertory in fact except they never mentioned the data on the

01:13:35.940 combat dead and so what they essentially have done in the space of just about a

01:13:40.580 year and a half they've told all of these families

01:13:45.780 even though you send your even though you went to vietnam and even though your son

01:13:50.340 went to the first gulf war and even though it's a family tradition that you

01:13:55.140 fought your grandson fought in afghanistan now your great-grandson is

01:13:59.140 going to turn 18 we still suspect that you suffer from

01:14:03.700 white rage and even though you died at double the numbers of your rubric

01:14:08.740 we're not going to count that and yet and so they've just said

01:14:12.980 we're done we're not going to join go get somebody else from one of the

01:14:17.780 and that's happening everywhere in this country right now

01:14:20.900 and when you it's not just the military you can see it with the airlines

01:14:25.860 pilot training you can see it with medical school admissions we used to make a joke

01:14:31.620 in the united states well they're never going to do this where nuclear plant

01:14:34.980 operators are pilots they are yeah right yeah so i think we're getting to a

01:14:40.100 we're going to get we're we're seeing a civilizations i mean it's like that line

01:14:46.180 in heming ways the sun also rises when he asked about bankruptcy he said how did

01:14:51.060 you become bankrupt mike and he said gradually and then suddenly then

01:14:56.420 suddenly yeah yeah right yes and that's what's i think that's what's happening

01:15:00.900 with the united states we've gone with this woke diversity stuff and now it's it was

01:15:06.580 gradual and now it's just accelerated to the point of suddenly and we're not

01:15:11.060 seeing basic competency in our grid and our transportation system and our education

01:15:17.540 and so i think and the data support that and you know when people measure the united states

01:15:25.460 quality of freedom or business environment vis-a-vis other countries we've really

01:15:31.140 we've really fallen down and let's look at the military issue for a minute so

01:15:36.340 the american military is very interesting institution because it it was it was staggeringly

01:15:42.980 uh merit merit meritocratically based and that started more or less in world war one when the

01:15:49.460 u.s military started to use tests of general cognitive ability to select for officer training

01:15:54.500 and the american military was were pioneers in meritocratic assessment for for decades they did

01:16:00.660 a lot of the basic research on general cognitive ability and they were strictly meritocratic and

01:16:05.220 there's some really cool things about that because one of the things it meant so black americans are

01:16:10.020 disproportionately likely to serve in the armed forces as well which is quite interesting and so

01:16:14.820 the u.s has set up its its military system not only to be available in wartime but also to be a means

01:16:21.780 of social progress um in peacetime and that's been part of explicit policy and so um the military was very

01:16:30.260 good at finding kids who had some ability especially on the officer front and who had some competence

01:16:36.740 and some diligence and then subjecting them to a meritocratic evaluation and and training process

01:16:42.900 and moving them up the socioeconomic hierarchy and so it's it's it's quite remarkable to see that

01:16:49.460 and you know i know a lot of military people and especially at the higher ends of the performance spectrum

01:16:54.900 they're they're a very singular type of person hey i mean um one guy i know for example a texas ranger

01:17:01.700 i i talked to him about when he decided he wanted to be a texas ranger and he said he was like five

01:17:06.420 years old hey when he knew he wanted to do something that was military and specialized and he's one of

01:17:11.620 these people who he was only interested in training if it was almost impossible insanely rigorous and

01:17:18.260 strictly meritocratic it's actually what he was looking for right and so one of the problems with

01:17:23.700 producing let's say a military apparatus where you dispense with meritocracy is you cease to attract

01:17:29.380 the very people who you absolutely want to attract right who are unbelievably ambitious with regards to

01:17:35.780 stringent attainment that's especially true for the special forces and so you can imagine that you just

01:17:40.980 decimate the military by excluding the very people who would be likely to thrive temperamentally and

01:17:46.740 practically it's a real catastrophe and so and you've lost the reagan foundation just did a poll last

01:17:53.380 year and traditionally 75 percent of americans had polled they had great confidence in the military

01:18:00.260 now it's 45 percent and the same is true when we see this what what weaponization you know i don't need to

01:18:07.780 get into that big topic of the fbi the cia we're starting to see that these institutions that we all

01:18:14.740 revered especially on the conservative side they completely lost all of their conservative

01:18:20.100 traditional support and they become almost stasi-like in their so they've been weaponized and i i feel

01:18:26.980 like so we're starting to see in the private and the public sector everything that worked and made the

01:18:32.580 united states singular and exceptional suddenly i mean we can chart the the genesis of it goes way back

01:18:40.180 decades but suddenly it's accelerated to such a point and whether we're talking about uh district

01:18:47.140 attorneys in chicago or baltimore or san francisco or los angeles laying criminals out the day that they

01:18:53.700 commit a violent offense we're starting to see society unwind and what we don't realize is this happens a lot

01:19:01.780 in rome there was there was no reason why the western empire had to fall in the late fifth century in

01:19:07.940 the way that the byzantine eastern half survived for a thousand years but once you lose confidence in

01:19:14.340 these institutions and once they're no longer americratic and once people's primary allegiance

01:19:20.980 is not any longer to the state everything we've talked about this morning then you the the end result is

01:19:27.140 an implosion very quickly and i think we haven't i think well this put this is a real conundrum for

01:19:32.980 conservatives say maybe we can start to talk about mr trump here a little bit because of this so

01:19:37.620 here's the dilemma that i see with regards to conservatives especially on the populist front

01:19:43.220 and so um trump was very good at speaking to disaffected working-class americans and certainly

01:19:50.980 the democrats abandoned them completely in the hill in the clinton campaign and had been preparing to

01:19:55.620 do that for years like the idiot champagne socialists have at the universities but in any case trump was

01:20:01.700 pretty good at talking to working-class americans but here's the danger as far as i'm concerned on the

01:20:07.140 classically conservative front and i don't really know what to do about this it's like the radical

01:20:12.820 leftists have this fundamental proposition which is all institutions are corrupt and predicated on

01:20:20.340 dominance and power and so that's kind of their leitmotif but now you have people like trump who

01:20:26.820 come in as outsiders and say on the populist front hey everyone on the right on the conservative

01:20:32.660 side working-class side let's say now um all your institutions are corrupt and basically predicated

01:20:40.020 on uh you know dominance and power and i think well this is a big problem because the conservatives

01:20:46.500 are objecting to the corruption the corruption of the institutions in the manner that you just described

01:20:52.340 they're captured by the woke ideology but the underlying message to people is kind of the same which is

01:20:57.380 our fundamental institutions can no longer be trusted and the problem with beating that drum

01:21:03.540 on the conservative side as far as i can tell is that you add fuel to the fire on the left side

01:21:08.740 and so then you're in the position and we can talk about the role of the humanities and education there

01:21:14.260 you're in the position of asking yourself well if you are conservative and you're traditionally based

01:21:18.500 but you believe that the institutions have been corrupt how the hell can you plot a pathway forward

01:21:24.020 without falling prey to exaggeration of exactly the concerns that the radical leftists are putting

01:21:29.380 forward because they say the same thing the institutions can't be trusted it's like the spirit

01:21:34.980 of the institutions can be trusted that's i i would maybe differ just in two regards one is i think

01:21:42.820 they used to say the institutions can't be trusted but it was the left that egged on the russian collusion

01:21:50.660 hoax the laptop hoax the ping and the alpha bank hoax and it was a left who said that james clapper who

01:22:00.740 lied under oath once and john brennan who lied under oath twice and james comey who famed amnesia 245 times

01:22:11.940 under oath and andrew mccabe who lied four times under oath and anthony fauci whose latest interrogatory

01:22:19.780 was just a mishmash of i can't remember i don't recall so and they are all iconic in the left so the

01:22:26.500 left has basically said these institutions got so unwieldy and two million people working for the

01:22:33.460 federal government and the regulators uh the regulators who were not elected alone had the expertise of this

01:22:44.020 huge byzantine complex because elected officials come and go but the epa guy is always there and

01:22:50.180 he knows every judge jury executioner legislative judicial uh executive power all in one person mode

01:23:00.020 of operating that the conservatives said we've got to break this up we've got to take the fbi office

01:23:06.020 and put it in kansas city we've got to cut 10 of the workforce we've got to make sure that uh hhs we

01:23:13.860 get uh should it shouldn't even be in washington we've got to get rid of the department of energy i

01:23:19.140 remember miss mr perry the texas governor said i'm going to get rid of three agencies unfortunately

01:23:24.260 he couldn't remember which ones they were on the debate stage but that's what conservatives were doing

01:23:29.140 but the left is saying well you know just as you have lost confidence because you they're regular

01:23:36.420 over regulatory and they're intrusive and they are anti-constitutional and they go after the

01:23:42.820 individual we find them now for the first time quite attractive because in our davos agenda or our great

01:23:50.420 reset agenda uh whether it's mandating green energy or mandating equity or mandating

01:23:58.500 vaccinations we find these institutions suddenly for the first time in our lives very very attractive

01:24:05.860 and so they've and they've inherited them and adopted them now and it's okay well that okay well

01:24:11.780 that all right so it is uncanny to watch it i mean one of the most miraculous things i've seen in my

01:24:16.580 lifetime is the insistence by people on the left side of the spectrum that pharmaceutical companies can

01:24:21.940 be trusted so that that's just like you know everything is absolutely upside down when that happens okay

01:24:27.700 but you're now you're pulling out something that's very paradoxical because on the one hand we've

01:24:33.300 already established the case that this fundamental critique that's emerged from the universities is

01:24:38.980 a critique of institutional reliability and the basic doctrine is one of power is that all institutions

01:24:45.620 are predicated on the expression of arbitrary power and they can't be trusted especially if you're not in

01:24:49.860 the power elite but but then you say there's a paradoxical side of that which is that at the same time the

01:24:56.660 same people at least with regards to their political and philosophical orientation are

01:25:01.220 increasingly willing to utilize large-scale social institutions to put forward a given agenda i suppose

01:25:07.940 maybe the difference there is that the left is perfectly willing to trust large-scale institutions

01:25:14.660 if the institutions operate under the rubric of their ideological theory absolutely right so you

01:25:21.060 could make so they get rid of all this yeah absolutely they get rid of all the sturm and drang of

01:25:26.740 discussion and the congress when they take the military over they they worship the chain of command because

01:25:34.660 whether it's transgender subsidized surgeries or women in combat units they can they can affect social

01:25:40.500 change in an authoritarian chain of command fiat so everything that makes these institutions

01:25:46.900 skeptical or suspicious to the traditional supporters that they become

01:25:54.260 they've taken away the power of the individual the they are commissary like they're ideologically weaponized by the left all of

01:26:02.900 those things make it attractive to the left so it's it's one of the strangest things i think in the history of the country how

01:26:09.460 the right has backed away from all of these investigatory uh agencies military they don't they don't trust them

01:26:17.940 anymore because they've been they've been i guess their dna is like a virus has been recalibrated

01:26:24.740 against the individual in traditional america and the left comes in and says we like what they're doing

01:26:30.820 we like their overreach of civil liberties because that's the only way that we can affect these changes

01:26:36.900 that 51 percent of the people don't want and they because they're stupid but when you control silicon

01:26:43.700 valley and k-12 and hollywood now the military and the fbi and the cia and the doj now we can finally

01:26:52.020 enact change without public support and so i don't know where it's all going to end but the conservatives

01:26:58.100 have backed off and in that vacuum the left has moved in so you know one of the things i really

01:27:03.940 appreciated about reading solzhenitsyn's gulag archipelago was his insistence that what happened

01:27:12.580 in the soviet union was not an aberration in relationship to the set of ideas that made up

01:27:18.020 the communist utopian vision but a fulfillment of the what would you call it of the core content that

01:27:24.580 was implicit in the original doctrines right because the apologists on the left constantly

01:27:29.540 and still do to this day say well real communism has never been tried which i think is one of the

01:27:35.220 world's most appalling excuses by the way but independent of that the the real notion was

01:27:41.460 well a system of ideas had been produced it had a certain degree of internal coherence and then if you

01:27:46.980 launched that system into the world it would run algorithmically and produce certain outcomes and it

01:27:51.380 did that in country after country and the problem in some sense with the discussion we're having now

01:27:57.700 is that we're not making a distinction between the they that are putting forward these ideas and the

01:28:03.220 algorithmic yes what would you say impetus of the system of ideas itself right because it's not exactly

01:28:10.500 a shadowy cabal of conspiracists are operating behind the scenes to bring this about what it is is a set of

01:28:17.700 ideas mostly most of which emerged in france and germany and then were adopted in the united states

01:28:24.100 that have a certain ethos built into them and the ethos is partly group identity uh predicated right

01:28:31.780 the fundamental predicate is that the most important distinction between people is some element of their

01:28:36.580 group identity and then there are ideas associated with that like all outcomes should be equal or that's

01:28:42.500 evidence of of the dominance of something like arbitrary power and another ethos would be the

01:28:47.940 fundamental motivating principle of the human race is power and domination and so those ideas have

01:28:54.100 an ethos that makes itself known across time and it it elaborates and then it it becomes a system of

01:29:00.900 ideas that possesses individuals and then they act in concert with the ideas but you don't need a formal

01:29:07.540 conspiracy no i think i think i think you know i think just about just i think i agree in a similar

01:29:12.260 way i think what we're witnessing now is the end stage of of what was wilsonian progressivism

01:29:21.620 elements of the new deal the great society program all of which could be justified by the left

01:29:28.260 to address the needs of the day and maybe to rectify some of the rigidity of the american system but

01:29:34.900 ultimately it was built into them that eventually it would appear in this latest manifestation because

01:29:42.020 uh it it always on the horizon there was the idea that we're we're marching toward radical egalitarianism

01:29:49.940 by fiat and that requires a level of coercion that's antithetical to a democratic society it's

01:29:56.100 in plato's gorgias i think socrates one at one point says well in athens they will not

01:30:04.660 be happy until the dogs and the donkeys can vote and what he's trying to say is that each element of

01:30:10.340 expanding the franchise justified as it was ultimately is going to end into the absurd because

01:30:16.580 there's no there's always going to be somebody who says that he's he doesn't have the same

01:30:22.260 franchise as someone else it's and i think it's very similar like well that's always the same case i

01:30:27.700 think it's built into this mindset or ideology it's once you threw out the bourbons that was justified

01:30:35.220 then you had the constitutional republic yes and you can see that that was and then you had danton but

01:30:41.780 ultimately you whether you knew it or not you had a rendezvous with the jacobins just like the you had a

01:30:46.660 rendezvous with the maoist right right just like kerensky and the mincheviks had a rendezvous with bolshevik it

01:30:52.420 was headed that way until if somebody didn't derail it and i think that's where we are today okay

01:30:58.180 so this allows us to return to a theme we didn't develop enough which is part of the purpose of a

01:31:03.620 true humanities education is to transmit the difficult to acquire knowledge that actually

01:31:10.820 allows people to become wise enough to forestall that inevitable deterioration towards an idiot and

01:31:17.540 vengeful uh egalitarianism yes right it takes a lot of training now you know you said you had taught

01:31:24.180 ancient languages to example for example to minority students and people listening might think well what

01:31:28.900 the hell good is that and let me make a case for what good what good that is very briefly because it's

01:31:33.940 a case for the humanities and you can comment on that well first of all there isn't anything you can

01:31:39.300 do to empower people which is a word i hate more effectively than to teach them how to be deeply literate

01:31:44.660 and historically knowledgeable if you're looking to facilitate people's ability to make positive

01:31:50.500 changes in their own life there is nothing you can do that's more helpful to that than to make them

01:31:55.380 literate and if you want to help them understand who they are in the deepest sense over and above the

01:32:01.060 superficial attractions of tribalism let's say you have to educate them deeply in this historical uh uh realm

01:32:09.300 that requires the acquisition of explicit knowledge about the central nature of the human being

01:32:14.500 and that would be the distinguished citizen let's say someone capable of of of upholding the

01:32:20.500 responsibilities of a citizen and someone worthy of the rights that are part and parcel of that

01:32:26.020 and without a deep humanities education all of that disappears because it has to be transmitted

01:32:31.620 explicitly and so that was the proper role of the universities for years it was as i envision it our role was

01:32:39.540 twofold that we were going to teach a method the inductive method as opposed to the deductive method

01:32:45.060 so that people when they looked at the human experience via art or literature or history they

01:32:52.100 would look at exempla and then they would come to a general overriding conclusion that took it took the

01:32:58.340 evidence rather than say i have an idea and i'm going to cherry pick the evidence that was one thing that we

01:33:03.860 taught the socratic inductive metaphor the other was we had to give them some kind of arsenal or

01:33:09.620 or realm of knowledge or referent points so i know i used to i used to xerox maybe 500 terms

01:33:18.980 ionic order or non-compos mentes anything i could give uh as an architecture and then we everybody made fun of

01:33:28.580 multiply we had mostly essay tests but i always thought there was a value in a multi

01:33:34.660 choice test and key dates generals i would always say to the student when you leave right when you

01:33:40.420 leave here i want you to know how far sparta is from athens i want you to give me three reasons

01:33:45.140 quickly why the mycenian empire collapsed and it was funny because graduate some of our students would

01:33:52.580 sit in on interviews from ivy league professors and they would ask these questions and these professors

01:33:59.220 i should say abds didn't have any answers for them they had no practical knowledge and then one

01:34:05.620 student said to me well why are we doing this and i said well it's so that you don't have to repeat

01:34:12.580 every life every life experience you have you're going to learn what is wise and stupid by experience and

01:34:21.060 often that experience is going to be deleterious to your character or your fortune but you don't have

01:34:26.500 to be fatal yeah you don't have to do that all the time if you think that sometimes people who are

01:34:32.340 right or punished or the more moral a person is the more that he's hated it's not you alone that

01:34:38.980 experiences that you can you don't have to you can find comfort in antigone or if you can say the race

01:34:44.900 goes not to the swift and why and how the students came in and he said you know what i'm the best tackle on

01:34:51.780 the team but i never get a chance to play because i don't kiss up and i said then you're old ajax

01:34:58.900 and what are you going to do about but that's the dilemma of ajax and the sophoclean play so

01:35:03.700 that was some of some of the things in a more pragmatic sense the humanities were able to do

01:35:08.740 they were able to give a person a whole reference of knowledge so that they didn't have to live out

01:35:13.700 and learn something by rote or by they had an example and the other thing is it gave them a

01:35:20.660 sense of yeah well that's not that's not optional that's not optional for human beings i mean we are

01:35:27.460 linguistic creatures and we require an awful lot of cultural programming i think we do and every culture

01:35:32.980 knows that and so you you definitely you were definitely in the situation where if we don't

01:35:38.260 inculcate the wisdom of the past into our young people then they are forced to regenerate that

01:35:43.940 wisdom through painful and often fatal experience those are the options and to study history and the

01:35:50.100 humanities is to arm yourself against the sea of troubles and to become literate and the and that is

01:35:55.540 the core of the universities and the universities have definitely abandoned that in the favor of this

01:36:00.660 idiot narrative you know here's something you might find interesting so i did a research study with one

01:36:05.780 of my students just before i was basically you know kicked out of the university for being persona

01:36:11.060 non gratis and uh we we investigated two uh mysteries the first was was there a coherent set

01:36:19.620 of beliefs that you could describe as politically correct and the way we investigated that was to

01:36:25.060 produce a very large body of political statements and then to find out the degree to which people

01:36:32.180 agreed with them and then to analyze them statistically to see if there were patterns of belief and we found

01:36:38.580 two patterns of belief that were obviously commensurate with the notion of a politically correct set of

01:36:44.020 beliefs and one of them was like a politically correct liberalism and the other was politically correct

01:36:48.740 authoritarianism and there's been quite a bit of research on the psychological front with regards to

01:36:53.540 politically correct authoritarianism in recent years so first of all there is such a thing

01:36:58.100 as politically correct beliefs and there's an authoritarian version but then you might also ask

01:37:02.340 yourself what predicts whether or not people will believe these theories you know what the biggest predictor

01:37:08.340 was this is so horrible it was low verbal intelligence it was more it was more it was a bigger predictor

01:37:16.820 than than verbal intelligence is a predictor of grades or socioeconomic outcome it was 0.45 a correlation

01:37:25.620 whose magnitude you never get in a social science study a walloping effect and then the subsidiary

01:37:32.260 predictors were being female was one of them being agreeable in temperament which is a feminine

01:37:38.820 personality temperament and then having taken any courses that were essentially propagandistic in nature

01:37:45.300 and so part of the reason that people fall fall for these this simplistic set of ideas is because

01:37:52.180 well they are simple and they they they're very attractive to people who want or require

01:37:59.780 a unidimensional view of the world at in light of both of its simplicity let's say but also its

01:38:06.660 underlying proclivity also to identify a convenient enemy i think that's true i i i had a student

01:38:11.860 i i i i mentioned it in the dying citizen but i had a student who once said to me well you know

01:38:17.700 this country is very unfair because wyoming

01:38:23.620 has one senator i think at the time it was for 200 000 400 000 residents and california at that time

01:38:31.220 we were 30 million now it's 41 but we have to have 15 million people we only get one senator and i said now

01:38:38.100 why would that be and he said because the founders were not democratic i said yes but why weren't they

01:38:44.340 fully democratic and do you have the house was going to be elected every the whole house flips every two

01:38:51.380 years it represents 750 000 people so it is democratic but it's balanced by the senate that flips every

01:39:00.500 three year i mean one third only flips every two years you have to be older it uh it represents

01:39:06.740 states it it's the it's america as defined by the individual 50 states not the people that's the house

01:39:13.860 and this then is balanced by the executive and the person was so arrogant because he was so ignorant

01:39:21.060 but he had got this catchphrase in his mind that democrat america's a democracy and therefore the

01:39:27.140 senate's not democratic and then so i was very interested in this and so i went when i was doing the

01:39:33.380 i didn't realize there was a whole body of scholarly literature attacking the senate from law schools and

01:39:40.740 from political science departments the senate is sort of the the last target of the left they're trying to change it there's a whole

01:39:48.260 a whole body of research showing just how toxic and conservative and anti-liberal it is because it

01:39:56.900 doesn't represent people it represents states and that the representatives in some states senators in some

01:40:04.340 states have larger constituencies and senate and the other and the supreme court has already ruled one man

01:40:11.220 one vote as it pertains to house districts and therefore it must rule that the senate uh each senator

01:40:18.100 must be proportionally equal yeah well you know it it's not that look you can see that the idea of

01:40:28.020 a distributed democracy has an instantaneous intuitive appeal it takes a lot of sophisticated thinking

01:40:34.980 before you can understand that there have to be intermediary institutions right and part of the

01:40:39.780 purpose of a humanities education was to give people that wisdom say look the problem with radical

01:40:46.500 democracy is that it can degenerate into rule by the mob like impulse of rule by the mob and that's

01:40:52.740 the danger of populism for example of an untrammeled populism and so you need intermediary institutions

01:40:58.900 you can kill socrates and they have to be set up vote to kill socrates by a majority vote on the court or

01:41:05.380 you can vote to kill all the middle indians on monday and then decide the next day you don't want to do it

01:41:10.420 and send a ship after the first trireme because the entire assembly has flipped in 24 hours

01:41:17.220 from being murderous to semi-murderous and that was what our founders knew that it was

01:41:22.340 very dangerous but that knowledge is completely absent in this younger generation because they're

01:41:29.540 the the sources of that transmission in history departments or political science departments or

01:41:34.500 government department is not there anymore and it's not there at k through 12 there is no civic

01:41:39.620 education anymore there's no body of music and art and tradition and literature and poetry

01:41:46.020 that each do their part to make a citizen aware of how unique the system was and so that's what i

01:41:52.500 find really frightening is this collective amnesia in this generation as this generation especially

01:41:59.140 it's it took a long time but this generation is the first that i've been aware of that is completely

01:42:04.660 amnesiac about the past it it hates the past it feels that history's melodrama

01:42:14.180 yeah those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it and so that was the role of the university so

01:42:19.540 look we've we've used up our 90 minutes of time here on youtube we didn't get to talk about donald trump

01:42:25.300 too much but maybe we'll have an opportunity to do that again in the future we did cover a fair bit of

01:42:31.140 territory in relationship to the idea of citizenship and the role of the universities and so i think

01:42:36.180 that was useful and apt and i do believe that you know there are stellar opportunities on the

01:42:41.540 educational front at the moment as the responsibility for proper education is abdicated by the universities

01:42:47.860 there's an economic opportunity and a conceptual opportunity and you know the us is a pretty damn

01:42:53.300 dynamic place on the entrepreneurial front and it certainly might be the case that new institutions

01:42:58.500 will arise to fill the void that's left by the universities as they collapse and it might be

01:43:04.340 that places like hillsdale are on the forefront of that we'll see how that happens um thank you

01:43:09.460 very much for agreeing to talk to me today and to all of you who are watching and listening on youtube and

01:43:15.460 associated podcasts i'm going to talk to dr hansen for another half an hour on the daily wire plus

01:43:21.060 platform i like to delve into people's biographies to see how their career got its start and how it

01:43:25.540 developed across time and so we'll delve into that and it's a pleasure meeting you sir and thank you

01:43:30.500 very much for agreeing to talk to me and to everyone else today and uh happy new year to you and we'll

01:43:35.460 flip over to the daily wire plus side goodbye everybody who's watching and listening hello everyone

01:43:42.100 i would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - January 23, 2023

325. The Downfall of the Ivy League ｜ Victor Davis Hanson

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