The Megyn Kelly Show - May 19, 2022


Cultural Backlash Against Truth, and Pawns in Political Games, with Glenn Loury and Rob Montz | Ep. 325


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 34 minutes

Words per Minute

175.90373

Word Count

16,684

Sentence Count

1,067

Misogynist Sentences

15

Hate Speech Sentences

43


Summary

Roland Fryer was a brilliant economist who had his life's work destroyed in the wake of the shooting of a police officer in Buffalo, New York. Megyn talks to Brown University economist Glenn Lowry and filmmaker Rob Montz about what happened to him, and why it happened. Plus, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's deep point about politicization.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.
00:00:02.860 Someone is trying to frame us.
00:00:05.160 Until our names are cleared.
00:00:07.720 We're fugitives from Interpol.
00:00:09.480 Like Bonnie and Clyde with better snacks.
00:00:12.880 Espionage?
00:00:13.560 You still as good a shot as you used to be?
00:00:16.600 Better.
00:00:17.400 Is there love language?
00:00:18.860 We like to walk that fine line between techno-thriller
00:00:21.380 and romantic comedy.
00:00:24.180 We make up our own rules.
00:00:25.940 NCIS Tony and Ziva.
00:00:27.400 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.
00:00:30.660 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:32.540 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:41.440 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
00:00:43.140 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:44.700 I'm excited about today's program
00:00:46.040 because we are bringing back
00:00:47.120 one of my very favorite guests of all time.
00:00:49.860 And what a day for him to be here.
00:00:52.080 These days it seems like the cancel-culture vultures
00:00:54.180 are coming for anyone and everyone.
00:00:56.420 We have witnessed people being silenced for their politics,
00:00:59.200 alleged misdeeds,
00:01:01.180 even their stance on issues that just don't fit the narrative
00:01:04.480 that some are trying to sell.
00:01:06.920 And today we're going to discuss one such person.
00:01:09.200 A brilliant economist who had his life's work destroyed.
00:01:13.760 We are also keeping tabs on the fallout
00:01:15.720 from the horrific shooting in Buffalo.
00:01:17.940 Even that attack has turned into an effort
00:01:19.740 to silence certain voices.
00:01:21.580 Those, of course, all on the right.
00:01:23.660 But are there critics telling the truth?
00:01:25.400 More on that in a moment.
00:01:27.300 First, though, I want to welcome
00:01:28.320 Brown University economist Glenn Lowry back to the show.
00:01:32.400 And also joining us today is Rob Montz.
00:01:35.160 Rob's a filmmaker and CEO of Good Kid Productions.
00:01:38.760 And there's a reason we have them both on together.
00:01:45.440 Glenn and Rob, thanks so much for being here.
00:01:47.560 Thanks, Megyn.
00:01:48.740 Thank you so much for having me.
00:01:50.400 It's our pleasure.
00:01:51.100 All right, so you guys have taken a deep dive
00:01:54.060 into what happened to Roland Fryer.
00:01:57.880 And I want to get into all of it.
00:01:59.780 We're going to spend a lot of time on the movie
00:02:01.180 and clips and so on and deconstruct it
00:02:03.060 because it's horrifying.
00:02:04.540 It's horrifying what was done to this brilliant.
00:02:07.460 Glenn says he's the most brilliant economist
00:02:10.240 of his generation.
00:02:11.180 And Glenn is an economist.
00:02:12.660 And so he understands that.
00:02:14.740 And his life has been ruined
00:02:16.720 because of well-founded research
00:02:19.200 that doesn't go along with the sort of BLM narratives
00:02:22.520 that the left is pushing
00:02:24.120 and that Harvard, the university
00:02:25.280 where Roland Fryer works as a professor, is pushing.
00:02:27.800 So they've decided to ruin the man's life.
00:02:30.020 That's where we're going to go
00:02:30.880 with Glenn and Rob in a minute.
00:02:32.140 But I want to start with news of the day
00:02:33.300 because there's a lot of it.
00:02:34.920 Glenn, I've been dying to get your take
00:02:36.000 on what happened in Buffalo
00:02:38.320 and the reaction thereafter.
00:02:41.620 Ayaan Hirsi Ali had an op-ed this week
00:02:44.020 talking about how a group of folks
00:02:47.440 gathered together over the weekend.
00:02:49.460 And I believe she said you were one of them
00:02:50.880 talking about Buffalo,
00:02:53.140 talking about what's happening in Black America
00:02:55.900 and that, you know, the consensus there
00:02:59.620 was not it's the fault of Republicans.
00:03:03.580 It's a lot more complex.
00:03:05.420 And they can see this being split
00:03:07.900 into a question of good and evil
00:03:09.980 by the Democrats.
00:03:11.960 And that she, Ayaan, excuse me,
00:03:13.640 Ayaan was saying,
00:03:14.440 it's hard for me to be pressured
00:03:16.460 into joining the so-called good side
00:03:18.580 when they're clearly using my color,
00:03:22.640 my race,
00:03:24.160 and that of fellow Black Americans
00:03:25.920 to divide us for political purposes.
00:03:30.300 What do you make of it?
00:03:32.080 I hadn't heard Ayaan.
00:03:33.640 We were together at the Old Parkland Conference
00:03:37.180 in Dallas,
00:03:39.880 actually celebrating the career
00:03:42.900 of the great economist Thomas Sowell
00:03:46.240 and the ongoing career
00:03:48.880 of the great jurist Clarence Thomas.
00:03:52.300 The Genesis was a reprise
00:03:55.100 of the 1980 conference
00:03:57.280 called the Fairmont Conference
00:03:58.460 in San Francisco
00:03:59.260 that Tom Sowell had been instrumental
00:04:01.420 in fomenting
00:04:02.100 and which Clarence Thomas attended
00:04:04.360 all those years ago.
00:04:05.280 now kind of revisiting
00:04:07.780 the question really
00:04:08.960 of what does conservatism
00:04:10.920 have to say
00:04:11.780 to the Black condition,
00:04:15.240 to the challenges confronting
00:04:16.740 the African-American community.
00:04:18.640 Wonderful conference.
00:04:20.480 Buffalo.
00:04:22.620 And Ayaan's deep point
00:04:25.480 about the politicization.
00:04:27.380 Glenn Greenwald also,
00:04:28.740 I thought,
00:04:29.500 had a very strong piece
00:04:30.460 on this very same theme.
00:04:32.780 I think,
00:04:35.680 gosh,
00:04:36.240 first of all,
00:04:36.600 you have to say
00:04:37.120 what a tragedy
00:04:37.780 and what a horrific crime
00:04:39.360 and et cetera.
00:04:40.280 And I think you have to nod
00:04:41.660 more than nod
00:04:42.980 to the concern
00:04:44.480 about extremism
00:04:45.700 of which
00:04:46.680 that particular act
00:04:48.100 is exemplary.
00:04:49.860 But I think Glenn Greenwald
00:04:51.520 gets it right
00:04:52.380 when he says
00:04:53.340 that you don't,
00:04:55.980 if a crazy person
00:04:57.460 does an evil thing
00:04:58.440 and they adopt an ideology,
00:04:59.940 you don't assume
00:05:00.760 that the people,
00:05:01.380 anyone else who holds
00:05:02.600 that ideology
00:05:03.220 is responsible
00:05:03.880 for the act of that person.
00:05:05.440 And he pointed out
00:05:06.140 how acts
00:05:08.520 on the left
00:05:09.980 of the spectrum
00:05:10.740 that are violent,
00:05:11.920 like the shooting
00:05:12.900 of Congressman Scalise
00:05:14.380 or the murder
00:05:16.860 of police officers
00:05:17.880 by people
00:05:18.460 who are animated
00:05:19.100 by Black Lives Matter
00:05:20.400 ideology,
00:05:21.320 you don't.
00:05:22.060 And it would be a mistake.
00:05:23.000 It would be irrational.
00:05:23.780 It would be immoral
00:05:24.540 to impute responsibility
00:05:26.320 for that
00:05:26.880 to the people
00:05:27.360 who might have
00:05:28.520 adopted the ideology
00:05:30.020 and promulgated it,
00:05:31.140 which inspired
00:05:32.020 the killer.
00:05:34.080 But I think
00:05:34.840 the politicization
00:05:35.880 of these issues,
00:05:37.040 I think the President
00:05:37.740 of the United States
00:05:38.500 would respect
00:05:39.180 taking,
00:05:43.780 you know,
00:05:43.960 what do they call it,
00:05:44.620 the replacement theory
00:05:45.440 and then Tucker Carlson,
00:05:46.720 I won't go on at length,
00:05:47.600 Megan,
00:05:47.760 I know I'm going on at length,
00:05:49.260 is supposed to be responsible
00:05:50.740 for this activity.
00:05:52.720 And meanwhile,
00:05:53.380 what they're really doing
00:05:54.800 is telling you
00:05:55.320 you can't discuss
00:05:56.160 the issue
00:05:56.900 of the security
00:05:57.580 of the country
00:05:58.200 and who comes
00:05:58.640 across the border.
00:06:00.000 So I very much identify
00:06:04.160 with Ayaan Hirsi Ali's
00:06:07.040 point that
00:06:08.220 I don't want to be
00:06:09.880 a pawn in your game.
00:06:11.020 I don't want
00:06:11.520 the great legacy
00:06:13.380 and struggle
00:06:13.840 of African Americans
00:06:14.580 in this country,
00:06:15.940 of which Roland Frye's
00:06:17.240 triumph is exemplary,
00:06:20.180 to be tarnished
00:06:21.180 by being appropriated,
00:06:22.340 making us pawns
00:06:23.180 on a chessboard
00:06:23.960 of some kind
00:06:24.460 of political thing.
00:06:25.520 So they're going to,
00:06:26.500 you know,
00:06:26.740 they're going to say
00:06:27.200 it's Trump.
00:06:28.160 They're going to say
00:06:28.620 at the end of the day,
00:06:29.280 you know,
00:06:29.520 there's an election coming.
00:06:30.480 2024 is coming.
00:06:31.680 There's an election coming.
00:06:32.700 2022 is coming.
00:06:34.260 They're trying to defeat
00:06:35.560 the expression
00:06:36.600 of a certain revulsion
00:06:37.840 at what the liberals
00:06:38.820 and their intellectual
00:06:40.560 handmakers have wrought
00:06:41.740 by putting this racist
00:06:44.060 label on it.
00:06:44.820 And frankly,
00:06:46.040 my prediction is
00:06:46.920 it's not going to work.
00:06:49.060 They've been touting
00:06:49.940 this great replacement theory
00:06:51.240 as this Republican
00:06:52.240 spun narrative
00:06:53.020 that's made its way
00:06:54.200 into the head
00:06:54.780 of crazies
00:06:55.500 like this shooter
00:06:56.260 in Buffalo.
00:06:58.340 Meanwhile,
00:06:59.420 you know,
00:06:59.660 the actual
00:07:00.400 great replacement theory,
00:07:01.880 quote unquote,
00:07:02.800 that this shooter
00:07:03.820 was reading on
00:07:05.280 and espousing on
00:07:06.500 in his so-called manifesto
00:07:08.700 is this bizarre theory
00:07:10.660 that there's some
00:07:11.620 elite cabal
00:07:12.640 of Jewish people
00:07:13.500 who are trying
00:07:14.640 to eliminate
00:07:15.180 the white race
00:07:16.120 by increasing
00:07:17.980 the black population
00:07:18.960 and the mixed race
00:07:20.640 population.
00:07:21.360 All right.
00:07:21.520 Like lunacy.
00:07:22.280 OK, that's crazy talk.
00:07:23.220 And that's what the great
00:07:23.820 replacement theory is.
00:07:25.200 What Republicans,
00:07:26.600 including Tucker,
00:07:27.700 talk about on his show
00:07:29.180 and elsewhere is
00:07:30.080 are we ever going to
00:07:31.240 close the southern border
00:07:32.140 and are Democrats
00:07:34.160 wanting a sieve
00:07:35.400 of a border
00:07:35.900 because they want to
00:07:36.560 increase the ranks
00:07:37.900 of immigrants
00:07:38.320 in the country
00:07:38.860 who they think,
00:07:39.860 rightly or wrongly,
00:07:40.860 are going to vote Democrat?
00:07:42.360 That it's it's not
00:07:43.260 the same thing.
00:07:44.080 And what we've heard
00:07:45.060 over the past four days
00:07:46.100 is they're sisters,
00:07:48.960 they're sister narratives
00:07:50.200 and there's too much
00:07:51.380 crossover
00:07:51.940 and it's irresponsible
00:07:53.120 and you know it.
00:07:54.880 And in the past few days,
00:07:56.880 a lot of folks,
00:07:57.740 Tucker, Gravy
00:07:58.440 and a lot of great people
00:07:59.340 who put together
00:07:59.940 like sort of
00:08:00.520 butted soundbites
00:08:01.300 have put together
00:08:02.760 soundbites of the left.
00:08:04.360 The left pushing
00:08:05.660 demographics are key,
00:08:08.620 you know,
00:08:08.820 that super focused
00:08:10.260 on how demographics
00:08:12.120 are destiny.
00:08:13.220 That's how Joe Scarborough
00:08:14.160 put it
00:08:14.600 and how the demographics
00:08:15.620 of the country
00:08:16.400 are changing
00:08:17.060 and how wonderful
00:08:17.800 this is.
00:08:18.340 And talking about
00:08:19.440 immigration
00:08:19.960 in those terms,
00:08:21.600 this is what Tucker
00:08:22.180 said when he came
00:08:22.740 on my show
00:08:23.160 in September.
00:08:24.180 He was like,
00:08:24.960 it's the left
00:08:25.500 that talks about this,
00:08:26.640 which is why
00:08:27.000 I talk about it.
00:08:28.300 And then they look
00:08:28.980 at me and say,
00:08:29.520 well, how dare you
00:08:30.000 talk about this?
00:08:30.940 Well, you put it
00:08:31.920 out there.
00:08:32.740 Here's just a bit
00:08:33.380 of the soundbite
00:08:34.040 Tucker ran the other
00:08:35.100 night on his show.
00:08:37.720 Blue Wave is
00:08:38.780 African-American.
00:08:41.760 It's white,
00:08:42.480 it's Latino,
00:08:43.240 it's Asian Pacific Islander.
00:08:44.540 It is made up
00:08:45.440 of those
00:08:45.880 who've been told
00:08:46.480 that they are not
00:08:47.220 worthy of being here.
00:08:49.100 It is comprised
00:08:50.100 of those
00:08:50.460 who are documented
00:08:51.240 and undocumented.
00:08:52.380 In a couple
00:08:52.880 of presidential cycles,
00:08:54.120 you'll be on election night,
00:08:55.760 you'll be announcing
00:08:56.500 that we're calling
00:08:57.280 the 38 electoral votes
00:08:58.800 of Texas
00:08:59.280 for the Democratic
00:09:00.280 nominee for president.
00:09:01.700 It's changing,
00:09:02.800 it's going to become
00:09:03.360 a purple state
00:09:04.080 and then a blue state
00:09:05.080 because of the demographics.
00:09:06.640 The demographics
00:09:07.380 of America
00:09:08.040 are not on the side
00:09:09.140 of the Republican Party.
00:09:11.060 The new voters
00:09:12.120 in this country
00:09:12.880 are moving away
00:09:13.920 from them
00:09:14.460 and instead
00:09:15.940 they're moving
00:09:16.760 to be independents
00:09:18.340 or to even vote
00:09:19.140 on the other side.
00:09:20.440 An unrelenting
00:09:21.480 stream of immigration.
00:09:23.940 Non-stop.
00:09:25.280 Non-stop.
00:09:27.340 Folks like me
00:09:28.440 who are Caucasian
00:09:30.160 of European descent
00:09:31.200 for the first time
00:09:32.880 in 2017
00:09:33.920 will be in an
00:09:34.840 absolute minority
00:09:35.980 in the United States
00:09:37.380 of America.
00:09:38.580 Absolute minority.
00:09:40.580 Fewer than 50%
00:09:41.880 of the people
00:09:42.440 in America
00:09:43.000 from then
00:09:44.000 and on
00:09:44.700 will be
00:09:46.200 white European
00:09:47.840 stock.
00:09:48.800 That's not a bad thing.
00:09:50.500 That's a source
00:09:51.540 of our strength.
00:09:53.680 What do you make
00:09:54.460 of it, Glenn?
00:09:56.340 Well,
00:09:56.980 I shouldn't be laughing
00:09:57.820 because it is
00:09:58.480 a very serious matter.
00:10:00.020 But the irony
00:10:01.000 is just almost
00:10:02.120 unbearable.
00:10:03.040 The irony here
00:10:04.080 is so exquisite.
00:10:05.940 So,
00:10:06.420 we are a country
00:10:07.580 where congressional
00:10:08.700 districts are drawn
00:10:10.360 with the intention
00:10:12.560 of assimilating
00:10:14.560 ethnically identified,
00:10:16.740 that is,
00:10:17.040 African-American
00:10:17.720 majorities
00:10:18.680 for the purpose
00:10:19.800 of electing,
00:10:21.740 et cetera.
00:10:22.720 I mean,
00:10:23.360 people are counting
00:10:25.120 by race
00:10:25.840 everywhere you look
00:10:27.060 and everywhere you turn.
00:10:28.180 And moreover,
00:10:28.960 the Democratic Party
00:10:30.020 does indeed
00:10:31.680 count on
00:10:32.580 the demographic
00:10:35.300 weight in order
00:10:36.400 to secure
00:10:37.540 its coalition
00:10:38.980 built around
00:10:40.600 ideas of ethnic
00:10:42.140 and racial difference.
00:10:43.500 So then,
00:10:43.900 if somebody calls
00:10:44.680 attention
00:10:45.400 to the relationship
00:10:49.060 between those things,
00:10:50.480 they're supposed
00:10:51.020 to be the racists.
00:10:51.740 who's really,
00:10:53.640 who really started this?
00:10:57.200 I have made the point
00:10:58.420 on this show
00:10:58.960 repeatedly,
00:10:59.720 this week
00:11:00.320 and prior,
00:11:01.580 that we,
00:11:02.500 there's a massive problem
00:11:04.080 with mental health
00:11:04.680 in America,
00:11:05.080 but it's not,
00:11:05.780 it's not the one
00:11:06.400 the administration
00:11:06.880 is looking at.
00:11:07.780 It's the fact that
00:11:08.600 right now,
00:11:09.500 if you know you're
00:11:09.980 raising a child
00:11:10.660 who happens to be
00:11:11.580 a sociopath,
00:11:12.600 and there are mothers
00:11:13.760 and fathers out there
00:11:14.860 right now
00:11:15.520 who know
00:11:16.140 that they are,
00:11:17.780 there's nothing
00:11:18.340 to do with them.
00:11:19.340 There's no place
00:11:19.800 to put them.
00:11:20.560 They can't be
00:11:20.960 therapized out of
00:11:21.840 being a sociopath
00:11:22.940 and unless they break
00:11:24.660 the law,
00:11:25.040 you can't get them
00:11:25.560 in the criminal justice system
00:11:26.520 where the parents
00:11:27.040 don't want them anyway.
00:11:28.040 There's no secure facility
00:11:29.120 where a loving parent
00:11:30.040 would send his or her child.
00:11:31.340 You know what I mean?
00:11:32.060 There's one place
00:11:32.800 and I think Michigan
00:11:33.420 called Nemours,
00:11:34.320 which is as close
00:11:36.320 as we have,
00:11:37.040 but it's still too barbaric
00:11:38.600 for most loving parents
00:11:39.460 to say,
00:11:39.800 I want,
00:11:40.080 my kid needs to go there.
00:11:41.360 He's,
00:11:41.700 he's torturing animals.
00:11:43.480 He's hurting
00:11:44.040 his little brother and sister.
00:11:45.720 You know,
00:11:46.020 a school shooting is next
00:11:47.100 and those mothers
00:11:47.820 are out there.
00:11:48.380 I've interviewed them.
00:11:49.120 So nobody will pay
00:11:51.360 attention to this.
00:11:52.100 And when we have
00:11:52.480 these massive shootings,
00:11:53.340 you say,
00:11:53.620 oh,
00:11:53.700 there were red flags,
00:11:54.460 red flags all over this kid.
00:11:55.980 Oh,
00:11:56.340 well,
00:11:56.900 you know,
00:11:57.280 what are we going to do?
00:11:58.000 And that's happening again,
00:11:59.780 Glenn.
00:12:00.040 That is happening again.
00:12:00.860 Joe Biden,
00:12:01.360 when he spoke to this this week,
00:12:02.500 came out and said,
00:12:03.800 there are things we can do.
00:12:06.000 There are things we can do.
00:12:07.060 Number one,
00:12:08.040 we got to get rid of the guns.
00:12:09.880 Okay,
00:12:10.200 we need an assault weapons ban.
00:12:11.580 It worked before.
00:12:12.460 Okay,
00:12:12.820 that's at best to give Joe Biden
00:12:14.380 the kindest interpretation
00:12:15.600 of the assault weapons ban.
00:12:17.360 Mixed results
00:12:18.120 to be as kind to him as possible.
00:12:20.340 I could cite you a slew of studies
00:12:21.520 saying it didn't work at all
00:12:22.480 and the shootings went up.
00:12:24.440 Okay,
00:12:24.860 but anyway,
00:12:26.060 number one,
00:12:26.640 the guns.
00:12:27.080 Number two,
00:12:28.280 messaging on the internet.
00:12:30.580 Okay,
00:12:30.960 so we're going to crack down
00:12:31.620 on the second amendment.
00:12:32.440 We're going to crack down
00:12:32.960 on the first amendment.
00:12:34.360 Mental health.
00:12:35.740 Okay,
00:12:36.540 no,
00:12:36.980 not really on the list
00:12:38.120 because here's what
00:12:39.000 his new spokesperson,
00:12:40.460 Karine Jean-Pierre,
00:12:41.200 when asked about mental health,
00:12:42.460 by the Washington Post,
00:12:44.100 right?
00:12:44.240 This is not Fox News
00:12:45.020 putting this one to her
00:12:46.040 about how this kid
00:12:47.080 had marked problems
00:12:48.940 well prior to this shooting,
00:12:50.180 but yet still got a gun.
00:12:51.720 Fair question.
00:12:52.400 How did it happen?
00:12:53.200 One of the things
00:12:53.740 we need to be looking into.
00:12:55.880 She takes umbrage
00:12:57.040 at the fact that mental health
00:12:58.700 is even being interjected
00:13:00.780 into this.
00:13:01.720 Here's a bit of that exchange.
00:13:04.060 He did have a history
00:13:05.220 of mental health issues
00:13:07.020 and was held
00:13:07.620 for an evaluation last year.
00:13:09.440 So does the White House
00:13:10.140 believe he should have been
00:13:10.920 prevented from owning a gun
00:13:12.020 because of that history
00:13:13.000 and how does the administration
00:13:14.240 propose doing so
00:13:15.200 in the future?
00:13:15.940 So just give me a second
00:13:16.900 because I really want
00:13:18.020 to touch on this.
00:13:18.800 It's really important.
00:13:20.040 Our nation is facing
00:13:21.320 a mental health crisis,
00:13:22.360 so it's important
00:13:23.700 to call that
00:13:24.520 one that is worsened
00:13:26.060 by acts of violence
00:13:27.220 like the one
00:13:27.980 we saw in Buffalo.
00:13:29.260 I want to also underscore
00:13:30.560 that the overwhelming
00:13:31.900 majority of individuals
00:13:33.340 with mental health problems
00:13:34.900 do not commit
00:13:36.620 acts of violence.
00:13:37.620 violence and so comments
00:13:39.540 that make this
00:13:40.280 about mental health
00:13:41.300 only further
00:13:42.120 stigmatizing mental health
00:13:44.480 issues and detract
00:13:45.560 from the other issues
00:13:46.780 like gun violence
00:13:47.860 that must be confronted
00:13:50.420 in our society.
00:13:51.280 So just want to make
00:13:52.020 that clear that we are
00:13:52.820 not stigmatizing.
00:13:54.400 I mean, look,
00:13:56.380 this goes back
00:13:57.480 to making sure
00:13:58.380 that we have gun reform.
00:14:01.900 It's all about the guns, Glenn.
00:14:03.660 She can't even spend
00:14:04.820 a minute on this guy's
00:14:07.280 mental health problems.
00:14:08.060 And let me just tick off
00:14:09.020 a couple of them for you
00:14:09.900 because I think these
00:14:10.420 have been undercovered.
00:14:11.820 One year before the shooting,
00:14:12.700 this kid said,
00:14:13.240 I want to commit murder suicide.
00:14:14.680 There was a police investigation.
00:14:15.840 They took him to a hospital.
00:14:17.100 He underwent a psych eval
00:14:18.500 but was released,
00:14:19.740 possibly because he had not
00:14:20.740 made a specific threat
00:14:21.640 against any individual.
00:14:22.900 Not clear, by the way,
00:14:23.880 why he was not red flagged
00:14:25.520 for purposes of getting a gun,
00:14:26.820 which he did thereafter.
00:14:28.080 We do need to look into that.
00:14:29.740 The shooter claimed
00:14:30.540 he had only been joking
00:14:31.580 in his in his remarks.
00:14:33.360 He wore a hazmat
00:14:34.400 to a school,
00:14:35.240 to his school for a week.
00:14:36.620 He wore a full hazmat suit
00:14:37.800 for a week in 2020.
00:14:39.540 And then here's the capper.
00:14:41.300 He this this is
00:14:42.140 it always goes down like this.
00:14:43.640 Trust me,
00:14:43.980 as somebody who's
00:14:44.340 interviewed these moms,
00:14:45.500 he beheaded a cat.
00:14:47.880 He once stabbed.
00:14:49.120 Forgive me.
00:14:49.480 This is graphic.
00:14:50.360 He once stabbed
00:14:51.160 and beheaded a cat.
00:14:52.140 He repeatedly stabbed it
00:14:53.160 and bashed its head in
00:14:54.080 before grabbing a hatchet
00:14:55.140 and cutting its head off.
00:14:56.340 He took meticulous notes on it.
00:14:57.900 New York Post reporting here.
00:14:59.460 This is from his
00:15:00.160 so-called manifesto
00:15:01.160 recording the time
00:15:02.040 at which blood spilled
00:15:03.000 from its mouth,
00:15:04.080 what knife he used
00:15:04.940 and how many times
00:15:05.920 he slashed its neck
00:15:06.960 until its head came off.
00:15:08.520 He said he felt
00:15:09.480 no empathy or emotion.
00:15:11.480 He told his mother
00:15:12.380 about it
00:15:13.100 and she said,
00:15:14.060 here's a box.
00:15:14.560 Go bury it in the backyard.
00:15:16.160 Talk about your red flags.
00:15:17.860 This guy was a
00:15:18.960 school shooter
00:15:19.940 or a mass shooter
00:15:21.000 waiting to happen.
00:15:22.640 But what we need
00:15:23.480 to focus on, Glenn,
00:15:24.900 is guns.
00:15:25.460 Well, I guess
00:15:29.180 you want to comment.
00:15:30.360 Yeah.
00:15:30.920 I mean,
00:15:31.400 I'm saddened in a way
00:15:33.400 by the politicization.
00:15:34.920 I mean,
00:15:35.060 obviously,
00:15:35.440 it's about control
00:15:36.440 of the narrative.
00:15:38.040 The narrative
00:15:38.640 could be mental health
00:15:40.180 because here's a person
00:15:42.020 who needed
00:15:42.580 to be dealt with
00:15:44.360 or who wasn't
00:15:45.340 effectively dealt with
00:15:46.260 or the narrative
00:15:46.720 could be about
00:15:47.260 white supremacy
00:15:47.900 or the narrative
00:15:49.300 could be about guns.
00:15:50.500 I mean,
00:15:50.800 obviously,
00:15:51.800 but it appeared
00:15:52.280 to be obvious
00:15:52.780 that if you took
00:15:53.420 a gun away from it,
00:15:54.220 you'd find some other tool
00:15:55.380 to carry out
00:15:56.960 the heinous acts
00:15:58.420 that his unstable mind
00:16:00.420 was promulgating,
00:16:01.820 contemplating,
00:16:03.220 I should say.
00:16:04.360 So, you know,
00:16:06.000 this is not about guns,
00:16:08.060 not really.
00:16:09.360 But is it about
00:16:10.420 white supremacy?
00:16:11.120 I think that's really
00:16:12.060 why the White House
00:16:14.100 press secretary
00:16:14.880 is reluctant
00:16:15.520 to give any space
00:16:16.700 to a discussion
00:16:17.320 about mental health.
00:16:18.640 And what saddens me
00:16:19.720 is that,
00:16:20.780 I mean,
00:16:21.040 as with so many
00:16:21.720 other things,
00:16:22.480 you know,
00:16:22.820 the dealing with
00:16:24.020 significant public health
00:16:25.620 and public policy
00:16:27.040 issues gets
00:16:28.000 held captive
00:16:29.120 to partisan politics.
00:16:32.320 So that's
00:16:33.000 what I see, Megan.
00:16:34.320 Rob,
00:16:34.640 can I ask you
00:16:35.200 as somebody
00:16:35.740 who actually,
00:16:36.600 as a documentary filmmaker,
00:16:37.900 one of the subjects
00:16:38.740 that you've focused on
00:16:40.120 has been Kanye West.
00:16:41.660 And I do not believe
00:16:43.800 the current claim
00:16:45.080 of let's be very careful
00:16:46.880 around the issue
00:16:47.560 of mental health.
00:16:48.340 We don't want to
00:16:48.720 stigmatize mental health
00:16:49.940 because boy,
00:16:51.320 oh boy,
00:16:52.040 were the Democrats
00:16:52.920 singing a different tune
00:16:54.180 when Kanye
00:16:55.080 visited the White House,
00:16:56.940 talked to Trump
00:16:57.760 and seemed to be embracing
00:16:59.260 MAGA type policies.
00:17:00.940 I heard a lot
00:17:01.820 from them
00:17:02.280 about how he was
00:17:03.700 off his rocker
00:17:04.660 and, you know,
00:17:05.640 not well
00:17:06.380 and we shouldn't be
00:17:06.880 listening to him
00:17:07.440 back then.
00:17:09.460 Yeah,
00:17:10.300 of course.
00:17:11.520 You know,
00:17:11.740 it's remarkable.
00:17:12.360 I just watched
00:17:13.320 the Netflix documentary
00:17:14.940 about Kanye
00:17:16.180 like maybe
00:17:17.040 three days ago.
00:17:17.940 Like I'm six months
00:17:18.780 behind the zeitgeist
00:17:19.760 because I have
00:17:20.340 three small children.
00:17:21.320 So forgive me
00:17:21.960 for like a dated reference.
00:17:23.180 And the very end
00:17:24.520 of the Kanye documentary
00:17:26.180 literally
00:17:26.620 is him watching
00:17:28.340 a Tucker Carlson monologue
00:17:30.300 about his infamous
00:17:32.640 presidential campaign event
00:17:35.420 in South Carolina.
00:17:37.060 And that you could tell
00:17:38.620 from the filmmaker,
00:17:39.960 from the voiceover
00:17:41.280 from the filmmaker
00:17:42.020 that Kanye West
00:17:43.980 watching and approving
00:17:45.640 of a Tucker Carlson monologue
00:17:47.440 is definitionally evidence
00:17:49.520 that he's insane.
00:17:50.760 And they have
00:17:52.220 the whole thing.
00:17:53.360 But as you watch it,
00:17:55.220 basically,
00:17:56.320 Tucker makes
00:17:57.300 very similar points
00:17:58.560 to what Glenn
00:17:59.640 and I made
00:18:00.280 in our documentary
00:18:01.180 about Kanye's
00:18:02.520 run for president
00:18:03.200 where he very
00:18:04.700 cleanly says
00:18:06.380 like,
00:18:07.040 okay,
00:18:07.440 Kanye might
00:18:08.380 have some
00:18:09.900 excessive dragon energy.
00:18:11.520 He might have
00:18:12.040 some biochemical
00:18:13.600 imbalances.
00:18:14.500 But when he talks
00:18:16.340 about freedom
00:18:18.260 is not pornography
00:18:19.740 and it's not
00:18:21.060 gun violence
00:18:22.080 and freedom
00:18:23.560 is not abortion,
00:18:25.560 he can,
00:18:26.060 he could still be
00:18:26.860 saying something true.
00:18:27.960 And he could be
00:18:28.440 saying things
00:18:28.960 that are true
00:18:29.540 that most celebrities,
00:18:30.540 most people
00:18:31.080 in his position
00:18:31.680 would be absolutely
00:18:32.960 petrified to articulate.
00:18:34.640 Right?
00:18:34.780 And the documentary
00:18:36.260 that we did
00:18:37.060 about him
00:18:37.540 kind of goes
00:18:38.320 through a bunch
00:18:39.040 of his media
00:18:39.520 appearances
00:18:40.020 where if you,
00:18:41.420 the kind of,
00:18:42.580 what Kanye
00:18:42.960 would call
00:18:43.440 the simulation,
00:18:44.480 sort of the legacy
00:18:45.320 media interpretation
00:18:47.940 or narrative
00:18:48.620 spun around
00:18:49.440 those appearances
00:18:50.500 is that he's
00:18:51.600 mentally unstable
00:18:52.660 and he's crazy
00:18:53.300 and he needs
00:18:53.660 to be medicated
00:18:54.340 and he needs
00:18:54.720 to be institutionalized.
00:18:56.200 But then if you
00:18:57.040 actually watch
00:18:57.780 the specific
00:18:58.580 media appearances,
00:18:59.920 he will occasionally
00:19:01.080 snap into
00:19:02.280 incredibly eloquent
00:19:03.920 insights
00:19:04.500 and most of which,
00:19:06.300 most of his insights
00:19:07.340 like decimate
00:19:08.800 woke orthodoxy.
00:19:10.260 And then when this
00:19:11.260 happens over and over
00:19:12.080 again,
00:19:12.300 you begin to become
00:19:13.180 suspicious
00:19:13.680 that perhaps
00:19:15.040 people are
00:19:15.700 trying to,
00:19:16.700 are trying to
00:19:18.600 debunk him
00:19:19.140 through this
00:19:19.560 like mental health
00:19:20.420 storyline
00:19:21.160 as opposed to
00:19:22.620 letting people
00:19:23.600 see that he's
00:19:24.720 saying these truths
00:19:25.580 that are deeply
00:19:26.220 problematic for them
00:19:27.200 and deeply
00:19:27.540 uncomfortable for them.
00:19:28.680 My God,
00:19:29.080 I mean,
00:19:29.220 it parallels
00:19:29.980 perfectly,
00:19:31.180 dovetails perfectly
00:19:31.920 with your documentary
00:19:33.180 on Roland Fryer,
00:19:34.380 even though in
00:19:35.240 Roland's case,
00:19:35.880 the attack
00:19:36.300 wasn't mental health,
00:19:37.380 the attack was
00:19:38.100 some minor
00:19:39.840 alleged
00:19:41.160 Me Too type
00:19:42.900 behavior in the
00:19:43.840 form of like a few
00:19:44.620 off-color jokes
00:19:45.480 and allegedly a couple
00:19:46.620 of texts where he
00:19:47.360 got a little,
00:19:47.920 a little racy.
00:19:49.500 That's it.
00:19:50.440 Like not even accused,
00:19:51.660 nothing,
00:19:52.280 no touching,
00:19:53.140 no affair,
00:19:53.940 no sexual
00:19:54.980 exploitation.
00:19:55.580 Nothing.
00:19:56.140 They used a trumped
00:19:57.500 up Me Too thing
00:19:58.580 to try to take
00:19:59.720 down Roland
00:20:00.300 who,
00:20:01.260 because he was
00:20:01.880 doing what Kanye
00:20:02.480 was doing.
00:20:03.040 He's got a
00:20:03.860 heterodox message,
00:20:05.580 but he,
00:20:06.500 like you,
00:20:06.960 Glenn,
00:20:07.740 like all these
00:20:08.680 economists,
00:20:09.420 I love listening to
00:20:10.240 you guys because
00:20:10.820 you're in the world
00:20:11.760 of data.
00:20:12.640 And it's funny
00:20:13.320 because if you let
00:20:13.880 data drive the
00:20:14.820 narrative as opposed
00:20:15.640 to ideology,
00:20:17.360 you can get to
00:20:18.780 real truths.
00:20:19.760 You can get to
00:20:20.220 real action points
00:20:21.320 that could affect
00:20:22.020 change,
00:20:22.720 which you would
00:20:23.220 think that everybody
00:20:23.880 would celebrate,
00:20:25.180 but they didn't
00:20:26.020 in Roland's case
00:20:26.760 because it didn't
00:20:27.580 go along with,
00:20:28.600 quote,
00:20:28.800 the narrative.
00:20:30.280 And that brings me
00:20:31.300 to your documentary.
00:20:33.220 Okay.
00:20:33.800 So,
00:20:34.620 Glenn,
00:20:35.060 let me start
00:20:35.360 with this.
00:20:35.800 For people who
00:20:36.240 have never heard
00:20:36.660 the name Roland
00:20:37.160 Friar before,
00:20:37.900 who is Roland
00:20:38.460 Friar?
00:20:39.520 So,
00:20:40.060 Roland Friar is
00:20:40.680 a young,
00:20:41.320 in his 40s,
00:20:42.300 economist.
00:20:43.500 He's from Daytona
00:20:44.500 Beach,
00:20:45.500 Florida.
00:20:47.240 He did a PhD
00:20:48.140 at Penn State
00:20:50.180 University and a
00:20:51.180 postdoc at the
00:20:52.780 University of
00:20:53.280 Chicago.
00:20:54.140 He's a former
00:20:55.560 junior fellow of
00:20:56.480 the Harvard
00:20:56.840 Society of Fellows,
00:20:58.900 a professor,
00:20:59.840 the youngest
00:21:00.300 tenured Black
00:21:00.980 professor in the
00:21:01.640 history of Harvard
00:21:02.160 University of
00:21:02.800 Economics at
00:21:03.420 Harvard,
00:21:03.720 and the
00:21:05.700 director of a
00:21:06.560 research lab,
00:21:07.320 Ed Labs,
00:21:08.060 for which he has
00:21:09.140 raised nine
00:21:09.860 figures of
00:21:10.720 cumulative research
00:21:12.200 support to carry
00:21:13.140 off massive
00:21:14.420 social intervention
00:21:15.320 experiments trying
00:21:16.300 to understand how
00:21:17.780 to get kids,
00:21:19.000 poor,
00:21:19.340 disadvantaged kids
00:21:20.040 better educated
00:21:20.860 and to try to
00:21:21.960 understand what's
00:21:22.480 actually going on
00:21:23.180 on the streets of
00:21:24.180 our cities with
00:21:25.100 respect to violence
00:21:25.920 and interaction
00:21:26.520 between Blacks
00:21:27.220 and the police,
00:21:27.700 amongst many
00:21:29.080 other things.
00:21:30.540 I could go on.
00:21:31.400 He's the winner
00:21:31.800 of the Clark Medal,
00:21:32.920 which is the junior
00:21:33.600 Nobel Prize awarded
00:21:34.780 every year to the
00:21:35.560 best economists
00:21:36.320 under the age of
00:21:37.060 40 as judged
00:21:38.520 by the American
00:21:39.080 Economics Association
00:21:40.280 and a MacArthur
00:21:41.080 Genius Prize
00:21:41.840 and many other
00:21:42.900 things.
00:21:43.520 He is one of
00:21:44.880 the leading
00:21:45.960 Black and
00:21:47.360 American social
00:21:49.320 scientists of
00:21:50.800 his generation.
00:21:51.780 He is an
00:21:52.520 absolute superstar,
00:21:55.080 stellar,
00:21:55.780 path-breaking.
00:21:57.140 I've been in
00:21:57.620 Toulouse,
00:21:58.220 France,
00:21:58.620 and heard graduate
00:21:59.320 students at the
00:22:00.740 Toulouse University
00:22:02.700 Institute for
00:22:03.920 Advanced Studies
00:22:04.440 say,
00:22:04.700 I'm following
00:22:05.240 Roland Fryer's
00:22:05.920 papers.
00:22:06.160 They want me to
00:22:06.640 tell them what
00:22:07.100 Roland Fryer was
00:22:07.800 doing.
00:22:08.040 I wish I could
00:22:08.480 have done that.
00:22:09.420 So that's who
00:22:10.100 Roland Fryer is,
00:22:11.500 Megan.
00:22:11.620 Okay, so he's a
00:22:13.380 rising star in
00:22:15.280 intellectual circles,
00:22:16.260 in economic circles,
00:22:17.780 and he decides to
00:22:19.400 use his talents as
00:22:20.600 we just discussed
00:22:21.320 just to find
00:22:22.200 truths, just to
00:22:23.100 uncover truths.
00:22:23.920 In a way, it
00:22:24.680 reminds me a little
00:22:25.520 bit of Michael
00:22:26.940 Schellenberger,
00:22:28.180 who, that's kind
00:22:30.300 of what he's
00:22:30.820 doing.
00:22:31.180 Like, he takes
00:22:31.840 big topics like
00:22:32.740 climate change or
00:22:33.620 homelessness and
00:22:34.300 just like a
00:22:36.120 moss to the flame
00:22:37.080 will not be drawn
00:22:38.060 away from facts as
00:22:39.280 we can unearth
00:22:39.900 them irrespective of
00:22:41.280 ideology.
00:22:42.760 And that's what
00:22:43.480 Roland's like,
00:22:44.300 except with an
00:22:44.740 economics background.
00:22:45.440 So in the film,
00:22:47.800 there's a bit that
00:22:48.620 talks about one of
00:22:50.040 the many things that
00:22:51.000 may have ticked off
00:22:51.920 his superiors at
00:22:53.200 Harvard, and that
00:22:54.760 has to do with
00:22:55.660 looking into the
00:22:57.460 quote, economics of
00:22:58.680 acting white.
00:23:00.300 Here's a bit, it's
00:23:01.400 sound by nine.
00:23:03.860 Mounds of existing
00:23:04.780 research seemed to
00:23:06.040 debunk acting white by
00:23:07.320 simply asking top
00:23:08.740 students how popular
00:23:09.900 they were and
00:23:11.460 finding no social
00:23:12.760 penalty for doing
00:23:14.140 well in school.
00:23:16.160 Asking a 13-year-old
00:23:17.320 boy how popular
00:23:18.480 he is, it's like
00:23:19.240 asking him how much
00:23:20.000 sex he's having.
00:23:20.660 I mean, you're
00:23:21.000 going to get an
00:23:21.360 answer, but it's
00:23:22.160 probably not going
00:23:22.700 to be the right
00:23:23.140 one.
00:23:26.560 Roland comes up
00:23:27.620 with a different
00:23:28.380 way to measure
00:23:29.500 popularity.
00:23:31.140 The students are
00:23:31.860 asked, who are
00:23:33.140 your three best
00:23:33.840 friends?
00:23:34.820 And so you can
00:23:35.420 count how many
00:23:36.260 times somebody gets
00:23:37.400 named as somebody
00:23:38.140 else's three best
00:23:38.980 friends.
00:23:41.340 He has this
00:23:42.120 beautiful algorithm
00:23:43.680 for constructing a
00:23:44.980 popularity index,
00:23:46.840 which he then
00:23:48.540 correlates with the
00:23:49.920 students' grades.
00:23:50.600 And he finds that
00:23:51.140 the curve of
00:23:51.880 popularity rises up
00:23:53.840 until about a B.
00:23:56.060 Then it starts to
00:23:56.840 tail off.
00:23:58.240 Roland finds that
00:23:59.180 black kids do lose
00:24:00.400 friends as they
00:24:01.860 excel in school.
00:24:03.460 That there's a
00:24:04.220 cultural ceiling
00:24:05.280 capping classroom
00:24:06.660 performance.
00:24:07.400 A lot of times we
00:24:08.560 don't talk honestly
00:24:09.460 and openly about
00:24:11.000 the things that are
00:24:11.780 hindering blacks in
00:24:12.700 America.
00:24:13.540 And that's what I'm
00:24:14.500 all about, frankly.
00:24:17.220 And Rob, so in a
00:24:18.160 nutshell, it was that
00:24:19.320 one of the problems
00:24:20.540 for black students
00:24:21.760 and excelling in
00:24:22.580 certain schools is
00:24:24.060 that if you do too
00:24:25.340 well, it's considered
00:24:26.140 acting white and it's
00:24:27.560 not socially a
00:24:29.440 positive thing.
00:24:30.500 That's what he was
00:24:31.120 testing and he found
00:24:33.060 that it was true and
00:24:34.760 you're not allowed to
00:24:35.540 find that in a
00:24:37.300 nutshell.
00:24:38.380 But then we, right
00:24:39.620 after that in the
00:24:40.560 documentary, we go
00:24:41.820 into Roland's
00:24:43.000 biography and there's
00:24:44.080 ways in which Glenn,
00:24:46.320 after what he just
00:24:46.920 said, still underplays
00:24:48.360 the magic and the
00:24:50.380 magnificence of
00:24:51.420 Roland's career.
00:24:52.900 That he wasn't just
00:24:53.520 like born in
00:24:54.220 Daytona Beach,
00:24:55.200 Florida.
00:24:55.820 He was born and
00:24:57.200 immediately abandoned
00:24:58.360 by his mother.
00:24:59.500 Okay?
00:24:59.900 He doesn't meet her
00:25:00.800 until he's in his
00:25:01.340 early 20s and he's
00:25:02.280 raised by an
00:25:03.180 alcoholic in what
00:25:04.240 I've called him
00:25:04.980 an employment
00:25:06.200 challenged father
00:25:07.680 who actually goes
00:25:09.340 to jail when
00:25:10.360 Roland is graduating
00:25:12.160 from high school.
00:25:13.820 Roland himself kind
00:25:14.660 of fell into small
00:25:15.380 time crime at high
00:25:16.240 school, but then he
00:25:17.480 on an athletic
00:25:18.740 scholarship goes to
00:25:19.640 the University of
00:25:20.280 Texas and while he's
00:25:21.140 there, he kind of
00:25:22.060 accidentally walks
00:25:22.880 into an economics
00:25:23.620 class and then
00:25:24.740 instantly falls in
00:25:25.740 love with these,
00:25:27.140 the equations of it
00:25:28.360 and the data sets
00:25:29.180 because so much of
00:25:30.440 his life up to that
00:25:31.240 point had been
00:25:31.700 defined by chaos,
00:25:33.320 incomprehensible chaos,
00:25:34.460 and for him,
00:25:35.680 economics offered
00:25:37.860 the promise of
00:25:38.720 understanding and
00:25:40.120 snapping into focus
00:25:41.340 a world that had
00:25:42.080 been violent chaos
00:25:43.400 up until that point.
00:25:44.860 And we go into his
00:25:45.760 biography in part to
00:25:47.340 show that for him,
00:25:49.100 something like
00:25:49.580 acting white or some
00:25:50.740 of the other bombshell
00:25:52.000 studies that he
00:25:52.880 released are not
00:25:54.340 meant to, are not
00:25:56.440 primarily about like
00:25:57.340 mindless provocation
00:25:58.360 and they're not even
00:25:59.540 about partisanship.
00:26:00.840 I mean, there's things
00:26:01.420 that he found that
00:26:02.420 definitely don't fit a
00:26:03.960 neat conservative
00:26:04.840 narrative about the
00:26:05.760 world, right?
00:26:06.880 He's only interested
00:26:08.800 in truth because he
00:26:10.620 cares about all the
00:26:12.080 kids that he left
00:26:12.900 behind in Daytona
00:26:13.840 Beach.
00:26:14.720 It's like truth is
00:26:15.920 absolutely essential
00:26:17.060 into giving them an
00:26:17.840 opportunity and
00:26:19.020 sometimes truth is
00:26:20.160 uncomfortable and
00:26:20.820 sometimes truth doesn't
00:26:21.660 fit neat partisan
00:26:22.440 narratives.
00:26:23.240 But it's not about
00:26:24.120 provocation for
00:26:25.260 provocation's sake.
00:26:26.520 It's not about
00:26:27.400 pleasing Republicans.
00:26:28.520 It's not about
00:26:29.240 pleasing white people,
00:26:30.400 right?
00:26:30.900 It's about digging up
00:26:32.260 truths and those
00:26:33.420 truths can be, can
00:26:34.600 underlie policy changes
00:26:36.000 that can produce more
00:26:37.680 Roland Friars.
00:26:38.560 That's the whole point
00:26:39.400 of it.
00:26:39.720 And that's the, that's
00:26:40.340 the reason why he
00:26:40.920 launches any of his
00:26:41.780 economic investigations.
00:26:43.680 And so, Glenn, was
00:26:44.780 that one done?
00:26:45.960 Yeah, go ahead.
00:26:46.480 Go for it.
00:26:47.080 No, no, I'm sorry.
00:26:48.100 It's your show.
00:26:48.940 But I just, I mean,
00:26:49.860 this thing that Rob
00:26:50.460 just said is so
00:26:51.080 beautiful because that's
00:26:52.540 exactly right.
00:26:53.320 And that's, again, the
00:26:54.160 irony because Harvard
00:26:55.160 cancels the guy who's
00:26:56.080 looking for truth.
00:26:56.720 Harvard's supposed to
00:26:57.260 be very tossed.
00:26:58.520 It's supposed to be
00:26:59.340 about truth.
00:27:00.020 That's right.
00:27:00.440 It's in the, it's in
00:27:01.240 the very brand.
00:27:02.660 And this idea that a
00:27:04.060 young black man coming
00:27:04.960 along against struggles
00:27:06.040 will have some insights
00:27:07.040 that cut against the
00:27:07.960 grain of the liberal
00:27:08.900 narrative about the
00:27:10.280 black victimology
00:27:11.180 condition.
00:27:12.700 This is, this is a
00:27:13.660 very deep point.
00:27:14.600 And, and the fact that
00:27:15.440 the point of it all at
00:27:16.620 the end of the day is
00:27:17.700 to help the kids, which
00:27:19.360 if you don't face the
00:27:20.860 truth, and this is not
00:27:21.640 going to just be true
00:27:22.760 about acting white, this
00:27:24.020 is going to be true
00:27:24.640 about gun violence.
00:27:25.580 This is going to be true
00:27:26.260 about the educational
00:27:27.080 achievement gap.
00:27:27.820 This is going to be
00:27:28.540 true about the seven
00:27:29.380 and 10 born to an
00:27:30.180 unmarried woman.
00:27:30.860 This is going to be
00:27:31.320 true about the abortion
00:27:32.180 rate.
00:27:32.780 This is going to be
00:27:33.360 true about a lot of
00:27:34.280 stuff.
00:27:35.180 The truth will set you
00:27:36.340 free.
00:27:36.800 Couldn't have said it
00:27:37.520 better, Rob.
00:27:39.400 Absolutely right.
00:27:40.260 And to me, it's also the
00:27:42.040 case in the Buffalo
00:27:42.820 shooter.
00:27:43.420 Like let's, yes, he was
00:27:44.860 radicalized over the last
00:27:45.680 12 months.
00:27:46.280 Yes, he had very racist
00:27:47.700 views at the time he
00:27:48.560 walked into that grocery
00:27:49.420 store.
00:27:49.740 But as far as I have
00:27:51.780 read, that wasn't this
00:27:53.400 kid prior to 12 months
00:27:55.720 ago.
00:27:56.560 This is a sociopath.
00:27:58.300 This people who torture
00:27:59.320 animals are sociopaths.
00:28:00.740 And we've seen that
00:28:01.720 pattern in virtually
00:28:02.300 everybody who's committed
00:28:03.120 a mass shooting.
00:28:04.160 So I'm not excusing it.
00:28:05.380 I'm just saying let's deal
00:28:06.460 with the real problem that
00:28:07.560 led him to be attracted to
00:28:08.840 these ideologies and to
00:28:10.080 want to kill long before he
00:28:12.020 ever started reading the
00:28:12.940 racist teachings of mass
00:28:14.720 shooters overseas.
00:28:15.320 Let's deal with the with
00:28:16.920 what created the desire to
00:28:19.200 kill on a mass level, as
00:28:21.340 opposed to just jumping to
00:28:22.640 his reason du jour.
00:28:24.500 I mean, that's he this guy
00:28:26.320 was a ticking time bomb well
00:28:28.340 before he started reading
00:28:29.440 about the great replacement
00:28:30.900 theory.
00:28:31.780 And we won't go there.
00:28:33.320 Unlike Roland Fryer, who
00:28:34.600 will go to all the
00:28:36.060 uncomfortable places and has
00:28:38.200 been just absolutely.
00:28:40.380 I mean, I know one of his
00:28:41.220 research assistants said he's
00:28:42.500 been it was a murder what
00:28:43.760 they did to him.
00:28:44.320 It was a professional
00:28:45.400 murder.
00:28:46.380 We're going to get to that.
00:28:47.360 Let me stand you by.
00:28:48.160 I'll squeeze in a quick
00:28:48.860 break and much, much more
00:28:50.320 as we dive into the
00:28:51.140 disturbing story of what
00:28:52.340 happened to Roland Fryer.
00:28:53.380 And then what can we do
00:28:55.080 about it?
00:28:55.720 How can we help this guy?
00:29:02.300 Let's talk about episode
00:29:03.500 number number two.
00:29:04.540 So he's at Harvard and he's
00:29:06.200 gotten away with the acting
00:29:07.760 white study and
00:29:10.060 conclusions.
00:29:11.420 But then he goes back and
00:29:13.060 pokes the bear again.
00:29:14.320 And he starts taking a look
00:29:15.420 at education
00:29:16.200 more in depth.
00:29:18.680 And he goes and
00:29:20.200 and is he part of
00:29:21.440 establishing Harlem
00:29:22.440 Children's Zone or he just
00:29:23.800 worked with them?
00:29:24.720 Rob, he just worked with
00:29:25.480 them.
00:29:26.240 Yeah, he just worked with
00:29:27.060 them.
00:29:27.480 He's been working.
00:29:27.860 I mean, I mean, to what we
00:29:29.920 talked about before, he's
00:29:31.080 looking for to unbury
00:29:33.480 specific truths that can be
00:29:35.080 used to uplift people and
00:29:36.920 everything about education
00:29:39.020 in particular that he's been
00:29:40.160 told works to boost black
00:29:41.800 achievement, like smaller
00:29:43.340 class sizes or more
00:29:45.040 credentials for teachers or
00:29:46.360 spending more per pupils.
00:29:47.740 All that stuff has been
00:29:49.000 definitively proven to be
00:29:50.180 absolutely irrelevant.
00:29:51.480 And then he stumbles on the
00:29:52.420 Harlem Children's Zone, which
00:29:53.380 has these incredible
00:29:54.420 academic gains for poor
00:29:56.700 black kids in New York
00:29:57.700 City.
00:29:58.120 And he goes in there to
00:29:59.280 basically figure out what is
00:30:00.640 their magical formula that
00:30:02.600 can then be replicated and
00:30:03.860 injected into other school
00:30:04.780 systems.
00:30:05.760 All right.
00:30:05.920 Here's a little bit from the
00:30:06.780 documentary on on that.
00:30:08.720 This is Soundbite 10.
00:30:09.520 The truth that matters most to
00:30:11.800 Roland is how to fix schools
00:30:13.500 for all the other young
00:30:15.540 Rolands in the world.
00:30:19.220 It wasn't until I got involved
00:30:20.400 in education I heard about
00:30:21.220 the cardiac test.
00:30:22.900 You'd walk around the school
00:30:23.760 and they would say, we have a
00:30:24.880 new program, after school
00:30:25.800 program.
00:30:26.260 I'll say, oh, that's great.
00:30:27.220 Does it work?
00:30:28.300 And they would say, yeah.
00:30:30.320 And I said, well, how do you
00:30:31.080 know it works?
00:30:32.320 You can feel it in your heart.
00:30:38.060 Maybe.
00:30:39.520 Ha, ha.
00:30:42.760 2011, the screen reads, Harlem.
00:30:46.500 Roland's work brings him here
00:30:48.220 to the Harlem Children's Zone.
00:30:50.760 It's a revolution, taking in
00:30:52.540 poor black kids and within three
00:30:54.220 years, getting them to catch up
00:30:55.740 to and even exceed their white
00:30:58.840 peers at richer schools.
00:31:01.060 You know, we really got to think
00:31:02.080 about this gap here because
00:31:04.220 there's like a white-black gap
00:31:06.300 going on.
00:31:07.960 I'm not sure why you guys,
00:31:09.520 you can't actually achieve.
00:31:14.420 He starts piecing together a
00:31:16.200 five-part formula for the Zone's
00:31:18.300 success.
00:31:19.180 And he finds that a central piece
00:31:21.300 is aggressive human capital
00:31:23.180 management.
00:31:25.000 Economists speak for the practice
00:31:26.380 of firing tons of teachers.
00:31:29.180 He asked the teachers, what do you
00:31:30.440 think you need to educate these
00:31:31.580 kids?
00:31:31.980 And we got answers like, well,
00:31:33.860 all we need is smarter kids.
00:31:35.140 I said, all you need is a new job.
00:31:40.340 The Zone's formula is simply
00:31:42.560 operationalized common sense.
00:31:46.200 Revolutionizing schools won't require
00:31:48.720 a revolution.
00:31:50.480 They needed extra time.
00:31:52.320 If you're behind, you either got to
00:31:53.880 spend more time or ask the white kids
00:31:55.760 to please take Thursday and Friday
00:31:56.980 off.
00:31:58.500 Small tutoring groups, they use data to
00:32:00.920 drive instruction.
00:32:01.580 They had high expectations.
00:32:03.340 They took no excuses for failure.
00:32:05.500 The highlight of Roland's youth
00:32:06.980 were summers spent with his
00:32:08.100 grandmother, a Florida grade school
00:32:10.020 teacher.
00:32:11.200 And she notices what he notices
00:32:13.440 about this formula.
00:32:15.780 I talk to my grandmother about it
00:32:17.100 every other day.
00:32:17.660 She lives in Daytona Beach, Florida,
00:32:18.900 very close to here.
00:32:19.860 And I've told her the five things.
00:32:22.360 And we're family now.
00:32:23.620 I'll just tell you what she told me.
00:32:24.660 And she said, baby,
00:32:27.400 they pay you for that shit.
00:32:36.180 I know.
00:32:37.240 I know what's obvious.
00:32:39.340 But if it's so obvious, why are we not
00:32:40.880 doing it?
00:32:42.300 Why are we not doing it?
00:32:43.620 High expectations, not the soft
00:32:45.620 bigotry of low expectations.
00:32:47.500 So key, Glenn, you've talked about this
00:32:49.240 many times.
00:32:51.540 Well, I mean, first, let's just take
00:32:52.780 notice of the achievement that is
00:32:54.780 represented in Rob's short synopsis
00:32:57.740 of Roland's work on education.
00:32:59.480 I mean, this is one of the biggest
00:33:01.100 questions of our time.
00:33:02.400 How to make schools more effective?
00:33:04.780 He actually runs a massive experiment
00:33:06.680 in the city of Houston after the
00:33:08.760 Harlem Children's Zone research to
00:33:10.860 confirm what was described there as
00:33:13.360 a basic outline or template for more
00:33:16.820 effective education for minority
00:33:18.260 students.
00:33:18.660 This is a magnificent intellectual
00:33:20.800 achievement.
00:33:21.460 And so and what happened in
00:33:24.120 Houston, Rob, was
00:33:25.640 incredible.
00:33:27.080 This is it basically reads.
00:33:29.020 Hold on.
00:33:29.460 This is from the piece talking about
00:33:31.020 how after being handed control of the
00:33:32.300 20th, lowest performing public
00:33:34.540 schools in Houston,
00:33:36.040 professor fire fired
00:33:38.600 half the teachers and almost all of
00:33:40.140 the principals.
00:33:40.840 Yay.
00:33:41.580 Within two years, he had significantly
00:33:43.620 boosted math scores
00:33:45.080 and college matriculation.
00:33:46.760 I read this and said, why didn't his
00:33:49.680 work then get expanded to every single
00:33:51.540 struggling community, especially in
00:33:54.000 predominantly black areas in the country?
00:33:56.320 Why didn't everybody say, oh, my God,
00:33:57.440 they're on to something?
00:33:58.620 Fire the bad teachers, set the
00:34:00.080 expectations higher, give the kids more
00:34:02.460 time, you know, use data and all that.
00:34:04.760 What happened after Houston, Rob?
00:34:06.300 Well, yeah, it's only a mystery if you
00:34:10.180 assume most of the people in the space
00:34:12.540 actually want to fix the problem.
00:34:15.620 It's not a mystery if you don't assume
00:34:17.280 that.
00:34:18.300 Yeah.
00:34:18.460 I mean, and it's the other thing that
00:34:21.060 Glenn talks about.
00:34:22.540 One of the essential pieces of that
00:34:24.940 formula is basically being institutionally
00:34:27.520 allergic to condescending to these kids.
00:34:30.260 Right.
00:34:30.960 As as Roland says in that in that piece
00:34:32.940 that you read, like bad schools,
00:34:35.560 failing schools, taking kids from bad
00:34:37.980 circumstances and just say, I'm so
00:34:40.540 sorry, I'm so sorry you've had it so
00:34:42.500 bad.
00:34:43.120 We shouldn't expect very much from you.
00:34:44.900 And a place like the Harlem Children's
00:34:46.480 Zone takes those exact same kids and
00:34:48.580 says, that's too bad.
00:34:50.700 Now let's teach you the Pythagorean
00:34:52.340 theorem.
00:34:53.040 Right.
00:34:53.320 The idea is that even under those
00:34:54.940 circumstances, you can still excel.
00:34:56.800 Right.
00:34:57.100 You can still excel.
00:34:57.900 And that's one of the essential
00:34:59.920 elements of it that cuts directly
00:35:02.300 against some of the more famous
00:35:05.260 black intellectuals in America right
00:35:08.000 now, like Ibram X.
00:35:08.840 Kendi, which say that if a standardized
00:35:11.120 test is proving or showing achievement
00:35:13.600 gaps, that means the test is
00:35:15.460 necessarily white supremacist and
00:35:17.100 institutionally racist and needs to be
00:35:18.480 scrapped.
00:35:19.480 Right.
00:35:19.840 It means you ought to not just lower,
00:35:22.180 but you need to dissolve the standards
00:35:24.940 if you're, if you fall upon an
00:35:28.820 achievement gap.
00:35:29.820 And I think, yeah, I mean, you're
00:35:32.620 asking why is it that it wasn't
00:35:34.400 replicated?
00:35:35.760 This is something I was thinking about
00:35:36.920 during the break.
00:35:37.580 Okay.
00:35:39.920 Because let's just zoom back for a
00:35:42.800 second.
00:35:43.260 So in the opening segment with Glenn,
00:35:46.780 I've been fortunate enough to work with
00:35:48.800 Glenn that I know some of his like some
00:35:51.360 some of the verbal tics that he uses
00:35:53.560 sometimes.
00:35:54.040 And when he was talking about Joe
00:35:55.480 Biden, the first thing that he said
00:35:57.740 is he said, uh, with all, with all
00:35:59.280 due respect, right.
00:36:00.520 And when Glenn Lowry says, with all
00:36:01.960 due respect, he's about to like
00:36:03.240 incinerate whoever he's about to
00:36:04.740 talk about it.
00:36:05.340 Right.
00:36:05.580 He is.
00:36:06.120 He's about to basically be the most
00:36:07.700 eloquent person in the English
00:36:08.780 speaking world and just destroy
00:36:09.960 him.
00:36:10.320 Right.
00:36:11.040 He, when I interviewed him, when I
00:36:13.100 interviewed Glenn, uh, uh, and we
00:36:16.060 were talking about Roland and how out of
00:36:18.340 place he was, I did ask Glenn to sort
00:36:21.740 of describe what the black
00:36:23.880 establishment at Harvard university
00:36:25.440 is like, well, if, if someone like
00:36:27.080 Roland can't fit in there, what are
00:36:29.100 these people like?
00:36:30.220 What is it that they care about?
00:36:31.460 What kind of, if I may, forgive me
00:36:33.060 for interrupting you, Rob, but just
00:36:33.960 to tell our audience, Glenn was
00:36:35.260 formerly at Harvard.
00:36:36.160 He was the youngest black economics
00:36:37.680 professor ever tenured at Harvard
00:36:39.380 then comes along Roland.
00:36:40.900 Uh, and I think he was the youngest
00:36:42.580 black tenured professor ever at, uh,
00:36:45.080 at, at any place at Harvard, uh, at
00:36:47.900 the age of 30.
00:36:48.580 So you have a history at Harvard
00:36:49.540 though you're at Brown university
00:36:50.600 now.
00:36:50.920 Go ahead, Rob.
00:36:51.580 And I, I will say on camera, when
00:36:54.220 Glenn was about to discuss some of
00:36:56.400 the members of the black
00:36:57.420 establishment, he also said with all
00:36:59.220 due respect, right.
00:37:00.380 He said, oh, he proceeded to do to
00:37:01.840 them what he just did to Joe Biden.
00:37:04.020 And I mean, I don't, Glenn can
00:37:06.620 discuss as much as he'd like what he
00:37:08.220 thinks the, the predilections are and
00:37:10.600 the ideological commitments are of the
00:37:12.760 black establishment at Harvard.
00:37:13.860 But that gets back to your question,
00:37:15.000 which is, okay, we have what Roland
00:37:18.380 called the vaccine for education at the
00:37:21.700 Harlem children's zone where you've
00:37:23.040 found the five part formula.
00:37:24.980 And just like you would basically take
00:37:26.620 and replicate the COVID vaccine, right.
00:37:29.720 Or vax any vaccine.
00:37:31.520 And then you spread it all across the
00:37:33.260 country.
00:37:33.780 We're going to take this vaccine and
00:37:35.360 inject it in other failing school
00:37:37.020 systems.
00:37:37.660 And that's exactly what he did in
00:37:38.860 Houston.
00:37:39.120 And it worked.
00:37:40.740 I mean, it took a while.
00:37:42.260 I mean, it worked.
00:37:43.460 Why is it that after that success, you
00:37:45.820 wouldn't continue to spread the
00:37:47.440 vaccine?
00:37:48.220 That's the exact same question as, well,
00:37:50.220 what is it that the people that are the
00:37:51.740 black established establishment at
00:37:53.200 Harvard care about?
00:37:54.380 And it unfortunately is not actually
00:37:56.760 about concrete improvements in the
00:37:59.600 lives of poor black people.
00:38:01.960 It's not, it's not.
00:38:03.780 Well, it's about politics, if I may.
00:38:06.260 Yeah.
00:38:06.560 At the end of the day, that's what this
00:38:07.940 is about.
00:38:08.420 I mean, come on, let's just face it.
00:38:10.900 Charter school debate.
00:38:12.160 I mean, Thomas Sowell has this wonderful
00:38:13.760 book about charter schools.
00:38:15.560 Charter school debate.
00:38:16.920 This is about the National Economics
00:38:19.120 Association, National, I'm sorry,
00:38:21.200 National Education Association and the
00:38:23.680 American Federation of Teachers.
00:38:25.520 This is about control.
00:38:27.180 This is about, you know, who do the
00:38:29.560 kids belong to?
00:38:30.740 Do the kids belong to the union?
00:38:32.680 Or does the union work for the kids?
00:38:34.440 I mean, that's ultimately what this
00:38:35.900 is about.
00:38:36.280 And Roland is caught in just like, oh,
00:38:37.940 on the police research stuff, which I
00:38:39.260 assume we'll talk about.
00:38:40.140 He's caught in this political
00:38:41.860 jigsaw, just like on the debate
00:38:43.840 about acting white, where the real
00:38:46.500 issue is, is culture a factor in
00:38:49.880 accounting for inequality?
00:38:51.660 And to the extent that it is, it's
00:38:53.700 just the burden of responsibility in
00:38:55.660 some sense about what to do in the
00:38:57.800 face of the problem of persisting
00:38:59.100 inequality.
00:38:59.540 This is about power at the end of the
00:39:01.880 day.
00:39:02.840 Mm hmm.
00:39:03.680 And I that's what we're taking up next.
00:39:05.640 The police work he did.
00:39:06.900 But before I get to that, you mentioned
00:39:08.140 this is about politics and
00:39:10.080 power.
00:39:10.800 And there was an extraordinary soundbite
00:39:12.860 on television with respect to the
00:39:14.220 Buffalo situation and how it's being
00:39:15.900 used to sort of
00:39:17.980 smear the entire Republican Party.
00:39:22.020 Donnie Deutsch, who's over on MSNBC.
00:39:24.520 I mean, it's rare when they say the quiet
00:39:25.700 part out loud.
00:39:26.460 But here's an extraordinary instance
00:39:28.180 of somebody doing it and explaining
00:39:29.520 why they keep saying at every turn,
00:39:31.880 great replacement theory, great
00:39:32.920 replacement theory and trying to
00:39:34.100 saddle this very racist theory that I
00:39:36.180 was talking about that inspired these
00:39:37.400 overseas shooters, not the
00:39:39.040 immigration concerns that the left
00:39:41.180 and the right have had in this
00:39:42.160 country for the past 40 years, why
00:39:45.220 they keep saying it and why they have
00:39:46.820 to keep keep doing that tactic.
00:39:48.880 Here he is.
00:39:49.340 Listen to this.
00:39:51.120 We don't have the economy on our side
00:39:52.760 as Democrats, so you have to scare the
00:39:54.900 bejesus out of people.
00:39:56.240 The way to scare it is say, you know,
00:39:57.740 this replacement theory, this is not
00:39:59.040 just coming from some dark corner of
00:40:00.380 the Web.
00:40:00.880 This is the Republican platform.
00:40:03.020 Make them own it.
00:40:03.680 Democrats run from this fistfight.
00:40:05.600 I know in the previous segment, Eugene
00:40:06.700 Daniels, you talked about the
00:40:07.980 president not wanting to call out
00:40:09.120 names, call out Tucker Carlson, call
00:40:11.260 out the politicians and make this make
00:40:13.420 them own it.
00:40:15.200 Glenn, it's right there.
00:40:16.260 We have to scare.
00:40:17.240 We have to scare people.
00:40:18.740 They're going to lose.
00:40:20.160 November's coming.
00:40:21.100 It's time to scare the populace.
00:40:22.580 It's the same thing.
00:40:24.900 Yes, it is.
00:40:26.140 And again, I think it goes to politics
00:40:28.300 and the fact that I'm sorry, can I say
00:40:32.200 this on your show, Megan?
00:40:33.180 I mean, the Biden administration is
00:40:34.460 failing across the board.
00:40:36.180 The party is expecting a disaster in
00:40:39.000 November and well-deserved.
00:40:40.720 That Supreme Court leak, something
00:40:42.060 tells me, I don't know this for a fact,
00:40:43.640 but how does Bill Maher put it?
00:40:44.920 But I know it's true.
00:40:46.720 That Supreme Court leak has something
00:40:48.200 to do with this.
00:40:49.300 They're grasping for straws.
00:40:50.980 You know, so white supremacy, you reap what
00:40:57.100 you sow.
00:40:58.580 They've been playing the race card forever.
00:41:01.800 I'm not excusing.
00:41:02.900 Obviously, I'm not excusing anything.
00:41:05.120 But do you think that you can make race the
00:41:07.640 centerpiece of the discussion of the heart and
00:41:10.780 soul of the country and not cause some white
00:41:14.220 people to defend whiteness?
00:41:16.020 Again, I'm not defending them.
00:41:18.160 I'm saying it's all a piece.
00:41:20.260 You know, we are reaping what we have
00:41:22.620 sown.
00:41:23.480 Oh, that's fascinating.
00:41:24.600 I've heard you warn about that many times
00:41:26.220 on your blogging heads TV with your talks
00:41:28.120 with John McWhorter about how this is a
00:41:31.040 dangerous game they're playing and we don't
00:41:33.000 want to go down this road and we don't
00:41:34.440 want to start comparing crime stats and
00:41:36.080 doing like it doesn't end in a good place
00:41:38.080 for anybody.
00:41:39.400 And yet they continue to do it and they
00:41:41.260 continue to exploit tragedies for political
00:41:44.100 purposes.
00:41:44.540 That seems clear.
00:41:45.520 All right.
00:41:45.800 Back to Roland.
00:41:47.220 So this, I think, was his cardinal sin, right?
00:41:49.820 As controversial as the earlier work was,
00:41:51.760 even though it was so fascinating and great
00:41:54.180 intentioned and great results, was the study
00:41:57.660 on police.
00:41:58.860 Police involved shootings and whether we have
00:42:02.040 evidence that black men are being killed at a
00:42:04.760 disproportionate rate by racist cops than white
00:42:08.980 men.
00:42:09.580 Rob, do you want to describe what happened
00:42:11.200 there?
00:42:11.360 Yeah, he, him and his research team go down
00:42:15.040 to Houston and they go through thousands of
00:42:19.160 handwritten police incident reports and they
00:42:22.320 basically put them in this big data set and
00:42:25.420 analyze them and are trying to answer this
00:42:28.420 question at the basically red hot center of
00:42:31.060 American politics, which are, are, is there
00:42:33.300 racial bias in, in police shootings and other
00:42:36.220 questions to, and they, they run it through and
00:42:39.560 they find that in fact, there was not that
00:42:43.720 actually black suspects in Houston were slightly less
00:42:47.220 likely to be shot than, um, white suspects.
00:42:51.300 That makes the New York times.
00:42:53.920 And as we recount in the documentary though, um,
00:42:58.020 Roland had been directly confronted during the early
00:43:01.680 stages of the paper and told by other powerful high
00:43:06.100 profile academics, not to publish the results, not to
00:43:09.520 do it.
00:43:10.260 Okay.
00:43:10.760 And he does it anyway.
00:43:11.400 We have a bit of that.
00:43:11.980 We have a bit of that.
00:43:12.700 This is soundbite.
00:43:13.600 He doesn't care.
00:43:14.500 He just does it anyway.
00:43:15.140 Right.
00:43:15.920 Let me get to that.
00:43:16.500 Cause we've, we've got a bit of that and that's, um,
00:43:18.220 soundbite 13.
00:43:19.060 And then I'll go back to you.
00:43:21.800 I remember Roland walking in and saying, what do the
00:43:25.680 numbers look like?
00:43:27.200 And I said, I just don't want to say it out loud.
00:43:29.700 And he said, what do you mean you don't want to say it
00:43:31.420 out loud?
00:43:32.500 I gave this paper early on.
00:43:34.400 Three professors took me to the side.
00:43:36.820 So, Hey, it's just so different, bro.
00:43:39.040 It's so different.
00:43:39.820 You don't want to publish.
00:43:41.540 You need to put that away.
00:43:44.360 I said, well, you just guarantee it.
00:43:46.200 I'm going to put it in no matter what.
00:43:49.060 He couldn't find bias in legal use of force.
00:43:54.760 In fact, he found that it was less likely that force would be
00:43:58.360 used against a suspect when the suspect was Black.
00:44:02.320 The resulting media firestorm prompts credible death threats.
00:44:06.220 And Roland is temporarily assigned around the clock police
00:44:09.960 protection.
00:44:10.520 I think the truth helps us, right?
00:44:15.520 False narratives do not.
00:44:16.940 I find it frustrating.
00:44:19.700 I find it insulting that people would change the truth because they think
00:44:24.880 they're trying to help us.
00:44:26.700 They're just trying to help themselves.
00:44:29.160 The truth is enough.
00:44:31.540 I'm just following the data wherever it leads.
00:44:33.680 What are you doing?
00:44:34.200 But the truth shall not set you free, Rob.
00:44:38.160 It didn't in Roland's case.
00:44:40.160 I mean, shortly after that,
00:44:41.120 his career is basically ended by a shady sexual harassment trial.
00:44:44.720 It's like, it doesn't take,
00:44:46.120 you have to be Sherlock Holmes to be a little bit suspect.
00:44:48.500 They're like, wait, uh, okay.
00:44:50.260 Like, we're not going to ask any questions about this.
00:44:52.460 We're just going to like,
00:44:53.400 like the New York times,
00:44:54.540 the day that his punishment comes down,
00:44:55.960 essentially ending his career,
00:44:56.820 we can get into it.
00:44:57.600 It, uh, uh, basically paints Roland as an unrepentant sexual predator
00:45:01.680 and mentions in their piece.
00:45:03.420 Oh, by the way, he's the guy who authored that, uh,
00:45:06.900 that study that didn't find racial bias in police shootings that you hate
00:45:10.080 as if the two things are related, but like,
00:45:12.240 oh, it's not the Clark medal winner.
00:45:14.020 It's not like the greatest economic mind of his generation at Harvard
00:45:16.760 university professor.
00:45:17.780 It's we're pairing this sexual predator with that study that you despise
00:45:22.440 that demolishes your worldview.
00:45:24.000 And that's the narrative that gets set in stone and basically goes on
00:45:27.260 question until the doc that, that, that Glenn and I made comes out.
00:45:31.080 It's like, it's, it's a little suspect.
00:45:32.960 It's a little suspect what's going on.
00:45:34.680 Yeah, it is.
00:45:35.200 So Glenn,
00:45:35.760 the role of the New York times here should be underscored because there
00:45:38.780 were a number of pieces written by a team of investigative reporters
00:45:42.480 who I can't name before, uh,
00:45:45.640 the final dispensation of Roland's situation at Harvard that were in effect
00:45:50.140 like expose.
00:45:51.600 And it's the Harvard Crimson also has to be mentioned, uh,
00:45:54.520 in this context.
00:45:55.340 And to some extent,
00:45:56.240 I think the administration at Harvard were responding to public pressures
00:46:00.120 to not be lenient given that they knew the kind of pieces that would be
00:46:03.940 written, uh, if, uh, they were not, uh, very strict with Roland.
00:46:08.360 So, you know, that, that whole media left-wing cabal, uh, uh,
00:46:14.800 world needs to be invoked here.
00:46:16.820 Uh, but, but, you know, uh, the, the finding of no evidence of racial bias in
00:46:24.440 the lethal use of force by police in Houston, uh, was a, uh, bombshell.
00:46:29.740 It was a blockbuster finding.
00:46:31.780 It came right at a time at the height of this black lives matter stuff.
00:46:35.700 And it was pushing in the, uh, in, uh, in the opposite direction against the Benjamin
00:46:40.080 Crump narrative that it's open season on black people.
00:46:43.760 And so it just underscores how important it is to pursue the truth because cities could
00:46:48.360 be put on fire in this country for getting this one wrong.
00:46:52.180 I mean, again, it, the capital T capital and the narrative was more important.
00:46:59.420 So he had to be silenced.
00:47:01.280 And that's where we pick up the story right after this quick break.
00:47:04.560 Glenn and Rob are staying with us.
00:47:06.040 Aren't they great?
00:47:06.720 Isn't this a great discussion?
00:47:08.120 Uh, and remember folks, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM triumph channel
00:47:12.360 one 11 every weekday at noon East and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our
00:47:16.820 YouTube channel.
00:47:17.440 That's youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.
00:47:19.600 If you'd like to watch the show, if you prefer to,
00:47:22.020 just listen on your own time while you're doing your makeup, doing your errands, what
00:47:25.840 have you, you can subscribe and listen and download to our audio podcast on Apple, Spotify,
00:47:31.280 Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free.
00:47:34.860 And there you will find our full archives with more than 320 shows, including the first time
00:47:39.160 Glenn was on with us.
00:47:40.320 It was an Fuego episode 25.
00:47:46.200 We're talking about Rob's documentary, which you can find at who canceled.
00:47:51.080 Roland Roland.com Roland Fryer.
00:47:54.220 We are speaking of Harvard university professor.
00:47:56.940 Uh, Glenn says the economist of his generation, uh, who has been treated terribly by Harvard
00:48:03.060 university for pursuing facts and not narratives.
00:48:06.860 Uh, so he publishes this, this piece.
00:48:09.520 And before we move on from the, the study that he did on police shootings, just want to
00:48:13.700 fill that out.
00:48:14.700 Uh, what he found is that police were more likely to engage in nonviolent force on black
00:48:22.340 suspects, tasering, handcuffing, other physical submissions.
00:48:25.580 Then they were on white suspects, even when the suspect was described as compliant by the
00:48:31.880 officer himself.
00:48:33.060 So as you point out earlier, he's not narrative driven.
00:48:35.980 It's not like, Oh, I'm going to exonerate all the cops with this study.
00:48:38.560 No, he said, when it comes to short of something fatal, they're worse on black suspects than
00:48:45.000 they were, than they are in white suspects, even those that they are describing as compliant.
00:48:49.240 No one had a problem with that piece of Roland study.
00:48:52.380 Fine.
00:48:53.060 Yes.
00:48:53.480 That's what we believe too.
00:48:55.040 And then when he got to the part about, but when it comes to fatalities, black suspects
00:48:59.340 are less likely to be shot by police than white suspects.
00:49:02.900 They couldn't tolerate that.
00:49:04.280 That was totally that, that crossed a line they shouldn't have crossed.
00:49:07.060 And by the way, then he added something that's been really important in our national debate.
00:49:11.300 And that is, uh, findings about the so-called Ferguson effect, finding that, uh, his team
00:49:15.960 examined data from about a dozen cities stretching back decades and found that if a police department
00:49:20.440 is subject, subjected to a federal pattern or practice investigation, that was the Obama
00:49:25.280 DOJ's favorite tool, uh, in the wake of a viral police killing, officers tended to withdraw
00:49:31.380 from the community.
00:49:32.840 And he concluded that many of these investigations would then see after them, you would see a
00:49:39.480 market increase in both homicide and total crime.
00:49:42.740 We're living that as a nation right now.
00:49:46.280 We're living that as a nation.
00:49:47.720 That's why it's so irresponsible for the media to take a tape like the George Floyd tape, as
00:49:52.320 awful as it was, and just put it on loop over and over and over with the, with the narrative
00:49:58.660 that all cops are racist, that they're all terrible.
00:50:01.320 So he's trying to say this.
00:50:02.720 And by the way, the FBI has just now come out with a study showing the vast majority of
00:50:06.140 people killed since we had defund the police and all this stuff in the wake of George Floyd
00:50:10.260 are black and brown people that no one at Harvard is going to address that either.
00:50:13.820 The people who have been trying to take down Roland will not address that fact that it's
00:50:17.660 black and brown people who have mostly been killed in the wake of these narratives.
00:50:21.220 Uh, but they want credit for being the ones who care about the black community.
00:50:25.120 So in the midst of all this, enter the accusations, the me too movement comes for Roland Fryer.
00:50:33.880 And as somebody who is literally probably interviewed more me to accusers than anyone on in on earth,
00:50:41.240 nevermind the U S I got to say, I read these.
00:50:44.480 I was like, eh, eh, you read the Harvard Crimson.
00:50:48.460 And you think Roland Fryer is Harvey Weinstein.
00:50:52.380 Yeah.
00:50:53.020 I mean, I'll just say that it's, I'll leave it up to the audience after they've seen the
00:50:57.380 specific accusations to determine what they think the severity is.
00:51:01.020 Um, I think it's a lot of off color jokes.
00:51:05.000 And frankly, one of the things that added to the profundity of Roland's economic research
00:51:12.940 and the reason he maintained the bravery and the imagination to keep asking these extremely
00:51:19.500 important questions is that he refused to sort of conform to the script of what it meant
00:51:24.800 to be a black intellectual at Harvard university, which I mean, I mean, which oftentimes basically
00:51:30.640 just means like being a white person with woke opinions and acting in a, in a very specific,
00:51:37.140 like upper middle-class Martha's vineyard way.
00:51:41.120 And so, I mean, we go into it.
00:51:42.480 Some of the people that are his enemies at Harvard university, they also have black skin
00:51:47.160 like Roland does, but they have extremely privileged upper middle-class backgrounds.
00:51:51.260 They go to Exeter, they go to fancy universities while Roland had been going to public universities.
00:51:56.940 But all of which is to say, Roland, once he got to Harvard, continued to be the kid born
00:52:04.040 into a low-income neighborhood in Daytona beach, Florida.
00:52:07.100 Like he didn't, he didn't modify his speech.
00:52:10.060 He didn't modify his rhythms.
00:52:11.540 So a lot of like the things that ended up getting categorized as sexual harassment, I think
00:52:18.020 are him just being like an authentic lower middle-class black guy at Harvard university.
00:52:23.780 Plus they're ridiculous, Rob.
00:52:25.040 I mean, honestly, like the ones that you outlined in the piece, I'll just give the audience
00:52:28.480 a flavor.
00:52:29.420 He made some arguably inappropriate jokes in the office, like saying an elderly university
00:52:33.640 administrator, quote, hadn't been laid since black people were slaves.
00:52:37.440 I mean, okay, fine.
00:52:40.600 Who's offended by that?
00:52:42.360 Yeah.
00:52:42.520 I mean, Harvard, you like, you theoretically like undomesticated or you like raw blackness,
00:52:47.900 but in, in, in practice, actually, I guess a lot of people are offended by it.
00:52:51.240 I mean, this is ridiculous in front of Glenn, but like, I think he would agree with this
00:52:54.900 as an assessment and the elderly administrator was like, I got laid just this morning.
00:52:59.120 Roland Fryer doesn't know what he's talking about.
00:53:02.860 Then he quipped that he learned his negotiating skills while quote, trying to get laid in high
00:53:08.100 school.
00:53:08.660 Okay.
00:53:09.060 I'm waiting for the offense to set in.
00:53:11.780 No one got touched.
00:53:13.180 There was no sexual Congress among anybody.
00:53:16.580 No one was propositions.
00:53:17.860 And I think the real, the killer is that even if you buy the assessments of the title nine
00:53:24.980 investigator at Harvard, which is that these were inappropriate, this, this was a, uh, you
00:53:29.760 know, an abuse of power asymmetries in Roland's lab, the title nine investigators themselves
00:53:35.160 after handing down that conviction recommend training.
00:53:39.300 That's what they recommend, right?
00:53:41.520 If Harvard's cultural sensitivity recommend training and somehow that gets transmuted into
00:53:45.920 career termination, that's, uh, that's a little suspect.
00:53:50.120 That's a little strange.
00:53:50.940 And we kind of go into the backend mechanics that, that are somehow able to transform sexual
00:53:57.060 harassment training to, we're going to, we're going to go nuclear on your career.
00:54:02.720 Yeah, that's right.
00:54:03.420 So there, there was a second, I should say the first woman who came forward against him
00:54:08.140 was, uh, I think there was only two, uh, but there's one woman saying I was his assistant
00:54:13.440 and he made these inappropriate comments.
00:54:15.900 And the documentary has a clip from Roland's researcher and coauthor on some of these studies,
00:54:22.920 an Indian woman who doesn't go on cam in terms of her face, but you can hear her voice
00:54:28.260 and who spent a ton of time with this accuser and knew her very well.
00:54:32.520 And here's a bit of her take on this woman's allegations, plus, uh, how those
00:54:37.800 allegations, something like 38 number when they were first filed, actually panned out
00:54:42.840 by the Harvard investigation team that was charged with looking into them.
00:54:47.020 Listen, it was one of my closest friends.
00:54:52.040 She'd left, uh, on a very sour note.
00:54:55.260 She wanted just plain old revenge.
00:54:57.960 She goes and she logs 38 specific claims of sexual harassment.
00:55:07.380 Instantly investigators shave off six of those.
00:55:10.500 And then after the investigation, they shave off another 26.
00:55:16.380 All but six of them were rejected.
00:55:19.920 Many of those on the ground that they were not only false, but they were deliberately false fabrications.
00:55:25.580 In other words, they were lies.
00:55:30.420 And then another woman comes forward and says, years ago, I was his assistant and we had some inappropriate texts with one another suggesting,
00:55:39.080 I don't know, was this the one who said he talked about how he was going to need a new bed
00:55:42.840 if he never got married or got a girl?
00:55:45.500 It's like, keep going.
00:55:46.940 At the time, Roland was single.
00:55:49.600 He was, uh, there's an immense amount of pressure on him as this highly touted black economist at Harvard University.
00:55:56.740 And this woman is a, uh, is a biracial ballet dancer with a 780 on her math SAT.
00:56:03.060 Like you can kind of see what was happening there.
00:56:05.500 The flirtation is mostly unidirectional.
00:56:07.560 It's him for, for, for, for being flirtatious with her.
00:56:10.960 But as we go into in that piece, she files, she never files a formal complaint, but she does complain to some administrators about this.
00:56:21.080 They tell Roland to cut it out.
00:56:22.960 He immediately cuts it out.
00:56:24.860 And she continues to work with him from several more months after that.
00:56:28.400 Right.
00:56:29.140 So this was like an old, settled, semi-claim of sexual harassment that everybody had been under the impression was over and done and settled.
00:56:40.280 And the Harvard investigators go back into it and resurrect it as part of making this case of Roland as a unrepentant sexual predator.
00:56:48.600 Right.
00:56:49.780 There's a lot of just very, um, gangster stuff that, that goes, that goes down right now.
00:56:54.360 And again, title nine as a, as a, as a mechanism of resolving sexual harassment claims on college campuses is notoriously opaque and prone to ideological abuse.
00:57:07.340 Like it's, it's basically like a monarchy and they just get to make up the rules as they go along.
00:57:11.520 And all of the protections that are normally afforded a defendant in a criminal trial are not provided on campus for most title nine investigations.
00:57:20.260 To the contrary, the system is entirely rigged for the accuser.
00:57:23.480 The whole trick in these title nine, uh, proceedings on college campuses is don't get involved in one.
00:57:30.040 If you're the man being accused, you're dead.
00:57:32.080 I mean, upon the accusation, it's over for you.
00:57:35.260 There are very few that wind up with, and he's exonerated and the evidence wasn't there.
00:57:40.240 You have no right to discovery.
00:57:41.340 You have no right to cross examine, uh, the witness who's accusing you.
00:57:44.220 You have no right to counsel in the hearing room.
00:57:46.120 Those who are actually trying your fate are all victims rights advocates and you have no place to object.
00:57:52.920 And once they inevitably find you guilty, there's very limited rights of appeal outside of that body, nevermind in the federal district court.
00:57:59.800 So the whole trick is don't get sucked in, which they knew, which they knew when they came for him, Glenn.
00:58:05.960 And, and then after this title nine board says, he should do some training.
00:58:10.100 Even these folks who probably wanted to get Roland said that training, the higher ups at the university, the dean of the faculty, um, and the chair, I think of the African-American studies department.
00:58:19.680 They came and said, oh no, it's going to be far, far worse.
00:58:23.580 So what happened to Roland?
00:58:25.460 I think in Larry Bobo's case, it was his role as dean of social sciences and Claudine Gay's dean of the faculty.
00:58:32.160 And yes, they were among the people who finally decided about the disposition of Roland's case.
00:58:37.060 The punishment administered was the closing of his lab and the shuttering of all the ongoing projects, along with a two year suspension without pay and a humiliating, intrusive regime of control or oversight of his teaching when he returns from, as he has done from the two year suspension.
00:58:59.440 So, uh, that was the punishment.
00:59:02.500 I mean, I think the question here, Megan, if I may, is why did Harvard not protect their valuable, uh, superstar asset from the administration of an injustice, which any of us can see.
00:59:16.300 I mean, we can see in retrospect, and they could have seen at the time what an injustice allowing this title nine machine to roll over Roland Fryer would be.
00:59:26.020 And they did not, uh, uh, intervene to, uh, prevent this from happening.
00:59:31.500 Now, I think we don't know that they were, uh, explicitly motivated by a distaste for his research findings, but I think it's beyond question that, um, this would not have happened if they didn't value, uh, if they valued, uh, Roland for what he was actually doing.
00:59:56.020 Bring it to the university.
00:59:57.020 And again, the irony is just unbearable.
00:59:59.280 They're supposed to be about diversity.
01:00:02.740 They're supposed to be about caring about black people.
01:00:07.300 Uh, so, um, but yeah, what happened was he was suspended without pay and his research was shut down.
01:00:13.460 He's raised over $100 million to support his research.
01:00:17.480 There's $30 million sitting in accounts to which he has no access, which have not been returned to the donors for projects as yet incomplete that were ongoing when they shut down his lab.
01:00:28.380 Oh, man.
01:00:29.240 I know you, you wrote on your Substack, Glenn, uh, these, these folks at Harvard, those at Harvard responsible for this state of affairs should be utterly ashamed of themselves.
01:00:41.760 Indeed.
01:00:42.960 I think it's gone the other way.
01:00:44.800 Like I don't, right.
01:00:46.360 It's a, it's a self-affirming system there where they're all patting themselves on the back.
01:00:50.080 They feel no shame whatsoever.
01:00:51.900 Um, I think the question of Roland's career should not be just decided that it's been destroyed.
01:00:58.440 I think it's up to us whether or not Roland's career has been destroyed.
01:01:02.000 And by us, I mean, all of us.
01:01:03.420 Um, I think he still has a tremendous, a lot to contribute.
01:01:08.140 He may choose to stay at Harvard.
01:01:09.640 He may choose to do something else with his life.
01:01:11.420 He's running companies and doing all kinds of amazing things in terms of the genius, creative, uh, uh, social analyst and activist in his way, uh, that he is starting companies and, uh, working on hard problems.
01:01:25.020 I'm not going to say more about that.
01:01:26.280 That's for him to reveal to the world, but, um, uh, yes, they, they should be ashamed of themselves.
01:01:34.300 So there's not any question about it.
01:01:36.000 Well, that was one of my questions is my note in the margin of your sub stack piece reads Harvard is not the place for him.
01:01:42.500 Um, you know, like to state the obvious, why not just leave Harvard?
01:01:46.700 I know they can't fire him because some people may be wondering, why didn't they just fire him?
01:01:49.980 He's tenured.
01:01:50.480 So they can't.
01:01:51.440 So they basically just clip his wings.
01:01:54.280 Um, so why, why not leave?
01:01:56.240 Why not go to someplace that's a little bit more open-minded?
01:02:00.080 I know there's not that many to choose from.
01:02:02.640 Well, I left Harvard in 1991 and moved to Boston university, but that's my story.
01:02:07.360 That's, that's not Roland's story.
01:02:08.880 Uh, and, and I think he's not going to let them have that satisfaction.
01:02:13.900 I mean, he waited, he may well, after he becomes a billionaire, decide to retire at the age of 52 and, uh, do something else with his life, but he's not going to just run with his tail between his legs.
01:02:24.740 Uh, not only that, but, um, he's got this black mark on him now, such that, uh, other institutions, if, you know, these people are cowards, they're spineless.
01:02:35.900 A Princeton or a Yale or a Stanford to make Roland the XYZ professor something and let him bring his hundred million dollar raising, uh, effort in his, uh, visionary, uh, uh, genius level of, uh, research to their institution.
01:02:52.460 Uh, to do it, they would have to stand out and take the slings and arrows that would surely come their way, uh, as a result of, uh, of the taint that's been put on him by this process.
01:03:01.760 Mm. So the, the taint is significant in September of 2021, the Crimson, that's their on-campus newspaper editorial board wrote an absolutely scathing piece about him.
01:03:13.720 I mean, I read this and I was like, I'm what is he really like a Weinstein type? What the hell did he do? My God.
01:03:19.140 Then you look at the actual allegations and they're utterly contrary to the language.
01:03:23.860 Uh, the, the, the piece starts by saying Friar was suspended for his quote, abhorrent treatment of his female employees.
01:03:31.560 What the joke about how somebody hadn't had sex since, you know, a hundred plus years ago.
01:03:36.140 Um, they note that he was accused of creating a hostile environment and engaging in years of unwelcome sexual conduct.
01:03:42.660 He never touched anybody. He wasn't accused of touching anybody.
01:03:45.900 He wasn't accused of conditioning anybody's career advancement on any sexual favors, et cetera.
01:03:49.980 Um, that's not in the piece there. They, uh, they write, this sends the message that Harvard is a university that permits a culture of sexual harassment.
01:03:57.780 They go on. This is allowing a faculty member who has, who has, who it has found violated university sexual harassment policies to educate its undergraduates.
01:04:07.700 This undermines the university's title nine policy, ultimately sending a message of hypocrisy to the students.
01:04:13.460 Women in the economics department now must decide whether or not they wish to take a class from a professor who allegedly objectified and sexualized his female employees.
01:04:25.300 Period. I mean, then they go on. Here's the final, um,
01:04:29.260 To our dismay, Friar will be teaching this fall. Harvard should notify students in Friar's course of the findings of their investigation against him.
01:04:39.180 He should not be allowed to interact with students alone in office hours or other spaces.
01:04:45.400 His, the, yeah, that he should, you have to out him on all these allegations to everybody.
01:04:50.160 And then he can't be alone with students. And then they go on to say the following.
01:04:53.260 Um, we don't ask, we don't, we do not make this ask lightly. The loss of Friar as a trusted educator and mentor at Harvard is a heavy one.
01:05:00.740 Friar's actions of sexual harassment have turned what was once a source of hope into a collective disappointment distributed and carried amongst all of the students who once looked up to him.
01:05:10.120 Students of color, especially have been stripped of a role model.
01:05:14.200 Friar could have been an excellent advisor to students eager to tackle the economics of inequality, an immensely important area of research.
01:05:20.720 But students have been denied this opportunity and the world is worse off because of it.
01:05:25.620 Glenn, that's kind of an admission right there.
01:05:29.100 The, the administration must stand against this. They won't, but they ought to.
01:05:34.900 These kids running these newspapers are going to do what they're going to do. They're 22 years old.
01:05:38.500 You know, they're going to do what they're going to do. And they're going off on a Title IX thing, Harvey Weinstein and all that.
01:05:42.500 It's obvious hyperbole and it doesn't fit the facts.
01:05:44.800 They're poisoning the well there. There should have been a letter to the editor of the Harvard Crimson from the president of the university objecting to the character assassination.
01:05:58.700 The McCarthyism that was being perpetrated against this stellar contributor to what the university is supposed to be about.
01:06:08.120 The cowardly character of academic leadership is at the root of the problem in the universities today.
01:06:17.340 We reached out to the two people featured in the documentary, Claudine Gay.
01:06:21.040 She's professor of government and of African-American studies at Harvard.
01:06:24.520 Also serves as the dean of social science for the faculty of arts and sciences.
01:06:28.340 And to Lawrence D. Bobo, he's dean of social science who you mentioned a minute ago, Glenn.
01:06:31.540 Um, and also chair of the department of African and African-American studies.
01:06:36.920 We didn't hear back from her.
01:06:39.140 We got this from Bobo's office.
01:06:40.980 Unfortunately, like this due to a very, very tight schedule, Dean Bobo will not be able to speak with you.
01:06:47.580 He thanks you for the invitation.
01:06:49.280 Very, very tight.
01:06:49.900 That's what they said to me.
01:06:50.760 That's what his people said to me too.
01:06:52.500 He's a busy guy.
01:06:53.560 What can I say?
01:06:54.640 One might say ultra tight, ultra, ultra.
01:06:57.460 Can I say though, you just saying the word Bobo triggered me though, Megan.
01:07:01.320 So I have to just say something.
01:07:02.620 Okay.
01:07:03.240 Oh, a, that's that like that.
01:07:07.100 Again, that editorial is only surprising if you think that the primary thing that Harvard
01:07:11.020 undergraduates are being taught is how to pursue veritas, right?
01:07:14.160 If you believe the pamphlet truth, it's not surprising if you think what they're being
01:07:18.300 trained to do is to perform victimhood.
01:07:20.920 And if that's what they're being trained to do, that's like a plus work right there.
01:07:24.300 Right.
01:07:24.880 And again, this is about deep, deep ideological corruption at the institutions of higher,
01:07:28.880 of higher learning.
01:07:29.460 I need to tell you guys that.
01:07:30.580 Right.
01:07:31.500 But can I, I just want to say on a somewhat hopeful note, because again, I'm like Glenn
01:07:36.140 and I'm like you in the sense that I find myself using these words that I would have been sort
01:07:39.880 of horrified about when I'm talking about like the cabal or like, you know, the woke cathedral
01:07:45.060 or the progressive establishment or legacy media.
01:07:48.520 And it sounds conspiratorial, but then there's no other way to describe what is the state of
01:07:53.020 affairs in 2022.
01:07:54.020 But at least for me, that's very sad and bad that the elites are uniformly ideologically corrupt
01:08:02.840 and pumping out false narratives about the country.
01:08:05.420 But it does also present an opportunity, right?
01:08:08.760 Like when the only thing that's ever been written about Roland's case is in the New York Times, in which they dutifully serve as handmaidens of the Harvard establishment and just repeat this narrative that Roland is an unrepentant sexual predator.
01:08:25.640 And that's how the narrative gets established.
01:08:28.220 That's not great.
01:08:29.780 But it also means that there's a gigantic story that's just sitting there that's been entirely
01:08:33.760 ignored by legacy media.
01:08:35.100 And that's basically what we we tried to do.
01:08:37.480 And it's not just that, though, it's we can make stuff that gets ignored.
01:08:43.960 But like, I mean, Glenn, like we can also make it better than the legacy media institutions or or a large legacy like Harvard University, which is and again, not to mince words, but I've watched more Larry Bobo lectures than his graduate students.
01:09:02.940 OK, I've read more of his papers than his wife.
01:09:05.320 OK, and this is me putting it kindly.
01:09:09.160 He, like a lot of the establishment, white and black at Harvard University, is a pampered mediocrity straight up.
01:09:16.480 He's a pampered mediocrity.
01:09:17.840 OK, and they couldn't even make something.
01:09:21.800 They couldn't even make a powerful counter narrative piece to this Roland documentary, even if they tried.
01:09:26.340 They couldn't do it, even if they tried, because they've gotten rich and wealthy and have a lot of status and have been put to the very highest realms of these institutions.
01:09:36.940 And they got there.
01:09:38.620 They're well above their actual intellectual merits, frankly.
01:09:41.860 And again, I don't just mean this about Bobo.
01:09:43.340 I mean, it's about a lot of people that are at Harvard University.
01:09:46.640 And they couldn't even make something this good if they tried.
01:09:49.040 And I think that should at least serve as a point of optimism if you have our critique of where media is in America in 2022.
01:09:59.120 Go ahead.
01:10:00.380 That was deep.
01:10:02.620 That was going for the jugular here in the war for the future of our country, which is largely about control of the narrative about these large issues that we're talking about.
01:10:13.600 And I'm glad to have Rob Montz on my side of the line in that one, because he's right.
01:10:18.880 I mean, pampered mediocrity.
01:10:19.880 Oh, my God.
01:10:20.500 Can I say that?
01:10:21.160 I cannot say that.
01:10:21.900 Y'all did not hear me.
01:10:25.720 Because, you know, but but look at the corruption.
01:10:29.460 And I do not mean this in reference to the the individuals in question here.
01:10:34.660 But affirmative action undermines, you know, everything.
01:10:39.500 It undermines everything.
01:10:40.940 I'm sorry to go off script here a little bit.
01:10:42.620 This is not the solution to the racial inequality problem, creating sinecures and boosting people and and inflating and puffing them up when they're not actually getting it done on the ground.
01:10:57.260 Rob rendered his view about Professor Bobo's videos.
01:11:01.100 I do not dispute it.
01:11:02.500 Neither do I endorse it.
01:11:03.860 I'll let it just sit there.
01:11:05.220 I'll let it just sit there.
01:11:06.620 I'm not saying he's an affirmative action professor.
01:11:09.340 You didn't hear me say that either.
01:11:10.500 What I'm saying, though, is that the deep story here is that Rowan's excellence is absolutely impeccable and it's independent of the color of his skin.
01:11:23.240 Exactly.
01:11:24.160 OK, that's the real threat.
01:11:27.040 That's it's not an Afro-American studies department.
01:11:30.000 It's the gosh darn Harvard economics department.
01:11:33.240 It's venerable.
01:11:34.280 It's foundational.
01:11:35.280 OK, he raises nine figures to do research.
01:11:38.620 Nobody does that.
01:11:39.940 Nobody else does that.
01:11:41.080 Nobody's a MacArthur genius.
01:11:42.660 Nobody's a John Bates Clark medal.
01:11:44.600 The excellence is just pouring off of him.
01:11:48.580 That's what they fear.
01:11:50.440 That black people would be judged by the content of their character, of which Rowan, notwithstanding this thing that they're trying to tattoo on him, is exemplary.
01:12:03.360 But he's a threat.
01:12:05.460 And whenever you're a threat, especially one who's saying things that align with the other side, ideologically or politically, you need to be destroyed.
01:12:12.680 And they're doing their level best.
01:12:14.520 But Rowan's going to have the last word.
01:12:16.620 Thanks to you guys.
01:12:17.640 Thanks to this documentary.
01:12:18.740 Thanks to our listeners and viewers and more and more people who get who get the real truth about him and understand that it's important to stand up and support his mission.
01:12:26.740 And whatever he forms next, we're all going to support.
01:12:29.640 He's got way more support out there than he even knows at this point because he's still tied to them and limited in what he can say and do.
01:12:35.900 But as soon as he clips that tether or manages to step away in some way, he'll feel it acutely.
01:12:43.000 You know, I think most people just going about their lives are worried about inflation.
01:12:45.400 They're worried about all that.
01:12:46.160 But they're not thinking about Roland Frye.
01:12:47.480 They don't even know the story, which is why the documentary was so important.
01:12:50.060 And even I, I've covered Roland Frye.
01:12:53.440 I've said it is studies in full, the good, the bad, the bubba, all of it.
01:12:57.480 And didn't have a full appreciation for what was happening to him until I saw this piece.
01:13:02.000 So it's an important piece and it's very easily accessed.
01:13:05.040 Stand by.
01:13:05.480 Glenn and Rob are staying with us.
01:13:06.480 We've got one more block to go.
01:13:07.500 A lot more to cover, including some of the news of the day and the disbanding of the disinformation board.
01:13:12.840 Did you hear?
01:13:13.820 Showtune tyrant is gone.
01:13:15.320 She's gone.
01:13:15.800 So you mentioned you mentioned affirmative action and, you know, we had a couple of things coming down the legal pike on that front.
01:13:26.460 A case going up to the U.S. Supreme Court questioning whether it's still to condense, it still has a role at the university level.
01:13:33.120 Can you discriminate against Asians and their admission at the university level in favor of other kinds of diversity admissions?
01:13:41.560 Supreme Court going to take a look at that.
01:13:42.980 I know, Rob, you wrote a whole you did a whole other documentary on like Facebook saying we need more diversity hires.
01:13:49.320 We need more diversity hires and doing self-flagellating over its diversity numbers.
01:13:53.260 It's all about like the quota, right?
01:13:54.660 It's the quota that they look at, the raw numbers of certain people of color, et cetera, as opposed to how are they doing?
01:14:02.640 How do they fare once they're here?
01:14:03.960 Do they ascend to positions of power?
01:14:05.680 Do they have a positive experience once they've entered Harvard University or Facebook, et cetera?
01:14:09.760 So, Glenn, what do you make of where that's going in academia?
01:14:12.640 What would you like to see?
01:14:14.100 Well, the court's going to decide evidently in the fall.
01:14:17.980 I should acknowledge that I signed on to a friend of the court brief with some other economist supporting the students for fair admission side of that case.
01:14:25.740 And, you know, there's going to be a decision.
01:14:30.580 What would I hope to see?
01:14:32.880 I would hope to see that the court would decide that what happened to the Asians at Harvard and is going on at the University of North Carolina is unconstitutional or inconsistent with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
01:14:43.540 I think the affirmative action in 1980 was one thing.
01:14:50.380 Affirmative action in 2022 and on into the indefinite future, I think it's poison for the future of race relations, poison for the pursuit of racial equality,
01:15:01.880 genuinely genuine racial equality in the country, which can only be founded, in my view, on equality of performance and of merit.
01:15:10.340 And that it points this is a bandaid.
01:15:13.500 This is a accommodation of the disparity in the development of intellectual performance amongst different groups in the country by by trying to legislate or mandate equality of achievement.
01:15:29.800 I think what's happened to the Asians at Harvard, again, this is to be decided by the court, is abominable.
01:15:37.920 The appropriation of a personality rating as a cover.
01:15:43.000 So that, you know, they say the Asian students have high scores, but they're narrow, they're nerdy, they want to do science and they're not interesting and they're not going to be leaders.
01:15:52.340 I mean, you can say that about any other group of people.
01:15:54.720 I mean, what I say to the affirmative action proponents who talk about this diversity thing, show me a black student with high scores, but a bad personality or who is not admitted or show me an Asian student with no scores, but an amazing personality who is admitted.
01:16:16.160 And then I'll believe the argument that it's a personality rating difference that accommodate that accounts for the disparity.
01:16:23.400 They're just playing with us.
01:16:25.660 They have in tacit quota an implicit desire for diversity and they're rigging the numbers in order to get it to the to the detriment of merit.
01:16:36.940 And it doesn't end there.
01:16:38.740 I mean, this is being built into our culture.
01:16:40.560 It's creeping into the corporate world.
01:16:42.100 It's it dominates the thinking in the political realm amongst progressives and it's poison.
01:16:49.540 Quotas are unlawful, by the way.
01:16:51.040 That's why they have to disguise it.
01:16:52.520 Yeah, I know.
01:16:52.940 I mean, there was a headline not long ago about the NFL requiring this isn't a racial thing, it's a gender thing, but requiring like all of these assistant coaches to be female.
01:17:00.860 It's like, OK, so do they know that most of the women don't play football in football and in high school?
01:17:07.700 And I mean, we don't have the peewee program for a lot of girls, so it's not exactly like a pipeline sending.
01:17:13.360 It's like, could you give us a break?
01:17:15.200 You know, and I know Victor Davis Hanson is always making the point like if we want perfect equity when it comes to gender, when it comes to race in major sports, let's do the NBA next.
01:17:24.260 See how that goes.
01:17:25.400 Right.
01:17:26.220 They don't want perfect equity.
01:17:28.440 They don't want perfect parity.
01:17:29.500 They just want to sort of look like they care about diversity as long as it aligns with their worldview.
01:17:35.920 And honestly, the same thing on these mass shootings.
01:17:38.220 You know, they ignored the press, ignored Waukesha.
01:17:40.520 They didn't care when a black man mowed down the dancing grannies and the children who were white.
01:17:44.720 That didn't fit the narrative.
01:17:45.720 They didn't care about the subway shooter who was black and had written a lot of anti-white things because that didn't fit the narrative.
01:17:51.280 But the Buffalo shooting, different story.
01:17:52.880 They've ignored the the it was a Taiwanese guy who shot up Asians or vice versa.
01:17:58.960 Just the same just after Buffalo, this happened just a couple of days ago.
01:18:01.860 Didn't make the press.
01:18:03.160 Five Hispanic guys down in Texas shoot out at another facility.
01:18:07.600 Didn't make the news like it has to align with the narrative or it doesn't count.
01:18:12.520 And I love.
01:18:13.640 Yeah, go ahead, Glenn.
01:18:14.620 No, I was going to echo Rob Monson saying this is an opportunity because everybody can see what's going on.
01:18:20.420 And I really fear the consequences of the unraveling of this kind of spiral of silence that we're embedded in where everybody can see what's going on.
01:18:30.220 Everybody knows that guy in Waukesha who drove that SUV into dancing granny Christmas parade was a racist mass murderer.
01:18:41.320 Everybody knows that.
01:18:43.040 No one will say it.
01:18:43.980 Of course not, because, you know, it doesn't fit the narrative, as you say.
01:18:47.000 And I don't think that kind of suppression.
01:18:51.120 Everybody knows that the real threat to black life in this country is vicious, violent criminals who are preying on other black people in the cities of the country.
01:19:00.800 The cops.
01:19:01.640 It's you know, Heather McDonald has made this point over and over and over again.
01:19:05.020 Everybody knows it.
01:19:07.100 The thing is not going to hold together here.
01:19:09.800 It's going to unravel and heaven help us if it unravels in an ugly way, which is quite possible.
01:19:17.300 Well, you know, I mean, you can do this tit for tat on a lot of stories, but the same weekend that the 10 people were killed in Buffalo and three other shot.
01:19:29.720 33 people were killed in Chicago.
01:19:31.620 33 people were shot in in Chicago.
01:19:35.000 33 people were shot five fatally in weekend violence across Chicago.
01:19:38.500 Just just yesterday was in the news that Chicago had to close Millennium Park, like the where everybody goes and listens to the music because a kid got shot.
01:19:47.380 Sixteen year old got shot.
01:19:48.600 I mean, the violence is pouring out there into John Cass has been writing great stuff about this into the mainstream sort of Chicago roads, neighborhoods and so on.
01:19:58.180 It's not confined to like the areas, you know, are full of gangs and so on.
01:20:03.020 No.
01:20:03.200 Now you can be at Millennium Park and have to worry about getting shot.
01:20:06.020 You can be on road, not Rodeo Drive, Mag Mile.
01:20:08.920 They call it Magnificent Mile and have to worry about it.
01:20:11.020 They can be having a post dinner drink in the loop and have to worry about media.
01:20:14.660 We'll never talk about it.
01:20:15.740 They won't touch it.
01:20:18.080 And everybody knows, excuse me, Megan, that it's young black kids who haven't been parented and who are indisciplined, who are pouring out in large numbers.
01:20:25.060 Some of it social media coordinated.
01:20:27.160 And, I mean, the racial dimension of this and, you know, I don't take any pleasure in calling attention to it.
01:20:34.720 I just want to point out that everybody can see it.
01:20:37.660 Mm hmm.
01:20:38.580 Yeah.
01:20:38.940 Well, I mean, that's what you've been doing for a long time.
01:20:40.600 Just saying, look, these are the stats and it doesn't behoove anybody to start doing this.
01:20:44.540 Like, let's divide by race.
01:20:45.640 Let's let's focus on the one.
01:20:47.300 And there's no question this guy was motivated by race when he actually did the thing in Buffalo.
01:20:50.100 As I said, it's not that we need to ignore that aspect of it, but some more time needs to be spent on what happened prior to that and how he got radicalized in the first place.
01:20:58.920 Rob, I was going to ask you about your other documentary, because when you talk about what Facebook did with again, I think this is basically quotas, what they were what they were doing to themselves.
01:21:07.400 Reminds me what I went through in New York City.
01:21:08.900 The first time Glenn was on the program with Coleman Hughes, I revealed to them why we left our schools in New York and how racist they had gotten there.
01:21:15.720 And I had read to them a thing that was circulated at our boys school that read in part in every classroom where white children learn there is a future killer cop.
01:21:26.980 And it was shocking.
01:21:28.600 And Glenn was he did his Glenn thing on it.
01:21:31.400 He did not say with all due respect, he just did it.
01:21:33.900 And it was wonderful.
01:21:35.580 But it reminded me what we went through in our New York City schools, where every single all the schools started flagellating themselves after George Floyd.
01:21:42.300 The headmaster, whatever you call him now, at my daughter's school was like, our school is racist.
01:21:48.000 I am racist.
01:21:49.320 We've had hundreds of years of racism.
01:21:50.960 And I'm sorry.
01:21:51.760 I'm like, what'd you do?
01:21:53.320 What?
01:21:53.620 What?
01:21:54.040 What'd you do?
01:21:54.420 No, she couldn't get specific.
01:21:55.900 And that's kind of the Facebook thing that you looked into.
01:21:58.320 Tell us.
01:21:58.700 Well, that one is more about they won't admit that it's a pipeline problem and they have to just consistently plow millions of dollars into well-polished TV campaigns to promise to do better and to promise to boost diversity.
01:22:12.220 And what you just said also, when Glenn was talking, it got me thinking about the fact of how awkward, though, and comically tragic this kind of colossus, though, of progressive right think, how tragic and comical it gets when they are confronted with the problematic reality of Asian excellence.
01:22:34.540 That it keeps changing how they deal with it.
01:22:36.960 Right now, we're working on a documentary about some changes that are happening to Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax, Virginia, which you guys might have heard of because it consistently gets ranked as the best high school in America.
01:22:49.100 It's very much like a Stuyvesant in that it used to have a very clean admissions protocol, which was just like a single test and a couple other academic credentials determined whether or not you got to have entry into basically the best high school in America.
01:23:02.940 But it's been awkward because the children of poor Korean and Vietnamese and Chinese families in Northern Virginia have been dominating the test.
01:23:14.780 And as of two years ago, it was like 70% of Thomas Jefferson High School is Asian, right?
01:23:20.940 But then flash forward to the summer of 2020, America's racial reckoning and the principal of Thomas Jefferson High School sends a missive, very much like what you were talking about, Megan, a missive to all the parents of Thomas Jefferson High School about how they need to do better, about how they failed to be diverse, about how all the latent white supremacy in the school.
01:23:47.080 And in this documentary we have, the person who is reading this letter is one of the parents at Thomas Jefferson High School.
01:23:56.920 She's a, she immigrated from China in the 80s and literally she and her family were escaped, she and her family have escaped the cultural revolution.
01:24:07.320 That's the person who's being lectured to about their privilege, is being lectured to about their unfair position in the intersectional pyramid.
01:24:16.780 And it's just obscene.
01:24:18.260 It's ridiculous, right?
01:24:19.580 And most of them are lower middle class, working class.
01:24:23.920 And it's just that the only thing they spend their money on is test prep.
01:24:28.000 That's the only thing they spend their money and time on.
01:24:30.000 And they have a culture that values academic excellence.
01:24:32.960 And that's what accounts for their astonishing success at a place like Thomas Jefferson High School.
01:24:37.140 And you get to watch like the weird warped doublespeak of the establishment when they're trying to explain that as also an outgrowth of white supremacy.
01:24:46.020 I mean, it's crazy making.
01:24:48.320 You see it sometimes when you look at the Indian American community.
01:24:52.880 You know, these are people who are brown people who they don't count either.
01:24:57.160 They have a culture that values hard work and merit and and just, you know, challenge within the school districts.
01:25:04.820 And yet they're not sort of I have a lot of Indian friends who are like, where do I fit?
01:25:08.960 Do I get to go to the diversity group?
01:25:10.600 Like, am I wanted there?
01:25:12.300 Because I don't feel like I am.
01:25:14.200 And yet, you know, I've suffered certain acts of discrimination, just like most people of color at some point in their life.
01:25:20.460 And also, we've talked about this before, I think, Glenn, but immigrants in this country who are black people, black people who are not American born, a lot of whom have the same very strong work ethic.
01:25:34.160 And we'll eschew some of these narratives about the black experience in America.
01:25:40.500 They sort of get lobbed off from the narrative by the by BLM Central, too.
01:25:44.960 You know, like, well, you don't understand because you're not descended from slaves, which a lot of black Americans are not descended from slaves either.
01:25:50.480 It was like you're not descended from slaves.
01:25:53.120 So you can't understand the true black experience and you can't speak to American racism.
01:25:56.760 Yeah, well, what this reveals, actually, is that we're in the 21st century and this is a great dynamic, moving target country.
01:26:04.820 This country is evolving and the world is evolving.
01:26:07.800 The world is getting small.
01:26:09.920 You know, you can work with people across great oceans and whatnot.
01:26:13.280 And the billions who are coming online with modernization that's going on in China and India are going to change the course of the history of humankind in the 21st century.
01:26:24.000 And we Americans and we black Americans, we Americans, because, you know, the reaction against the disproportionate representation of excellent test takers in a place like Thomas Jefferson, by dumbing it down and leveling it down, getting rid of the test and whatnot, will hinder us as a people, American people, from getting in.
01:26:45.540 And we black Americans have a lot of state because nobody is standing still.
01:26:48.940 You know, they're moving forward.
01:26:51.220 It's like Roland says, I think at some point in Rob's documentary, that you've got to ask the white kids to take Thursday and Friday off if you want the black kids to catch up.
01:26:58.780 And nobody's taking Thursday and Friday off.
01:27:00.480 And these Asian kids are certainly not taking Thursday and Friday off.
01:27:03.400 So if we don't get our heads around what really is the issue here, which is the development of the capacities of our people to effectively perform in modern society.
01:27:13.640 We're just we're cruising for another summer of 2020 just online with the demagogues are going to have a field day.
01:27:21.180 And if I may, without running on too long, we need leadership.
01:27:24.860 We need Barack Obama to come out of hiding and lead a movement to empower African-Americans and others to grasp the opportunities of the 21st century, not to repeat the tired, shopworn, you know, shibboleths and fairy tales about white supremacy is holding black people down, about America has a knee on the neck of black people.
01:27:51.640 So it's the road to disaster for America and for blacks.
01:27:55.200 But let me let me ask you, because I also understand if I were black and living in Buffalo and anywhere near this community, I can understand how I'd feel scared and I'd feel angry and I'd feel worried for my kids.
01:28:09.960 And and outside of Buffalo, too, because the narrative is really I mean, there's no question that there are crazy people in the country and there are white supremacists in the country, not to the numbers that the Biden administration would have his belief, but they're clearly out there.
01:28:21.220 And.
01:28:21.640 And with race becoming so such a centralized topic of discussion, as you pointed out late earlier, it's dangerous.
01:28:28.640 So I I wouldn't know what to say to that person who's worried because it's really the Democrats who can continue to make race the focus of everything.
01:28:38.880 You know, you cannot avoid it these days.
01:28:41.160 And then you see a story like that where this guy has clearly racist thoughts and writings.
01:28:45.640 And what what would you say?
01:28:47.740 I mean, to black Americans now worried, worried about their safety.
01:28:51.040 Well, I'm glad you asked me, because, you know, I said earlier who started it and it may seem insensitive to the families who lost loved ones and so forth.
01:28:58.720 It may seem that I was unconscious, unaware of that there is a real threat of violence, of racially motivated violence against black people in this country.
01:29:10.000 I understand that that's the case. I don't mean to minimize that at all.
01:29:13.480 I mean, what would you say? You say, oh, my God, I'm so sorry for your loss.
01:29:16.840 I mean, you would try to comfort people as Obama comforted in that amazing speech that he gave in South Carolina after the terrible racist crime that was presented there.
01:29:27.020 No, you don't want to get into tit for tat.
01:29:28.920 You don't want to get into, you know, counting off violent acts perpetrated by black people as if that somehow balance the scales.
01:29:37.940 You want to try to stay in touch with reality without losing touch with your your humanity and human empathy.
01:29:45.540 These things are at one in the same time, emotional and requires to draw together and mourn.
01:29:52.580 But they're also political in the various ways. I mean, we're going to have to decide what the narrative is going to be going forward.
01:29:58.680 And it's a delicate balancing act to be able to maintain a sense of sympathy and support for people who suffered loss while at the same time not being plowed under by the ideologues who want to make the narrative miss out on the fullness of the picture.
01:30:15.540 In circumstances like these, you want to look at facts. You want to look at numbers like let's get an actual handle on the the numbers, the size of the sort of white supremacy in America.
01:30:26.460 You know, these groups that are devoted to it and spread the word about it.
01:30:29.360 I would like to do something like that. But the truth is, Glenn, I don't really know who to trust on something like that.
01:30:35.520 And in part, it's because of things like what happened to Roland Fryer. You know, we've seen time and time again that people who write these studies take a take Lisa Libman over at Brown University who wrote a study, did a study on the trans craze sweeping young girls and then was forced, you know, thanks to the wokesters to have it reviewed again.
01:30:57.000 And it's it withstood the scrutiny. But my point is, I don't know who to trust, because if you're a professor at a university doing this kind of research, you can't really write the truth and survive.
01:31:07.900 So it has to be modified or has to be double peer reviewed later or, you know, what have you. So it's a little disconcerting because facts are tough to get on these subjects.
01:31:17.620 I think the question is, if in response to what happened in Buffalo, how do we minimize going forward the chance that it happens again and ask ourselves a question of whether or not invading against white supremacy and the threat that it poses or examining the delivery of mental health services to people who need them would be the most effective way to minimize the possibility of
01:31:37.900 the recurrence of this event going forward. I think I can see the answer to that question.
01:31:42.660 We need the disinformation board, Glenn. That's what you're basically know. We need the showtune tyrant.
01:31:50.720 Chris Ruppo came up with that. I have to say it's brilliant. Showtune try it because this woman, you know, she's resigned. That's over. I think we're all in agreement, especially I know, Rob, you did another documentary on freedom of speech, how important it is on college campuses, etc.
01:32:02.280 That's not where we were going with the disinformation board, though. It does remain unclear whether it's entirely disbanded or just on pause. Your thoughts on that one, Rob?
01:32:11.120 Well, yeah, I mean, I'm glad that caricature of tyranny is broken down. But I do want to say, and talking to Glenn is part of what informs us about me, is that a big part of the reason I've done so many investigations into higher ed is because I still have what maybe is a naive, romantic vision of what these institutions ought to be.
01:32:35.820 And it's an extremely unique and valuable purpose. And one of those purposes, obviously, is the generation of new truths. But again, right now I'm just going to be parroting Glenn's lines and another documentary we did about free speech at Brown University.
01:32:50.780 Part of that process, though, of digging up new truths requires a open forum of of a variety of different ideas bumping up against each other.
01:33:03.060 And I do worry, as much as I love Substack, as much as I love the Megan Kelly podcast, as much as I love these other kind of upstart media institutions that are forming outside of the corporate establishment, is that a lot of them tend to not have that feature that's ideal in higher ed, which is a heterodox open market of ideas.
01:33:29.720 And you really do. In order to be to get smarter, you don't just want to consume people that already agree with you.
01:33:36.340 And the university at its best takes very smart people from all across the political spectrum, makes them clash with each other and will hold them accountable if they try to use rhetorical techniques other than using evidence and arguments like you can do plenty of tribal ad hominem attacks on Twitter.
01:33:56.040 But if you come to a university properly functioning, you can't get away with that. You're not supposed to get away with that.
01:34:01.660 It's either you mount a good argument and you and you present some good evidence of your own or you lose or you lose.
01:34:09.060 And that's an extremely important system to have in place. And it's difficult to really accurately replicate outside of the university.
01:34:17.200 Hmm. Well, hope springs eternal. We've got University of Austin and that's about it right now.
01:34:25.180 We'll check back in with further updates. Glenn Lowry, such a pleasure as always. Rob Mons, congrats to you.
01:34:31.220 Everybody's got to go check out the Roland Fryer film at whocanceledroland.com.
01:34:37.080 You requested, we responded. Tomorrow, Dinesh D'Souza. He's behind the documentary. Everyone's talking about 2000 Mules. Don't miss it. See you then.
01:34:44.980 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.