The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Dr. Eric Kaufmann - The Buckingham Manifesto for Post-Progressive Social Science (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_859)

00:00:00.000 Hi, everybody. This is Scott Satt for The Sad Truth. Today, I have one of the rare repeat guests, one of the rare people to put on their CV that they were good enough to be invited for a second time to The Sad Truth, Professor Eric Kaufman. How are you doing, sir?

00:00:17.560 God, great. It's good to be here, and I'm glad that I'm one of the Hall of Fame that has managed to get in more than once.

00:00:24.400 You are indeed. I just checked before we came on, the first, the inaugural time we came on was April 3rd, 2023. Much has happened since, which I want to get into, but just for the people who don't know who you are, you're Professor Eric Kaufman, Professor of Politics at University of Buckingham, which I was fortunate enough to visit last month.

00:00:46.920 We'll talk about that. And you are also the founder and director of the Center for Heterodox Social Science, which comes with a new MA and a new PhD. We'll talk about that. Anything else you want to add to the bio before we get going?

00:01:04.040 Well, I have my book, which you probably can see just over my shoulder, and that's The Third Awakening, 2024, which is really all about woke and how it got here.

00:01:14.500 Right, which, in a sense, is going to lead up to the Buckingham Manifesto, which we're going to talk about, yes?

00:01:23.020 Right, yeah. I like to think of it as the companion volume to The Parasitic Mind and to the new book on suicidal empathy, actually, which is really, I'm looking forward to.

00:01:33.780 Oh, thank you so much. You know, it's funny because I wake up every morning filled with so much impatience because I am seeing the reaction that people are getting to suicidal empathy, which, dare I say, is even more, you know, orgiastic in its firm than The Parasitic Mind.

00:01:52.820 So if this is any good indication, I may be able to retire in Newport Beach, California soon.

00:02:00.480 Anyways, let's get, so let's first begin with, last time you were on, two plus years ago, you were at University of London.

00:02:08.960 You've now moved to the University of Buckingham, where you founded all sorts of new cool things.

00:02:14.240 Tell us about this move and what are some, you know, things you want to add to that, John?

00:02:18.340 Yeah. Well, I think, Gad, like you, I'm one of a small band of, you know, non-progressive scholars in the social sciences, broadly conceived, so we're on the move now, aren't we?

00:02:29.600 I was at Birkbeck University of London for 20 years, and I was four years at the University of Southampton, so 24 years in the mainstream system.

00:02:40.760 And then University of Buckingham, which, of course, Britain's first, one of the very few private universities founded by Thatcher, you know, has a free market tradition, very different from the mainstream in that.

00:02:55.000 And I just thought it was about time I put my money where my mouth was and go to a different institution.

00:03:00.440 And I'd also had, you know, some run-ins, you know, the internal investigations, the Twitter mobbings, the open letters, all these sorts of things you're familiar with.

00:03:09.040 And so between that and the opportunity at Buckingham, I thought it was time to make a move.

00:03:15.100 And so I set out this new Center for Heterodox Social Science, which we'll talk about, because that's kind of the context for the conference and manifesto, which came later, and which you were kind enough to attend, really.

00:03:29.180 Oh, it was such a pleasure.

00:03:32.280 So actually, so let's talk about that, and then we can get into the actual official manifesto that came out recently.

00:03:39.500 I think it was published in the Chronicles of Higher Education, is that what I'm talking about?

00:03:43.480 And I think someone has rebutted it, and then that person is soliciting some replies to it, which I've so far ignored.

00:03:53.080 But in any case, so June 4th, I think, there was a Is Walk Dead conference at the Emanuel Center in London, which you were kind enough to invite me to.

00:04:04.160 And then the following day, we all drove, headed up to University of Buckingham for, I think, the inaugural, the original first fully anti-woke academic conference ever.

00:04:19.500 Is that a true statement?

00:04:20.400 I think that is a true statement, absolutely.

00:04:23.660 And I think it's important to, now that we're starting to get some new initiatives happening on the non-progressive side.

00:04:32.280 You know, so we have the June 4th event that yourself, Matt Goodwin, and Baccia Ungar Sargon spoke at, which was before the conference the next day, which was on Heterodox Social Science.

00:04:43.760 As it's worth saying for the audience, we have got a free speech infrastructure now of organizations like FIRE and the Free Speech Union and others who are defending academics.

00:04:55.120 We had the Stanford Academic Freedom Conference.

00:04:58.800 We've got the Heterodox Academy Conference.

00:05:01.340 We have a number of conferences where, and we have that conference out at University of Southern California, I believe, where people are talking about the problem of free speech and ideological conformity in academia.

00:05:16.360 But what I wanted to do with this is to say, okay, we've now outlined the problem.

00:05:21.400 What is the positive thing we need to do?

00:05:24.560 And that is a new research agenda and a new intellectual movement.

00:05:28.920 So this is really the whole point of my post-progressivism article and this conference is to sketch out what I call post-progressive intellectual movement and agenda.

00:05:40.980 It's a bit like, think of it as a non-progressive post-modernism.

00:05:43.760 But instead of post-modernism, we're saying we're not post-modern, but we are beyond the last 60 years, which is really the progressive period in which the cultural left has come to completely dominate high culture, intellectual life, universities.

00:06:01.660 We need to have an agenda, which is post-progressive, which says, actually, that progressive movement has restricted the pursuit of truth by setting out taboos and red lines beyond which you're not allowed to go.

00:06:17.520 So you can't say people's minds are parasitized.

00:06:24.340 So essentially doing more or less off-piste or politically incorrect social science that is rebalancing.

00:06:32.560 So what we're doing is we're trying to rebalance social sciences towards truth because they've gone away from truth and in favor of ideology.

00:06:40.860 Ideology tells you what you're allowed to research and which perspective.

00:06:44.580 So any disparity between, you know, black and white or between men and women can only be explained by systemic racism and sexism.

00:06:53.980 You can't say, well, actually, can we at least look at family structure?

00:06:59.020 Can we look at, you know, you say evolutionary psychology choices men and women make, you know, these sorts of things.

00:07:05.720 If we really want to understand the phenomenon, we're going to need to actually bring these other explanations in.

00:07:11.900 So that's really part of the mission is heterodox social science or countercultural social science.

00:07:17.460 And the other part of it is we need to be studying woke as an ideology like any other.

00:07:23.060 The way, you know, if you, I'm a co-editor of a journal of nationalism studies where after the Berlin Wall came down,

00:07:31.320 this scholarly association and journal was set up and you had a boom in studies of nationalism,

00:07:38.280 thousands of articles, books, conferences, courses.

00:07:43.160 You know, if academia was functioning properly, the explosion of woke would have led to the same thing.

00:07:49.880 But you're not going to find courses on woke, except my course, open online course on woke.

00:07:54.740 You're not going to find that at universities.

00:07:58.000 And so why not?

00:07:59.040 Well, because it's too uncomfortable to study, it's off limits.

00:08:02.220 So the two things we need to do, countercultural social science and what I call critical woke studies.

00:08:08.780 And that's the research agenda, the intellectual agenda at the conference and for the manifesto.

00:08:16.160 Right.

00:08:16.480 I mean, and there are several reasons for why we are in the, I mean, in French, you say,

00:08:21.880 like in the trouble pit that we're in right now.

00:08:27.880 One of it, I mean, there are many reasons.

00:08:30.260 One is, of course, if you conflate activism versus the pursuit of truth, right?

00:08:37.520 I mean, there's nothing inherently non-scientific about sociology, epistemologically speaking.

00:08:43.840 I mean, Auguste Comte argued in the hierarchy of sciences that sociology should be at the apex because it is a lot more difficult to study human beings than it is to study, you know, chemical compounds.

00:08:57.140 And he's exactly correct.

00:08:59.240 The problem arises because sociologists don't view their fundamental objective as one to pursue truth, but rather I have to be an activist.

00:09:10.580 And so it's in that sense that sociology is tainted, not because psychology or sociology are any less, so there's that problem.

00:09:19.780 Another problem, which is an infrastructural one, is that if 95, 98, 99% of the professors are leftists, even if you and I are, you know, proud signatories of the Buckingham Manifesto, are you ever able to flip it?

00:09:37.020 And then, of course, there are other reasons that the parasitic stuff that I talk about, you know, social scientists are afraid to argue that human beings are driven by biological imperatives and so on.

00:09:47.540 Do you see any of these three that I just mentioned, and there are a few other reasons, as one is more, you know, we better solve the lopsidedness and biased professoriate before we get, or are they all equally problematic and it has to be a multi-pronged approach?

00:10:04.220 Well, okay, yeah. I think that our aim shouldn't, in the short term, be 50-50 in academia between right and left. I think that's unrealistic. But I think what's more realistic is to say we can approach a more balanced picture in terms of the influence on the dominant ideas of society.

00:10:27.820 Yes.

00:10:28.440 And actually, the way to attain that is we have to create a parallel ecosystem of new universities, new centers, new networks, and then we need to amplify the cultural production of those networks.

00:10:44.300 Because most academic papers are never cited. So we don't actually need to reproduce all of the stuff sitting on the dusty shelves. We need to, however, anything that is produced by the dissidents needs to be amplified to the point where it really influences debates that policymakers and journalists are having.

00:11:06.740 And I kind of see an alliance between the dissident academics and some of the kind of new media that's out there, new podcast media that can amplify this research. And so actually, it should be possible to have the same influence with one, you know, with one-twentieth the number or one-tenth the number of academics.

00:11:28.760 I still think it should be possible. I still think it should be possible. But we need to be much smarter and more nimble about it. So one of the things I'm trying to do is create a repository of non-progressive social science that can be searched with an AI by journalists and by policymakers. I'm trying to get some funding for that.

00:11:47.880 So what that will allow people to do is say, well, we want to bypass, say, chat GPT or some other AI that will just direct us to the usual stuff. We can go to this portal and we can find the argument against systemic racism as the explanation for the racial wealth gap.

00:12:05.600 Something like that. Can we come to a system where we've created a separate ecosystem, linking dissenting academics like you with people in think tanks, people in new media, new universities that can have an amplification and change the culture?

00:12:25.260 So I think that's probably our best bet. I don't think we're going to suddenly have academia be 50-50.

00:12:31.480 Yeah, no, I think you're exactly right. I mean, that's the exact reason why very early I saw the value and power of setting up my own show. This was way before it was cool to have podcasts, right? I mean, you know, everybody and their mother has a podcast.

00:12:50.720 I know.

00:12:51.080 But when I first came out, I was, dare I say, probably maybe the first professor to actually have these long format chats and so on, because I thought, well, wait a minute, exactly to your point, the modal number of times that a paper is cited in academia is, drum roll, zero.

00:13:10.080 Zero, right? I mean, yes, there are these stellar papers that end up getting cited after 10 years, you know, 8,000 times, but the average paper, and by the way, this is not an indictment on the value of producing knowledge.

00:13:26.360 Both you and I are academics in our core. But life also involves trade-offs, as the great Thomas Sowell explained to us. So I can write a trade book that will be read by hundreds of thousands of people, or I could publish my 97th academic paper, which if I'm lucky, it'll be read by 30 people.

00:13:51.500 Well, life is short, I've got to make a decision. So I exactly agree with you. And that's why I love having these conversations, because I'll post this up. And within, you know, an hour or two on X, there'll be 65,000 people who viewed it. So do you think that a lot of academics, whether they are parasitized or not, are starting to realize the importance of these new media? Or are they still stuck in their stay in your lane sort of vision?

00:14:19.000 I think most are still stuck in your lane, because they're used to it's comfortable. I think there's also another interesting dynamic, though, which speaks to what you're doing. And that is, I heard somewhere that, you know, for example, the statistic that if you go to law school in the Ivy League, and you're a Republican, your chances of clerking in the Supreme Court are something like 14 times higher.

00:14:44.180 Because the demand is kind of roughly 50 50. But the supply is so heavily on the left out of those law schools, that if you happen to be in the minority, you're doing very well. And similarly, with nonfiction books, you know, I think a similar pattern where the pattern of books that are actually consumed is more balanced than the producers of the book. So and so it's true, then that, you know, for podcasting, most of the political podcasts in the US that are popular are actually on the right.

00:15:14.160 Right. And I think there is some truth in that, in that there's a big demand with very few people to fill it. And so it's quite a good opportunity for people like you to who are filling that particular niche, to get your ideas out there. So I think all we need to do is in fact, connect the small number of producers with this quite large demand to have the same influence.

00:15:39.240 Now, of course, someone can always say, if you're just a podcaster, and you have no credentials, someone might say, oh, well, you're just a podcaster. I think that's a dishonest way to argue, but they can say that. I do think we need to have some academic heft behind this alternative media think tank sphere. So it is useful to have the alternative academia.

00:16:02.300 I do think we need to, you know, people who know the methods can produce the deep research. I think that's going to be necessary. We can't just have somebody's take on today's events.

00:16:14.700 But I think we don't need to reproduce all of academia. As you say, most of academia is either salami slicing off the same very tired old ideas, or just never getting cited. So we just need to have better amplification and maybe better coordination.

00:16:35.580 Yeah, beautiful. I mean, we've already touched upon many of the ideas behind the Buckingham Manifesto. But give us the specific definition of what this manifesto is. And then in the eventually in the description section, I'll put a link. Now is the link to the actual manifesto behind the paywall? Or is it publicly available?

00:16:57.440 No, there? Well, there's really the the the the chronicle is paywalled. But I've also got it on a Google Doc that anybody who's an academic or graduate student can sign. So we are taking signatures. Okay, perfect. I'll put I'll send that over to you. So it's perfectly public. But yeah, there's really, the manifesto is really just following from the conference. It's two things.

00:17:19.780 It's it's that we need to do what you might call politically incorrect or countercultural social science, to rebalance the production of knowledge, which has become heavily warped. And the second thing is we need to do critical woke studies. In other words, study woke, as an ideology, the way we would study fascism or communism or any other ideology. That's a research agenda. And we've already got, as I mentioned in the well, in the manifesto, we already have competing schools of thought.

00:17:48.220 We have, you know, we have, you know, the people who say it is all about status and dividing the working class. That's why we have woke, you know, Viva Gramaswamy, or Rob Henderson, or, you know, and then we have the people who say, no, it's a religion. It's a true belief. And that's perhaps a bit closer to also your, I think, to your position.

00:18:09.420 And then, or then we also have arguments over, you know, did this arise in the 2010s, or did it arise in the 1960s, which is my view and Chris Ruffo's view. So you have these competing schools of thought already, this is a discipline. And so it needs to be recognized as such. And so it's a research agenda. So that's really the two prongs. I'm kind of using this term post progressivism to kind of scaffold this enterprise.

00:18:36.760 Because I do think there's a sense in which cultural leftism has come to the end of the road. You know, trans is its Waterloo in a way. I'm not saying everybody recognizes that. But I think even the proponents, they're just defending turf now. I don't think they're actually taking it to the next level. And I think a lot of even the center leftists now are starting to back away from elements of it. 0.73

00:19:02.820 So I think it's kind of reached its apogee. And so I think we should put a bookmark down and say that was the era of the cultural left, it dominated intellectual life, what's the next era going to look like the post progressive era, and two parts of that are going to be this new social science and the critical woke studies.

00:19:21.320 So two questions. First, one, you already alluded to when you referenced Christopher Ruffo, he recently came out with the Manhattan statement, which I was also a proud signatory of that statement. What are some do they does the Buckingham manifesto and the Manhattan statement feed off each other? Do they complement each other? I mean, of course, they complement each other. But what are the similarities? What are the differences? Maybe you could talk a bit about that.

00:19:50.580 Yeah, and then I'm also also a signatory of both. The Manhattan statement is, is more of a political and legislative, or let's just say it's a policy manifesto. This is what government should do, or the Trump administration should do. Whereas the Buckingham manifesto is an intellectual manifesto. This is what intellectuals should do. And one of the reasons you can see one way you can see the differences, you can see intellectual

00:20:20.440 opponents. Chris Ruffo and Steven Pinker are both signatories of the Buckingham manifesto. Now, those two don't agree on much.

00:20:29.440 But they do agree on this. I was quite pleased. It was an aim to try and get both of them. And there's a few, you know, there's a number of liberals, you know, Yasha Monk and Claire Lehman. And then you have conservatives both signing up to this manifesto.

00:20:49.180 Because I think both your liberals who don't want to see government interference and who believe in university autonomy, they are very opposed to the social justice agenda and conformity, as well as the people like myself and like yourself who think that without government pressure, these institutions will never change.

00:21:11.780 Which is really, which is really, I think, I should say that in regard to the Manhattan statement, I have a debate out now and inside higher education with an opponent of the Manhattan statement, this guy, John Wilson. So that came out today. I wasn't that convinced by the reply.

00:21:30.360 But that's, forgive me for interrupting. That's the guy that I was thinking about when I said, I've been ignoring it. I mistook it as that guy being for the Buckingham. It's for the, you're right. Thank you. Go on.

00:21:44.200 Yeah, I think the Buckingham one is, who knows, it may become debated. I have a reply to one journalist, but I think it's more likely that this will be, what I'm hoping is that this gets debated in academic journals.

00:21:59.780 Because I'm kind of trying to, we're trying to reach into academia. And so what I'm anticipating is we'll send this, we're going to do an edited book as well, and you'll undoubtedly be contacted on that. But the aim is to try and get something in the academic world, get it attacked, as it no doubt will be. But once something is attacked, it's inside the system, and they're having to deal with it.

00:22:24.900 Beautiful.

00:22:25.300 Well, I said that I had two questions. One was the Christopher Rue from Manhattan statement. The second one, which in a sense, you're sort of alluding to, because I was going to ask you, what are some of the next steps? One, you said it, edited book, but then the most obvious next one would be, are you thinking of founding a new journal of post-progressive social science?

00:22:49.120 Well, that's a good question. So I'm not, it's not something I'm personally thinking of doing. I will say that we have now just recently, and you saw at the conference, there are some journals, which I think are essentially doing post-progressive social science.

00:23:05.740 And so Theory and Society, which is a venerable journal. One of the founders was Alvin Gouldner, who is one of the originators of the term new class, which also is a euphemism for the professional managerial class.

00:23:20.300 So yeah, but he, that journal now under the editorship of Kevin McCaffrey, I think is a great home for post-progressive social science.

00:23:28.980 Lee Jossam's, Soyb's journal, Journal of Open Inquiry and the Behavioral Sciences. So we've got a few journals. I don't think I, I don't think I can, can or want to replicate that.

00:23:40.700 One thing I am doing is I managed to get some money for a grants program in countercultural social science. So that we will be advertising, you know, try and get projects that are going to be working towards the two aims of the manifesto.

00:23:59.940 And then we got the edited book and then the special issue of Theory and Society. So I'm trying to make that impact in the academic world to try and just say, no, in fact, you can't just go on assuming that you are the world.

00:24:15.400 There is a challenger, which you will have to deal with in some way. I think that's the beginning.

00:24:20.920 Yeah, I, I, if you mentioned theory and society, one of the many wonderful interactions that I had at your conference in Buckingham was with Kevin who approached me and we had a very long conversation.

00:24:36.840 And, and, and yes, you know, there's this special issue that's coming out, but he also invited me to, to submit my evolutionary psychology stuff with the hope of Darwinizing the field of sociology.

00:24:49.500 And, you know, if Kevin hears this, I hope he appreciates how much I felt invigorated by his, you know, I mean, he's a bit, he's a bit younger.

00:25:01.840 He's probably in his forties, but he's very, very driven, very much wishing to make big changes as you are.

00:25:10.380 And so there is something that is so soothing. I'm not saying anything that's not obvious, but to meet fellow like-minded people, not because you're trying to create an echo chamber,

00:25:19.520 but because when you've spent, in my case, 31 years fighting against nearly everybody in sight, and suddenly I go to a conference where people come up to you for all sorts of different reasons saying, hey, thank you for your work.

00:25:35.180 It can't help but feel good. And so again, I can't stress enough how, how wonderful it was to, to be at that conference. So thank you for organizing it.

00:25:44.300 Thank you. It was wonderful. You know, it was just great to have you there. And the energy I thought was just tremendous.

00:25:51.100 And you have a vice chancellor that's rather applicable in his offbeatenness, if I can put it that way.

00:25:58.080 I know. Yeah, it's great to have a, have a, you know, leader of the university be that enthusiastic.

00:26:03.680 And, and, and, and, you know, because normally I think presidents and vice chancellors would be sort of peddling away as quickly as they can.

00:26:11.260 So it's trying to, you know, very much behind it.

00:26:15.800 But the other thing too, is, you know, it's also important to have these kinds of events.

00:26:19.940 Like if you look at self, self-censorship amongst staff and students, it's driven mainly by peers, actually, or perceptions of peers.

00:26:30.120 And so even if you have the best University of Chicago trifecta principles, you're still going to have massive self-censorship.

00:26:38.540 And so when you have a forum like this, where people can speak freely, can be creative, and not have to worry about looking over their shoulder, I think that's a great environment.

00:26:50.160 Now, that doesn't mean you don't also have, we might have a, in the future, it may be that, you know, you have a, an environment where the kind of woke mainstream and the countercultural may have a forum where they get together.

00:27:04.240 And I've been in some of these forums and they have their own dynamics.

00:27:06.980 So it's, you know, it's useful to have, like, I know Johns Hopkins is doing something like that.

00:27:11.280 So you can have the, the neutral ground where the two sides meet and disagree.

00:27:16.500 That's useful.

00:27:17.340 But it's also useful to have your own show where people can feel free to research what they want.

00:27:23.700 Yes.

00:27:23.940 On a personal level, may I say that I had, I guess you call them chips, but they're these very, very big potatoes in downtown.

00:27:35.340 If we could call it a downtown, because it's a small sort of quaint village, in downtown Buckingham, that I might return to Buckingham, not to see you, but only to have those fries.

00:27:48.720 Do you know, by the way, which place I'm talking about?

00:27:51.600 I don't.

00:27:52.040 I'm curious.

00:27:52.800 You got me curious.

00:27:53.740 It's owned by a Portuguese couple.

00:27:57.020 Oh.

00:27:57.280 It's, I mean.

00:27:59.700 Is it a small place?

00:28:01.000 It's a small, it's a small place.

00:28:02.540 It's a fish and chips place.

00:28:04.380 My wife and I walked in there.

00:28:06.840 We didn't get the fish.

00:28:08.360 We only got the chips.

00:28:09.620 And we ordered a large, but the large was enough to feed an entire Russian battalion. 0.87

00:28:15.840 So what ended up happening, actually, a gentleman from the conference, whom I didn't know who he was, but, you know, he knew me, came up to us to introduce himself.

00:28:26.380 And he ended up sharing in this orgiastically large chips.

00:28:33.340 So I'll have to try to find the place for you, because if you ever return there, I know you're a very slim, healthy guy, but you really need to partake in that Epicurean delight.

00:28:43.660 Well, I think if you use the term orgiastic about chips, then something is right.

00:28:50.380 I know.

00:28:51.480 I think I know the place because I've been in there once, and I'm going to have to go back for the chips.

00:28:56.860 Very good.

00:28:57.780 What are some projects that you're currently working on, whether it be with some of your MA or PhD students in these two new programs that you founded at University of Buckingham or anything else beyond what we've talked about that you'd like to share?

00:29:12.640 Well, I have, yeah, some more academic projects.

00:29:16.000 So one thing I'm looking at is the very strong correlation between, among young people, between being very left-wing ideologically, being non-heterosexual, particularly bisexual or queer, and mental illness.

00:29:36.000 Now, so if we're talking about, you know, let's step away from value judgments and just say, you know, I can tell you that ideology, sexual orientation, and mental health are essentially so heavily correlated in the student data, the FIRE, 60,000 samples, student data, that one underlying factor explains half the variation in those three variables.

00:30:04.300 So, you know, so, you know, look, now, I mean, there's just this ridiculously high correlation.

00:30:10.820 And so that's one area where I'm kind of working on that, you know, not a hot potato or anything.

00:30:18.660 A little bit less, yeah.

00:30:20.660 Also, this question of trust in universities, which has declined among Republicans, especially in the U.S.

00:30:28.820 And, you know, one of the things you see is, I'm trying to understand the connection between what people think academics, you know, the makeup of academia politically, and their trust in academia.

00:30:42.220 And what you kind of see is that Republicans who think academia is heavily Democrat are very untrusting, unsurprisingly, of professors.

00:30:52.940 And it kind of turns out that a lot of people don't realize just how left-wing academia is.

00:31:01.580 So the average Republican thinks that social science and humanities professors are almost 40%, or somewhere between a third and 40% Republican.

00:31:10.360 So actually, if they actually knew the correct proportion, would that even lead to a more, a greater suspicion of university?

00:31:23.380 I mean, this is just from an empirical standpoint, right?

00:31:26.840 And so I'm kind of looking into this data through surveys.

00:31:30.680 So I'll present that in the American Political Science Association in Vancouver this summer, or in September.

00:31:38.200 So that's something else that I'm looking at.

00:31:40.700 Oh, very nice.

00:31:41.580 I have a project that I started, I would say, maybe four or five years ago, just shortly after Parasitic Mind came out.

00:31:51.820 I wanted to test some empirical ideas I had.

00:31:56.300 And so I had a master's student who asked that I supervise him.

00:32:03.900 And so what I pitched to him was the idea of studying, I mean, several things, but one of which, I don't know if you remember the male feminist as sneaky effers section in my book.

00:32:15.780 Oh, yeah, yes.

00:32:16.560 That's right.

00:32:17.320 Yeah, yeah. 0.98

00:32:17.780 So for our viewers and listeners who don't know what this is, so the concept of sneaky effers, fuckers, is a zoological term from the 1970s. 0.95

00:32:28.500 The formal term is kleptogamy, which is the stealing of mating opportunities, where you typically have different phenotypes of males in a species. 0.97

00:32:40.440 There's the dominant phenotype, like the dominant male phenotype.

00:32:44.120 But then there is another male that mimics the morphology and behavior of a female, hoping to cause the dominant male to let this guy through, and then he can surreptitiously engage in some sneaky effing.

00:33:00.460 And so I took that idea and the parasitic mind and I said, aha, I believe that the male feminists and the supra empathetic, you know, social justice warriors are applying that zoological strategy in the human context, hence male feminists and sneaky effers. 0.97

00:33:20.480 And so then I decided with this graduate student, I said, well, why don't we actually test some of these ideas?

00:33:27.580 There is some research that's already published, not by me, by others, that shows that, for example, your physical formidability correlates to your political and economic orientation, which itself is a fascinating finding, which I cite in the parasitic mind.

00:33:48.040 So, for example, men who are physically more formidable are less likely to be for social or economic egalitarianism, because they obviously realize that humans are a hierarchical species.

00:34:02.140 Some of us are tougher than others.

00:34:03.980 Some of us are more likely to win competitions than others.

00:34:07.080 And that's the natural order of things.

00:34:09.020 But if I'm a small, wimpy guy who cries every second, then I want there to be equality.

00:34:14.700 I want there to be some supra force that removes those mechanisms that make me be at the lower end of the hierarchy.

00:34:23.760 And so what I was supposed to do with the student, I say suppose as if it's in the past tense, and I'll explain in a second why that is.

00:34:31.100 So one of the things that we were testing is I asked them to run a study where we would show various morphologies of people, of men,

00:34:41.200 and then ask people which of these men would be most likely to support these various parasitic ideas that I enumerate in the book.

00:34:52.180 And I thought, boy, once we run these studies, get ready.

00:34:56.360 The media is going to stop.

00:34:58.240 Never mind the media.

00:34:59.200 I think it would be really a cool scientific study.

00:35:01.640 Now, here's the bad part of this.

00:35:03.540 As regrettably often happens with graduate students, they get sucked into a black hole of which they never return.

00:35:12.340 So this project, which as far as I know, he had reported to me that he had ran the data, I mean, collected the data and ran it.

00:35:20.900 I haven't heard from the student from nearly two years.

00:35:24.060 And I'm assuming at this point he's dropped out.

00:35:26.700 I have two other PhD students with whom I spent probably hundreds, if not thousands of hours supervising them who've also disappeared.

00:35:34.680 So one of the biggest frustrations I have had in my career is to, you know, nurture these students for really hundreds, if not thousands of hours, and then regrettably they disappear.

00:35:46.780 But if he resurfaces, I think I've got a whole bunch of studies that very much fit within your post-progressive social science framework.

00:35:56.700 Well, I hope to see them.

00:35:58.860 I mean, this is the thing, yeah, with graduate students.

00:36:01.980 I've got some quite interesting ones now attracted by, you know, the program, you know.

00:36:08.760 So that's, which is just fascinating research.

00:36:11.740 But there's always this issue of, you know, whether they will complete.

00:36:18.860 So you're saying they just dropped out because they didn't have the money or the time?

00:36:22.560 No, just, yeah.

00:36:24.300 I don't know.

00:36:25.020 I don't think it's the money.

00:36:26.140 I think they just get sucked into, you know, being a graduate student is a difficult transition,

00:36:35.160 even though you had previously been a very good student in the sense that, you know, you did well.

00:36:41.080 You were studious.

00:36:42.020 You got A's.

00:36:42.920 Because it's the first time where you're being asked not to retain and master other people's knowledge.

00:36:50.940 But now you have an empty paper where it's incumbent on you to fill in that knowledge, right?

00:36:58.640 And for some people, they could be very, very bright, you know, very talented, but they can't make that switch.

00:37:05.840 And so I, maybe I'm speculating, but my sense is that for a lot of the students who've been sucked into a black hole, at least in my case, what happens is they flounder.

00:37:17.020 And I've always struggled with whether there is any part of that that's due to me in my supervisory strategy.

00:37:26.480 I'm infinitely nurturing in that if you ask, as a matter of fact, I will often be the one who is driving the research, right?

00:37:35.100 They come to me, professor, give me a research topic, right?

00:37:38.320 So it's not as though I'm not willing to mentor you fully, but I'm not someone who will call you every 48 hours and say, what have you done?

00:37:49.320 So if you happen to then get sucked into a black hole, I might send one email, two emails, three emails, but then I will back away.

00:37:58.960 But I don't know, maybe I should be sending an email every Tuesday.

00:38:02.640 What are your thoughts on that?

00:38:04.760 Very hard.

00:38:05.500 I mean, I think most supervisors are fairly hands-off and it's up to the student and you give feedback when they submit things.

00:38:15.400 They should be responding to the comments.

00:38:17.900 That doesn't always happen.

00:38:20.440 But there's not a whole lot you can do.

00:38:22.680 It has to come from the student, I think, especially PhD.

00:38:27.560 Now, you have these processes where you have to fill out reports every year and things, so they have to kind of show what they've done each year.

00:38:34.960 But if a student wants to spend money and spend years and years, I mean, there are processes now they're trying to crack down on it a little bit.

00:38:43.620 But some people just enjoy the process of being a student.

00:38:46.400 There's not much you can do.

00:38:49.060 That is true.

00:38:50.480 That is true.

00:38:51.580 So how have you so far, since we're talking about graduate students, given these two new programs, the master's and PhD that you've instituted at University of Buckingham, have you had any students that have completed the programs?

00:39:05.700 Or is it so new that no one is out of the pipeline yet?

00:39:08.660 Yeah, it's so new.

00:39:10.100 It's the first year.

00:39:11.060 So we have two who will complete.

00:39:14.360 And I think they will complete this year.

00:39:16.800 But two MA students.

00:39:19.820 But obviously, it's the first year.

00:39:21.880 So and even some of the master's are on a part time basis.

00:39:25.540 So they'll run for two years.

00:39:28.000 So, yeah, we're just at the beginning.

00:39:29.220 But, you know, teaching is a part of it.

00:39:33.360 But I'd say the research agenda is, in many ways, a major part of this, too, is having a program that you want more researchers to work in these areas and to know about each other, connect with each other, you know, hopefully with conferences, certainly through networks.

00:39:54.360 That's kind of the aim.

00:39:55.380 So one of the things that's occurring in the U.S. with these new schools of civic thought and the new centers, new universities, University of Austin, for example, Ralston College, is we have an emergence of a lot of teaching.

00:40:10.000 When that's great, we have to have that.

00:40:11.840 I mean, one of the questions is, are we producing new research?

00:40:15.480 And there, I think it's much weaker and there's a lot of work to be done.

00:40:19.700 And so hopefully as this enterprise, as these new centers pop up, this will be a way of, in fact, trying to advance a research agenda, not just a teaching agenda.

00:40:31.440 Yeah.

00:40:32.000 A couple of more questions and then I'll let you go.

00:40:34.800 So you mentioned these new civic centers and so I'll call them loosely freedom centers.

00:40:43.140 So, for example, the current university that I'm still affiliated with, but for only a few more weeks.

00:40:51.960 Congratulations.

00:40:52.400 Congratulations.

00:40:53.900 No, no, no, not Concordia.

00:40:56.020 I'm talking about Northwood University.

00:40:58.360 Oh, sorry, sorry.

00:40:59.620 Don't worry.

00:41:01.200 But Northwood University, which, by the way, I thought would have been great for you.

00:41:05.800 I tried to connect you with the president of Northwood, which I'm still hopeful that you guys will connect.

00:41:10.780 They're very much founded on the principles of free enterprise, small, limited government and so on.

00:41:16.580 Now, that ethos, one can argue, is a different project from the one that we've been talking about, but you can also reconcile the two together.

00:41:26.280 And so, you know, there's now, I think, one at, of course, University of Austin is trying to do this.

00:41:33.240 There's, you know, Florida International University has the Adam Smith Center.

00:41:38.720 University of Florida has a kind of a freedom center and so on.

00:41:41.540 Do you see these two projects, the proliferation of centers?

00:41:48.400 For example, I visited Ole Miss, University of Mississippi.

00:41:52.640 They have a new Declaration of Independence Center.

00:41:56.360 Do you see these types of projects jiving well with the post-progressive social science project?

00:42:05.480 Yeah, definitely.

00:42:06.180 I mean, I think that in terms of higher education reform, the only way to bring viewpoint diversity in is through these centers.

00:42:14.260 I just think having a bunch of scattered academics who are having to keep their mouth shut is just not going to, that's not going to be enough.

00:42:21.680 We have to have that as well, but we have to support them.

00:42:24.000 But we need to have kind of ring-fenced zones where people can be free to research what they want without fear.

00:42:34.080 And so I think this is really extremely important.

00:42:37.400 Now, the one criticism I have is that these schools of civic thought and the new universities are heavily focused on great books in the American Constitution and tradition,

00:42:48.940 which is extremely important to pass on, I support that for the teaching enterprise in particular.

00:42:55.680 But I think we also need to push back, not just in the humanities, but in the social sciences.

00:43:01.340 We have to do research that starts to change the narrative about systemic racism and sexism being the reason for race and sex inequality.

00:43:11.900 Essentially, as Moussa Al-Gharbi shows, 85% of papers in sociology are talking about inequality.

00:43:20.120 I mean, that is just a ridiculous level of focus on an important problem, but only one problem.

00:43:27.100 I mean, we should also be talking about social cohesion and integration and how to reduce polarization and crime and other elements of social disorder,

00:43:36.800 which are not really part of the mainstream agenda in the social sciences.

00:43:41.440 So, yeah, I would say that what's missing in the new centers is the social research part of it.

00:43:48.440 I know that there are some social scientists in some of these centers, and they are trying, and I think it will develop, but it's at an early stage right now.

00:43:57.240 Beautiful.

00:43:59.440 Last comment before I let you go.

00:44:01.940 You've now entered the pantheon of the repeat guests.

00:44:05.680 But I don't want to denigrate your great accomplishment of being a repeat guest on The Sad Truth.

00:44:12.680 Lord Matt Ridley has beaten you by being a three-time guest, so let's make sure to somehow put you into the schedule

00:44:21.320 so that you can enter the truly rarefied pantheon of three-peat guests.

00:44:26.560 Then you can put that proudly on your CV as your greatest accomplishment in your career.

00:44:32.320 Do I get a belt, you know, like a WWF?

00:44:35.460 Yeah, whatever you want.

00:44:36.240 You get a trophy.

00:44:37.160 Well, I recently, not to toot my own horn, but I recently found out that I might be the most frequent guest on Joe Rogan,

00:44:46.060 short of his, like, sort of comedy friends.

00:44:48.800 But, like, I don't want to say more serious guests because I don't mean to imply that comedy is not serious business.

00:44:54.920 But so maybe you'll be third, maybe fourth.

00:44:58.680 My point is you're always welcome to return.

00:45:01.540 It's always a delight to talk to you.

00:45:03.480 I look forward to hopefully seeing you soon again, either in Canada or the U.S. or England.

00:45:08.940 Keep doing your great work, and thank you so much for coming on the show, Eric.

00:45:12.420 Yeah, it's been a pleasure as always, and I look forward to getting that belt.

00:45:15.900 So, sounds good.

00:45:17.640 Stay on the line.

00:45:18.360 We'll say goodbye offline.

00:45:19.460 Talk to you soon.

00:45:20.080 Cheers.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - August 01, 2025

Dr. Eric Kaufmann - The Buckingham Manifesto for Post-Progressive Social Science (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_859)

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