The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Dr. Steven Skultety - On the Relationship Between Freedom and Education (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_982)

00:00:00.000 Hi, everybody. This is Gad Saab. Today, I have a repeat guest. He was here, I checked, November 18th,

00:00:06.160 2025, so about five months ago. I've got Professor Stephen Scaltetti. How are you doing, sir?

00:00:11.760 Oh, I'm doing really well, and it's great to see you again, Gad.

00:00:14.840 You too. And so I just want to remind people who you are. Number one, you are a professor of

00:00:19.480 philosophy at Ole Miss. You're also the chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Ole

00:00:26.900 miss but if that wasn't keeping you busy enough you decided to found a center which i am a proud

00:00:33.620 member of uh the declaration of independence center for the study of american freedom

00:00:38.480 so i always have a very hard time nailing you down to me not because you don't wish to meet

00:00:45.960 but because i i always look at my wife and i say how does this guy do it anything else you want to

00:00:51.220 add to your unbelievable burden of responsibilities that you have? Well, and I still, you know, I

00:00:59.380 genuinely love teaching. So I'm still in the classroom working with just fantastic students

00:01:06.100 and, you know, working on my scholarship. So I'm still trying to be a professor of philosophy

00:01:13.180 as well as all these different administrative tasks. But each is exciting in its own way,

00:01:19.320 but I still really am devoted to my students and my teaching as well.

00:01:23.180 That's beautiful. Since you mentioned, you know, a professor of philosophy, and for those of you

00:01:28.940 who don't know, your main area of expertise, although you have, you know, several related

00:01:33.560 areas, is of course Aristotle. I believe we discussed him at some length the last time you

00:01:39.900 were on the show. I thought we'd start today, so you and I agreed prior to the show that we might

00:01:44.840 try to stick as best as we can to the theme of freedom and education. Remember, we are at a

00:01:52.180 center that tries to promote American freedom. And so we will talk about that. And maybe the

00:01:57.460 best way to start that, since I have a classicist of sort on the show, is democracy is hopefully

00:02:05.300 for it to maximally operate. It goes on the presumption that people should be, the populace

00:02:11.120 should be maximally informed hence educated but of course we probably both know maybe me a bit more

00:02:18.040 than you because i deal with the regular people every day on social media many people are

00:02:22.620 bafflingly non-informed uh if if not holding the wrong views on many things that are objectively

00:02:30.500 false plato said to us he doesn't he doesn't like democracy for exactly this reason and it should

00:02:37.660 be philosopher kings who are educated, who are well-informed, that should be ruling over

00:02:42.500 us.

00:02:43.500 Did he have any validity or was he wrong, Professor Scalteri?

00:02:49.500 Well, there's definitely something to his idea.

00:02:52.340 There's definitely something to his idea.

00:02:54.100 You know, I think the way of thinking about it would be this.

00:03:00.360 part of being in a free country means that no group is just being dominated

00:03:09.440 in a tyrannical way by a group that just has unaccountable power, right? And, you know,

00:03:18.920 Plato was just terrified of the idea that just the people at large, an ignorant mob

00:03:25.140 who didn't understand anything, if they had the chance to rule, they would necessarily almost act 0.79

00:03:34.220 in a tyrannical way. They would act despotically because they wouldn't know any better, right?

00:03:39.420 Now, his solution to that problem was to then imagine the creation of a group of people

00:03:47.320 who would always be accountable to the truth, to the good.

00:03:53.180 And, you know, he, at least in the Republic, seems to have confidence

00:03:56.900 that you really could train a group of people

00:04:00.140 who could exercise unaccountable rule over other people

00:04:04.980 because they would be accountable to these transcendent eternal forms.

00:04:11.540 So, you know, I don't agree with Plato's solution there.

00:04:17.320 I think he's way too optimistic about, you know, rulers just being accountable to the truth.

00:04:26.520 That's hard.

00:04:27.300 I also think he's too pessimistic about the ability of ordinary people to have different degrees of knowledge.

00:04:37.020 But that said, Plato is right to think that in the best sort of society, you want wise, prudent, and knowledgeable people in the decision-making roles.

00:04:51.140 You know, that part of his insight is correct.

00:04:54.760 I just think he takes that one insight and sort of misapplies it to his kind of understanding of the sociology of the republic.

00:05:04.820 I will point out, you know, in America, the whole idea, if you look at the Federalist papers and writings of the early, many of the early founders, they also were very critical of, you know, raw democracy for these same ideas.

00:05:20.520 They were worried that people who didn't know any better would get riled up about this, that, and the other, and because they didn't really have a lot of insight or prudence, would sort of make dramatic and quick changes without any reflection.

00:05:39.040 And the reason we were set up as a republic, not as a democracy in that raw sense, was exactly this idea that we're supposed to have kind of speed bumps and hurdles that give time for reflection, that give time for people who know something to speak up, you know, and to put people, to let views that are more prudent weigh in on major decisions we make rather than rushing into things. 0.53

00:06:07.800 I mean, I would say that even if the reflex and the way he wanted to implement it, you know, might have been noble, the reflex to say there is a group of people that know more than you peasants, you rubes, is basically the default value of human history, right?

00:06:29.980 So let's take in our very recent past, our COVID overlords said that the science is settled.

00:06:37.200 There's a bunch of us that have medical degrees that can understand how protesting as 100,000 people at a BLM rally will not spread the virus.

00:06:50.100 That's just settled science, according to the noble public health officials.

00:06:54.300 But going to see your grandma when she's dying is very dangerous for spreading the COVID.

00:07:01.340 And they rely on the imprimatur that we are the wise public health officials.

00:07:05.860 So I think the old slippery slope, even if he perfectly meant it in the most noble and pure ways, is open to be gained by endless authoritarian people.

00:07:18.380 Yes?

00:07:19.200 Yeah.

00:07:19.960 No, I think that's exactly right.

00:07:22.820 And, you know, it's interesting, even in The Republic, in Book Eight of The Republic, he tells this, he gives this account of, well, how does a perfect regime like this, filled with perfectly enlightened philosophers ruling everything, how does it end up falling apart?

00:07:41.880 What will bring its demise? And his answer to that is really interesting. It's not something like, well, people at the end of the day are, you know, just wicked and vicious and eventually they'll have appetites and emotions that will overcome their reason.

00:08:02.860 And the thing that ends up tripping even this perfect regime is that people will make calculations and make and ground their beliefs and they'll be convinced they have knowledge, but they'll be miscalculating and they won't realize it.

00:08:19.940 So it's that kind of the belief that, you know, something that you don't ends up sort of undermining even this perfect regime he's he's imagining.

00:08:33.380 So it's even Plato's aware of the danger there. And, you know, it's an old story and it's it's one that is worth thinking about.

00:08:44.580 And it's one that students, too, should be incredibly aware of. And that's part of why it's so important to educating people in liberty and in, you know, Western culture begins by reflecting on a lot of these themes. Right.

00:08:59.960 I mean, even think about the figure of Socrates, you know, walking into the forum, and basically Socrates is going around telling not average people, but telling elite people, hey, you're not as smart as you think you are, and poking holes in their accounts just to show that they don't really have a grasp of the truth in the way they thought.

00:09:24.240 And think about how pivotal Socrates is for our self-conception of, you know, Western culture and Western civilization.

00:09:33.000 So that idea has been with us for a long time, and it picks up a crucial insight.

00:09:37.880 Yeah, I mean, the idea of the fact that the architecture of the human mind is prone to intellectual hubris and lack of epistemological humility is something that certainly Socrates would have been familiar with.

00:09:51.840 Another guy who faced a similar situation to what Socrates faced is a book that I'm just about to finish reading.

00:10:02.220 It's the story of the trial of Galileo by the Inquisition.

00:10:08.520 i mean oftentimes when i speak to people now who have this reflex against tenure which would be

00:10:21.280 part of what we're talking about here in that it is one of the sub-branches of freedom is academic

00:10:27.740 freedom and being able to say what you want and how you want to say it's on so many politicians

00:10:33.880 will often have this reflex, you know, you've got the fat cats, dead wood, who are sitting around

00:10:39.660 doing nothing now that they've got tenure, but they don't appreciate the fact that certainly

00:10:44.620 folks like me would have never survived. I can't remember if we discussed this last time, but

00:10:49.420 wouldn't have survived 15 minutes had we not protected by tenure. So is there a way for us

00:10:56.540 to remain true to the ethos of academic freedom as enshrined in tenure, but also maybe

00:11:03.720 tweaking it a bit so that we ensure that to the extent that part of human nature is for some

00:11:09.260 people to be parasitic deadwood, how do we address that then? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean,

00:11:16.100 I am a strong advocate of academic freedom. And I also believe that having tenure is a crucial

00:11:24.920 protection, uh, to ensuring, uh, that people can, uh, engage in wide ranging inquiry and debate

00:11:33.620 and exploration. I mean, you know, we have to let the scientists be free and we have to let

00:11:38.820 philosophers and thinkers, um, explore any avenue they, they want. Um, and so I also am very

00:11:46.300 skeptical when people, you know, in the legislators or government will see the university system and

00:11:57.400 think that the solution to some of our problems would be just to do away with those kind of

00:12:04.140 things. So now I want to say a little bit more about that. I actually agree, though, with a lot

00:12:12.380 of the criticisms that a lot of the legislators have, because, I mean, I understand their

00:12:19.020 frustration, right? I mean, here they're giving, the state is giving millions and millions

00:12:24.920 and millions of dollars to these institutions. And then it just seems like a lot of people

00:12:30.680 in the institutions take that money, and they just sort of turn around and present one-sided

00:12:40.940 views of things or create echo chambers or only use the money to sort of critique the powers that

00:12:49.820 be and the citizens of where they're living. So I actually am somewhat sympathetic to the

00:12:54.820 frustration public officials feel. But the solution to that problem is not to abolish

00:13:05.460 academic freedom or abolish tenure, it's to take steps to make sure that the big debates going on

00:13:13.300 in our countries are the ones that are being reflected in the universities and that, you know,

00:13:20.440 many different voices are being heard in the university and there's robust debate with major

00:13:28.360 sides represented. So you need to add more voices in and protect academic freedom to kind of solve

00:13:38.020 the problem, in my opinion. Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. So some people will say we just need

00:13:45.280 to protect academic freedom and preserve tenure. And I'm actually, I mean, I'm for that, but I feel

00:13:51.980 that that's not enough, because that doesn't recognize why those things are coming under

00:13:58.620 thread.

00:13:59.620 And it's not recognizing the reasonable concerns and the frustrations people have who are outside

00:14:07.520 the academy.

00:14:08.520 So we need to protect academic freedom and create robust competition and debate.

00:14:16.080 We need to add more things to the university rather than subtract.

00:14:21.320 would be my view. And I would add, I mean, regarding, because your answer, while a perfectly

00:14:27.240 valid one, doesn't address the deadwood element of what many of the legislators talk against

00:14:33.820 when they hate tenure and so on. I would say I really don't understand why being granted

00:14:41.540 academic freedom goes as a concomitant reality with that means that you're now free to never

00:14:50.680 do anything again. We give you academic freedom so that you do say things, so that you do write

00:14:57.360 things. Now, if the last time that you wrote something or said something of any value to

00:15:02.200 anyone was in 1979, then maybe you're not deserving of having that academic freedom.

00:15:07.740 So why wouldn't it be a very easy tweak of the tenure system to say there is a, for you to

00:15:16.000 maintain all of these wonderful protections that academic freedom grants you, here are the minimal

00:15:23.140 standards that you must maintain. And then the academic freedom kicks in once you've met those.

00:15:29.760 If you don't, well, you're not privy to those privileges. Doesn't that make perfect sense?

00:15:35.440 Well, yes. Well, and in fact, it makes so much sense. That is the system. That's the way the

00:15:40.500 system is supposed to work when you have competent chairs of departments, you know, because every

00:15:48.960 year, you know, all of the faculty in my department, they list all of their activities, all their

00:15:55.720 publications, all their teaching. And my job as chair is to make sure that everyone in my department,

00:16:02.140 you know, is performing in accordance with the metrics and standards that we expect

00:16:08.780 of full-time employees. So to the extent that there is a Deadwood problem, it's not really

00:16:16.140 tenure that's causing that. It's having people in leadership positions who won't hold people's

00:16:22.880 feet to the fire. What would be the mechanisms at Ole Miss? Or you don't have to answer for

00:16:30.560 Ole Miss generally. What is the mechanism that then holds people's feet to the fire if they're

00:16:38.160 not meeting those standards, and they are tenured. Yeah, no, so every year you undergo a review,

00:16:44.580 and if you receive several unsatisfactory reviews, then there's a whole process by which

00:16:53.620 your job is put into jeopardy. So it's not, and tenure does not protect you from that kind of

00:17:02.280 problem. If you're not performing satisfactorily, tenure can't stop that. So the issue really is

00:17:10.520 just are there people in leadership positions who are holding people to account who aren't

00:17:16.360 doing enough work? That's the issue there. Beautiful. All right, let's get back to freedom

00:17:22.020 and education. You had mentioned yesterday that possibly we might discuss how AI could be

00:17:31.880 improving, hindering both our research activities, our pedagogic activities. And I could already

00:17:40.100 think of a few ways where it could go. So maybe I could start it off. So I think, for example,

00:17:44.580 that as someone who is a prolific author, I could never imagine using AI to generate

00:17:55.080 a single sentence of mine, because to me, that would be akin to cheating, because it is exactly

00:18:05.020 my voice with my idioms, with my exact sequence of phraseology that makes it a Gad prose that's

00:18:16.320 different from a Grok prose. So if I say, Grok, please write this paragraph in Gadsad's voice,

00:18:23.940 as much as Grok might have been very well trained to to understand that task it's not me so let's

00:18:32.080 start with that one are you as uh stringent on that as i am or do you grant greater liberty for

00:18:39.980 using ai and the generation of pros as academics uh yeah i've i'm i have a complex answer to this

00:18:49.380 So in one way, having seen AI in action and having seen things written by AI, I definitely

00:19:02.740 am taking extra steps to ensure that my students are able to discuss matters with no help from

00:19:09.820 AI.

00:19:10.360 So just for example, now in all of my classes, I have oral examinations where no notes, no

00:19:18.020 books.

00:19:18.440 The student just comes into my office and, you know, I ask the students the same questions, but then no matter what comes out of their mouth, you know, I challenge their answer or complicate their answer.

00:19:31.060 And it really is amazing to see the difference between students who have thought carefully about the material

00:19:41.060 and taken the time to get the material clear in a way that they can articulate in their own language.

00:19:49.700 And not just, there's other students who, they'll memorize the material as sort of a script.

00:19:56.180 And what happens is as soon as you hit that kind of student with a challenge question,

00:20:01.060 They just repeat the script because because they've never kind of parsed the material in concepts that they really understand and grasp.

00:20:10.500 So in one way, I mean, I'm taking extra steps to make sure that the students are exercising those intellectual muscles that you're talking about, where they're having to formulate things in their own terms and come up with their their own arguments.

00:20:28.180 Um, now that said, you know, as the months have gone by and, and as I've kind of learned

00:20:36.280 more about, uh, AI, I have now, I have come around to a view where I'm actually more optimistic

00:20:43.640 about the way, uh, human beings are going to be using AI.

00:20:49.560 And, um, and again, maybe this is too optimistic.

00:20:52.760 You can kind of shoot me down and push back on this, but, you know, I think about what

00:20:57.080 it must have been like to live in a time when the printing press was first came online.

00:21:02.980 And suddenly, you know, there's all of these books swarming around.

00:21:08.840 And I can imagine a lot of people thinking at first, like, how on earth this is going

00:21:15.100 to be the end of humanity?

00:21:16.220 You're just going to have all of these uneducated people just reading stuff on their own and

00:21:21.700 thinking they know something because they can just read a book.

00:21:24.500 And even worse, there's going to be terrible people writing books.

00:21:28.440 Just anyone's going to be able to write a book now?

00:21:30.720 And so, you know, the worry surely was when people who are not careful and thoughtful

00:21:40.900 get a hold of a tool like a book, just think of all the damage they could do, let alone

00:21:47.100 having like libraries where just anyone could just walk off the street and get stuff without

00:21:52.380 consulting an expert, right?

00:21:54.500 And I guess I think that when AI is just widely available, a lot of the fear we have about it, I think, will go away because it's going to turn out that at the end of the day, what people enjoyed is the process of thinking about things for themselves.

00:22:21.780 And I think AI will be used more and more just to do the tasks that don't require thought and don't require intellectual habits, but are just more operational.

00:22:35.680 And there's going to be it'll be vague and hard to tell, you know, sometimes which which falls in which bucket.

00:22:42.420 But I'm I think it's going to lead to human beings actually valuing thinking for themselves more and more.

00:22:50.920 And I think as part of that, we're going to end up valuing things like podcasts and conversations and things where two human beings or three human beings are trying to figure out something for themselves more.

00:23:08.140 And we'll be leaving all of the kind of just operational mechanical stuff to the powers of AI more.

00:23:15.000 So and I feel like I'm talking too long, but let me just give you one other example.

00:23:19.760 You know, I when I was younger, I played a lot of chess and was very, you know, I still love chess a lot.

00:23:27.760 And it's so interesting to me that we live in a world where, you know, the computer chess engines now can beat anyone, anyone.

00:23:36.200 No human being can beat these top chess programs.

00:23:39.740 And yet watching human beings play each other in a game of chess is more popular than ever.

00:23:46.100 If you go online and there's all these chess tournaments and, you know, people follow the ups and downs of their individual heroes.

00:23:54.460 So I think maybe AI is going to allow us to actually hone in on exactly the kind of qualities you're talking about rather than just replacing all of them.

00:24:05.480 So anyway, that's my optimistic story.

00:24:07.360 I'm sorry that went on so long.

00:24:08.760 No, no worries.

00:24:09.340 I'm going to add to what you just said.

00:24:11.040 I think it's going to build on what you're saying.

00:24:12.560 And then I want to talk specifically about chess because that's a segue to a story of my former professor in AI.

00:24:19.720 So I was going to say that if you use AI to reduce the computational complexity of searching for information, then I think that's perfectly valid.

00:24:35.940 because I am facing an informational landscape

00:24:40.280 that grows exponentially every day.

00:24:43.580 And I'm trying to design a message.

00:24:47.260 That message could be an academic paper.

00:24:49.140 It could be a paper for an article for popular press.

00:24:52.340 It could be a book.

00:24:52.980 And I want to ask Grok,

00:24:55.740 hey, Grok, how did Western European countries

00:25:00.500 on average score in their happiness indices?

00:25:04.720 Now, I could go to specific indices that exist where I will get this information, but if at the drop of one query, I can get that AI system to synthesize that for me so that I could then use that information, which would have taken me 10 times longer to amass in my creative process, that's great.

00:25:29.340 Where I think draw the line that you're talking about is that the ultimate creative process, for me to call it a Gadsad process, it has to come from my mind, from my words, from my hand.

00:25:47.160 And otherwise, and now I'm hardly an artist, so I'm just extrapolating here.

00:25:52.720 I don't think when you use an AI system to generate a new image, I mean, yes, you could

00:26:01.520 call that digital art, but you can't call it Stephen Scaltetti art if all he did was

00:26:07.800 press a button that generates fractal patterns.

00:26:11.160 It's not Da Vinci doing that.

00:26:13.180 What made Da Vinci great is that it had to come from his innate talent.

00:26:17.160 So I think that's where I would draw a line. And if I may then move on to your second point. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

00:26:22.180 Yeah, and I just want to say, I think, as I've thought about this more, I'm just more and more confident that other human beings want to see other human beings doing that.

00:26:36.540 I think human beings are just mesmerized, not just by just seeing a piece of art, but by watching another human being being able to create it.

00:26:47.420 And so that's why, you know, just again to go back, I think that's why podcasts are in part so popular.

00:26:54.720 It's because it's not just like reading a transcript or reading a, you know, like a book.

00:27:00.240 It's watching a human being answer questions on the fly in their own words, working through the material.

00:27:09.020 And I think that just is gripping to us.

00:27:10.980 It's fascinating to us.

00:27:12.340 And again, it's like watching a chess master struggle through a hard game, even though we all know that there's a computer out there who might be able to, that there's something just that we desire to understand about what other human beings go through in that process.

00:27:29.100 So anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

00:27:30.260 Yeah, no, no, please.

00:27:31.080 I'm going to come to the podcast in a second, but to stay true to my promise, I want to mention the AI story, which I don't think, I can't remember if I've mentioned this publicly.

00:27:39.820 I mean, the sequela to the story.

00:27:42.340 So in 1985, when I was an undergrad in math and computer science, I took a course with

00:27:47.220 Professor Monty Newborn, who was one of the pioneers of working on Deep Blue, that was

00:27:54.280 the original sort of generation of computers, IBM computers that was being designed to play

00:28:01.020 against human grandmasters.

00:28:02.840 And I remember in his course, we had to pick a game and develop what's called alpha beta

00:28:11.820 a pruning search algorithm, which basically prunes parts of the decision tree that would

00:28:18.940 otherwise be too computationally costly to exhaustively go through the whole tree.

00:28:24.160 So, for example, the entire number of nodes for the full chess game is, I think, 10 to

00:28:31.080 the 100 nodes, if I remember correctly, which is more than the number of atoms in the universe,

00:28:35.920 which is at 10 to the 80, right?

00:28:37.740 And those are the types of things I remember from Professor Newborn's course.

00:28:40.920 Well, so I had mentioned something akin to what we're talking about here.

00:28:45.720 I think it was on Joe Rogan's show, which then is going to bring you back to the point about your podcast point.

00:28:51.100 Yeah.

00:28:51.680 So about two months ago, maybe a month and a half ago, I received an email, Stephen.

00:28:56.840 Dear Professor Saad, I recently heard you speak on the Joe Rogan show about my father, Professor Monty Newborn.

00:29:09.360 Oh, wow.

00:29:09.900 And I shared with him the thing. He was so touched. He would love to hear from you. So I rushed to the computer. She had given me his email address. I wrote to Professor Newborn, whom I hadn't interacted with since 1985, but whose praises I've been hailing for many years. And we connected. And I will be speaking on this beauty right here, suicidal empathy at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.

00:29:38.480 he happens to he was at McGill at the time he's now moved to about 90 minutes away from San

00:29:45.220 Francisco so he may be coming to this event where his former student from 1985 will be

00:29:54.420 and that happened so now I'm gonna tie it all together that happened because I quickly realized

00:30:02.820 many years ago that if my job is twofold to create knowledge and to disseminate knowledge,

00:30:08.620 I'm going to use all available forms and mediums to try to achieve that goal. So going on Joe

00:30:16.760 Rogan, I didn't know that Monty Newborn's daughter would end up listening to it, but here we are.

00:30:22.820 So yeah, that's right. So you're exactly right about all of these new modes of educational

00:30:27.860 delivery. Here's the question. While we're seeing an increasing number of dinosaur professors

00:30:34.980 maybe becoming lukewarm to it, I still am baffled at why it is that more people are not as visionary

00:30:44.100 in their insights as Stephen Scaltetti. Are we going to break through this or does it take a

00:30:50.700 very long time for professors not to be laggards? Yeah. Well, let me, you know, as we're talking,

00:30:56.500 it just kind of dawned on me that, you know, I believe that freedom and what it means to be free

00:31:06.180 really has these kind of three parts. And we've actually kind of hit all three in our discussion

00:31:13.820 without even kind of realizing it. Like, a part of freedom is just not being interfered with,

00:31:20.240 and that's the point of academic freedom. You can do your thing. The scientist can be the

00:31:25.700 scientists without, you know, political influence, and you can do your research without being

00:31:30.800 inhibited. It also, being free means living under a kind of constitutional system where you're not,

00:31:38.180 don't have a tyrant who can come after you in an unexpected way at any given time. And we talked

00:31:44.660 about that when we were sort of worried about the Plato's solution to ignorance. But then this last,

00:31:51.640 part of freedom requires that human beings have to be a certain kind of person. You have to have

00:31:57.800 a certain set of virtues. I mean, you can have the greatest constitution and you can have no one

00:32:03.240 interfering with you, but you also have to have as a human being a certain psychological skill set.

00:32:10.040 And, you know, I think the American founders understood that you kind of need all three.

00:32:15.240 I think there's a long history of all three of those components in Western culture.

00:32:21.340 So I guess here's here's what I'm telling you, Gat, is maybe the reason I'm able to say these things that sound visionary is I'm just picking up on the things I've learned.

00:32:33.920 Having studied Western culture and Western civilization all these years, I think no matter which technology comes along, no matter how powerful, I think there is this incredible combination of ethics, politics, and then space to operate that makes for an exceptional kind of life.

00:32:59.380 And I think we'll just rediscover that if we forget it at any point, unless the really dark thing happens, which is that people in positions of power use the tools of AI for ill.

00:33:15.380 AI doesn't bother me as much as the idea of a human being abusing AI.

00:33:21.220 For me, that's the scarier scenario.

00:33:23.720 By the way, I love the way you connected our conversation to the tripod. That was fantastic. I mean, to your point about a human interfering and having nefarious consequences to AI, do you remember a couple of years ago when Gemini, because it had been woke-ified, when you would ask it,

00:33:46.740 Can you show me a picture of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington? 0.75

00:33:54.020 It turned out that they were all black. 0.99

00:33:56.160 Right. 0.99

00:33:57.360 So that would be a perfect manifestation of what you're talking about.

00:34:00.780 Well, yeah, absolutely.

00:34:02.580 You know, as well as a lot of the things that happened during COVID, you know, where it's pretty clear that the federal government was through kind of backdoor channels trying to manipulate.

00:34:16.360 social media in lots of different ways. And, you know, you just imagine the power of AI being used

00:34:26.460 to pull off those kind of things rather than setting up this game of telephone between human

00:34:31.400 beings. You know, it really is, it's going to be a danger. But on the bright side, just going back

00:34:40.200 look, we've always had that danger of having unaccountable rulers, you know, wielding very

00:34:47.440 powerful tools against their population. That's a perennial problem. And we just all have to be

00:34:52.480 vigilant about it if we're going to continue to live in a free country. All right. So I want to

00:34:57.180 link what we're talking about to an old form, not TikTok, but these things called books, as I tell

00:35:06.520 My children, you know, these things that they don't quite know what they are.

00:35:10.180 You know, you open these pages and there are these words in there.

00:35:12.800 This is actually apropos because this book is called Burning the Books about the lengths that heroic people have gone through to try to protect the written word at great personal cost.

00:35:28.260 how do we get our children who have become so uh unable to focus to have the cognitive focus

00:35:38.100 and discipline to actually take a book sit on a couch and immerse themselves free themselves

00:35:44.480 into a book you would think that someone children that have me as their father if i may put it this

00:35:52.860 way, would be the most voracious readers. And it is probably harder to get them to read than

00:36:01.520 anything else that I've... By the way, we had gone recently, two months ago, I'd been invited to give

00:36:06.720 some lectures in Israel. And one of the deals, I usually don't strike these types of kind of

00:36:12.120 concrete deals with my children, but I felt that I needed to do some Skinnerian conditioning.

00:36:17.240 I actually made them sign a contract. Well, I say I, but it was my wife and I. We made them

00:36:22.820 sign a contract that they would have to read, I think it was by the end of the summer, four books

00:36:28.160 that were not part of their school curriculum. And to me, it really hurt me. And I'm not trying

00:36:35.980 to denigrate my children, because I think most children are facing that challenge. Is there a

00:36:41.540 way for us, Stephen, to make young people rediscover the joy of just sitting with a book?

00:36:48.800 Yeah, I think there is. And you put your finger on it. Just telling them to read a book isn't going to do it. You have to give them the experience of the joy of reading a book. And that actually requires that you help people learn to read.

00:37:09.080 let me give you a quick story you know I was increasingly disappointed with the quality of

00:37:16.380 the papers students were turning in in my classes so I I started this practice of setting aside a

00:37:22.340 whole day of class just to talk about how to write an excellent philosophy paper right and

00:37:28.260 and one time I did this and a student approached me after class and he said you know that was just

00:37:35.140 so helpful. I've actually never had a teacher just explain what I'm supposed to be doing when

00:37:41.460 I sit down to write a paper. I didn't realize that there were just these, I just literally

00:37:46.280 didn't know how I was supposed to be spending my time in that project. And then he paused and he

00:37:51.180 said, he said, you know, it actually would be really helpful if you could kind of teach us

00:37:56.640 how we're supposed to read. And I, and I like looked at him and he, and he could tell by my

00:38:01.640 Facebook. He's like, well, no, I can read. I can read fine. And I know my eyes are passing over

00:38:07.700 the words and I'm following along, but is that what I'm supposed to do? What exactly do you do

00:38:15.880 when you're reading? And it was just really clear that this very bright, precocious, and

00:38:22.760 and well-motivated student, had never been shown how, look, slow down, and, you know,

00:38:31.580 when an author is starting a new paragraph, you know, that means that they've finished an idea

00:38:36.640 in the previous paragraph. Give yourself time to stop and just say, okay, now what was the point

00:38:42.060 in that paragraph? What was the idea there? And just the joy of reading requires that you're

00:38:48.840 really in you are asking questions of the text right you're competing with the author uh to win

00:38:56.400 you over you're you're you know you're duking it out your arm wrestling whatever the wrestling

00:39:01.840 with the author but you're really engaged trying to probe it so it requires a lot of

00:39:07.860 activity on your part to read and if you do that then you experience this incredible sense of joy

00:39:14.480 and wonder because when you're reading someone who's uh wonderful and brilliant you know you're

00:39:20.360 pushing as hard as you can and you you end up being just so impressed right and amazed by how

00:39:26.660 wonderful and smart people can be but i mean a lot of students i think they're just so used to being

00:39:31.860 passive recipients of things just showing up on their screen or showing up on the tv or or um

00:39:38.340 that they just don't have that skill of, of being active, um, when they read it.

00:39:44.620 So that's the thing you have to, that's the thing we have to teach is, so, you know, I'm also a fan

00:39:49.600 for students who are in your, um, children's position is find, uh, less reading, um, but then

00:39:59.220 a deeper conversation about the thing that was assigned, uh, so that they can, and then maybe

00:40:05.080 maybe have them go back and reread what you talk about, because then they can sort of see

00:40:09.940 the difference between just having your eyes go over something and actually kind of wrestling

00:40:15.160 with the text. Easier said than done, but I think that's what it takes.

00:40:19.200 Yeah. Regarding your passive versus active modes, I think one of the greatest difficulties that many

00:40:25.680 doctoral students face is that when they come to that stage where they have to now

00:40:31.320 generate that novel insight called the doctoral dissertation they have a very hard time the ones

00:40:38.120 who fail at this task are the ones that could have very easily mastered the passive stage you teach

00:40:45.940 me something professor i will learn it and i'll get an a on the exam but now there's an empty piece

00:40:52.000 of paper or empty word document now i'm supposed to populate that paper wait a minute here that's

00:40:58.360 too difficult but i was going to say that uh my son is currently reading a book so we uh we

00:41:04.280 recently went to southern california i was doing some shows for in a sort of promotion for the

00:41:10.800 forthcoming book and as i always do wherever i am i try to find some used bookstore to go look for

00:41:17.400 you know to hunt for treasures and as we were in some in an area we we found a book that looks

00:41:23.960 sort of antiquarian it turns out to be a 1943 uh autobiography of a uh american bomber uh pilot

00:41:35.200 as he was about to drop some bombs over tokyo so no this is not the nagasaki and hiroshima

00:41:45.400 but related and then he gets shot down and so on and so then my son is immersed in that book

00:41:53.520 and at one point we were walking home and i said do you realize that you this book was sitting in

00:42:00.060 a corner somewhere completely forgotten you now have revived that guy that guy is alive he's alive

00:42:09.520 in the fact that there is a 14-year-old boy in a completely different era in a different country

00:42:16.160 that's living and breathing his life story. And I think that touched him. So any way that we can

00:42:24.360 use to implore young people to read, boy, we'll be doing a good service. Yeah. No, that's right.

00:42:31.480 That's right. And I think part of it is just it takes time to appreciate something, including

00:42:36.900 other people but once once they can do that and they have that experience there is something

00:42:41.180 wonderful about it and i think it kind of go back to an earlier point i was making i do think human

00:42:46.140 beings ultimately do connect with each other in that way so i'm sure that meant a lot to your son

00:42:52.700 that he had that experience of uh of of um imagining what that must have been like and the

00:42:58.460 decisions that airman was facing and all of that so that's how it starts like book book by book

00:43:04.260 intellectual experience by intellectual experience. But it does require that conversational

00:43:09.140 part, talking about the book, having a reading group, getting together with friends where you're,

00:43:16.920 you know, you're trying to think through it together. I think that's just as important as

00:43:23.760 the reading itself, because that's kind of what motivates the reading. And that's what helps you

00:43:27.960 read better at the end of the day as well. I'll just add one final personal note to what we're

00:43:33.220 talking about here about reading and then i want to spend maybe a few minutes talking about some of

00:43:37.300 the exciting things happening at the center and then we could wrap it up uh on one of my trips to

00:43:43.080 old miss i was being driven back to the memphis airport by one of your the one who really runs

00:43:50.680 the center a young recent graduate of uh of old miss and i won't mention her name because maybe

00:43:57.660 she doesn't want her name to be mentioned but anyways uh i was bemoaning to her the fact that

00:44:02.700 I can't get my children to read.

00:44:04.700 And she said something to me that was very encouraging.

00:44:07.120 She said, you know, I wasn't at all into reading.

00:44:10.180 I can't remember the age that she said

00:44:11.700 until I was about 19 and 20.

00:44:13.800 But once I discovered the joy of reading,

00:44:16.960 not because you have an exam tomorrow,

00:44:18.820 but really just for the pure joy of reading,

00:44:20.880 she's become a voracious reader.

00:44:22.580 So she goes, don't worry,

00:44:24.120 your children still have time to find the love.

00:44:26.680 So you know who you are.

00:44:29.360 Thank you for that very optimistic and encouragement.

00:44:32.120 All right. Let's talk about some of the very exciting things that are happening. Before I cede the floor to you, many great guest speakers have come, including most notably recently, Jonathan Turley, whom I've never had the pleasure of meeting, but I would love to connect with him. Maybe I haven't come on the show.

00:44:49.560 Number two, I just posted earlier, without you having requested this of me, a really cool course on totalitarianism in films or something, which I love because I love the idea of doing content analyses and cultural products to demonstrate something.

00:45:08.780 So give it away to us.

00:45:11.240 Yeah, I'm really, you know, I'm really proud of the classes that the Declaration Center is offering.

00:45:21.620 I mean, they really are fascinating and interesting classes.

00:45:24.200 And we're emphasizing, you know, debate, conversation and all of this.

00:45:30.580 But the topics also are just fantastic.

00:45:33.340 So every semester we offer our Freedom Studies 101 class, although now it's going to be called Freedom Studies 1010 because they've redone the academic catalog.

00:45:44.980 But basically, it's our introduction to the ideals of American freedom, which kind of looks a lot of many of the themes we've talked about in this conversation today, but in an American historical context.

00:45:57.720 And then every semester we offer different sort of upper division classes.

00:46:01.560 And, you know, as of July 4th, we'll be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

00:46:12.860 And so one of the courses we're offering in the fall is Freedom Studies Principles of Ordered Liberty.

00:46:20.780 And it's going to be just a careful look at the Declaration of Independence, the thought process that went into the document.

00:46:28.600 they're going to be reading very carefully line by line

00:46:33.280 what each sentence in the declaration means

00:46:37.560 and then also the guy teaching it

00:46:41.380 is also going to have students read other declarations of independence

00:46:44.380 that were written in other countries

00:46:46.320 and do sort of a comparison and contrast

00:46:48.940 with the American version

00:46:51.140 as a way of just doing this thoughtful interpretation

00:46:55.820 of what is up with this founding important document in American history.

00:47:01.840 And then the final upper division class we're going to be offering is Freedom Studies 305.

00:47:08.040 And this is our Liberty Literature and the Arts class.

00:47:13.500 And every time it's offered, the instructor is exploring freedom and liberty,

00:47:18.780 but through the prism of fiction or film or different kinds of artistic expression.

00:47:27.340 And we're going to be looking at totalitarianism in fiction.

00:47:31.540 And so the students are going to be reading Orwell, Alice Huxley, all the kind of a lot of the classics in that in that genre.

00:47:40.340 So we're super excited about about that as well.

00:47:43.680 Oh, I love that. I mean, I often make the point that

00:47:47.900 one of the reasons why cultural products in general are so important to kind of tie it to my

00:47:53.980 evolutionary psychology stuff they resonate with us because there is a fundamental set

00:48:00.040 of evolutionary narratives that drive that literature or that drives that film right

00:48:06.220 if you watch a film or read a piece of literature that is incongruent with human nature that somehow

00:48:14.580 feels false then it's not going to titillate my senses but the reason why i could read an ancient

00:48:20.360 greek tragedy and understand exactly what the guy is writing about despite the fact that we

00:48:26.100 are separated by millennia is precisely because he's talking about things that the software running

00:48:32.320 my brain and running his is exactly the same software he may not know what ipad is or what

00:48:38.240 a plane is but he knows about sibling rivalry he knows about paternity uncertainty he knows about

00:48:43.900 parent-offspring conflicts, all of these fundamental Darwinian drives. So to be able to use

00:48:50.280 cultural products to make the case for liberty and freedom, I think it's a brilliant move.

00:48:57.520 Yeah, yeah. Well, and again, it requires students not to be passive, right? I mean,

00:49:03.480 if they're going to be able to uncover the kind of themes you're talking about, or I should say,

00:49:08.500 the kind of explanatory tools available, I mean, a film doesn't come along and just

00:49:13.920 announce that, you know, right?

00:49:16.160 Students have to be able to ask questions and dig in and wrestle with different interpretations

00:49:21.880 to kind of find those ways of explaining what's going on.

00:49:26.340 So that's what it's all about in the end.

00:49:29.860 And, you know, it's exciting to be part of it.

00:49:33.020 It's daunting when you're kind of trying to get all of this organized and make sure

00:49:37.220 it runs, but it's really rewarding when it works. Can I do some promotional stuff, even though you

00:49:42.880 did not ask me to do any? No, of course. Yes, absolutely. So here it goes. Gorgeous city,

00:49:51.140 Oxford. The square has not one, not two, not three, but four bookstores. The second that I

00:49:59.820 discovered that, I was like, I think I'm moving to Ole Miss. Did I get that right? It is four,

00:50:04.540 right uh well right on the square there's two uh yeah there's two oh i thought there were there

00:50:11.420 were more okay well i'm glad you corrected me i thought yeah no but they're great but they're

00:50:15.340 great well one of them is antiquarian that yeah well they're old yeah that's right well they're

00:50:20.100 old school they are traditional old school bookstores the kind that i remember from when i

00:50:25.600 was growing up in a pre-internet age um and so that yeah it really is uh the bookstores here

00:50:33.040 are just absolutely terrific.

00:50:35.340 And they're the kind of places where you can go in,

00:50:37.600 sit down on a comfy sofa and like read a chapter,

00:50:41.000 you know, before making a decision

00:50:43.600 about whether to purchase.

00:50:45.380 And it really is wonderful.

00:50:48.040 Everyone who comes here,

00:50:48.980 we take them to those bookstores

00:50:50.200 because it makes an impression.

00:50:52.180 Well, it certainly did on me.

00:50:53.700 So that's number one.

00:50:54.540 Number two, the Ole Miss campus is gorgeous.

00:50:58.720 If I may say the people,

00:51:00.100 both the men and the women are gorgeous.

00:51:02.480 They're Americana, something that I love.

00:51:05.920 People say that I'm more American than most Americans.

00:51:08.720 That's true. 0.99

00:51:09.380 I felt as though I had been catapulted into an era where men were men and women were men.

00:51:16.660 I think that's beautiful.

00:51:17.820 Great university, great guys like you.

00:51:20.440 So anybody who is thinking of where to send their kids, please consider Ole Miss.

00:51:27.080 Please consider the Declaration of Independence.

00:51:28.680 Anything else you want to add, Stephen, before we wrap it up?

00:51:32.760 Yeah, well, I appreciate you saying that again.

00:51:35.020 I will just say I do honestly believe the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom here at Ole Miss is we are doing something that's unique.

00:51:45.260 And we really are trying to add a new perspective, add new voices into academic discussions and into the milieu of higher education.

00:51:56.540 and we're excited to be part of this experiment,

00:52:00.280 but if you send your son or daughter here,

00:52:02.620 they really can be part of something

00:52:04.500 that I don't think they'll find anywhere else in the country.

00:52:07.920 Amen.

00:52:08.500 Thank you so much, Stephen.

00:52:09.480 Stay on the line so we can say goodbye offline

00:52:11.440 and of course, come back anytime that you desire.

00:52:14.340 Thanks so much, Gad.

00:52:15.300 It's been great.

00:52:16.120 Cheers.

00:52:16.440 Thank you.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - April 09, 2026

Dr. Steven Skultety - On the Relationship Between Freedom and Education (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_982)

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