TRIGGERnometry - What’s REALLY Happening on College Campuses - Rikki Schlott

00:00:00.200 They put us all in separate, completely segregated groups in order to have our affinity group conversations because we apparently are not able to talk about race with people that look differently from us.

00:00:13.300 I mean, it's grotesque what is happening on these campuses.

00:00:15.540 They're in such a left-wing environment that the last frontier of something that actually feels like they're being edgy, that they're being transgressive, that they're pushing the bounds is cheering on a mass slaughter of citizens in a foreign country.

00:00:32.060 Ricky, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:34.100 You've obviously co-written this brilliant book, Canceling of the American Mind, with Greg Lukianoff, also a former guest of the show.

00:00:40.200 But one of the things before we talk about all of that we really wanted to talk to you about is campus culture and everything that's happening at American universities because, dare I say, it's become kind of front-page stories in the last few weeks, it's fair to say.

00:00:55.740 So tell us your story about being a college student, writing about it, and how that relates to what I think the rather bemused and frankly shocked public have been seeing on their TV screens and social media in the last couple of months.

00:01:09.360 Yeah, absolutely.

00:01:10.860 So my origin story in this field is an op-ed that I wrote for the New York Post while an NYU student still about how free speech was endangered on campus and just decided in the depths of the pandemic that it was an existential enough point in time where I was willing to kind of volunteer myself to be canceled as a result, which certainly happened.

00:01:32.160 I have been removed from a lot of group chats as a consequence of that, but, you know, it happens.

00:01:37.820 And so I wrote an op-ed about that that kind of launched me into a column at the New York Post, and now I'm a columnist there, but definitely saw this stuff all with my eyes and saw the writing on the wall of what has happened over the past couple months on campuses.

00:01:52.260 And in the process of writing about that, I ended up interviewing Greg Lukianoff, who's my co-author of this book, The Canceling of the American Mind.

00:02:01.600 And that's how we first met.

00:02:03.600 And then that we, I mean, we couldn't have asked for more perfect timing for the Ivy League to just absolutely self-detonate as our book was coming out.

00:02:12.540 So I think it's, it's, it's definitely been an interesting and challenging time to be a free speech advocate and, and someone who does defend speech, whether or not I agree with it.

00:02:24.460 Um, but also certainly a time where, where I think that honestly, the reason that American campuses and especially elite campuses are the ones that are melting down right now is precisely because they've abdicated their responsibility to foster an environment where free speech, uh, can, can flourish.

00:02:41.080 And statistically consistently, you see, if you ask students, FIRE does this, the survey of, um, colleges across the country and has student sentiment.

00:02:49.600 And one of the most contentious issues that people felt for years they couldn't discuss is the Israel-Palestine conflict.

00:02:55.520 And I think, um, I mean, it's no surprise to me that Harvard seems to be the worst offender right now in terms of like just egregious antisemitism that's frustrating on campus.

00:03:05.540 And it's not a coincidence to me that they were literally the lowest ranked school for free speech in FIRE's rankings.

00:03:11.080 They had a zero score out of a possible 100.

00:03:15.100 Um, and I think literally, I think they actually had to round it up because they deducted so many points that it was a negative score ultimately.

00:03:21.720 So zero is generous.

00:03:22.980 And it's, it's no surprise to me that if you have a school where you can't have civil conversations with people with whom you disagree, then things go underground.

00:03:32.840 They fester, they become more extreme.

00:03:34.860 And then all of a sudden, when there's a moment of social unrest and tension, they rear their ugly heads and you have Harvard students coming out in favor of Hamas.

00:03:43.820 So I think it's no surprise to me that the schools that have lost that North Star of free speech and civil expression are the ones that have the most egregious and shocking things happening on their campuses right now.

00:03:56.360 And Ricky, you mentioned that you said you saw it with your own eyes.

00:04:00.320 What kind of things are you talking about that you personally experienced while a student?

00:04:04.700 Yeah, when I was at NYU, I think it was just so one way or the highway politically, um, whether that was explicitly said or just implicitly felt, um, I just statistically, even at NYU's campus, I think it's something like roughly two thirds of students say that they're self-censoring.

00:04:22.140 And, you know, the other third are just probably in the popular political, uh, milieu on campus.

00:04:28.680 But when I was there, I mean, freshman year, one of our professors tried to have Milo Yiannopoulos come to campus, which obviously a provocateur, but someone who has the right to speak, um, just to talk to 25 freshmen about offensive Halloween costumes.

00:04:42.640 And it ended up being shut down after Bill de Blasio warned the school about threats.

00:04:49.040 And I mean, like even the mayor came in to help and shut down a speaker my freshman year.

00:04:53.360 I thought that was egregious.

00:04:55.340 Um, I also came from a boarding school at, uh, called Lawrenceville, which was kind of like a mini college.

00:05:02.580 So by the time I got to NYU, I knew what to expect.

00:05:05.280 Um, I had been kind of, I'd been canceled in high school.

00:05:08.900 I, I, I'd seen, um, just how woke and, and crazy academia was.

00:05:13.680 And so I was bracing when I arrived there and my freshman year, I show up at, in New York and a very progressive city with randomly assigned roommates and a bunch of people I don't know.

00:05:23.240 And I decided to start hiding some of my books under my bed, honestly, because I was so afraid of the social repercussions of being outed, God forbid, as a Jordan Peterson reader or a Thomas Sowell reader.

00:05:32.820 Um, so I think just from day one, it was, it was the self-censoring and sitting on my hands and anyone who even, I, I mean, I remember one time there was a kid in a class, um, a philosophy class who wanted to say something politically, uh, I guess unpopular.

00:05:48.780 It was a debate about abortion that we were having, like a philosophical debate.

00:05:52.460 And he, he wanted to like present a pro-life position and he started it just to say, I'm going to play devil's advocate here.

00:06:01.180 And it was literally like hissing and sneering.

00:06:04.340 It's, it, it was just one way or the highway, even if you preface it, that this isn't even my own opinion, but can we consider the other side?

00:06:11.300 So I think, um, just, just from day one, it was, it was a, a fraught environment if you don't think in a very specific, narrow way.

00:06:20.820 Ricky, it doesn't surprise me that, you know, uh, young people behave in this fashion, in this manner.

00:06:27.380 Young people have always gone to the extremes. 1.00

00:06:29.940 That's how they are temperamentally.

00:06:31.700 But my question to you is the moment he went, look, I'm just going to play devil's advocate and I'm going to push back on your idea just to challenge how you, just to challenge the argument and see how robust it is.

00:06:43.920 And it got hissed.

00:06:45.260 What, what did the professor do at that point?

00:06:47.840 Did they step in?

00:06:48.780 Absolutely nothing.

00:06:49.360 No, absolutely nothing.

00:06:50.420 And I think that's, that's, um, one of the, the consistent issues was that there was just no leadership from the professors because they're afraid for their jobs.

00:06:59.440 And especially, I think that there's, there's an element when you arrive on campus and you're taking those earlier classes and you're more likely to be with an assistant professor and an adjunct professor who does not have career stability, like a tenured professor does. 0.94

00:07:13.380 Your first few classes as a freshman or a sophomore are probably going to be taught by someone who is existentially terrified of their students, like Twitter mobbing them or shit posting them.

00:07:23.860 And I, I think that really sets the tone for the rest of the, the academic experience. 0.59

00:07:29.880 I mean, I had, I have, I had professors who would blatantly disparage political candidates or, or, or Trump supporters and in context in which it just wasn't even relevant.

00:07:39.500 Like there, there, there were, there were so many failures in terms of leading a classroom where, where a professor's politics shouldn't be obvious or where different viewpoints are explored that I, I mean, it's unsurprising to me that, that kids are like allergic to the concept of even devil's advocacy.

00:07:58.520 Ricky, can you point, can you give us certain examples, like the most ridiculous or egregious ones, just to highlight your argument?

00:08:05.680 Cause there'd be people going, well, what do you mean by that?

00:08:09.460 Examples of, of things that have happened in school.

00:08:11.900 Yeah. When, when, when you were in, when you were in school, like examples of, yeah, go for it.

00:08:16.600 I mean, I can, I can rewind back all the way to like the first moment when I, I think I was 14 and realized that there was something up with the, the system and that there was a, an ideology that I disagreed with.

00:08:28.600 I just couldn't put my finger on it. And I don't think the word woke was yet in the popular vernacular, but that's what I would call it now.

00:08:35.680 Which goes back to my boarding school days, freshman year where they, during holidays, they don't like having kids, you know, we're very close to New York.

00:08:42.600 So they don't want us to have a long weekend and go and cause trouble. So they keep us busy, um, during holiday times.

00:08:48.400 And on Martin Luther King day, we had to come in to have this thing called community day. And I still remember this so well.

00:08:56.280 I mean, I, I was grown up, I grew up with believing in the ideal of colorblindness, um, and, and was raised to not see immutable differences as something that were intractable.

00:09:08.400 Um, however, I got there, they bring us all into the auditorium and the school, um, administrators, the headmaster comes and give us a speech.

00:09:16.340 And then they say, okay, white kids go to the, um, the gym and the Asian students ironically are going to go to the math and science building. 0.70

00:09:27.400 And they put, they put us all in, in separate, um, completely segregated, uh, groups in order to have our affinity group conversations, because we apparently are not able to talk about race with people that look differently from us.

00:09:42.360 And I still remember sitting with my still best friend, who's an Indian American Vanya, and she ended up in a different building from me. 0.96

00:09:50.520 And I'm thinking I'm sitting next to my best friend here who I'm now being segregated from.

00:09:54.440 And that was like the first moment where, where I realized just how absurd things were getting.

00:09:58.780 And then from there, um, which I think is even potentially worse, we had to pick from a group of seminars and 14 year olds, by the way, captive audiences at this point in time.

00:10:09.420 And some of the options were like Bruce Lee and Asian masculinities, um, gender inequality and the difficulties of being a woman, um, like deconstructing the big black male in American society. 0.75

00:10:22.540 So I think even from the point that I was 14 years old, I was just steeped in this environment where apparently that's the, the institutional viewpoint of, of my high school on Martin Luther King junior day, where like segregation and all these completely backwards concepts were, um, pushed on us as, as ultimate truths.

00:10:43.100 And I, I mean, just from day off, day one of being a young adult and becoming politically aware, that was the sort of tone that was set.

00:10:51.100 And I think NYU certainly picked up on that as well.

00:10:54.060 And I'm curious to ask you this, Ricky, because I'm guessing you don't have kids and many of the people watching this will be more likely to be your parents' age than your age.

00:11:04.100 And a lot of them will be asking them a question, you know, I, I'm a father now and I sort of play the movie forward and wonder what, did you talk to your parents about this?

00:11:15.100 Did you tell them and what was their response?

00:11:17.000 Because I guess a lot of people will be wondering if your kids encounter this sort of stuff at school, what do you do?

00:11:24.160 Yeah, I, I, I absolutely did tell my parents about it and they were outraged, frankly.

00:11:29.900 Um, I'm, I have moderate conservative parents.

00:11:32.760 Um, but I think that the most important thing that my parents did to, um, make sure that I didn't end up going down these rabbit holes or, or buying into this was, uh, they, they definitely taught, they counterbalanced it with different viewpoints, but they never enforced an ideology on me.

00:11:50.860 And I can only imagine being a parent right now and feeling like I want to like hammer in home, like just fundamental classical liberal values into my kid's head.

00:12:00.640 And I think that those are, those should be apolitical, but you know, I might want to push the opposite viewpoint on my kid because I'm terrified about what happens eight hours a day when they're in school.

00:12:09.540 I completely understand that. However, that I, I worry that there's going to be some like serious mass backlash as a result of that.

00:12:18.340 And a lot of kids who are going to get even more seduced by, by left-wing ideology, if their parents are trying to hammer home a different vantage point, I think, um, just from day one, I mean, we have a chapter in our book about parenting and I realized that it's tone deaf for me as a non-parent to be giving parenting advice.

00:12:37.040 However, my coauthor is apparent. Um, and I think one of the most important things that, that we wanted to hammer home is, is to teach epistemic humility from day one and to have conversations at the, at the dinner table where someone does play devil's advocate and to, to push forth the possibility and the, the humble reality that we all may be wrong at any point in time.

00:12:58.840 And every person that you meet knows something that you don't. Um, and I think that as long as you can instill those values without overplaying your hand and, and trying to force a, an ideological valence on your kids, that that's the best way to inoculate them against this stuff.

00:13:14.160 And did you, or your parents attempt to communicate with the school about some of these things that you were, uh, seeing and going through? Was there any, uh, opportunity for you to say, actually guys, I'm not sure two sets of drinking fountains for people of different skin colors is, uh, is, is going forward. Exactly.

00:13:33.500 No, I, we didn't do anything at that point in time because we were just kind of guppies in this system and I was a freshman and, but, um, yeah, I mean, I think that the only thing that I did start to do is by the time I, I was 21 with my first op-ed, I think at the New York post. And that was when I decided, you know, I'm not going to make any institutional change by showing up to some administrator who is going to be likely hostile to, to my viewpoints anyways, but I, I can hopefully affect some degree of change in my modest way.

00:14:03.480 By speaking out and actually talking about the issue. And I found even at NYU, which is obviously a super progressive school. I was shocked by how many people came out of the woodwork to support me and who messaged me or DM'd me. This was still during lockdown. So we weren't yet in person with classes. Um, but people that, you know, I'd, I'd like someone who was in the next dorm room for me that I would never have known. I thought had similar political views with, um, professors, like literal heads of departments reaching out and emailing me and finding out what I was going to do.

00:14:33.480 Me in the school directory. But the thing that was so chilling to me is even though I had so much positive reinforcement, almost every single one of those messages or conversations ended with, by the way, just don't tell anyone that we talked about this, which is, is terrifying because I think cancel culture and a liberalism thrives by making all of us feel alone and isolated.

00:14:54.640 Even when there are people around us who, if somebody were to take that first step and actually say something, you'd realize that like, there are other kids in this classroom that, that feel the way that I do, but we've, we've all been sitting on our hands and feel entirely isolated.

00:15:09.080 And like, we're on some ideological island when that's not even the case.

00:15:13.020 Ricky, it's a great point. But when you were talking to me about the 14 year olds being taken and, you know, these ridiculous, you know, Bruce Lee and the Asian male or whatever it is, there's put, it really gave me far more empathy for young people. 1.00

00:15:30.300 Who have imbibed this ideology than I had before, because I'm thinking it ain't their fault. It ain't their fault. If you, if you do this to young people and you start basically hammering this home, then what do you expect?

00:15:45.760 Yeah. I mean, I, it, it isn't their fault. And especially in a context like that, a boarding school where these kids are away from their families.

00:15:54.640 Besides like these, these teachers step up and effectively become parents and educators at the same time. I mean, it's no wonder. And it starts so young. And I mean, that was shocking to me at that point in time, but that would have been like January of 2015. So almost a decade ago, roughly. And this is, I can only imagine, I think that was just kind of the, the, we were very cutting edge perhaps at my boarding school, um, with our neo-racism, but, um.

00:16:22.640 I mean, that's one way of putting it.

00:16:24.060 Yeah. Um, but I, you know, it makes me think I I'm fortunate to have had at least the beginnings of my, my upbringing in a time where we still did say that that colorblindness is an ideal to strive towards. And I had friends regardless and didn't even, it never even really would have occurred to me as a kid growing up in New Jersey, that, that there was some sort of like immutable difference between us aside from our appearance.

00:16:50.020 And, and I do remember that time. And I grew up in that, the last days of that era. And for kids who don't remember that and will never remember it because they've only grown up in the, like, apparently affinity group, neo-segregationist era. I, that, that to me, I mean, it's, it's scary. I feel fortunate that at least I remember a different time.

00:17:12.720 Yeah. And Ricky, you dropped out of college. Is that correct?

00:17:15.380 Yes, I did. Um, I dropped out of an, uh, out of NYU. Yeah.

00:17:19.280 You sound like you're an interrogation man.

00:17:21.900 You dropped out. Is that correct?

00:17:23.680 No, but I was just wanting to explore, was it because you were doing, you were doing a law degree and you were, you know, you were, you were a straight A student to use British vernacular.

00:17:32.560 What was it about the experience? Wait, we, it made you go, you know what? I just can't do this anymore. I don't see the value in the purpose of this.

00:17:41.900 When you think that actually what you've done your entire life is work to get to the point of having a 4.0 grade average and go to an amazing college and study law.

00:17:52.340 Mm-hmm. Yeah. I was, um, I was headed to law school. I had just bought an LSAT prep book when the pandemic happened. Um, and I had gone down that path, not because I had some specific, like, burning passion in, in law, but because I, I seemed to have the academic skill set that that would be the most logical step for me afterwards.

00:18:13.020 And I think even like in the culture of, of schools like NYU, like undergraduate isn't even enough. Like everyone's getting a graduate degree and, and onto the next thing. Um, and so I was very much in that achievement loop and, and keeping my head down and, and frankly, trying not to ruffle feathers. I, I, I, I felt acutely having been in a liberal arts, um, program that, that the risk, if I were to actually voice my viewpoints, that my 4.0 could be dinged as a result, I think were legitimate.

00:18:42.260 Um, maybe unfounded. Um, maybe unfounded. I never really tested the waters while I was there, but I, I felt stifled by the environment, but kept my head down, just kept trudging through. Then the pandemic happened. And I, um, decided that paying six grand per course for zoom school is absolutely absurd. They didn't even, they didn't even cut our tuition at all whatsoever. And NYU is one of, if not the most expensive college in America, which it's just exorbitant and ridiculous. And anyway,

00:19:12.140 they, they decided not to do anything with their billion plus dollar endowment to actually relieve, uh, the financial situation for students. Um, and so my mom at that point in time said to me, like, I'll help you float financially through one semester if you take a leave of absence. And we were hoping at that point in time that perhaps the world would be normal enough to go back to college. Um, but she said, just promise to do something interesting and, and, um, to like use the time while. And I said, you have my word. Um,

00:19:42.140 it's a moment of feeling like if I, if I, if I continue to lie about my own viewpoints and, um, play the game just to succeed, to end up in a career path that I'm not particularly passionate about, but I'm actively betraying like my, my beliefs and, and these burning passions for, for free speech and, and for more conservative values as well, that, I mean, it would just be fundamentally dishonest to continue down that path.

00:20:12.140 I've been really fortunate that, um, the post offered me a full-time job. I'm, I'm now full-time with them, but also that even having met Greg, um, and working as a fellow for fire, uh, during that time period as well, he changed the degree requirements that fire had. They actually don't, did not, um, until they hired me allow anyone without a college degree to start working for them. And, and I think that that pandemic moment where a lot of kids pulled back from school,

00:20:39.140 there were so many kids who took leaves of absence or delayed or took a gap year that they never would have otherwise. I think once a lot of people pulled out of that system and the achievement loop, they started to really critically engage with like, what am I actually paying for here? And, and at the same time we had the, the hot mess of, of student loan forgiveness and the Supreme court weighing in. And I think that it was just really a moment where a lot of young people, myself included, looked up at the millennial generation.

00:21:09.140 above us who are crippled by debt. And, you know, a third of American colleges produce a graduating class where the median graduate earns less than the average high school graduate in, um, in America. So this, I mean, the system is just so fundamentally broken. And I think that there's a, now a generation of young people who are able to hit pause long enough to actually question, um, the, the value and to, to force some, some market pressure.

00:21:37.780 I mean, I'm not anti-higher ed, but I'm anti-higher ed as it is right now. And so I've just kind of like conscientiously objected from participating in and paying into a system that stifles people and bankrupts them and indoctrinates them with like gender studies degrees.

00:21:53.780 So, well, right. I think that there was a time when going to, uh, college or university, as we call it here, uh, was something that was not available to most people. Uh, and partly because of that, if you got into a college or university, you were probably going to do a very, uh, beneficial degree. You were going to get a massive graduate premium.

00:22:15.780 It was going to be academically rigorous, et cetera. But then at some point we sort of decided that everyone needs to go to college and you have this proliferation of all these, uh, Mickey Mouse degrees.

00:22:27.320 And then you are, as you are talking about ending up in huge amounts of debt and, you know, we employ some young people despite our, uh, better wishes. Uh, and you know, a lot of them sort of will go to a trade college, get a qualification where they've actually learned how to do something.

00:22:42.280 And then they will go out into the real world, uh, because studying four years of history, even, which is a sad thing to say, or whatever else it might be, it's just not going to translate into a meaningful career, but will translate, as you say, into a lot of debt.

00:22:57.680 So I guess I'm wondering is if you had kids now of, of college age, what would you be saying to them about going to college?

00:23:04.460 Yeah, I think, um, I, I really admire my, my family's ability to have allowed me to take that risk. Um, I, I, my dad didn't go to college. My dad is, um, actually 86. So I'm a very late addition to the Schlott family. Um, yeah. And so he comes from an era where it was still a select few number of people and they would become lawyers and doctors or whatever career path or professors themselves.

00:23:31.460 But, um, you had to, if you were going to opt into that system, have some sort of conception of what you want to do with that degree at the end. Um, and I think if I were raising a child right now, um, or if I had a kid a few years younger than me, who was asking like whether or not it's worthwhile to go to college.

00:23:51.240 I mean, I think I, I had, there were tremendous benefits to the two years that I had at NYU. I'm not saying that there were, there was no value for me. I mean, one of the greatest ones was learning how to actually be a functional adult in a city. I think that urban colleges have that advantage, uh, for a coddled generation. That's one way to grow up a little quicker. Um, but I would say.

00:24:10.640 I would guide my child to find their passion earlier. And I think the problem that Americans, like the American school system as it exists right now has is that we do so much generalized learning all the way up through your first two years of college. You don't even have to declare a major until junior year at NYU.

00:24:30.840 Um, and I think that unless you can verbalize what path you want to go down or how you want to use that degree or how you think you might want to explore using that degree. Um, if, if you don't, if there's not like a clear line and trajectory, I don't think it's necessary. And I think that, I mean, we're seeing Tesla, IBM, Google, like tons of major companies that are dropping degree requirements because they've rightfully realized that there are enterprising young people who've, who've dropped out of, um,

00:25:00.380 the, the, the system. But I would say like, find, find a path or a plan and explore that early and, and use summers to do apprenticeships or, or, you know, be grifty and LinkedIn DM somebody who's works in the field and say, can I shadow you? Or can you tell me about it? Um, because I think that it's, it's really a mistake to say, even when 18 year olds arrive on campus, you have to do two years of a liberal arts degree before you even.

00:25:26.160 Uh, like decide whether you're going to be a chemistry major or a history major. Like, I think that we need to get kids on practical pathways earlier. And that would also allow for some of these completely impractical degrees and, and, uh, departments to wither and suffer a little bit more than they are right now, I think as well.

00:25:48.040 I think it's a really great point, Ricky, because I think there's a lot of people who go to university because they don't know what they want to do. And it's a way of putting off adult life for four years. So they can go and hang out and drink and experiment. And, and look, sometimes like in my own case, you know, that's how I developed a love of comedy of standup comedy.

00:26:09.140 And I've read a lot of books and great, but it's not worth the gigantic sums of money that people are paying, particularly under the American college system. I think it's going to come to a point, hopefully where people go, maybe go to college a little bit later and they go, well, you know what?

00:26:28.220 I've always wanted to be a lawyer and I've always wanted to be a criminal defense lawyer. So at the age of 25, I kind of know now what I want to do. I want to do this. And if somebody wants to do medicine and they've always wanted to be a doctor, great, be at 18. But the wanting to go to college because you don't know what you want to do. I think we really have to accept that that is done. And actually young people need to be canceled, canceled. 0.98

00:26:54.900 Yeah. Let's cancel young people. 1.00

00:26:59.560 Just get rid of them. No, young people need to be canceled against that because what they're doing is they're going to, like you said, you come out with a degree, which is practically useless and you're in horrendous amounts of debt. 0.94

00:27:11.340 Yeah, absolutely. And another thing I would add to that is I think that gap years are, I mean, far more common in Europe than they are here in the U.S.

00:27:19.960 And taking that time off when I did was the best decision of my entire life, like hands down. It was the first time where I could pull away from reading the material that was prescribed to me by professors and teachers and actually read for passion and learn out of passion and explore things on my own.

00:27:42.080 And that was when I read John Stuart Mill's On Liberty for the first time, which ironically, I later ran into a philosophy professor that I'd had at NYU and we had read his utilitarianism, but not On Liberty.

00:27:53.200 And I said to him, I read this book and it just hit me like a ton of bricks. It just clarified the importance of freedom and free speech and how profound it is and how I need to protect it because it's such a small sliver of human history that we've had this realization.

00:28:11.120 And like, why didn't we learn about this when we read about John Stuart Mill and we did utilitarianism? And he goes, I haven't read it.

00:28:20.040 Like, oh, so that's what I'm paying for. And NYU apparently is a philosophy professor who's not read John Stuart Mill's On Liberty.

00:28:27.560 No wonder free speech is withering at NYU.

00:28:30.400 But having that time away to actually explore my own interests and have the intellectual freedom and autonomy to do that was so clarifying.

00:28:41.240 And I really would say my number one piece of advice, actually, the more than I'm thinking out loud right now for parents that have kids that aren't sure about their path right now is some time off is great.

00:28:53.160 And I mean, I think that you should be productive and ideally, like looking for a job and to have some responsibility, not just an extended vacation.

00:29:02.780 But I think that that we've we've not allowed young people to just kind of take a breath and look around and say, OK, what actually do I want to do?

00:29:11.680 Because they're worried about SATs and then like LSATs and the next thing, the next thing, the next thing without ever pulling back and looking for their passion.

00:29:19.660 And Ricky, and how draw a line for us from the stuff we've just spent, you know, 20 minutes talking about in terms of the decline of the graduate premium, the fact that you're probably not getting as good an education as you might have done.

00:29:32.760 It's costing you more, et cetera.

00:29:34.400 And the woke kind of domination of college campuses and school campuses and the fact that administrators are leaning in that direction, et cetera, et cetera.

00:29:43.680 And there's a culture of self-censorship that you mentioned.

00:29:46.220 And draw a line from that for us to what we have seen post-October 7th, where you have pro-Hamas protesters on college campuses.

00:29:56.960 And particularly what we've seen as we're recording this in the last couple of weeks of the year.

00:30:02.400 You know, I think it's presidents from several very, very established colleges in the U.S. being asked about whether calling for the genocide of Jews is harassment and saying, well, it sort of depends on the context.

00:30:18.360 Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT's code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment?

00:30:25.560 Yes or no?

00:30:26.500 If targeted at individuals not making public statements.

00:30:29.800 Yes or no?

00:30:32.440 Calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute bullying and harassment?

00:30:36.060 I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus.

00:30:39.520 But you've heard chants for intifada? 0.92

00:30:42.220 I've heard chants, which can be anti-Semitic depending on the context, when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people.

00:30:49.860 So those would not be according to the MIT's code of conduct or rules?

00:30:53.640 That would be investigated as harassment, if pervasive and severe.

00:31:00.900 Ms. McGill, at Penn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's rules or code of conduct?

00:31:08.500 Yes or no?

00:31:09.140 If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.

00:31:16.240 Yes.

00:31:16.540 I am asking, specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?

00:31:25.460 If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment.

00:31:29.500 So the answer is yes.

00:31:31.280 It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.

00:31:34.080 It's a context-dependent decision.

00:31:36.140 That's your testimony today.

00:31:37.420 Calling for the genocide of Jews is depending upon the context.

00:31:41.160 That is not bullying or harassment.

00:31:43.600 This is the easiest question to answer yes, Ms. McGill.

00:31:49.420 So is your testimony that you will not answer yes?

00:31:52.780 If it is, if the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment.

00:31:59.840 Yes.

00:32:00.120 Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide?

00:32:02.540 The speech is not harassment?

00:32:05.920 This is unacceptable, Ms. McGill.

00:32:07.580 I'm going to give you one more opportunity for the world to see your answer.

00:32:12.640 Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment?

00:32:20.180 Yes or no?

00:32:23.620 It can be harassment.

00:32:25.640 The answer is yes.

00:32:27.160 And Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?

00:32:37.200 It can be, depending on the context. 0.86

00:32:40.040 What's the context?

00:32:41.680 Targeted as an individual.

00:32:43.460 Targeted at an individual.

00:32:45.180 It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals.

00:32:49.000 Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them?

00:32:52.080 Do you understand that dehumanization is part of anti-Semitism?

00:32:57.960 I will ask you one more time.

00:33:00.700 Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?

00:33:08.740 Anti-Semitic rhetoric.

00:33:10.280 And is it anti-Semitic rhetoric?

00:33:11.740 Anti-Semitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct, and we do take action.

00:33:23.760 So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard's code of conduct.

00:33:30.620 Correct.

00:33:33.080 Again, it depends on the context.

00:33:35.520 It does not depend on the context.

00:33:37.300 The answer is yes, and this is why you should resign.

00:33:40.840 These are unacceptable answers across the board.

00:33:44.160 Saying, well, it sort of depends on the context, which, by the way, as a free speech advocate, you might say is accurate, but not when you contrast it to the things that have been considered harassment or microaggression on college campuses for the last decade, including asking people where they're from, wearing a sombrero for Halloween, etc., etc.

00:34:03.660 Yeah, I mean, just to put some meat on the bones of your last observation there, when I was at NYU, they give us our ID cards the first day of freshman year, and on the back of it, it has 911, it has the campus police phone number, direct line, which is really important in New York, the student health center, and another emergency hotline, and then the bias response hotline.

00:34:31.600 So you could literally call and report a peer or a professor who says something that you think is offensive or biased against you.

00:34:40.920 And an example that they published a report from NYU of the ways that people had used it in the past, and someone had called to report that the advertising, we have a bunch of posters up of students, and it's NYU, and just those kind of stage shots that they come and take in classrooms.

00:35:00.280 And someone had called to report that they were not diverse enough to reflect the student body and decided that that was a use for the hotline.

00:35:07.040 So the threshold of speech that is beyond the pale or the precedent that free speech is just not an issue or a thing that the school cares about has been so deeply set to the point where they've created a snitch culture hotline for kids to report their professors.

00:35:27.860 I mean, Jonathan Haidt has talked considerably about how that affected him as a professor at NYU.

00:35:33.480 That's the sort of world that October 7th and the resulting protests, like, this is exploding on campuses where free speech has so fundamentally been abdicated as a value.

00:35:46.420 And I think that part of it, to draw a line to what we were talking about earlier, that I don't think enough attention is really paid to, is the student loan situation here in America and the fact that these schools can continuously take money from teenagers who don't fully understand the deal that they're signing into, federally backed student loans that they have no responsibility to actually make sure pay off in the end.

00:36:11.060 And these schools are so drunk on their own power, they have guaranteed money that they can just raise the tuition with impunity.

00:36:21.020 I mean, the financial literacy in America is absolutely absurd.

00:36:25.180 We don't let kids buy a beer at 18 or 17, but we let them sign away their down payments to some money-rich institution with an endowment that could afford to send them through college easily.

00:36:36.940 And that sort of drunk on power system where free speech has just been totally pushed to the wayside for decades, and provably so, based on student surveys, faculty surveys, how many professors have been fired, which just in the past decade is more than 200.

00:36:59.080 FIRE has tallied, or the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is FIRE, my co-author is the president of FIRE, and they've found that there were over 1,000 attempts to fire or sanction professors as a result of their speech just in the past decade alone.

00:37:16.340 These numbers outstrip McCarthyism.

00:37:18.180 So we had the spectacle at Capitol Hill recently of the presidents of MIT, of UPenn, and of Harvard showing up and all of a sudden hiding behind the valence of free speech in a way that's entirely hypocritical because you don't just suddenly discover free speech when it's convenient for you.

00:37:38.700 And that's obviously what we're seeing. I mean, if they had set the precedent all along that different viewpoints were allowed on campus, then I would say, okay, maybe in some instances, some of these fringe cases are legitimately free speech.

00:37:53.960 But when we're at a point where, like, there have been professors fired for the most absurd and atrocious things that are, or who have, I mean, there's an example that we have in the book of a professor who sent a tweet, a kind of equivocating COVID lockdowns with slavery.

00:38:13.500 And he ended up being squeezed out of his position and ended up killing himself in the downfall of being canceled on this university campus.

00:38:26.200 So if that was our attitude to free speech historically, I mean, just to see them suddenly be like, oh, no, actually free speech is the bedrock of Harvard.

00:38:34.760 And it's just it's it's unbelievable and so fundamentally defies the the foundation that's been laid for the past several decades on American campuses, which is that that protectionism is more important than free speech.

00:38:50.800 And why do you think it's happened? Because, as you say, I mean, in my opinion, actually, there is a college campus environment I can see in which calls for genocide might be considered harassment or not based on a particular context.

00:39:06.220 You know, you could say the college campus is a place where freedom of speech is most important because young people go there to indulge different ideas and some of them might be quite extreme.

00:39:17.280 But what we need is a robust exchange and debate. And if we have that, we can tolerate a little bit more than we might tolerate in a public institution that employs people primarily or whatever.

00:39:30.080 But we not only haven't had that, as you say, we've had this far more restrictionist attitude prior to now.

00:39:36.360 What do you think is different in this instance where suddenly this is the issue, like the 300 movie?

00:39:44.180 They're prepared to make a stand right here to the death, which seems kind of quite unusual or anti-Semitic.

00:39:51.800 Yeah, I was going to let her say it.

00:39:54.100 Yeah, I mean, I I have a theory on why this issue has taken so or gotten so much attention on college campuses.

00:40:04.660 And I think that what's happening is that when you're a young person who wants to be transgressive and edgy and and push the envelope and you come out and decide, you know, Donald Trump was just elected.

00:40:17.740 And so let's let's protest on campus to to demonstrate.

00:40:21.660 And then, you know, the administration cancels classes so that you can do that.

00:40:25.120 It's like, oh, that's not really that edgy.

00:40:26.740 Like you just got the university just sanctioned your viewpoint.

00:40:29.140 Right. Or you want to protest for Black Lives Matter and post the black square because that's the edgy progressive cause. 0.83

00:40:36.480 But then the university president's in your email and validating your viewpoint and standing behind you and saying good for you.

00:40:42.820 Or you protest Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal.

00:40:46.240 And then all of a sudden, you know, the school is issuing a statement for some reason about Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal like that.

00:40:52.260 Like nothing that these kids could do in the name of progressive causes was actually edgy or pushing buttons or or ruffling feathers in any meaningful way.

00:41:01.240 They were just coddled and and and and cheered on.

00:41:05.880 And the administrators were like catering lunches at places like, you know, we would have all these sit ins of college students who would go into an administrative building and in protest, stay there all day long.

00:41:17.660 And then the school is bringing them like burritos and stuff like that's not the cool edgy thing.

00:41:21.980 You're not pushing the adults buttons.

00:41:23.520 And in a university campus, like, I mean, it's just so progressive, the environment that all the professors are they're not these like stodgy bow tie wearing classical liberals anymore.

00:41:35.960 They're woke, you know, like nose piercing sort of types that will champion all the popular progressive causes. 0.96

00:41:45.340 So you need the next frontier.

00:41:47.040 And I think that this is the it's gotten to the point where we're progressive politics on college campuses are so extreme that in order to actually do something that that shakes things up on campus or to actually feel like you're speaking truth to power, even if I think it's entirely an illusion that these kids are under.

00:42:03.520 It's I mean, it's grotesque what is happening on these campuses.

00:42:06.340 This is by no means an excuse.

00:42:07.940 But I think that they've they're in such a left wing environment that the last frontier of something that actually feels like they're they're being edgy, that they're being transgressive, that they're pushing the bounds is, you know, cheering on a mass slaughter of citizens in a foreign country, which is shocking to me.

00:42:28.880 But I think the result of just how extreme these colleges are, there's nothing left.

00:42:32.540 There's no new frontier.

00:42:33.760 And also, as well, it kind of maps on the ideology, for instance, if you see Israel as being oppressors and, you know, white supremacists, you know, which they would probably argue that they are.

00:42:47.840 I mean, bless them, but then you could make an argument that what Hamas are are freedom fighters and they're overthrowing, you know, the oppressor.

00:42:59.000 And this is morally right and correct.

00:43:00.840 As abhorrent, by the way, as I find those arguments, it kind of maps, doesn't it?

00:43:06.020 You kind of get where they're going logically.

00:43:09.940 Oh, yeah, absolutely.

00:43:10.800 I mean, I think that a lot of this is an outgrowth of the kind of Marxist dichotomy between the oppressor and oppressed class.

00:43:16.160 And if you believe that that Palestinians are in the oppressed class, then and if you look at things through that dichotomy, then, of course, anything is justified by by all means. 0.95

00:43:28.500 And I think that's we're seeing that come to fruition.

00:43:31.440 I think we also are seeing the extremity of what happens when you you no longer believe that free speech is a value to uphold, where you no longer believe that that words words can't wound you and that speech actually is violence, which we've heard for years on college campuses of people saying that they're wounded by words or that that that bad ideas are causing them harm.

00:43:57.140 And the logical extrapolation, if you really believe that words are violence, is violence is just as acceptable as speech.

00:44:05.240 And I think that we're seeing kids who really have pushed the frontier of just completely abdicating free speech to the point where they believe that if your words can wound me, then I can fight back with legitimate violence as a result.

00:44:19.140 And we see statistically that the percentage of students who who believe that violence is acceptable as a response to speech is non-negligible and actually concentrates in these super elite campuses.

00:44:31.240 And also another weird wrinkle, which is kind of a tangent, but the schools where the highest percentage of students say that they are that violence is is acceptable in response to speech are almost all across the board, super outlier high percentages, women's colleges.

00:44:49.340 So I'm not sure exactly what conclusion to draw from that, but apparently it's concentrated in women's colleges and elite universities. 1.00

00:44:57.000 Well, one of the things I think I've heard Jordan Peterson articulate this, particularly about the female psychology, he sort of talked about how women tend to assess threats a little bit differently.

00:45:10.900 So he talks about how you're either an infant or you are an infant carer, or if you're neither of those, then the best thing for a woman to do is to consider you a threat.

00:45:22.700 Because if you falsely think someone's a threat, it doesn't really cost you anything.

00:45:28.100 There's a much greater risk in seeing someone who's a threat as not a threat.

00:45:32.740 That's really dangerous.

00:45:33.720 So if you're if you're an infant, you're the oppressed.

00:45:36.700 If you're a caregiver, you are on my team, if you like.

00:45:39.800 Right.

00:45:40.320 And everyone else is an enemy.

00:45:41.880 And what do you do with enemies?

00:45:43.140 Well, you avoid them or you destroy them.

00:45:45.400 So this infantilization of people, if you live in a world where the victims are your infants, it makes quite a lot of sense that you would then use whatever means necessary to destroy the people who you consider a threat to those people.

00:45:58.700 So I found that quite a persuasive argument.

00:46:01.400 Yeah, that's that's really interesting.

00:46:02.980 And I think also along those lines, the the idea that you need to be protected from words or so often on college campuses, I mean, I can't come up with an example of somebody shutting down speech or claiming offense that was actually their own group.

00:46:21.180 Like it's so frequently a white student who will be like, well, that's offensive to black people or it's always on someone else's behalf.

00:46:29.660 And I do feel that there's a some aspect of this anti free speech ideology or the idea that people need to be protected from speech taps into the the female like predisposition to be more empathetic and to like believe that other people do need to be protected, that they genuinely are harmed. 0.63

00:46:53.300 And so often I saw my female peers particularly be the ones to put themselves in the position of defending some abstract other rather than an individual as a and shut down speech as a result. 0.95

00:47:07.600 Ricky, one of the things I really liked about your book is that it's written by not someone who's on the right.

00:47:14.940 You sort of describe yourself as right libertarian, but Greg, who is on the left, because this is an issue and we focus on the left.

00:47:22.220 And of course, the left have gone nuts. We all know that. But the right aren't so innocent.

00:47:27.840 And I sometimes look at the right, particularly very much the online right, and I'm like, you're kind of going the same way.

00:47:36.200 Yeah, absolutely. I think two benefits to our partnership were the intergenerational dynamic, because I had lived a lot of what we write about in terms of what happens on college campuses and seen it firsthand.

00:47:51.420 But he had the wisdom of a career as long as my lifetime of actually fighting for people's free speech.

00:47:58.700 But then also, to your point, the fact that we do come from different parts of the political aisle, and I'm certainly more on the right than Greg, and he's more on the left than me.

00:48:09.140 And what actually matters and what animates this book are the fundamental classical liberal values that we share and that we think should be apolitical regardless of what party you're in and historically have been a part of the fabric of American society.

00:48:25.380 And then just all of a sudden, we're completely pushed to the wayside.

00:48:30.740 And, you know, I'm writing this book. I certainly we write it. We've talked about, like, some of the rhetorical dodges that both conservatives and liberals make.

00:48:39.940 And some of it I realized, like, oh, I've kind of done that myself, where I turn my ears off if someone's on the left, because I just assume that I know what they're going to say, which is unhelpful.

00:48:48.620 And we call out our own sides, even though I don't think that I wouldn't go as far as to say that we indulge in some sort of, like, both sides ism and saying that there is an equivalence.

00:48:58.880 I we both agree that the left, in terms of cancel culture and moving away from free speech, are the worst offenders.

00:49:05.840 However, I am deeply concerned by the fact that a lot of people on the right who I think rightly point out where the left is extreme and illiberal and censorious are attempting to fight that with the exact same tactics because there is not a fundamental understanding of free speech.

00:49:26.660 And I think also just the historically, I think it's been so unpopular to be a conservative in public for a while that it's super easy to be a free speech advocate if you're a conservative when it's your side that's under siege.

00:49:40.100 But I think that recently we've I've been seeing more and more suggestions that there are a lot of people who've said that they're pro free speech, who would rather fight might with might and fist with fists where they have power to do so.

00:49:52.900 And like a lot of the laws coming out of Florida, like anti CRT stuff that I think cross a line into just I mean, and the courts agree with me across the line into actually violating First Amendment rights of employers and stuff.

00:50:07.600 And like, yes, I agree that a lot of the the DEI trainings that are mandated in workplaces are absurd.

00:50:15.080 And I completely agree with that, that con that the reason and the context in which these these bills were written.

00:50:20.860 And but then I also think that it's absurd to say you as a private employer are not allowed to do that in your own company and the government's going to tell you as much or you as a professor are not even allowed to bring up DEI in in any pedagogical context.

00:50:36.860 And and so I do agree with you that that there's a concerning and I think growing strain of a liberalism that is coming up in a reactionary way on the right wing that we really need to caution against.

00:50:51.480 And yeah, it does worry me for sure.

00:50:55.820 Well, let me ask a devil's advocate question then, Ricky.

00:50:58.380 One of the things they might be asking is, well, we've tried your way, we've tried being liberal and look where it's got us.

00:51:06.460 Why are we wrong?

00:51:08.540 I mean, I think that fighting might with might is just the the worst possible thing that we can do.

00:51:14.920 I mean, not only have we seen examples of of just completely unconstitutional laws that are being passed and are constantly being struck down that are demonstrably not feasible in the American context.

00:51:29.140 But I also I don't think that we've that the right has actually fully walked the walk and fighting in a truly classical liberal way against illiberalism on the left.

00:51:40.720 I think that a lot of us and myself included and until I started writing, a lot of people on the right have kind of have not fought back or have not raised their hand and said, you know, I have a problem with this or I think that that this DEI training is going to too far.

00:52:00.460 And I think that a lot of the silence and the idea that we could kind of just go along and get along and not actually exercise our free speech rights in response to a liberalism is how we end up in this sort of place where we're all on the back foot, where people have been self-censoring, where too few professors have put themselves out there and students are never going to follow suit as a result.

00:52:21.440 Like, I think that the we've not actually really tried what does it mean to fight ideas with ideas when so many people very understandably have cowered in submission to this this I'm these squeaky wheel people who who want to cancel people and push an ideology.

00:52:38.020 But I think that those who are animated by a desire to fight might with might should consider whether or not they've actually fully fought with words first.

00:52:51.320 And I don't think that we have. I think we have. We're living in a country in America here where it's 80 percent of the American public who think that that cancel culture is a problem, who think that political correctness has gone too far.

00:53:03.540 And for some reason, 80 percent of us, regardless of whether we're Democrats, Republicans, whatever, like a Bill Maher liberal or Fox News watching conservative agree that this is insane.

00:53:15.460 And yet we're allowing this 20 percent tyranny of the minority squeaky wheels to take over and not actually fighting back and speaking up. 0.99

00:53:22.800 Well, right. I mean, look at your own example. What should have happened at your boarding school is the parents should have got together and said, you're not going to teach our kids to be racist.

00:53:31.500 Yeah, that's what should have happened. But each individual parent is likely too afraid to raise it as an issue because they don't want their child to be ostracized.

00:53:41.740 They don't want to be the problem parent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:53:44.500 And I think that's probably where a lot of the more reactionary type of response is coming from is from a feeling of powerlessness and a feeling like, well, it's all very well for us to say, you know, you fight ideas with ideas.

00:53:56.560 But what happens when I express an idea and I lose my job? That's not really a fight. That's me getting crushed here. Do you know what I mean?

00:54:05.060 Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I'm completely sympathetic to it on the individual level.

00:54:09.120 I mean, not everyone's going to like write an op ed and then decide to start talking about free speech on podcasts like we had.

00:54:15.560 There's only so many podcasts to do that on. But I would say that, yeah, I mean, I do have a degree of hope, though, in spite of the fact that I think that there is that reactionary liberalism that's popping up on the right.

00:54:29.120 I do think the pandemic and particularly in the realm of education, there's been so much more pushback where parents are exercising their rights and their free speech and showing up at school board meetings or running for for school board themselves.

00:54:43.940 And there is, I think, a greater engagement with the civic process and and just a larger conversation.

00:54:56.240 I mean, even like Emma Camp wrote an op ed and she's she's roughly my age.

00:55:01.020 I think she was at UVA in The New York Times that like called out free speech is an issue as well.

00:55:07.280 And I don't think that was really a conversation that we would have seen published in The New York Times pre pandemic.

00:55:14.000 But now now it is kind of part of the Overton window.

00:55:17.840 And I do think that there there has been much greater engagement.

00:55:22.580 And I think that that, again, is kind of because society had a pause and enough time to actually pull back and say, like, hey, what is my kid learning in school or, you know, just how can I get involved or how can I affect change in a way that I don't think people were as inclined to do pre pandemic?

00:55:43.000 And I also think as well, there's other, you know, green shoots that we can see.

00:55:47.460 I mean, Elon has taken over Twitter and look, I mean, it's gone through turbulence.

00:55:53.100 I'm not denying that.

00:55:54.420 But if you think about how Twitter used to be, I mean, people were saying like men can't be women and they were just getting their accounts completely deleted for saying a biological fact.

00:56:05.420 Whereas where we are now, it's a lot better, actually.

00:56:08.640 Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the sad reality for a lot of people and myself included was that it required like being shaken from complacency required seeing liberties eclipsed in such a profound way as they were during the pandemic, whether it was like forced lockdowns or vaccine mandates or censorship gone awry on social media.

00:56:31.540 I think that there really was things got so bad that it was animating to so many people.

00:56:38.620 And, you know, it's it's really easy to just kind of forget how profound in the scheme of human history is so many of the liberties that we in the West enjoy are.

00:56:48.980 And it it requires that like kind of once in a generation moment where they're they're completely violated as they were in 2020 to get people to actually engage more vigorously in protecting them and maybe even realizing that they're even there in the first place, which I don't think a lot of young people fully conceptualize.

00:57:10.360 Ricky, I was just going to say, because the thing that people because, you know, I kind of get this idea, you know, on social media, Ricky, where you see something egregious and awful and we look, we all get triggered, we all get angry, we all go, this is disgusting or whatever else.

00:57:27.100 But deleting that person's account, doing whatever, and you've made this point yourself, it doesn't make the opinion go away. It just drives it somewhere else.

00:57:37.160 Yeah, absolutely. And we have a chapter in our book, actually, we had the great fortune of having the National Contagion Research Institute and CRI allow us to publish a study that they did where they watched as there were mass bans on Twitter, which, by the way, the the original I think it was a CFO of Twitter said that they were the free speech wing of the free speech party back in the day.

00:58:03.120 And that was an ideal that they did pretty much stay pretty close to until 2016 is in the lead up to that election.

00:58:12.040 But they found that every single time that there was a mass ban or purge of accounts, and some of them were like really egregious stuff, like blatant white supremacy accounts and things with like disgusting slurs that none of us would ever dare repeat, let alone think.

00:58:26.700 But every single time that there was a mass ban and purge, the amount of people who flocked over to Gab, which is like, you know, Twitter for the right wing and a complete echo chamber, goes up in lockstep every single time.

00:58:42.440 And the word ban starts trending on Gab every single time.

00:58:45.380 And so rather than allow these gross beliefs, which I think everyone should, you know, be able to block and get out of their mute from their own timeline, if they so choose, rather than allow them to play out in the marketplace of ideas and, you know, maybe be pushed into a corner of Twitter, but, you know, vigorously objected to by other people or actually maybe perhaps quote tweeted

00:59:11.900 and then shamed and then someone thinks twice about their their fringe viewpoint.

00:59:16.460 They were pushed into a place where more people, I mean, I don't want to like color Gab entirely as some like alt-right neo-Nazi place.

00:59:25.380 I'm not a member of it, but, you know, ending up in an echo chamber where everyone is on the same side of the aisle as you is one way to end up all the more extreme.

00:59:34.780 And even to bring this back to what we're seeing on university campuses now and like young people who were growing up with in an environment where they don't feel like they can talk about contentious issues, whether it's Israel-Palestine conflict or whatever, who end up turning to the Internet for that dialogue, end up in rabbit holes in all of two seconds.

00:59:55.340 And that's how, I mean, we, I don't know if you guys saw that TikTok trend of people celebrating like Osama bin Laden's letters, like these woke Gen Zers. 0.69

01:00:05.120 I mean, that's precisely what happens when you can't have a conversation.

01:00:08.780 You end up down some rabbit hole, which is so much easier to do as a young person with social media in your hand, too.

01:00:15.860 And you can fall down it much faster.

01:00:18.300 Really interesting.

01:00:19.060 Ricky, as we wrap this up, before we ask you some questions from our supporters and, of course, our final question, can we bring this home in a somewhat positive way?

01:00:29.360 You talked about snitch culture.

01:00:31.180 Obviously, the book is about cancel culture.

01:00:33.460 How can this be, this situation be improved?

01:00:36.720 How can we start to make progress, actual progress?

01:00:40.120 I think that courage is contagious and that there is strength in numbers.

01:00:43.580 And, I mean, my experience at NYU demonstrated that to me as well.

01:00:48.560 But I would say where I see the most hope is the fact that 100% my generation is at the helm of these cancel campaigns more often than not.

01:00:57.260 And they're the squeakiest wheels and they're, you know, shaming their bosses on Twitter.

01:01:01.640 And I understand why people walk on eggshells around us.

01:01:05.320 However, that is such a tiny, squeaky wheel tyranny of the minority situation going on. 0.99

01:01:11.600 And if you ask the American public from boomers all the way down to Gen Z what their view is of cancel culture, by far the most negative view of cancel culture is Gen Z.

01:01:20.940 And the most positive view is millennials, which, I mean, it completely fundamentally reverses.

01:01:26.320 Like, older people are a little more down on it.

01:01:28.340 And then millennials are the most gung-ho.

01:01:30.320 But then Gen Z hates it more than anyone else.

01:01:32.120 And that's because we grew up in this age of cancel culture.

01:01:34.980 We were teenagers with tripwires around us who felt like we couldn't express ourselves at a point in time where we should be exploring and not having all of our viewpoints permanently attached to us or college admissions revoked for a tweet that resurfaces years later or a three-second Snapchat video.

01:01:52.340 And I think that where I'm hopeful, not that kids right now have the tool set and the ideological framework to fix this problem, but they have the motivation to.

01:02:05.380 And the problem is we just have not taught Gen Z.

01:02:08.840 And I was not taught in my own education classical liberal values that can supplant cancel culture and the values that underpin a free speech culture that could replace it.

01:02:18.560 And if we do, I think, give kids those tools, then ultimately I believe that there's enough animation and desire among young people to live in a world where they're not unceremoniously torn down or running the risk of being torn down at any point in time that we could actually make a meaningful change.

01:02:39.200 Rikki, this has been absolutely brilliant.

01:02:41.780 Thank you so much.

01:02:43.140 And Rikki, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?

01:02:47.320 This is a real tangent and not fully related.

01:02:51.660 However, I think that there's just been such an interesting conversation about the birth control pill and how it affects women's psychology and how it affects young women's psychology especially.

01:03:04.100 And I'm enormously frightened by some data that came out of Europe that showed that the instances of suicide and self-harm skyrocketed when young women were put on birth control in adolescence.

01:03:15.760 I was put on it when I was 14 for acne.

01:03:19.100 When you're 14, you should have acne and not chemically change your body in order to prevent that.

01:03:24.400 But, you know, I have a lot of friends who similarly were prescribed it very young.

01:03:28.580 I think it has meaningful impacts on women's brains and biology. 0.95

01:03:33.280 And I don't think that there's been enough attention paid to that.

01:03:36.680 But there seems to be just the start of a conversation.

01:03:39.920 And so, Dr. Sarah Hill has done a bunch of great research.

01:03:42.620 But I think parents should be aware of that with their daughters.

01:03:46.260 Absolutely.

01:03:46.980 And not only that, there's also, terrible is to say, quite a lot of evidence that Alex Jones, who I think is someone I disagree with on most things, was actually not entirely incorrect about what happens when you have a lot of people on birth control.

01:04:00.800 What happens to the water supply and how that might be affecting other people and other creatures in the environment.

01:04:06.940 So, that's definitely something I'm glad you brought up.

01:04:09.500 We've talked about it briefly, I think, with Freya India and perhaps with Luis Perra as well.

01:04:14.460 I can't remember.

01:04:15.140 But it's something we will definitely.

01:04:16.660 Oh, and with Mary Harrington, of course.

01:04:18.680 But we'll be definitely talking more about that issue.

01:04:21.840 So, I'm really glad you brought her up.

01:04:23.260 As am I glad that we are now heading over to answer questions from our supporters that they've already submitted for you.

01:04:29.300 Head on over there and join us for the conversation with Ricky.

01:04:32.460 You're there.

01:04:34.540 As much as this cancel culture is brainwashing your mind, do you agree that it is also exposing truths and intentions that we didn't realize were there or didn't see before? 0.58

TRIGGERnometry - March 06, 2024

What’s REALLY Happening on College Campuses - Rikki Schlott

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript