September 15, 2021 • 55 mins
Now-former Portland State University professor and one of the three masterminds behind the grievance studies affair, Peter Boghossian, joins Jack & Joe to talk about his exit from the university, woke culture and why we need open expression & intellectual diversity.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm going to take the counterpoint that the male penis
is a construct and the penis is responsible for global warming.
It's Armstrong and Getty extra large because four hours simply enough.
This is Armstrong and Getty extra large. You know, I
gotta say that was not the highbrow tone I was
hoping to take in today's discussion. I'm disappointed in you
(00:22):
that argument was good enough to get published and a
university uh publication that that can't possibly be. You wouldn't
think so. Perhaps you've heard us on The Armstrong and
Getty Show discussing the experiences of Peter begin who taught
philosophy at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon for a
decade and has recently resigned for reasons that we will
(00:43):
let him describe. It's always great to talk Peter. Welcome.
How are you, sir? I have never been better, truly,
I am a I am so happy right now. That's awesome.
How are you, guys? We're terrific. We won't still of
thunder though. Why do you feel that way? Well, because
I don't have to compromise my integrity because I was
(01:07):
working in a job in which I was hired to
teach critical thinking and ethics, and then the conditions at
the university made that impossible. Uh. And and I've just
been really touched. I you know, I wrote a letter
of resignation and I published it on very was the
sub Stack, and I detailed what happens to people when
(01:27):
they question or challenge the orthodoxy. And I have been
flabbergasted by the literally worldwide reaction, the publication of the
letter into multiple languages, the unbelievable amount of support that
people contacted me just to say thank you or we
appreciate what you did. I mean, it's just it's so touching.
(01:49):
You know. I was tearing up last night just reading
all these emails and support. I mean, it's truly amazing.
I think there is an aspect of this, uh that
we're gonna be talking about that is is kind of
nice and warm feeling in that we and you and
Matt Taiebe and and all sorts of thinkers who might
disagree about everything have realized, oh my gosh, these sacred
(02:12):
principles are are actually at stake. And we're not prone
to hyperbole around here, which probably makes us bad talk
show hosts, but we actually believe what's happening in our
elementary high schools and university campuses is actually dangerous to civilization.
And honestly, it feels good to be working with people
we generally disagree with to do what we feel is right.
(02:32):
It does and appreciate you having me on. And what's
interesting is, you know the local paper here, I want
to have a conversation. I want to have a sincere
conversation about what's happening in our university system. I want
to have a conversation about the president of Potland State
University said that basically racial justice is his highest priority,
(02:54):
highest priority of the institution. And you know, I want
to have a conversation with the left about as you know,
I'm a liberal atheist. I want to have a conversation
with Matt matt Ow, with CNN, with MSNBC, with the
local paper here, the oregon Ian, with op B, Oregon Public, Nobody,
the whole left media media ecosystem is having none of it.
(03:16):
They just don't want to have that conversation. And I
find that that is fascinating. Do you think that's because
they agree with the radical walk left, or because they're
afraid of them, or they're afraid I think it's part
of it is the same problem you see within the
university is mirrored outside the university, and that is, don't
(03:38):
talk to people with different views. There's even a word
for that, it's called platform, and don't give the Nazia platform.
Don't And it's not even that the problem is that
somebody would give me a platform. The psychologist Stephen Pinker
says that he calls it the left pole. In other words,
when you're on the far left, anything even slightly to
the right of that looks like you're all right or
(04:01):
a Nazi. And so I think it's guilt by association.
I think it's that they view themselves and I'm at
least in partial agreement with this, that we really are
in a cultural war and they don't want to. Well, actually,
maybe I'll just put it on you. So, why do
you think that the left wing, anybody's center of left
(04:22):
is refuge? You guys will have me on. Glenn Beck
had me on, Tucker Carlson had me on, and not
only to talk about this, to talk about a wide
range of issues, to challenge and question in probe, why
don't we see that on the left. I blame the internet.
I certainly blame social media. The social media tends to
be left, particularly Twitter, and because it tends to be left,
(04:43):
the the outspoken voices of the fringe left, the crazy
people that we're talking about, they their importance is being
elevated to a level that is not you know, doesn't
make any sense. But the regular left is so scared
of that vocal Twitter left that I think that's what
drives all of this stuff. I'm gonna I'm gonna, well,
(05:07):
all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna throw out something that
may seem crazy, But here's my this is the next
level of thinking about this. Our Lord vote a famous
has a famous line of title, The Master's tools cannot
disable the Master's house. The master's tools cannot dissemble, take
(05:27):
apart the master's house. What is the master's house patriarchy, sexism, racism, oppression?
What are the Master's tools? Reason, science, dialogue, discourse, etcetera.
I believe part of the rot that's happening now that
we're seeing is because there is a deep seated belief
that the master's tools, that conversation, discourse, etcetera. Are enabling racism, xenophobia,
(05:54):
the patriarchy, etcetera. So to have a conversation with someone
like that is you don't want to give them a voice.
The only thing that you will do, and there's a
whole line of academic literature on this, the only thing
that conversation will do is it will reinforce the patriarchy,
it will reinforce bigotry, and it will demean the lived
experiences of people who listen to that conversation and be hurtful.
(06:18):
So I think that there is a moral infrastructure in
place in which many on the left. And I don't
think that this is in any way native to the left,
Like you don't see this with known Chomsky or the
kind of old school economic leftist. You see this exclusively
with woke people. This is like, like my friend Dad
(06:39):
said said, it's like a parasticization. It's a parasitic value
system that's latched onto traditional leftism. So that's why I
think that the the anybody left of center won't talk
to me or anybody else. Well, there are a bunch
of big ideas there. I wish I jutted them all down,
but it's starting with the the expression about the master's house.
(06:59):
I just reject at premise outright, and and at the
heart of this, the idea that their ideas are irrefutable
because they're sincerely held is one of the craziest things
I've ever heard in my life. Can you imagine Peter
walking into a symposium or whatever and saying, first of all,
I'd like it to be made clear that my ideas
(07:22):
are unimpeachable, every single one. And of course you get
a big belly laugh from scholars. But then you say, no, no,
I'm perfectly serious. You can't use logic, you can't use data,
because those are the tools of the oppressor. I mean,
that's it's it's so obviously a con it's hilarious to
those of us with skeptical minds. Well, that's the other
(07:42):
thing about this. I mean, that's the thing that I
just marvel at. It's so insane, Like people are ripping
down statues, people are assaulting the police, they're des drowing
storefront windows of mom and pop businesses, you know, working
class and for what do they do. It's so stupid,
for Chad, for for a for an anarchist zone in
(08:06):
which people are raping and murdering each I mean, for what,
what is the what is the goal of this whole thing.
It's so much easier to rip down and destroy than
it is to create. And that's also I think part
of the problem of why the left wing media ecosystem
won't have people on, and it's because I not only
(08:27):
do they not value conversation and they think that conversation
is actually bad, but I think that's a convenient excuse
to not do intellectual work to understand the other side
of the argument. Now that's not to say that the
right wing doesn't have a lot of crazies. I mean,
of course it does, but it has a different kind
of problem. And I would argue that the problem of
(08:48):
free speech and free inquiry is absolutely rudimentary to human progress.
I would say, you make a lot of good arguments,
and Ian Joe are talking about some very intellectual stuff there.
But I can tell you just from being in this
business at a very base level, I don't think Rachel
Mattow on MSNBC or Jake Tapper on CNN agree with
(09:08):
any of this woke stuff. But if their bosses get
a hundred emails or tweets from the woke left complaining
about having you on, that's enough to frighten them off.
And it's not for ideological reasons. It's just advertisers and ratings. Okay,
So so then so if that's true, then they have
(09:29):
no integrity, correct. Yeah, yeah, that's a good so. Right,
So we're either we're either in a position that these
folks believe it but won't say it. And if that's
the case, why would you listen to them because what
they're saying is not what they're believing. So there's a
kind of inauthenticity built into the mechanism. Yeah, these go ahead.
(09:55):
I was just gonna say, I think I think it's
somewhat like Trump and some people on the right plane
foot see with you and on or whatever. They think
it's just a fringe group of crazies and better to
have them on our side than not, and they're not
enough to do any damage. Well, turns out they are.
And I think that the Rachel Maddows and Jake Tapper's
and that crowd is going to find that out about
the woke crowd too. That kind of just playing footsie
with him because it's easier and keep advertisers is going
(10:17):
to turn out to be a bad idea. Well, in
the same way that for instance, Ted Wheeler is the
Mayor of Portland found out in a very painful way
that no, you can't control that whirlwind or that pack
of pit bulls, and just because they're you know, nominally
on your side, they'll get out of control eventually. Yeah.
That that's another conversation. Ted Rulers is a public disgrace
(10:38):
and he should immediately be impeached and held accountable for
what he's done to the City of Portland when he
personally his negligence. The homicide rates are astronomical. He I mean,
this is another conversation, but he we can. I'd love
to have a conversation, but I want to stick it on.
I want to I want to keep it to The
university is just now. This is not a ininge bunch
(11:00):
of nut jobs like Q and on. These are people
who control major academic in most academic institutions in English
speaking world, and they have positioned they're paid for in
my case apportency. The university is paid for by taxpayer funds.
Many of these people, if not most of them, have
jobs for life. They're looking at the university as an
(11:21):
indoctrination mill. They're teaching people and um training people to
be activists based upon scholarship. That's totally, totally bogus. Again,
the parallel to Q and on doesn't hold up. Yet.
Does the right have crazies? Have, no question about. Everybody
has crazies, but these crazies, the woke crazies, control academic institutions,
(11:46):
our knowledge, our engines of knowledge production right and it's
and the messages are grievance filled. The West is awful,
Capitalism is awful. I'm not saying capitalism is perfect by
any means, but I'm saying they have a very specific
message that they're pumping out and nobody benefits from They
(12:08):
don't even benefit from that. That's the other crazy thing
about this. Nobody benefits from racial hatred, from division, from
the universities, you know, racial justice being the highest part.
Nobody is benefiting from these things. It is an ideology
that is killing us all well. As a person who
has worked with young people of all races for most
(12:29):
of my adult life, I believe that to my core,
that the very worst thing you could possibly do to
a little child of colors to tell them they can't
possibly achieve what they dream of because the white man
is keeping them down. I think I think you are
doing work so unholy and evil. The clan at its
height couldn't dream of being that affected as effective. Hey,
(12:49):
I want to go. I want to make one point
because it's a prism through which I think the rest
of the conversation could flow. One of the things you
said in your letter of resignation, which I've read several times,
is that. And this hit me like, I mean, like
one of those fundamental principles you learn when you're a
little kid, something Thomas Jefferson said. It just it fills
your soul with excitement because you've realized the great truth.
(13:12):
And what you said was the freedom to question is
our fundamental right. And I thought that was one of
the truest things I've ever heard. That's at the basis
of everything right. The freedom to question is our fundamental
right and the role. And I think the next line
in that letter was talked about what our duty is.
(13:34):
We we continue to forget that, and the university's goal
is to remind us that that's not only our right,
but that's our duty. But Portland's state is practically forbidden
questioning correct only about certain things, though only about things
that contradict the more orthodox. You can question other things
(13:55):
you know, like what's the best way to plant plant
a tree? You know, how far down should it go?
But only questioning certain things. So I guess I want
to put out a call. I want to say two things.
I think it's really important when you're talking about racial justice, Like,
if you actually want racial justice, the first order of
business is to give every American an education of public education,
(14:18):
particularly AK through twelve, education of the first rate, independent
of skin color or socio economic status. And we have,
my opinion is that we have let down an awful
awful lot of people. And the solution to that is
not equity, in other words, trying to gerry read outcomes delution.
The solution to that is the quality of opportunity. And
so I think what I would like to see conservatives
(14:41):
the space that they move in is well, many spaces,
but in the context of this conversation, I'd like to
see them move into honest and sincere attempts to fix
school systems in the worst neighborhoods for the worst people,
independent of their skin color. That's the first thing. The
second thing that I would like to see is for
(15:01):
all this talk about diversity, diversity is a code word
for intellectual homogeneity. Right, if diversity really meant diversity, then
for example, you wouldn't see the excuse me, the vile
and bitriol spewed that Larry Elder particularly, and all the
horrible names that he's been called because he's a black
man who doesn't toe the party line. Right. So the
(15:23):
other thing that I would like to see, and I
just on Glenn Beck and I asked him this. So
here's my question to you. Um. One of the things
that we see in this in our university system is
culling of voices. They came for the right, then they
came for the concertors, and they came from the moderates,
then they came for the liberals, and and now they're
in their own little chamber of derangement. So my my
(15:47):
question to you is do you think we should have
a Mark A Marxists in an economics department at a university. Wow?
That's an interesting and I absolutely believe Marxism ought to
be studied and known and understood. I love the phrase
chamber of derangement. By the way, So that's gonna be
(16:08):
my new band. That's a good one. That's a good
album title to um. Yeah, that's a really interesting question.
I if there is the free of exchange of ideas,
if there's the marketplace of ideas functioning, I don't mind
some guy saying no, no, no, Marxism is correct, because
(16:28):
any rational examination of the evidence will render that opinion.
You know, silly, um. So I'm not particularly threatened by it.
I don't love it, but that's fine. So so I
do love it, and I'll tell you why. So I
love the best proponents, people who actually believe what they teach.
So I'm an atheist. I teach an atheist class, and
(16:51):
I have Christians, many very very prominent Christians and apologists
come in and teach the best arguments to the existence
of God. And the reason is because I don't believe
those things. And so I would be doing my my
students and injustice if I taught them without having You know,
um um, I was crazy to see this. Let let's
(17:13):
say this way. Students need to learn from people who
believe things in the most diverse ways possible. So I
love the idea of their being a Marxist, even though
I hate Marxism, because I think our students need to
see our freedom night. They need to see people with
psychology and behaviors. They need to see, they need to
see people who have um a wide range of beliefs,
(17:36):
and we need to give them the tools to figure
out for themselves what the answer is. I just might
be I was gonna say, I was gonna say, my
my discomfort is with the hundreds of millions who have
died at the hands of communism, And I mean, would
you would you likewise be infused about somebody teaching actual fascism,
(17:58):
not antifa's view of fascism, actual fascism and trying to
convince the kids, look, this is a better system. Yeah.
I think it's less about convincing and more about framing
an argument in the most charitable way possible. So yeah,
I have no problem with that, even though I disagree.
And the reason for that is not only so that
(18:19):
the kids can get the best representatives of the of
the ideas, but they can make the decisions for themselves.
Like that, the moment that you say, oh, we can't
have this person here or we can't have this person
speak out, you you were in very serious danger of
becoming the things that we hate. That's a very good
(18:39):
So we have to allow a system that has the
free exchange of ideas. Now, somebody recently, I don't have
it in front of me, but put out a tweet
about nine eleven being the white, hetero capitalist patriarchy professor
from Syracuse University. Yeah, and the university did exactly what
he should do and what it should have done, and said,
(19:01):
look this this academic So freedom of speech in an
academic context is even more privileged, even a higher value.
It's like we need people like that too, you know, whatever,
rock the boat, say anything they want to speak. That's
the whole idea of protection from tenure. And the university
issued a wonderful statement that I wish my university would
have issued for me, that we may or may not agree,
(19:23):
but this person has the right to speak openly and honestly.
And then the students. That was a statement. But I
would like to see the kind of intellectual change um
wrestling with ideas and the type of academy in which, look,
you can disagree with people, you can agree with people,
But here are the people who have they believe this,
(19:45):
those are publishing it, they have researched it. We've given
you the tools to make an analysis and the examination.
Now go forward. You do that and our democracy will flourish. Right,
you teach people not to attack other people on the
basis of the mutable characteristics, but to engage their ideas,
and we were all better off. Peter, Maybe we can compromise.
(20:07):
Let's keep the Marxist chained in a cage and just
bring them out for lectures. Would that be fair? No,
we have to give everybody, you know, and that's why
I said a Marxist not. But the problem comes when
you stack a whole department with people who have the
same beliefs, and then the kids will go into that
(20:28):
and they're saying, well, everybody, my economics professor believe this.
He's written all these books. This is true. No, that's
why you need intellectual diversity. And the other thing is
nobody will trust the bodies of literature and the quote
unquote scholarship coming from you know, about really important things
like global climate change, because they'll say, well, why should
I try? People have actually said this to me, why
(20:49):
should I trust that? Everybody here is a leftist? And
they're right, right, right, But if if you had a
mix of people, right, if you in a climate science
you know, if you pee Christians and everybody different views
and they came to a convergence of opinion, they came
to a consensus. Now that would be something that people
(21:11):
would then look at that and say, Okay, wow, these
people like me, they represent my voice, they agree with
other people like you and I are agreeing about this stuff. Yeah.
I mean, this is the fundamental principle upon which our
democracy has to be based. We have to have open inquiry,
(21:32):
we have to have free speech, and we also have
to teach people. You know what, if somebody doesn't agree
with you, that's okay. You can still hang out with them.
They can still be your friend, you can still go
drinking with them, you can still marry them. It's okay.
In fact, it's probably good if they don't agree with
you about everything, because then you can have some fun
and good conversations. But we're strayed from that because we're
(21:55):
not allowing people to have different that's my book, how
to have impossible conversations. We're straight aid from that because
those conversations don't take place in the university. And it's
not only that they don't take place. It said. If
somebody has a view that doesn't conform to what's morally fashionable,
it's not just like they're wrong, but it's like they're
a bad person. And that's the narrative. People are pointing out.
(22:19):
If you don't agree with this, you're a racist, you're
a bigot, you're a homeleful. Well how about this? How
about maybe I don't agree because I don't see the
evidence for how about how about that? Well? Yeah, amen
to that, And that's the speaking of the fraud we
were talking about before. The idea that I'm a racist
for disagreeing with you is literally, you know, begging the
(22:40):
question in the classical sense. I mean, well, what am
I supposed to do? Just stand here and get punched?
I guess ideologically, but I know Jackie had something just
to make things easier. What what's the name you like
to put on this, this whole thing is woke ism?
What you like best? Or or you know? It's nice
that when we throw on the term Marxist we all
know what we mean. I think it it helped combat
(23:00):
this if we have an agreed upon term that everybody's using. Yeah,
I don't. I don't think you could have an agreed
upon term. The people who participate in woke ideology don't
like woke Helen pluck Rose, author of Cynical Theories, which
is the v book on the subject, called the Critical
Social Justice Yes but genius book. She calls it critical
(23:22):
social justice. Whenever I write it, I write it social
justice uppercase S and upper case J. So there is
no consensus on this, but I like to term it
either social justice, social justice ideology, or woke ideology. Sometimes
people call it a worldview too, which is true. It
is actually a worldview. It's a worldview which bases itself
(23:44):
on the fact that the West is inherently racist, sexist, etcetera.
And we have to destroy the institutions that leads to
those things. And I just want to throw this in
so I don't forget to say it. Um, you mentioned
integrity earlier when we're talking about I mean, I mean,
one of the most interesting things that's come out of
this is you. I think you needed this that. Um.
Everybody that's reached out to you for an interview is
(24:04):
on the right, and no one, no liberals have I mean,
like you mentioned earlier, that's amazing. But you brought up
the term integrity, and I can't imagine more integrity than
what you've done. I assume you're not an independently wealthy man,
and you quit your job because, um, because you believe
in this stuff too much. And I mean, I'm not kidding.
I will remember what you did for the rest of
(24:25):
my life whenever I come to a crossroads like this. Yeah,
I I I appreciate that. I never wanted any of this, um,
and I did. I just could not stay at the
place where I had to compromise my integrity anymore. I
just couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. So, you know,
I think I can tell you about what led up
(24:47):
to that, or I can. I mean, we can go
from many places. Yeah, actually, you know, it's funny. I
was about to go there. You mentioned Helen pluck Rose
and her co author James Lindsay's Cynical Theories, and the
paper you wrote, the Conceptual Penis as a Social constra
and then the work you did with James and Helen
is one of my favorite things that's ever happened. Can
(25:07):
you tell us about the conceptual penis as a Social
construct and then the other papers and what what we
were trying, what were you trying to prove or or
or you know, exposed, and then what was the reaction
to it. Sure, happy to tell you about that. So
the conceptual penis was a hoax paper, and Alan's social
(25:28):
there are actually penises. Um, it's really I'm glad you
actually read the paper because I think that the papers
is really funny. That's the other thing about ideologs. They
have no sense of humor. That so one of the
things that we were trying to do is to show
that these bodies of scholarship they're not rigorous, they're not
(25:49):
based on evidence, and they are ideological. And so we
wrote the conceptual penis is a social construct and we
published it in a in a low ranked It wasn't
a great journal. It was a new journal as well,
and we received a tremendous amount of criticism, and much
of that criticism was justified. And that criticism was you
(26:10):
didn't prove what you thought you proved about these disciplines.
If you want to prove it, you need to do
the following things one, two, three, four, five, etcetera. And
so I said to to to Jim, to James lindsay, dude,
this is awesome. They told us exactly what we need
to do, so let's do it. He's like, all right,
(26:31):
so then we wrote twenty papers and we forwarded absolutely insane,
totally deranged thecs. I probably can't say because many of
them are sexual on the air right now. Oh no,
it's a podcast. If we have to, we'll believe it.
Go ahead, Okay about you know, penetrative anal sex and
transphobia and you know, putting people in matt white males
(26:54):
and chains as a whole of experience of reparations in
the classroom. And that one did not get public. We
we got called by the Wall Street Journal before we
published it. But the goal was to say so we
we did exactly what people wanted us to do, like
exactly what they wanted to do. So but instead of saying, wow,
maybe there's a problem here, like maybe this is something
(27:15):
we need to think about or be more reflected on
because this is informing public policy. Instead of doing that,
they came after me. They tried to take my job.
That's their response to this. So I want to make
sure it's it's it's clear what you were trying to prove.
You were trying to prove that these fields that masquerade
as science aren't science. It's not just that they're not science,
(27:38):
it's that it's that they're the musings of ideologues. There's
no evidence for these. So so the background piece that
you need to know is, as a general rule, there
are maybe a few exceptions to this, but this is
almost a rule. Seven papers in seven years his tenure. Right,
there's a job for life. I had no background in
(27:59):
this stuff. Jim had no background. Hell and had no background.
Gym's a mathematician. And we delved into the literature. We
did a deep dive in the literature. We really read
the journals, we read the articles, we did our homework
plus plus and the point was to show that the
policies that we're shaping our institutions, first the university or
(28:23):
the university system as an institution, and then the policies
as they were seeping out, these are not not only
are they not scientific, they're not anything. They're just a
bunch of people get together. We call it a term
Brett Weinstein uses for when we went over his house,
he's the former Evergreen professor, and we were explaining the
grievance studies thing. Early on he said, oh, it's like
(28:44):
idea laundering. So a bunch of idea loogs get together
and they have Um, they have an idea and they're
they're in academia, and they published that idea. They discharge
the moral impulse in a journal and then comes out
as the other side, as knowledge. So then they go
around pointing when you say, well, how do you know,
they point to the bogus scholarship that they themselves meet up.
(29:07):
But that's not based on evidence. And not only that,
you couldn't publish anything in there that went against what
what was morally fashionable, Like the whole ecosystem exists to
prop up certain moral conclusions and they teach that to people,
credential themselves, get tenure, and then hire other people who
(29:29):
believe the same things. That's how that's why you have
ideological capture of the university institutions. That's the mechanism. That's
how they've done it. Boy, I love that image of
idea laundering. That's a great metaphor. And and by the way,
you've ruined the dog park for me, uh you with
your rape culture at the dog park paper, which was
hilariously brilliant. Well here here's something that we don't talk
(29:52):
about because it's just too complicated. Um So everybody loves
the dog park and and you know p traditions, can
I rape culture and looking at it through the lens
of black feminist criminology. I mean, it's just and that
the total Well, yeah, I chose I chose that. I
chose that because I had to find something that they
could not criticize, like what was the thing? And they
(30:14):
could never criticize black feminist criminology because that would be
both misogynists and racist. So I choose to look at
dog dog humping incidents. And the other thing is there
was some utterly insane number of dogs and talk comping
incidents that that I uh, that we alleged to have reported,
and you know, people stopping their dog rage by doing
(30:35):
jumping Jackson just I mean these crazy ship dog humping
incidents or d h I s if you will. Yeah. Yeah.
So so the thing we never talked about that that
goes on along the lines of the conceptual penis because
it's a very complicated idea. But we got in the
number one gender studies journal in the world, there are
(30:55):
two of them. Um, we we got in this paper
that argued that was against us, we specifically named us,
and we talked about the conceptual penis in this paper
and we said that basically, we're terrible people. Uh. We
titled the paper when the Joke's on You, as if
the joke were on Jim and I for writing the
(31:17):
conceptual penis. But the fact that we published a paper
the joke about us that was bogus and said things
that were absurd was when the joke was on them.
So the joke was actually on them when they're thinking
that the joke is on us. So we know, was
that clear? Yes, that is incredible Hall of Mars. It's
(31:42):
very complicated to what we don't talk about it. But
so so that's the part of the problem is that
people are basing their conceptions of reality on these journals.
And what you have is not only are they grievance filled,
but they're racially divisive. They teach people. Look, I know
I right now he's become a friend of mine, young
(32:03):
kid who's at Oregon Health Science University. I can actually
read you what it said, um the screenshot he sent me.
But they've asked students to self segregate on the basis
of race. I mean that's crazy. Yeah, that is just amazing. Now,
who were the liberals here and who are the conservatives?
(32:25):
So that's why those terms don't really mean anything. You're
absolutely right, Well, conservatives at this point, good ones, I think,
are conserving liberalism. But anyway, exactly that, Dave Rubens made
that point, and I think that's absolutely true. I don't
even know what those terms mean anymore. And so people
will say, well, you're liberally conserved. Well what do you mean, Like,
give me a specific policy and then I'll tell you
(32:46):
my answer. But you know, people like you know, rubrics,
umbrella terms like oh, I'm this, I'm this. But the
fact is that in this cultural moment, the political reality
is more complicated than that, it's more nuanced, and you
all so seeing I publish a piece about this in
the American mind, I call it the Great realignment. There's
a realignment now if there's a political and ideological realignment
(33:09):
based upon things like rules of engagement. So while you
and I may have different I don't know what you
guys think about abortion, but I'm pro choice. Well, we
we may have differences of opinion about that, we agree
how to solve those differences of opinion, right, We debate,
we converse, you can even protest if you want. Um.
But but the new, the new threat to cognitive liberty
(33:32):
are you know, the are the woke. Are the woke,
and they don't play by those rules of engagement. So
if if you publish something or you say something they
don't like, they go after your family, they try to
get your job taken away from you, they file complaint,
they weaponize offices of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So you're
talking about people who do not abide by traditional rules
of engagement. So that's one thing in the in this
(33:55):
great realignment that we're experiencing. I mean there are other
factors as well, you know, like there's a truth that
can be known, there are more philosophical things, but I
think it Behoovese people. You have to be willing to
step If you're a liberal and you're against woke stuff,
you have to be willing to step across the line
when Ted Cruise, for example, says something and agree and
(34:17):
you will agree with him because it's true. Not because
you have to agree with every single thing Ted Cruz says,
but you have to look when when someone says something
that's true that corresponds to evidence and facts, you have
to stand up to it, even if it's against your
own tribe. In spite of the consequences. That's what intellectual
integrity means. Well, the you know, the the intellectual mainstreams
(34:41):
running in the other direction. Though, this is something we've
talked about a fair amount. Is that to to signal
your allegiance to your tribe, you bellow opinions that you
don't even think are are real, but you know it's
a tribal indicator. And the more ridiculous, the more clear
your indication of tribal loyalty is. So the counter fact
that the counter factual I would love to be able
(35:03):
to run or in a parallel universe, is if Trump
had won the presidency, who would be avoiding getting the
vaccine at that point, because not because of any the
science being any different, just because who was behind pushing
it at the time. I think that would perfectly prove
your point. Yeah, that that would I don't want to
go down this rabbit hole, but the utter, unmitigated and
(35:24):
fifty five years of my life, I think this is
the worst catastrophe of this country and is signaling a
new error from US. The unmitigated to call it a
call Afghanistan and catastrophe is actually not even remotely doing
it justice. But you know that's the thing, like, well,
what if Trump were in or could you take the
words of the sentence and you can when they say black,
(35:46):
can you put white in there? Can you put white
in it? But even in those cases, um that these
folks have had many years, like an incubation chamber to
incubate ideas. So they've changed the meanings of words. So,
for example, racism is now has a power component instead
of the traditional definition of discriminating me against an individual
(36:07):
in the basis of a racial stereotype. Right, So they
changed the meanings of words, and it makes it really difficult. Look,
life is difficult enough, fake news, Russian bots, we have
all this stuff we have to contend with, and on
top of that, we have people running around who changed
the meanings of basic words. I'm telling you, like, you know,
(36:28):
I get all these emails from my kids school. They
go to p punctions, equity, equity, equity, equity. How many
people do you think actually know what the word equity means. Yeah,
we've talked about the fair amount. That's one of the
that's one of the ways they line up so many
well meaning, suburban, college educated white gals and guys as well,
as they've redefined these words, and I hear anti racist,
(36:49):
and if I didn't know what Abram x Kendy has
written and what that really means, I think, well, of
course you've got to be anti racist, but it's come
something completely different, right, and those sorts of things, and
that's by design, by the way, of course, that's not
a bug of the system. That's a feature of the system.
And so look, so one of the things people say, well,
(37:13):
was there a final straw for you? Like, what was
the thing that finally? So I tried to I'm going
to relate this to our conversation. So I tried to
get a meeting with the president of Portland State University. Right,
So a lot of things I didn't put in the letter,
like the faculty Senate passed a resolution and the National
Association of Scholars Oregon chapter has an amazing video that
(37:37):
they took from the Faculty Senate meeting when they passed
an actual resolution about criticism of ideas being harassment and
specifically criticism of critical race theory. Right. Can you imagine
the people in the engineering school saying, hey, criticism of
this bridge design is the engine is harassment or philosopher saying, hey,
(37:57):
criticism of my ideas of free will or ans free
will or whatever. It's that. No, that's insane. The the
the more ideological you are. To keep your ideology in place,
you have to have things like political correctness, You have
to have things like blasphemy laws. So the university passes
faculty resolution. And then one of my colleagues wrote a
hit piece on me and the Chronicle of Higher Education,
(38:20):
and I responded to that, Uh, well, let me not
hit piece. Let me rephrase that by saying, uh, she
wrote an article about me, and and uh and and
basically the idea was that criticism of ideas is harassment.
And I responded in that And if you guys have
a moment, it would be to read that, because it
(38:43):
would give you context for for this whole thing that's
happening in the academy. Criticism of ideas is not harassment.
Criticizing and immutable property of a person is a no
no because that person can't change it, so it doesn't
do them any good. For example, to criticize someone in
a wheelchair, or to criticize me because I'm fifty five.
(39:05):
I can't change the color. I could change the cold,
my hair, I can't change my age. So so I
was in the dean's office. So I asked the president
for a five minute meeting repeatedly, and his staff told
me repeatedly, he's too busy. He's too busy for a
five minute meeting. Okay, Finally I managed to have like
a three minute meeting with a dean. And this individual
(39:30):
told me, you know, I really did my best to
watch my tone. I was extraordinarily respectful. And I actually
had known this this person, so it's not like they're
total stranger to me. We live in Portland, we know
each other. So I said to this individual, you know
that Portland's State university made the list of the talk
(39:55):
of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education. It's Greg
Glukyanas book. He's the guy who wrote the Caddling of
the American Violence. Yeah. Yeah, So I said, you know
that I would urge your viewership to your listeners to
fact check me when I say this, fact check every
don't believe anything I say, fact check everything. Poland State
University of worst colleges for free speech. And he turned
(40:19):
to me with total sincerity and said, it's a good
thing to be on those lists, and I was so
utterly blown away, like because in other words, this wasn't
a bug of the woke ideology. This is a feature
like this is actually baked into the educational system. This
(40:39):
is a feature. And it was in that moment I
realized I had to quit, and then the pandemic hit
and that kind of through through things for a loop.
But um, I mean that is a month. That is
a grown task. I mean think about that, like, that's
not a symposium. You know. In the Greeks, they get together,
(41:01):
they talk, they dispute, they argue, they laugh, they drink,
and said, no, this is a church. These are yeah,
you know, I'm reminded of I'm reminded the final sceniversally,
the final scene in Brave New World where the you know,
the all powerful leader essentially says to the dissident, um no,
I don't take it personally. I'm not angry at you
(41:22):
or anything. Here's what we're doing, here's why we're doing it.
You don't fit in, so you need to go away.
And the cool rationality of it is always, you know,
has always chilled me. And for that guy to say,
oh no, no, that's a good thing. I mean that's
like finding out he's a pod person or something. I mean, right,
and and that's the other thing. So so that's when
(41:44):
you really just let that idea percolate and then detonate,
like when you really think about what that means. Here,
individuals who are positive they have the truth, they want
to look at the system as an indoctrination. It's kind
of a factory where people come in and they put
ideas about specifically race, gender, and sexuales, etcetera. But whatever is,
(42:08):
you know, the moral orthodoxy. They put that in your head.
They no longer have the north Star's truth. And when
you do that, the natural consequences there can't be free
inquiry and open expression. I mean, there can't be think
about it like this, think about it like this. So
if the president again, I want everybody to fact check
every single thing I'm saying. Do not take my word
(42:30):
for it. I don't have the exact quotation, but it's
something like the highest priority of the university is racial justice, right, Okay,
So let's just think about that. If the it doesn't
even matter if it's racial justice, it doesn't matter what
is If the highest priority of a football team is winning,
which is what the highest priority of a football team
(42:51):
should be right that any other priority that cons that
conflicts with that would by definition be a or priority, right, right.
So that's why they don't, for example, have diversity requirements
on professional sports teams, because any other priority would have
to be d prioritized or lowered. So, if your highest
(43:15):
priority is racial justice and free speech or free inquiry
or open expression of ideas can flis with that, you
have to always side with your highest priority by definition,
because it's your highest priority. Well, right, And we're in
a situation here where what has long practically forever been
(43:36):
the highest priority of a university, seeking of the truth,
the exchange of ideas is now seen as detrimental to
the new orthodoxy. So it's not just not as higher priority,
it's specifically as it's a sin, it's a point, it's right,
it's not above, it's a feature. And to avoid that,
(43:56):
that's why you have to have intellectual, political, uh an
ideological diversity. You have to have that Marxist in there,
a Marxist. You have to have that um Keynsian, you know,
you have to have someone teaching Hiak, you have to
you have to have that intellectual diversity, so that the
(44:19):
highest priority, so that the institution doesn't become something other
than a means to enable people to understand the world
and to figure out what's true. And if they're wrong,
you know what, that's okay too. But nobody was forced
feeding them that idea. They made the best. They did
the best they could to come up to to be
(44:43):
sincere and ask honest questions to try to figure out
what's true. And they kept the value in mind of
being willing to revise their beliefs. And that's another characteristic
that ideologues don't have. They're not willing to change their minds.
And that's a fundamental feature of what it is that
makes someone rational. And we have we are not teaching that.
(45:06):
We have lost that and what have we bartered it for.
We've bartered it for an ideology that separates and divides us.
If you try to get the if you try to
get the universities down to one Marxist, there's gonna be
a lot of Marxists on the street corners saying will
share for food or something. But um my, my final
question for you would be I used to read about
(45:28):
the cultural revolution in China that happened through what the
late sixties, early seventies, and I would read that stuff
and I think, I don't I just don't get it.
I mean, like, how how could this ever happen? It
didn't quite make sense to me. I now get it completely,
because it's starting to make sense to me in a
in a very scary way. Do you think, um, do
you think we could get there? Do you feel you
feel like do you feel like it's getting worse or
(45:50):
better or enough people waking up to it? Where where
are we on the continuum there? That's that's a that's
a great question. I don't know the answer to that.
I know that this is not sustainable. I don't know
what the expiration data is. People don't like living like this. Um.
And again, like you said before, the whole thing is
so stupid. You know, it's not like that they're offering.
(46:11):
You know, what's the end result of any of this stuff?
And that's the other thing. It's so idiotic. Just think
about white fragility. It doesn't work with anything else. Why
should it work with whiteness? I mean, it doesn't work
with witches. You're a witch? No, I'm not. That's proof
that you're a witch like you're denialist groups of the thing.
So it doesn't work with literally anything else. Why would
(46:33):
it work with I mean, the whole thing is so stupid.
It's like what the junior high school people do to
each other. But yet it's who doing an unbelievable number
of our of our intelligentia, and it's captured the institutions.
So I don't think that this is sustainable. I think
that this will do unbelievable damage to our institutions. I
think it already has done damage to the institutions. Who
(46:57):
is Ah, no, you go. I was just gonna say,
I hope you're right about the cultural revolution thing, because
I see some of the the earmarks of it in
the kids are being urged to either ignore their parents
or turn them in or tell their teachers about them,
and that sort of thing. And the idea of dragging
your own parents into the street to see them beating
is so horrific most of us can't imagine it. I
(47:18):
think you had to have a communist system for that
to catch fire like it did. Um. You know, Hitler
send into power through the ballot box famously. Um. But
you know, one more aspect of the cultural revolution, totalitarian systems.
The rest of it are show trials, And I wondered
if you could just spend a couple of minutes on
your experience with the Title nine investigation. Yeah. Well I
(47:42):
had to sign paperwork saying I couldn't talk about it,
so I can't really talk about it. Wow. Yeah, well,
now it was there just out of curiosity. I don't Peter,
you probably don't know this about me, Joe Getty. I
almost went to law school, so I'm the show's legal expert.
Um Was there was this a contract? Was there consideration
(48:02):
in exchange? You you you gave up the right to
talk about this in exchange for what it was an
exchange for I? I am. You know, we're represented by
a union. And and that's the other thing that I've
changed my mind on, probably a conversation for another show.
I do not like teachers unions one iota, but I
can tell you in no uncertain terms, like, as a fact,
(48:25):
I would have lost my job long ago if not
for my teachers union in general and not for the
guy who heads the teacher's union. I was seeing this
guy literally like every day from complain. In fact, he
went up for renewal and I asked you to write
um a letter like I don't know, two or three
years in the row because he was seeing me. So
I've kind of had a change of change of mind
(48:45):
on the importance of teachers unions. But yeah, I know,
it's it's it's it's uh, it's interesting. So the title
line investigations, there's no due process in that, so you
don't have access to what you're being infused if you
have to infer that from the invest the gator. And now, look,
it is often said that we are not um that
people who consider us their enemies, we do not say
(49:09):
kind things about. So I'm gonna tell you something unbelievably
truthful about the title line investigator in the Office of Diversity.
You could accuse these people of many things, but the
thing you cannot accuse them of is not being thorough.
These people are the most thorough people. I mean, they
(49:31):
had a gustopo like thoroughness and compliment. They were calling
in form of students, colleagues, t s, people I did
you know, independent studies with people I had known like
years ago. They went back like years and they were
(49:51):
summoning them to the Office of Diversity. They were I
mean I was walking around campus and people were coming
up to me, that's what the whole beating your wife
and family, and then like other people would come up
with this I hear about you didn't want I was just,
you know, the the particularly um insidious part about that is,
you know, you know, my daughter is adopted from China,
(50:13):
so like there's another level of hideousness that's going on there,
and there's really nothing you can do. I mean, you
can quit, but you can't say you know, you can't
even see that, you forget anything. You can't even see
the charges, right, And then I love the outcome of it.
Loved it in quotes and that it is so bizarre
it's actually it reminds me of one of Iron Rand's
(50:35):
most famous quotes about you know, we don't expect you
to follow these laws. We expect you to break them,
because once you're a lawbreaker, then we own you. And
at the end of your title nine things you mentioned
in your letter of resignation, they essentially said, you're not
guilty of these bizarre charges, but as long as we've
got you in our clutches, you're not allowed to do this.
You have to do this, and we think you ought
(50:56):
to get counseling, and and it's like, wait what, so I, UM,
that's right. So I requested a meeting. After that meeting,
and then I read a very long statement UM to
the chair of the department and the Chief Diversity Opics,
and my union guys, Phil phil Lesh, who was again
(51:18):
unbelievably phenomenal, um, and and among those, why am I
not allowed to render my opinion or teach in such
a way that my opinion about protected classes can be known?
When there were entire wings of university architecture dedicated to activism.
In fact, at the time I think alignment that was
(51:38):
the Women's the Gender Studies Department of Women's Studies or
whatever it's called. The p s U had the word
activists or some variant there of seven times on the
web page. So you have a whole you have entire
departments basically anything with the word studies in it. You
had entire departments that are geared towards activism. Explicit we
(52:00):
not only rendering their opinion, but actually geared to make activists.
But I can't render my opinion about a protective class
of teaching such a way that it's known and that's
the other thing. Think about how crazy that is. So
if someone comes to me and says, hey, do you
think this minority should be enslaved and in chained? I
(52:20):
have to say I cannot render my opinion. I mean,
it's so crazy on so many levels. You know. I
picture you and Copernicus and Galileo sitting at a bar
and just staring at your bears and saying, I hear
your brother, I hear you as you ran into rather
similar orthodoxes and results. Um, hey, Peter, I hope we
can stay in touch. We're absolutely hoping to support you
(52:43):
and people who think like you as much as we
can for as long as they keep us on the
air before some woke group gets us fired. But it's
great to talk to you and and and chin up.
I mean, we really admire the hell out of it. Yeah,
thank you. I appreciate that you guys have always been
terrific supporters and I'm I'm very grateful for that. You
can find me on Twitter at Peter burgosand g H O,
(53:05):
S S I N. And I just started a nonprofit
that's going to fight back about this. It's called UM
National Progress Alliance, and we're at National Progress Alliance dot org.
So I appreciate you guys have always been been supportive,
and it's a it's a great way to remember that
we are Americans and we and our disagreements actually make
(53:26):
us stronger. And you know, I would love to go
out and have beers with you guys and hang out
and you know, have spirited conversations to the early morning.
I'll see if Galileo is available. All right, thanks many,
good to talk, all right, thank you. All right. See
(53:46):
that's principle, man. You don't see that that much these days, no,
I think, Um, we've all had situations like this in
our lives where uh, we don't want to do a
certain thing, but we end up in a situation where
the realized there's no choice. This is not what I
want to do, but I've got no choice. And that's
where he was. Yeah, I I absolutely admire his character
(54:10):
and I know he would have done this in a
variety of circumstances. In his letter resignation is brilliant and
persuasive in the rest of it, but in a weird way,
Portland's state made it easy for him in that they
were so patently crazy and unfair and oppressive and unwilling
to listen to reason. I mean, he really had no
choice unless he was just gonna drink himself to death
(54:32):
and pretend that it wasn't happening. Well, when one of
the deans says, no, it's a good thing we're on
that list of being the worst university for free speech
to America, You're done. I mean what there's unless you
think you can reform them from the inside. You obviously can.
You're done, you know. He mentions he was sworn at
and spit on walking across campus on more than one occasion.
(54:53):
He's obviously a man of the mind and a man
of peace. I had a punched people in their heads.
But that's why Peter Gashian is a better fellow than
I am. I find a quad with a pool cue
or a sack by Nichols. Amen to that, brother. Extra
large
I'm going to take the counterpoint that the male penis
is a construct and the penis is responsible for global warming.
It's Armstrong and Getty extra large because four hours simply enough.
This is Armstrong and Getty extra large. You know, I
gotta say that was not the highbrow tone I was
hoping to take in today's discussion. I'm disappointed in you
(00:22):
that argument was good enough to get published and a
university uh publication that that can't possibly be. You wouldn't
think so. Perhaps you've heard us on The Armstrong and
Getty Show discussing the experiences of Peter begin who taught
philosophy at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon for a
decade and has recently resigned for reasons that we will
(00:43):
let him describe. It's always great to talk Peter. Welcome.
How are you, sir? I have never been better, truly,
I am a I am so happy right now. That's awesome.
How are you, guys? We're terrific. We won't still of
thunder though. Why do you feel that way? Well, because
I don't have to compromise my integrity because I was
(01:07):
working in a job in which I was hired to
teach critical thinking and ethics, and then the conditions at
the university made that impossible. Uh. And and I've just
been really touched. I you know, I wrote a letter
of resignation and I published it on very was the
sub Stack, and I detailed what happens to people when
(01:27):
they question or challenge the orthodoxy. And I have been
flabbergasted by the literally worldwide reaction, the publication of the
letter into multiple languages, the unbelievable amount of support that
people contacted me just to say thank you or we
appreciate what you did. I mean, it's just it's so touching.
(01:49):
You know. I was tearing up last night just reading
all these emails and support. I mean, it's truly amazing.
I think there is an aspect of this, uh that
we're gonna be talking about that is is kind of
nice and warm feeling in that we and you and
Matt Taiebe and and all sorts of thinkers who might
disagree about everything have realized, oh my gosh, these sacred
(02:12):
principles are are actually at stake. And we're not prone
to hyperbole around here, which probably makes us bad talk
show hosts, but we actually believe what's happening in our
elementary high schools and university campuses is actually dangerous to civilization.
And honestly, it feels good to be working with people
we generally disagree with to do what we feel is right.
(02:32):
It does and appreciate you having me on. And what's
interesting is, you know the local paper here, I want
to have a conversation. I want to have a sincere
conversation about what's happening in our university system. I want
to have a conversation about the president of Potland State
University said that basically racial justice is his highest priority,
(02:54):
highest priority of the institution. And you know, I want
to have a conversation with the left about as you know,
I'm a liberal atheist. I want to have a conversation
with Matt matt Ow, with CNN, with MSNBC, with the
local paper here, the oregon Ian, with op B, Oregon Public, Nobody,
the whole left media media ecosystem is having none of it.
(03:16):
They just don't want to have that conversation. And I
find that that is fascinating. Do you think that's because
they agree with the radical walk left, or because they're
afraid of them, or they're afraid I think it's part
of it is the same problem you see within the
university is mirrored outside the university, and that is, don't
(03:38):
talk to people with different views. There's even a word
for that, it's called platform, and don't give the Nazia platform.
Don't And it's not even that the problem is that
somebody would give me a platform. The psychologist Stephen Pinker
says that he calls it the left pole. In other words,
when you're on the far left, anything even slightly to
the right of that looks like you're all right or
(04:01):
a Nazi. And so I think it's guilt by association.
I think it's that they view themselves and I'm at
least in partial agreement with this, that we really are
in a cultural war and they don't want to. Well, actually,
maybe I'll just put it on you. So, why do
you think that the left wing, anybody's center of left
(04:22):
is refuge? You guys will have me on. Glenn Beck
had me on, Tucker Carlson had me on, and not
only to talk about this, to talk about a wide
range of issues, to challenge and question in probe, why
don't we see that on the left. I blame the internet.
I certainly blame social media. The social media tends to
be left, particularly Twitter, and because it tends to be left,
(04:43):
the the outspoken voices of the fringe left, the crazy
people that we're talking about, they their importance is being
elevated to a level that is not you know, doesn't
make any sense. But the regular left is so scared
of that vocal Twitter left that I think that's what
drives all of this stuff. I'm gonna I'm gonna, well,
(05:07):
all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna throw out something that
may seem crazy, But here's my this is the next
level of thinking about this. Our Lord vote a famous
has a famous line of title, The Master's tools cannot
disable the Master's house. The master's tools cannot dissemble, take
(05:27):
apart the master's house. What is the master's house patriarchy, sexism, racism, oppression?
What are the Master's tools? Reason, science, dialogue, discourse, etcetera.
I believe part of the rot that's happening now that
we're seeing is because there is a deep seated belief
that the master's tools, that conversation, discourse, etcetera. Are enabling racism, xenophobia,
(05:54):
the patriarchy, etcetera. So to have a conversation with someone
like that is you don't want to give them a voice.
The only thing that you will do, and there's a
whole line of academic literature on this, the only thing
that conversation will do is it will reinforce the patriarchy,
it will reinforce bigotry, and it will demean the lived
experiences of people who listen to that conversation and be hurtful.
(06:18):
So I think that there is a moral infrastructure in
place in which many on the left. And I don't
think that this is in any way native to the left,
Like you don't see this with known Chomsky or the
kind of old school economic leftist. You see this exclusively
with woke people. This is like, like my friend Dad
(06:39):
said said, it's like a parasticization. It's a parasitic value
system that's latched onto traditional leftism. So that's why I
think that the the anybody left of center won't talk
to me or anybody else. Well, there are a bunch
of big ideas there. I wish I jutted them all down,
but it's starting with the the expression about the master's house.
(06:59):
I just reject at premise outright, and and at the
heart of this, the idea that their ideas are irrefutable
because they're sincerely held is one of the craziest things
I've ever heard in my life. Can you imagine Peter
walking into a symposium or whatever and saying, first of all,
I'd like it to be made clear that my ideas
(07:22):
are unimpeachable, every single one. And of course you get
a big belly laugh from scholars. But then you say, no, no,
I'm perfectly serious. You can't use logic, you can't use data,
because those are the tools of the oppressor. I mean,
that's it's it's so obviously a con it's hilarious to
those of us with skeptical minds. Well, that's the other
(07:42):
thing about this. I mean, that's the thing that I
just marvel at. It's so insane, Like people are ripping
down statues, people are assaulting the police, they're des drowing
storefront windows of mom and pop businesses, you know, working
class and for what do they do. It's so stupid,
for Chad, for for a for an anarchist zone in
(08:06):
which people are raping and murdering each I mean, for what,
what is the what is the goal of this whole thing.
It's so much easier to rip down and destroy than
it is to create. And that's also I think part
of the problem of why the left wing media ecosystem
won't have people on, and it's because I not only
(08:27):
do they not value conversation and they think that conversation
is actually bad, but I think that's a convenient excuse
to not do intellectual work to understand the other side
of the argument. Now that's not to say that the
right wing doesn't have a lot of crazies. I mean,
of course it does, but it has a different kind
of problem. And I would argue that the problem of
(08:48):
free speech and free inquiry is absolutely rudimentary to human progress.
I would say, you make a lot of good arguments,
and Ian Joe are talking about some very intellectual stuff there.
But I can tell you just from being in this
business at a very base level, I don't think Rachel
Mattow on MSNBC or Jake Tapper on CNN agree with
(09:08):
any of this woke stuff. But if their bosses get
a hundred emails or tweets from the woke left complaining
about having you on, that's enough to frighten them off.
And it's not for ideological reasons. It's just advertisers and ratings. Okay,
So so then so if that's true, then they have
(09:29):
no integrity, correct. Yeah, yeah, that's a good so. Right,
So we're either we're either in a position that these
folks believe it but won't say it. And if that's
the case, why would you listen to them because what
they're saying is not what they're believing. So there's a
kind of inauthenticity built into the mechanism. Yeah, these go ahead.
(09:55):
I was just gonna say, I think I think it's
somewhat like Trump and some people on the right plane
foot see with you and on or whatever. They think
it's just a fringe group of crazies and better to
have them on our side than not, and they're not
enough to do any damage. Well, turns out they are.
And I think that the Rachel Maddows and Jake Tapper's
and that crowd is going to find that out about
the woke crowd too. That kind of just playing footsie
with him because it's easier and keep advertisers is going
(10:17):
to turn out to be a bad idea. Well, in
the same way that for instance, Ted Wheeler is the
Mayor of Portland found out in a very painful way
that no, you can't control that whirlwind or that pack
of pit bulls, and just because they're you know, nominally
on your side, they'll get out of control eventually. Yeah.
That that's another conversation. Ted Rulers is a public disgrace
(10:38):
and he should immediately be impeached and held accountable for
what he's done to the City of Portland when he
personally his negligence. The homicide rates are astronomical. He I mean,
this is another conversation, but he we can. I'd love
to have a conversation, but I want to stick it on.
I want to I want to keep it to The
university is just now. This is not a ininge bunch
(11:00):
of nut jobs like Q and on. These are people
who control major academic in most academic institutions in English
speaking world, and they have positioned they're paid for in
my case apportency. The university is paid for by taxpayer funds.
Many of these people, if not most of them, have
jobs for life. They're looking at the university as an
(11:21):
indoctrination mill. They're teaching people and um training people to
be activists based upon scholarship. That's totally, totally bogus. Again,
the parallel to Q and on doesn't hold up. Yet.
Does the right have crazies? Have, no question about. Everybody
has crazies, but these crazies, the woke crazies, control academic institutions,
(11:46):
our knowledge, our engines of knowledge production right and it's
and the messages are grievance filled. The West is awful,
Capitalism is awful. I'm not saying capitalism is perfect by
any means, but I'm saying they have a very specific
message that they're pumping out and nobody benefits from They
(12:08):
don't even benefit from that. That's the other crazy thing
about this. Nobody benefits from racial hatred, from division, from
the universities, you know, racial justice being the highest part.
Nobody is benefiting from these things. It is an ideology
that is killing us all well. As a person who
has worked with young people of all races for most
(12:29):
of my adult life, I believe that to my core,
that the very worst thing you could possibly do to
a little child of colors to tell them they can't
possibly achieve what they dream of because the white man
is keeping them down. I think I think you are
doing work so unholy and evil. The clan at its
height couldn't dream of being that affected as effective. Hey,
(12:49):
I want to go. I want to make one point
because it's a prism through which I think the rest
of the conversation could flow. One of the things you
said in your letter of resignation, which I've read several times,
is that. And this hit me like, I mean, like
one of those fundamental principles you learn when you're a
little kid, something Thomas Jefferson said. It just it fills
your soul with excitement because you've realized the great truth.
(13:12):
And what you said was the freedom to question is
our fundamental right. And I thought that was one of
the truest things I've ever heard. That's at the basis
of everything right. The freedom to question is our fundamental
right and the role. And I think the next line
in that letter was talked about what our duty is.
(13:34):
We we continue to forget that, and the university's goal
is to remind us that that's not only our right,
but that's our duty. But Portland's state is practically forbidden
questioning correct only about certain things, though only about things
that contradict the more orthodox. You can question other things
(13:55):
you know, like what's the best way to plant plant
a tree? You know, how far down should it go?
But only questioning certain things. So I guess I want
to put out a call. I want to say two things.
I think it's really important when you're talking about racial justice, Like,
if you actually want racial justice, the first order of
business is to give every American an education of public education,
(14:18):
particularly AK through twelve, education of the first rate, independent
of skin color or socio economic status. And we have,
my opinion is that we have let down an awful
awful lot of people. And the solution to that is
not equity, in other words, trying to gerry read outcomes delution.
The solution to that is the quality of opportunity. And
so I think what I would like to see conservatives
(14:41):
the space that they move in is well, many spaces,
but in the context of this conversation, I'd like to
see them move into honest and sincere attempts to fix
school systems in the worst neighborhoods for the worst people,
independent of their skin color. That's the first thing. The
second thing that I would like to see is for
(15:01):
all this talk about diversity, diversity is a code word
for intellectual homogeneity. Right, if diversity really meant diversity, then
for example, you wouldn't see the excuse me, the vile
and bitriol spewed that Larry Elder particularly, and all the
horrible names that he's been called because he's a black
man who doesn't toe the party line. Right. So the
(15:23):
other thing that I would like to see, and I
just on Glenn Beck and I asked him this. So
here's my question to you. Um. One of the things
that we see in this in our university system is
culling of voices. They came for the right, then they
came for the concertors, and they came from the moderates,
then they came for the liberals, and and now they're
in their own little chamber of derangement. So my my
(15:47):
question to you is do you think we should have
a Mark A Marxists in an economics department at a university. Wow?
That's an interesting and I absolutely believe Marxism ought to
be studied and known and understood. I love the phrase
chamber of derangement. By the way, So that's gonna be
(16:08):
my new band. That's a good one. That's a good
album title to um. Yeah, that's a really interesting question.
I if there is the free of exchange of ideas,
if there's the marketplace of ideas functioning, I don't mind
some guy saying no, no, no, Marxism is correct, because
(16:28):
any rational examination of the evidence will render that opinion.
You know, silly, um. So I'm not particularly threatened by it.
I don't love it, but that's fine. So so I
do love it, and I'll tell you why. So I
love the best proponents, people who actually believe what they teach.
So I'm an atheist. I teach an atheist class, and
(16:51):
I have Christians, many very very prominent Christians and apologists
come in and teach the best arguments to the existence
of God. And the reason is because I don't believe
those things. And so I would be doing my my
students and injustice if I taught them without having You know,
um um, I was crazy to see this. Let let's
(17:13):
say this way. Students need to learn from people who
believe things in the most diverse ways possible. So I
love the idea of their being a Marxist, even though
I hate Marxism, because I think our students need to
see our freedom night. They need to see people with
psychology and behaviors. They need to see, they need to
see people who have um a wide range of beliefs,
(17:36):
and we need to give them the tools to figure
out for themselves what the answer is. I just might
be I was gonna say, I was gonna say, my
my discomfort is with the hundreds of millions who have
died at the hands of communism, And I mean, would
you would you likewise be infused about somebody teaching actual fascism,
(17:58):
not antifa's view of fascism, actual fascism and trying to
convince the kids, look, this is a better system. Yeah.
I think it's less about convincing and more about framing
an argument in the most charitable way possible. So yeah,
I have no problem with that, even though I disagree.
And the reason for that is not only so that
(18:19):
the kids can get the best representatives of the of
the ideas, but they can make the decisions for themselves.
Like that, the moment that you say, oh, we can't
have this person here or we can't have this person
speak out, you you were in very serious danger of
becoming the things that we hate. That's a very good
(18:39):
So we have to allow a system that has the
free exchange of ideas. Now, somebody recently, I don't have
it in front of me, but put out a tweet
about nine eleven being the white, hetero capitalist patriarchy professor
from Syracuse University. Yeah, and the university did exactly what
he should do and what it should have done, and said,
(19:01):
look this this academic So freedom of speech in an
academic context is even more privileged, even a higher value.
It's like we need people like that too, you know, whatever,
rock the boat, say anything they want to speak. That's
the whole idea of protection from tenure. And the university
issued a wonderful statement that I wish my university would
have issued for me, that we may or may not agree,
(19:23):
but this person has the right to speak openly and honestly.
And then the students. That was a statement. But I
would like to see the kind of intellectual change um
wrestling with ideas and the type of academy in which, look,
you can disagree with people, you can agree with people,
But here are the people who have they believe this,
(19:45):
those are publishing it, they have researched it. We've given
you the tools to make an analysis and the examination.
Now go forward. You do that and our democracy will flourish. Right,
you teach people not to attack other people on the
basis of the mutable characteristics, but to engage their ideas,
and we were all better off. Peter, Maybe we can compromise.
(20:07):
Let's keep the Marxist chained in a cage and just
bring them out for lectures. Would that be fair? No,
we have to give everybody, you know, and that's why
I said a Marxist not. But the problem comes when
you stack a whole department with people who have the
same beliefs, and then the kids will go into that
(20:28):
and they're saying, well, everybody, my economics professor believe this.
He's written all these books. This is true. No, that's
why you need intellectual diversity. And the other thing is
nobody will trust the bodies of literature and the quote
unquote scholarship coming from you know, about really important things
like global climate change, because they'll say, well, why should
I try? People have actually said this to me, why
(20:49):
should I trust that? Everybody here is a leftist? And
they're right, right, right, But if if you had a
mix of people, right, if you in a climate science
you know, if you pee Christians and everybody different views
and they came to a convergence of opinion, they came
to a consensus. Now that would be something that people
(21:11):
would then look at that and say, Okay, wow, these
people like me, they represent my voice, they agree with
other people like you and I are agreeing about this stuff. Yeah.
I mean, this is the fundamental principle upon which our
democracy has to be based. We have to have open inquiry,
(21:32):
we have to have free speech, and we also have
to teach people. You know what, if somebody doesn't agree
with you, that's okay. You can still hang out with them.
They can still be your friend, you can still go
drinking with them, you can still marry them. It's okay.
In fact, it's probably good if they don't agree with
you about everything, because then you can have some fun
and good conversations. But we're strayed from that because we're
(21:55):
not allowing people to have different that's my book, how
to have impossible conversations. We're straight aid from that because
those conversations don't take place in the university. And it's
not only that they don't take place. It said. If
somebody has a view that doesn't conform to what's morally fashionable,
it's not just like they're wrong, but it's like they're
a bad person. And that's the narrative. People are pointing out.
(22:19):
If you don't agree with this, you're a racist, you're
a bigot, you're a homeleful. Well how about this? How
about maybe I don't agree because I don't see the
evidence for how about how about that? Well? Yeah, amen
to that, And that's the speaking of the fraud we
were talking about before. The idea that I'm a racist
for disagreeing with you is literally, you know, begging the
(22:40):
question in the classical sense. I mean, well, what am
I supposed to do? Just stand here and get punched?
I guess ideologically, but I know Jackie had something just
to make things easier. What what's the name you like
to put on this, this whole thing is woke ism?
What you like best? Or or you know? It's nice
that when we throw on the term Marxist we all
know what we mean. I think it it helped combat
(23:00):
this if we have an agreed upon term that everybody's using. Yeah,
I don't. I don't think you could have an agreed
upon term. The people who participate in woke ideology don't
like woke Helen pluck Rose, author of Cynical Theories, which
is the v book on the subject, called the Critical
Social Justice Yes but genius book. She calls it critical
(23:22):
social justice. Whenever I write it, I write it social
justice uppercase S and upper case J. So there is
no consensus on this, but I like to term it
either social justice, social justice ideology, or woke ideology. Sometimes
people call it a worldview too, which is true. It
is actually a worldview. It's a worldview which bases itself
(23:44):
on the fact that the West is inherently racist, sexist, etcetera.
And we have to destroy the institutions that leads to
those things. And I just want to throw this in
so I don't forget to say it. Um, you mentioned
integrity earlier when we're talking about I mean, I mean,
one of the most interesting things that's come out of
this is you. I think you needed this that. Um.
Everybody that's reached out to you for an interview is
(24:04):
on the right, and no one, no liberals have I mean,
like you mentioned earlier, that's amazing. But you brought up
the term integrity, and I can't imagine more integrity than
what you've done. I assume you're not an independently wealthy man,
and you quit your job because, um, because you believe
in this stuff too much. And I mean, I'm not kidding.
I will remember what you did for the rest of
(24:25):
my life whenever I come to a crossroads like this. Yeah,
I I I appreciate that. I never wanted any of this, um,
and I did. I just could not stay at the
place where I had to compromise my integrity anymore. I
just couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. So, you know,
I think I can tell you about what led up
(24:47):
to that, or I can. I mean, we can go
from many places. Yeah, actually, you know, it's funny. I
was about to go there. You mentioned Helen pluck Rose
and her co author James Lindsay's Cynical Theories, and the
paper you wrote, the Conceptual Penis as a Social constra
and then the work you did with James and Helen
is one of my favorite things that's ever happened. Can
(25:07):
you tell us about the conceptual penis as a Social
construct and then the other papers and what what we
were trying, what were you trying to prove or or
or you know, exposed, and then what was the reaction
to it. Sure, happy to tell you about that. So
the conceptual penis was a hoax paper, and Alan's social
(25:28):
there are actually penises. Um, it's really I'm glad you
actually read the paper because I think that the papers
is really funny. That's the other thing about ideologs. They
have no sense of humor. That so one of the
things that we were trying to do is to show
that these bodies of scholarship they're not rigorous, they're not
(25:49):
based on evidence, and they are ideological. And so we
wrote the conceptual penis is a social construct and we
published it in a in a low ranked It wasn't
a great journal. It was a new journal as well,
and we received a tremendous amount of criticism, and much
of that criticism was justified. And that criticism was you
(26:10):
didn't prove what you thought you proved about these disciplines.
If you want to prove it, you need to do
the following things one, two, three, four, five, etcetera. And
so I said to to to Jim, to James lindsay, dude,
this is awesome. They told us exactly what we need
to do, so let's do it. He's like, all right,
(26:31):
so then we wrote twenty papers and we forwarded absolutely insane,
totally deranged thecs. I probably can't say because many of
them are sexual on the air right now. Oh no,
it's a podcast. If we have to, we'll believe it.
Go ahead, Okay about you know, penetrative anal sex and
transphobia and you know, putting people in matt white males
(26:54):
and chains as a whole of experience of reparations in
the classroom. And that one did not get public. We
we got called by the Wall Street Journal before we
published it. But the goal was to say so we
we did exactly what people wanted us to do, like
exactly what they wanted to do. So but instead of saying, wow,
maybe there's a problem here, like maybe this is something
(27:15):
we need to think about or be more reflected on
because this is informing public policy. Instead of doing that,
they came after me. They tried to take my job.
That's their response to this. So I want to make
sure it's it's it's clear what you were trying to prove.
You were trying to prove that these fields that masquerade
as science aren't science. It's not just that they're not science,
(27:38):
it's that it's that they're the musings of ideologues. There's
no evidence for these. So so the background piece that
you need to know is, as a general rule, there
are maybe a few exceptions to this, but this is
almost a rule. Seven papers in seven years his tenure. Right,
there's a job for life. I had no background in
(27:59):
this stuff. Jim had no background. Hell and had no background.
Gym's a mathematician. And we delved into the literature. We
did a deep dive in the literature. We really read
the journals, we read the articles, we did our homework
plus plus and the point was to show that the
policies that we're shaping our institutions, first the university or
(28:23):
the university system as an institution, and then the policies
as they were seeping out, these are not not only
are they not scientific, they're not anything. They're just a
bunch of people get together. We call it a term
Brett Weinstein uses for when we went over his house,
he's the former Evergreen professor, and we were explaining the
grievance studies thing. Early on he said, oh, it's like
(28:44):
idea laundering. So a bunch of idea loogs get together
and they have Um, they have an idea and they're
they're in academia, and they published that idea. They discharge
the moral impulse in a journal and then comes out
as the other side, as knowledge. So then they go
around pointing when you say, well, how do you know,
they point to the bogus scholarship that they themselves meet up.
(29:07):
But that's not based on evidence. And not only that,
you couldn't publish anything in there that went against what
what was morally fashionable, Like the whole ecosystem exists to
prop up certain moral conclusions and they teach that to people,
credential themselves, get tenure, and then hire other people who
(29:29):
believe the same things. That's how that's why you have
ideological capture of the university institutions. That's the mechanism. That's
how they've done it. Boy, I love that image of
idea laundering. That's a great metaphor. And and by the way,
you've ruined the dog park for me, uh you with
your rape culture at the dog park paper, which was
hilariously brilliant. Well here here's something that we don't talk
(29:52):
about because it's just too complicated. Um So everybody loves
the dog park and and you know p traditions, can
I rape culture and looking at it through the lens
of black feminist criminology. I mean, it's just and that
the total Well, yeah, I chose I chose that. I
chose that because I had to find something that they
could not criticize, like what was the thing? And they
(30:14):
could never criticize black feminist criminology because that would be
both misogynists and racist. So I choose to look at
dog dog humping incidents. And the other thing is there
was some utterly insane number of dogs and talk comping
incidents that that I uh, that we alleged to have reported,
and you know, people stopping their dog rage by doing
(30:35):
jumping Jackson just I mean these crazy ship dog humping
incidents or d h I s if you will. Yeah. Yeah.
So so the thing we never talked about that that
goes on along the lines of the conceptual penis because
it's a very complicated idea. But we got in the
number one gender studies journal in the world, there are
(30:55):
two of them. Um, we we got in this paper
that argued that was against us, we specifically named us,
and we talked about the conceptual penis in this paper
and we said that basically, we're terrible people. Uh. We
titled the paper when the Joke's on You, as if
the joke were on Jim and I for writing the
(31:17):
conceptual penis. But the fact that we published a paper
the joke about us that was bogus and said things
that were absurd was when the joke was on them.
So the joke was actually on them when they're thinking
that the joke is on us. So we know, was
that clear? Yes, that is incredible Hall of Mars. It's
(31:42):
very complicated to what we don't talk about it. But
so so that's the part of the problem is that
people are basing their conceptions of reality on these journals.
And what you have is not only are they grievance filled,
but they're racially divisive. They teach people. Look, I know
I right now he's become a friend of mine, young
(32:03):
kid who's at Oregon Health Science University. I can actually
read you what it said, um the screenshot he sent me.
But they've asked students to self segregate on the basis
of race. I mean that's crazy. Yeah, that is just amazing. Now,
who were the liberals here and who are the conservatives?
(32:25):
So that's why those terms don't really mean anything. You're
absolutely right, Well, conservatives at this point, good ones, I think,
are conserving liberalism. But anyway, exactly that, Dave Rubens made
that point, and I think that's absolutely true. I don't
even know what those terms mean anymore. And so people
will say, well, you're liberally conserved. Well what do you mean, Like,
give me a specific policy and then I'll tell you
(32:46):
my answer. But you know, people like you know, rubrics,
umbrella terms like oh, I'm this, I'm this. But the
fact is that in this cultural moment, the political reality
is more complicated than that, it's more nuanced, and you
all so seeing I publish a piece about this in
the American mind, I call it the Great realignment. There's
a realignment now if there's a political and ideological realignment
(33:09):
based upon things like rules of engagement. So while you
and I may have different I don't know what you
guys think about abortion, but I'm pro choice. Well, we
we may have differences of opinion about that, we agree
how to solve those differences of opinion, right, We debate,
we converse, you can even protest if you want. Um.
But but the new, the new threat to cognitive liberty
(33:32):
are you know, the are the woke. Are the woke,
and they don't play by those rules of engagement. So
if if you publish something or you say something they
don't like, they go after your family, they try to
get your job taken away from you, they file complaint,
they weaponize offices of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So you're
talking about people who do not abide by traditional rules
of engagement. So that's one thing in the in this
(33:55):
great realignment that we're experiencing. I mean there are other
factors as well, you know, like there's a truth that
can be known, there are more philosophical things, but I
think it Behoovese people. You have to be willing to
step If you're a liberal and you're against woke stuff,
you have to be willing to step across the line
when Ted Cruise, for example, says something and agree and
(34:17):
you will agree with him because it's true. Not because
you have to agree with every single thing Ted Cruz says,
but you have to look when when someone says something
that's true that corresponds to evidence and facts, you have
to stand up to it, even if it's against your
own tribe. In spite of the consequences. That's what intellectual
integrity means. Well, the you know, the the intellectual mainstreams
(34:41):
running in the other direction. Though, this is something we've
talked about a fair amount. Is that to to signal
your allegiance to your tribe, you bellow opinions that you
don't even think are are real, but you know it's
a tribal indicator. And the more ridiculous, the more clear
your indication of tribal loyalty is. So the counter fact
that the counter factual I would love to be able
(35:03):
to run or in a parallel universe, is if Trump
had won the presidency, who would be avoiding getting the
vaccine at that point, because not because of any the
science being any different, just because who was behind pushing
it at the time. I think that would perfectly prove
your point. Yeah, that that would I don't want to
go down this rabbit hole, but the utter, unmitigated and
(35:24):
fifty five years of my life, I think this is
the worst catastrophe of this country and is signaling a
new error from US. The unmitigated to call it a
call Afghanistan and catastrophe is actually not even remotely doing
it justice. But you know that's the thing, like, well,
what if Trump were in or could you take the
words of the sentence and you can when they say black,
(35:46):
can you put white in there? Can you put white
in it? But even in those cases, um that these
folks have had many years, like an incubation chamber to
incubate ideas. So they've changed the meanings of words. So,
for example, racism is now has a power component instead
of the traditional definition of discriminating me against an individual
(36:07):
in the basis of a racial stereotype. Right, So they
changed the meanings of words, and it makes it really difficult. Look,
life is difficult enough, fake news, Russian bots, we have
all this stuff we have to contend with, and on
top of that, we have people running around who changed
the meanings of basic words. I'm telling you, like, you know,
(36:28):
I get all these emails from my kids school. They
go to p punctions, equity, equity, equity, equity. How many
people do you think actually know what the word equity means. Yeah,
we've talked about the fair amount. That's one of the
that's one of the ways they line up so many
well meaning, suburban, college educated white gals and guys as well,
as they've redefined these words, and I hear anti racist,
(36:49):
and if I didn't know what Abram x Kendy has
written and what that really means, I think, well, of
course you've got to be anti racist, but it's come
something completely different, right, and those sorts of things, and
that's by design, by the way, of course, that's not
a bug of the system. That's a feature of the system.
And so look, so one of the things people say, well,
(37:13):
was there a final straw for you? Like, what was
the thing that finally? So I tried to I'm going
to relate this to our conversation. So I tried to
get a meeting with the president of Portland State University. Right,
So a lot of things I didn't put in the letter,
like the faculty Senate passed a resolution and the National
Association of Scholars Oregon chapter has an amazing video that
(37:37):
they took from the Faculty Senate meeting when they passed
an actual resolution about criticism of ideas being harassment and
specifically criticism of critical race theory. Right. Can you imagine
the people in the engineering school saying, hey, criticism of
this bridge design is the engine is harassment or philosopher saying, hey,
(37:57):
criticism of my ideas of free will or ans free
will or whatever. It's that. No, that's insane. The the
the more ideological you are. To keep your ideology in place,
you have to have things like political correctness, You have
to have things like blasphemy laws. So the university passes
faculty resolution. And then one of my colleagues wrote a
hit piece on me and the Chronicle of Higher Education,
(38:20):
and I responded to that, Uh, well, let me not
hit piece. Let me rephrase that by saying, uh, she
wrote an article about me, and and uh and and
basically the idea was that criticism of ideas is harassment.
And I responded in that And if you guys have
a moment, it would be to read that, because it
(38:43):
would give you context for for this whole thing that's
happening in the academy. Criticism of ideas is not harassment.
Criticizing and immutable property of a person is a no
no because that person can't change it, so it doesn't
do them any good. For example, to criticize someone in
a wheelchair, or to criticize me because I'm fifty five.
(39:05):
I can't change the color. I could change the cold,
my hair, I can't change my age. So so I
was in the dean's office. So I asked the president
for a five minute meeting repeatedly, and his staff told
me repeatedly, he's too busy. He's too busy for a
five minute meeting. Okay, Finally I managed to have like
a three minute meeting with a dean. And this individual
(39:30):
told me, you know, I really did my best to
watch my tone. I was extraordinarily respectful. And I actually
had known this this person, so it's not like they're
total stranger to me. We live in Portland, we know
each other. So I said to this individual, you know
that Portland's State university made the list of the talk
(39:55):
of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education. It's Greg
Glukyanas book. He's the guy who wrote the Caddling of
the American Violence. Yeah. Yeah, So I said, you know
that I would urge your viewership to your listeners to
fact check me when I say this, fact check every
don't believe anything I say, fact check everything. Poland State
University of worst colleges for free speech. And he turned
(40:19):
to me with total sincerity and said, it's a good
thing to be on those lists, and I was so
utterly blown away, like because in other words, this wasn't
a bug of the woke ideology. This is a feature
like this is actually baked into the educational system. This
(40:39):
is a feature. And it was in that moment I
realized I had to quit, and then the pandemic hit
and that kind of through through things for a loop.
But um, I mean that is a month. That is
a grown task. I mean think about that, like, that's
not a symposium. You know. In the Greeks, they get together,
(41:01):
they talk, they dispute, they argue, they laugh, they drink,
and said, no, this is a church. These are yeah,
you know, I'm reminded of I'm reminded the final sceniversally,
the final scene in Brave New World where the you know,
the all powerful leader essentially says to the dissident, um no,
I don't take it personally. I'm not angry at you
(41:22):
or anything. Here's what we're doing, here's why we're doing it.
You don't fit in, so you need to go away.
And the cool rationality of it is always, you know,
has always chilled me. And for that guy to say,
oh no, no, that's a good thing. I mean that's
like finding out he's a pod person or something. I mean, right,
and and that's the other thing. So so that's when
(41:44):
you really just let that idea percolate and then detonate,
like when you really think about what that means. Here,
individuals who are positive they have the truth, they want
to look at the system as an indoctrination. It's kind
of a factory where people come in and they put
ideas about specifically race, gender, and sexuales, etcetera. But whatever is,
(42:08):
you know, the moral orthodoxy. They put that in your head.
They no longer have the north Star's truth. And when
you do that, the natural consequences there can't be free
inquiry and open expression. I mean, there can't be think
about it like this, think about it like this. So
if the president again, I want everybody to fact check
every single thing I'm saying. Do not take my word
(42:30):
for it. I don't have the exact quotation, but it's
something like the highest priority of the university is racial justice, right, Okay,
So let's just think about that. If the it doesn't
even matter if it's racial justice, it doesn't matter what
is If the highest priority of a football team is winning,
which is what the highest priority of a football team
(42:51):
should be right that any other priority that cons that
conflicts with that would by definition be a or priority, right, right.
So that's why they don't, for example, have diversity requirements
on professional sports teams, because any other priority would have
to be d prioritized or lowered. So, if your highest
(43:15):
priority is racial justice and free speech or free inquiry
or open expression of ideas can flis with that, you
have to always side with your highest priority by definition,
because it's your highest priority. Well, right, And we're in
a situation here where what has long practically forever been
(43:36):
the highest priority of a university, seeking of the truth,
the exchange of ideas is now seen as detrimental to
the new orthodoxy. So it's not just not as higher priority,
it's specifically as it's a sin, it's a point, it's right,
it's not above, it's a feature. And to avoid that,
(43:56):
that's why you have to have intellectual, political, uh an
ideological diversity. You have to have that Marxist in there,
a Marxist. You have to have that um Keynsian, you know,
you have to have someone teaching Hiak, you have to
you have to have that intellectual diversity, so that the
(44:19):
highest priority, so that the institution doesn't become something other
than a means to enable people to understand the world
and to figure out what's true. And if they're wrong,
you know what, that's okay too. But nobody was forced
feeding them that idea. They made the best. They did
the best they could to come up to to be
(44:43):
sincere and ask honest questions to try to figure out
what's true. And they kept the value in mind of
being willing to revise their beliefs. And that's another characteristic
that ideologues don't have. They're not willing to change their minds.
And that's a fundamental feature of what it is that
makes someone rational. And we have we are not teaching that.
(45:06):
We have lost that and what have we bartered it for.
We've bartered it for an ideology that separates and divides us.
If you try to get the if you try to
get the universities down to one Marxist, there's gonna be
a lot of Marxists on the street corners saying will
share for food or something. But um my, my final
question for you would be I used to read about
(45:28):
the cultural revolution in China that happened through what the
late sixties, early seventies, and I would read that stuff
and I think, I don't I just don't get it.
I mean, like, how how could this ever happen? It
didn't quite make sense to me. I now get it completely,
because it's starting to make sense to me in a
in a very scary way. Do you think, um, do
you think we could get there? Do you feel you
feel like do you feel like it's getting worse or
(45:50):
better or enough people waking up to it? Where where
are we on the continuum there? That's that's a that's
a great question. I don't know the answer to that.
I know that this is not sustainable. I don't know
what the expiration data is. People don't like living like this. Um.
And again, like you said before, the whole thing is
so stupid. You know, it's not like that they're offering.
(46:11):
You know, what's the end result of any of this stuff?
And that's the other thing. It's so idiotic. Just think
about white fragility. It doesn't work with anything else. Why
should it work with whiteness? I mean, it doesn't work
with witches. You're a witch? No, I'm not. That's proof
that you're a witch like you're denialist groups of the thing.
So it doesn't work with literally anything else. Why would
(46:33):
it work with I mean, the whole thing is so stupid.
It's like what the junior high school people do to
each other. But yet it's who doing an unbelievable number
of our of our intelligentia, and it's captured the institutions.
So I don't think that this is sustainable. I think
that this will do unbelievable damage to our institutions. I
think it already has done damage to the institutions. Who
(46:57):
is Ah, no, you go. I was just gonna say,
I hope you're right about the cultural revolution thing, because
I see some of the the earmarks of it in
the kids are being urged to either ignore their parents
or turn them in or tell their teachers about them,
and that sort of thing. And the idea of dragging
your own parents into the street to see them beating
is so horrific most of us can't imagine it. I
(47:18):
think you had to have a communist system for that
to catch fire like it did. Um. You know, Hitler
send into power through the ballot box famously. Um. But
you know, one more aspect of the cultural revolution, totalitarian systems.
The rest of it are show trials, And I wondered
if you could just spend a couple of minutes on
your experience with the Title nine investigation. Yeah. Well I
(47:42):
had to sign paperwork saying I couldn't talk about it,
so I can't really talk about it. Wow. Yeah, well,
now it was there just out of curiosity. I don't Peter,
you probably don't know this about me, Joe Getty. I
almost went to law school, so I'm the show's legal expert.
Um Was there was this a contract? Was there consideration
(48:02):
in exchange? You you you gave up the right to
talk about this in exchange for what it was an
exchange for I? I am. You know, we're represented by
a union. And and that's the other thing that I've
changed my mind on, probably a conversation for another show.
I do not like teachers unions one iota, but I
can tell you in no uncertain terms, like, as a fact,
(48:25):
I would have lost my job long ago if not
for my teachers union in general and not for the
guy who heads the teacher's union. I was seeing this
guy literally like every day from complain. In fact, he
went up for renewal and I asked you to write
um a letter like I don't know, two or three
years in the row because he was seeing me. So
I've kind of had a change of change of mind
(48:45):
on the importance of teachers unions. But yeah, I know,
it's it's it's it's uh, it's interesting. So the title
line investigations, there's no due process in that, so you
don't have access to what you're being infused if you
have to infer that from the invest the gator. And now, look,
it is often said that we are not um that
people who consider us their enemies, we do not say
(49:09):
kind things about. So I'm gonna tell you something unbelievably
truthful about the title line investigator in the Office of Diversity.
You could accuse these people of many things, but the
thing you cannot accuse them of is not being thorough.
These people are the most thorough people. I mean, they
(49:31):
had a gustopo like thoroughness and compliment. They were calling
in form of students, colleagues, t s, people I did
you know, independent studies with people I had known like
years ago. They went back like years and they were
(49:51):
summoning them to the Office of Diversity. They were I
mean I was walking around campus and people were coming
up to me, that's what the whole beating your wife
and family, and then like other people would come up
with this I hear about you didn't want I was just,
you know, the the particularly um insidious part about that is,
you know, you know, my daughter is adopted from China,
(50:13):
so like there's another level of hideousness that's going on there,
and there's really nothing you can do. I mean, you
can quit, but you can't say you know, you can't
even see that, you forget anything. You can't even see
the charges, right, And then I love the outcome of it.
Loved it in quotes and that it is so bizarre
it's actually it reminds me of one of Iron Rand's
(50:35):
most famous quotes about you know, we don't expect you
to follow these laws. We expect you to break them,
because once you're a lawbreaker, then we own you. And
at the end of your title nine things you mentioned
in your letter of resignation, they essentially said, you're not
guilty of these bizarre charges, but as long as we've
got you in our clutches, you're not allowed to do this.
You have to do this, and we think you ought
(50:56):
to get counseling, and and it's like, wait what, so I, UM,
that's right. So I requested a meeting. After that meeting,
and then I read a very long statement UM to
the chair of the department and the Chief Diversity Opics,
and my union guys, Phil phil Lesh, who was again
(51:18):
unbelievably phenomenal, um, and and among those, why am I
not allowed to render my opinion or teach in such
a way that my opinion about protected classes can be known?
When there were entire wings of university architecture dedicated to activism.
In fact, at the time I think alignment that was
(51:38):
the Women's the Gender Studies Department of Women's Studies or
whatever it's called. The p s U had the word
activists or some variant there of seven times on the
web page. So you have a whole you have entire
departments basically anything with the word studies in it. You
had entire departments that are geared towards activism. Explicit we
(52:00):
not only rendering their opinion, but actually geared to make activists.
But I can't render my opinion about a protective class
of teaching such a way that it's known and that's
the other thing. Think about how crazy that is. So
if someone comes to me and says, hey, do you
think this minority should be enslaved and in chained? I
(52:20):
have to say I cannot render my opinion. I mean,
it's so crazy on so many levels. You know. I
picture you and Copernicus and Galileo sitting at a bar
and just staring at your bears and saying, I hear
your brother, I hear you as you ran into rather
similar orthodoxes and results. Um, hey, Peter, I hope we
can stay in touch. We're absolutely hoping to support you
(52:43):
and people who think like you as much as we
can for as long as they keep us on the
air before some woke group gets us fired. But it's
great to talk to you and and and chin up.
I mean, we really admire the hell out of it. Yeah,
thank you. I appreciate that you guys have always been
terrific supporters and I'm I'm very grateful for that. You
can find me on Twitter at Peter burgosand g H O,
(53:05):
S S I N. And I just started a nonprofit
that's going to fight back about this. It's called UM
National Progress Alliance, and we're at National Progress Alliance dot org.
So I appreciate you guys have always been been supportive,
and it's a it's a great way to remember that
we are Americans and we and our disagreements actually make
(53:26):
us stronger. And you know, I would love to go
out and have beers with you guys and hang out
and you know, have spirited conversations to the early morning.
I'll see if Galileo is available. All right, thanks many,
good to talk, all right, thank you. All right. See
(53:46):
that's principle, man. You don't see that that much these days, no,
I think, Um, we've all had situations like this in
our lives where uh, we don't want to do a
certain thing, but we end up in a situation where
the realized there's no choice. This is not what I
want to do, but I've got no choice. And that's
where he was. Yeah, I I absolutely admire his character
(54:10):
and I know he would have done this in a
variety of circumstances. In his letter resignation is brilliant and
persuasive in the rest of it, but in a weird way,
Portland's state made it easy for him in that they
were so patently crazy and unfair and oppressive and unwilling
to listen to reason. I mean, he really had no
choice unless he was just gonna drink himself to death
(54:32):
and pretend that it wasn't happening. Well, when one of
the deans says, no, it's a good thing we're on
that list of being the worst university for free speech
to America, You're done. I mean what there's unless you
think you can reform them from the inside. You obviously can.
You're done, you know. He mentions he was sworn at
and spit on walking across campus on more than one occasion.
(54:53):
He's obviously a man of the mind and a man
of peace. I had a punched people in their heads.
But that's why Peter Gashian is a better fellow than
I am. I find a quad with a pool cue
or a sack by Nichols. Amen to that, brother. Extra
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