"Welcome to this curated educational transcript of the Joe Rogan Experience. In this session, we provide a deep-dive examination of the critical perspectives and historical dialogues presented in Episode #970. Our mission is to offer a high-fidelity, searchable research resource for students of cultural history, emerging technology, and global discourse. This transcript has been specifically optimized for academic reference, linguistic study, and archival preservation regarding Evolutionary Biology, Social Systems Analysis, and the Psychology of Institutional Dynamics." Four. All right, we're live. Brett, first of
all, thanks for doing this. Appreciate it, man.
Very glad to be here. You look great. Despite
all this pressure, you're smiling. For people
that don't know what's going on, let's lay out
all the events that have transpired. Essentially,
you were being asked to step away from your college.
For a day? Is that what it was? Is it one day?
Well, this goes back farther than that. Yeah.
Let's lay out the whole thing. Okay. So we couldn't
possibly lay out the whole thing. Well, it's
just for people that have no idea what's going
on. Right. They're listening right now and they're
like, who's this Brett Weinstein guy? So the
core of it. surrounds a tradition that we have
at Evergreen called Day of Absence. And this
tradition stretches back long before I was ever
at the college. I've been there 15 years. This
tradition stretches back into, I think, the early
70s. And it's built around a play written by
Douglas Turner Ward, a black playwright. And
the play portrays events in a fictional town
where the black population decides not to show
up one day. in order to emphasize their roles
in the town that the white population is unaware
of. And as you would imagine, all hell breaks
loose. So anyway, it's an excellent play, and
some early faculty at our college decided that
we should have a day that mirrored this event,
and that originally black faculty and students,
and then later people of color, would leave campus
for a day to emphasize the role that they play
in our community, and then they would later...
The tradition was amended and had a day of presence
added to it where people would come back to campus.
And this has been going on, as I said, since
the 70s and the whole time I've been there. And
then this year, it was announced by the organizing
committee that the situation would be reversed.
And they asked white students, staff, and faculty
not to come to campus. And that did not at all
sit well with me. as I said in my letter to the
person who had announced this, Rashida, who I
should say is staff, and she has ended up at
the center of this controversy, I think, wrongly,
just because my letter in response is addressed
to her, and then it was made public by our school
paper, so her name has been dragged front and
center. But in any case, my letter, I said that
there was all the difference in the world. between
a population deciding to absent themselves from
a shared space in order to highlight their role
and a population deciding to absent another population
from a shared space, which I find unacceptable
as a person, as somebody devoted to the gains
of the civil rights movement. I just, and I should
also probably say as a Jew, when people start
telling me where I can and cannot be, it... It
rings alarm bells. So that's the gist of the
story. And the letter caused quite a stir amongst
student staff and faculty who responded, many
of them quite angrily. Privately, of course,
people were much more divided on the matter,
and there were plenty of people who agreed with
my letter. But publicly speaking, there was condemnation
of the letter. But the event itself, Day of Absence,
was mostly uneventful. I did go to campus, as
I said I would in my letter, and I actually,
it's neither here nor there, it was accidental,
but while I was on campus, I ran into a student
that I know very well, actually a student that
my wife and I were abroad in Ecuador with last
year. We were teaching abroad, and we had 30
students with us, and so one of the students
who had traveled with us to Ecuador happened
to be on campus too. This is a student of color.
I'm going to stop this. Sorry. That's all right.
That was going to go on. That was going to drive
me crazy. Right. I understand. Let's keep going.
So I ran into this student that I know well and
care about quite a bit. had a very nice conversation,
mostly not about Day of Absence. As a matter
of fact, I can't even remember if we did talk
about Day of Absence. But there was something
poignant to me about the fact that while I was
being condemned for refusing to accept this new
formulation, that I was able to meet with a student
who is important to me, and neither of our racial
backgrounds is primary in our relationship. know
each other as people. And that's really how I
would like to see all of us interacting on campus.
We all have our backgrounds. They matter to us.
But it can it cannot become the primary interface
between us. Let me stop you here and let me try
to understand what the reaction was, because
you rightly said that you think there's a huge
problem with asking people to not show up simply
based on their color of their skin. Exactly.
And what was the argument against that? When
you said that, and I read your letter, and your
letter didn't sound racist at all. It sounded
very well thought out. It made a very good point.
But the response, the inflammatory response to
your letter was so disturbing and shocking. Was
there anyone who had reasonable debate with you
about this? Was there anyone who said, well,
we should take into consideration why they're
asking us to do this? We should sit down with
them. We should talk through this. Was there
anything reasonable or was it just dig your heels
in the sand and then let the insults and the
white privilege and all these accusations fly?
Well, like I said, there's a huge difference
that you can't see unless you're at the center
of one of these things between the public discussion
and the private discussion. Privately, I had
very interesting discussions with many people
that was not absent. But if you were to look
in on the discussion at the public level, it
looked as if there was consensus united against
me. Now, when you say public and private, are
the same people making contradictory statements
in public that are commiserating with you in
private, or is it just different people? A few
of them do that. That actually is the thing I
find most surprising, is that sometimes people
will privately say one thing to you and then
publicly do another. Mostly it's different people.
And I should say the people who have talked to
me privately and expressed concerns are actually
quite a diverse group. So it's not as if white
folks are disturbed by this and people of color
are united. It's not at all like that. But part
of the hidden story here is that in order to
advance certain policy proposals, it has to appear.
that the community is united behind them, and
that anybody who stands against them is standing
against them for illegitimate reasons. So that
means that the number of people who are willing
to express any sort of nuance about what's taking
place has to be small, and they have to be dismissible.
So what they did is they called me a racist,
which is ironic because I'm an anti -racist.
I've gone out of my way to... first of all, study
the question of why racism occurs. And I've,
I believe, been pretty courageous in fighting
against it where I've run into it. So to challenge
me with that particular epithet was a mistake
on their part. It was a strategic mistake. And
I kept trying to tell them while this was still
internally being discussed in the college, I
kept trying to tell them that they should really
check the concept that I'm a racist. They should
ask. Because if they did, they would discover
that they were actually way off the mark, and
then they would have an interesting puzzle on
their hands. Then they would have to explain
to themselves why they had found themselves hurling
this most poisonous term at somebody who not
only isn't a racist, but is pretty nearly the
opposite. Well, it's a standard maneuver when
someone wants to silence someone. When someone
wants to put someone in a category that's instantly
recognizable, one of the best ones is racist.
Oh, absolutely. And what I found is that people
simply could not figure out what they would do
if that term was applied to them. Right. They
were able to preview in their minds what that
would be like. And so many people could see that
there was no escape for them. Right. It's like
being called a rapist almost. It's like even
if you are exonerated, there's still that cloud
hanging above you. Yes, but this also actually
points to something pretty important. And for
anybody who travels this ground themselves, they're
going to discover this, that many of the terms
that are being used have been redefined, but
they haven't been fully redefined. So one of
the things that I've seen in several places is
that a term like racist has been redefined so
that the bar. for being a racist is so low that
you couldn't possibly help but trip over it.
But then once you've tripped over it and you
have accepted that you are a racist, then the
stigma goes back to the original definition.
So it is the dodging and weaving between the
two definitions that actually does the heavy
lifting. Well, there's also a really disturbing
idea that's being bounced around lately that
it's impossible to be racist if you're anything
other than white. Right. Which is ridiculous.
It's preposterous. Anybody who looks up the actual
definition of racism will discover that that's
preposterous. But yes, that does pass in certain
places as logical. Yeah. And just it's parroted
in this very bizarre way that's supposed to be
unchallenged. And this is a fairly recent thing.
I mean, this is not something that existed two
decades ago. Right. I agree. And the. pace at
which it's moving in the last few years is very
surprising. It is surprising, but it kind of
makes sense because you get into these groups
of people. They have this confirmation bias.
They lump up together and they all reinforce
their ideas in this echo chamber. And they all
do it inside the colleges. And then when it gets
out to the rest of the world, as we're seeing
with your case at Evergreen, the rest of the
world is like, what is going on over here? Like,
what is happening in school? And people who are
sending their children off to school are very
concerned with the indoctrination of these ideas
and the adopting these very rigid mindsets that
the rest of the world just simply could pick
apart pretty quickly well this is the most shocking
thing because i'm you know i'm i haven't been
censured I haven't been suspended. I'm still
on the email distribution list. So I'm watching
the traffic inside of my college, and I'm able
to compare it to the huge flood of stuff that
I'm seeing from the outside world as they get
wind of what's going on at Evergreen. And the
difference is a million miles. Inside of Evergreen,
actually, we are descending further into madness.
The faculty are blaming the... The fact that
the campus had to be suddenly closed due to a
threat from the outside yesterday on me for having
talked about this in the outside world specifically.
It's hilarious. Not to you. I can't use that
term yet. To me. Hopefully someday. I hope it's
soon. And, you know, I must say one thing that
I don't know. We haven't even talked about where
this where I got thrust into the spotlight here,
which you're. Listeners are going to have to
know in order to understand why I'm even sitting
here. But the intensity and the out -of -touch
nature of the discussion inside the college simply
reinforces the impression that something is desperately
off, that what we really have is a filter bubble
that is so... so strong that even when the world
sends very clear evidence that you've missed
something somewhere and it's time to rethink
what you've been doing, they're not waking up.
And I love this college. This college, maybe
we'll get to talk about it, but... The structuring
of this college is so unusual, and what one can
do as a professor at Evergreen, if you're really
dedicated to teaching, it is the place to be
because you have unparalleled pedagogical freedom,
more freedom than you'd have as a tenured professor
at Harvard. And you also have room to teach individually
to students because... Our students take one
program at a time. They're full -time in one
program, and the professors teach one program
at a time, full -time, and they can go on for
a full year. So imagine you've got 25 students,
and you have them for a year, full -time. You
really know every student in your class individually,
not just by name, but you know how they think,
you know their backgrounds, you know their blind
spots, and that allows for a kind of teaching
that can't be done anywhere else. Quite distressed
at the fact that Evergreen is now endangered
by what's going on. And I really would like to
see it wake up and rescue itself because it is
worth rescuing. I watched the is it the president
of the school who gave the speech addressing
all these issues? George Bridges. It looked like
a hostage negotiation. It looked like he had
a gun to his head. He was literally a hostage.
It was so bizarre. And kids are yelling things
at him like, what the fuck are you going to do?
And he just has to take it. It's so strange.
It's such a bizarro world to view it from the
outside and to view these. These preposterous
allegations that these kids are throwing at him
of being racist and everyone's being racist and
no one's doing anything to protect them. And
everyone's acting like they're in danger and
their ideas are in danger and their their minds
are in danger. It's just so there's so much grandstanding.
It's so preposterous. Like, what is it? Well,
first of all, did you see the video in which
Dr. Bridges, our president, is being challenged
for his hand gestures? And the protesters are
actually policing his hand gestures. No. Oh,
it's unbelievable. What's wrong with his hand
gestures? He's not doing this, is he? Don't do
that. No, no. You can't even wave to a friend.
You can't even go like this to a friend. They'll
pause you right here. They'll pause you right
there in the middle. No, I think he's, I mean,
I don't want to caricature this because I really
think it's very important. As preposterous as
what's going on is, I think it's very important.
That we understand it. It's very easy to dismiss
it because it's so strange. But it's very important
that we get it right. I think the complaint about
the hand gestures was that they represented microaggressions,
if you will. I don't know for sure that that
was the complaint, but I can't make heads or
tails of it otherwise. What was he doing? Can
you move your hands? I think he was kind of gesturing
like a person. Just trying to talk with emotion.
So I do think there's a translation, which is
this can be portrayed as a microaggression in
some way. How is this a microaggression? I mean,
it isn't. Well, we should talk about whether
microaggression is even a good category. But
let's just say the protesters had enough control
over him that he gestured. They didn't like it.
They told him not to. And he capitulated, which
he's been doing the entire time. So I would say
there's a huge amount of what's going on at Evergreen.
That is what I would call a show of force. Is
he afraid of losing his job? Is he afraid of
losing the support of the students? What is he
afraid of? Well, I got to guess. I think he is
afraid of he's old enough. He doesn't need another
job. He didn't need to take the job at Evergreen,
which he took two years ago. I think he is afraid
that this is going to be the. capstone of his
career, a scandal in which he has allowed the
campus to get out of control, which he did. But
here's the crazy thing. It's a non -scandal.
You're a non -racist who's been accused of being
a racist. All you did was say, hey, I don't think
you should be able to tell people they can't
show up for work if they're white. They can't
show up for school if they're white. That seems
kind of crazy. And now hand gestures. This is
how far we've sunk. We're not at Kent State.
It's not the National Guard shooting students.
It's this. Moving your hands around while you're
You're talking with emotion. That's a microaggression.
This guy's afraid of losing his job because of
his hand motions. Well, it goes beyond that.
So when George came to the college, he studied
us, which I can't hold him responsible for that.
That was a good move. If he was well -intentioned,
he would have done that. But he studied us very
carefully. He had a friend interview hundreds
of us to figure out what was going on at the
college. But then he said in motion. policy proposals
and committees that were empowered in a way that
was completely at odds with the way the school
has run traditionally. How so? Well, so among
the many unique features of Evergreen is the
fact that the college is, in large measure, governed
by the faculty and even the administration. All
of the deans are faculty members who have come
from the faculty, and when they're done being
deans, they go back to the faculty. So the faculty
has control over the college in a way that I
don't think there's another college in the country
that runs that way. So what that means is that
if you want to advance a policy proposal, The
faculty has to agree to it. And George wanted
to do some things that the faculty would not
have agreed to. So I've told you about these
full time programs where students get this really
personally tailored education and they they join
a community that everybody knows each other.
He wanted to take those apart. Why? I can't imagine.
I can't imagine why you would. I mean, I can.
The most generous thing to say is that he did
not understand. what an important part of the
Evergreen model those programs are. Whatever
his reason, it was a terrible error. And the
only way to do it is to advance the idea as an
equity -enhancing idea. In other words, you can
say that the full -time programs are anti...
They are anti -equity in the sense that if you
are disadvantaged, you are less likely to be
able to dedicate yourself full time to a program
because you may be going to school while you
have a family and you have a job. And so, you
know, no doubt there's some truth to that. But
it doesn't, you know, how many colleges in the
country do we have that do four credit programs?
We don't need another. We have one college in
the country that does full time programs. And
even if it is inconvenient for many people for
reasons that are beyond their control. The real
question is, can we get enough people for whom
that's exactly the right model through the door?
And, you know, it's also the college is very
inconvenient for people who live in Colorado
by virtue of the fact that it's hundreds of miles
away. So anyway, so if you wanted to advance
that proposal, it had to be dressed up as equity
enhancing. And once it was equity enhancing,
it became very hard to challenge it because,
of course, if you did challenge it, then you
were anti -equity. Boy, that's convoluted. You're
telling me. So he wants to sort of disassemble
this very unique and very beneficial model that
you guys are operating under. So this is just
one part of it. Now, how does this get to this
one suggestion that white people step down? Oh,
it doesn't. The two are connected in the following
sense. The president empowered he he. chose people
to be on what's called the Equity Council. The
council has changed its name several times, so
I'm not even sure what the current name is. I
think it's the Equity and Inclusion Council.
But in any case, he chose this council. The council
is, if you count the two deans that are on it,
it's only a third faculty member. So it's mostly
students, staff, and less than half faculty.
And he empowered them to propose. modifications
to the college that would be equity enhancing.
And the thing that they advanced, the strategic
equity plan is extremely densely written. So
it's hard to read. And most of the people on
our campus have not read it. Most of the people
in the faculty have not read it. In fact, when
it was released, it was pretty clear that most
of the people on the equity council hadn't read
it because it was so full of errors, spelling
errors and other things that would have been
caught if people had gone through it. But in
any case, My wife, who also teaches at Evergreen,
and I and several others did read it carefully
and were very alarmed at what was in it. So there
were features of the document that would, for
example, completely reorient our hiring. So our
hiring process, I would be up to see it revised
and made better, too, because I don't think we
do it very well. I think it's one of the things
we're weak about. But anyway, the proposal that
they advanced was that... For example, every
single hire would have to be justified on the
basis that it was equity enhancing, meaning racially
equity, equity enhancing. So imagine racially
equity enhanced. Right. So not just not just
a policy of hiring all kinds of people and not
being racially discriminatory, but being discriminatory
in looking for certain people, people of certain
colors. Well, you're discriminating towards.
I think beyond that. When I read that, I thought,
how exactly do you hire a physical chemist and
justify that this is racially equity enhancing?
So you would look towards like, say, if you had
10 chemists, you would try to only hire the ones
that were of color. Yes. Is that what they're
saying? Yes, I think so. I mean, as I said, the
document is so densely written that it's hard
to know. It really is set up, I think, to be
dismissed so that it can be instituted and then
we can find out what it really means. But think
about the model that I described about how we
teach at Evergreen. That is not a model that
anybody trains to teach in. And the people who
do it well are very unusual. We're not looking
for the same professors that would be best at
Berkeley, for example. We're looking for unusual
people who will take full -time programs and
total pedagogical autonomy, meaning we actually
literally are free to teach anything we want
in any way we want. So that freedom is... A marvelous
thing if you have a particular appetite for figuring
out how teaching should be done, that it's never
been done anywhere else before, and you're willing
to try it out and learn from the experience and
advance that way. So we're looking for very unusual
people who find that an appealing challenge rather
than somebody who wants to get a textbook and
deliver the regular stuff. If we're now going
to prioritize race over everything else in our
hiring. then finding those needles in a haystack
who are actually well -built to deal with that
much pedagogical freedom and that much contact
with the students is going to be that much harder
because sometimes the right person for the job
just simply isn't going to be dark -skinned or
who knows. So anyway, I found the proposal, as
did other people I talked to who had read it,
quite alarming at the level of hiring in particular.
So is it meant to... give the impression of diversity
just by simply, like, look, we've got all our
boxes checked. Here's a brown woman. Here's an
Asian man. I mean, is that what they're trying
to do? Like, look, we've got all our bases covered.
This school is diverse. Well, I'd like to put
a placeholder on Asian man because during Day
of Absence, there was actually a, I guess you
would call it a seminar held on how Asians might
just be part of the problem here. Yes, Asians
and – The problem. Yes. Did you air quote when
you said the problem? I didn't. I'm not even
sure if I should. The world has become so bizarre.
What does that mean? Asians are part of what
problem? Well, I think the translation is that
because Asians are a population, I don't know,
that is succeeding in a particular way, at least
from the perception of those who are deciding
what these seminars look like, that they actually
– I don't know, have special obligations in this.
And I might say everything I've just said about
Asians could be repeated for women, especially
white women who are playing a special role in
this equity battle on our campus, too. So white
women might be a part of the problem as well
as Asian men? Quite clearly. And so. Right. So
the idea, I think, I mean, I have my own hypothesis
about this and that's really all it is, but it
does fit everything I've seen so far is that.
There are entities within the, you know, 10 years
ago, the phrase women and minorities was a very
common phrase. And what it meant was people who
had faced historical oppression. In the current
context, that's too many people. In order to
utilize these structures to feed a certain set
of populations, you can't very well have all
women included. And so what's happened is people
who are perceived as, yes, having been historically
disadvantaged in some way, but also at the moment
being successful in some sense, are being shoved
out of the coalition. And then if they feel a
loss, a sense of loss in having been shoved out,
the mechanism to get back in is to take on the
role of what is. ironically called allyship in
this case, which is not allyship at all. It's
an abuse of the concept of allyship. Allyship
is really a symmetrical concept, and this is
subordination. Subordination, we hear that a
lot with the male feminist community. The male
feminists are supposed to be allies to women.
I even read a paper that was, or an article rather,
that was telling white people, if you truly want
to be allies, you should not take high -paying
jobs, and you should only leave them to... Yes.
My brother. Good ally. Yeah, that's what a good
a good ally subordinates. And that means stepping
away from a job, et cetera. So it's not an ally
at all. No, it has nothing to do with ally. And
in fact, this is the thing that is most troubling
to me about my personal situation is that if
they really wanted, you know, mind you, we're
going to have to fill in what they means. But
if this coalition really wanted an ally for a
quest for real equity. I would be an ally. Right.
Real equity. Real equity. That's not what they
want. What do you think that means then? If they
don't want real equity, what they want is a special
advantage given to people of color, a special
advantage given to people that were historically
oppressed? Well, let's put it this way. I believe
that in general, at the moment, coalitions are...
unholy alliances between two things. And in this
case, you have the real equity movement, which
are people who wish to end oppression. And then
you have another movement that wishes to reverse
oppression. And they don't know that they're
different because until you reach equity, they're
pointing in the same direction. I see. So one
is trying to balance it out by in some way pushing
down against white people and people who have
historically had privilege. They're trying to
reduce their role. They're trying to literally
oppress. Think about the story we were just talking
about where the president of the college is being
told how to move his hands. That's not so unlike
a black person, a black man, let's say, being
told that he's not allowed to look a white woman
in the eye. Right. It's that kind of thing having
been reversed. This is people of color telling
the president of our college how to move his
hands. So it was people of color that were telling
him to do this with his hands. Again, I got to
be really careful because, you know, I've seen
the video only once and I'm trying to remember
if the people who are doing the asking are even
on the screen. So I don't want to I don't want
to project something that I don't know for sure.
But it was definitely this the protesters which
were protesting on. Some of them were white protesting
on behalf of people of color and some of them,
many of them were people of color. But even there,
we're in trouble with the complexity because
the people of color coalition that is protesting
is not synonymous with people of color at Evergreen.
There are many people of color at Evergreen who
are either just simply bewildered by what's going
on or very troubled by it. Because you can imagine,
I mean, just put yourself in the shoes of a person
of color who came to Evergreen to get a really
interesting education and didn't want to tell
the president how to move his hands. And then
you see this happening in your name. What exactly
are you supposed to do then? Well, there's also
the problem, the very real problem with the mob
mentality. And it is a. common thing with human
beings when they get together in large groups
and people start chanting and screaming and they
feel very justified and they always want to escalate.
It's very weird. It's a strange reaction that
human beings have in large groups acting together
where they just want to ramp things up. They
want to take it to the next level. They want
to shut this motherfucker down. It's a weird
thing that people do. But I was watching it in
your videos where people were saying you should
resign. You need to resign. You need to resign.
Like, wow, you need to apologize to that woman
for communicating with her the way you did. Right.
In a very respectful and intelligent manner.
Like, they want to bully you around. They want
to push you around. They want to take that professor,
that guy who's been allowed to be the one who's
talking and distributing all the information,
and they want to shut you down. It's flat -out
bullying. Yeah. And what I'm seeing... is that
almost nobody seems to know what to do about
bullies, especially when they're armed with a
super weapon like the accusation that you're
a racist. Nobody understands that capitulating
to bullies may solve your problem in the moment,
but it makes the problem vastly worse over time.
And so anyway, all I've done is apply that piece
of knowledge that when a bully challenges you,
not capitulating is just a prerequisite to getting
anywhere. Ideally, you want the bully to pay
enough of a price that they don't continue what
they're doing. Well, ideally, you would like
to have a rational conversation with these people
and get them to see your perspective. And they
should be able to consider it and say, OK, he's
not racist. Well, yeah, it is kind of ridiculous
that we're asking people who didn't have a say
in what color they were born. To step away from
something. We're literally discriminating under
the guise of being anti -discriminatory. We're
discriminating. Right. And it wouldn't even be
hard to have that conversation. One -on -one.
Even, I'd do it 20 -on -one. But don't you think
that that's what happens? They just start screaming
and... Well, I mean, A, you have to get used
to the fact that... You don't get there all at
once. You plant a seed that's enough to cause
them to know something about what we're saying
couldn't possibly be right or we wouldn't be
seeing what we're seeing. The problem here is
that the mob that we're talking about is so large
that even, you know, in the couple cases on last
Tuesday, not this last Tuesday, I guess it was
two Tuesdays ago now, the couple of times that
I was faced with a group that was, you know,
somewhere below 100. I actually do think I made
some progress, but I thought it was not durable
at all because as soon as the event was over,
whatever progress was made got overwritten by
whatever discussion happened next. So it is possible
to have these discussions, but there's something
about the momentum that is in play here that
makes it impossible to make any durable progress.
Durable progress is a very interesting description.
Durable progress. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're
fighting against this current movement of ridiculous
ideas that's going on through schools. And we
saw it with Yale. We saw it with those students
screaming at. What was it? The professor? Was
it a professor? Who was the guy they were screaming
at that was trying to defend his wife's email
about Halloween costumes? Yes. Maybe we should
allow people to wear ridiculous Halloween costumes
because that's part of like the fun of Halloween.
Yes. And people are acting like you were saying
that we should be lynching people. Well, so first
of all, he did reach out to me and his point
was what you are going through is. eerily reminiscent.
He's watched the videos and he was just pointing
out how shocking it was. I mean, even to the
point of my wife having been dragged in here,
oddly, in this discussion where she wrote an
email internal to our distribution list asking
the college why they were not protecting me and
my students who were being actively stalked on
our campus, harassed, doxxed. Which students?
My current students. But why? Why are your current
students being harassed? Because my current students,
like almost all of my former students, know that
this charge is completely baseless. And so they
have been supportive. So in defending you, then
they're being attacked. Absolutely. Like they're
little soldiers in some sort of a strange ideological
battle. They are being penalized for not falling
in line. Wow. That's scary. That's real scary
bullying when someone says, hey, he's a good
guy. And then someone comes after them and says,
this is where this person lives. Let's find them.
That has actually literally happened. And what
has happened to the students once they do find
them? Well, so the students have been, I think
the idea is intimidation. So I've had students
followed in the woods. In the woods. I've had
students visited at home. It's very scary. And
I should say, just in terms of putting the context
here, as the college was pretending that nothing
serious was going on, the police called me up
on the Wednesday just after the Tuesday in which
I had been challenged in my class and asked me,
are you on campus? And I didn't have class. I
said, no, I'm not on campus. They said, don't
come to campus. I said, why? searching car to
car for what they describe as an individual,
and we think it's you, and the college has told
us to stand down, we can't protect you. What?
I know. The college has told the police to not
protect you? The college told the police to stand
down, which means the police were literally barricaded
in the police station. despite their sense that
they very much needed to be actively protecting
people outside of the police station. The police
were left with no choice but to barricade themselves
in the police station because they answered to
the college administration, which told them not
to act, I think because it wished to prevent
a news story. But this meant people engaged in
these protests were... Roving freely about the
campus, looking for people, following them. That's
so incredibly aggressive. Like looking for individuals
in a car. And to do what? Well, that's the question.
My guess would be even they don't know. Let's
say that it was me that they were looking for,
which would make sense. I would imagine that
they would have had the idea of, I don't know,
taking me somewhere and getting me to acknowledge.
Something that they think some sort of a hostage
situation. Right. But suppose I didn't want to
acknowledge whatever it is that they wanted me
to acknowledge, just as I didn't want to resign
when they said I should resign. I don't I don't
know if they had a backup plan. And it worries
me that one of the things that unfolded on the
campus was that people who had a very clear idea
of how things should go were they were literally.
I mean, they were barricaded in the president's
office with the president and a bunch of faculty
members and staff. And the story is that the
president wanted to go to the bathroom and he
was not even allowed to go privately to the bathroom.
He had to be escorted by two people. Who? The
president of the college. But who are the people?
Protesters. Protesters had to go with him to
the bathroom. Right. So that, to me, sounds like
literally kidnapping. It's just stunning that
he agreed to that. All of it is stunning. I can't
believe I'm seeing it. Well, this is PC gone
amok. I mean, this is what everybody's been worried
about. This is what you are right now is that
you're the tip of the spear. We are previewing
where this goes taken to its logical extent.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and. Could have been worse
had you not been contacted by the police. Had
you been in one of those cars? Had you been pulled
out? Had you been pulled into some sort of a
hostage situation where they were trying to tell
you you can't go to the bathroom without us like
they did to the fucking president and he agreed
to it? Yeah. I mean, this is madness. I mean,
that's like people should go to jail for that.
Well, so, okay. That's kidnapping. It's kidnapping.
I do think that the administration and. certain
faculty members have a lot of responsibility
here. So I think in some sense, yes, it's literal
kidnapping. The students, however, I believe
have become tools of something that they don't
really understand. Tools of what, though? Of
their own making? I mean, is it an ideology outside
of the school that they subscribe to? Or is it
their own... I mean, what is it? Well, I believe
it is a... A militant belief structure. And I
do think based on what we've seen on our campus,
it is emanating from a subset of the black population.
OK, so I'm not saying that this is black people
doing this, but I'm saying that the people who
are at the forefront of it happen to be in that
part of the coalition of people of color and
that they are advancing a set of assumptions
and beliefs that they. seem to imagine uh describe
some future world that they would like to reach
and it's a future world i mean it's preposterous
it will never happen because what is the future
world where the 400 years of oppression of black
people in north america results in a uh a reversal
of roles i think i mean i i can't imagine having
that thought and following it through and not
realizing that this can't possibly be anything
like a way forward. This is something that they've
described, this reversal of roles, that they
would like to come to this conclusion? So I would
imagine that your listeners, having heard me
just say what I said, have to be wondering a
little bit about me and where my sympathies really
lie. But what I've seen, and if your listeners
go looking at the videos that came out of Evergreen
over the last 10 days, posted by the protesters,
I should point out. Videos that they thought
made them look good. They will find many instances
in which the official order of things says, well,
let's say there's a four o 'clock meeting on
the Tuesday in which I was challenged in the
morning. Four o 'clock meeting that became very
dangerous. And the meeting began with an announcement
that the chairs and the food were for people
of color and that white people shouldn't. Use
them. Yes, I know. The chairs and the food were
only for people of color. Correct. White people
have to be hungry. Right. You can't sit down.
Right. And I've also seen, you know, I don't
remember where I saw it now. I probably have
a screenshot of it, but I saw something where
some activists. put out a message, a broadcast
message that said a person of color needed a
power adapter for a computer. Were there any
white people who could fetch one or something
like that? Oh, Jesus. I mean, the thing is it's
preposterous, but it is also putting in danger
the actual vision of a world in which race ceases
to provide advantage. Right. So anyway, it's
jeopardizing. The idea that it should be reversed
is just so crazy. Like, we should oppress now.
Like, no, there should be none. Right. We should
get past this. Right. We should be anti -supremacist.
Yes, 100%. This idea, I mean, imagine if there
was a college in North America that suggested
that white people only should eat and white people
only should be able to take the seats. Is that
what's going to happen 300 years? So what if
black people are pressed for the next 300? Then
white people come back and say, hey, we're going
to have to turn this around again. I mean, isn't
the idea that 100 years from now, white people
are going to be a minority in America? Because
the rates of birth with Latinos and black folks
that will there won't be this minority group
anymore, that they will be, in fact, a majority.
All I can say is it's so obviously a wrong path
just in terms of, A, it's not an honorable objective.
It's racist. It's racist. It's absolutely racist.
I mean, it's not even difficult to see that.
It just simply is racist. But if you say that
on my campus at the moment, you're the racist
for not understanding why this is logical. So
how do people react when someone says a person
of color needs a power adapter? Can a white person
go fetch it? Are there these white? Air quote
allies that are running these beta males and
just running to go grab a white power adapter
and give it to this person of color. Is that
what's happening? That's the literal description
of it. Jesus Christ. And then they have to in
a few years, they're going to have to go on to
the workforce. Well, and that's the thing that,
well, this is a whole other side of the puzzle.
What this is really about, and not just at Evergreen,
but this movement which has taken over so many
campuses and shut down so many people who spoke
with positions that were not somehow sanctioned,
is really a battle between two incompatible worldviews
within the academy. So on the one hand, you have
the sciences and all of the things that function
on the same assumptions that the sciences do
about how you figure out what's true. And then
you have these postmodern disciplines, which
basically argue that the tools that the sciences
claim are about figuring out what's true are
actually tools of oppression themselves. And
so, you know, another video. Goddamn rulers.
Right, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So there's this
video in the middle of the Tuesday, the first
Tuesday of these protests, where the president
barricaded with these protesters is talking to
them. And the protesters actually flat out say
in referring to my email that I mentioned the
word phenotype and that that inherently tells
you that I must be a racist to even be thinking
about. a scientific term in the context of this,
which I find horrifying because these very students
stand to gain a tremendous amount. They will
be most powerful in the world in pursuing equity,
among other things. They will be most powerful
in the world if they are armed with a scientific
toolkit, with an analytical toolkit that allows
them to be forceful rather than to be preposterous.
What was the context you used the word phenotype
again? I forget. Oh, I said that I would like
us in my challenge to the new day of absence
formulation. I said I would like us to put phenotype
aside. Right. Put phenotype aside, meaning that
I did not want us discussing equity as teams,
as different teams broken up by color. And so
the very fact that I said phenotype. And that
I suggested that I would be willing to give a
lecture to anybody who wanted to come about what
I understand to be the evolutionary context of
racism. And they did not want the lecture. They
assumed that if I said evolution and racism that
I was going to give a eugenics lecture or something
like that. And so it's preposterous. The way
this works is they shut down the conversation
before you can have it so that they don't actually
know what you're going to say and therefore don't
need to address it. Oh, God. Yeah. It's quite
frightening. Well, it's bizarre because it's
primarily occurring in universities. It's not
happening really in high schools very much. It
sort of bubbles up in high schools, it appears,
by people that I've talked to that have been
in high school and gone into universities that
you see echoes of it. You see the beginnings.
And then when it gets to college, you're away
from your parents. You're in some new place.
Everyone gathers in groups. They dig their heels
in the sand, and they go fucking crazy. Well,
I mean, there is something about college and,
you know, we all did some dumb stuff in college.
But I also think there's a hidden reason for
it being colleges, which is that there is real
inequity in civilization that needs to be dealt
with. I would say the thing that I find most
troubling is the skew in policing and in the
courts that results in disproportionate fractions
of some populations. being incarcerated, which
has terrifically destabilizing impact on those
communities. So I think that that is a very real
harm that would be hard to overstate and that
absolutely has to be addressed just to even make
any claim on being a fair society. That said,
it is very hard to attack the private prison
complex, for example, right? It's a difficult
challenge. On the other hand, the universities...
are a soft target. They can't defend themselves
and they already have sympathies in the direction
of, you know, a view of a radically different
enhanced world. So in effect, I think we're being
challenged on the basis that the inequities on
our campuses are completely intolerable and that
that is largely a fiction and that what really
is happening is that this is displaced anger
over a system that is fair, that's been pointed
at something that can't defend itself. That's
fascinating. So this is a reaction to the actual
real inequities of the outside world, the systemic
racism of places like Baltimore and what we're
finding out about places where they literally
would not sell homes to black people, communities
that have just had generation after generation
of impoverished people that are fighting off
crime -ridden neighborhoods. Right, or water
you can't drink because it has lead in it. Right,
exactly. What the universities, what's happening
in the universities is sort of a misguided reaction
to all the real inequity in the world. I would
say not misguided, it's misdirected. Misdirected.
It's just pointed at the wrong thing. And the
reason it's pointed at the colleges and universities
is that they simply can't defend themselves.
That's fascinating. And so this is occurring
in universities all over the country. And at
a rate that's... According to people that I know
that teach pretty unprecedented that this wasn't
the case 20 years ago, that you would have dissent,
you would have debate, you'd have discussion,
but you wouldn't have these full blown ideological
mobs. Yeah, I think the thing is, it hadn't been
operationalized yet. The thought process that
led to this was postmodernism has been. has been
around for decades. And so there were places
you could go if you wanted to have an absurd
discussion. You could go, for example, to cultural
anthropology. Cultural anthropology was captured
by postmodernism 30 years ago. And so if you
wanted to hear people say really crazy things
about what's true, cultural anthropology was
a place you could do it. If you stepped next
door to physical anthropology. It was just fine.
And so anyway, that's been in the university.
And what's happened is it has been how would
one put it? It has been operationalized or activated
so that it is now it is now it forms the core
of a vision that college students are trying
to bring about. Not all of them, but enough of
them that you can't run a college without either
deciding to capitulate or figuring out how you're
going to fight back. Was there a way that this
could have been stopped or nipped in the bud
in the years past? Or is there a way that this
could have been sort of planned for? Was there
a lack of foresight? Yeah. This is exactly, it's
what I was talking about a few minutes ago. If
you give in to the bully, the bully comes back
stronger. We've been given in to the postmodern
bully for... And it's now come back in a form
that nobody knows what to do with it. So what
was the original reason to give in when it was
a more mild argument? Well, because it was an
abstraction. So originally, the idea that that
certain. That based on. Certain people who had
been, for example, largely shut out of the sciences
were entitled to think without having to deal
with the structures that had been built around,
let's say, men and mostly white men over the
course of Western scientific history. So the
idea that women maybe needed a place to discuss
what was true that was not structured by men,
I get that. And in fact, there's a very good...
example in my own field where the difference
between the way men and women, I don't mean every
man and every woman, but the difference on average
I think played a decisive and very positive role
when Louis Leakey empowered three women to go
study the three great apes in order to figure
out what was going on with them. And so Jane
Goodall figured out what was going on with the
chimps because she was... because she was female
and because she didn't subscribe to the rules
that men had written down about how you study
these creatures. And so it is a case where something
about the way men look at the world had prevented
people like George Schaller, who had made his
mark studying lions. He didn't do so well with
gorillas. So anyway, Jane Goodall's female approach
worked, and it is largely the reason that we
understand chimps today. On the other hand, Jane
Goodall... took the scientific toolkit and threw
out the rules that had been biased rather than
rejecting the scientific toolkit, which is what
the postmoderns are doing, which I think is just
tragic. What we should be doing is arming everybody
who goes to college. And frankly, we should be
arming everybody who can't go to college with
a scientific toolkit that lets them figure out
what's true, especially now, because science
is the ultimate bullshit detector. you know,
this era is, you know, hopefully this is peak
bullshit, but they need the ultimate bullshit
detector. It does seem like peak bullshit, right?
And it seems like that's one of the reasons why
it's so important for you to stand your ground,
is that you are, you're being very clear in what
you perceive this situation to be. And you're
doing it in a very logical and a very rational,
well thought out and clearly structured way.
You're showing everyone what's wrong with this.
It is a scientific approach. You are literally
using the very tools that you're trying to empower
these young children. Young children. I feel
like they are. Yeah. These kids. You can say
kids. Young folks. Beautiful, exuberant human
beings. Millennials. Yeah, millennials. I hate
those words. I hate those generational terms.
But you're literally using, you're dealing with
a dilemma, and you're using the very tools that
you would like them to learn from this university
and take forth into the world. I mean, it is
a very scientific approach. You're saying, like,
well, no, this is not, that's not racism, and
this is racism, and what you're doing here is
actually racism. Right. And in fact, you know,
the irony is so my students and really my students,
many of them are both my students and my wife's
students. We both teach evolutionary biology
and students bounce back and forth between our
programs. So, you know, we have people in our
community who are empowered by having an understanding
of how things function evolutionarily that gives
them a window into all sorts of things, including.
human social dynamics and other things that affect
us all the time. So anyway, yes, there is a way
of thinking about virtually any of the issues
that most people care about using scientific
rationality, which does not mean that you put
aside your humanity, but it means that you give
your humanity a tool to understand what is going
on before you figure out how you feel about it
and whether something ought to be done. How does
this university survive this? How does the community
survive this? How do these students come out
of this with a new understanding of what went
wrong and in some way that allows them to save
face and still be a viable part of the community?
That is a beautiful question. Thank you for asking
it. I really hope it works. I got three things
and I'm afraid I'm going to forget one of them.
But first of all, there's one clear first step.
The president of the college has to step down.
And there are two reasons he has to step down.
One, this is how things work. I don't like how
you're moving your hands when you're talking.
I'm sorry, John. Microaggressions. Is that better?
So he's got to step down because, A, when something
has gone as crazy as we've seen things go on
Evergreen's campus. there is an expectation that
somebody will take responsibility. So he has
to step down to signal to the world that somebody's
taking responsibility. But in this case, he also
absolutely must step down because this is his
responsibility. He set this in motion and he
made this happen. And so it is not an injustice
at all that he should have to step down. And
I frankly am flabbergasted that it hasn't happened
yet. I do not understand how the board of trustees
could allow him to maintain that position as
long as he has. But first thing is he has to
step down. At the point he steps down, that's
going to flip a switch. Suddenly the question
is, okay, what now? The next thing that would
have to happen is the faculty of my college would
have to evidence that they actually got something
out of this rather than feeling that they had
been wrongly. portrayed in the media or something
like that. If the faculty, and there are many
good faculty who do understand what's going on.
So they have been quiet because, frankly, they're
afraid of what happens to them if they're not.
But George has to step down or be fired, and
the faculty have to rally and evidence that they
learned something. And then the third thing,
and in some ways, this is the one that is, I
think, the toughest. They came after me. They
came after two other people, the chief of police
of our police force, Stacey Brown, who they have
been attempting. She is a utterly professional,
extremely good police officer who is also an
Evergreen graduate and interested. in cleaning
up policing she wants she she's aware of what
bad policing is and what this is campus police
campus police so it's independent of the the
region right which is why they were stood down
because they are part of the administration is
is has control over them but the chief of police
was demonized and uh i mean in the most disgusting
ways posters of her wearing a KKK outfit and
some sort of, I don't know, sexed up garb was
distributed. This is a mother of three, right?
And what was the logic behind it? Well, I hate
to say it, but the logic, I think, was this saying
that circulates, all cops are bad. So she was
literally, her swearing in. was protested so
at the very moment she took the job she was already
persona non grata um they want no police well
and in fact they advocated for that there was
in the middle of this protest there was a uh
something like a Police Community Review Board,
I'm not sure exactly what it's called, but there
was some sort of a gathering where suggestions
about better policing were advanced. And the
protesters actually advanced not only the idea
that the police be moved off campus, that they'd
be disarmed, but that in fact that campus policing
be turned over to what they call community policing.
So at the very same moment that you have protesters
as judge, jury and executioner searching cars
for people, stalking them, they're telling us.
that actually they want official control over
the policing of the campus. It couldn't be more
ironic. So how do they plan to handle sexual
assault, violence, anything along those lines?
Funny you mentioned sexual assault, because the
third witch, in addition to me and the chief
of police, is our grievance officer, our grievance
officer, Andy Siebert. is also an excellent human
being who is very dedicated to her job and very
dedicated to Evergreen and has been there for
a very long time. And one of the things that
she's been accused of is not being sensitive
to allegations of sexual assault. Now, what she
has not said in her own defense, she is so interested
in protecting the college from its own worst
instincts that what she has not said in her own
defense is that she runs a summer camp. for girls
who have been sexually assaulted. And I think
she funds it out of her own pocket. So in all
three cases, in my case, I'm accused of being
a racist. In Stacey Brown, the police chief's
case, she's accused of being a brutal, biased
cop. And in Andy Siebert's case, she's accused
of being insensitive to people who have been
assaulted. In all three cases, not only are these
things wrong, they are the opposite of right.
And so I was just going to say the third thing
that I wanted to say was George has to step down.
The faculty has to wake up. And then everybody
needs to take a look at the fact that three for
three, they've gone after people in classic witch
hunting style. And the person in question was
the exact opposite of what they were saying.
At the point you discover that you've been hunting
witches and then it turns out the people in question
are innocent. You have to step back and ask yourself
how you got there. How did that happen to you
that you ended up hunting innocent people? That
should be a wake -up call for everybody involved.
Well, as soon as you start talking about searching
for cars and searching for individuals, my mind
immediately escalates to violence. That's how
my mind goes. I know mobs and I know people.
I just have far too much experience with violence.
And I know what happens when people ramp up ideas
without a real predetermined goal. They don't
have, like, what we'd like to do is get Brett
and talk to him one -on -one. I want to invite
him to have a debate, a one -on -one debate with
someone without an audience so they could sit
down and hash out these ideas. Well, hey, you're
working with something. Well, how do we find
him? Well, maybe he's in one of these cars. Like,
that's not what they're doing. Right. Right.
No, they go, we're going to. find him, but they
don't have a step after they're going to find
you unless they do. And it might be fucking barbaric.
I mean, it might be, you know, we're going to
kidnap him. We're going to, we're going to force
him to read this letter. You know what I mean?
It's literally hostage shit. I, I agree. And
I do think, you know, I don't, I don't know.
I'm not an expert on what happens when mobs ultimately
do something, you know, like I think it's Mashal
Khan, uh, who was, killed by a mob over supposed
blasphemy, I guess last month. Was that in Turkey?
I thought it was in Pakistan. It wasn't in Turkey.
Okay. All right. I'm sorry. I should know. That's
all right. That's a different world. It's a different
world, but nonetheless, the point is a mob thinks
that it's on the right track, and it's so convinced
of what it believes that... It ends up doing
something that it doesn't know it's capable of.
And there's also a diffusion of responsibility
in a large group. They're allowed to do much
more horrific things you would ever do one -on
-one to an individual. One hundred percent. So
I don't think that anyone intends that, but I'm
not sure that they ever do. Well, the ramping
up of things is what terrifies me. I've just
seen it too many times where people get together
in large groups of people and things escalate
and no one knows why. And then all of a sudden
it's chaos and there's a literal feeling in the
air that violence could erupt. And I don't know
if there's maybe you would be able to tell me,
is there some. evolutionary echo of that from
back in the day when we would get invaded by
large groups of people and we had to switch over
immediately to some sort of a warlike mindset.
I don't know what it is, but there's something
really bizarre that happens to people in large
groups. And if you've ever been in a concert
where a riot breaks out or a stampede where things
go crazy, it's scary. It's terrifying. Well,
you're absolutely right about the evolutionary
roots, that these are programs that exist in
us for circumstances. And one of the things,
you know, if I had been able to give the lecture
that I proposed in the letter that got me in
so much trouble with people, one of the things
that I would say is that the most dangerous thing
is that we have these latent programs that are
waiting for evidence that it is the moment to
do X, Y, or Z. haven't been in those circumstances
until the moment those programs are triggered
we don't even we're not even aware that human
beings are capable of some of the things they're
capable of so we have to guard against these
things at all costs if we really you know never
again is a very important concept and if never
again is to mean anything we have to understand
why it happens in the first place so that we
can repair the world so it becomes impossible
Yes, instead of giving in to the influence of
these ancient programs, understanding that they're
there and recognizing them when they go live.
Exactly. In fact, maybe the thing that would
be worth remembering is what happens to a drowning
person. When a person drowns, they're very dangerous.
Right. Because they their body switches on a
drowning program that basically looks for anything
that can be pushed down so you can get up to
where the air is. Yeah. Which means that somebody
can drown their closest kin by accident because
a drowning program that they've never seen active
until the first time they face drowning is suddenly
online. Right. And so that's a simple one. But
there are other ones too. There are ones for
tyranny and I believe things like genocide where
populations that have successfully eliminated
other populations have done well. And so knowing
that human beings are actually wired for genocide
under some circumstances is, well, it's a sobering
responsibility, but it's also... hopeful to me
because if you know that it's there you can figure
out what triggers it and you can I think we can
rule it out by raising people in an environment
where awareness of that program allows us to
teach them in such a way that that program is
deactivated. And that might be the only way.
You must be aware of the fact that there is a
potential to disassociate and decide that this
group of people is the other, and that they are
not you, and you could do horrific things to
them. And that this is literally a part of how
human beings evolved to 2017, how we got through
all the horrific things that have taken place
in the past. And if you think about the... The
religious innovations that have occurred in the
history of most of the populations on Earth today,
they involve a recognition at some point where
the definition of self gets broadened to a larger
group. So if you think about, for example, the
Golden Rule. The Golden Rule has progenitors
in the Hillel tradition. But it is basically
somebody saying that some large entity needs
to be treated as some extension of self. And
really, this may sound funny to people, but if
we are to survive the next century as a species,
it's going to have to be... through the recognition
that actually all human beings are trapped on
one tiny little planet, and we're in severe jeopardy.
And really, we have to start treating each other
not as other, because we will be fighting each
other as the whole experiment goes to hell. We
have to recognize that we actually face a common
enemy, which is the unintended consequences of
the system we've built. I never like to bring
up Ronald Reagan as the voice of reason, but
he had a fantastic quote way back in the day
in one of his speeches during the Cold War where
he was talking about how we would bond together
if we were approached by some alien life form
from another planet that threatened us, how we
would all realize that we are all in this together.
I had no idea that he said that. It was a great
speech because the conspiracy theorists went
crazy. They're like, there's aliens, man! Well,
I think this is totally right. And here's the
even better part, I think, which is, yeah, if
there was an alien race that came to invade the
Earth, we'd rally. If there was an asteroid that
we had enough time to know that it was coming
and that we would have to rally together to do
something about it, we'd do something about it.
And so it is perfectly possible for the mechanisms
that... evolution built into us to fight each
other that caused us to cooperate to fight other
groups to be retargeted at things that aren't
other groups that are problems and so what frustrates
me more than i think anything else is right now
we do face a common enemy and that common enemy
is you know Let's say climate change would be
one facet of it, but it's the system that set
climate change in motion, which has also given
us nuclear reactors that are unstable and difficult
to control. It's given us economic policies that
are going to cause us to destabilize as a result
of the concentration of well -being and power
in a small number of hands. Those are common
enemies. And if we allowed the circuitry that
is in us to be triggered, that allows us to fight
a common enemy, actually, we would be quite united
at the moment and for a good cause. Which is
one of the more disturbing things about Trump
pulling out of the Paris climate agreement is
that what what it says is that we're not in this
together. I mean, even more so than it says that
these guys are. I mean, he has. advisors and
this EPA guy is a very dangerous character that's
a climate change denier and there's so much anti
-science going on in this administration you
wouldn't even know where to begin, right? But
one of the real problems is that we're moving
away from this group of people that's trying
to figure out what to do about emissions. What
do we do about all this garbage? What do we do
about all this waste? And it's not even necessarily
just about climate change. It's about... sustainability.
It's about what are we doing with the byproduct
of civilization? If there's one thing that should
cut across political lines, it's that question.
What do we do about the things that jeopardize
us all together? And if it's one thing that should
disturb us about capitalism, the number one thing
is putting profit ahead of the environment that
we literally need to sustain life. And that's
something they're trying to do with bringing
back fucking coal. Of all things. And they have
these coal miners on TV and they don't even agree
with it. They interviewed a bunch of coal miners
today that were President Trump supporters. They
were happy and they voted for Trump because he's
going to bring back coal. And they're like, well,
I don't know about this. Why is he stepping away
from the climate change thing, though? Like even
people in the coal mining industry are torn on
this. I mean, this is a very dark time in that
way. Very dark. And, you know, and ironic, too,
because I mean, we're now behind the eight ball
because we've put this off for so long. We should
have started doing this 25 or 30 years ago. But
even now, it is actually not as hard as people
think to figure out how the world might function
that didn't create this jeopardy as a matter
of byproducts of everyday activity. It's actually
not that difficult. But the system is built to
frustrate it. So in the same sense, if you step
back from the last presidential election and
you think about how is it that we ended up with
two such lousy candidates for this position with
such power, something in the system has to be
off that we don't end up with any viable candidates
for that office. And it's the same problem. We
are caught in loops that prevent proper solution
making. It's not that solution making. isn't
possible. It's that solution making is not someplace
we can go from here because of mundane reasons
in our system that are ultimately... going to
kill us if we're not careful. Well, it's also
such a complicated structure that outside of
completely radical change, like restructuring
everything from the bottom up, like tearing it
down literally to the foundation and rebuilding
it. How else are you going to fix this thing
with lobbyists and special interest groups and
congressmen and representative government? It's
like there's so many. different areas that allow
for the possibility of corruption and influence
and just cronyism. It's such a dark and twisted
corridor that you enter into if you consider
any kind of reform. Well, it can't be reform,
and we can't tear it down either. Well, what
would we do? Well, that's an interesting question,
and I must say it's something that a number of
friends of mine and I have been working on for
some time. There are answers which five, seven
years ago I wouldn't have thought possible that
I now believe actually are possible. And so what
we're really talking about, we can't have revolution.
We can't afford it, nor will it work. The power
arrayed against revolution is so immense that
it's inconceivable that it could function. We
also can't afford... a disruption massive enough
to cause the system to restructure on its own,
if for no other reason than the fact that we've
got more than 400 nuclear reactors on Earth today
that require constant inputs of power or they
melt down and spill not only the contents of
the reactors but the contents of the spent fuel
pools where we've stored decades' worth of spent
material. So basically we have to restructure
the system. without letting it collapse and without
confronting it in the traditional way. So we
need effectively revolutionary change without
revolution. However, notice that your life today
doesn't look all that much like your life 30
years ago from the point of view of how you go
about things, how you navigate around the world.
Things sweep across civilization in a market
system based on utility. that model can also
be used to replace the system that we have currently.
So in essence, if you think forward, what is
the world going to look like 20 years from now?
It's very hard to know because you know how much
change has come in the last 20 years. So there
will be revolutionary change. At the moment,
it will be dictated by a market, and it will
basically give us more of what we think we want
rather than what we actually need. However, the
same mechanism that causes technologies to sweep
across civilization can be utilized to have meaningful
change in the way we interrelate with each other
and the way we govern ourselves sweep across
civilization. So that's the project that we've
been working on behind the scenes. So what is
the project? How does it work? Well, it involves
different people with... Different expertise,
and there are those who are expert in the technological
aspects, in other words, identifying those technologies
that actually stand a good chance of replacing
the dangerous stuff that runs civilization now.
There are those of us who are involved in the
game theoretic aspects of what it is that keeps
the current system stabilized as it is and what
would have to change in order to replace it.
So anyway, it's a complicated effort, but it
is not – I am hopeful in a way that I wasn't
back during Occupy, let's say, because I no longer
think that the only route forward is one of the
traditional modes that we've seen. So do you
think that it's going to be a slow integration
of technology into people's lives to the point
where it's going to – affect the system itself
to the point where the current system, the way
it works, just won't operate the way it does?
No, not really. What are you saying specifically?
What I'm saying specifically is that people have
been shut out of the gains of civilization, and
they have been fed a small portion of the phony
growth that our system generates to placate them.
They've also been threatened with austerity.
which is largely a false threat. In other words,
they've been told, yes, we could do something
different, but you're going to have to give up
most of the things that you value. So how about
it? And in fact, the world could be a very exciting
place to transform. were to recognize the real
landscape that we face rather than the story
that has been portrayed that has told us that
we really don't have any good options, it seems
that there is still time, though, frankly, the
clock is ticking. So what would be the steps
that would be taken in order to make this a reality?
Well, the question is, do I want to say that
out loud here where the entities that want to
oppose it know exactly what it is? before it
comes. I don't know how smart that is. What I
will say is that there are a good number of us
working on the puzzle. We're serious about it.
And the things that would typically be used to
dismiss us ought not be. We're not looking to
be the head of some system that enriches us.
We're looking to make the planet function in
a way that serves everyone. So do you think there's
some sort of conspiracy to stop this? Like if
you actually bring it up, you think that there
would actually be people that would make or take
active measures in order to hold it off at the
pass? I don't think it's exactly like that. I
think there is a structure that has emerged that
exists. Administrations come and go, but there's
a structure that doesn't. And it seems to have
a central principle behind it, which is it doesn't
like change that it can't control. Change is
one thing. Change happens. But it's not interested
in change that could upend it. So anyway, the
reason that we end up with a battle between a
non -viable Republican and a non -viable Democrat
is that they have passed a test. in which they
do not threaten the fundamental structures underneath.
In fact, Trump may actually be a violation of
that. He may actually threaten those structures
and they may be trying to figure out what to
do about them. But in general, what we have is
a system that filters on the way towards the
levers of power such that anybody who gets there
wouldn't use them. in a destabilizing fashion.
Which is why we saw the DNC conspire against
Bernie Sanders. Absolutely. We saw them conspire
in the most direct terms and then we've seen
them in court defend it by saying they had every
right to do it rather than denying it. Yeah.
So anyway, I'm not, you know, it's too easy to
say conspiracy and it is too... It's too simplistic
because it implies that people got together in
a room and said things out loud. And that does
happen sometimes. But it also happens through
another mechanism, a mechanism of what scientifically
we would call emergence, where those structures
that frustrate change outcompete structures that
allow change. So it may be that what we have
are forces that resist change reflexively without
knowing what they're doing the same way, you
know, a tree grows toward the light without knowing
what it's doing. Oh, OK. Don't you think, though,
that there'd be some benefit to discussing these
potential solutions to these issues out loud?
And then people would sort of like pick it up
and act on it, especially given this. Enormous
platform? I do. So it's not that I don't want
to talk about them. I mean, in fact, we held
what was called an unconference in Palo Alto
several months ago. So it's not that we don't
talk about them out loud. What I'm concerned
about is that, A, I'm only one of the people
involved. And so, you know, I have my area of
expertise in this group. But there are many other
areas of expertise that I can't speak to as directly.
So anyway, I'm concerned about unearthing the
thing in a place where it will be a cartoon version
of something that's actually more sophisticated
than that. I understand. I'm not averse to answering
questions if you got them. What would be the
first step? Well, the first step would probably
involve a blockchain currency that had strengths
connected to it that made it competitively superior
to something like the dollar. In other words,
the dollar is a flawed entity in multiple regards.
But the dollar depends on... our valuing it.
And the thing about blockchain currencies is
that blockchain currencies can be exchanged between
entities that have an agreement about preferring
them. So, for example, a group of people could
decide to pay each other in blockchain currency
of some kind based on ideals that are not the
same ones on which our nation, for example, is
founded. you could agree to a higher set of standards
for something and agree to prefer each other
in the context of business. So you would do business
with those who had also agreed to the same higher
set of principles, and that currency could therefore
displace something like the dollar. Well, it'd
be fascinating to see. I mean, I know that Bitcoin
and blockchain and a lot of these different cryptocurrencies
are gaining momentum. And in fact, Bitcoin, weren't
we just talking about this, is higher now than
it has been like literally in years. Ever? Ever.
Yeah. So there's some momentum in that regard.
It'd be nice to see them use. Side by side, you
know, to see if it could be possible that it
could gain more momentum to get to the point
where it's right now you bring up. I'm going
to buy some of Bitcoin. People think you're a
freak. Right. Like my friend and Andreas Antonopoulos,
who's big in the Bitcoin movement. I've had him
on the podcast a few times. He's written books
on it and he does everything in Bitcoin. He's
paid in Bitcoin. He buys his airline tickets
in Bitcoin. He pays his rent in Bitcoin. I mean,
he's he's deep, but maybe what is one of a thousand
people in the world that might do that? Right.
Although, you know, everything transformative
starts in a small minority of people doing it
somewhere. So what I would say is that the cryptocurrency
isn't enough in and of itself. You have to couple
it with the structures that are capable of solving
the other problems of civilization. Like someone
figuring out what to do with nuclear waste. That
would be a nice one. That's a biggie. That's
a biggie. And it's high on my list of... let's
say, fears is that those nuclear reactors are
so dangerous by virtue of what it is that keeps
them stable day in and day out, that really,
if people understood the danger they face based
on those reactors and the spent fuel that they
have, people would be alarmed. Well, if people
just paid attention to Fukushima, I mean, just
look at what's happening and know how many of
those there are. And here's the other issue,
you know, I've talked to people before and There's
this – I mean it's really funny how when you
subscribe to a certain ideology, whether it's
a liberal ideology or whether it's a conservative
ideology, you immediately adopt a series of beliefs
that go along with that. And one of them on the
right is that nuclear power is clean energy.
And my argument to that has always been we've
only had it for 60 years and look how many places
you can't even go anymore. I mean, Fukushima,
Chernobyl, what is it, Three Mile Island? Three
Mile Island. I don't know, Three Mile Island,
can you go there now? I wouldn't go there. It'd
be the best of those three, but we also have
the Whip Project in New Mexico. Yeah, the number
of places on Earth you can just simply no longer
go is growing. Places in Nevada where they just
bury the waste. Where they just bury the waste.
Hanford. It just had a huge collapse. So let's
put it this way. We now know how dangerous this
technology is. And we also know that what we
were told when it was invented, I mean, everything
we were told, we were told electricity too cheap
to meter for one thing. We were also told we'll
figure out what to do with the waste. Not true
and not true. Not true. And here's what's really
terrifying. I mean, every now and then we, you
know, they're digging in Mexico City and they
find some ancient Aztec ruins and they have to
stop construction because they didn't know it
was there. What the fuck happens if 100 years
from now they dig into the Nevada desert and
just tap right into a chamber of spent fuel rods
and kill everybody? Well, in fact, that's one
of the problems that they've tried to solve is
how do you make a sign for people, you know,
a thousand years in the future? How about 100
years? Right. We have no idea how you would warn
them off. Nor are these things stable. I mean,
the thing about the whip project in New Mexico
is that. This was supposed to be stable for thousands
of years, and we had this explosion that leaked
plutonium after decades. The thing was not stable
the way we were told it was. So anyway, we have
this terrible problem, and what to do with the
waste you've already got is obviously a huge
issue. Not making more of it would be a really
good idea. Yeah, and there have been some solutions
that someone... There was a really young kid,
I believe, that came out with some radical proposal
for taking the nuclear waste and converting it
into energy that could power cities for thousands
of years, whether or not it's viable. But, I
mean, it's totally possible. I mean, look, if
someone can come up with nuclear energy in the
first place, the ability to split an atom and
power a city. Maybe it is possible that someone
could figure out what to do with that way, some
new sort of radical approach to looking at it.
But you can't just leave it. No. You can't just
keep doing what we're doing over and over again
and hope that we don't make more spots where
you can't live. Well, I mean, the first thing
is. There is one thing we can do with it that's
better that we already have the technology to
do, and there's no excuse for not doing it, which
is that all of the stuff that's sitting in pools
that has to be actively cooled, after something
like five years, it can be put in dry cask storage,
which ain't perfect, but at least it doesn't
require some system to actively keep it from
boiling over. And doesn't need electricity in
order to cool it, which is the issue that happened
in Fukushima. And that's strictly a matter of
money, right? We could do that. tomorrow, we
could just require it. And we should because
it's vastly safer. We could also potentially,
there are ways to take the spent fuel and to
burn it down that does involve other kinds of
reactors. But ultimately, ultimately, I can't
understand why we have not made an immense investment
in fusion power. Were we to discover the ability
to make viable fusion power, which I believe
we know is possible. we not only would be able
to power civilization without warming the climate,
but we would also be able to pull carbon out
of the atmosphere if it turns out that we need
to do that. If you have effectively an unlimited
source of power, you can take carbon out of the
atmosphere and you could turn it into building
materials that were stable for thousands of years.
And the tiny amount that we spend on fusion research
is inexplicable to me. Yeah. We've gotten way
away from the original subject, but I think this
is all very important stuff. But I wanted to
talk to you about evolutionary biology. All right.
And being someone who teaches that and being
as that's your discipline and seeing all of these.
I mean, what is it like being a professor and
being someone who's studying this stuff and then
seeing all these weird traits and all these weird.
personality aspects demonstrate themselves in
these times of crisis, like seeing these situations.
You're talking about people. Yes. Well, that's
an interesting question. I have become fascinated.
I didn't start out studying people, but the longer
I proceed in evolutionary biology, the more interested
I am in people. And let's put it this way. Sometimes
something is surprising, but in general. If you
have the right tools to understand people at
an evolutionary level, things make a certain
amount of sense. I have something I say to students
frequently, which is if a situation is confusing
with people, very often it makes more sense if
you turn the sound all the way down so you can't
hear what they're actually saying. Because very
often what's being enacted between people isn't
really about the content of what they're saying.
It's about something else. And so let's take,
for example, My first project, when I was an
undergraduate, I was studying with a very famous
evolutionary biologist named Bob Trivers. And
I wrote a paper for his class, and it was about
the Holocaust. It was about the, really, I was
testing the question. At the time, it was relatively
commonplace to hear that Hitler was insane. And
something about that didn't ring true to me.
And I wanted to know, evolutionarily speaking,
was he insane? And in studying that question,
it became very clear that insane was the wrong
description, that he was a monster. But he was
a rational monster from the point of view of
advancing German genes. And that was a very troubling
discovery to me, that in effect, what he was
doing was, I mean, It's the worst thing imaginable.
But from the point of view of genes that are
attempting to spread across the globe and exclude
alternative genes from access to resources, it
was perfectly reasonable. Not only what he did
to Jews and homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses,
but the military plan. The future of Germany
lies in Russia. The idea was that this was actually
a sophisticated plan that would have advanced
the cause of spreading German genes spectacularly
had, frankly, so many million Russians not been
ready to give their lives to turn the German
war machine around. So what I'm saying, this
has to be dealt with carefully because people
hear you say that and they think that you're
justifying it. But, you know, I'm, of course,
a Jew. whose ancestors were from Europe. There's
no part of me that is in any way okay with what
happened. Quite the opposite. But understanding
that even though the Darwinism that Hitler was
deploying was deformed and not accurate and defensible
in a logical sense, the plan he was advancing
was German genes attempting to take over a larger
fraction of... the resources that planet Earth
has to offer than they had available to them
at that point in the 30s. So anyway, what I'm
trying to say is that there's something that
we often teach students first when we get to
them, which is called the naturalistic fallacy.
It means that just because something is true
doesn't mean it's good, that it ought to be true.
And so discovering the nature of something like
the Holocaust is very important in the sense
that it allows you to grapple with it logically,
but as you're grappling with it logically, people
want to imagine that you're saying it was okay,
and that's the opposite. There are many things
that are true for evolutionary reasons that are
completely unacceptable, and understanding what
those things are... gives you a pretty good shot
at preventing them from unfolding. It also really
is a problem when something becomes taboo to
even consider or to look at. You can't look at
the idea that he wasn't insane and that he was
in fact rational in rationalizing his horrific
acts. And that there was some sort of a plan
to it all. And you would say that even by enacting
that plan, you would be insane in terms of how
you think of the world and I think of the world.
Like if we found out that Jamie over here was
thinking about starting a master race and killing
everybody off, we would go, oh, Jamie's gone
insane. And to say, no, he's not insane, he has
a rational plan. Like immediately people would
want to justify any horrific thing they could
say about you. Yeah. Just to be clear, though,
Jamie is not doing that, right? Jamie's a good
guy. Fair enough. He likes sports. That's the
kind of takeover he's into. But having taboo
subjects or having things you cannot consider,
even if you're clearly not a racist person, even
if you're clearly not a person who advocates
genocide, the idea that intellectual discussions
cannot be pursued about specific topics. The
first thing, if you're going to go into evolutionary
biology, especially if you're going to get anywhere
near human beings, you have to really put aside
the idea of taboo in intellectual space. You
have to be able to consider everything because
so much of the story is, you know, it goes from
bizarre to horrifying. You know, there's also
great beauty. One of the important things to
remember is that the evolutionary, the adaptive
process, the adaptive evolutionary process gave
us not only our worst characteristics, our tendency
to war and to genocide and to oppression, but
it gave us our best characteristics to our capacity
to love, to empathize, to be compassionate, to
sacrifice for others. So all of those things
are. evolutionary products. And the message I
try to convey to people when I talk about this
is that we have to pick and choose which of the
evolutionary products we want to honor and preserve
and which of them we wish to bar from the landscape.
And this is really what civilization is about.
Civilization is about taking the whole spectrum
of things that we're capable of and providing
a landscape for the ones that are honorable and
good, and making the ones that aren't honorable
and good so expensive that nobody would consider
engaging in them. Now, when you're in the middle
of this crazy scenario that you find yourself
in, and what you know about evolutionary biology
and about the mechanisms behind human behavior
and... How do you get back to work? Well, I'm
lucky in that the freedom that Evergreen offers
me to teach what I want, how I want. You can
teach outside of the school? Well, I mean, you'd
be surprised. My contract doesn't even mention
biology. I can teach what I want. So you could
teach, like, football scores? I could teach dance.
Really? I mean, I'm not a good dancer, so I can't.
But I could teach. Pottery, it doesn't matter.
So what that means from my perspective is that
I'm able to take the stuff I'm intellectually
interested in and I'm able to make it my teaching
life as well. And that has worked beautifully.
I've really had a great time bringing students
in on what I think is the cutting edge of evolutionary.
theory, and many of them have rallied. So, you
know, it's a lot like having graduate students
who are deeply interested in the same material
and are able to play ball because, you know,
they take on the toolkit, they learn to use it.
And so anyway, my intellectual life is quite
rich, and it involves undergraduate students,
which is a pretty unusual thing, but it does
work pretty well. How do you get back to work
at your school, though? Oh, is that what you're
asking? Yeah. I mean, how does does that even
happen? It's a tough question. So you are confronted
with the very real possibility that your days
at Evergreen might be over. Well, there's a practical
question. I don't think they can fire me because
I haven't done anything wrong. Right. So that
means I can go back to work in the fall and I
don't have another plan. On the other hand –
You're saying in the fall. Your school – how
much longer does the semester have? Well, my
– You add in June or July? I unfortunately have
a conference that I have to – I mean, it's not
unfortunate that I have it, but I have a conference
that unfortunately interfaces with the end of
the quarter such that I had to wrap my program
up early. And I met with my program for the last
time yesterday after the campus had closed. We
met in the park again. You mean in the park?
Well, we weren't safe to be on campus, so we
started doing that as an alternative. How many
students? I'm supposed to have 25. I have 32.
So who are the extra ones? People who begged
to get into the program, and I couldn't turn
them away. Oh, you're a sweetie. Thank you. So
now you meet in the park. Are you worried that
someone's going to find out where you're meeting
and you won't be safe there? You know, I mean,
I don't go anywhere without thinking about it.
So, yes, I'm concerned about that. So it's really
gotten that crazy in your mind that you have
to worry if you're going to the supermarket or
you have to worry if you're... I never know what
I'm going to encounter. And, you know, I'm not
a big worrier on that front. I more or less feel
like if I encounter somebody, they're probably
going to be upset. A large number of them, actually,
I could probably talk to them and get somewhere.
On the other hand, given what people think is
true about me and what they think the rules are
with respect to what they are therefore entitled
to do, I don't know. I really don't know what
could happen. Wow. Well, what can be done or
what should be done about some of the... I don't
want to use the term crazy, but some of the more
rambunctious students that are a part of this.
I mean, it doesn't seem like they're going to
just change their behavior and go back to just
being a normal, inquisitive young person trying
to figure out the world. It's like they're so
embroiled in this ideology. It seems and they've
given them so much ground. It's like, how do
you stop this? And when you've held the fucking
president hostage and told him he can't go to
the bathroom without representatives of your
militant group watching him pee, where does it
go from there? Well, I should say, what I said
five, ten minutes ago probably sounded a little
utopian. I'm not a utopian. I think utopia might
be the worst idea humans ever had. So what I'm
saying should be understood. The worst? Worse
than the Holocaust? Well, I mean, the Holocaust
was utopian. I guess. It was, right? That was
the idea. So, yes, I think that. But most people
think of utopian as like some moment in time
where we're all sort of like, oh, what are we
doing? Let's work together. Let's all be nice.
Right. Well, people, I mean, you know, utopia.
They have utopian ideas of utopia. Yes. Well,
they have very impractical ideas. They think
they, A, they think they know enough about the
way things work to describe. a good state for
things to reach. And they tend to focus on one
thing that they want to make better and ignore
all of the harms that will come if they engage
in it. So anyway, I'm not a utopian. And what
I'm about to say about what could happen at Evergreen
is not utopian in nature. But I do think Evergreen,
as you described earlier, is really the tip of
something. What happened at Evergreen... is so
extreme and the way it looks to the world is
so preposterous that I do think, I do hope that
the academy is hitting bottom. That in seeing
this little preview of where these things go,
if they are allowed to evolve their own accord,
that people will wake up and they will realize,
actually, as hard as it is to challenge this
stuff, we have to do it because if we don't,
this is what happens. Now, that said, on our
campus, if we get rid of a few bad actors, starting
with the president, and we recognize that we
have ended up in some new landscape where up
is down, it is also possible that we could find...
We could find a new kind of common ground. Do
you think you could find a new common ground
with these students that are screaming in the
streets, hey, hey, ho, ho, these racist teachers
have got to go? I know this is going to sound
crazy, and some people are not going to understand
why when my family and students have been threatened,
I would even talk like this. And to be honest,
I understand why they would say that. But the
difference is... can you talk to them in a small
group of people where they could be reached because
indeed many of them are reachable or do you have
to talk to the entire mob in which case yes it's
absolutely impossible isn't it also a problem
in that when people dig their heels into the
sand and they decide that this is how things
are and then even when confronted with the possibility
they may have been incorrect or wrong or acted
irrationally it's very difficult for people to
admit that and reconcile and step back and maybe
just self -assess. Somebody has to blaze the
trail. In other words, I find myself accidentally
in the position of blazing a particular trail
of how do you stare down an accusation of racism.
So someone from that side has to blaze a trail.
Somebody from that side. To realize, hey, Brett
is the opposite of racist. We're being silly
here. We all have a common enemy, and a common
enemy is real racism. Ah, good. And, I mean,
this is why I said, recognizing that you have
been involved in a witch hunt. That's the moment
at which you either level up or you don't. When
you realize you've been engaged in a witch hunt,
that's the moment at which you can discover there's
something fundamental that's wrong in my program
somewhere that allowed that to happen. Maybe
that would be a subject that someone could teach
as a course, like how campus ideology goes amok.
Absolutely. How things go amok. It's not exactly
that, and it was planned long before this protest
erupted, but I'm scheduled next spring to teach
with another professor a program on essentially
the evolutionary origins of human violence. Wow.
So when you think about everything coming, do
you have like a vision in your mind about how
everything would sort of the dust will settle
and this president hopefully will either resign
or be forced out and then? What do you do with
these students that you looked at and they were
screaming at you, calling you a racist, telling
you to resign? Like, how do you deal with that
when you go back to school? Well, I mean, if
they were willing to listen, I could deal with
it. The thing that is, I think, hard to appreciate
from the outside a little bit is that because
I know that there's nothing to the accusation
and because so many students. know that there's
nothing to the accusation, it doesn't hurt in
the same way that it would if I had serious doubts
about myself in this regard. So if they were
to come around, you know, we could make it happen.
That said, that's not the direction things are
going. As of this morning, the internal list
of the faculty and staff was headed in exactly
the wrong direction what is the list like what
are they what are they trying to do well they
imagine that this entire catastrophe including
the closing of the campus yesterday and today
is the result of the i think it was six minutes
i spent on tucker carlson yeah you got on fox
news you summoned the demon i mean those airwaves
are immoral Yeah. Yeah. So have they literally
said that, that you should not have gone on Fox
News? Oh, that's beyond that. Their point is.
Here we go. Evergreen State faculty demand punishment
of white professor who refused to leave on anti
-white day. Oh, it's anti -white day. That's
even more interesting. Wow. It came out today.
It might have came out since we started the podcast,
too. I'm not sure when this hit. What is it?
The collegefix .com? This is describing what's
in the letter. The contents of the letter are
right here. I've been tweeted it a few times.
Make that a little larger for me. We acknowledge
that all of us have power within the institution.
who have power within the institution share responsibility
for the racist actions of others. Furthermore,
those of us who are white bear a particularly
large share of that responsibility. Oh, God.
We acknowledge that we have a great deal of work
to do in order to honor and live up to the demands
made by the student leaders. Oh, the students
are leaders. Oh, yeah. They're leaders. Like
how in Yale, the students that stared down the
professor and physically threatened him, they
were actually... They were given awards. Wasn't
one of them given some sort of an acknowledgment
of being a leader? We'll find that. Jamie will
find that. But we acknowledge we have a great
deal of work to do in order to honor and live
up to the demands made by the student leaders
during last week's protests. color focus groups
of 2014 through their participation in anchoring
the strategic equity plan for November in Cooper
Point Journal, blah, blah, blah. And we have
not yet truly listened and acted. We acknowledge
a student's right to protest and affirm President
Bridge's recent decision not to use the misguided
language of the current student context. What
is that? Current student conduct code to punish
the protesters? What is the language of the current
student conduct code? A, hell if I know, but
B, I believe what they're talking about is the
president said that students would not be held
accountable for disrupting my class. And then
I believe he agreed to their demand for student
authority over any changes to the conduct code.
So these students who are engaged in this. I
hope this is right. I don't want to say something
that's untrue. But my understanding was that
he agreed to that demand. We vehemently reject
the claim that students have been violent simply
because they have been loud and emphatic. There
is a difference between exercising the right
to freely voice an opinion and inciting violence.
And that difference has nothing to do with the
volume or forcefulness. That's not true. Because
they were upset that he was moving his hands.
They were calling that aggression. And now they're
saying that, on the other hand... Children can
scream. I'm calling them children from now on.
We support the demands made by students and honor
the positive institutional change they have already
achieved through their protests. That's hilarious.
Our most urgent demands below center on the safety
of those individuals who are currently most at
risk. I mean, like the professor? At the same
time, we acknowledge that in weeks and months
to come, our attention will need to turn to the
larger structural issues students have identified.
In solidarity with students, we commit ourselves
to Participating actively and self -critically
in the annual mandatory trainings specified in
the memorandum of understanding recently signed.
By the UF, what does UFE stand for? That's our
union, United Faculty of Evergreen. And management
bargaining teams holding each other accountable
when we act in racist ways against our colleagues
or our students. Okay, well then why don't you
hold yourself accountable that you acquiesced
to a fucking anti -white day? That's racist.
Right, but what's going to happen here is this
is going to be intolerable. re -education by
people who, frankly, it pains me to say it, but
they're the most racist people on the campus.
I mean, that's what this is. This is racism.
It just happens to be in an unfamiliar direction,
but it's racism. And they also are going to be
in charge of sensitivity training here, which
to me is the height of insanity. So scroll up
a little bit. In solidarity with students, we
call for the evergreen, this way, administration
to center. Student perspectives and a persistent
media approach. Gobbledygook. Approach to counter
the alt -right narratives that are demonizing
Evergreen. Okay, do you have an alt -right movement
at Evergreen? If I read that correctly, I am
now in the alt -right. Oh, you're an alt -righter.
I guess so. Are demonizing Evergreen and Day
of Absence specifically. Wow. Persistent media
approach. Is that you going on Tucker Carlson?
That must be it. So we have to break this down
like it's code. We're not even speaking English.
We're reading fucking hieroglyphs here. Persistent
media approach. Persistent media approach. Am
I alt -right? I might be. You are now. I might
be. People think I am because I've had alt -right
people on. But then conveniently, when I have
liberals on, I'm a fucking raging liberal. God
damn it. Take seriously the threats made to the
individual community members. Oh, aren't you
an individual community member? I think you're
about to get to me here. Use available institutional
resources to protect them. Demonstrate accountability
by pursuing a disciplinary investigation against
Brett Weinstein. According to guidelines in the
social contract and faculty handbook, Weinstein
has endangered. faculty, staffs, and students,
making them targets of white supremacist backlash
by promulgating misinformation in public emails,
on national television, in news outlets, and
on social media. That is a very, very broad...
You should sue. That's a hell of a bullet point,
huh? You should sue just for that. Yep. You have
endangered faculty, staff and students. You see,
the problem with that statement is someone can
just read that now and use that as a quote and
just start saying that as if it's fact. Well,
let's just let's just deal with this for a second.
Can we please? OK, so that is a very interesting
bullet point. The fact is, I have gone on media.
Media has come to me. What I have done is I have
pointed to. that the protesters themselves put
up that caused the world to say, what the hell
is going on at Evergreen? And this has resulted,
the entire thing has unfolded. I've been fighting
this for a year, trying to point out to my colleagues
that they were making terrible errors. This is
all the result of reforms put in motion by President
Bridges. So they are now blaming me. And I should
say, I do think there is jeopardy on the campus.
We had a threat yesterday from somebody. I have
no idea how serious it was. But I do believe
that there's jeopardy to people on our campus.
What specifically was the threat? Was it a threat
from a white supremacist group? Was it a threat
from a pro -protester group? It wasn't specific.
So all I can say is that I got what I was told
was a transcript of the call. I cannot vouch
for it because I don't have... access to, you
know, somebody could be promulgating a hoax.
I don't know. But what it said was that they
were coming to campus, I think, with a magnum,
and they were going to kill as many as they could,
is what they said. They do? We could play the
audio? Okay. Put your headphones on. Let's listen.
Let's hear it. Hello? Hello, dispatch, can I
help you? Yes, I'm on my way to Evergreen University
now with a .44 Magnum. I'm going to execute as
many people on that campus as I can get a hold
of. You have that? What's going on there, you
communist scumbag hound? I'm going to murder
as many people on that campus as I can. Sure.
Just keep your eyes open, scumbag. Okay. First
of all, A, that guy's full of shit. B, he's an
amateur. Right. Because 44 Magnum only holds
six rounds. Mostly, maybe five. Might even be
five rounds. Or is that a Desert Eagle? That
guy's a bullshit artist. 44 Magnum. You don't
specify the round that you're going to use. Nor
does that weapon make any sense. But nonetheless,
the point is... He's Dirty Harry. He thinks so.
Yeah, right. But, you know, I don't want to belittle
people's jeopardy. I have to say that he might
have been crazy and he might have actually been
really wanting to do that. And he could have
done right. And it could happen. And I, I think
the jeopardy to people on campus is real. And
I live right adjacent to campus. And I must tell
you, I brought my family with me because I don't
feel that they are safe there at the moment.
The question is, how is it? that we have reached
the point of deciding that this jeopardy is from
me. Well, that's horrific. What they've done
is so irresponsible in releasing that and making
it public. It's so irresponsible and so silly
that they don't realize that other people are
going to see through that so clearly. Misinformation?
Like what? Misinformation? What specifically?
They should be very specific. When they accuse
you of misinformation, they should be very specific.
If they're going so far as to say that you are
somehow or another summoning the alt -right and
making misinformation public on mass media, what
is that misinformation? Well, I know because
I've been watching the email traffic. Right.
So their claim. is that white people were not
asked to leave campus, that there were only 200
spaces in the venue off campus, and therefore
this was just supposed to be for a small subset
of people, which is nonsense. There were only
200 spaces if you wanted to go to the particular
seminars that they were holding, for example,
the one about why Asians were part of the problem.
So they had a seminar on Asians being a problem.
Or a presentation of some kind. That is really
racist. I believe so. But in any case, they are
conflating the 200 spaces off campus with what
was actually expected of us. And it was quite
clear. In fact, one of my staff colleagues. put
out an email. Boy, time has gone into some weird
thing, but I think it was last night in which
he detailed the several emails that we had seen
in which the school did ask white people to leave
for that day. So they are promoting falsehoods
themselves designed to obscure what's going on,
I think because they finally understood that
the world doesn't get... What they were doing.
Well, do they not understand that this is a trail
that's going to be released, like that this is
actual data and that this data when they accuse
you of misinformation and then you have all this
data and then you could just like release it
to everybody like, hey, this is the actual emails.
Clearly, this contradicts what you're saying.
It makes you a liar. Right. Several people, in
fact, many people have now started to refer to.
what's going on in the staff faculty zone here
as a cult. And I think, you know, on the one
hand, that could be tongue in cheek. On the other
hand, the mechanisms at work that have people
doubling down on absurdities rather than trying
to get on the right side of history as quickly
as possible, it is very cult -like. Again, you
asked me what would have to happen for us to
right the ship. The second one is that my faculty
colleagues have to wake up to the fact that their
belief structure is... has become bizarre and
unrecognizable from any normal position. And
very dangerous from the perspective of an educator.
If this is what an educated person who has gone
through the entire system and now has a job in
educating young people, if this is how you view
the world, and this is how you view facts, and
this is how you distort them and then disseminate
them. to the rest of these like -minded folks
in this very bizarre echo chamber that's being
rejected almost universally outside of the college.
I mean, it's not just Fox News it's rejecting.
It's the Washington Post. It's the New York Times.
People are freaking out about your situation
and recognize very clearly and very rightly that
you are absolutely not a racist. And this is
kind of a lot of what I've said to Jordan Peterson
when I had him on. They fucked with the wrong
person. Again, they fucked with the wrong person.
And this is one of the most horrific things about
what I find so troubling about what I think of
as – I used to think of myself as a progressive.
But what I have a problem with all of this is
that the left is attacking itself now. It's like
there's no one who's progressive enough. No one.
Like every single thing you do is a microaggression.
Every single thing you do is based on white privilege
and therefore you're racist. And unless you somehow
or another give up all your money and give up
all your jobs – and there are people who are
asking to do that too, by the way. There's people
asking people to give their money and put them
in black banks, give them to black people. I
mean we're going crazy. This is literally – It's
not an individual psychosis, but it's a collective
psychosis that we're watching. And I believe
that in literal terms. We are watching a kind
of group insanity. Is this a problem with language?
In some ways, is this a problem with influence
and charisma and people's ability to sort of
change the way others view the world with dramatic
interpretations of events? And things like emails,
where this is not a one -on -one debate. There's
a real problem with blogs and emails. And I've
talked about this several times, but it's worth
repeating. There's a real problem when someone
writes something like that specifically about
another person like you and just writes it, but
you're not there to respond. So they can write
as much stuff that's not true. And they can put
it all down and then it's there. And then someone
has to refute it, but it's still there. So you
don't even get to refute the actual document.
You write your own and then someone has to go
and read that at a different location. It's a
real weird way to distribute information. And
it's contrary to the way human beings rationally
discuss and debate ideas. Well, I would say there
are many. rules that are written into the way
we interact now that make it possible for this
to happen. So there was an instance where a faculty
member accused those that were challenging any
of these equity proposals as being part of a
racist backlash. And she was clearly talking
about me because I'm the most prominent person
objecting. Is this faculty member a white person?
No. So anyway, she says in a faculty meeting
that this is a racist backlash. And I said to
her in front of this faculty meeting, I said,
somebody might want to check on the question
of whether or not I'm actually a racist, because
if you do check on it, you will discover I'm
not. And if you don't, this is going to blow
up on you. And the chair of the faculty told
me that the faculty meeting was not the place
to defend myself against accusations of racism.
I said to her, That's fine. It's also not the
place to level the accusations. But I said, where
is the place? And then the faculty member who
had made the accusation said, you should not
expect there to be a venue in which to defend
yourself. You should just get used to these accusations.
In a separate case, I was told. Who said that?
A white guy? No, it's the same faculty member
who made the accusation. Wait a minute. The person
said that you should just accept these untrue
accusations. Yes. And what was your reaction
to that? That this is not a place for you to
defend yourself against racist accusations. This
is a place for you to just eat shit. Right. You
just have to accept these accusations. On a separate
occasion, we were also told that to question
an allegation of racism is racist. Oh. So convenient.
Yeah. Try to wrap your mind around that one.
To question an accusation of racism is racist.
Right. We have an obligation to believe them.
Wow. I know. I know. Wait a minute. How? That
is crazy. That is like that is such stupid back
ass words thinking it. You know, it's it's what
the. Cult mentality sounds like inside. It doesn't
understand that when you say that to an outsider,
you know, it simply doesn't add up. Or it's creating
a structure that makes it impossible to defend
yourself because these accusations are so preposterous
that they realize that they have to have some
sort of a bizarro world structure. Absolutely.
Oh, my God. So what does this person teach? They
teach media. How ironic. Right. They teach media.
They are currently running a program where she's
teaching students to make documentaries. And
that program, one of the students in the program
filed a public records request. Since we are
a public college, you can request the emails
of faculty and staff if you want them. And so
she had a student file a public records request
for my email to make a documentary in her program.
So you've got one faculty member searching another
faculty member's email through a student looking
for evidence of I don't know what. Evidence of
racism. Well, presumably. Yeah, God. Yes. What
little half of a sentence is she's going to cut
out a contest with a few dot, dot, dots afterwards?
I mean, in fact, if you can separate my letters
from each other and reorganize them, I could
have said all kinds of things. Well, I think
you should have a student ask for... the emails
that came from her, I bet they'd be wonderful.
They could be very interesting. I bet they'd
be wonderful. If she's telling you that you shouldn't
have a venue to defend yourself and you should
just accept the fact that you're going to be
called a race, that the idea that she can call
you a racist in a meeting, but you defending
yourself against racism is not, it's, it's not
the place for that. It's not the place for it.
And in fact, this whole exchange took place with
the president of the college and the provost
sitting there. And what does he do? Silently.
Didn't say a word. Did he move his hands? That's
a really good question. I don't remember him
moving his hands. I do remember him not releasing
an email after that meeting saying that, in fact,
on accusations of racism without evidence will
not be tolerated. Well, that's pretty goddamn
important. It's pretty goddamn important. And
you just can't just there's there's certain hot
topics that. You just got to leave alone when
someone levels an accusation. This is the current
progressive mindset. The current, like, PC gone
awry mindset. Yeah. It's fucking crazy. Crazy.
We're all even. We're all human. That's it. I
don't give a shit where you're from. I don't
care if you're from your ancestors or from one
part of the planet or right next door. It does
not matter. It's who you are. And as soon as
you try to gain some sort of a leverage position
because of the fact that you think that you have
suffered more oppression in your family's ancestral
history, we're way off track. We're way off track.
The track should be equality today. That should
be where we're all on this. And as soon as someone
says you're a racist, but you can't. You can't
defend yourself. Well, then we don't have equality
anymore, man. You're trying to have anti -equality
in order to bring equality to people that have
been treated unethically? Is that what it is?
You're absolutely right. It's structural inequity,
which is the irony of the whole thing, is that
people who were wrapped in the flag of equity,
I challenged them because I believe in actual
equity, and I was... accused of being a racist
for doing it. But it also sounds like intellectual
poverty too. It's like the actual structure of
the thoughts that they're presenting are so poorly
worded and so it's so poorly thought out and
you're not allowed to defend against it. Well,
that's what I was saying about the difference
in assumptions and beliefs between the postmodern
disciplines and, dare I say, the actual disciplines.
In the postmodern disciplines, the illogic of
those arguments doesn't matter because logic
isn't a thing. It's a tool of oppression. Well,
that's a cute way to just... Yeah. Throw a monkey
wrench into the gears. Clank. That's exactly
what it is. And what do they want to achieve
out of this? They just want to achieve all black
professors and all white people on their knees
as slaves. I mean, what is that? What is the
ultimate goal? You know, just people running
around fetching power adapters. Yeah. I mean,
I have to again, I want to be really careful.
Most most people of color, most black people.
Hold no truck with this. They don't want this.
But a tiny number who do want this or maybe think
they want it until they see what it looks like
are writing the narrative. And that can't be.
They're going to undo the civil rights movement.
And that can't be allowed. Well, not only that,
the real problem with any of this really crazy
shit is that it gives fuel to actual racists.
And then it makes actual racists think that these
people that are involved in these protests, as
misguided as they are, it makes them think that,
see, look, we told you that these people are
bad. See, look, we told you that there's a reason
why they're inferior. And it just as soon as
you as soon as you open the door to that, like
you have real problems. Yeah, this plays right
into the cartoonish fantasies of the absurd left
that the right believes in, which is a tragedy.
It is a tragedy. But I will say there's a positive
outgrowth of this, I think, which is if I look
in my various inboxes at the stuff that's coming
in from people that I've never heard of before,
this wake -up call is uniting people across every
known fault line. So I'm getting letters from
religious people, from very conservative people,
from very progressive people. Every known fault
line is cut by this, and people are galvanized
by seeing something that doesn't fit any narrative
they've seen before. That is to say, staring
down an accusation like this is not common. Watching
it stared down and the world not fall apart is...
And then, you know, you mentioned it yourself,
to have the Wall Street Journal and the New York
Times on the same page about this, that's pretty
interesting. So I do hope that what emerges from
this is that all of the coalitions that exist
will look at themselves and will recognize that
they have, you know, maybe not every coalition
has a noble part, but all of the ones that have
a noble part will understand that it's paired
with something that isn't noble. I'm hoping that
people who find themselves ill -served by the
narrative will join together and that basically,
you know, a coalition of the reasonable might
emerge. Well, that's a beautiful hope. And I
share that hope with you. I mean, I really hope
that what's happening is that in these insulated
environments of these universities and colleges
where things just get crazy, that when word leaks
out that they get crazy, it's very much like
cults. When you hear about Jonestown, you're
like, hey man, don't drink the fucking Kool -Aid.
Something's going on down there. But these group
mindsets that people fall into. You know, oftentimes
when you're in the hive and you're in the middle
of it, it can all be very, very confusing. My
hope is that as more people find out about the
preposterous behavior that's going on in these
universities and colleges and how people are.
I mean, these are young people that. don't have
a fully formed frontal cortex and are about to
enter into the world. And they're doing this
with this ridiculous momentum of these silly
ideas. And there's people that want to enforce
that more and more. And that these people, some
of them are actually professors at the very college
where this is going on. I mean, that to me is
one of the weirder aspects of it. And one of
the things that scares people a lot. It's the
idea that these people are going to live in these
insulated environments and then they're going
to go and get their graduate degree and then
they're going to start teaching. And then they're
going to go right back with these same ideas
in this insulated environment and never really
go out into the world where the marketplace of
ideas has roundly rejected a lot of these notions
that they're trying to pass off through logic
and debate and actual discourse. Not through
shutting people down because of the color of
their skin or lack of or excess amount of melanin.
I mean that's not – That's not how human beings
should be behaving in 2017. It's just not. So
when you see it so evident and so prominent and
so commonplace in universities and colleges,
there's so many people on the outside looking
back, looking in at this rather, are baffled
and for the first time enraged. Well, I think
what you just described is exactly how this happened.
The critical race theorists and the postmodernists
are, you know, third generation by now. And so
this has matured into a movement that wishes
to reformulate the world according to what it
thinks it understands. But it's so confused about
the nature of reality that it's just hard to
even describe how preposterous it looks as it...
Because they go from being at the university
to eventually teaching at that same university.
Well, it doesn't have to be the same one. Or
a. Yeah, they come to maturity inside a field
where these things sound reasonable. And then
they go on to teach them to students. And so,
you know, the intensity and absurdity grows with
each of those generations. And I think had they
been exposed to. The real world in the context
of having to make sense in order to make a living,
which, you know, I'm not a big fan of capitalism,
but nonetheless, just even having to interface
with the world and make enough sense to get by
would enforce a kind of mental discipline that
is not evident here. Yeah, mental discipline
is a good way to describe it, too. I mean, it
just it seems like like the idea that. Not only
should there not be a level playing field, but
you should force a playing field that's not level.
Permanently not level. Yeah. It's crazy. And
obviously the world agrees, or a good percentage
of it. It's not even, I mean, I'm sure there's
some bias in who writes and who doesn't, but
I would actually imagine there'd be some pressure
if you were really angry with me out in the world
to write to me. And I don't know, I must have
a thousand, highly supportive emails, all kinds
of emails from amazing, interesting people all
over the world now. And a few angry emails. And
I think, I don't know if it's three or four angry
emails and two of them come from inside the college.
Yeah, I'm sure. Some of them must be some of
the professors that realize that this is a fucking
sinking ship that's on fire. You can't keep doing
that. This is not going to end well. You can't
double down. That's what they keep doing. Well,
they keep double down. So what happens now? Do
you just wait for the dust to settle? I don't
know. This has never happened to you before.
This is a very unique moment in your life. Completely.
How old are you? I'm 48. So your whole life,
essentially... Well, we should be careful there.
There have actually been a number... Nothing
like this has ever happened. The intensity of
this, the national nature of it is all completely
unprecedented, and it's pushing both me and my
wife to our absolute limit of what we can do,
just even fielding all of the stuff that is coming
across our desks and all. That said, there is
a precedent. when I was a freshman in college,
and I've had battles inside of my field. And
so what I would say is that when one has deep
principles and one acts based on those principles,
irrespective of the, I guess what would be called
optics, you find yourself the one against the
many. repeatedly, just by virtue of the way the
world works. And so this is without precedent
in terms of the magnitude of it. But it's not
the first time that I've found that just simply
proceeding from principles that I'm pretty sure
are right based on careful work has resulted
in something boiling over in some amazing fashion.
Have you explored the possibility of teaching
outside of a university or college structure?
Have you explored the possibility of using new
media, whether it's online video, audio, text,
in terms of publishing things and maybe having
a Patreon page or something along those lines?
Well, I would love to do it, actually, because
at the moment, the college has been a great place
to do this because of the unusual teaching model.
It's becoming less fun. I mean, even if I wasn't
at the center of this firestorm, the rules that
are being instituted and the diversity sensitivity
training that's coming and all of those things.
What is that? What do they make you do? Well,
they haven't done it yet. You need to learn how
to not be racist. Right. So they have to assume
that you have these issues in the first place.
Right. So they, first of all, why would they
ever hire you if they thought that you were discriminatory?
And then second, what is going to be done? Has
it ever been proven ever that you can change
people through compulsory remapping of their
brain and anti -racist? Some sort of a, what
is it? It's like a two -day seminar thing? Something
like that. Well, the thing is, none of this makes
any sense because let's say this. Let's say that
all white people pick up racism from their environment
developmentally. They can't help it. So we know
you're a racist. Wow. Okay. Well, if we know
you're a racist, then what's the remedy? Okay.
The remedy is going to be some sort of sensitivity
training. But if sensitivity training works,
then how do you know I haven't already had experiences
that have done this for me? How do you know?
Right. Right. So the whole thing is illogical.
And frankly, I think it's punitive. I think I
think the real purpose is we would like to lecture
you. Yeah. So like that, in answer to your question
about have I considered working outside the college
system, I've considered it. The real question
is how to operationalize it so that I don't.
strand my family because evergreen um provides
a very high quality of life we live well in a
you know beautiful setting but doesn't pay well
so we haven't accumulated the resources where
i can just um cut the umbilical cord and go take
this stuff to a different audience so um i would
love to find a different way to do it isn't there
a way to do it in the meanwhile like you don't
have to leave one to do the other Well, that's
certainly true. And I wouldn't be averse to starting
something like that while teaching at Evergreen.
I really hope you do, because I think you have
some really interesting ideas and you're a very
smart guy. And obviously your heart, your mind
is in the right place. And it seems like before
all this boiled over with this new president.
Things were going the way you would enjoy them
going, this individualized attention, the freedom
to teach anything you want. I mean, it sounds
wonderful in the hands of the right person, and
you seem to be the right person. It's beautiful.
Yeah. I just feel like the whole idea of going
to a place and learning, I mean, it sounded like
a great idea back when that was how it had to
be done, but it doesn't take into account the
wonderful Internet that we all have. The ability
that you have now with this platform, with the
amount of attention that's on you right now to
launch something is really you're never going
to have anything like this ever again in your
life. Hopefully. Yeah. From your mouth to God's
ear. You know? Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll take that
as a piece of advice. This is the moment to launch
such a thing. Listen, do it. I'll help you. I'll
promote it. I'll tweet it. I'll put it on Instagram.
I'll put it on Facebook. I'll let people know.
Wow. Thank you. Yeah. It's just. I think that's
the future. I think the future is people educating
anybody, like anybody who wants it, whether you're
here or there. You don't have to be in a specific
location. Maybe a lot of this can be overcome
if we don't have these groups of people that
live in these echo chambers and constantly circulate
in these same groups that reinforce these opinions
and experience all this confirmation bias that
makes them. believe that this is all correct
and the rest of the world is just misinformed
and don't understand. But clearly by that email,
a big problem is the staff itself. Yeah, I don't
want to say the staff. Or whoever. The administrators
and some faculty. They're crazy. They are crazy.
Calling you alt -right or saying this is alt
-right and that you're racist and misinformation.
I mean, that is... That's slander. I mean, it
really is. Yeah. Well, it's slander. It's also
I think it's just worth pointing out kind of
funny. Yeah. I mean, they should have something
to back those claims up. Those are just empty
claims. They're beyond empty claims. I mean,
you know, I'm a Bernie Sanders voter. If I'm
all right. I mean, where are they? Yeah. Tucker
Carlson tried to say you were a Hillary supporter.
I was like, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. What
did you just say about me? Man. It's just, have
you thought about contacting an attorney? I am
getting offers and people are contacting me saying
I should. You should. As long as they keep that
guy as president, you should definitely contact
an attorney. And if they're going to put shit
like that on the Internet, because for every
person like me who reads it and goes, this is
nonsense, there's going to be a possibility of
someone reading it and go, oh, that Brett Weinstein
guy is a racist. Oh, that Brett Weinstein guy
is alt -right. Oh, he uses misinformation in
the media and he's actively sought out this attention
and he's doing this to damage. the relationship
with the schools he's doing this out of spite
because he was called out for being a racist
and we have this professor who says he's a racist
and she said it to his face and he didn't defend
himself i mean all that kind of shit that's how
it boils over yep no i mean it's clearly it's
clearly justified and they won't listen to anything
else i've tried everything else so Maybe that's
just simply the answer. I really hope you do
something alternative. I really do. Because I
think if someone like you who has this unprecedented
platform where you have been launched into the
public eye because so many people are outraged
about this. I know you were on my friend Dave
Rubin's show, and I'm sure there's going to be
a thousand other requests after people hear this
as well. People don't want this to be the case
anymore, and they want to do whatever they can
to stop that. And they also want to support people
that are brilliant people like yourself that
have wonderful ideas that we would like our kids
to learn if they do go to college somewhere.
We'd like people to be educated in these unique
facets of the world and have a platform where
you could teach evolutionary biology unhindered
and unshackled by this. fucking nonsense that
you're dealing with. Garbage. Yeah, well, it's
a great idea. And, you know, I don't know. It
may be that the... university system is so encrusted
with this stuff at this point that it can't be
freed? That's what Jordan Peterson thinks. I've
talked to quite a few other professors that think
that as well. Gad Saad, he believes it as well.
He believes there's just a certain amount of
time left in this system where it's just so caked
up that maybe the only way to deal with it is
to abandon it. Well, and then we would have to
reformulate it. Yes. Which would be, you know,
unlike civilization, the university system could
be reformulated. We could start with a fresh
sheet of paper. And it's probably very dangerous
to not have a university system. You can't not
have it. Right. You have to. It's the way we
figure out what's true. Right. And there's got
to be a way to save it while cutting out all
these cancerous aspects of it. Or start it afresh.
You know, we could leave the carcass to the postmodernists.
build something that works outside where we don't
have to let them in. And then there'll be a whole
group of people just talking about what a piece
of shit you are that's locked in some classroom
somewhere demonstrating all the different terrible
things that you've done to bring horrible things
upon the college. It's just, boy, it's such a
strange world you're in right now. It is really,
it's almost more dreamlike than dreams are. Are
you sleeping? That's a good question. Usually
I sleep pretty well. This one, I mean, partly
it's just the number of hours trying to field
everything means I go to bed late and then, you
know, by the time the sun comes up, the question
is how much more stuff is accumulated. So less
than I might. I don't, I guess the thing is I'm
worried about what's going on. I'm worried about
the danger to my family. That gets in the road
of sleep. I know that what I'm doing makes sense,
even if. My colleagues don't understand that.
So I'm not getting enough sleep, that's for sure.
But I'm also not ripped apart by doubt. Well,
you've done nothing wrong. So you don't have
that blanket of guilt. Like, why did I do that?
What could I have done differently? Right. You
know, you're not. You're not Kathy Griffin right
now. No. You know what I mean? So I really hope
this works out well for you, and I'll be paying
attention every step of the way. And my offer
is real. If you need some help, if you decide
to put something together and you need some help
promoting it, I'd be more than happy to. And
I'm sure there's been a lot of people listening
to this that would love to hear your ideas on
things. Great. Well, thank you so much. Thanks,
man. Thanks for coming in here. All right. I
really appreciate it. Yeah, me too. That's it,
folks. We're done for today. We'll see you next
week. Bye.