https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=5Cc-mnHWSqA
So man, maybe you could start with what happened at evergreen. Although I suspect many of the people watching this do know That does that seem reasonable? Sure. Yeah, we can we can start there. I think we should Probably Air in the direction of being Sparse with the details and see where it leads us. Yeah so in 2017 I was teaching at evergreen as was Heather my wife and She was literally evergreen’s most popular professor. I wasn’t too far behind I was very popular as well our classes were always over full and we accepted more people than we had to and had to turn some away anyway and Then in actually 2016 the new president of the college George Bridges began an initiative or a set of initiatives surrounding diversity equity and inclusion and These initiatives included the empaneling of a committee that was supposed to look into Racism at the college its impacts and to propose solutions and As it became clear what they were alleging and proposing Heather and I became very alarmed and I began to speak out at first in Faculty meetings and then when the ability to speak out in faculty meetings became Non-existent I took to our faculty and staff email list to talk about the threat to the college that was created by these initiatives and that of course brought about exactly what you would imagine which were accusations that I was motivated by some kind of racism or white supremacy or white fragility or who knows what the accusations were exactly but in any case I fought back anyway, and my sense was I had tenure and I was well liked and I was well known at the college. I had been there for 14 years and so I didn’t think they had the power to To get rid of me and that gave me the ability to say what needed to be said about these proposals Well, the upshot is that ultimately protesters 50 students that I had never met Showed up at my classroom accused me of racism demanded that I either be fired or resign. I told them I wouldn’t and riots broke out at the college in which Faculty and administrators were kidnapped. I was apparently hunted car-to-car on campus by protesters the police were stood down by the college president and We were basically left to fend for ourselves with student patrols roving the campus with weapons baseball bats and the like so it was a chaotic scene there was a lot of interest in it because it was very colorful, but of course most people back in 2017 dismissed this as Yes an overreaction, but you know how college students are and those of us who saw it up close knew that that couldn’t be the case that it would ultimately spill out into civilization and We of course were right and now it’s everywhere we see it taking over institution after institution In the US and Canada, we see it making tremendous strides in Government and there’s no telling where it ends and what is I? Have a bunch of questions that come out of that So I’m gonna lay out three why in the world did this bother you enough so that you took a stand? Especially given your political leanings Because you were which I’m not criticizing by the way. I’m just stating that it isn’t obvious To begin with why it would be you that would take a stand say right now Why it would be you that would take a stand say rather than someone else, but you did and so I’m curious about why and What is it that you saw coming and what is this it that you’re referring to you’ve had a lot of Time to be thinking about this now. It’s been four years And I mean you’re and the other thing I want to ask you about is your life was thrown Completely upside down you and your wife You don’t have your job at the university anymore either of you despite the fact that you were tenured professors It’s not an easy thing to get another toehold in academia once you’ve been a tenured professor somewhere Especially if you’ve gone through what you went through because no hiring committee anywhere is going to give you any consideration once you’ve been Once you’ve been tarred by scandal regardless of what your role in it was They’re far too conservative to ever do anything like that. And so okay, so let’s I Don’t know if I can remember the order in which I I asked those questions But the far I think the first one was why in the world did you why in the world were you compelled to? To object to object and what is it that you were objecting to do you think? Well, it’s a funny a funny question for you to pose to me because I have the feeling that the answer will be entirely Native to you. I literally don’t believe I had any choice People frequently ask me why I stood up and my sense is if I think through the alternative I Simply can’t live with it. I can’t sleep. Yeah, but that doesn’t seem to bother most people so I don’t get that like why why you Well, right. I mean, I guess that’s the the thing I’m discovering So you alluded to my political leanings and you and I both know what you mean by that I’m a liberal and I would actually I describe myself sometimes as a Reluctant radical By that I mean that I believe we must engage in radical change if we are to survive as a species But I also know that radical change is very dangerous And so it’s not like you know, I find most people who would call themselves radicals Feel like radical change is always called for and I don’t my my sense is I hope to see change That makes Civilization good enough that I get to be a conservative that I get to say actually we’re doing so well That we have no choice but to preserve this if we try to improve it will mess it up That’s where I want to go. But what I’m discovering is that the bedrock of my liberalism is nothing like the Underpinnings of the so-called liberalism of most of the people on the left side of the political spectrum my liberalism comes from a sense that yes compassion is a Virtue but that policy must be based on a dispassionate analysis of problems It is based on an understanding that there that the magic of the West comes from a tension Between those who aspire to change things from the better for the better and those who recognize the danger of changing them at all and and so in any case, I think the short answer is we look around the world and everybody makes Arguments that sound as if they come from first principles, but most people do not arrive at conclusions from first principles If they extrapolate at all, they don’t do it very well and that results in Severe compartmentalization of thought and that means that when confronted with Changes that threaten a system on which we are dependent Most people don’t recognize it and if they do recognize that they wouldn’t know what to do about it. So How can I how can I put it in in plain terms I had no choice because I was as if on a ship Where somebody had proposed to fix our course through a field of icebergs And navigate based on some absurd theory with no grounding in fact Somebody had to object and I was a little surprised At how few and far between the objectors were But you know if I’m to be totally candid about it at the point that things went haywire at evergreen I had watched video of you reacting to protesters in Toronto and It had made so much sense to me at a number of different levels You know, I recognized you as somebody who knew that although The initial proposals were arguably symbolic that they were connected to things that ultimately were very much about an exercise of power and A transfer of well-being and that it was therefore You know you felt obligated to stand up and say no which resulted as you know better than anyone in you being Mocked for overreacting and then here we are Years later and it turns out that you saw with absolute clarity what others couldn’t even imagine