 I want to talk about Reed College. Reed College is one of the top colleges in the country. It produces more PhDs in the humanities, I think, than any other college in the United States. Let me see if I got that statistic right. But yeah, it's one of the top humanities projects, right? So it's ranked second, no, not first, a second for future PhDs in the humanities and fourth in all of the subjects. It's also, it's also, and this should tell you a lot about this, the most left-wing liberal student body. So it's considered to have the most left-wing liberal student body. Now that should tell you something about future professors. If this college produces ranked second for future PhDs, so these are going to be influential PhDs, which means teachers. And they start off before they even get to college. It's the most liberal. And then you'll hear what's happening over there. You'll get a sense of what the future of America is going to look like in terms of education, in terms of what the education is. So there's a lot to say about Reed College because a lot has been happening most recently. There's been a sit-in. Remember the sit-ins that students used to do in the 1960s where there's a sitting sit-in? Basically, students have occupied the administrative building now for 11 days. They're rotating 40, 50 students at a time sitting in and occupying the administrative building. The school has actually had to close down its finance office. It's actually had to move sensitive documents to a new location. Of course, the one thing that the administration is not considering is bringing the police and dragging these students out and maybe putting them in jail. That would be, that would be a suit of, and that would be violent and oh my god, you can't do that. The sit-in is organized by a group called Reedies, Reedies from Reed, against racism. Reedies against racism as if anybody from Reed is not against racism, as if we're not all claiming to be against racism. We'll see how against racism they really are in a minute, but not only are they sitting in, but they are abusing staff members. They're harassing staff members. And what is the administration doing about it? Nothing. Now, why are they sitting in? Why are they sitting in? They're sitting in to protest the fact that Reed College has a business relationship with Wells Fargo, who is considered an unethical bank. And why is it considered an unethical bank? Because I guess it has some corporate partnerships, corporate partnership with private prisons and with the Dakota Access Pipeline. So when I talk about, I don't know, Wells Fargo funding terrorism or Wells Fargo, I don't know, even being, I can't even think what could be incredibly horrific. No, they have a relationship with private prisons and they have some kind of business relationship with the Dakota Pipeline. And for that, staff members are being harassed, physically threatened. For that, the administrative building, parts of the administration to be shut down. And, you know, this is what the Reedys for racism against racism, although the name should be Reedys for racism, we'll get to that in a little while. I'll just give you, you know, it's just unbelievable. You know, they claim that the relationship that the school has with Wells Fargo is racist and that it harms brown students and black students and creates potential for the system to be continuously perpetuated, the system of racism, institutionalized racism. Why? Because Wells Fargo has a business relationship with private prisons and the Dakota Access Pipeline. How does that have any impact on brown and black students? Nobody says, I guess because brown and blacks are disproportionately in the prison system or something like that. I don't explain it, right? They don't have to explain it. They declared Wells Fargo as a racist organization and therefore having to do anything with them is banned. And all they have to do is declare it. Any explanation would be oppressive to them. And I'll explain why any explanation would be oppressive to them. These people don't have to explain anything. I've just got started in Reed College because it's just amazing what's going on there. The sit-in is the least of what's happening. This, Reedies Against Racism, which was founded a couple of years ago, actually last year on September 26, 2016. It was a response to the police shootings and a Facebook post. Everything's a response to Facebook post. I think our lives revolve these days just around Facebook posts. But it was a post by actor Isaiah Washington who urged, quote, every single African American in the United States that was really fed up with being angry, sad, and disgusted. So rise up. Make your voices heard. So a response on Reed was the creation of Reedies Against Racism. And they boycotted classes for one day and then they put out 25 demands on that date. And the number one demand that they had was reforming a class that every freshman at Reed College has to take. It's called Humanities 110. This is a year-long course that all freshmen take together. And it has both classes taught by professors and then small breakout classes where the students learn how to discuss, debate, and defend their readings. There's some quoting out of Reed's kind of manual on this. The Humanities 110 class is basically a Western civilization class. It is a class about the foundations and the basis of Western civilization, or of liberal humanities thinking. And here I use the word liberal, not in the modern sense to denote crazy leftists, but in the traditional sense of, you know, Western liberal freedom, market kind of view of individual liberty. That's what liberalism used to mean. So they defined Reedies Against Racism, defined this class as a racist class. Why? Why? Because they were reading Greeks, and they were reading Potions and Mesopotamians and Egyptians, right? So the text includes Mediterranean, Mesopotamian, Persia, and Egyptian readings. And they decided that this was Eucentric, Caucasoid. I didn't even know that was a word. And as a consequence, oppressive. It was offensive to students of color. One of these Reedies Against Racism quotes the saying, it feels like a cool test for students of color. It traumatized my peers. They're traumatized by reading Plato. They're traumatized by reading Aristotle. And they have demanded that the syllabus be redesigned to include, of course, more readings from more different parts of the world. Now, the fact is that the fact is that this part of the world, Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, and primarily Greece, is where most of human knowledge originates from. It's the place where writing, mathematics, science, logic were discovered, invented. This is where civilization comes from. The fact is that in sub-Saharan Africa, there is no civilization, was no civilization. The fact is that in, you know, there's Chinese, there's civilization in China, which is worth, I guess, studying. But this is about Western civilization. This is about the world in which we live. And indeed, even China today is much more Western than it is. It's much more rooted in ideas of the West than it is rooted in ideas that come from Chinese civilization. So the most important ideas that we understand today are Western ideas. Now, Western ideas happen to be the best ideas. And let's define what best means. Best means consistent with human nature. Best means consistent with human flourishing, with human success, with human prosperity, with human freedom. Those are the right ideas to be studied. Good for humanities 110. Good for Reed College having a course on Western civilization. Indeed, some universities, some universities don't have a course on Western civilization because of opposition from either faculty or students. So here's Reed College, one of the most liberal colleges in the country, actually teaching students about Greek civilization, getting students to read the priestocratics and Plato and Aristotle and the great plays and studying the art of the Greeks. These are the foundational ideas that all humanity benefits from no matter what skin color you have, no matter what your ethnic origin is, no matter where you come from. The only good ideas, the only pro-life, the only pro-human flourishing ideas come from this Western tradition. They come from, they originate with the Greeks. The Greek philosophy, philosophy was discovered as a field of human study by the Greeks. No, this is racist. I don't even know that the Greeks, the original Greeks were whites in a sense that we understand that term today. I don't know what white even means, but you know, because it's a complete fiction, the exact genetic makeup of the Greek, of the historical Greeks is not the same makeup the Greeks today. Who knows? They're probably an Asian tribe, somewhere from Central Asia. But who cares? Who knows? What differences they make? You're not studying their genetic makeup. You're studying their ideas. Ideas are not racial. Ideas are not genetic. Ideas are not about ethnicity. This is why I say, Reedies against racism are really Reedies for racism. They are racists because any attempt to identify the ideas of a person with this race, not study certain ideas because of the race of that person, not study Aristotle because he was so-called supposedly white, is racist. Any attempt to place race as a primary or as important in any way is racist. Racism is the primitive, barbaric, collectivistic idea that says that what defines you is not your character, what defines you is not your ideas, what defines you is not who you are and what you are as a human being, but what defines you is your genetics. It's a disgusting ideology. It's a disgusting ideology that these leftist students have completely, utterly, unapologetically embraced in totality. I cannot think of more racist people today than these. Now, they are racists on the right as well, but these racists make those racists on the right in many ways possible. All right, so they oppose this humanities class and they have, they've occupied the building and they occupied libraries and they've disrupted class more than 60 times. We're going to take, we've got the news break coming up here, so I'm not going to get too far into this, but when we come back from the break, I want to go deeper into what they're actually doing, how they're intimidating faculty members, intimidating students, they're using violence, how they're taking over classes and what they're doing to disrupt these classes. It's fascinating and disgusting at the same time. So we were talking about these students at Reed College, one of the most liberal colleges in the United States, but a place that trains many of the PhDs of the future, many of our teachers in the future, a place that is considered maybe the most liberal college in the United States. And it has, it has this group, Reedies Against Racism, which I would argue who are real, the real racists in the story. Anyway, at Reed College, they have a course called Humanities 110. It sounds like a pretty good course. I mean, I'm tempted, I'd like to sit in, although my guess is that it's being taught by very, very left-wing professors. So the content, I would probably be pretty upset, but content, although they claim they encourage debate. I wonder, I wonder if somebody challenges the professors on some of what they say, whether they would, whether they would actually be open to that debate. I don't know, and I don't want to judge them. Maybe they're great, right? But this Reedies Against Racism wants to shut down this course. And what it's done is it's disrupted the classroom 60 times. Mostly last year, their school years just started this year. And what did they do? How did they disrupt the class? We'll get to what they did this year, but how did they disrupt the class? What they do is, and I've seen pictures of this. It's pretty wild. The professor standing at the podium kind of lecturing. And what the Reedies Against Racism do is they all, they sit right next to the professor up front in the class, facing the students with big signs. The signs say, we demand space for students of color. Well, I think they have space. They're right there. I don't know what that means, right? We demand space for students of color. Oh, we cannot be erased. Who wants to erase you? Who's trying? I mean, F, humanities 110, lots of vulgarities that I can't say on the radio, lots of vulgarities, right? Stop silencing black and brown voices. The rest of society is already standing on their necks and on and on and on. Just signs. And of course, many of the signs have photos of black Americans who've been killed by police. So this is in front of the class. Your professor, I've been a professor, standing on the stage, standing by the podium, trying to lecture, and you've got these students waving things. And you're a student, more importantly, you're a student trying to learn. And he's a freshman. This is their first encounter with class at a college level. And they're standing there and they want to learn. And instead of actually having an opportunity to listen to professor talk about Greece and the birthplace of civilization and maybe even talk about Rome, instead of that, they can hear the professor, but they're constantly distracted by these signs in their face. And by these messages that mean nothing other than to obstruct. And this is the learning environment these freshmen face. The professor's a harassed. So there's a professor, her name is Lucia Martinez Valdivia. I can guess she's Hispanic. And she has preexisting PTSD. Don't know what the source of that is, but she has PTSD. And she said, look, it's these protests, it's going to be difficult for me to face them. It's going to reignite my PTSD. Please don't cover protests when I teach the class. And the Reedy's for racism, you know, they wrote an open letter to her. They offered a little bit of sympathy for her PTSD. And then they accused her of being anti-block and discriminating against those with disabilities. I don't know where that came from because she's PTSD. And they never specified the charges. They never actually said why she's anti-black or why she discriminates against disabilities. And when they were asked, could you give us some specifics? What has she done? What's her crime? This is the answer. And this is, this is very revealing. I think they said, quote, asking for people to display their trauma so that you feel sufficiently justified is a form of violence. So asking people to actually give reasons for the accusations they make against other people is a form of violence. I mean, this is nuts. This is what's going on in American campuses. This is where you're sending your kids to school. This is what you're paying thousands, no, tens of thousands of dollars for their tuition so that they can encounter other kids who believe this crap. One of the accusations against this professor is that she wore a t-shirt that said poetry is lit. Poetry is lit. Okay. And they say, that's wrong. She can't wear a t-shirt like that. Why? Because she's appropriating African American, vernacular English. And that is a form of anti-blackness. So I guess lit, L-I-T, is a form of African American, vernacular English. I didn't know that. That's new to me. And that anybody who's not black is not allowed to say the word lit because then you're appropriating their language and it's a reflection of anti-blackness. I would think it was a form of respect. It isn't flattery, a form of respect. But yeah, I mean, now there's this big thing. You can't dress up like somebody from a different ethnic group. You can't listen to their music. Oh, I've got a great one about listening to their music. So there was a dance at this, there's a party, at this, at Reed College. And I guess they were going to play some music sung by black people, right? I guess. I mean, a lot of the popular music is such. So the Reedies for Racism put out a declaration saying, and I'm quoting, this is what they wrote, they're requesting that students, specifically white students, so white students give a suggested amount of $5 to Reedies Against Racism if they planned and consuming black and brown culture at the ball. This money explicitly regarded as reparations was collected at the door by student activists. So this is the, so you have to pay them reparations because you are consuming their, their culture because black singers are primarily black and belong to black people. And if a white person listened to a song by a black person, that is cultural appropriation that has to be compensated for you have to pay reparations for the damage you're doing to black culture by listening. I mean, I can't even repeat this stuff. It's such garbage. And it's so nonsensical. And it's so racist, racist, racist, racist. And I wish somebody would call them. I wish some of these guys would come to my lectures and ask questions. I could say, no, you are the racist because that's exactly what they are. They place race above all else. And therefore they are racist. Now, the theory says, and this is a theory that a lot of professors support, that a black person cannot be racist. Only whites can be racist. This is the whole intersectionality theory that exists today on American campuses. Only the oppressed, only, only the oppressors are racist. The oppressed can never be racist. But exactly what readies for racism is doing is oppressing. It's exactly what they're doing by, by, by disrupting these classes. Indeed, at the beginning of this year, they stopped the class, they started, they took over the microphone and stopped the class and wouldn't let the professors teach. They wouldn't let the professors teach. And they've done that now three times this year, not letting the class go forward, not just standing there with signs, but taking over the class and not letting people teach. Coming up with their own statements, claiming that it was just as important to hear them, that it was to hear the professor, not what your parents are paying, not what parents are paying kids, paying the universities for, to listen to some crazy nuts rather than listen to. Now, often the professors are crazy nuts, but okay, the professors, they're educated crazy nuts supposedly. It's just unbelievable. So they stopped classes three times. And it, and, and of course, what's the administration doing? And this is, this is, I think, indicative. It's appeasing them. So they've given it to their demands. They've had meetings. So they've had meetings. So the administration has given it to most of the demands. They've hired, they had new hires in the office of inclusive community. So there's an office at this university, which you are paying for with your tuition money for the office of inclusive community. They are fast tracking the reevaluation of humanities 110 syllabus. And they are having the, having these six by six meetings, think about this, six racist, sorry, readies for racism, students, and six humanities professors to solicit ideas for the syllabus. Now remember, so they're basically soliciting ideas for class, from students, but not from any students, the most nutty, crazy racist students. Now it turns out that the meetings have ended because the students were offended by the fact that the faculty members were insisting that like Aristotle being included in the new syllabus and they found it to quote that they were forced to sit in hours of fruitless meetings listening to full grown adults cry about Aristotle, the most important philosophy in human history, philosopher in human history, they felt that was insulting. Now I want to end this segment just on a little bit of good news. And the good news is that that the freshman class now, the freshman class at Reed College is up in arms about this. They're not tolerating this. They're actually speaking up against readies for racism for the first time. In the past, the freshman has just gone along and they've been silent partially because they were intimidated, not because they agreed. Most of the students at Reed don't agree with what's going on, but they've been intimidated. They've been, they've been harassed. They've been violently threatened. This freshman class is standing up for them. And indeed, Reedies for racism has seen a dramatic decrease in their, in the number of people affiliated with their organization. So the good news is maybe if we look across American campuses, the good news might be that there's a rebellion against the craziness that students, from the students, are standing up. But even the faculty, so one of the faculty members published a editorial in the Washington Post attacking Reedies for racism, students now are standing up, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. All of us talking up against this issue, all the free speech campaign that they unrendered stewed and many others have been engaged in over the last year or so. Maybe it's finally starting to resonate. Maybe, maybe, maybe one can hope on American campus now there's a backlash against the sheer nuttiness of what's going on. And then we can go back to the regular nuttiness that is American campuses. But the craziness that's been happening recently on some of these universities, not all of them, but some of them. Maybe that's declining. Maybe there is some hope.