 Welcome to the reason stream. I am Zach Weissmuller joined by my colleague Liz Wolfe. Hey, Liz. Hey, thanks for having me, Zach Today we're gonna talk about the higher ed wars specifically the ongoing conflict over diversity equity and inclusion Standards or what critics tend to term wokeness on the college campus we've seen this play out in Florida where I'm coming to you from and in in the form of an expansive law known as the stop woke acts that outlaws professors from teaching several prohibited concepts around racial identity It's also playing out in my former state of california where the community college system Has attempted to mandate the teaching of many of these very same concepts That leaves us in that situation all too familiar to many libertarians where everything not forbidden must be compelled But there's an organization that's fighting against both california and florida on this front and it's known as fire The foundation for individual rights and expression formerly known as the foundation for individual rights in education A rebranding that we'll talk about a bit more later So i'm happy to welcome to the stream Jesse appleby an attorney with fire who is part of a lawsuits called Paul's guard versus christian that alleges the california community colleges dei standards are both on lawfully compelling speech And restricting speech jesse. Thank you for joining us today Thanks for having me We also are hoping we're going to be joined by a plaintiff in that suit bill blankin He's running a little bit behind but he may join us later He's a chemistry professor at reedley college in california But for now let's jump right in with a look at the big picture here. Here's the lawsuit paul's guard versus So paul's guard is one of the professors. There's a whole list of professors that who are the plaintiffs And then on the other side of the ledger we've got a list of various california community college uh officials How did this case against california's community college system come about in the first place jesse Well last year um in probably march 2022 The community college system released a draft regulation that would mandate the teaching and Kind of embraced by professors of these dei standards and at the time fire and other organizations submitted public comments objecting strongly to the content of the regulations and The california community college system ignored those Uh comments and those objections to the regulations and ended up approving them In may 2022 and then officially filed them with the secretary of state this spring But the regulations also came about as part of a longer term project that started in 2019 by the state chancellor of the community college system That was kind of a dei push into every part of the system. How can we Kind of overhaul the system to embrace dei So why is this happening at the community college level? That's the thing that i'm i'm very curious about Is there a similar thing happening with the university system in california? Like why Is this happening there and is this by and large supported by students or is this actually pretty top down? There are there is definitely Movement with dei in the university system itself it's because it's a different system It's not identical to what's happening within the community college system um We get a lot of reports from The california state universities About the use of dei statements in hiring In even using them as kind of a threshold in hiring so that you have to pass dei the dei statement review before you get to the Review of your actual resume and career and everything um, so there is Definitely a push for dei at the university system, but it's just completely separate from the community college system Why it's happening at the community college level? I don't know. I mean we we're seeing it everywhere. We're seeing it in universities and community colleges everywhere. So I My best best there would just be different leadership in different systems choose to implement it differently Yeah, that makes sense, but it seems like it's a pretty top down imposition not something that's bottom up led by students like this is really You know has to do with hiring and we're reading the law student It has a lot to do with tenure reviews and whether or not professors can Callify for that is that correct? Yes, this regulation itself is very top down it comes from the state Chancellor and the state board of governors and there it's imposed on the 100 plus community college districts And or maybe 70 some districts and 100 some colleges within the system They teach nearly 2 million students. It's imposed by the state on all of those I mean, do you have a sense as to Is the community college system in california More centralized in that way than the uc system. I mean, I know that you know independent Colleges within the uc system. I assume would have a lot of leeway and flexibility based on what their You know board Believes is right for the university. Is it less so that for community colleges or do you know the answer to that? I'm probably not well informed enough on the structure of the system at the university level to Uh Give any kind of real answer on that. Um, I just don't know how similar or different it is Yeah, that's fair enough. Let's let's dig into the introduction to the complaint Which says that among other things dei the dei a rules We've got to add a on there. I believe for accessibility Mandate viewpoint conformity Compelled professors to teach and preach the state's perspective on dei a Impose a prior restraint on the sharing of contrary views and subject professors to an array of overbroad Vagan arbitrary requirements. So let's take some of those one by one The first one is this idea of compelled speech, which is your third cause of action listed here You say that it's unconstitutional Compelled speech that violates the first amendment. Could you just explain the meaning of your allegation there? Sure compelled speech is Um, it's when the government tells you what you have to say. Uh, it's when the government says We require all faculty to Say a particular thing about dei um, most first amendment Um issues that people think of is the government trying to shut people up This is just the opposite the government trying to make people who want to maybe stay quiet speak And speak the government's message Is there legal precedent for Compelled speech like what what sort of cases have there been in the past that deal with this issue of compelled speech because when People think of first amendment they they tend to think of you know, the government stopping you from saying something Not in a way forcing you to say something Yeah, well actually uh in the California California was the kind of original home of some of the First cases in this area, which were the uh loyalty oath cases of the fifties When The uc system required faculty to um, essentially pledge allegiance And confirm that they were not communist uh, that would be kind of an instance of compelled speech requiring a loyalty oath of some sort requiring um Kind of like a dea dei statement and hiring now it's um requiring you to confirm that you believe something and um In order to hold a job with the government. Uh, so those were some of the first cases since then There have been All sorts of compelled speech cases uh some have been with um Wow, i'm blanking on my example, but uh, yes, we have seen them in uh universities where you can't tell professors to essentially Speak or teach a particular viewpoint All right, and I'd like to also right now we're going to add bill blank into the stream He's popped in uh bill is as I mentioned at the top of the show a chemistry professor at reed lee college And one of the plaintiffs in this case bill welcome to the reason stream Hi, how you doing? Good we were just talking about the concept of compelled speech that as it's laid out in this case As a professor who is party to the case Do you feel that um these dei standards are compelling you to express ideas that you don't agree with and if so in what way Definitely, and I think it's beyond even what I agree with personally or not. It's it's a waste of classroom time We have a limited amount of time that we need to get through a lot of material every class period whether it's lecture or lab and I think in the sciences is it's particularly inappropriate because um You know, there's a quote that's attributed to me. What is the dei anti racist perspective on the atomic mass of of boron? and and that really lays it out because um science should have no agenda other than, you know, a relentless pursuit of the truth And wherever that leads and with dei we're expected to search out racism within, you know, science curriculum, etc And it's just not there so um, yeah, it really interferes it's going to interfere with With classroom instruction as well as laboratory work Yeah, i'm really curious here What exactly do they expect you to do in order to Infuse your teaching with dei like i'm very curious like do you have colleagues in the sciences who are on board with this? I'm like, how do they anticipate doing this it seems Contrary to my understanding of what one typically learns in a chemistry class Well, I honestly think liz that um my colleagues Many of them are just going to go along and and i'm just going to be very frank here at gift lip service and um They'll in the in the evaluation process. That's where this really comes down as a tenured faculty member All of my colleagues are also tenured um When we get evaluated we have a self evaluation and there's also classroom observation from our dean and a faculty peer and The self evaluation is where there's a lot of questions about, you know, what are we going to be doing or what have we done? um to promote anti racism and dei A ideology is what which is really what it is an ideology and so um, I think many of them In fact, I've actually now that I think about it have been told recently since the lawsuit was filed that they appreciate what we're doing because You know, they're they're kind of too afraid to stick their neck out And they're just going to go along and give lip service that You know, we do this this and this but I think some of them are not aware that if they say that They treat all students the same that's considered a racist statement and and Thought process By the people who have put together um The dei a You know, I'll call standards here in california. It's not enough to say I treat all this all my students the same That's not enough. That's not going far enough. So um, I don't know there's only four of us total where I teach and I haven't had a lot of contact since the lawsuit was filed with my colleagues at the other sister campuses but um, I'm sure that there are some In fact, you know, now that my memory got jogged again I know that there are faculty who essentially have removed all reference to any scientist or you know physicist Who happens to be white and and I think that is just not helpful to The discipline let's put it that way. Are there like specific scientists like so so I would imagine There are some very famous scientists who have thus been removed from curriculum Do you have any examples of like what would happen if you cleansed all the white people from the history of your study? Like like who who would be erased? Who would students no longer learn about? well What I'm what I have just recently taught we always learn at the beginning of the semester You know, where does the principal of the atom come from? Where does the who discovered the electron? So to speak yeah, and scientists like rutherford and and so many others Even even you know, democratists we bring him up because um of the greeks view that you know matter was The idea of being able to split matter into smaller and smaller pieces And it's people like that would would get completely cleansed And so you would just learn about an experiment per se And there would be no name attached to well who did that work? And so that's that's kind of how it plays out. It just becomes You know very sterile, but I will say this now that I again think about this there are There are laws What I call law we call them laws The gas laws in particular and then there's named after certain scientists. What are we going to we're going to rename those? And then the kelvin temperature scale Okay, which is the scale used in in science Is named after lord kelvin. He happens to be white. What are we going to do rename that? Call it something else. So that's that's kind of really really how this plays out and I think it's it's been set up. I'm gonna you know Give my opinion now, but I think it's been set up that way in some sense on purpose So that whatever somebody does it's never enough I think with the right administrator and the right hr They can say it's not enough. You need to go further What is the reaction been of Some of your colleagues. I I know you mentioned that kind of communication with administration has been cut off But you know, you are at a college in california I assume The faculty leans pretty progressive and might be uncomfortable with the stance you're taking here How has that manifested in terms of just day-to-day interactions on campus? Uh, my particular campus is um I would say it's a mixed bag as far as People's ideologies, um and beliefs. It's it's not your I hesitate to even say it But it's not your typical cal what you would perceive as a california college campus And the the faculty who have approached me have been completely supportive of what what we're doing and Uh, as far as if a faculty member on the campus does not support what i'm doing Nobody has said anything to me so um That plays into the idea that we were talking about at the beginning that this is Much more of a top-down imposition rather than something that people at least on your campus Are clamoring for en masse. Um, you know, I you've mentioned the the performance evaluations that i'm going to pull up this slide from the lawsuit Which says that the evaluation of employee performance including tenure reviews That requires requires demonstrated or progressed toward proficiency in the locally developed dei competencies So this is the mechanism for enforcement is I guess you go to your annual review And that is one of the metrics you're judged judged upon and it seems like even even tenure is in in play here So, uh, what is it that? How is it that you expect? This to play out once let's say that this this law Were to remain in or this regulation were to remain in effect How would that play out come annual review time? What how would the way that your performance is evaluated? Do you think would be different than it has been in the past? Uh, yeah, that's a good question. Um, let me go back to something you said at the beginning This definitely is top down. I don't know a single faculty member that In in all the discussions in in the entire 15 plus years I've been where i'm at that read the college That that wants this in terms of oras as you said clamoring for this. I don't know a single faculty member that Um personally now, I'm I'm sure there are progressives on the campus that When what happened in 2020? I know they went all in But I have not had a single discussion with anybody In the sciences at least that Where I'm at that wants that wants this that is asking for this. This is 100 top down That is that is a great characterization now as far as my performance evaluation. Well again, we we call it an evaluation And now that i'm since i'm tenured It's every three years now This this affects me, but it really is going to affect new hires they're evaluated every year and I want to make everybody aware of something else that's happening right now and that is They have changed and what I mean by they is it's the community college system of california and our camp our district has made it very clear that We are to change Hiring practices and and who gets interviews and who ultimately gets hired It is been 100 influenced by the the dea ideology And so that is happening right now as well So back to my evaluation I'm supposed to be evaluated next spring and it's a look back It is what am I doing this semester? What did I do? Meaning fall. What did I do the previous two years? And now that they have this new these these new questions in the rubric What did I do to? You know forward Deracist principles and what did I do to basically? Forward dea principles. I don't know the exact Question off the top of my head But that's that's the the crux of it is that they're going to look back And as far as is my tenure at risk I to be very frank I don't know why it wouldn't be because it all depends on who is going to be evaluating my responses to those questions Um what I anticipate now. I'm just giving my opinion. I don't have any Um proof of this. I haven't received some document that said that this is what's going to happen But just in my experience in how things typically go Um what I'm anticipating is that if we give an answer I give an answer that they don't find appropriate There's discussion about this and then hr will say well, why don't you undergo a little bit additional bias training? Why don't you undergo some training to actually? Show you how to be an anti-racist bill. That's what I would anticipate happening and it's to me. It's a struggle session we're going to have to have I'm going to have a little struggle session and Perhaps, you know, again, I'm just giving my opinion. This may be seeming like from left field, but Um, that's how this kind of stuff goes is that well, you're gonna You're gonna go to training until Your mind is right The thing that's so interesting about this to me is that it's not as if There is a clear Actionable thing that a specific faculty member has done wrong using a mean nasty racial slur toward a student That's not what's happening. It's it is rather this almost like Obama era traditionally liberal sort of like yeah, we'll treat everybody the same as best we can That's the aspiration. It's almost like that thing that we by and large kind of all agreed was a good thing You know treat people equally as best you can, you know, try to be You know, somewhat colorblind. I mean, they're all students in a classroom You want to be accommodating and respectful of students as best you can given their diverse needs But by and large you want to treat people equally and like that's really the thing that's under fire in today's new regime So that's the thing that's just kind of stunning to me about all of this is like there's there's like an absence of instigating Awful incident it is rather that things have been chugging along. I guess at a pace and in a way that many of the dea Administrators and the dea industry writ large is not comfortable with and and does not want and they want to stamp out I guess this old way of thinking about things which At least from my view is very aligned with Enlightenment thinking this idea of like it is important for each person's dignity to be respected And to you know for people to be judged on their character and on their merit And we're going to get into in just a second all of the What exactly it is that is Being put forth what these concepts are that they want you to espouse in the classroom so that I mean At this point I think people know a lot of this stuff because we you know in every sector of life You're kind of like you're exposed to it, but it's still useful to look at the exact concepts We're going to go through that but I before we do I wanted to ask jesse one last question which is Another aspect of the lawsuit is that You you say there's the compelled speech, but then You say that they're also they also tell faculty what they are not allowed to say faculty Are warned not to quote weaponize academic freedom and academic integrity As tools to impede equity or inflict curricular trauma on our students So the the language of like physical violence being invoked here, but could you just uh lay that out from a legal perspective? how is How are these regulations not only compelling speech, but you're alleging Impeding speech infringing on and saying what you are not allowed to say Yeah, that's uh What's interesting about these particular dei rules? Uh, because they so bake in kind of a full-throated ideology and fairly explicitly say Use terms and say this is the kind of world view we expect you to adopt um, they both expect faculty members to espouse that world view, but they also warn against um Preaching a different world view because of the harm that it'll do to um marginalized students or Different identity groups. Um, it's Both side. It's kind of flip sides of the same coin You need to embrace one world view, which means you cannot embrace a contrary world view That makes sense. So you're you're they're saying you you should say this script more or less and not not that script So the that's the flip sides of the coin and it's laid out in this Well, hold on. I was just going to say what's interesting to me about that excerpt though is the like verbiage of weaponizing academic freedom. I mean in a sense, this is attempting to um condemn the You know vernalists or lawyers or people who are just making the full-throated Free speech on principle argument this idea of weaponizing academic freedom. No, I don't think anybody Sitting here is interested in weaponizing academic freedom We believe in academic freedom and are interested in Preserving that principle that we hold dear that we believe to be absolutely essential to our ability to engage in free inquiry um But even them just throwing that word weaponized at the beginning beginning of it like to what degree does that then Make it so you as a lawyer representing This case you're not supposed to be doing that and you're not so you're certainly if you're a faculty member Not supposed to be hiring lawyers to make that case I really get concerned when I see words like weaponized academic freedom because to me Yeah, bill bill. Are you weaponizing academic freedom? You know, I wanted to chime in I've had conversations with administrators at a local another local college where I have colleagues or I should say friends that teach and they don't Subscribe to The idea of academic freedom in the way that all four of us understand it to be and they use language like the true definition of academic freedom And part of the problem is that these administrators? There are like vice president level administrators and dean level positions. They've never been faculty They've literally never been faculty And they get hired for reasons. Um, I could only guess at but That is part of the problem right there and then you you so that you so you have this ideologically driven person That's evaluating faculty using language like the true definition of academic freedom words mean things and ideas matter and so Um, they it's this new speak that has just so pervasive I don't weaponize academic freedom. The idea of academic freedom is a long-standing tradition in higher education that allows us to present ideas which may challenge a student's current belief about whatever now, um, you know, we don't have Too much of that per se and in chemistry. It's just hard facts and we're learning about how atoms and molecules work but as it relates to something like say, you know man made climate change or That's a belief and so um things of that nature as a faculty member I need to have the right and this is a long-standing tradition and right to bring up certain ideas And no, we're not weaponizing academic freedom. We don't I don't know of a single incident where A faculty member has, you know done something to a person of color You know who was the and the faculty member was white. So we grade everybody the same And and to say that is now an offense in and of itself Yeah, sorry. I was just gonna say traditionally, you know, that that is ostensibly the point of tenure. So the the idea that they're undermining tenure to advance this is particularly alarming to me even though, you know, we can have a Larger debate if we want to about, you know, whether tenure is the right mechanism or not for academia, but I mean that this is Clearly the kind of ultimate like this is the purpose of it And uh for for that to be now thrown into question is I don't know. That's particularly concerning to me I want to bring up this document which you've entered into evidence jesse dei in curriculum Model principles and practices. This was put out by the california community colleges and really lays out point by point What it is they expect to see in the classroom Could you before we dive into the documents details? Could you tell us what is the import of this? Well, this is one of several documents that the state community college system issued to inform the individual districts and colleges How to apply the new dei rules and this document in particular Is this is what we want to see when you are applying dei in the classroom This is how you incorporate it into your curriculum This is these are the kind of practices you should use and not use or the types of language you should use and not use Uh to be compliant with the state's definition of dei So this will be a sort of reference for you know, if this system is implemented where Professors are evaluated Where this is incorporated into their evaluations Be like this is the reference document. Are you aligning with what is laid out here? It's one of several sources that that they're going to be referencing. It's correct Yes and looking inside of it This is the kind of big picture vision they lay out that What you develop and implement a pedagogy or curriculum that promotes a race conscious and Intersectional lens and equip students to engage with the world as scholars and citizens Develops and implements a pedagogy that fosters an anti-racist anti-racist and inclusive environment for minoritized students Um demonstrates an ability to teach culturally affirming pedagogy What is your reaction to that bill as someone who would be affected by these new standards? Well, again, it's it's uh, it's this this relative terminology is kind of the way I look at it. Um anti-racism anti-racist intersectionality race conscious Yeah, yeah, you you ask five different people and they're gonna have five different definitions And I don't know how um to work in The anti-racist ideology to Boyle's law I'm sorry that Boyle was a white scientist, you know physicist 200 plus years ago or something along those lines, but um It it really becomes I think it's preposterous because The periodic table of the elements is what I'm charged with teaching students about and explaining how that was constructed, etc etc and how it works and um I think it's relative in the way they're going to Evaluate me and it's not objective and um I have real concerns about my future in academia and as do You know the other people who have been joined in the lawsuit as well um because administrators You know sometimes You know, I would say I'm trying to figure out the most polite way to say this they they can bear grudges and so um I think that that evaluation language can be interpreted so many different ways. Well, you're not going far enough Yeah, I recognize that you did x y and z but you didn't go far enough. You could have went further So that's that's kind of how this I think and I'm anticipating this working I just want to add that there's a certain hilarity like, you know Say we like put on our little marxist hats for a second here There's a certain hilarity to the fact that it's Administrators who are frequently paid, you know a pretty penny in the college environment as well as some of the dei consultants Where now there's like a pretty thriving industry a lot of these dei consulting firms make bank and there's a little bit of absurdity to These very highly paid professionals being the sort of enforcers of this You know and implementing a very top-down thing, which I would imagine many students at California community colleges do not come from the most, you know economically privileged backgrounds in the entire world and or are working really hard to put themselves through school And to attempt to you know work their way up in the world And so I just think that there's also something kind of fascinating about that of like who are the people doing the enforcement of this If they actually care about you know lifting the people who are the absolute most depressed There's a certain Absurdity to the fact that many of them I think are probably paid an awful lot of money very handsomely to do this type of thing So I want to add to that there's a there's a bit of a tempest happening in the Not the community college system, but the state college system So in california you have the ucs university california you have the cal state and then you have the community college system so in the cal state right now They are negotiating And I think it's system-wide with faculty unions And administration Is playing hardball they they want to give minimal raise but Contrast that to administrators Whose raises have far outpaced? faculty and inflation so to speak and You have you have administrators in the california state university system So that would be you know places like cal state la Cal state fresno cal state fullerton, etc You have administrators that are making you know just under a million dollars You know college presidents and then you you just kind of goes down from there They get they get housing allowances there are people within the cal state system who get a housing allowance And mileage which is greater than what professors monthly pay is And so I think you point out something that's really good that these administrators who where this is where this is all coming from Um, and you and you have faculty, you know that are definitely marxist, um as well But you have these the administrators who are who are really pushing this Making tremendous amounts of money far more than they would ever make in the private sector And I think you point out something that just is is really remarkable. It's it's hypocrisy. It's I you know There's a lot of different adjectives. We could probably come up with to describe this but Yeah, it's it's exactly that you have administrators making huge amounts of money compared to faculty And they're the ones decrying You know white privilege and everything else Yeah, there's uh There's a real industry that has popped up around this Both at the higher ed level but also in the corporate level and a little bit We're we're going to play a clip from one of the kind of original creators of of that industry Describing how that kicked off and I think your your point is is well made liz that And bill that yes, there's this administrative bloat It actually pervades all education not just higher ed like if you look at The amount of money that has gone into the education system An alarming percentage of that has gone to administrative staff and you you can see the lines where Their their growth has gone up and you know kind of teacher pay has stayed flat So there yeah, there's a real interesting economic dynamic there I want to dive back into the concepts for a second before we get uh into like the the industry that has popped up around this This is from that same document where you've got a side to side Traditional educational practice versus equity principles. So this is a kind of Do's and don'ts in this new classroom setup. And if we zoom in on it The traditional education practice would be Classroom experiences or assignments and assessments that are built from an individualist perspective That's the don't the the new way to do it the equity principle is to shift to a collectivism perspective To engage authentic lived experiences and relate to students cultural norms What are you going to do bill to shift from the individualist perspective to the collectivism perspective in your chemistry classes in this semester Nothing I'm just not going to comply Um, I'm going to teach chemistry the way I always have I'm going to teach chemistry in the way that is the most logical way To get the information and the skill set into my students I teach students. I teach freshman level Chemistry for science majors and these are people who want to go to medical school And they want to go to pharmacy school. And I also teach intro chem For students that want to become nurses and other allied health professionals and their skills that they need to bring From my classroom Such as dosage calculation um That they need to carry on that they don't get anywhere else and particularly in the in the the Students that want to go to nursing school and one of the things about some discipline like chemistry is As well as math and physics is that it's one of the best places to learn to think critically and logically and problem solve And that's what I'm concerned about. I'm not concerned about collectivism um and I do evaluate my students on an individual basis. And so if anything I I am I am Strongly individualistic because my students Get the grades that come from their own personal work You know, so are we are we just Are we to collectivize grades so everybody, you know, gets a c now or a c minus So, yeah, that's the kind of confusing thing about it I I know one aspect of the lawsuit too is about vagueness because if I were in this position Reading some of this would be really confusing. I wouldn't even quite understand what the actionable like instruction is because of the way that the language is just the kind of flowery or you know abstract language They did helpfully provide a glossary which I've pulled up here and One of the terms that I know caught Liz's interest is watering up could you Share with us Liz what watering up is and I mean this is the problem This is the problem with so much of this like I just literally don't know what this means I am a journalist. I spend all day writing words and parsing their meaning and this is not super clear to me I mean read a little bit of it for our listening audience watering up is apparently You know instructional practices with the science of learning that we can apprentice students to be active agents in their own learning instead of watering them down With compliance oriented deficit views This process requires students to build and braid together multiple neural relational and experiential processes to produce their own unique learning acceleration process I'm sorry. This feels like if you fed chat gpt hr buzzwords Um, it's not clear to me how a professor is actually supposed to implement this or how this is a useful I mean the thing that I just keep coming back to you because ever since becoming a mom I've been pretty interested in a lot of the stuff related to um phonics education and the crisis related to how children have been taught how to read in many public schools in this country Which is obviously at a different level than the level that we're talking about But I just keep coming back to this question of like wait a second at many schools across the country there's this huge problem, which is that like there isn't enough instructional time or um suitable enough instruction in the first place to get kids to the level that they need to be at and then you also look at college classroom environments and it's not clear to me why we ought to be trying to get Instructors to be spending more time on these very vague wishy washy concepts Versus actually ensuring that kids and young adults learn the things that they need to be learning They need to learn how to read or like what you're talking about You know, they they need to be figuring out how to You know the basics of dosage like one of the things that I just keep coming back to is When we orient ourselves more toward these things Are we setting people up to fail because we're actually I mean it comes at a cost And what's the cost actually useful instructional time? Do you have thoughts on that bill? That's exactly right. It takes away. We have a limited amount of time And we have a tremendous amount of material that we have to go over and skills that they have to learn and I think what you said too at the beginning was right that it is It's there's multiple definitions of these words this administrator or this advocate or I want to say you know, I think advocate may be where grifter may be a good word They have a definition of this word and somebody else has a different definition of the word Well, how am I going to be objectively evaluated? In my faculty evaluation if I've got these multiple definitions of the word that I'm looking at Who's do I go with? Yeah I it also to be it strikes me as a little insulting to people's time I recall I came from a more privileged background But I still you know was working as I made my way through college and my time was really scarce And if I had been forced to in my view waste more time on these types of things versus actually getting useful instruction That would have been really frustrating to me. I would imagine Most community college students in the california system feel much the same way And in a sense, this is very disrespectful to people who might be working a few jobs to pay their way through college To then force them to spend time on things that are perhaps pretty unrelated to them actually Securing the type of success that they they hope to get later on. Zach, could you also take us to the? collectivism individualism definitions because I have this is the one that Yeah, this is the one that jumped out to me their definitions From the glossary of collectivism was an individual sense of connection to and responsibility for members of their group community Sounds sounds very warm and fuzzy Individualism the valuing of the individual over the value of groups or society as a whole So, I mean this is an incredibly buy it. These are both incredibly biased definitions Clearly written by someone more sympathetic to collectivism and and look you you can be a collectivist I think history would show it's the wrong way to think about human nature But using the state to impose That kind of orthodoxy on academics people who are supposed to be intellectuals our free thinkers Is incredibly disturbing to me and you know fire as the foundation for individual rights and expression I've got to assume there's some people that are made uncomfortable by this as well. Jesse like what what is Just your reaction as someone who is trying to stand up for individual rights to that seeing that sort of thing being imposed well I I would say as a defender of individual rights that also include uh defending the individual rights of people who want to Promote collectivism As well as individualism. So I I think we would object to Compelling anyone to embrace any particular point of view Whether that be individualism or collectivism and in both cases we would defend the person whose individual rights were being Violated but yes as An organization we exist to specifically to defend the rights of individuals I think this is uh the really delightful thing that fire does. I just appreciate I mean, I think we'll talk about it in a little bit in a few minutes here, but we really are so um Kind of delighted by the fact that like we can criticize so much of this and the um You know the compelled speech here and fire is doing such a good job of representing these california professors but then you also look at some of the things happening in forda related to the stop woke act and um the sort of chris rufo one-man mission to Create a different sort of viewpoint conformity. Um at many schools in that state And I really appreciate and I think we as as libertarians at reason also kind of straddle that very very tight We we walk that tightrope of like no don't mandate that thing over there But then also even the thing that I like you shouldn't be mandating Any sort of viewpoint conformity in that realm either it's really really important that individuals have full ability to Legitimately go out into the world and decide what they believe and authentically hold and articulate those beliefs for themselves as opposed to having any Institution impose things top down and I mean without this. We don't have true academic freedom We don't have the ability for people to Really engage in robust discussion and come to you know, take their half truths and and you know have them blossom In a like a very j.s. Mill type way Yeah, and I want to get to we're going to Spend the last part of this conversation talking a little bit about the stop woke act Which is kind of the flip side of what's going on in california While we still have bill here with us because I know he has to jump off around 12 30 I want to talk about what we touched on earlier Which was the sort of industry that has come up around this the where some of these concepts Have come from i'm bringing up a slide from the website based on the website of tamah okun who is a activist and One of the corporate consultants who's responsible for a lot of these concepts that we see in that Glossary we just went through she went runs a website called dismantling racism.org you can see some of the concepts that are Problematically associated with white supremacy here perfectionism individualism objectivity sense of urgency defensiveness She was interviewed Earlier this year by ryan grim of the the intercept on a podcast where she had some interesting things to say About the origins of her workbook that was later used as the basis for a lot of both corporate and academic dei work I want us to take a listen to that clip and get your reaction to what she's saying so Here's tamah okun I went to some kind of meeting and I don't remember any details of the meeting but I went to a meeting And it was a very frustrating and horrible meeting and I came home and I sat in front of the computer And the article literally came through me onto the computer. It was not researched. It was not I didn't sit down and And deliberate it just came through me and I've never had that experience with my writing before since and Someone somewhere along the line once the internet became more active Just took the workbook and posted pieces of it on the internet So you hadn't even posted it. No, I never posted it. I never once posted it I never ever expected it to be used certainly out of context of the whole piece so then it just started circulating and it kind of started to have a life of its own And then when George Floyd was murdered it really started to have a life of its own And started having a whole lot of use and it is becoming a DEI industrial complex You know with all the problems that that that brings but I kind of wonder What's the alternative? Are we not to address it at all? I mean if we can't address it, right? Do we not address it? You know, this is this is 400 years in the making the more More things people are trying the better the more of us in in the In the fight the better the more Wisdom and ways of doing things people bring the better and along the way. Yeah, it's going to be messy and people are going to go after each other and You know part of part of the reason for for my being here today is just to say to those people who are Miss using my work. Please stop. Just don't just don't you know, it's not it's not meant to to be used to target people That's not what it's meant for it's meant to bring people together to talk about how we're getting in our own way and what we can do differently So what what I hear there is that the the idea For her workbook her her influential workbook kind of came to her spontaneously almost like, you know, uh, it came down it was handed down to her and flowed out even two tablets on the mountaintop But but she she's since she's since refined it and now she acknowledges that there's been this, uh, you know This profitable dei industry and people misuse these concepts sometimes but It's a messy process and it it's good that people are at least trying here Um, I guess I'll start I'll I'll get bill to react to the second but first jesse I I want to get your thoughts on The way she characterizes, uh, the way dei is is implemented in the real world and Where you know, we draw the line between this kind of experimentation. She's talking about and something that crosses the line into illegality Yeah, that's kind of been the, um The tough challenge when we're looking at all of these dei uh policies at different places is they um A lot of them are quite broadly written and so The question does arise Um, how much is this compelling anything? Is it just a suggestion? Where is it guidance? and where is it used against people to judge their safe performance and or uh Judge their, uh Their merit to being hired, uh, that that has been the very Tough challenge and I think what we've seen is that Even the broadly written ones often are more compulsory in practice than you might assume just from the text of the policy uh it gives those administrating the program kind of the discretion Uh to apply it as they see wish at or as they wish And that often means they will apply it in an arbitrary discriminatory manner, but it does become at least for some Definitely more compulsory in practice than you would guess from the text on the page and Bill, uh, did you have any reaction to just kind of the I guess admission there or concession that this has become A sort of industry and there's a whole bureaucracy attached to it but perhaps That's in a way a good thing because this is the way We progress as a society is you need these structures to emerge I have kind of a poor connection. Could you repeat your question? Oh, sure. Yeah, I you know, I I I'm not sure if you heard any of that the clip that we just played earlier But I was just asking for your reaction to the idea that Yes, there is a dei bureaucracy But maybe that is a good and necessary thing Well, I I want to take a step back first and say I can categorically without reservation say there are No racist faculty at my college and my suspicion is For all intents and purposes There are no racist faculty in my entire school district at least, you know white racists. Let's put it that way And so I think the whole premise of her Her entire work is false. So it's built upon a lie to begin with But having said that This notion that she has or this this request that she has that people stop using it to go after Faculty to put it that way um, I think that's I'm going to be very frank here. I that's awfully convenient for her to say that But that's the net effect is is what It's going to be used as it's going to be used as a cudgel against faculty and and Even probably administrators who would resist it as well Who don't support her Or don't support the DEIA philosophy so and as far as It being necessary to have these in place No, it's it's not necessary again. Her her entire work is built on on a lie The the thing that's interesting to me and I'm curious about your thought here bill right before you I know you have to leave really soon But is like I'm curious about I wish the DEIA Imposers the people who are imposing it on faculty I wish they would sort of sketch out what culturally affirming classroom practices do in fact look like Because one thing that keeps jumping into my mind as we consider Teima Okan and what she's talking about here is like Doesn't this very easily go veer into the territory of tokenizing students, right? Like aren't there some students who don't want the hijab that they're wearing to be pointed out? um And want to be able to be treated like any other person in the classroom or It would feel odd if somebody was talking about for example, you know in a legal class the um trump rico Georgia case and you know decided to bring the rappers in Atlanta who were also Who are also facing rico charges like young thug into the mix and you know specifically was trying to be culturally affirming of a black student's identity But in doing so assumed that a black student follows young thug when in fact they might not follow that rapper like i'm very curious about It feels like it can kind of go both ways where a culturally affirming classroom practice could make somebody feel more welcome But also I could very easily see a situation where the exact same type of thing Ends up making somebody feel very stereotyped or very singled out Do you have any thoughts on that tension and how that would work in a classroom environment bill? Yeah, so first of all, you know, I I wouldn't say I've I've polled my students precisely Do you support dei a ideology and principles? I haven't done that Uh per se, but I've nibbled around the edges And I'm comfortable saying that the vast majority of my students do not support this because let's The it really occurred to me recently when I was thinking about our lawsuit that what this what this dei a ideology does Is it effectively strips the individual identity away from my students? It it turns them from being an individual to being part of a group part of a collective And I can safely say that again 90 plus percent of my students would not like that They are individuals and they want to be treated with their own individual identity Not part of a whole and that's what this does. It it's going to demand that we treat all students I hate this term students of color As part of groups And the vast majority of my students are not white I maybe have In a class of 20 one or two white students the rest are not white And and they don't want to be treated as a group. They are all different and that's what they want I want to close out the conversation here with a site uh with um Case that you cite in your lawsuit called pernell versus florida board of governors of state university system Where you say you quote from that? the judge's ruling there saying that it's not acceptable to impose The state to impose its own orthodoxy a viewpoint about the content allowed within university classrooms and of course the case that we're talking about here is one that part that fire is also party to against the state of florida's Law that has become known as the stop woke act the individual rights and education act I produced a short documentary about that issue and i'm going to play a quick clip from it where pernell the named plaintiff in the case professor pernell Speaks out about His feelings about the stop woke act and how it would affect what he's doing In the classroom so that we can see the flip side of that conversation Pernell a law professor at florida a&m university or famu and historically black college Is a plaintiff in the aclu's case challenging that part of the law He's afraid that the law will outlaw discussions of systemic racism Which he says is part of famu's institutional history The state created the law school in 1949 to accommodate two black law students who applied to the racially segregated university of florida In 1966 the state forced it to seize admitting new students until then florida governor jeb bush signed a law to reopen it in 2000 Pernell worries that if instructors were to characterize that history as systemically racist They'd run afoul of the law's restrictions around teaching the concept I Have no way of knowing that my passion for teaching students About history about change and about the ability to bring about change I have no way of knowing that that isn't offensive To these subjective judges of what is endorsing what is not endorsing what is promoting what is not Not promoting So i do now live with the idea that at any moment the state can come and take negative action Against me because of my thought let's say that there was a blue state that did kind of the opposite of this And they said we're gonna ban A professor who has a different viewpoint and thinks critical race theory is wrong and that we should be Talking about color blindness as a legitimate concept and things like this Anytime you put state and ban together danger All right Why does the state ban any thought? If we are in a free society That exists and develops based on free exchange of ideas So uh professor pernell there is taking a very principled stance he is in he believes in uh systemic racism and things critical race theory Is an important uh academic concept, but He does not would not be it sounds like he would not be in favor of a law like the california law that forces professors to Embrace or promulgate these concepts I guess my question this could be the last question for you bill because i know you have to leave so feel free to jump off Whenever you need to after this, but do you feel the same way in the reverse direction? that Professors who do believe in many of these concepts we've gone through in the dei framework Should be free to Teach those in the classroom Provided that their students are free to disagree and not be graded negatively Um, I would would support that as long as it goes both ways But frequently that is not the case You know, I support professor cornell's freedom of speech in the classroom to teach the material As he sees fit, but I also support And would would make sure that this is brought up in that discussion That his students have the right to disagree with him and lay out their case And that's the whole whole point of higher education Anyway is that is the free exchange of ideas may the best idea win and sometimes even though we're right and we're arguing For a particular position that is is right Our arguments may be weak and we lose that particular argument So you go back you regroup you redevelop and come back again And that's that's how it was when I went through college and that's how it should be The idea of may the best idea win I think is so important and many of the dia cheerleaders are in a sense Traying a sense of like their own insecurities If you're attempting to so rigidly impose this orthodoxy And mandating it from on high At least to me that indicates a certain sense of like oh, maybe they're not so confident that these ideas would win in the marketplace Because they're not choosing to use those sort of like classically liberal means Of duking it out It is instead a different approach being tried right now and that really raises my hackles at least where I sort of am like wait a second You know, is there an insecurity being communicated there? Are they actually confident that these ideas would win? Yeah, and you know, uh, liz when I raised that That phrase the marketplace of ideas with chris rufo in a previous live stream that we had he Disagreed that we even have a marketplace of ideas in higher education We're going to drop links to all this media in the description So, uh, you know, you if you're interested in this conversation You might want to check out that full stream with rufo, but I want to play A clip of what rufo's our counter argument was In that that debates were discussion with with me and nick gillespie And then get you to react to the argument that he's making in favor of the stock woke act jesse Because he was one of the intellectual architects behind it This has argued that it does have a say over what's taught at taxpayer subsidized schools teaching kids That's not the right to a clip Uh, I don't like you I guess I don't support abolishing them But when they're off track when they're not supporting those values when they're not pursuing those as the telos or the highest principle of the university It's up to the voters to institute reforms and what we have is a situation where there is not, uh, there's a kind of A kind of written idea of academic freedom, but the actual on the ground facts I've talked to a lot of professors in the u.f. System That are conservative that say I can't express my opinion I can't do the research I want if I say that i'm conservative. I won't get tenure Um, uh, my ideas are suppressed. I'm forced to go through these diversity trainings This is a problem for people within the the system. It's also a problem for the public to say, hey, wait a minute If you're public if you're professoriate if your faculty because of the hiring and because of the funding and because of the selection process Is now in many public universities 20 30 40 to 1 Dependent on the departments between progressives or liberals and conservatives You have a massive imbalance in faculty. You have an administration that has adopted d.i As the highest principle of the university. How does this crap work? Forcing professors to to bow down to left-wing diversity ideology. They're forcing professors to sign diversity statements Okay, forcing professors to be hired on the basis of their commitment to these ideologies You have a huge problem and yet What i'm hearing is that well, you can't do anything about it because you know government bad How do you reply to that argument rufo is making jesse, which is that these are public institutions and therefore the government through the legislative process the democratically elected legislator they should be able to Shape the standards of what is allowed to be taught on a college campus Uh, well first I just say to think that Uh in the answer to an insufficient marketplace of ideas is to censor part of the marketplace Is a very odd response uh As for The taxpayer funded nature of universities uh taxpayers fund using universities because they are knowledge generating machines and they generate that knowledge by bringing together a lot of people a lot of ideas to kind of duke it out and Hopefully from that process We can discover some sort of truth gain some sort of knowledge uh historically that has worked Actually quite well in the united states, and that's why we fund universities uh Taxpayer funding does not mean that Taxpayers get to tell every government employee what they can and can't say that's Never how it's worked and it's not how it works when it comes to universities The interest of taxpayers and of the government in a university Is both the knowledge generating and the education of adult college students again, we want to expose them to a variety of ideas and That is very very different from say Uh, what you see in the k through 12 environment where you're Where the public's interest is more inculcating community values in young children In college you want to bring together all sorts of ideas and expose students to all of them You know liz talked earlier a little bit about the I think she said tightrope that you are walking at fire Where you are willing to take on both of these cases. It's vanishingly rare that I mean, I feel like it's maybe uh us and fire at this point that that are willing to That civil liberties oriented organization that I've heard so much about but I'm not sure There used to be another one that I reclass her one that was on all sides, but But I mean maybe that maybe that plays into why fire has rebrand You know, you started as the foundation for individual individual rights in education and now You have expanded that beyond the educational sphere I mean, is there any insight that you can give us there as to you know, why has fire Expanded its mission. Um, is it because of That that lack of people willing to to walk that tightrope? I think um There was definitely a need for An organization to come out and Be willing to Defend free speech just because it's free speech and not on the grounds of the Uh correctness of the opinion being given Uh, and I know that fire first before it Ever wanted to expand it wanted to make sure that it was Doing everything it could in the higher education space and so it grew enough to kind of um perfect its craft there and then it became time where um They could jump into the wider community and it also happened to coincide with A lot of the negative trends that we've seen in higher higher education as students graduate are kind of coming out into the broader world and It's a good time for fire to expand and counter that outside of the university system as well Yeah, this is also interesting to me because I feel like I um Got a very early taste of this. I entered college in 2014 and left college in 2016 But it was interesting because I think so many people When attempting to trace um this sort of second wave of political correctness on campus Obviously we had the wave in the 90s Which I know Greg Lukianoff of fire has actually written about um wonderfully for reason uh for our print magazine of like Hey, actually this wave of political correctness on campus. This isn't really the first time this has happened This has been a little bit of a cyclical thing throughout. Um, you know recent American history But I do think that this most recent wave is really traced back to starting around Ferguson, Missouri 2014 um that whole thing and and it was really interesting to arrive on campus Right as so much of this was bubbling up Um, but then I see so much of my cohort. I mean I got the hell out of college and Early because in part because of this and so much of my cohort. It's been so interesting watching them Then go into you know major newsrooms and other different industries And it's fascinating how these ideas that I think were either You know inculcated at the university level or not pushed back on sufficiently at the university level You know circa 2015 2016 2017 have really now Flowered into something else and taken root in all kinds of other industries I reported a piece for our friend Mike Solana of pirate wires a few maybe a year and a half ago That talked a little bit about uh the di efforts uh at tech companies and the sort of like di hr convergence And how for many tech employees, um, you know, it's it's many of the same objections that we're lodging here And that that professor blinkin has has commented on here where it's a little bit of like well Wait a second doesn't this distract from the actual thing we were hired to do Doesn't this distract, um, you know in the professor's case from educating students from teaching them chemistry Or in the tech employee case, uh from sales goals, uh, or you know, creating the best possible software to sell to their customers So I think there's there's something that people are sort of slowly coming around to which is like A lot of these things distract people who actually want to, um, roll up their sleeves and get hard work done And there's also a certain hollowness that I think people are sort of slowly becoming wise to, um And you know at the same time this also then breeds an entire industry of what I view as grifters like the chris Rufos of the world who are really converting a lot of this, um craziness into their own sort of culture war and, um, Mandating another form of viewpoint homogeneity, which I'm not super keen on so, you know All props to fire for fighting the good fight and for the professors, uh Who are willing to stick their necks out and possibly take an unpopular position in pursuit of more academic freedom Thank you guys so much for talking to us Yeah, and uh the issue with the the mandating aspect That's the key word. Uh, Liz that you mentioned there is that, you know, we can sit here and have our criticisms of these concepts and I think they're warranted and you know, even when they're not mandated, I think there's a lot of, uh self-destructive Ideas that we've gone over today that that should be vigorously criticized, but it is a The the reason we advocate a marketplace of ideas is because this stuff is really complicated and reducing it to its You know, woke versus non-woke and this all has this all is gospel or this all is garbage It doesn't really make sense. It has to kind of play out in a messy social process and and the less we have uh, you know governments or, uh community college state connected community college Review boards trying to impose their vision of the social good the more we can actually I think Progress and get to an actual social good. I want to just uh since bill is uh here I want to he's still here. I want to just get his your any final thoughts that you have maybe about the concept of academic freedom and and why That you chose to put yourself out there as one of the faces of this lawsuit Well, first I kind of want to say that There really isn't a free exchange of ideas on your typical college campus anymore at all Christian conservatives who are pro-life. You're not going to get tenure. You're not even going to get hired So that that is just the reality of the situation Now, uh, why did I join this lawsuit? Well, first of all, I'm concerned about my own job Uh, I'm I either I have the choice of either Going along with something that I believe to be completely untrue. So then in effect I lie And that's one choice and the other choice is to be honest And say I believe in treating students the same regardless of their skin color and then I run the risk of losing my job and somebody has to stand up and do something and Part of it is my own trying to preserve my job. But also is um To try to for generations that are coming behind me because I'm not that far from retirement that they'll have the Right to teach higher ed or teach really anywhere in the way that's appropriate for the subject matter and I actually did have a faculty member thank me that um You know for on behalf of of his children who may want to be professors someday and trying to Protect their future rights and that's ultimately what this takes is it just takes somebody who's going to stand up and say No, this isn't right and fire, you know joined with us and took our case And here we are And jesse what is the status of the case? What should people who want to follow it look out for next? uh, we recently filed our motion for preliminary injunction which requests that the court Uh, essentially put a halt to enforcement of the regulation while litigation is ongoing And we will have a hearing on that in about uh, probably about a month And that is a good, um That decision that we get on the motion for preliminary injunction is kind of a good precursor of how the entire case will go because It's the um, it is only issued if the judge believes that you are likely going to succeed on the merits Down the road. So that would be the first thing to uh, watch for is uh, we are going to argue that in about a month and uh, We're hopeful that we'll be successful Okay, well, we will watch and wait and I want to Reiterate what Liz was saying and thank you both for what you're doing and for giving your time to us today to Share what's going on with the case Liz. Thank you for joining. Uh, thanks to everyone who tuned in. We'll be back next week Next thursday at 1 p.m See you then