 So, you know, I've talked, we've talked a lot about kind of the kind of nutty left, the woke left's anti-racism in quotes, anti-racism or racist agenda. We've talked a lot about how it seems like in the political realm a lot of the wacky left's agenda is being successfully rebuffed by voters whether that was, as we saw, that was in Northern Virginia, sorry, yeah, in Virginia, including Northern Virginia, last in November in the vote there for governor and then we saw it in San Francisco, we've seen it in Minneapolis, we've seen it defund the police, we've seen it CRT in the schools. We've seen generally a voter backlash including in pretty left wing cities around the country against kind of the wacky left. I'd also say that, you know, while a lot of businesses give the agenda of the left a lot of credence and they bring in DEI and they do courses and they do all of this stuff, my general sense of business is that it is, it says what it needs to say to keep on going but none of this is taken too seriously, generally I think even young people who kind of believe in the left's nonsensical ideas, wants to actually have to live in the world, they have to make a living, they have to go to a job, they actually have a reality and there's a reality check, they actually have to have goals, they have to achieve those goals if they don't achieve those goals they can lose their job. I mean there's actually an impact of reality on their lives, so I'd say the impact of kind of the left's more wacky agenda is mitigated by young people when they go into the real life work environment, they get slapped around, they get woken up, they get a dose of reality which moves them away from the craziest of the ideas, so I think that business generally happens to young people, I think it certainly happens politically, it's happening to the radical left, their ideas are being rejected, again whenever the ideas clash with reality, people's desires to live a better life, to live just the basics, not to have crime in the streets and have their kids get a decent education and not have complete horror in the streets around them and some cleanliness and not have being attacked by homeless people and they have a basic police force and their kids actually study history. People reject the ideas of the left and so I think in much of the world in which we live these ideas are being chipped away out, they're being challenged, they're being rejected, they're being questioned and there is a mechanism by which in a sense a self-correcting mechanism as things move further and further to the left, they kind of get slapped around and beaten back. I've said this many times, Americans are not nihilists, most Americans don't advocate for nihilism, don't want at nihilism, don't support nihilism, indeed reject nihilism and as a consequence these ideas don't really plant themselves in the culture and sustain themselves over time, not in many, much of our activities that we engage in, except in one area but it turns out to be a very, very, very, very, very important area but except for one area and that is academia, that is the university and ultimately our entire educational program but particularly the educational programs that are now beyond the reach of parents who care about their kids. Wes, wow, Wes just contributed $100, that's fantastic, really appreciate that so you know when it comes to K through 12 there's some self-correcting mechanism, parents but what is the self-correcting mechanism in academia and I would argue that there really is none, it could be students not going to certain universities because they've gone so wacky left but students are not self-aware enough, students are young, again there's no self-correcting of the parents coming in and dictating students off and go to schools not based on what their parents want, based on what they want, they go study what they want and parents are much more flexible than they are in lower grades and the only other mechanism to rein in our universities are alumni and we'll talk about that later so we'll talk about why you know that is in a sense our only hope is to control the nuttiness on our universities is for alumni so let's go through what it is about universities that makes it so difficult to self-correct and what is the problem right now in universities and let me start by just acknowledging look that we all know that the universities are left, way left of center, have been way left of center for years and years and years you could argue for decades they certainly were left of center when I was getting my PhD that's many decades ago and you know we really the left does be taking over the universities and this is not no secret everybody knows this the left has been taking over the university slowly but systematically but not as a conscious plan but just as a as the way it happens right the YBS support page is down huh interesting bookshow.com see that's up let's click support I don't see the support page where's the support page maybe it is down all right I'll have to sponsor pages down right I'll talk to my IT people and find out could be that they're working on it and they're they're doing things Glenn thank you for the 50 dollars Emmanuel thank you for letting me know that the support page is not working and for the 20 dollars I really appreciate that all right so we all know universities have been left they've been left forever they've been more and more and more left over time simply based on a pretty straightforward simple mechanism and that mechanism is tenure so the way university the way universities work is um the way universities work is you you uh you get a PhD so let's assume you've already been accepted into grad school you you apply for grad school you get accepted into grad school you get a PhD and now you go in the job markets um historically you go in the job market uh they they base the decision on how good you are what you published the dissertation you go typically you go to different universities that want to interview you you present your work they evaluate that work and then based on all of that based on the quality of your work they will uh tend to offer you a position then you they offer your position is what's called an assistant professor you go in and your work is an assistant professor and uh after seven years six seven years uh and it somewhat varies I guess depending on department and depending on university you go up for tenure that is after six or seven years the university decides do they want to keep you or don't they want to keep you and um so they look at all your research and then they look at all your teaching and your teaching evaluations and they look at what they call a service you know the committees you've served at the universities all the stuff you've done in terms of the universities in terms of the university uh and faculty commitments and then they basically make a decision about whether to offer you tenure or not and and if you're offered tenure uh and you accept then you basically got a job for life very difficult very very very difficult to fire a professor who has tenure um you can show up when you want you can do the work you can not do the work as long as you basically teach your load maybe do a little bit of service although even that you can get away with not doing anything not doing being on any committees uh but as long as you do your teaching as long as you don't uh assault anybody um it's very hard to lose your job um as a tenure professor very very very difficult so you got a job for life now if you want to make full professor that's the highest um standard so as a tenured professor you're an associate professor to make full professor you have to um you have to again publish and everything and you go up and and there's a committee and they decide whether to give you a full professor should put on now if you do not get tenure you're out you've got a year to leave the university and during that late yeah you can look for another university job but you didn't get tenure it's a little tainted already uh you might become an adjunct uh you might get another university job but probably not a tenure job uh you're basically out of influence in terms of academia so for every uh you know student what's that wants to be a university professor the key is uh you know get do your PhD which usually takes about six years five six years get a PhD don't piss people off too much uh get good recommendations from the people you got the PhD from a writer dissertation it's acceptable to schools get job offers get a job then spend six years writing papers getting published again getting published peer reviewed your peers are viewing you and then a committee decides whether they want you as a faculty member forever at the university or not once you're in you can pretty much do what you want say what you want you know the consequence of that as well but basically they can't fire you and you got a job for life that's the way it works now think about it if you're already a tenure professor at a university who do you want to hire who do you want to surround yourself remember when you choose somebody for tenure you're choosing uh you're choosing somebody that is gonna be your colleague for many many many years you're gonna see him around the corridors around the school uh in in in you know department meetings for decades who are you gonna choose to hang around what are you gonna choose people you you like people you tend to agree with people who are not gonna shake things up too much people who uh you know are not gonna be your ideological or personal enemies so the tenure decision and the original hiring decision are very much about the kind of people you want to surround yourself with and the kind of people who are going who do the kind of work that kind of fits in with your work so it's a it's kind of a self-reinforcing so once let's say that for example the left gets a foothold in a particular department um you know they're likely to want to hire people like them and they hire people like them and then they're more of of you know a particular point of view in the department and they might want some diversity among point of views if they're a little bit intellectually curious but generally within a particular context a particular framework we don't want anything a little too much to upset things and then the people who you hire that are cutting edge tend to be cutting edge in your direction so if you're on the spectrum of I don't know kind of center left all the way to wacky left being 10 and center left being one you know if you're one maybe you hire a three but then once you've got a few threes in the department they tend to hire fives and once you get a bunch of fives in the department they tend to hire sevens and you can see that over time these department tend to drift leftwards to a large extent because the graduate students come from a particular ideological philosophical political background most phd students are you know tend to be from and off the left that form of collectivism there's some on the right and and what you see is they concentrate in certain departments in certain places even in certain fields some areas have fewer people of the right and some places have more of them and and how you define right and left as we've talked so many times is ambiguous so what you see is this trend of departments moving more and more and more to the left in a sense phd students knowing this so they either don't go into grad school and get a phd if they're not going to fit and if they do go in they want to push the envelope a little bit they're going to push it further out left whether that's further out towards socialism further out towards what's not called critical critical theory critical race theory critical literature theory whether it's further out towards postmodernism whatever it happens to be in that department they're pushing out and I think this is how over time by people voting in the people they like by the or the people that support their point of view this is also what happens in journals you know your best chance of getting published in a book in a journal is taking an existing theory taking a theory that people basically represent the consensus and basically reinforcing it a little bit or pushing it in the boundaries a little bit but not challenging it too much challenging might not get published the top journals tend to publish things that incrementally move the field within a particular context that is already acceptable so you get in academia a constant reinforcement of the prevailing ideas constantly being pushed further and further to the left because the left is what dominates our universities so even though for example in economics the way the the let's say in economics the more pro markets there's been an increase in the numbers in certain places and there was a period in which it really had a sense that free market economics was taking over it was everywhere it was it had the chance to really really dominate it never really happened partially because economic departments didn't let it happen and what what has landed up happening for example in economics is that the good guys the better guys the free market people have tended to concentrate in particular schools in particular places yes harvard might have wanted to and and all the top schools have wanted to but those departments are dominated by different forms of statist economists who then hire statist economists and they might have wanted to free market guys in order to have some intellectual diversity but not too much as to reshape the character of that department to reshape the type of people they're interacting with now what's happening right now at universities is that they have become dominated by uh you know by de i by um let me just fight once i know yeah there it is uh by de i diversity diversity um uh something in inclusion what's what's the e stand for i had it a second ago um thank you equity so diversity equity and inclusion diversity equity inclusion um and that that is the new politically correct thing that has to be emphasized and what is what does it mean it's really kind of the old standard of making sure your department is diverse making sure you have minorities represented and so on but it's it's taken a nasty twist right it's not just representation it's now much more than just representation so when i was interviewing for a job when i got my phd in finance it was interviewing for a job at a university the the the chairman of the bottom basically told me look you're on we really like you and we want to hire you and i think we're going to hire you but we can't yet make you an offer because there is a a a black woman who is on the market uh at the same time as you and look we have to offer her a job because that way we can tell the university you know authorities the the people you know the administrators we can tell them you know we after the job took a woman we after the job somebody was black and they can tick that box she turned us down so what could we do we had to hire this you know Jew with white skin right um which which the which the authorities did not like because for a variety of reasons and this is a true story and they said but don't worry we're going to offer her the job but don't worry because everybody's going to offer her the job all the universities are going to offer her the job and it's almost it's very unlikely very unlikely that she accepts our offer given that some much more prestigious universities are going to offer her the job why are they going to offer the job because she's basically the only black female on the market this year so she's going to get an amazing job at an amazing salary somewhere so don't worry we'll offer you the job next once she says no and indeed you know a lot happened there was a lot of drama around my hiring for a variety of reasons primarily um a variety of reasons um and ultimately uh and ultimately uh you know and uh part of that had to do with actually me me being Jewish and there being too many Jews in the department but nobody officially said that but that was implicit but ultimately I got the job because she turned them down so this stuff has always been has been going on for a long time for decades now this idea of diversity and we need women and we need we need minorities in the department and that's skewed kind of the hiring to some extent and created really justices imagine if I'd not gotten that job this is the job I really wanted because not because they like somebody more than me not because somebody else was better more qualified than me not because uh they had a better dissertation to me they presented better than me they taught better than me or anything like that no they would have gotten the job because of the color of this kid so that's been going on for a long time a long time but DI is different DI is different now I'm I'm going to read you from a post on John Cochran's Grumpy Economist blog which I highly recommend always have one of my favorite economists by far well how can he be one of them by far but he's certainly one of my favorite economists he is quoting so I'll be quoting from him quoting an article that was published uh where was it published oops not that one um it was published in the new discourse by um Stephen Brent Brent oh excuse me and Kobe uh German let me drink some water I'll also be quoting uh or we're telling you the story or quoting from this article by uh Joseph uh Joseph H. Manson who's got I guess a blog as well or a sub stack um where he's he's talking about why he's leaving the university which was published I think a couple of days ago why why he's a tenured faculty and he's leaving he didn't have to leave they can't fire him but he's leaving anyway let's see um I mean I like I like John Cochran Cochran says you know I hate to use the wellian or wellium term DEI and he's right because DEI is not about certainly not about equity not if you understand what equity is and and and not about inclusion or diversity ultimately it's about politics he says um I hate to use the term DEI it is really CPE so DEI is really CPE what does CPE stand for according to uh John Cochran conformity preference and exclusion I like that conformity preference and exclusion okay see is the quote this is what DEI now is all about it's right and I'm quoting by 2019 eight of the 10 and this is often the University of California University 10 uh eight of the 10 University of California campuses mandated that ladder rank faculty recruitment require candidates to submit diversity statements notice this is not about whether you are represent diversity whether you are minority or whatever but your attitude towards diversity that is you have to submit a diversity statement that and I'm quoting again these statements ask candidates to discuss what they have contributed to the university's goals of diversity equity and inclusion so what they're asking you is not I don't know how do you add to the racial or sexual diversity uh uh in our department in our campus which is kind of a question they could never ask in the past but kind of what they were all thinking in the past the question now is what have you done to contribute to the university's goals of diversity equity inclusion what are your views on DEI and what have you actually practiced I mean have you gone to a black lives matter demonstration have you smashed some windows have you signed some petitions have you done something in other words have you been an activist what is your opinion in a sense about DEI so they uh this is again from University of California and this is from the article quoting um they de-alignate criteria for scores ranging from one poor to five excellent an applicant who doesn't discuss gender or race ethnicity should receive a poor score as should an applicant who sees DEI as anti-ethical to academic freedom or university's research mission so if you have a particular political view philosophical view the DEI is not consistent with university's mission that it's not consistent with academic freedom you don't have academic freedom you basically get a poor score so as an applicant who discusses DEI as core values that every faculty member should actively contribute to advancing should receive an excellent score so basically if you agree with their political agenda if you agree with their philosophical agenda then you get an excellent score and if you get if you don't you get a poor score now okay so they rank my of user DEI why does that matter well it matters because this screen is done on all job applicants for academic jobs at the university and only the people who get acceptable scores their resumes their hiring package is then passed on to the departments to review so note that anybody who's not does not have a positive view of DEI who's not an activist with regard to DEI or or pretends to be an activist or argues for activism with regard to DEI doesn't even get the hiring package at the department level to be reviewed at the departmental level for hiring the screened out screened out now you know in a kind of a talk that one sociologists gave actually this is an article she wrote on the pages of inside higher education trying to explain to people how to write their statement right the DEI statement the diversity statement she says don't worry about being too political right because if you write something not too political it might come across as blasé and people and you'll get a poor score indeed you should demonstrate that you have quote awareness of how systematic inequalities affect students ability to excel unquote and you should show your commitment to activism and you should tell your story you know of the obstacles you faced or or if you haven't faced obstacles as many of us obviously have not faced obstacles you need to acknowledge your privilege she recommended that applicants focus on quote racial oppression sexism homophobia transphobia ableism or some other commonly recognized form of oppression and when it comes to teaching she encouraged applicants to express their commitment to anti-racist pedagogy so basically what they're saying is if you want to job at our university at one of these eight of ten uc campuses university of california campuses and this by the way supposedly now i haven't fact-checked all this this could be an exaggeration this could be over the top i kind of remember lying on john carquin fact-checking it maybe he has maybe he hasn't hopefully he has but i think this applies across the university so this would apply to stem this was applied to any position to a business school so any position being high as you're coming out of grad school you have to provide a statement a diversity statement so here's what happens i i already described this but this is in their terms in 2018 the university began to experiment with the use of diversity statement as the initial screening device in faculty searches and i'm quoting from the article in a presentation prepared by uc davis vice provost for academic affairs search committee members were instructed to review a candidate's contribution to a diversity statement before any other part of the application and candidates who do not look outstanding with regard to their contributions diversity would not advance for further consideration in the hiring process in other words only people with the right politics get to move forward only people with the right politics get to be considered for a job uc bookly has published information about the effects of the policy mandating the use of diversity statement as an initial screening device in one faculty search less than one quarter of otherwise qualified candidates had submitted diversity statements that were sufficient for advancement to the next stage of hiring so 75 percent were not deemed acceptable from political perspective for political standard political ideological standard this is a binding constraint now this will turn almost immediately these departments overwhelmingly you know wacky left all the way out there politically that's who they're gonna hire because that's the only people they have to hire from the system will not allow them to hire anybody else during job talks you know where you go to the university as a grad when you're finishing grad school and you present kind of the work that you're doing your dissertation during job talks candidates were asked to explain their ideas about diversity and their responses determine whether they were eligible to be hired in the late stages candidates were limited because they were perceived as being insufficiently committed to DEI regardless of the academic qualifications and this goes on and on and it's it truly is scary and what what happens is that you know you you start building up a faculty that is more and more and more you know aligned with the craziest most left-wing ideas possible and and this is what this guy Joseph H. Manson describes he says he's been a tenure tenure truck professor since 1996 well tenured since 2000 in anthropology department at UCLA and you know for a long time he says this anthropology department and he considers anthropology department was very collegial there was a variety of different points of view generally people tended to be kind of left of center as most academics were but he says gradually one hire at a time practitioners of critical i.e. far left postmodernist anthropology some of them lying about their beliefs during job interviews to not seem as wacky as they really were came to comprise the department's most influential clique they slowly grew also remember they are true believers like if you're like center left eh well why can't we all get along but the the the postmodern left they're true believers they believe everybody else it's not only wrong but but harmful so they stick together and their passion and their fight he said he says there's so many he's so many of these you know they're particularly nasty they are super intimidating and he gives an example of how they've treated a particular colleague of his his name is Jeffrey Brattingham and Jeff developed a simulation model of the geographic and temporal patterns of urban crime he created a predictive software that he that he marketed to law enforcement agencies now you can imagine what the far left thinks of somebody who has a software program that predicts based on area based on demographics based on you know geographic and and over time where crimes are going to be committed you can imagine that they think that this guy is a racist nasty horrible person plus he's working with the police the enemy so they started going after him and they harassed him and and and and and uh you know accused him of racism and everything else and and you know Manson here says look Jeff it's not a racist he's a standard issue liberal democrat didn't matter they restricted his teaching his ability to teach courses uh they reclassified him they harassed him you know so he basically basically Jeff this faculty member stopped attending faculty meetings because he was always put down he basically went silent didn't interact with anybody did his teaching they can't fire him he didn't fight them nobody stood up for him and he just in a sense disappeared I mean they literally tried to you know organize demonstrations against him get the administration to fire him I mean the guy's not being fired he's got tenure it's very hard to fire a tenured faculty but he's also work conditions are horrific um now he says not only was Jeff ostracized he was unpersoned I don't know if that's a word but unpersoned none of the faculty talked about him as if uh you know whenever they could avoid it the department chair for example would open every faculty meeting by solemnly intoning that our department was a community a family and we're here for each other except when we don't like you and then we're not there for you other colleagues who are not part of the fall left were always kind of embarrassed by this and they kind of supported Jeff but they didn't want to talk about it and they didn't want to they were basically completely in denial and they realized this was all bullshit but nobody wants to fight what are they gonna fight for the left has them all high ground here and Jeff himself in the story refused to defend himself he just went silent just turned his back he'll retire one day and he'll be replaced by more of these fall left and they'll hire more of them and more of them and they're committed they're devoted and this is of course all over he says all over UCLA he says not only do you have this DEI but the other part of kind of the the wacky left is a real hatred of Israel anti Zionism which is as he describes it here a thinly disguised hatred of Jews basically people are advocating kind of the worst anti-Israel anti rhetoric and this is supported by grad school students are supported by faculty supported by academic departments taking political positions nobody stands up against them and when somebody does UCLA goes after them and it's well documented and I've talked about on the show different examples of UCLA professors getting harangued suspended and ultimately leaving so Joseph Anson has decided he's leaving he's got many years he could still stay at the university he could get a salary he could do very little he could be like Jeff not interact with anybody teaches classes get a nice pay but instead he is retiring why because it's too painful it's too painful for him to see what's becoming of his department what's becoming of his university it's too painful given that he's a Jew to see the hostility towards him and his fellow Jews I guess on campus it's too painful to see meritocracy free debate out the window I need rather leave and fight from the sidelines and indeed that is what he is doing now this is only going to get worse there's no self-correcting mechanism here there's no constituency that is going to say but this is all wrong this doesn't the professors are not going to do it too many of them uninterested too many of them think that the far left has the more high ground even if it's implicit even if they don't agree with them too many of them are older the younger people coming up are the more radicalized there's nothing to fix this there's no marketplace I mean the marketplace would be students students would stop going to these universities but where else can they go and we'll get to that in a minute I mean there's a sense in which the one mechanism to fix this is alumni stop giving contributions stop giving donations for years and years now I've been telling business groups if you want to save America if you know help this country the one thing you can do is stop giving money to your alma mater but nobody listens I know people who are very friendly towards objectivism super wealthy billionaires who could do whatever they want with their money give it to anybody who want say whatever they want nobody can touch them in a sense and yet they will give to their alma mater they will sit on boards at their alma mater they'll bitch and complain about it constantly oh the universities are so left and they'll write another five million dollar check partially because that way their kids can go to that alma mater to their university why do they want them to if they're so damn left because the prestige the prestige of the university the prestige of being on their board the prestige of just getting along the prestige because everybody else on the board is a big shot businessman like them cc this pattern of wealthy americans whether they're conservatives or whether they're just center right or whether the libertarians who continue to fund the universities continue to write checks and they think that they're writing it to this program or that program and somehow it's included or they're building a building that everybody knows money is fungible everybody knows that if you write a check to university that's not very very clearly delineated towards something new you're basically finding the status quo funding the status quo getting worse funding the move the move towards even worse and worse and worse i remember years ago the the board of regents of darmouth tried to rebel against the university against its hiring against its move towards the left and they were ultimately crushed in many ways the existing university systems particularly the big ones particularly the public ones but even you know in some extent the ivy leagues are worse than anybody are doomed there is no way out of this cycle the only way out is for students to stop going and for that students have to have an alternative and here i think there is some hope we saw the university of austin last year i think they just started offering classes or they're starting in the fall i saw another university started in in um in savannah georgia where jordan peterson i guess is the chancellor something like that that is trying to be an alternative to the existing universities there are now online universities online degrees online classes there's of course youtube where people are learning a lot of stuff they are uh these boot camps where you can learn programming and learn particular skills and some of these boot camps you don't actually pay tuition until you get a job and then you pay up a cent of what you earn so slowly we're seeing alternatives but it's slow in the meantime the universities are breeding ground for worse and worse and worse graduate students which means worse and worse and worse future professors which means worse and worse and worse intellectuals who then influence everything about our culture because they're the people who are quoted on television the people who write the books the people who advise presidents are the people who influence what is going on and there's no there's no surprise that the right in the united states is rebelling the right in the united states is rebelling against what they call the elites what they mean by the elites they mean these university professors and the people they influence the people they train the people who take them seriously there is a real rebellion against this nutty left the rebellion is not in academia it's outside of academia it's about academia it's about the influence academia has and it's about the people who've been influenced by that academic academic these academic programs i as you know i don't think it's a good way in which to address them i don't think the right knows what they're doing i think the right ultimately is going to be as bad as the left but this is what the rebellion is about if you want to rebel against academia then it makes complete sense in us in a way to vote for donald trump right he's the opposite or at least presents himself as the opposite is more similarity to them than most people realize so this is what they're rebelling against and they were rebelling against you know points of view about race and diversity and the nature of reality and the nature of sex and gender and all these things thank you for listening or watching the iran book show if you'd like to support the show we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me you get value from listening you get value from watching show your appreciation you can do that by going to your own book show dot com slash support by going to patreon subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution uh on any one of those uh any one of those channels also if you'd like to see the iran book show grow please consider sharing our content and of course subscribe press that little bell button right down there on youtube so that you get an announcement when we go live and for you those of you who already subscribers and those of you who already supporters of the show thank you i very much appreciate it