 So you brought up education and I was just reading about the fact that in the social sciences Marxists outnumber conservatives four to one This was a study put out by Musa Algarbi at heterodox academy. There was also an extensive study of 8688 tenure-track professors at 51 of the top-ranked liberal arts colleges in the US This was by the National Association of Scholars and it found that the ratio of faculty members registered as Democrats compared to Republican is Now at 13 to 1 The the researcher here was Mitchell Langbert And he found that 40% of these colleges had zero faculty members who were registered Republican not a single one now I am no Republican never have been. I'm a libertarian and I've never voted Republican But what this data suggests? To me is that there's a kind of groupthink. There's a kind of ideological homogeneity a Dogmatic intellectual monoculture right going on dominating the Academy that's not helping us That is not serving students. That's not introducing students to the full range of of human thought and in fact Mitchell Langbert actually breaks down this this study by discipline and In communications, I'll just really quickly read it to you by fields in communications The ratio is 108 to 0 no registered Republicans anthropology 56 to 0 religion 70 to 1 English 48 to 1 sociology 44 to 1 art 40 to 1 it goes down and down and down and down classics 27 to 1 Then you get down to the the actual mathy Hard sciences and things like that and it starts to go down political science 8 to 1 computer science 6 to 1 physics 6.2 to 1 math 5 to 1 economics 5.5 to 1 chemistry 5 to 1 engineering 1.6 to 1 Okay, so all I just I think there's a lot of stuff going on here, right? So so one is groupthink I mean the whole tenure system is Rooted in this idea that you know people you like to promote people who publish in the journals that you are Running and therefore and it's true even within these disciplines put aside and even within the discipline the discipline So put aside politics It's true that like revolutionary papers articles that are written that really change a field almost never published in the leading journals Right, so the leading journals in a field tend to publish the things that confirm what everybody already of course I want to ask you a question about this though because and I think what you're saying right now is that there's a lack in the academy of institutionalized Disconfirmation which means if there's no one on the other side to check your biases then You're gonna publish a lot of biased work So based on all of that that long-winded list of showing how lopsided the academy is What do you think iron rand or objectivists would say about the current climate and academia this ever increasing tilt especially in the humanities and social sciences towards a kind of left-wing anti-reason anti-science moral and epistemological relativism this adoption of a kind of post-modern worldview grounded in critical theory feminist criticism post-structuralism intersectionality ethnic and identity studies programs all of this in other words How can we use objectivism to combat? What's going on in the universities to bring a little bit of sanity back or at least what would objectivists say? About the tools we could use to combat identity politics neo Marxism and other illiberal philosophies dominating the Academy well, that's a big question, but I mean I'll start with this look I Mean this is a huge problem in academia. There's no question about it I also don't want to exaggerate it though because I think can be exaggerated There are people who identify as the left were still good professors who teach good stuff I mean, you know as much as Steven Pink is wrong and a lot of things and he's leftist and he's wrong and free Well, yeah, he's brilliant and he's got and I'm sure his classes are pretty interesting and And I'm not sure adding a standard conservative You know is what is and so the flip side of that is I'm not so conservative so what you need in academia, right? Yeah, I mean the fact that it's all one so homogeneous is problematic and disturbing But it's also true that some extent conservative are pricing themselves or Or keeping themselves out of academia one is because they don't go into some of these fields My guess is they just they just not interested second is look. I don't know if you don't believe in evolution I can't take you that seriously and you want to be an anthropologist, but you don't believe in evolution or you want to be a I don't know any field almost and you don't believe in evolution I've never met a conservative a mainstream Intellectual-intelligent studied Evidence-based conservative that doesn't believe in evolution and my thought is I mean look at the look at this whole think tank in Washington in Washington state dedicated to creationism and you know, so they've got a scientific name for it now But well, that's unfortunate, but there should be you would assume that there wasn't Think about why Silicon Valley doesn't vote for president, right? If you're a Silicon Valley Why doesn't vote for public and for president if you're in Silicon Valley you've dedicated yourself to technology and science and and then the Stupid presidential candidates when they do debate not one of them will acknowledge that evolution is real I mean, how can you vote? I mean, I I'm not justifying them voting for Bernie Sanders But how can you vote? For a human being who pretends to be intelligent who is going to be president of the United States who says at best I'm not gonna comment on the question of evolution You know, you know, it's so It's so primitive and barbaric that it has no place on on on the thing now It's true religion has no place in politics, but this isn't about religion This is about the courage and but it's also about their respect for science and the fact that they don't so I think I think some conservatives disqualify themselves on from Academia because they're not serious Summer kept out there's no question so the bias is there and there's no question the biases there But it's also true that I don't think conservatives are the solution because the conservatives of course are either Mystics of some form or Conteans or something else. I think the solution is I meant the solution is is some fresh thinking about everything Not just about politics and I don't like that We define everything in terms of political agendas, but if you looked at philosophy to put on how many of them are Contean You know 70% or something Yeah, that will always be even more if you look at the fundamental concept that there's no diversity even there and bringing in conservatives Doesn't solve that. So what what objectivism? is hopeful of that that We start diversifying those kind of ideas by bringing in people who will challenge the Conteans in some of the humanities Will challenge the postmodernists who will in in Of course identity politics of course the way to challenge identity politics is to be an advocate of individualism and to it's not To change tribes, which is unfortunately what many on the right do right? Oh, no, your tribe definitions are no good Let me give you my tribal definitions But no to abandon all tribal definitions for the sake of a of a real philosophical Individualism and that to me is what's lacking in academia. What's lacking academia? I think unfortunately Conservatives and libertarians haven't picked up this man so but this is the man so they need to pick up is Philosophical individualism as a counter to everything the left represents both in politics and in kind of identity Politics, which is not really politics, which is more epistemology and more ethics, you know, it's a real form of tribalism So I would like to see us be more philosophical and focus in on the root causes So for example, we need to defend free will we need to defend individualism and and the individual is the beneficiary of his own Actions because only then can you defend capitalism if you are not shouldn't be morally the beneficiary of your own product Your own actions be distribution of wealth is fine Cursion is great because it achieves a moral purpose. The moral purpose is more equality in society This is my book equal is unfair, right? If if the goal is if you don't own your stuff This is why I think the most important speech Barack Obama ever made Was one of his more philosophical speeches was that you didn't build that speech which he which he stole from Elizabeth Warren Who might be our next president? There's a scary thought yes, but we did pay the people who did build that a fair market wage Exactly, and that's my book explains all of that and why you are the beneficiary of these things But he gave the speech you didn't build that and nobody very few I mean people made fun of it, but they didn't critique it There was very little actual critique because the fact is the conservatives don't have a critique of it because Morally they believe in redistribution morally they believe that your purpose of your life is to serve others They just want to tinker with it a little differently than the left does so what is needed is a critique of the idea of altruism the idea of egalitarianism Not just of its political manifestation, but of its philosophical roots and again, that's what we do in equal is unfair That's why I think this is one of the biggest issues of our time This holy egalitarian idea which with the next presidential, you know as the left You know we'll see what happens to the left But which is a leftist idea which is right never challenges really But you didn't build that is is is rooted. I mean almost every academic I know believes that to some extent or another particularly academics who've never been in the business world Of course, they don't believe it applies to them right when you ask them does that mean article you wrote you didn't write Oh, no, you know, we're special but But they believe it and that's what needs to be challenged It's those fundamental ideas in epistemology and ethics the politics will take care of itself if we can get that that's what we need a diversity of ideas and And you know at the institute that managed to we've been trying for years and it's hard to train people To be academics to go into these universities to help them out with the cetacean grants and help them out at University positions to create that diversity, but the left is so dominant. We need so many people It's gonna take a long time and it in you know in the world is crumbling in the meantime philosophic