From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Tips On How To Pick A Non-Woke College

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

On this episode, Sean and Rachel are joined by Senior Fellow at The Hoover Institution Professor Victor Davis Hanson to discuss the top colleges in the nation to get a classical education.    Victor explains what to look for on college campuses to tell if they are woke, the ideology that he believes has permeated through these American institutions, and the reforms that could be implemented to fix the higher education system.    Follow Sean and Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your teen requested a ride, but this time, not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to From the Kitchen Table. I'm your host, Sean Duffy, along with my co-host for the podcast, but also my partner in life, Rachel Campos Duffy. Thank you, Sean. And hello, everyone. We're back with more conversations from our kitchen table. And today we're joined, I'm really excited about this,

we're joined by author, historian, professor, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Victor Hansen. Welcome, Victor, to the kitchen table. It's so great to have you. And boy, I've been wanting to have you on back because this is your second time at the kitchen table. Because I mentioned several times, Victor, on Fox and Friends that you and I had discussed a list of universities that come with the VDH approval, the seal of approval. And I have had more emails from people wanting that list and wanting to talk about it. And so I thought,

I'm going to have them back to make sure we have the full list before I give that out. Welcome. Thank you. Glad to be here. So Victor, this has been a raging conversation in America about how do we protect our kids? How do we educate our kids? And I think there's been a real awakening and you have been part of this awakening because it's an issue that you talk about a lot, but what's happened with the American K through 12 system, but then the higher education system and how woke it has gotten. And as parents have seen, whether it's been their own children or their friends or neighbors or nieces or nephews go off to school and they leave kind of normal, normal kids. And they come back

four years later, absolutely insane, woke, liberal crazies. And now parents with the news attention that what's happened in universities, they're like, oh my goodness, I want to protect my own child. I've given so much to raising, rearing this child. I don't want to lose them. So give us your thoughts on the schools that you think are the best when you want to look at getting a great education, but also not losing your child to the woke crazies. Yeah, I get that question a lot. And there's all sorts of distinctions. I mean, we're talking about undergraduate colleges and universities, because with graduate programs in the liberal arts, they tend to be exclusively left wing. at or have been a visitor at. I think far and away Hillsdale College for the amount of money you pay and the quality of education you get. And even if you were to pay three times that,

it would be worth it. So that campus has no studies courses. If you go into the bookstore or look at the schedule of courses, there's no DASH, gender studies, leisure studies, peace studies, environmental studies, black studies. And there's not a lot of social sciences, sociology or community studies. It doesn't not a lot of social sciences, sociology, or community studies. It doesn't mean that they don't investigate those subjects, but they do under traditional rubrics of philosophy, English literature, foreign languages, and the physical sciences and mathematics. And there's a wide campus diversity there. I mean, there's people who are all across the conservative and even the moderate spectrum. But I just find that when I go there every two to three weeks a year, I've been doing it for 20 years to teach.

And it just reminds me of my childhood. You park a bike on campus, you don't lock it. Students are polite when they disagree with you. It's not accusatory. And so the faculty is top notch. So that would be my first choice. Then if you're, say you're a moderate or something, I gave the graduation speech once at St. John's University in Minneapolis. And that, while it can be woke, it does have a great books curriculum that it's centered upon. And it seems that if you were to go to St. John's, then you would probably be exposed to the great thinkers of the Western world and the non-Western world.

But it would be at least better prepared than the Naval Academy students. And the faculty that I knew at St. John's was far more adept and conservative than were the U.S. Naval Academy faculty. That was quite striking. Another college that I've been following and I recently spent two days there is St. Thomas Aquinas College down in Southern California. And it's really one of the most beautiful campuses I've seen. It's up in the hills, oh, 20 miles eastward and inland from Ventura, Oxnard in Southern California. But that's the only affinity it has with Southern California, the weather. But it's a beautiful campus. The students are very good. The faculty is excellent. I would recommend that as well. well. Pepperdine is a very unique case. It was a Church of Christ affiliated campus. It's beautiful. It's in Malibu. It's one of the most beautiful campuses in the United States. It was a favorite of foreign students who felt that it was one of the safer areas because it's off the Pacific

Coast Highway in a very exclusive area, and it's up on the hills. They have been I don't know how to say it. They're in a the undergraduate programs are starting to evolve a little bit as I look at them. And I visited there a little bit woke, but there's still a good nucleus of faculty. And then they have a wonderful graduate program in public policy. The school that offers an M.A. that's very traditional and and reliable. And it turns out great students. The other colleges, correct. You taught there. Yes, I did. I was a visitor there for I had a daughter, Susanna Hansen, who passed away from leukemia. But she was in her right after she graduated. She passed away. But she. So sorry to hear that. She had a wonderful time there. And she it was sort of her renaissance.

She was a graduate of UC Santa Cruz when she didn't like that. And then she went to Chile, learned Spanish, taught there for two years and came back. And then suddenly kind of relived her undergraduate experience in having a community of normal people. So she loved it there. You know, my colleague, my colleague, Will Kane, went to Pepperdine. And I mean, I've heard mixed reviews about Pepperdine. I've heard wonderful things. Yes. And then I've also heard that it has become infected with the woke virus. I think that's a good analysis. I went there, I think, nine years ago. And I talked to some of the undergraduate faculty. I was teaching in the graduate school.

ago, and I talked to some of the undergraduate faculty, I was teaching in the graduate school, I had a couple of undergraduate, and I thought that it was wonderful. But I think recently, the last two times I visited, I would say the School of Public Policy under Pete Peterson's wonderful, but I can't say the same for the undergraduate. In totality, there are pockets there that are still excellent. University of Dallas is known as a very good place to go, and it's got reliable faculty. It's not woke. When we say it's not woke, what we mean is we're not trying to be ideological warriors. We're just saying that the courses are inductive. That is, the faculty member presents evidence, required

readings, exams, and then the students analyze that. And the faculty member's not interested as much in the particular point of view the student has, but more interested in how that view is expressed, how it is supported, how it is defined, the data that went into that empirical decision. In other words, they're inductive, whereas a woke campus is deductive. The professor starts off with a premise, and then he or she forces the evidence on one side only to keep reaffirming that pre-existing deductive idea. And that's really what you can see the difference when you look at the catalog. I used to say the UC campuses in California, they used to be excellent, but I can't think of one undergraduate or graduate

program that is not woke. And we have 23 state university campuses. I taught for 21 years at one and they're all woke as well. So I, Victor, I went to UC San Diego for graduate school. Yes. And, you know, it was obviously liberal, but I wouldn't say it was, you know, terribly woke. I know that has changed as well. Based on your recommendation of the University of Dallas, know that has changed as well. Based on your recommendation of the University of Dallas, when you were on our podcast last time, that made the list, which let me backtrack a minute here. So our oldest child went to the University of Chicago. We had another one that enrolled at University of Wisconsin-Madison. And around that time, shortly after he started at Madison, is sort of when Sean and I decided that we were sick

of giving our hard-earned money to people that hated us, didn't like our values, weren't interested in Western civilization, thought it was, you know, horrible and wanted to indoctrinate our kids and all the other kids. And so we decided we weren't going to fund it anymore. And that's around the time, by the way, that you were on our podcast. And I remember that discussion, selfishly picking your brain for which universities, you know, VDH would choose. And so when when you mentioned Dallas, that was became one of the schools in Hillsdale was on there. There were a couple others that you'd mentioned. And she went down and visited Dallas, really liked it. And anyway, she got accepted and she's starting.

Oh, good. That's good news. A few weeks from now. So, you know, real influence that you've had on this. So we've, Sean and I have said that, you know, we feel like we're becoming better consumers of education. And that goes for, you know, as you know, we have nine kids. So we have kids in elementary, junior high, high school.

So we ended up placing our kids in a classical academy. And now, you know, the first one that's gone through our new criteria for choosing college, we basically say, you can go wherever you want. You can pick whatever school you want. You can go wherever you want to go. But if you want us to participate in helping to pay for it, there's only these schools you can pick from. You can pick from.

That's where there's a lot of influence in that picture. That comes up a lot. That's one of the most, I think that's the most, I should say the most common question I get from parents is the following. Well, I have the interest of my child foremost, and my child has done superbly in high school, and I would like them to go to a Harvard or Princeton or Yale or Oberlin or Brown or Dartmouth or Wellesley or Amherst. But I'm worried. And yes, you've recommended these other schools, but their brand, and they're very explicit about being a brand, their brand will not offer them the same trajectory for fill-in-the-blanks law school, med school, business. And that's true because the graduate programs participate in that same branding phenomenon. So it's kind of a dilemma sometimes when you tell a parent,

yes, but your student child, if they were to go to just take example, Hillsdale, they're going to meet people they'll never meet anywhere else at another campus. There's the whole development of the young adult. They may marry somebody there. They may date somebody there. It's going to be a holistic totality. Whereas if you take them to where I work at Stanford and they have traditional values, they can have experiences outside the classroom that can negate not just the fact that they're not going to get as good an education, but negate the whole idea that they're going to graduate and feel motivated to go

to graduate school. So, it's a hard call. I think what we all have to do as parents and alumni is to cease giving money to these universities without clear direction of where it can be spent. I know it's fungible, but too many alumni will say to me, well, I give to Stanford because I need my grandkids to go. Or I want that brand to continue to be superior so that it enhances my own career when I come up in my 30s and 40s. And it's all the wrong thinking. You know, it's very hard to tell a parent, stop. Don't give them any money. Put your child in a place where they'll get a traditional, rigorous and demanding education, but they'll have a campus life that is reaffirming.

And they're not going to get that, unfortunately, at the Ivy League or these Tony named university campuses. When you give them that answer. I mean, it's so interesting because clearly, I mean, by the way, we don't have anyone able to go to Harvard. But so we're not, we probably weren't competitive in that way. But the University of Chicago is a great school. The University of Chicago is a great school. It is a good school. And in hindsight, I don't know, Victor,

and my daughter came out more conservative than she went in. They attacked her. I think she's a rare bird though, Sean. I think so too. And so she did a great job. In hindsight, I don't know, Victor, and my daughter came out more conservative than she went in. They attacked her. I think she's a rare bird, though, Sean. I think so, too. And so she did a great job. And UChicago was wonderful for her. But most of my other kids, the University of Chicago would have got them.

What do you mean by got them? Indoctrinated them. It's a walled campus. Yes, it's a woke campus. But the difference between Chicago and other places is that it has a core of empirical thinking faculty that were hired, let's say, 15 to 20 years ago. And they're not woke. And so there are islands within Chicago and they have such a great reputation as teachers and scholars. Tiny islands. Yes, tiny, but a person with care and deliberation can pick over four years,

maybe 10 or 12 faculty members to take classes from. So I've heard that repeatedly in a way that's not true of Stanford or Berkeley or Princeton or Yale. So it's very hard when you ask what do parents think? There's two criteria that I think have changed. One is what they thought 2015 and what they think now are starting to be quite different. Now, given the lockdown craziness, the George Floyd aftermath, the BLM, the Antifa, and the craziness of the whole left wing movement. A lot of parents are now saying that brand is not worth it because I could lose my child. If I send my son to an Ivy League or Stanford, I don't know.

He might go on a date and be accused of something and he won't have constitutional protections. They will not allow him to cross examine. So I don't want him to date. People will say this. If my son or daughter go to those campuses, A, I do not want them to date anybody. I'm so scared about the lack of due process and what they might do. I don't want them to get in any political activity whatsoever because I don't know whether they'll go out after their social media, except I don't want them to talking to any. And that's not that's not a healthy idea. So they're changing. People are saying, you know what, I don't want to buy into that to the same degree. And so I think I maybe the last year or

two, I've talked to maybe 15 people whose older siblings have gone to those branded schools and they're sending their kids to, say, Hillsdale. Almost all of them are. And I think that that's heartening, Victor, because for me, I look at this and say, you know, there's great networking that happens at a Harvard and a Princeton and a Stanford, and there's a good brand to those schools still. But if you look at what's the quality of the true education that your young adult is going to get in that institution versus a Hillsdale or one of these classical schools that are actually forcing kids to read and think and be critical and be exposed to all kinds of ideas, which is what we want them to be exposed to,

not just one set of ideas. And if you have faith in your child, yeah, they may not have the same Harvard network, but they're coming out smart, well-rounded kids. I would have faith in my kids that went to a great school and they're well-educated. They're going to make it. They're going to do just fine. They're going to do excellent by coming out and being smart, well, well-rounded, well-informed young adults. They don't need the Harvard stamp of approval. By the way, I think, did Pete Hexeth Press send sent it back. Yeah, I think that's the right way of thinking about it. I think it's changing again. When I look at these other schools, one of the differences when I always when I go speak at a campus, I go to the bookstore and I look what the books are ordered. And one of the big differences is that a Hillsdale or University of Dallas or they have more primary readings. And these other schools do not want to do it because they want to, A, bring in their friends or these post 1960s studies courses and promote, you know, gender studies or black studies or environmental studies.

And there's not a lot of primary sources. So they bring in this therapeutic curriculum. And then the second, they don't like primary sources of the Western world because they feel they're racist or sexist. So they don't want anything to do with them. And so when you go to these other courses that are offered at these traditional campuses, they're actually getting primary sources. And I think it is really changing because people, again, they're not looking at, I know in California, say a Stanford or Berkeley, they're not looking at, well, my kid will get a BA from Berkeley or Stanford and that will send the push them on their way and they'll take courses and it'll just be four years. Big deal.

That was the attitude 10 years ago. But they're worried now and they're saying things like my 18 year old could be permanently damaged going to that place because of the things that go on and the things that they indoctrinate. And he could he could raise his hand in a class and be, you know, shouted down and somebody could follow him. Or he can be in a dorm and he can be innocently walking into a safe space where he's the wrong race. Or he can say something that he doesn't want to participate in a graduation that's adjudicated by racial criteria or a theme house or any of that stuff. And I have a lot of conservative students at Stanford that come into my office, kind of slink in at the Hoover Tower, and they're very

anxious people. They feel that they have a like cadre of people that they found. They have kind of a community of traditional students, but they have to be very, very careful. And they are very aware that their politics puts a target on their back and they can be they can have somebody say, well, Joe Smith said something to me in the gym, and I think I should report it to the equity inclusion officer, things like that. I should report it to the equity inclusion office or things like that. And so it's kind of an Eastern European 1950s atmosphere at these campuses now. We'll have more of this conversation after this. Oh, interrupting their playlist to talk about defined gravity, are we?

That's right, Newton. With a Bronco in Bronco Sport, gravity has met its match. Huh, maybe that apple hit me a little harder than I thought. Yeah, you should get that checked out. With standard 4x4 capability, Broncos keep going up and up. Now get up to $6,000 in rebates on eligible 2024 Bronco family models. Visit your Toronto area Ford store or Ford.ca. Well, and that goes for the professors, too. So my my daughter at University of Chicago had an experience. I won't go into it, but she was canceled and she came out stronger and kind of fought back and was, I think, victorious in this, you know, canceling of

her because of her political ideas. But there were professors that were slinking to her that were, you know, afraid to come out and basically writing letters saying, you're so brave. You know, thank you for what you're doing. I can't do it. I'm not tenured yet or whatever. You brought up such an interesting point to me. You said you went to the bookstore to look at primary source that see how many primary sources were in the bookstore. What other books were they selling? That's an indicator for you. And so we've been talking about this idea of becoming better consumers of education. And the questions I was asking when I toured the University of Dallas were totally different than anything I was looking at when I went to tour the University of Chicago with my first child. So I think in the

first at University of Chicago, I was really taken, you know, look like Harry Potter, Hogwarts. It was beautiful. You know, the Gothic architecture, it was a beautiful campus. Again, it had that branding and we knew people would be really impressed if she graduated from there. And then she did well because of who she is. I was not that impressed. I was impressed with the workload and the work ethic that is required to graduate from there. But I think it was really hard for her. She did find a small group of professors that she clung to and helped her, but it wasn't as large as it sounded like you have heard it could be. I thought it was very small, considering how big that, you know, and well-known that university is. When I went to Dallas,

I actually wanted to see what is the curriculum. And I was so impressed because no matter if you're an English major or an engineer, everybody is reading the same books. Um, in the first two years, there's a set curriculum. Um, they all have to read them. They're primary sources. Um, it's all the classics that, you know, if you didn't read, you wish you had read. Um, I'm sure that you, Victor, have read all of them and could, and could tell us everything about them. But I was so happy that my, I was like, this is worth me paying for. And I, they also had a semester in Rome where they're going to, you know, study architecture and art. I mean, I just I felt so much better about the idea of writing a check. So what other clues should parents look for when they when they go on these tours, when they start researching the schools?

The bookstore is an excellent idea. I never thought of that. I asked for the curriculum. Another great thing is to go online and just look at the catalog titles, because if you look at St. Thomas Aquinas or Hillsdale or St. Vincent, even Pepperdine, you will see things like History of Western Humanities, Part One, Antiquity to the Medieval Period, Part Two, Spring Semester, or they will say Great Philosophical Minds of the West, Plato, Aristotle, Boethius, or something like that. But when you go to these other ones, they actually have titles and courses that are things on movies, cartoons. that are things on movies, cartoons. They have these constructive, the architecture of masculinity, the poetics of gender, these new made-up therapeutic terms that are highly ideological. And they really have things that are not academic in the title.

I mean, cartoon studies, movie studies, comic books a lot. And I'm not kidding, or the performance of Popeye or the use of Minnie Mouse. Those are always tip-offs that the particular department's curriculum committee has allowed that to happen. The dean has allowed that to happen. The provost has allowed that to happen. Whereas at these other schools, if some wacky professor said, you know what, I'm kind of lazy, I don't really know a lot, but I love Facebook. So I'm going to teach a class called the ideology of posting in Facebook, something like that. It would never get through the committee. It would never get into the curriculum. And they'll just catch your eye very quickly. And as soon as you see them, you know that there's no faculty introspection or discipline.

And I think that that's a very good thing. Another thing I do is I walk across campuses when I'm invited to speak. And I've had some pretty hairy experiences the last 30 years at some campuses. But I look at what's being posted and what's, you know, every campus has lunatic posters and things like that. But when you see the majority of them are things like come to this free speech area and listen to and they have some radical palestinian person and it's overtly anti-semitic and that's very common today about the palestinian issue that's one of the things you know you look at or if you walk and there's a huge area with chalk that says blm safe space or uh antifa meeting tonight and it's just that you can see just by perusing these postings.

Yeah, wherever they congregate, wherever they have all these postings, you see them all over campus. That's such a great way to get more insight. Anything else that you can think of that, you know, I always look at the lectures and the graduation speakers. If they are a legitimate university, they will have once in a while a conservative, not often, but once in a while, a conservative graduation. You can get the list there online of all the graduation speakers year after year. And then you can see the people who they invite to speak. If they have a lecture series where they try to have both sides, if they had somebody like, say, Jordan Peterson speak, they would allow that to happen. Then they tend to be respectful of free exchanges of ideas. Stanford student group invited Ben Shapiro. And the next thing I knew when I walked to the parking lot, here were pictures of bug spray

and a very anti-Semitic trope that you have to be careful to get rid of Ben Shapiro as if he was an insect or something. And that was all over the Stanford campus. And then, you know, when I looked in the faculty senate, I always try these out when, because I'm a graduate of Stanford, I had a PhD there. My mother went there, my aunt went there, my sister went there, cousin, sister. And I always ask myself, what happened to this place? And how can I kind of define empirically what happened? So, these are the things I look at because they weren't there when I was a student. It was a left of center campus, but it was tolerant and the professors were very tolerant and they were

worried about you learning, not the type of ideology that you advanced or possessed when you graduated. So, those are some of the things. The faculty is, if you, you can go, I always look at the senior faculty and I will Google them if I'm interested, because I had three children as well. I had two now, but I had three and I would do this. I didn't do a very good job of selecting the colleges because they wanted to go to particular places. I should have probably had more discipline, but they all turned out pretty well. But once they got there, they would write back to me and say, this person is teaching, what do you think? And I would Google them if I didn't know the name. And I'd say, if you take that class and you come to an independent position different from that

particular professor, they're going to hound you and you're not going to do well. And so, you're going to be in a dilemma. You're either going to have to use a vocabulary and come to a conclusion that you don't believe in, but you know will give you an A or B plus or something. Or you can be honest and no matter how wonderful that essay is composed, you're going to get a C. And that was very shocking to them. And I remember my daughter would call me and say, wow, I wrote something on, we were talking about World War II, and it was a conflict and resolution class. And she talked about, I said, Susanna, if you write about World War II, and it was a conflict and resolution class. And she talked about, I said, Susanna, if you write about World War II as an exam, that's going to make you militaristic.

She goes, oh, no. And then she called up crying and said, it was such a good essay. And no one really cared about it. They just said that I shouldn't talk about these subjects. And then she said, you know, I went to see the professor and all World War II was Hiroshima and the Japanese internment. It wasn't anything you talked about all these years about D-Day and the bombing campaign and the Russian front. It wasn't that at all. And so she really encountered a lot of learning, but it came at an expense, I think. As I look back, I think if I had to do it over, I would have taken a lot of parents wonder, they don't want to be helicopter parents. I think it's as you both do, I think it's better to err in an activist sense and interventionist

sense at that point in a student's decision making, because I thought, you know, I will pay for it or help you pay for it, but I'm not going to tell you where to go, but I'm going to advise you. And then you have to make that decision. And I think that in each case, I got feedback that they wanted, in retrospect, more direction from me. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you were my dad, I mean, I would expect you to tell me what to do. I would demand that.

But I would say things like if you go, I went to UC Santa Cruz when it first opened. It was a wonderful school, I said to my daughter. And I was a classics major. I had taken all the advanced placement. I didn't have any GE to do. And all I took was Greek and Latin in translation and in the original languages. And I had wonderful professors. And I got individual attention.

They were not ideological. They were center left. It was kind of a crazy hippie school, but I got it. And you can do the same thing. But that was bad. That was bad advice. And she said, well, I can't do the same thing because it's not like that. And she was right about that. I remember taking her to the orientation and one of these minor officials saying, as he walked around and meeting the parents, he says, well, I want every student to have one homosexual experience while they're on campus. And he said that.

That's kind of what happened to her at Chicago, but that came through, that happened to our daughter as well, but that came from the, from the RA. I mean, it was just, they were the boys and girls are using toilets and showers in the RA. But Victor, I mean, it was just... They were, the boys and girls are using toilets and showers in the same... It's co-ed showers with just a curtain between

them. And I'm like, and also with all the Me Too stuff going on, I'm like, this is a recipe for disaster. And it's not, I don't think it's very safe for anybody to be engaging in 18, 19 year olds in that kind of environment. And I think it's also very, I think it's- You put a bowl of condoms out after we all left as parents because we had to come back

and give her something. We're like, what's this? And it's like, they put the condoms out for these kids. I'm like, where have we sent her? We were like, we lost our minds, Victor. We were beside ourselves. We had sent her to a school like that, this little precious thing that we raised. We sent her off to the wolves.

I had my, he went to a CSU campus, my son, Cal Poly, then he transferred to Fresno. And I said to him, don't be deluded by this permissiveness on campus. It's there and it will draw you in if you let it. But I want to warn you that when young people are not committed to each other and they have sexual congress, emotions run high. And often what seems, you know, what might seem okay on the current climate and campus, a person can have a regrettable experience, very common if you don't know someone. And that will grow under counseling and feminist studies to accusations of people that you were using coercion or something.

So I said to my son, yes, you go there and yes, people do all sorts of crazy things in the dorms and they swim nude in the pool and all that stuff, but don't think that the new left is not Victorian. At the same time, it's very permissive. It just chooses when to be permissive and to be traditional and when not to. And it's usually adjudicated by counselors on campus that if there is an incident, you will not have constitutional protections. And I was just speaking as someone over the 20 years I've been at Stanford and the 20 years I was at Cal State, I must have seen 25 of these cases where people go out on a date. They really don't know each other very well. They sometimes have alcohol, sometimes don't. They have sex. A boy being a cad decides that

weeks later, he does not want to see the girl. And that's not that's kind of a stereotype narrative, but it happens. And then the girl gets upset and then it can be months later. She says that she feels under further consideration that she was coerced. And then the young student is accused of sexual assault and he does not have a right to have a lawyer or cross examination or bring in witnesses or even have his accuser named. And I've seen this, and it destroys people. So, I think all people that go to these campuses, and that's the majority of campuses, should adopt, not just for moral reasons, but for self-protective reasons. They should say, you know what? I'm not going to get involved in this 60s type culture that's normative. I'm just

not going to do it. It's kind of like the sirens in the Odyssey. It lures you in and it shipwrecks you. It shipwrecks you morally, but it shipwrecks you legally too. You have a lot of exposure, especially for young males. That's a really good point. I mean, I guess I hadn't thought about it like that. And you probably see it so frequently and you see the real risk and danger that there's no bright line rules for liberals. It can be okay one day, to your point, it can be wrong two weeks or two months later. And so going in with a clear set of morals and values keeps you safe. Can I ask you, I know we don't have much time left with you, Victor. I went to law school, graduated like 23, 25 years ago.

And this has been a conversation I know about undergrad. But it seems like over the course of the last decade, 15 years, we've seen law schools become wildly woke, medical schools become very woke. And I don't know if you can speak to this, but I'm concerned as a former prosecutor, I look at judges, I look at the criminal justice system, the fairness and equity that happens in our American system is really remarkable. I'm really proud. I mean, I was a prosecutor. I was proud of the system that I participated in. Whether I won or I lost, 12 people came in and made a decision of guilt or innocence. I love it. And I thought that the prosecutors and the defense were moral, upstanding, principled in the way they presented their cases, both one advocating for the state, one advocating for the defense. It seems like we're now going to start churning out

a bunch of left wing nuts that will be all part of this criminal justice reform, this set of ideas that undermine our bill of rights, because that's what they've been taught. This is what we've taught today is what we're going to see in our future judges and legislators tomorrow. It scares me. I'm wondering if you have any concern whether it's- I do. I have an apartment on campus right across the street from Stanford Law School. So I know people that teach there. I follow some of the things that they do. there. I follow some of the things that they do in this critical legal theory that posits, basically, if you do not have an equality of result in society, there has to be an identifiable victim and an identifiable victimizer. And that the law is a construct that was created by,

fill in the blanks, wealthy, white, heterosexual males. And it doesn't have any currency or as one person put it it's a crime to steal snicker bars because wealthy white men don't steal them therefore they say you can't steal them and it only impacts people of marginal background so yeah it's it's very scary because they do not believe a in the constitution and they're open about that. They feel that it's a relic of a particular race and gender and age. And more importantly, they feel no duty to follow it. And that permeates the entire campus, because I think it's not an exaggeration to say that for a faculty member or a student, there is no constitutional protection on campus. There just isn't. And I know that where I was, Scott Atlas, who's a wonderful colleague of mine,

you know, he had a different view from Dr. Fauci. He wrote very early on. And when he went as a consultant to the Trump administration, he was very prominent in saying this mutatable virus will not have an answer as we know it yet with a with an ironclad vaccine and mask are valuable, but only in particular places and only a particular mask. And more importantly, we by having a shotgun approach, shutting down the schools, except that we're we don't have enough resources to concentrate on the people who are really vulnerable, the elder. And for that, he was censored by the Stanford faculty, the Stanford medical faculty. There was talk about yanking his license. He suffered a great deal of financial loss. His professional reputation on campus was ruined. People like myself who wrote about this and how unjust that I was attacked. I had

to go before the Stanford Faculty Senate. One of my accusers was the member of Stanford Antifa who had founded it. And then Neil Ferguson, a distinguished historian, another colleague, he was attacked. So it was almost as if we're going to attack him because we feel that he is advancing particular Trumpian ideas and he wasn't, but they were medically sound and we're going to attack him because we feel that he is advancing particular Trumpian ideas and he wasn't, but they were medically sound. And we're going to destroy him and anybody else who defends him, we're going to find something and go after you. And then we're going to set the climate as a deterrent factor that nobody will dare ever do this again and cross us. And these are not radical students. These are very distinguished faculty, deans, provosts, all the way to the top.

And that happens at almost all the campuses. I'm just thinking right now that the Ben Shapiro example that we're all aware of at Georgetown or the Jonathan Katz example, where he he was really outraged at this radical black group that was intimidating other black students. And he wrote about and he used the word terrorist tactic or terrorist group. But he, you know, and he said, you know, they're terrorizing other African-Americans. And that led to sort of a star chamber inquisition of his entire past. And then they dug up something they already had reprimanded him and retried him again. And then they put a video out where they picked and choose words and censored it to make him look even more dubious and attacked him with an introductory video. And then they fired him,

a tenured professor. And these examples, whether they're Jordan Peterson or at Evergreen up in Oregon, they're not uncommon. But more importantly, they set a tone for a young faculty member, particularly without tenure. And that's why they're designed to do. There's these protocols say this is the orthodox view. If you challenge it, we're going to go after you and we're going to destroy your career and your life. And so on the other hand, you can buy indemnity insurance and participate in our agendas. And if you do slip and make mistakes, you'll be immune from any prosecution or punishment. And that's a very powerful tonic for a lot of young faculty.

We'll have more of this conversation after this. Light up Black Friday with Freedom Mobile and get 50 gigs to use in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico for just 35 bucks a month for 18 months. Plus, get a one-time gift of five gigs of Roam Beyond data. Conditions apply. Details at freedommobile.ca. I mean, especially in the case of Dr. Scott Atlas, he was definitely vindicated. He was. It's unbelievable. No apologies ever came from the med school. Nothing.

No apologies ever came from the university community. Nobody ever said, we're sorry. We want to make it up to you. It was terrible what they did to you. We, it was, it was, it was terrible what they did to me. You know, when, when I hear all of this, I'm, I'm, I'm even more reinforced in what Sean and I have done. And we always say that having a lot of kids, you know, is wonderful, but the best part is you get second chances and you get to, you get do-overs. Yeah, we get do-overs. And I do think we've learned a lot. You know, even, you know, we sent our kids to, you know, Catholic school and, you know,

not all Catholic schools are the same. And we, you know, finally wised up. It took us, you know, many years to figure out that, you know, we want what we really wanted was a classical Catholic school for our kids. And then that's now extended to, you know, the university and the system that we now have where we tell our kids, this is the list. And we want to help you. You can go wherever you want. But if you want us to help, we're only going to help with these schools.

And again, it's not because it's ideological. It's not because it's ideological. It's because we want them to graduate having learned something about truth and beauty and what's made Western civilization so amazing. And what are the foundational and, as you said, the primary sources for so many of the scholarship. And so that's what we're looking for. I think the things that you bring up about how men are treated, young men can be treated and the perils for them is really important. I think maybe even and, you know, you brought this up and it's such a great point. Who are your kids eventually? I mean, it's not uncommon that people meet their future spouse. And I frankly think the most important decision you make in your entire life is not where

you go to school. It's who you marry. And so who are you? Who are you surrounding your kid? Who are the people surrounding your child? I think that's just as important as what they're learning. And all of this is reinforced for me. The idea that, you know, I need this list. And so I want to go over some of the some of the schools that you said. So you said Hillsdale. Yes. St. John's. Yes. Thomas Aquinas in California. Yes. Still like Pepperdine. And you like the University of Dallas. Yes. What else would you add to this list? What other schools?

Well, the other schools then are schools that, how should I put it carefully, that are part of woke institutions, but they have, like the University of Colorado is entirely woke, but they have an innovative Western civ and even have a professor of the history of conservative thought there. of conservative thought there. And when I have spoken there, I've met a whole group of students that were able to pick and choose what they wanted to take. So many criteria are based on, you know, the location of the place. Chicago is much better for a student

than Princeton or Stanford. But on the other hand, it's a very wild neighborhood, especially right now. It's dangerous. And that's the phrase. USC is probably not as- They're trying to defund the campus police in this really dangerous neighborhood.

That's how dumb they are. And by the way, the people, the black community on the South Side loves that campus police because that's what's allowed that area to actually be a little safer and businesses have thrived. And they're the ones against defunding the police on campus. But the campus white kids want to defund it. Yeah, the campus rich white kids want to defund the police. The minorities in the community are like, no, no, no, keep the police. Keep them.

There was a... We'll do that for you. The same thing is true of USC. If anybody's followed the University of Southern California the last 20 years, when I was 20, it was considered an OJ Simpson football factory or a fraternity school. And it was in a very bad area in Watts. But over the years, it had really stressed institutional integrity. They had a wonderful president, Max Nikias, who was a social and I think political conservative. And he was there for 10 years.

It was just my daughter when she graduated from Pepperdine Graduate School. She went there and worked, had a wonderful experience there. And I have gone over and given guest lectures there. But that so that is in transition as well. It's not quite as bad as U.S. UCLA next door where they sort of were getting rid of all meritocratic considerations. What do you think about a couple of schools that I've heard of that people are thinking about? One is Arizona State University also has, I think.

I've heard the same thing. I have only spoken there once a long time ago, but I've heard that it's trying to, one of the things that's happening is a lot of universities is we're going to have a million fewer students in the fall than we did two years ago. And that will translate, you know, at maybe as many as 10,000 fewer faculty jobs. And people are starting to panic, especially when kids go on the Internet or they feel that. Why? Why are we having a million fewer kids? I hadn't heard that. Yes. Well, partly it's because of the economy and inflation and worries. Partly it's the woke anger at the woke. Partly it's the student debt crisis, one point seven trillion. And partly it's the idea that in this economy, vocational skills, I mean, you get it in California, if you want an electrician to work at your home, he charges $40, $50 an hour. That can work out to $80,000, $90,000 a year versus, you know, $100,000 in a sociology degree from Cal State Riverside.

So young people are making those decisions that more than half are not going to four-year colleges or community colleges. Or better yet, they're going to a California in this state community college for two years, near home, live at home, save money, and then transfer to the university system, either the CSU or UC, and save half the cost. But the net result is that at four-year colleges, they are in a crisis because they're short students and their costs are rising, and they can't go any higher on their tuition and cost of living because it's unaffordable. And so, one of the results is that, and I think this is positive, that a lot of schools are thinking, wait a minute, if we continue down the woke road, and we continue down these social science degrees that don't give people jobs, when we have this vocational pressure, and the online course pressure, and the commercial school pressure, we better be more balanced.

So you're starting to see people like Arizona State and others saying, hold on, let's have some element of the campus that can attract a type of student that has those worries and get them into college because they are destroying their own product. college because they are destroying their own product. It's not going to affect the Ivy League and Stanford and Berkeley and Chicago because they don't really sell. Nobody says, I'm going to Harvard because I'm going to get a wonderful undergraduate degree. Nobody anymore says, I want to be on the Princeton campus so I can have Cornell West as a professor. They don't say that. They say, I don't know much about it. Parents do, but we're wealthy. And we know if you get a BA from Princeton, you can get into Yale Law School.

That's what they think. And so they're going to be exempt because they're just selling a brand that's like Coca-Cola or Honda or Toyota versus a Kia. brand. It's like Coca-Cola or Honda or Toyota versus a Kia. You know, nobody cares whether a Kia or a Hyundai actually might be as good as a Toyota or a Honda, but they just know that the brand name or, you know, you buy a generic Coke versus Pepsi, it could be just as good, but it doesn't have the brand name. And that's what these schools are now selling. And I don't think they'll ever, I think as bad as they are and they're going to get worse, I think they'll still for a while

longer have that brand name. So what do you think about a school like Liberty or School of the Ozarks? Some of these that have very overtly conservative or religious. Yeah, they're very different. I think they're very different schools. I know people keep, Liberty's had some problems. I've heard of them. Yeah. And I don't need to get into them, but the College of the Ozarks is a little different because it's got a very good speaking bureau. They have people coming from all over the United States that speak there,

that enrich the campus. They really require everybody, not because just for financial reasons, but they think work, physical work. And the same thing was true when I went to St. Thomas Aquinas. They had beautiful rose gardens. And I said, I've never seen a rose garden like that on a campus. And they said, the students do it. We assign them particular landscaping projects

or we assign them, we give them, when we make a new building, we have a student committee and they have to decide the paint and then they do it and they take pride. And the College of the Ozarks is sort of famous for that, for having a, that students learn the value and the nobility of physical work. So yeah, I think it's a great place. And the president is sort of renowned. I think he's in his 70s. His name escapes me. Yeah, but that's a good place. What about Purdue? Purdue is basically the create the modern Purdue is a creation of Mitch Daniels, who's an excellent administrator and was a great OMB director for a while for George W. Bush. But he came up with this innovative notion that students

were going to get a contractual value of their education. So if they came to campus, they were going to graduate in four years. They were going to have classes that were available. They would not major in history and then suddenly find that the one-third of the history department was on leave their senior year, and they couldn't take the necessary courses. So, he had the idea that he was going to freeze tuition, room and board, and he was going to give greater value. And it was a student-centered approach that they could actually go to that university, be serious, and graduate in four years. Remember, half of all undergraduates who enter their freshman year do not graduate after six years.

They drop out. So, we don't talk about that. But he was trying to address those issues. And then he made some very astute observations that once the federal government interrupted the moral hazard and said, basically, we're going to guarantee these student loans no matter what, and the university was off the hook, then they doubled the rate of inflation with their annual tuition increases. And he put a stop to that. So I think as long as he is there, and I don't know the degree he's institutionalized his leadership, but it's of the big 10 schools, I think it's the best. That's interesting. Victor, I'm going to take on a little different jaunt as this. I make this point. One of the worst agencies that was created in Dodd-Frank is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB. It's a horrible, unaccountable to Congress. It's self-funding. Republicans, we tried to kill it in the Financial Services

Committee, major fights over the course of my tenure in Congress. However, wouldn't it be great if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau started to take a look at some of these universities and how much they're charging kids and the kind of garbage product they get back in the CFPB when after schools. That's the one thing I'd actually go for for money is being devoted to political activism rather than instruction. You're all tax exempt. And the people who give to you don't have to pay gift tax on that. And yet you're not a disinterested institution anymore. And there was serious talk that you should limit the tax deductibility after a certain student dollar amount in the endowment. $1 billion, that would be permissible money per student. But above that, the government, any university should not be subsidizing colleges to amass these huge endowments that are not used to necessarily reduce student costs all the time. Often they are, but they're used for these other things that are pernicious. And that was one thing that people talked about. Another is I think tenure could be replaced with yearly contracts or three to five-year contracts.

If you're a professor of philosophy, in the next five years, we would expect one or two articles, maybe one book, better than average teaching evaluations. You did go to your office hours hours and then we'll assess you out for five years rather than just saying, okay, you're 30 years old, you've been here six years, we're going to give you lifetime employment. Another thing is, I think it's very valuable is when we talk about all these problems, we essentially get back to the school of education because they are the ones that are teaching our high school kids grammar school. And if we would just say to the states, if we're going to fund with federal money these universities,

we should say the school of education, we're not going to fight you. We understand that you're highly political and you're not teaching any academic knowledge for that year or two to credential people. you're not teaching any academic knowledge for that year or two to credential people. However, we are going to tell the states that if they have their K through 12 public schools, you have the choice of either getting a VA and a credential, the traditional route to the school, or you can have a master's degree or one and a half year academic degree without a credential. Because, and I think the students would walk. In other words, when they got their BA and they wanted to be a history teacher, a science teacher,

they'd stay an extra year and take an MA in science or history. And then they would be away from the worst of that politicking because I had the unhappy experience. Yeah. I had to speak. I was assigned a classroom for, I think, four years in the School of Education. And I just would listen to the teachers next year. You know, they would say, I walked out of my classroom and they had students lined up on both sides of the hallway. And they were yelling the N-word and all these horrible words at students. I said, what is going on? And they said, each person has to walk the line, the gamut. And then we call them terrible things. I said, why would you do that?

So, they know what it's like. I said, they've never heard these words in their life. And it was stuff like that every day. And I started, I was very young at the time. I thought, these people are crazy. And they were doing things teaching high school teachers about grading and syllabi that were not meritocratic. And we were upset about this idea that if you're punctual, it's white supremacy. But that went way back. I can remember 20 years ago, 30 years ago, people in school of education were talking about whiteness and punctuality as being unnecessary as teachers. So I think you've got to emasculate the school of education. You need to tax the endowments. I think the federal government's got to get out of

the student loan. And if you had an 18-year-old and they were going to Princeton and somebody sat down with them or say Northwestern or University of Texas, and they said, look, we have to have you sign this, but you're going to go for four years. Theoretically, you're going to pay $100,000 a year. It's going to be $400,000 unless you get a scholarship. The current interest rate on the student loan is 7% or 6%. interest rate on the student loan is 7% or 6%, you're going to be paying $2,021 a month or something. Here are the list of majors that you could consider. And here's the average income per major when you graduate. Now, if you select any of these majors, these are going to be how many years you're going to pay off that student loan. And that's what you do when you buy a car. They apprise you of every possible thing. And yet we just let these kids come in, they get a letter,

they go off, they think it's not going to be paid back. And the next thing we know, they're indebted for 10, 20 years. I have relatives that 20 years later, they owe $40,000 still. I left Congress at 48 years old and only after I left Congress did I pay off my student loans. I paid forever. I had a great feeling to pay them off. I know we're going to let you go. This is going a long time. I thought about running for governor in Wisconsin.

I haven't shared this before, but Rachel and I have talked about it. One of the first things that I was going to address as governor is the Department of Education, the education department within our university system. Because the woke teachers that are being funneled out of there into our K through 12 schools, you're exactly right. And I would just tell you from my time in Congress, it is really hard to change the federal government, to change the agencies. to change the federal government, to change the agencies. Governors have so much power in their states. Ron DeSantis is a great example of that. Kristi Noem, a great example of governors who are making changes that have huge impacts. And I just wish we had more Republican conservative governors seeing the problems and the power that they have and saying, listen, our state tax dollars are not going to go and fund an education system that's churning out all these woke teachers to go back into our school system and indoctrinate our kids. Yeah. I mean, we're not going to do it. I'm sorry. That's not why

we're paying our taxes. We want to educate these young adults to be good teachers, We want to educate these young adults to be good teachers, good instructors, but we don't want to teach them how to be indoctrinators. That's not the job, and that's not what you've given your tax money for. More governors need to stand up, and if they do, I think we the awakening that's happened. I mean, you and I've been saying for a long time, Sean and Victor, you know, this, the Marxists, the radicals infiltrated the teaching colleges for a reason. It was all intentional. And, you know, there were a few, you know, voices out there talking about it, but people kind of thought you were a little bit crazy and radical yourself for focusing on that. I think it's a very popular idea right now to reform teachers' colleges. And I think people are awake to it and ready for it. And I think all of your ideas are excellent. I think that if anyone listened to this podcast, Victor, they would become a better consumer of education. And I think that is what we wanted to accomplish with this podcast.

I hope so. I hope so. I think it's probably the greatest service that you could do and our podcast could do. Save it America is helping parents make better decisions with their students. You are, I think, one of the great thinkers in this space and who people trust, which I mean, again, for our own family, Victor, you are one of the reasons why we kind of put together this list for our daughter and the university of Dallas, because of the conversation with you, which is why I wanted to bring you back to go, let's talk about it again. And, and, and have a, you know, this, this, these sets of things we can look at to go, again, I love, what are we teaching?

What are the titles of the classes? That is a great way. What's in the bookstore? I mean, what kinds of things are being posted about what are the activities on campus? All of this is very smart. Because your point is, they're not hiding it. I mean, it's on their sleeve. It's like you can take a glimpse at the college and go, oh gosh, these guys are woke as all get out. And if they're traditional classical, you're going to see that as well. As long as you scratch the surface a little bit and look, we'll all see it. And so as a parent, look at it and make sure if you care about the kind of education that your kid's going to get or the kind of person your child is going to be when they get

out. Yeah, it's more important, isn't it? It is more important. We'll help push them and instruct them and guide them into a better school or better yet, don't fund the woke institutions, which is we're not going to do it anymore. We did it for two of them. We're not funding the people that hate us, that want to steal our daughter from us. We don't want to do that. And we're not going to. We work too hard for them. I mean, well, everyone works too hard for their money, right? You work too hard for your money to go, why am I giving it to these people

who hate, you know, Victor David Hanson, this classical thinker. Or who hate America. Who hate America. Yes, better yet, they hate America. Burn our flag. Well, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. We think you're an American treasure. Okay. Well, thank you. And we'll do it again.

Thank you. That was a great conversation with Victor Davis Hanson. So smart, so insightful. And again, had a huge impact on the decisions that we made for our third child. And adding more to it. I just love all these other little bits of information and things that you can do to get to the bottom of it. I think it's not just parents, it's grandparents now. A lot of grandparents are helping to pay for colleges as well. And I think they're also going, hey,

where's my money going? What's the product here? And I hope that all of this is helpful to people, to students, to parents, grandparents, as they make their decision that we can all become better consumers of education. And- What I loved about what he said, it's not a secret. It's really clear. It's just, look at it and you're going to go, yeah, this school seems to be pretty decent. This one is not. And you can, at first glance, you're going to be able to tell what kind of school it is. And then you can ask around as well. And you can help your child make a great decision on the school that they go to.

And I think he made an interesting point. There's going to start to be a transition, especially if there's a million less students going to school. That's a wake-up call for the higher education system. No question about it. No question about it. Absolutely. No question. And if we send our kids to places that, again, I want my kids to hear all kinds of ideas. I want them to be exposed to all different kinds of people. That's a good thing. I just don't want them to be indoctrinated. I'm not trying to protect them from anything. I just don't want the magic men and women at these

universities who've perfected indoctrination to get my child. Yeah. That's it. Educate them. Don't teach them garbage. Use my dollar well and expand their minds. That's what I want. And I do still love what he said about marriage too, because that is something that happens out of universities. Who do your kids end up becoming close friends or eventually married to? And that also matters and has generational impact. So what is the person you want them to be? And is that university helping them to become the person they should be, the best person they can be?

And I also like the point too, it's like most college kids make really bad decisions. I didn't. I only made perfect decisions. We all make bad decisions in college. And he makes a good point to go, it's dangerous. These are dangerous times that you can make some not perfect decisions. And two weeks, two months, four months later, it can come back to you with no constitutional protections and you're tarnished. A lot of these kids are committing suicide. It is just, it's a horrible experience and they have no due process and can're tarnished. A lot of these kids are committing suicide. It's a horrible experience, and they have no due process and can be falsely accused.

Or even just, and that's also an extreme case, but what's it like to be, I went to Arizona State University. It was definitely more liberal than me, but it was pretty center left, if not center. Everything is more left than you, but it was pretty, you know, center left, if not center. Everything is more left than you, Rachel. Yeah, everything is more left than me. That's true. But that said, I am. I never felt I felt like I could say what I wanted to say for the most part. What if you spent four years feeling like you're living in East Germany where you're afraid to say anything and you really end up just you stop thinking for yourself. It's just a terrible way to go through life. And you're going to take that from the university to your next job, to your marriage. It infects your life. And again, we used to have, and again, we went to school, there was this idea that we could debate, we could have disagreement

and you weren't going to get canceled. You weren't going to get shunned and kicked out of school. That's what it is now. And who wants that potential experience for their young adult going into the world? So again, we made a mistake with the first two. It turned out pretty okay with the first two. This third one, I'm like, well, I don't know how it would go for her um so let's make sure we protect her and I feel better about writing that check absolutely do um so anyway he is a national treasure we're so glad we got him on so smart so smart well um if you like this podcast definitely rate subscribe review review wherever you get your podcasts and uh we will talk to you next time from the kitchen table. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you around the kitchen table next week. Bye, everybody. This is Jimmy Fallon, inviting you to join me for Fox Across America,

where we'll discuss every single one of the Democrats' dumb ideas. Just kidding. It's only a three-hour show. Listen live at noon Eastern or get the podcast at foxacrossamerica.com.