The Daily Signal - Ep. 305: Heather Mac Donald Explains 'The Diversity Delusion' in Our Educational System

Episode Date: September 27, 2018

Whoever controls education has an enormous impact on the direction of our country. That’s not exactly encouraging news, given the current state of higher education. Our guest today, Heather Mac Donald, has a new book called “The Diversity Delusion.” In that, she describes how a toxic turn in education is infecting society as a whole. Plus: Sex robots are coming to America. We also cover these stories:--A third accuser, Julie Swetnick, is now alleging that Brett Kavanaugh behaved inappropriately at high school parties. She is represented by Michael Avenatti.--Kavanaugh dismissed the allegation as being from the “twilight zone.” He said, “I don't know who this is and this never happened.”--Sen. Jeff Merkeley, D-Ore., is trying to block a Senate vote on Kavanaugh -- not through persuasion, but through a lawsuit in federal court. --Appearing before the United Nations Security Council Wednesday, President Trump accused China of election interference.  The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, September 27th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Ideas have consequences, and that means education has consequences. Whoever controls education has enormous impact on the direction of our country. But that's not exactly encouraging news, given the current state of higher education. Heather McDonald has a new book titled The Diversity Delusion. In that book, she describes how a toxic turn in education is infecting society as a whole.

I'll sit down with her to discuss that. Plus, sex robots are coming to America. We'll take a close look at this new industry and its potential impacts on our society. But first, we'll cover a few of the top headlines. A third accuser, Julie Swetnik, is now alleging that Brett Kavanaugh behaved inappropriately at high school parties. She says she witnessed Kavanaugh, quote, drink excessively at many of these parties and engage in abusive and physically aggressive behavior towards girls, including pressing girls against him without their consent,

grinding against girls, and attempting to remove or shift girls' clothing to expose private body parts. End quote. Swetnik is represented by Michael Avinati, who also represents porn star Stormy Daniels, who is engaged in a lawsuit against President Trump. Well, Brett Kavanaugh is pushing back hard on this third allegation, calling it ridiculous and from the twilight zone.

In a statement released by the White House, he said, quote, I don't know who this is and this never happened. Well, soon after the allegation was announced, President Trump took to Twitter, blasting Avanotti as a low life and a third-rate lawyer. He said, quote, Avanotti is a third-rate lawyer who is good at making false accusations like he did on me and like he is now doing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

He's just looking for attention and doesn't want people to look at his past record in relationships, a total low life. Megan McAleb, a high school friend of Kavanaugh's, addressed Swetnick's allegations in an exclusive interview with the Daily Signals, Rachel Del Judas. McCaleb said this claim is absolutely false and absurd. She also said, I can just tell you that Brett was always a responsible,

decent, polite guy, and he would never, ever do anything like this, ever. McAulb also doesn't recall students from Swetnick's high school, Gathersburg High School, school ever being at any of the parties that she attended. Well, one Senate Democrat is trying to block a Senate vote on Kavanaugh, not through persuasion, but through a lawsuit in federal court. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon announced a new lawsuit on Wednesday, saying the White House has interfered with the Senate's constitutional duty to give advice and consent on

judicial confirmations. He cited the White House's refusal to hand over certain documents from Kavanaugh's time in the Bush administration. blocking access to staff secretary documents and handing over some documents that only the Judiciary Committee is allowed to see. He says the Senate shouldn't be allowed to vote until all those documents are made accessible. Mercily acknowledged that he didn't know of any other instance where a court had actually blocked the Senate from taking a vote, and it's also noteworthy that Kavanaugh has written over 300 judicial opinions, which are all accessible to every senator. Appearing before the United Nations Security Council Wednesday, President Trump accused China of election interference.

Regrettably, we found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election. Coming up in November, against my administration, they do not want me or us to win because I am the first president. ever to challenge China on trade. And we are winning on trade. We are winning at every level. We don't want them to meddle or interfere in our upcoming election. Well, some concerning new data here on veterans, according to the VA's national suicide data report,

suicides among young military vets continue to rise. Among veterans age 18 to 34, essentially that's millennials, there are 45 suicide deaths for every 100,000 vets. That's a sharp increase from just two years ago when the rate was 40 suicide deaths for every 100,000. According to the report, veterans accounted for 14% of all suicides nationwide, even though they only make up 8% of the population. The Wichita Eagle reports that drag queen's story hours are a hit.

Quote, Divinity Masters, the drag queen persona of Brad Thomason, is one of three drag queens who participated in, say, yoss, not as good doing that as the kids are, to reading, a story hour that drew a standing room only crowd to the downtown branch library Tuesday evening, wrote the Eagle. One mom, Holly Byers, who took her four-year-old daughter, told the Eagle, quote, I just thought this was a wonderful opportunity to expose my daughter to a wider community.

And it's great for people to realize that this isn't sensational. It's fabulous, but it's not sensational. It's not abnormal, and it's just another opportunity to help children learn more about the world. Okay, then. All right. Well, you might recall from yesterday's podcast that Ted Cruz and his wife were chased out of a restaurant by left-wing protesters. What we didn't know then was that the protests turned out to be a major fail. According to a CNN report Tuesday, the restaurant's management team moved Cruz and his wife to safety, called the cop.

and once the protesters left, he sat right back down and finished their dinner. The restaurant later posted a statement, they said, quote, the FT group, that stands for Fabio Trebochi, the restaurant owner, welcomes all patrons and is proud of its reputation not just of culinary excellence, but also of creating a welcoming space for all, irrespective of creed, ideology, or opinion. Chef Fabio believes politics, like elbows, are best left off the dining table, and we welcome everyone. Kate, I might just have to try this restaurant.

I have to say I was curious, and I looked at the menu. If it's affordable. Yesterday, it is not, I would say, affordable, but good for Ted Cruz. Well, up next we'll talk to Heather McDonald about her new book. When we think of institutions that shape our nation's future, many often think of Congress and the White House. But it was John Maynard Keynes, the British economist, who said that a great deal of the change we see in politics and in society at large actually start. with professors, academics, people he called scribblers a few years back. I'm joined now by someone who's been studying and writing about that very thing.

Heather MacDonald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the new book, The Diversity Delusion, How Race and Gender Pandering, corrupt the university and undermine our culture. Heather, thanks for being on. Daniel, this is such a pleasure. Thank you for having me on. And thank you for that terrific quote, which I didn't know about. and I'm going to have to appropriate it for myself.

Yes, yeah. Well, so Heather, you know, a typical observer these days, who maybe has been around the United States for a couple decades, sees a lot of disturbing changes in recent years, new pushes for identity politics, new racial tension, battles over diversity. Those things seemed unimaginable 10 to 15 years ago. You argue in your book that this stuff actually stems back to the university. Give us an idea of how that,

works? Well, from a moment a student steps on campus today, he is inundated with the message that he is in a racist, sexist environment. We're talking about a college campus right now, which is an extraordinarily privileged opportunity-filled environment. He is told to think of himself in one of three categories. He's either the oppressed, the oppressor, or if he shows sufficient enlightenment and he's one of the oppressors, he can move himself out of the oppressor category into the ally category. And what does that entail? Basically, keeping your mouth shut and endorsing everything, endorsing all of the guilt and shame that's poured on you and then you kind of do eternal penance? Yes, exactly. You have to support the poor females that are at risk of

their lives and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and this of this of this incredible burden to be a college student and a female so where does this I mean when did this really start on university campus and surely it started at a certain time does it stem back to the 60s 70s or is this more kind of new rehashed you know racism or identity politics well there's several strands of it in the 60s we had the start of racial preferences, which are an extraordinarily destructive policy that don't do their alleged beneficiaries any good. But the 70s was a sort of a hateous moment. Multiculturalism hadn't hit yet. I went to college in the 70s, and I view myself as incredibly

fortunate in that I was allowed to read Chaucer, Milton, Spencer, and Wordsworth without anybody bitching and moaning about the gonads and melanin of those extraordinarily gifted, sublime authors. I was unfortunately wasted my time studying this very arcane, misguided literary theory called deconstruction, but at least I got to read the greatest books without a chip on my shoulder and without anybody apologizing. The 80s came. You had Jesse Jackson, it's Stanford University, leading the student know-nothings trying to dismantle Stanford's Western SIV requirement with the hey-ho-ho-ho Western Siv has got to go. Feminism took over, identity politics took over, and the curriculum has never been the same.

So give us maybe an idea when a typical classroom that's doing what you call deconstruction, you know, literary class sits down to read what would have been considered a classic text. What does it look like now to go through that text? Well, in the era of high deconstruction, you would not have been interested in the plot, you would not have been interested in character, you would have been looking for signs that the book itself was meaningless. I'm setting these phrases out and I don't expect any listener to understand them because it was such a lunatic way of thinking about language. Nevertheless, it was powerful. It seemed sexy. It seemed like a hidden knowledge about language. But that was the

70s. That was when it was a Mandarin science about language and its impossibility. Today, deconstruction has morphed into something, I would say, is more pernicious, which is that you look for, in Shakespeare, you're looking for signs of racism and sexism. You're looking for the proto sins that allegedly created a world of oppression. You are not allowed to lose yourself in beauty. Pastoral poetry is an escape into an imaginary world of the beauties of nature and a retreat from the oppression of civilization, these days you're only going to be looking for so-called gender stereotypes. So how does that translate into our cultural moment? I mean, it can definitely see, you know, in your description there, that sounds a bit like the cynicism that we see on the left

toward, you know, people who they consider to be in positions of power, people who bear that guilt. How does that translate? It translates into our cultural moment because the same obsession with phantom victimology, the same obsession that to read Shakespeare, if you're a female or an underrepresented minority, is to be subjected to life-threatening racism and sexism. And I'm not making this up. This is right out of their words. That same obsession with victimology has gone quickly into the real world and people believe that every institution now is racist and sexist in the absence of affirmative racial quotas and gender quotas. Essentially, you mentioned life-threatening victimology because I was reminded of that when

the Yale law students wrote a letter against Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court and they were saying that people would die. And that view that Kavana was a future murderer, By the time of the hearings, he's now an actual murderer. One of the Women's March protesters from the rafters that were trying to shut down the hearings in a, again, another instantiation of campus culture transforming the world, shouted out, you are a murderer. So the incredible delusion is just getting worse and worse and worse. you know it seems that as identity politics takes over the kind of thing that you just mentioned the frustrating thing about that is that reason and argument don't matter anymore you can't

if you're from a certain class of people there's nothing you can say there's no argument you can make that is legitimate or that can be accepted and once you've once no one is allowed you know once we've kind of left the plane of like reason that everyone has access to this and everyone can attempt an argument and be considered on a level playing field, then it just seems like chaos and, frankly, oppression. Well, you know, it's a very good observation, Daniel, and it operates what you're saying about the routing of reason goes on at two levels. Let's be honest, everybody has a hard time accepting opposite points of view. Reason is something we all aspire to and we often fail at achieving. We have a tendency, no matter if we're a liberal or a

conservative, to ignore countervailing evidence. And this is something that the scientific method to its enormous credit has liberated us, has conquered want and poverty through trying to overcome those blind spots. But there's an additional layer to this now, that it's not just a human and failing, the contempt for reason, the inability to follow reason, is now, as they say in a high theory, being theorized, it's being affirmatively justified. Reason and the Enlightenment are being trashed within the academy as themselves sources of oppression. I was the subject of one of these shout-down protests at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Southern California, and because I was there to speak about policing and to push back against the Black Lives Matter

narrative. Afterwards, among the numerous student petitions that went out against me, justifying the shutdown of my speech, there was one that came from so-called students of color at Pomona College, another nearby Southern California College. I cited in my book, I urge readers to read it. It is the most extraordinary statement of ignorance that somehow they're claiming that the pursuit of truth is a way of oppressing minorities, that enlightenment values are just a way to keep minorities down. The historical ignorance, behind this is extraordinary. In 1860, Frederick Douglass was shut down from a commemoration of the radical abolitionist John Brown. Boston had passed law saying, no abolitionist shall meet.

This was what the left is doing today. Afterwards, Frederick Douglass said, Free speech is the enemy of tyrants. Five years of free speech in the South would break every chain. He understood that far from being a tool of oppression, the ability to speak, to challenge power, to speak truth to power. We used to talk about that is what every tyrant fears. And the most amazing aspect of this current moment is the left in seizing these tools of oppression and trying to silence non-Orthodox speech are so simplistic. in their thinking that they're unable to reverse the situation and think, okay, we now control the definition of hate speech. But what if Donald Trump says, okay, I'm going to start defining

hate speech and I'm going to ban it? That basic act of objectivity and distancing oneself from one's own position is apparently beyond the capacity of these leftists. Yeah, I mean, being committed to the rule of law, you'd think would be in everyone's interests. Everyone's interest. In the long term. In the long term. Right. Because you're not always going to be on top.

Right. That's so true. Well, last question for you. I want to ask you if there's any hope because the universities, so many universities have been taken over by this mentality. And they're the ones turning out the next generation of students. And of course, you've got pockets of certain universities that aren't like that. But is there a way back into those universities?

to renew them and to get rid of this so that the future generations are not tainted by it or other other ways to capture the next generation outside the universities. It's the final question. It is the most important question, and I'm still struggling with the answer to be perfectly honest. I am heartened by students on campuses that are showing incredible courage in pushing back against this. I was not political during college. I was a default liberal because I hadn't thought about it. But I didn't have to take sides. Today, you kind of have to. And I'm in awe of these conservative students who have the courage to do the affirmative action bake sales

and to write about the campus diversity bureaucracy and its extraordinary wastefulness. They need encouragement. They need support. I think what we, in an ideal world, and again, this is what needs to happen. I don't know how you do it yet. What needs to happen is people have to beat back this myth that America is fundamentally racist and sexist and that college campuses are places of oppression. People have to destroy that because as long as that remains the dominant view, the push to

censor and silence non-Orthodox speech will continue in the name of protection and safety, because the equation that is used is that these vulnerable females and underrepresented minorities are at existential threat, hate speech, which is an increasingly capacious term, puts them at existential threat, therefore in order to preserve their very existence, we need to silence hate speech because they're under such threat. As long as people don't challenge that, as long as they don't say, excuse me, you are the most privileged human beings in history to be on a college campus, then that is going to continue.

Donors certainly have to stop funneling billions into their alma maters that allow this diversity ideology to grow. please do not give to your college campus unless you're certain that it is committed to teaching the classics with love, reverence, and gratitude. Well, the book is called The Diversity Delusion, How Race and Gender Pandering, corrupt the university and undermine our culture. Heather MacDonald, thanks for being on the podcast. Thank you for such a wonderful conversation, Daniel.

I appreciate it. Liberals have pretty much cornered the market on 101-style podcasts that break down tough policy issues in the news. Until now, did you know that every week Heritage Explains intermingles personal stories, news clips, and facts from heritage experts to help explain some of today's hardest issues from a conservative perspective. Look for Heritage Explains on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Blewey, editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal. Check out Blueprint for balance, a federal budget. This Heritage Foundation budget plan balances the budget within seven years and

cuts spending by more than $10 trillion. To find it, go to heritage.org and search for budget or spending. So first off, I'm just going to say if you have any kids within earshot, this may not be the best segment for them to tune into, so just wanted to give a warning about that. But there's this business that I hardly know how to describe. Let's just say it's being dubbed a robot sex brothel. Kinky S. Dahls is now looking to start opening locations in the U.S., beginning with Houston. Quote, this is not the kind of business I would like to see in Houston, and certainly this is not the kind of business the city is seeking to attract. That's what Mayor Sylvester Turner told Fox News. According to the Washington Examiner, the Toronto Kinky S. Dolls features, quote, $60 buys a half hour alone with a life-sized doll that's warm and ready to play.

customers take rented sex robots to a private room in a warehouse near an emissions testing center before returning them for cleaning, end quote. A nonprofit in Houston, Elijah Rising, which works to combat sex trafficking, has launched a petition against the business. That's gained 7,000 signatures and states. As a nonprofit whose mission is to end sex trafficking, we have seen the progression as sex buyers go from pornography to strip clubs to purchase. sex. Robot brothels will ultimately harm men, their understanding of healthy sexuality, and increase the demand for prostitution, and sexual exploitation of women and children. Daniel, what do you think about this? Yeah, it's interesting that this is coming to Houston first. As one who used to live near Houston, it's not so great to hear. My thought on this is that

it's just first of sadness, like that this is even a thing that people would do this. And yet, you know, we live in a world with some pretty messed up things. My thought on this is like, it's just got to be destructive for human relationships and for society long term. I mean, this is just the beginning. In Japan, this is much, much more common. You know, this is where the sex robot industry really has taken off over the years. And now they're being exported. And it's just not something that I think a lot of people,

I think it'll shock a lot of people. The first response might be, oh, this is actually a thing. Like, this really exists. But once you get past that, yeah, like people, some people will do this. And it's just, when you think about, like, this on a mass scale, look at what's happening in Japan. Like, there's a huge problem with the in-cell phenomenon. People there, like, being, like, totally cut off from social life. They're just, like, staying inside.

They're being antisocial. And this plays into that. Right. I think it's Japan where they have people whose whole job is to clean out apartments when someone who's died who knows no one. I shouldn't recall reading that. I wasn't aware of Japan specifically having an insult problem. Of course, for those of you who aren't aware, that refers to the movement of involuntary celibates, which in my understanding is mainly an online-driven thing.

and the driver in Toronto, who I believe killed several people. And then there was, again, I believe a killer in California a few years ago, claimed that they were motivated by this. So obviously a really scary phenomena. You know, I think this is interesting in the sense of like, yeah, it's very easy to sort of laugh it off as like, oh, something creepy, but whatever. I think it's, you know, one, we're seeing increasing, I believe, suicide rates in our country. We're seeing people turn to drugs like opioids.

We are seeing marks that loneliness is growing. And you see all these things. And I know that America has this attitude of like whatever happens in the bedroom, stays in the bedroom. But I think that more and more that is being challenged, that we are seeing that what you do to yourself has repercussions beyond the bedroom. And I think this is sort of the thing that we, you know, just shrug and laugh at at our peril.

I can definitely see that already marriage rates have declined. That's the topic we've talked about on this show. And maybe for a guy who's shy or who's uncomfortable or who's faced a lot of rejection before, you can see that it might be easier to maybe turn to something like this rather than keep trying to deal with actual women. Yeah, and there are some people who try to say that this is a good thing because it gives people an outlet or for people like pedophiles, criminals, like it's better for them to, you know, get it out with a non-human than to actually victimize somebody. And that's kind of a pragmatic approach. But I think ultimately just reinforces the same mindset.

It reinforces the way you see other people. And it reinforces a really selfish way of viewing sex and sexual activity. It basically teaches you that sex is about you and yourself. And it really takes the mutual and the sacrifice. aspect out of human relationships. Really, the sexual act just becomes about you, like, is doing your own thing. And I think that's just a real dysfunctional way to view it. Yeah, and I think that sort of is played into, you know, I think social conservatives

talk about porn a lot. In general, our culture doesn't. There's been some shifts. I'd say lately there's been more awareness of it, sometimes seeing in a positive light, sometimes not. But, I mean, the fact is the amount of porn consumption in our country is crazy. It's so much. And I think, like, when you were saying about, like, this idea of, like, sex becoming an activity that you do with yourself, like, obviously people watching porn are largely doing it by themselves.

So I think we already have the mindset here that could sort of just have sex robots be the next thing. Like, maybe some people say, oh, I do it in between, you know, relationships or I do it. And yeah, it just, I mean, I think for anyone who thinks that sex is more than just the physical component, it's just really troubling. Yeah, I think you're right about that connection with porn because this really is, it really just shows, it's bringing to light just how dysfunctional pornography is in itself because you can still say, well, there's people in pornography. It's still real. But no, for you and a computer, that's really not much different from a robot. But the big thing I think women should be concerned about here, and I'd be curious what you think, is it really it encourages an objectification of women. It encourages men to think of women as objects and reinforces that.

And what do you think? I mean, I think it does, but I think, like, so much in our culture already encourages that. I'm not particularly worried about that component. I'm more worried about that, you know, as I said, marriage rates are down. There's a lot of talk about these apps and guys either aren't asking. girls out or they're saying, you know, it's like a one-night hookup. And I think that we're very lazy society right now. It is much easier to have sex with a doll than deal with a real human person. That gets messy, really fast. And I can just see our society just being like this laziness,

this sloth, just really increasing this way. Like, it's just simpler. And if you feel you can get sufficient physical pleasure from this? Like, why not? I mean, people are going to say that. Well, and that's where society, you know, as a society, we have to ask ourselves, what are we about? What is the purpose of our lives? Is it just about your own individual maximizing of pleasure and personal psychological happiness? Like, well, okay, if that's the case, then you could just be a drug addict and psychologically you'll be fine. And you could measure your quality of life that way. But, you know, there's another alternative. which is that we actually have obligations to one another as a society and as a community and as families.

Right. And I think, of course, some in the medical community argue that there is sex addiction. So, I mean, that sort of goes along with the drug stuff. But I think, oh, my gosh, I can't think of the exact title. I think it was called All Joy and No Fun, which I didn't read, but I read articles about. But it was a book about parenting. And it sort of got at the contradiction. I mean, yeah, I don't have kids.

but the contradiction inherent in parenting that like it's not really enjoyable a lot of the time, but it's deeply meaningful. And I think that that's something that our society is sort of losing, this understanding of this difference between joy and pleasure. You could use a bunch of different words, but sort of, yeah, why not just be addicted to drugs? Because that's not a meaningful life. So, and of course, you know, they don't ultimately satisfy, which is the whole problem with addiction. So, yeah, there's a lot of problems with these robots. Yeah. Well, probably enough on that subject, but we thank you for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. Brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio studio at the Heritage Foundation.

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