The Joe Rogan Experience - #970 - Bret Weinstein

Episode Date: June 2, 2017

Bret Weinstein is a biology professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. Currently he is in the middle of an intense controversy that has been documented by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and several other mainstream media outlets.

All right, we're live. Brett, first of all, thanks for doing this. Appreciate it, man. Very glad to be here. You look great. Despite all this pressure, you're smiling. For people that don't know what's going on, let's lay out all the events that have transpired.

Essentially, you were being asked to step away from your college for a day. Is that what it was? Is it one day? Well, this goes back farther than that. Yeah. Let's lay out the whole thing. Okay. So we couldn't possibly lay out the whole thing.

But it's just for people that have no idea what's going on. Right. They're listening right now and they're like, who's this Brett Weinstein guy? So the core of it surrounds a tradition that we have at Evergreen called Day of Absence. And this tradition stretches back long before I was ever at the college. I've been there 15 years. This tradition stretches back into, I think, the early 70s. And it's built around a play written by Douglas Turner Ward, a black playwright.

And the play portrays events in a fictional town where the black population decides not to show up one day in order to emphasize their roles in the town that the white population is unaware of. And as you would imagine, all hell breaks loose. So anyway, it's an excellent play. you would imagine all hell breaks loose. So anyway, it's an excellent play. And some early faculty at our college decided that we should have a day that mirrored this event. And that originally black faculty and students, and then later people of color, would leave campus for a day to emphasize the role that they play in our community. And then they would later, the tradition was amended and had a day of presence added to it where people would come back to campus. And this has been going on, as I said, since the 70s and the whole time I've been there.

And then this year, it was announced by the organizing committee that the situation would be reversed. And they asked white students, staff, and faculty not to come to campus. And that did not at all sit well with me. As I said in my letter to the person who had announced this, Rashida, who I should say is staff, and she has ended up at the center of this controversy, I think, wrongly, just because my letter in response is addressed to her and and then it was made public by our school paper, so her name has been dragged front and center. But in any case, my letter, I said that there was all the difference in the world

between a population deciding to absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their role, and a population deciding to absent another population from a shared space, which I find unacceptable as a person, as somebody devoted to the gains of the civil rights movement. I just, and I should also probably say as a Jew, when people start telling me where I can and cannot be, it rings alarm bells. It rings alarm bells. So that's the gist of the story. And the letter caused quite a stir amongst student staff and faculty who responded, many of them quite angrily. Privately, of course, people were much more divided on the matter. And there were plenty of people who agreed with my letter. But publicly speaking, there was condemnation of the letter.

were plenty of people who agreed with my letter, but publicly speaking, there was condemnation of the letter. But the event itself, Day of Absence, was mostly uneventful. I did go to campus, as I said I would in my letter, and I actually, it's neither here nor there, it was accidental, but while I was on campus, I ran into a student that I know very well, actually a student that my wife and I were abroad in Ecuador with last year. We were teaching abroad, and we had 30 students with us. And so one of the students who had traveled with us to Ecuador happened to be on campus, too. This is a student of color. I'm going to stop this. Right here, because there's too much banging around in here.

It's very distracting. Stop this. Right here, because there's too much banging around in here. It's very distracting. It's too distracting. It's okay. Sorry. That's all right.

That was going to go on. That was going to drive me crazy. Right, I understand. So let's keep going. So I ran into this student that I know well and care about quite a bit, and we had a very nice conversation, mostly not about Day of Absence. As a matter of fact, I can't even remember if we did talk about Day of Absence. But there was something poignant to me about the fact that while I was being condemned for refusing to accept this new formulation, that I was able to meet with a student who is important to me

and neither of our racial backgrounds is primary in our relationship. We know each other as people and that's really how I would like to see all of us interacting on campus. We all have our backgrounds. They matter to us. But it cannot become the primary interface between us Let me stop you here and let me try to understand what the reaction was because you Rightly said that you think there's a huge problem with asking people to not show up simply based on their color of their skin exactly and

What was the argument against that like when when you said that and I read your letter and your letter didn't sound racist at all. It sounded very well thought out. It's it made a very good point. But the response, the inflammatory response to your letter was so disturbing and shocking. Was there anyone who had reasonable debate with you about this? Was there anyone who said, well, we should take into consideration why they're asking us to do this? We should sit down with them. We should talk through this. Was there anything reasonable or was it just dig your heels in the sand and then let the insults and the white privilege and all these accusations fly? Well, like I said, there's a huge difference that you can't see unless you're at the center of one of these things between the public discussion and the private discussion. Privately, I had very interesting discussions with many people that was not absent. But if you were to look in on the discussion at the public level, it looked as if there was consensus united against

me. Now, when you say public and private, are the same people making contradictory statements in public that are commiserating with you in private, or is it just different people? A few of them do that. That actually is the thing I find most surprising, is that sometimes people will privately say one thing to you and then publicly do another. Mostly it's different people. And I should say the people who have talked to me privately and expressed concerns are actually quite a diverse group. So it's not as if white folks are disturbed by this and people of color

are united. It's not at all like that. But part of the hidden story here is that in order to advance certain policy proposals, it has to appear that the community is united behind them and that anybody who stands against them is standing against them for illegitimate reasons. So that means that the number of people who are willing to express any sort of nuance about what's taking place has to be small, and they have to be dismissible. So what they did is they called me a racist, which is ironic because I'm an anti-racist. I've gone out of my way to, first of all, study the question of why racism occurs, and I believe I've been pretty courageous in fighting against it where I've run into it. So to challenge me with that particular epithet was a mistake on their part. It was a strategic mistake. And I kept trying to tell them while this was still internally being discussed in the college,

I kept trying to tell them that they should really check the concept that I'm a racist. They should ask. Because if they did, they would discover that they were actually way off the mark, and then they would have an interesting puzzle on their hands. Then they would have to explain to themselves why they had found themselves hurling this most poisonous term at somebody who not only isn't a racist, but is pretty nearly the opposite. Well, it's a standard maneuver when someone wants to silence someone. When someone wants to put someone in a category

that's instantly recognizable, one of the best ones is racist. Oh, absolutely. And what I found is that people simply could not figure out what they would do if that term was applied to them. They were able to preview in their minds what that would be like. And so many people could see that there was no escape for them.

Right. It's like being called a rapist almost. It's like even if you are exonerated, there's still that cloud hanging above you. Yes, but this also actually points to something pretty important. And for anybody who travels this ground themselves, they're going to discover this, that many of the terms that are being used have been redefined, but they haven't been fully redefined. So one of the things that I've seen in several places is that a term like racist has been redefined so that the bar for being a racist is so low that you couldn't possibly help but trip over it. But then once you've tripped over it and you have accepted that you are a racist, then the stigma goes back to the original definition. So it is the dodging and weaving between the two definitions that actually does the heavy lifting.

Well, there's also a really disturbing idea that's being bounced around lately that it's impossible to be racist if you're anything other than white. Right. Which is ridiculous. It's preposterous. Anybody who looks up the actual definition of racism will discover that that's preposterous. But, yes, that does pass in certain places as logical. Yeah, and just it's parroted in this very bizarre way that's supposed to be unchallenged.

And this is a fairly recent thing. I mean, this very bizarre way that's supposed to be unchallenged. And this is a fairly recent thing. I mean, this is not something that existed two decades ago, right? I agree. And the pace at which it's moving in the last few years is very surprising. It is surprising, but it kind of makes sense because you get into these groups of people. They have this confirmation bias. They lump up together, and they all reinforce their ideas in this echo chamber. And they all do it inside the colleges.

And then when it gets out to the rest of the world, as we're seeing with your case at Evergreen, the rest of the world is like, what is going on over here? Like, what is happening in school? And people who are sending their children off to school are very concerned with the indoctrination of these ideas. children off to school are very concerned with the indoctrination of these ideas and adopting these very rigid mindsets that the rest of the world just simply could pick apart pretty quickly. Well, this is the most shocking thing because I'm, you know, I haven't been censured. I haven't been suspended. I'm still on the email distribution list.

So I'm watching the traffic inside of my college and I'm able to compare it to the huge flood of stuff that I'm seeing from the outside world as they get wind of what's going on at Evergreen. And the difference is a million miles. Inside of Evergreen, actually, we are descending further into madness. Actually, we are descending further into madness. The faculty are blaming the fact that the campus had to be suddenly closed due to a threat from the outside yesterday on me for having talked about this in the outside world, specifically for— It's hilarious. Not to you. I can't use that term yet. To me.

Hopefully someday. I hope it's soon. The intensity and the out-of-touch nature of the discussion inside the college simply reinforces the impression that something is desperately off, that what we really have is a filter bubble that is so, so strong that even when the world sends very clear evidence that you've missed something somewhere and it's time to rethink what you've been doing, they're not waking up. And I love this college. This college, maybe we'll get to talk about it, but the structuring of this college is so unusual. And what one can do as a professor at Evergreen, if you're really dedicated to teaching, it is the place to be because you have unparalleled pedagogical freedom, more freedom than you'd have as a tenured professor at Harvard.

And you also have room to teach individually to students because our students take one program at a time. They're full-time in one program, and the professors teach one program at a time, full-time, and they can go on for a full year. So imagine you've got 25 students and you have them for a year full-time. You really know every student in your class individually, not just by name, but you know how they think, you know their backgrounds, you know their blind spots, and that allows for a kind of teaching that can't be done anywhere else. So I am quite distressed at the fact that Evergreen is now endangered by what's going on. And I really would like to see it wake up and rescue itself because it is worth rescuing.

I watched the, is it the president of the school who gave the speech addressing all these issues? George Bridges, yes. It looked like a hostage negotiation. It looked like he had a gun to his head he he was literally a hostage it was so bizarre and kids are yelling things at him like what the fuck are you gonna do and and and he just has to take it it's so strange it's such a bizarro world to view it from the outside and to view these preposterous allegations that these kids are throwing at him of being racist and everyone's being racist and no one's doing anything to protect them and everyone's acting like they're in danger and their ideas are in

danger and their their minds are in danger it's just so there's so much grandstanding it's so preposterous like what, what is it? Well, first of all, did you see the video in which Dr. Bridges, our president, is being challenged for his hand gestures? And the protesters are actually policing his hand gestures? No. Oh, it's unbelievable. What's wrong with his hand gestures? He's not doing this, is he?

Don't do that. No, no. You can't even wave to a friend. You can't even go like this to a friend because they'll pause you right here. They'll pause you right there in the middle. No, I think he's, I mean, I don't want to caricature this because I really think it's very important. As preposterous as what's going on is, I think it's very important that we understand it. It's very easy to dismiss it because it's so strange.

But it's very important that we get it. It's very easy to dismiss it because it's so strange. But it's very important that we get it right. I think the complaint about the hand gestures was that they represented microaggressions, if you will. I don't know for sure that that was the complaint, but I can't make heads or tails of it otherwise. What was he doing? Can you move your hands? I think he was kind of gesturing like a person gestures.

Just trying to talk with emotion. Right. So I do think there's a there's a translation, which is this can be portrayed enough control over him that he gestured. They didn't like it. They told him not to. And he capitulated, which he's been doing the entire time. So I would say there's a huge amount of what's going on at Evergreen that is what I would call a show of force. Is he afraid of losing his job? Is he afraid of losing the support of the students? What is he afraid of? his job? Is he afraid of losing the support of the students? What is he afraid of? Well, I... If you had to guess. I think he is afraid of...

He's old enough. He doesn't need another job. He didn't need to take the job at Evergreen, which he took two years ago. I think he is afraid that this is going to be the capstone of his career, a scandal in which he has allowed the campus to get out of control, which he did. But here's the crazy thing. It's a non-scandal.

You're a non-racist who's been accused of being a racist. All you did was say, hey, I don't think you should be able to tell people they can't show up for work if they're white. They can't show up for school if they're white. That seems kind of crazy. And now hand gestures. This is how far we've sunk.

We're not at Kent State. It's not the National Guard shooting students. It's this. Moving your hands around while you're talking with emotion. That's a microaggression. This guy's afraid of losing his job because of his hand motions. Well, it goes beyond that. So when George came to the college, he studied us, which I can't hold him responsible

for that. That was a good move. If he was well-intentioned, he would have done that. But he studied us very carefully. He had a friend interview hundreds of us to figure out what was going on at the college. But then he set in motion policy proposals and committees that were empowered in a way that was completely at odds with the way the school has run traditionally. How so? Well, so among the many unique features of Evergreen is the fact that the college is in large measure governed by the faculty and even the administration. All of the deans are faculty members who have come from the faculty. And when they're done being deans, they go back to the faculty. So the faculty has control over the college in a way

that I don't think there's another college in the country that runs that way. So what that means is that if you want to advance a policy proposal, the faculty has to agree to it. And George wanted to do some things that the faculty would not have agreed to. So I've told you about these full-time programs where students get this really personally tailored education and they join a community that everybody knows each other. He wanted to take those apart. I can't imagine. I can't imagine why you would. I mean, the most generous thing to say is that he did not understand what an important part of the Evergreen model those programs are.

Whatever his reason, it was a terrible error. And the only way to do it is to advance the idea as an equity-enhancing idea. as an equity-enhancing idea. In other words, you can say that the full-time programs are anti-equity in the sense that if you are disadvantaged, you are less likely to be able to dedicate yourself full-time to a program because you may be going to school while you have a family and you have a job. And so, you know, no doubt there's some truth to that. But it doesn't, you know, how many colleges in the country do we have that do four credit programs?

And we don't need another. We have one college in the country that does full-time programs. And even if it is inconvenient for many people for reasons that are beyond their control, the real question is can we get enough people for whom that's exactly the right model through the door? And, you know, it's also the college is very inconvenient for people who live in Colorado by virtue of the fact that it's hundreds of miles away. So anyway, so if you wanted to advance that proposal, it had to be dressed up as equity enhancing. And once it was equity enhancing, it became very hard to challenge it because, of course,

if you did challenge it, then you were anti-equity. Boy, that's convoluted. You're telling me. So he wants to sort of disassemble this very unique and very beneficial model that you guys are operating under. So this is just one part of it. Now, how does this get to this one suggestion that white people step down? Oh, it doesn't. The two are connected in the following sense.

The president empowered, he chose people to be on what's called the Equity Council. The council has changed its name several times, so I'm not even sure what the current name is. I think it's the Equity and Inclusion Council. But in any case, he chose this council. The council is, if you count the two deans that are on it, it's only a third faculty member. So it's mostly students, staff, and less than half faculty. And he empowered them to propose modifications to the college that would be equity enhancing. And the thing that they advanced, the strategic equity plan, is extremely densely written. So it's hard to read. And most

of the people on our campus have not read it. Most of the people in the faculty have not read it. In fact, when it was released, it was pretty clear that most of the people on the equity council hadn't read it because it was so full of errors, spelling errors and other things that would have been caught if people had gone through it. But in any case, my wife, who also teaches at Evergreen, and I and several others did read it carefully and were very alarmed at what was in it. So there were features of the document that would, for example, completely reorient our hiring. So our hiring process, I would be up to see it revised and made better too, because I don't think we do it very well. I think it's one of the things we were weak about. But anyway, the proposal that they advanced was that, for example,

every single hire would have to be justified on the basis that it was equity enhancing, meaning racially equity enhancing. So racially equity, equity enhancing. So imagine racially equity enhanced, right? So not just, uh, not just a policy of hiring all kinds of people and not being racially discriminatory, but being discriminatory in looking for certain people, people of certain colors. Well, it was a little hard to know. Like you're discriminating towards... I think beyond that.

Beyond that. When I read that, I thought, how exactly do you hire a physical chemist and justify that this is racially equity enhancing? So you would look towards, like say if you had 10 chemists, you would try to only hire the ones that were of color? Yes. Is that what they're saying?

Yes, I think so. I mean, as I said, the document is so densely written that it's hard to know. It really is set up, I think, to be dismissed so that it can be instituted and then we can find out what it really means. But think about the model that I described about how we teach at Evergreen. That is not a model that anybody trains to teach in. And the people who do it well are very unusual. So we're not looking for the same professors that would be best at Berkeley, for example. We're looking for unusual people who will take full-time programs and total pedagogical autonomy, meaning we actually literally are free to teach anything we want in any way we want.

So that freedom is a marvelous thing if you have a particular appetite for figuring out how teaching should be done, that it's never been done anywhere else before, and you're willing to try it out and learn from the experience and advance that way. So we're looking for very unusual people who find that an appealing challenge rather than somebody who wants to get a textbook and deliver the regular stuff. If we're now going to prioritize race over everything else in our hiring, then finding those needles in a haystack who are actually well built to deal with that much pedagogical freedom and that much contact with the students is going to be that much harder because sometimes the right person for the job just simply isn't going to be dark skinned or who knows.

Right. So anyway, I found the proposal, as did as did other people I talked to who had read it, quite alarming at the level of hiring in particular. So is it meant to give the impression of diversity just by simply like, look, we've got our boxes checked. Here's a brown woman. Here's an Asian man. Here's I mean, is that what they're trying to do? Like, look, we've got all our bases covered. This school is diverse. Well, I'd like to put a placeholder on Asian man because during day of absence, there was actually a, I guess you would call it a seminar held on how Asians might just be part of the problem here. Yes, Asians and- The problem.

Yes. Did you air quote when you said the problem? I didn't. I'm not even sure if I should. The world has become so bizarre. What does that mean? Asians are part of what problem? Well, I think the translation is that because Asians are a population, I don't know, that is succeeding in a particular way, at least from the perception

of those who are deciding what these seminars look like, that they actually, I don't know, have special obligations in this. And I might say everything I've just said about Asians could be repeated for women, especially white women who are playing a special role in this equity battle on our campus too. So white women might be a part of the problem as well as Asian men? Quite clearly. And so, right. So the idea, I think, I mean, I have my own hypothesis about this and that's really all it is, but it does fit everything I've seen so far is that there are entities within the, you know, you know, 10 years ago, the phrase women and minorities was a very common phrase. And what it meant was people who had faced historical oppression. In the current

context, that's too many people. In order to utilize these structures to feed a certain set of populations. You can't very well have all women included. And so what's happened is people who are perceived as, yes, having been historically disadvantaged in some way, but also at the moment being successful in some sense, are being shoved out of the coalition. And then if they feel a loss, a sense of loss in having been shoved out, the mechanism to get back in is to take on the role of what is ironically called allyship in this case, which is not allyship at all. It's an abuse of the concept of allyship. Allyship is really a symmetrical concept, and this is subordination. It's subordination, and we hear that a lot with the male feminist community,

the male feminists are supposed to be allies to women. And I even read a paper that was, or an article rather, that was telling white people, if you truly want to be allies, you should not take high paying jobs and you should only leave them to minorities. Yes, my brother. If you want to be a good ally. Yeah, that's what a good a good ally subordinates. And that means stepping away from a job, etc. So it's not an ally at all. No, it has nothing to do

with ally. And in fact, this is the thing that is most troubling to me about my personal situation is that if they really wanted, you know, mind you, we're gonna have to fill in what they means. But if this coalition really wanted an ally for a quest for real equity, I would be an ally. Right. Real equity. Real equity. That's not what they want. And so I'm- What do you think that means then? If they don't want real equity, what they want is a special advantage given to people of color, a special advantage giving to people that were historically oppressed? Well, let's put it this way. I believe, so I believe that in general, at the moment, coalitions are unholy alliances between two things. And in this case,

you have the real equity movement, which are people who wish to end oppression. And then you have another movement that wishes to reverse oppression. And they don't know that they're different because until you reach equity, they're pointing in the same direction. I see. So one is trying to balance it out by in some way pushing down against white people and people who have historically had privilege. They're trying to reduce their role. They're trying to literally oppress. Think about the story we were just talking about where the president of the college is being told how to move his hands.

That's not so unlike a black person, a black man, let's say, being told that he's not allowed to look a white woman in the eye. Right. It's that kind of thing having been reversed. This is people of color telling the president of our college how to move his hands. with his hands? Again, I got to be really careful because, you know, I've seen the video only once and I'm trying to remember if the people who are doing the asking are even on the screen. So I don't want to, I don't want to project something that I don't know for sure, but it was definitely this, the protesters, which were protesting on, some of them were white protesting on behalf of people of color. And some of them, many of them were people of color. But even there, we're in trouble with the complexity because the people of color coalition that is protesting is not synonymous with people of color at Evergreen. There are many people of color at Evergreen who are either just simply bewildered by what's going on or very troubled by it. Because you can imagine,

I mean, just put yourself in the shoes of a person of color who came to Evergreen to get a really interesting education and didn't want to tell the president how to move his hands, and then you see this happening in your name. What exactly are you supposed to do then? Well, there's also the problem, the very real problem, with the mob mentality. And it is a common thing with human beings when they get together in large groups and people start chanting and screaming and they feel very justified and

they always want to escalate it's it's very weird it's it's a a strange reaction that that human beings have in large groups acting together where they just want to ramp things up they want to take it to the next level they want to shut this motherfucker down. They, it's, it's a weird thing that people do, but I was watching it in your videos where people were saying you should resign. Like you need to resign. Like you need to resign. Like, wow, you need to apologize to that woman for communicating with her the way you did

in very respectful and intelligent manner. Like it's, they want to bully you around they want to push you around they want to take that professor that guy who's been allowed to be the one who's talking and distributing all the information and they want to shut you down it's flat out bullying yeah and what i'm what i'm seeing uh is that almost nobody seems to know what to do about bullies, especially when they're armed with a super weapon like the accusation that you're a racist. Nobody understands that capitulating to bullies may solve your problem in the moment, but it makes the problem vastly worse over time. And so, anyway, all I've done is apply that piece of knowledge that when a bully challenges you,

not capitulating is just a prerequisite to getting anywhere. Ideally, you want the bully to pay enough of a price that they don't continue what they're doing. Well, ideally, you would like to have a rational conversation with these people and get them to see your perspective. And they should be able to consider it and say okay. He's not racist well. Yeah, it is kind of Ridiculous that we're asking people who didn't have a say in what color they were born To step away from something or to we're literally discriminating in Under the guise of being anti discriminatory. We're discriminating right I mean that's and it's not even it wouldn't even be hard to have that conversation. One-on-one. Even, I'd do it 20-on-one.

But don't you think that that's what happens? They just start screaming? Well, I mean, A, you have to get used to the fact that you don't get there all at once. You plant a seed that's enough to cause them to know something about what we're saying couldn't possibly be right, or we wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing. to know something about what we're saying couldn't possibly be right or we wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing. The problem here is that the mob that we're talking about is so large that even, you know, in the couple cases on last Tuesday, not this last Tuesday, I guess it was two Tuesdays ago now, the couple of times that I was faced with a group that was, you know, somewhere below 100, I actually do think I made some progress,

but I thought it was not durable at all because as soon as the event was over, whatever progress was made got overwritten by whatever discussion happened next. So it is possible to have these discussions, but there's something about the momentum that is in play here that makes it impossible to make any durable progress. Durable progress is a very interesting description. Durable progress. Yeah. Yeah, because you're fighting against this current movement of ridiculous ideas that's going on through schools, and we saw it with Yale. We saw it with those students screaming at

What was it the professor was it a professor or who was the put the guy they were screaming at that was Trying to fend his wife's yes email about Halloween costumes Yeah Maybe we should allow people to wear ridiculous Halloween costumes because that's part of like the fun of Halloween. And people are acting like you were saying that we should be lynching people. Well, so first of all, he did reach out to me and his point was what you are going through is eerily reminiscent. He's watched the videos and he was just pointing out how shocking it was. I mean, even to the point of my wife having been dragged in here, oddly, in this discussion where she wrote an email

internal to our distribution list asking the college why they were not protecting me and my students who were being actively stalked on our campus, harassed, doxxed. Which students? My current students. But why? Why are on our campus, harassed, doxxed. Which students? My current students. But why? Why are your current students being harassed? My current students, like almost all of my former students, know that this charge is completely baseless. And so they have been supportive.

So in defending you, then they're being attacked. Absolutely. Like they're little soldiers in some sort of a strange ideological battle. They are being penalized for not falling in line. Wow. That's scary. That's real scary bullying. When someone says, hey, he's a good guy, and then someone comes after them and says,

this is where this person lives, let's find them. That has actually literally happened. What has happened to the students once they do find them? Well, so the students have been, I think the idea is intimidation. So I've had students followed in the woods. In the woods. I've had students visited at home. It's very scary.

And I should say, just in terms of putting the context here, as the college was pretending that nothing serious was going on, the police called me up on the Wednesday just after the Tuesday in which I had been challenged in my class and asked me, are you on campus? And I didn't have class. I said, no, I'm not on campus. They said, don't come to campus. I said, why? And they said, because the protesters are searching car to car for what they describe as an individual. And we think it's you. And the college has told us to stand down. We can't protect you. What? I know. The college has told the police to not protect you. The college told the police to stand down, which means the police were literally barricaded in the police station.

Despite their sense that they very much needed to be actively protecting people outside of the police station, the police were left with no choice but to barricade themselves in the police station because they answered to the college administration, which told them not to act, I think, because it wished to prevent a news story. But this meant people engaged in these protests were roving freely about the campus, looking for people, following them. They, you know. That's so incredibly aggressive. Like looking for individuals in a them. They, you know. That's so incredibly aggressive. Like looking for individuals in a car. Like and to do what? Well, that's the question. My guess would be even they don't know.

Let's say that it was me that they were looking for, which would make sense. I would imagine that they would have had the idea of, I don't know, taking me somewhere and getting me to acknowledge something that they think I should acknowledge. Some sort of a hostage situation. Right. But suppose I didn't want to acknowledge whatever it is that they wanted me to acknowledge, just as I didn't want to resign when they said I should resign.

I don't know if they had a backup plan, and it worries me that one of the things that unfolded on the campus was that people who had a very clear idea of how things should go were, they were literally, I mean, they were barricaded in the president's office with the president and a bunch of faculty members and staff. And the story is that the president wanted to go to the bathroom, and he was not even allowed to go privately to the bathroom. He had to be escorted by two people. Who? The president of the college. But who were the people? Protesters. Protesters had to go with him to the bathroom. Right. So that, to me, sounds like

literally kidnapping. It's just stunning that he agreed to that. All of it is stunning stunning i can't believe i'm seeing it well this is pc gone amok i mean this is what everybody's been worried about this is what you are right now is that you're the tip of the spear we are previewing where this goes taken to its logical extent yeah yeah i mean and could have been worse had you not been contacted by the police. Had you been in one of those cars? Had you been pulled out?

Had you been pulled into some sort of a hostage situation where they were trying to tell you you can't go to the bathroom without us like they did to the fucking president and he agreed to it? Yeah. I mean, this is madness. I mean, that's like people should go to jail for that. Well, so, okay. That's kidnapping. It's kidnapping. I do think that the administration and certain faculty members have a lot of responsibility here. So I think in some sense,

yes, it's literal kidnapping. The students, however, I believe have become tools of something that they don't really understand. Tools of what, though? Of their own making? I mean, is it an ideology outside of the school that they subscribe to? Or is it their own? I mean, what is it? Well, I believe it is a militant belief structure.

militant belief structure. And I do think based on what we've seen on our campus, it is emanating from a subset of the black population. Okay, so I'm not saying that this is black people doing this, but I'm saying that the people who are at the forefront of it happen to be in that part of the coalition of people of color and that they are advancing a set of assumptions and beliefs that they seem to imagine describe some future world that they would like to reach and it's a future world i mean it's preposterous it will never happen because what is the future world Where the 400 years of oppression of black people in North America results in a reversal of roles, I think. I mean, I can't imagine having that thought and following it through and not realizing that this can't possibly be anything like a way forward. This is something that they've described, this reversal of roles? That they would like to come to this conclusion?

So I would imagine that your listeners, having heard me just say what I said, have to be wondering a little bit about me and where my sympathies really lie. But what I've seen, and if your listeners go looking at the videos that came out of Evergreen over the last 10 days, posted by the protesters, I should point out, videos that they thought made them look good, they will find many instances in which the official order of things says, well, let's say there's a 4 o'clock meeting on the Tuesday in which I was challenged in the morning, four o'clock meeting that became very dangerous. And the meeting began with an announcement that the chairs and the food were for people of color and that white people shouldn't use them. Yes, I know. The chairs and the food were only for people of color. Correct. White people have to be hungry. Right.

You can't sit down. Right. And I've also seen, you know, I don't remember where I saw it now. I probably have a screenshot of it, but I saw something where some activists put out a message, a broadcast message that said a person of color needed a power adapter for a computer. Were there any white people who could fetch one or something like that oh Jesus I mean the thing is that it's preposterous but it is also putting in danger the actual vision of a world in which race ceases to provide advantage right so anyway it's jeopardizing that it should be reversed is just so crazy.

Like, we should oppress now. Like, no, there should be none. We should get past this. Right. We should be anti-supremacist. Yes, 100%. This idea, I mean, imagine if there was a college in North America that suggested that white people only should eat and white people only should be able to take the seats.

Is that what's going to happen 300 years? So what if black people oppress for the next 300? Then white people come back and say, hey, we're going to have to turn this around again. I mean, isn't the idea that 100 years from now, white people are going to be a minority in America? Because the rates of birth with Latinos and black folks that will, there won't be this minority group anymore, that they will be in fact, a majority. be this minority group anymore, that they will be, in fact, a majority. All I can say is it's so obviously a wrong path just in terms of, A, it's not an honorable objective. It's racist.

It's racist. It's absolutely racist. I mean, it's not even difficult to see that. It just simply is racist. But if you say that on my campus at the moment, you're the racist for not understanding why this is logical. So how do people react when someone says a person of color needs a power adapter? Can a white person go fetch it? Are there these white air quote allies that are running these

beta males and just running to go grab a white power adapter and give it to this person of color? Is that what's happening? That's the literal description of it. Jesus Christ. And then they have to, in a few years, they're going to have to go on to the workforce. Well, and that's the thing that, well, this is a whole other side of the puzzle. What this is really about, and not just at Evergreen, but this movement which has taken over so many campuses and shut down so many people who spoke with positions that were not somehow sanctioned, that were not somehow sanctioned, is really a battle between two incompatible worldviews within the academy. So on the one hand, you have the sciences and all of the things that function on the same assumptions that the sciences do about how you figure out what's true. And then you have

these postmodern disciplines, which basically argue that the tools that the sciences claim are about figuring out what's true are actually tools of oppression themselves. And so, you know, another video. Goddamn rulers. Right, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So there's this video in the middle of the Tuesday, the first Tuesday of these protests, where the president barricaded with these protesters is talking to them. And the protesters actually flat out say in referring to my email that I mentioned the word phenotype and that that inherently tells you that I must be a racist to even be thinking about a scientific term in the context of this. Which I find horrifying because these very students stand to gain a tremendous amount.

They will be most powerful in the world. In pursuing equity, among other things, they will be most powerful in the world if they are armed with a scientific toolkit, with an analytical toolkit that allows them to be forceful rather than to be preposterous. What was the context you used the word phenotype again? I forget. Oh, I said that I would like us in my challenge to the new day of absence formulation. I said, my challenge to the new day of absence formulation, I said, I would like us to put phenotype aside, right? Put phenotype aside, meaning that I did not want us discussing equity as teams, as different teams broken up by skin color. And so the very fact that I said phenotype, and that I suggested that I would be willing to give a lecture to anybody who wanted to come about what

I understand to be the evolutionary context of racism. And they did not want the lecture. They assumed that if I said evolution and racism, that I was going to give a eugenics lecture or something like that. And so it's preposterous. The way this works is they shut down the conversation before you can have it so that they don't actually know what you're going to say and therefore don't need to address it. Oh, God. Yeah. It's quite frightening. Well, it's bizarre because it's primarily occurring in universities.

It's not happening really in high schools very much. It sort of bubbles up in high schools, it appears, by people that I talk to that have been in high school and gone into universities that you see echoes of it. You see the beginnings. And then when it gets to college, you're away from your parents. You're in some new place. Everyone gathers in groups. They dig their heels in the sand. And they go fucking crazy.

Well, I mean, there is something about college. Yeah. And, you know, we all did some dumb stuff in college. There is something about college and, you know, and we all did some dumb stuff in college. But I also think there's a hidden reason for it being colleges, which has terrifically destabilizing impact on those communities. So I think that that is a very real harm that would be hard to overstate and that absolutely has to be addressed just to even make any claim on being a fair society. just to even make any claim on being a fair society.

That said, it is very hard to attack the private prison complex, for example. It's a difficult challenge. On the other hand, the universities are a soft target. They can't defend themselves, and they already have sympathies in the direction of a view of a radically different enhanced world. So in effect, I think we're being challenged on the basis that the inequities on our campuses are completely intolerable, and that that is largely a fiction. And that what really is happening is that this is displaced anger over a system that is fair, that's been pointed at something that can't defend itself. That's fascinating. So this is a reaction to the actual real inequities of the outside world,

the systemic racism, places like Baltimore, and what we're finding out about places where they literally would not sell homes to black people, communities that have just had generation after generation of impoverished people that are fighting off crime-ridden neighborhoods. Right, or water you can't drink because it has lead in it. Right, exactly. So what's happening in the universities is sort of a misguided reaction to all the real inequity in the world. I would say not misguided, it's misdirected.

Misdirected. It's just pointed at the wrong thing. And the reason it's pointed at the colleges and universities is that they simply can't defend themselves. That's fascinating. And so this is occurring in universities all over the country. And at a rate that's, according to people that I know that teach, pretty unprecedented.

That this wasn't the case 20 years ago. That you would have dissent, you would have debate, you'd have discussion, but you wouldn't have these full-blown ideological mobs. Yeah, I think the thing is it hadn't been operationalized yet. The thought process that led to this was postmodernism has been around for decades. And so there were places you could go if you wanted to have an absurd discussion. You could go, for example, to cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology was captured by postmodernism 30 years ago. And so if you wanted to hear people say really crazy things about what's true, cultural anthropology was a place you could do it. If you stepped next door to physical anthropology, it was just fine.

been operationalized or activated so that it is now, it is now, it forms the core of a vision that college students are trying to bring about. Not all of them, but enough of them that you can't run a college without either deciding to capitulate or figuring out how you're going to fight back. Was there a way that this could have been stopped or nipped in the bud in the years past? Or is there a way that this could have been sort of planned for? Was there a lack of foresight? Yeah. This is exactly what I was talking about a few minutes ago.

If you give in to the bully, the bully comes back stronger. We've been given in to the post, the bully comes back stronger. We've been given into the postmodern bully for decades, and it's now come back in a form that nobody knows what to do with it. So what was the original reason to give in when it was a more mild argument? Well, because it was an abstraction. So originally, the idea that certain, Originally, the idea that based on their history, certain people who had been, for example, largely shut out of the sciences were entitled to think without having to deal with the structures that had been built around, let's say, men and mostly white men over the course of Western scientific history. So the idea that women maybe needed a place to discuss what was true that was not structured by men, I get that. And in fact, there's a very good example in my own field where the difference between the way men and women, I don't mean every man and every woman, but the difference on average,

between the way men and women, I don't mean every man and every woman, but the difference on average, I think, played a decisive and very positive role when Louis Leakey empowered three women to go study the three great apes in order to figure out what was going on with them. And so Jane Goodall figured out what was going on with the chimps because she was female and because she didn't subscribe to the rules that men had written down about how you study these creatures. And so it is a case where something about the way men look at the world had prevented people like George Schaller, who had made his mark studying lions. He didn't do so well with gorillas. So anyway, Jane Goodall's female approach worked, and it is largely the reason that we understand chimps today.

On the other hand, Jane Goodall took the scientific toolkit and threw out the rules that had been biased, rather than rejecting the scientific toolkit, which is what the postmoderns are doing, which I think is just tragic. What we should be doing is arming everybody who goes to college, and frankly, we should be arming everybody who can't go to college with a scientific toolkit that lets them figure out what's true, especially now. Because science is the ultimate bullshit detector. And, you know, this era is, you know, hopefully this is peak bullshit, but they need the ultimate bullshit detector. It does seem like peak bullshit, but they need the ultimate bullshit detector. It does seem like peak bullshit, right? And it seems like that's one of the reasons why it's so important for you to stand your ground is that you are, you're being very clear in what you perceive the situation to

be. And you're doing it in a very logical and a very rational, well thought out and clearly structured way you're showing everyone what's wrong with this it is a scientific approach you're literally using the very tools that you're trying to empower these young children young children i feel like they are yeah these kids you can say kids young young folks yeah youthful exuberant human beings millennials yeah millennials what i hate those words i hate those generational terms but you're Folks. Yeah. Youthful, exuberant human beings. Millennials. Yeah, millennials.

I hate those words. I hate those generational terms. But you're literally using, you're dealing with a dilemma and you're using the very tools that you would like them to learn from this university and take forth into the world. I mean, it is a very scientific approach. You're saying like, well, no, this is not, that's not racism. And this is racism. And what you're doing here is actually racism. Right. And in fact, you know, the irony is, so my students, and really my students, many of them are both my students and my wife's students, we both teach evolutionary biology, and students bounce back and forth between

our programs. So, you know, we have people in our community who are empowered by having an understanding of how things function evolutionarily that gives them a window into all sorts of things, including, you know, human social dynamics and other things that affect us all the time. So anyway, yes, there is a way of thinking about virtually any of the issues that most people care about using scientific rationality, which does not mean that you put aside your humanity, but it means that you give your humanity a tool to understand what is going

on before you figure out how you feel about it and whether something ought to be done. you figure out how you feel about it and whether something ought to be done. How does this university survive this? How does the community survive this? How do these students come out of this with a new understanding of what went wrong and in some way that allows them to save face and still be a viable part of the community? That is a beautiful question. Thank you for asking it. I really hope it works. I got three things and I'm afraid I'm going to forget one of them. But first of all, there's one clear first step. The president of the college has to step down. And there are two he's got to step down because A, when something has gone as crazy as we've seen things go on Evergreen's campus, there is an expectation that somebody will take responsibility. So he has to step down to signal to the world that

somebody's taking responsibility. But in this case, he also absolutely must step down because this is his responsibility. He set this in motion and he made this happen. And so it is not an injustice at all that he should have to step down. And I frankly am flabbergasted that it hasn't happened yet. I do not understand how the board of trustees could allow him to maintain that position as long as he has. But first thing is, he has to step down. At the point he steps down, that's going to flip a switch. Suddenly the question is, okay, what now? The next thing that would have to happen is the faculty of my college would have to evidence that they actually got something out of this, rather than feeling that they had been

wrongly portrayed in the media or something like that. If the faculty, and there are many good faculty who do understand what's going on. So they have been quiet because frankly, they're afraid of what happens to them if they're not. But George has to step down or be fired and the faculty have to rally and evidence that they learned something. And then the third thing, and in some ways this is the one that is, I think, the toughest. They came after me. They came after two other people, the chief of police of our police force, Stacy Brown, who they have been attempting.

our police force, Stacey Brown, who they have been attempting. She is a utterly professional, extremely good police officer who is also an evergreen graduate and interested in cleaning up policing. She wants, she's aware of what bad policing is and what- And this is campus police, correct? Campus police. So it's independent of the region. Right. Which is why they were stood down because they are part of the region. Right, which is why they were stood down, because they are part of the administration, has control over them. But the chief of police was demonized, and I mean, in the most disgusting way, it's posters of her wearing a KKK outfit and some sort of, I don't know, sexed up garb was distributed. This is a mother of three, right?

And what was the logic behind it? Well, I hate to say it, but the logic, I think, was this saying that circulates, all cops are bad. So she was literally, her swearing in was protested. So at the very moment she took the job, she was already persona non grata. They want no police. Well, and in fact, they advocated for that. There was in the middle of this protest, there was a

something like a police community review board. I'm not sure exactly what it's called, but there was some sort of a gathering where suggestions about better policing were advanced. And the protesters actually advanced not only the idea that the police be moved off campus, that they'd be disarmed, but that in fact that campus policing be turned over to what they call community policing. So at the very same moment that you have protesters as judge, jury and executioner searching cars for people, stalking them, they're telling us that actually they want official control over the policing of the campus. It couldn't, it couldn't be more ironic. Well, so how do they plan to handle sexual assault, violence, anything along those lines? Funny you mentioned sexual assault, because the third witch, in addition to me and the chief of police was, is our grievance officer.

the chief of police was, is our grievance officer. Our grievance officer, Andy Siebert, is also an excellent human being who is very dedicated to her job and very dedicated to Evergreen and has been there for a very long time. And one of the things that she's been accused of is not being sensitive to allegations of sexual assault. Now, what she has not said in her own defense, she's so interested in protecting the college from its own worst instincts, that what she has not said in her own defense is that she runs a summer camp for girls who have been sexually assaulted. And I think she funds it out of her own pocket. So in all three cases, in my case, I'm accused of being a racist. In Stacey Brown, the police chief's case, she's accused of being a brutal biased cop. And in Andy Siebert's case, she's accused of being insensitive

to people who have been assaulted. In all three cases, not only are these things wrong, they are the opposite of right. And so I was just going to say the third thing that I wanted to say was George has to step down, the faculty has to wake up, and then everybody needs to take a look at the fact that three for three, they've gone after people in classic witch hunting style. And the person in question was the exact opposite of what they were saying. At the point you discover that you've been hunting witches and then it turns out the people in question are innocent, you have to step back and ask yourself how you got there. How did that happen to you that you ended up hunting innocent people? That should be a wake-up call for everybody involved.

hunting innocent people. That should be a wake-up call for everybody involved. Well, as soon as you start talking about searching for cars and searching for individuals, my mind immediately escalates to violence. That's how my mind goes. I know mobs, and I know people, and I just have far too much experience with violence, and I know what happens when people ramp up ideas

without a real predetermined goal. They don't have like, what we'd like to do is get Brett and talk to him one-on-one and make, I want to invite him to have a debate, a one-on-one debate with someone without an audience. So they could sit down and hash out these ideas. Well, hey, you're working with something. Well, how do we find them? Well, maybe he's in one of these cars like that that's not what they're doing right right no they go we're gonna find him but they don't have a step after they're gonna find you unless they do and it might be fucking barbaric i mean it might be you know we're gonna kidnap him we're gonna we're gonna force him to read this letter you know i mean it's literally hostage shit i i agree and i do think you know i mean what i mean it's literally hostage shit i i agree and i do think you know i don't i

don't know i'm not an expert on what happens when mobs ultimately do something you know like i think it's mashal khan uh who was uh killed by by a mob over supposed blasphemy, I guess, last month. But... Was that in Turkey? I thought it was in Pakistan. Was it in Turkey? Okay. All right. I'm sorry, I should know. That's all right.

That's a different world and different... It's a different world, but nonetheless, the point is a mob thinks that it's on the right track and it's so convinced of what it believes that it ends on the right track and it's so convinced of what it believes that it ends up doing something that it doesn't know it's capable of. And there's also a diffusion of responsibility in a large group. They're allowed to do much more horrific things you would ever do one on one to an individual. 100%.

So I don't think that anyone intends that, but I'm not sure that they ever do. Well, the ramping up of things is what terrifies me. I've just seen it too many times where people get together in large groups of people and things escalate and no one knows why. And then all of a sudden it's chaos and there's a literal feeling in the air that violence could erupt. And I don't know if there's, maybe you would be able to tell me, is there some evolutionary echo of that from back in the day when we would get invaded by large groups of people and we had to switch over immediately to some sort of a warlike mindset? I don't know what it is, but there's something really bizarre that happens to people in large groups. And if you've ever been in a concert where a riot breaks out or a stampede where things go crazy, it's scary.

It's terrifying. Well, you're absolutely right about the evolutionary roots, that these are programs that exist in us for circumstances. And one of the things, you know, if I had been able to give the lecture that I proposed in the letter that got me in so much trouble with people, one of the things that I would say is that the most dangerous thing is that we have these latent programs that are waiting for evidence that it is the moment to do X, Y, or Z. And because we haven't been in those circumstances until the moment those programs are triggered, we don't even, we're not even aware that human beings are capable of some of the things they're

capable of. So we have to guard against these things at all costs if we really you know never again is a very important concept and if never again is to mean anything we have to understand why it happens in the first place so that we can repair the world so it becomes impossible yes instead of giving into the influence of these ancient programs understanding that they're there and recognizing them when they go live. Exactly. In fact, maybe the thing that would be worth remembering is what happens to a drowning person. When a person drowns, they're very dangerous, right?

Because their body switches on a drowning program that basically looks for anything that can be pushed down so you can get up to where the air is, which means that somebody can drown, you know, their closest kin by accident because a drowning program that they've never seen active until the first time they face drowning is suddenly online. And so that's a simple one, but there are other ones too. There are ones for tyranny and I believe things like genocide where populations that have successfully eliminated other populations have done well. And so knowing that human beings are actually wired for genocide under some circumstances is, well, it's a sobering responsibility, but it's also hopeful to me because if you know that it's there, you can figure out what triggers it. And you can I think we can rule it out by raising people in an environment where awareness of that program allows us to teach them in such a way that that program is deactivated. And that might be the only way to be. You must be aware of the fact that there is a potential to disassociate and decide that this group of people is the other and that they are not you and you could do horrific things to them. And that this is literally a part of how human beings evolved to 2017, how we got through

all the horrific things that have taken place in the past. And if you think about the religious innovations that have occurred in the history of most of the populations on earth today, they involve a recognition at some point where the definition of self gets broadened to a larger group. So if you think about, for example, the golden rule. For example, the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule has progenitors in the Hillel tradition. century as a, as a species, it's going to have to be through the recognition that actually all human beings are trapped on one tiny little planet and we're in severe jeopardy. And really we have to start treating each other, not as other, because we will, you know, we will be fighting each other as the whole experiment goes to hell. We have to recognize that we actually face a common enemy, which is the unintended consequences of the system we've built. I never like to bring up Ronald Reagan as the voice of reason, but he had a fantastic quote way back in the day, one of his speeches during the Cold War, where he was talking

about how we would bond together if we were approached by some alien life form from another planet that threatened us, how we would all realize that we are all in this together. I had no idea that he said that. It was a great speech because the conspiracy theorists went crazy. They're like, there's aliens, man. Well, I think this is totally right. And here's the even better part, I think this is totally right. And here's the even better part, I think, which is, yeah, if there was an alien race that came to invade the Earth, we'd rally. If there was an asteroid that we built into us to fight each other, that caused us to cooperate to fight other groups, to be retargeted at things that aren't other groups, that are problems. And so what frustrates me more than I think anything else is right now, we do face a common enemy. And that common enemy is, you know, let's say climate change would be

one facet of it, but it's the system that set climate change in motion, which has also given us nuclear reactors that are unstable and difficult to control. It's given us economic policies that are going to cause us to destabilize as a result of the concentration of well-being and power in a small number of hands. Those are common enemies. of well-being and power in a small number of hands. Those are common enemies. And if we allowed the circuitry that is in us to be triggered, that allows us to fight a common enemy, actually we would be quite united at the moment and for a good cause.

Which is one of the more disturbing things about Trump pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, is that what it says is that we're not in this together. I mean, even more so than it says that these guys are, I mean, he has advisors and this EPA guy is a very dangerous character that's a climate change denier. And there's so much anti-science going on in this administration, you wouldn't even know where to begin, right? But one of the real problems is that we're moving away from this group of people that's trying to figure out what to do about emissions. What do we do about all this garbage? What do we do about all this waste? And it's not even necessarily just about climate change. It's about sustainability. It's about what are we doing with the byproduct of civilization? If there's one thing that should cut across

political lines, it's that question. What do we do about the things that jeopardize us all together? And if it's one thing that should disturb us about capitalism, the number one thing is putting profit ahead of the environment that we literally need to sustain life. And that's something they're trying to do. Bringing back fucking coal. Coal. Of all things. And they have these coal miners on TV and they don't even agree with it. They had that. They interviewed a bunch of coal miners today that were President Trump supporters that were happy. They voted for Trump because he's going to bring back coal. And they're like, well, I don't know about this. Why is he stepping away from the climate change thing, though? Like even people in the coal mining industry are torn on this. I mean, this is a very dark time in that way. industry are torn on this. I mean, this is a very dark time in that way.

Very dark. And, you know, and ironic, too, because I mean, we're now behind the eight ball, because we've put this off for so long, we should have started doing this 25 or 30 years ago. But even now, it is actually not as hard as people think to figure out how the world might function that didn't create this jeopardy as a matter of byproducts of everyday activity. It's actually not that difficult, but the system is built to frustrate it. So, you know, in the same sense, if you step back from the last presidential election and you think about how is it that we ended up with two such lousy candidates for this position with such power? Something in the system has to be off that we don't end up with any viable candidates for that office. And it's the same problem. We are caught in loops that prevent

proper solution making. It's not that solution making isn't possible. It's that solution making is not someplace we can go from here because of mundane reasons in our system that are ultimately going to kill us if we're not careful. Well, it's also such a complicated structure that outside of completely radical change, like restructuring everything from the bottom up, like tearing it down literally to the foundation and rebuilding it. How else are you going to fix this thing with lobbyists and special interest groups and congressmen and representative government? It's like there's so many different areas that allow for the possibility of corruption and influence and just cronyism. It's just it's such a dark and twisted corridor that you enter into if you consider any kind of reform. Well, it can't be reform. And we can't tear it down either.

Well, what would we do? Well, that's an interesting question. And I must say it's something that a number of friends of mine and I have been working on for some time. There are answers which five, seven years ago, I wouldn't have thought possible that I now believe actually are possible. And so what we're really talking about, we can't have revolution, we can't afford it, nor will it work. The power arrayed against revolution is so immense that it's inconceivable that it could function. We also can't afford a disruption massive enough to cause the

system to restructure on its own, if for no other reason than the fact that we've got more than 400 nuclear reactors on Earth today that require constant inputs of power, or they melt down and spill not only the contents of the reactors, but the contents of the spent fuel pools where we've stored decades worth of spent material. So basically, we have to restructure the system without letting it collapse and without confronting it in the traditional way. So we need effectively revolutionary change without revolution. However, notice that your life today doesn't look all that much like your life 30 years ago from the point of view of how you go about things, how you navigate around the world. Things sweep across civilization in a market system based on utility. And that model can also be used to replace the system that we have currently.

So in essence, if you think forward, what is the world going to look like 20 years from now? It's very hard to know because you know how much change has come in the last 20 years. So there will be revolutionary change. At the moment, it will be dictated by a market, and it will basically give us more of what we think we want rather than what we actually need. However, the same mechanism that causes technologies to sweep across civilization can be utilized to have meaningful change in the way we interrelate with each other and the way we govern ourselves sweep across civilization. So

that's the project that we've been working on behind the scenes. So what is the project? Like, how does it work? Well, it involves different people with different expertise. And there are those who are expert in the technological aspects, in other words, identifying those technologies that actually stand a good chance of replacing the dangerous stuff that runs civilization now. There are those of us who are involved in the game theoretic aspects of what it is that keeps the current system stabilized as it is and what would have to change in order to replace it. replace it. So anyway, it's a complicated effort, but it is not, I am hopeful in a way that I wasn't back during Occupy, let's say, because I no longer think that the only route forward is one of the traditional modes that we've seen. So do you think that it's going to be a slow integration of technology into people's lives to the point where it's going to affect the

system itself to the point where the current system the way it works just won't operate the way it does? No not really. What are you saying specifically? What I'm saying specifically is that people have been shut out of the gains of civilization and they have been fed a small portion of the phony growth that our system generates to placate them. They've also been threatened with austerity, which is largely a false threat. In other words, they've been told, yes, we could do something different, but you're going to have to give up most of the things that you value. So how about it?

And in fact, the world could be a very exciting place to transform. If we were to recognize the real landscape that we face rather than the story that has been portrayed that has told us that we really don't have any good options it seems that there there is still time though frankly the clock is ticking so what would be the steps that would be taken in order to make this a reality well I'm the question is do I want to say that out loud here where the entities that want to oppose it know exactly what it is before it comes. I don't know how smart that is. What I will say is that there are a good number of us working on the puzzle. We're serious about it. And we are, the things that would

typically be used to dismiss us ought not be. We're not looking to be the head of some system that enriches us. We're looking to make the planet function in a way that serves everyone. So do you think there's some sort of conspiracy to stop this? Like if you actually bring it up, you think that there would actually be people that would make or take active measures in order to hold it off at the pass? I don't think it's exactly like that. I think there is a structure that has emerged that exists. Administrations come and go, but there's a structure that doesn't.

And it seems to have a central principle behind it, which is it doesn't like change that it can't control. Change is one thing, change happens, but it's not interested in change that could upend it. So anyway, the reason that we end up with a battle between, you know, a non-viable Republican and a non-viable Democrat is that they have passed a test in which they do not threaten the fundamental structures underneath. In fact, Trump may actually be a violation of that. He may actually threaten those structures and they may be trying to figure out what to do about them. But in general, what we have is a system that filters on the way towards the levers of power such that anybody who gets there wouldn't use them in a destabilizing fashion.

Which is why we saw the DNC conspire against Bernie Sanders. Absolutely. We saw them conspire in the most direct terms and then we've seen them in court defend it by saying they had every right to do it rather than denying it. Yeah. saying they had every right to do it rather than denying it. Yeah. So anyway, I'm not, you know, it's too easy to say conspiracy. And it is too, it's too simplistic because it implies that people got together in a room and said things out loud.

And that does happen sometimes. But it also happens through another mechanism, a mechanism of what scientifically we would call emergence, where those structures that frustrate change outcompete structures that allow change. So it may be that what we have are forces that resist change reflexively without knowing what they're doing, the same way a tree grows toward the light

without knowing what it's doing. Oh, okay. Don't you think, though, that there'd be some benefit to discussing these potential solutions to these issues out loud? And that people would sort of like pick it up and act on it, especially given this enormous platform? I do. So it's not that I don't want to talk about them. I mean, in fact, we've we held a what was called an unconference in Palo Alto several months ago. So it's not that we don't talk about them out loud. What I'm concerned about is that, A, I'm only one of the people involved. And so, you know, I have my area of expertise in in this group. But there are many others areas of expertise that I can't speak to as directly. So anyway, I'm concerned about unearthing the thing in a place where it will be a cartoon version of something that's actually more sophisticated than that.

I understand. I'm not averse to answering questions if you got them. What would be the first step? got them. What would be the first step? Well, the first step would probably involve a blockchain currency that had strengths connected to it that made it competitively superior to something like the dollar. In other words, the dollar is a flawed entity in multiple regards, but the dollar depends on our valuing it. And the thing about blockchain currencies is that blockchain currencies can be exchanged between entities that have an agreement about preferring them. about preferring them. So, for example, a group of people could decide to pay each other in blockchain currency of some kind

based on ideals that are not the same ones on which our nation, for example, is founded. So you could agree to a higher set of standards for something and agree to prefer each other in the context of business. So you would do business with those who had also agreed to the same higher set of principles. And that currency could therefore displace something like the dollar. Well, it'd be fascinating to see. I mean, I know that Bitcoin and blockchain and a lot of these different cryptocurrencies are gaining momentum. And in fact, Bitcoin, weren't we just talking about this, is higher now than it has been like literally in years. Ever? Ever. Yeah. see them used side by side, you know, to see if it could be possible that it could gain more momentum to get to the point where it's, I mean, right now you bring up, I'm going

to buy something with Bitcoin. People think you're a freak. Right. Like my friend Andreas Antonopoulos, who's big in the Bitcoin movement. I've had him on the podcast a few times. He's written books on it and he does everything in Bitcoin. He's paid in Bitcoin. He buys his airline tickets in Bitcoin.

He pays his rent in Bitcoin. I mean, he's deep. But maybe, what, is he one of a thousand people in the world that might do that? Right. Although, you know, everything transformative starts in a small minority of people doing it somewhere. So what I would say is that the cryptocurrency isn't enough in and of itself. You have to couple it with the structures that are capable of solving the other problems of civilization. Like someone figuring out what to do with nuclear waste. That would be a nice one. That's a biggie. Right. That's a biggie. And it's high on my list of,

of, let's say, fears is that those nuclear reactors are so dangerous by virtue of what it is that keeps them stable day in and day out, that really, if people understood the danger they face based on those reactors and the spent fuel that they have, people would be alarmed. Well, if people just paid attention to Fukushima. I mean, just look at what's happening and know how many of those there are. And here's the other issue. You know, I've talked to people before, and there's this – I mean, it's really funny how when you subscribe to a certain ideology, whether it's a liberal ideology or whether it's a conservative ideology, you immediately adopt a series of beliefs that go along with that. And one of them on the right is that nuclear power is clean energy.

And my argument to that has always been, we've only had it for 60 years, and look how many places you can't even go anymore. I mean, Fukushima, Chernobyl, what is it, Three Mile Island? Three Mile Island. I don't know, Three Mile Island. Can you go there now? I wouldn't go there. It'd be the best of those three. But we also have the WIP Project in New Mexico.

Yeah, the number of places on Earth you can just simply no longer go is growing. And places in Nevada where they just bury the waste. Where they just bury the waste. Hanford just had a huge collapse. So let's put it this way. We now know how dangerous this technology is. And we also know that what we were told when it was invented, I mean, everything we were told. We were told electricity too cheap to meter, for one thing. We were also told we'll figure out what to do with the waste.

Not true and not true. Not true. And here's what's really terrifying. I mean, every now and then, you know, they're digging in Mexico City and they find some ancient aztec ruins and they have to stop construction because they didn't know it was there what the fuck happens if a hundred years from now they dig into the nevada desert and just tap right into a chamber of spent fuel rods and kill everybody well in fact that's one of the problems that they've tried to solve is how do you how do you make a sign for people, you know, a thousand years in the future? How about a hundred years?

Right. We have no idea how you would warn them off. Nor are these things stable. I mean, the thing about the WIP project in New Mexico is that, you know, this was supposed to be stable for thousands of years. And we had this explosion that leaked plutonium, you know, after decades. The thing was not stable the way we were told it was. And so anyway, we have this terrible problem. And what to do with the waste you've already got is obviously a huge issue. Not making more of – there was a really young kid, I believe, that came out with some radical proposal for taking the nuclear waste and converting it into energy that could power cities for thousands of years, whether or not it's viable. But, I mean, it's totally possible. I mean, look, if someone can come up with nuclear energy in the first place, the ability to split an atom and power a city, maybe it is possible that someone could figure out what to do with that waste. Some new sort of radical approach to looking at it. But you can't just leave it. You can't just keep doing what we're doing over and over again and hope that we don't make more spots where you can't live. Well, I mean, the first thing is,

there is one thing we can do with it that's better that we already have the technology to do, and there's no excuse for not doing it, which is that all of the stuff that's sitting in pools that has to be actively cooled, after something like five years, it can be put in dry cask storage, which ain't perfect,

but at least it doesn't require some system to actively keep it from boiling over. And doesn't need electricity in order to cool it, which is the issue that happened in Fukushima. And that's strictly a matter of money, right? We could do that tomorrow. We could just require it, and we should, because it's vastly safer. We could also potentially, there are ways to take the spent fuel and to burn it down that does involve other kinds of reactors. But ultimately, ultimately, I can't understand why we have not made an immense investment in fusion power. Were we to discover the ability to make viable fusion power, which I believe we know is possible,

we not only would be able to power civilization without warming the climate, but we would also be able to pull carbon out of the atmosphere if it turns out that we need to do that. If you have effectively an unlimited source of power, you can take carbon out of the atmosphere and you could turn it into building materials that were stable for thousands of years. And the tiny amount that we spend on fusion research is inexplicable to me. Yeah, we've gotten way away from the original subject, but I think this is all very important stuff. But I wanted to talk to you about evolutionary biology.

All right. And being someone who teaches that and being as that's your discipline and seeing all of these, I mean, what is it like being as that's your discipline and um seeing all of these i mean what what is it like being a professor and being someone who's studying this stuff and then seeing all these weird traits and all these weird personality aspects demonstrate themselves in these times of crisis like seeing these these situations. You're talking about people? Yes.

Well, that's an interesting question. I have become fascinated. I didn't start out studying people, but the longer I proceed in evolutionary biology, the more interested I am in people. And let's put it this way. Sometimes something is surprising, but in general, if you have the right tools to understand people at an evolutionary level, things make a certain amount of sense. I have something I say to students frequently, which is if a situation is confusing with people, very often it makes more sense if you turn the sound all the way down so you can't hear what they're actually saying. the sound all the way down so you can't hear what they're actually saying. Because very often what's being enacted between people isn't really about the content of what they're saying. It's about something else. And so let's take, for example, my first project when I was an undergraduate. I was studying with a very famous evolutionary biologist named Bob Trivers. And I wrote a paper for his class. And it was about the Holocaust. It was about the, really, I was testing the question. At the time, it was

relatively commonplace to hear that Hitler was insane. And something about that didn't ring true to me. And I wanted to know, evolutionarily speaking, was he insane? And in studying that question, it became very clear that insane was the wrong description, that he was a monster. But he was a rational monster from the point of view of advancing German genes. And that was a very troubling discovery to me that, um, in effect, what he was doing was, uh, I mean, it's the worst thing imaginable, but from the point of view of genes that are attempting to spread across the globe and exclude alternative genes from access to resources, it was perfectly reasonable. Not only what he did to Jews and

homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses, but the military plan. The future of Germany lies in Russia. The idea was that this was actually a sophisticated plan that would have advanced the cause of spreading German genes spectacularly, had frankly, so many million Russians not been ready to give their lives to turn the German war machine around. So what I'm saying, this has to be dealt with carefully, because people hear you say that, and they think that you're justifying it. But you know, I'm, of course, a Jew, you know, whose ancestors were from Europe. There's no part of me that is in any way okay with what happened, quite the opposite.

But understanding that even though the Darwinism that Hitler was deploying was deformed and not accurate and defensible in a logical sense, the plan he was advancing was German genes attempting to take over a larger fraction of the resources that planet Earth has to offer than they had available to them at that point in the 30s. So anyway, what I'm trying to say is that there's something that we often teach students first when we get to them, which is called the naturalistic fallacy.

It means that just because something is true doesn't mean it's good, that it ought to be true. And so discovering the nature of something like the Holocaust is very important in the sense that it allows you to grapple with it logically. But as you're grappling with it logically, people want to imagine that you're saying it was okay. And that's the opposite. There are many things that are true for evolutionary reasons that are completely unacceptable. And understanding what those things are gives you a pretty good shot at preventing them from unfolding. It also really is a problem when something becomes taboo to even consider or to look at. Like you can't look at the idea that he wasn't insane and that he was in fact rational in rationalizing his horrific acts and that there was some sort of a plan to it all.

And you would say that even by enacting that plan, you would be insane in terms of how you think of the world and I think of the world. Like if we found out that Jamie over here was thinking about starting a master race and killing everybody off we would go oh jamie's gone insane i mean that's like the and to say no he's not insane he has a rational plan yeah like immediately people would want to justify any horrific thing they could say about you yeah just to be clear though jamie is not doing that right okay good guy fair enough like sports that's how to take over he's into yeah um but it but having taboo subjects or having things you cannot consider even if you're clearly not a racist person even if you're clearly not a person who advocates genocide the the idea that intellectual discussions cannot be pursued about specific topics.

Well, the first thing, if you're going to go into evolutionary biology, especially if you're going to get anywhere near human beings, you have to really put aside the idea of taboo in intellectual space. You have to be able to consider everything because so much of the story is, you know, it goes from bizarre to horrifying, you know, and there's also great beauty. I mean, one of the important things to remember is that the evolutionary, the adaptive process, the adaptive evolutionary process gave us not only our worst characteristics, our tendency to war and to genocide and to oppression, but it gave us our best characteristics to our capacity to love, to empathize, to be compassionate, to sacrifice for others. So all of those things are evolutionary products. And, you know, the message I try to convey to people when I talk about this is that we have to pick and choose which of

the evolutionary products we want to honor and preserve and which of them we wish to bar from the landscape. And this is really what civilization is about. Civilization is about taking the whole spectrum of things that we're capable of and providing a landscape for the ones that are honorable and good and making the ones that aren't honorable and good so expensive that nobody would consider engaging in them now when you're in the middle of this crazy scenario that you find yourself in and you what you know what you know about evolutionary biology and about

the mechanisms behind human behavior. How do you get back to work? Well, I'm lucky in that the freedom that Evergreen offers me to teach what I want, how I want. You can teach outside of the school? Well, I mean, you'd be surprised. My contract doesn't even mention biology. I can teach what I want. So you could teach like football scores. I could teach dance.

I mean, I really, I mean, I'm not, I'm not a good dancer, so I can't, but, um, but I could teach pottery. It doesn't matter. Um, now what, so what that means from my perspective is that I'm able to take the stuff I'm intellectually interested in and I'm able to make it my teaching life as well. And that has worked beautifully. I've really had a great time bringing students in on what I think is the cutting edge of evolutionary theory. And many of them have rallied. So, you know, it's a lot like having graduate students who are deeply interested in the same material and are able to play ball because, you know, they take on the toolkit, they learn to use it. And so anyway, my intellectual life is quite rich and it involves undergraduate students, which is a pretty unusual thing, but it does work pretty well.

How do you get back to work at your school, though? Oh, is that what you're asking? Yeah. I mean, does that even happen? That's a tough question. So you are confronted with the very real possibility that your days at Evergreen might be over. Well, there's a practical question.

I don't think they can fire me because I haven't done anything wrong. So that means I can go back to work in the fall and I don't have another plan. On the other hand... You're saying in the fall, like your school, how much longer does the semester my... You had in June or July? I unfortunately have a conference that I have to, I mean, it's not unfortunate that I have it, but I have a conference that unfortunately interfaces with the end of the quarter such that I had to wrap my program up early and I met with my program for the last time yesterday after the campus had closed.

We met in the park again. You meet in the park? Well, we weren't safe to be on campus, so we started doing that as an alternative. How many students? I'm supposed to have 25. I have 32. So who are the extra ones?

People who begged to get into the program, and I couldn't turn them away. Oh, you're a sweetie. Thank you. So now you meet in the park. Are you worried that someone's going to find out where you're meeting and you won't be safe there? You know, I mean, I don't go anywhere without thinking about it. So, yes, I'm concerned about that. So it's really gotten that crazy in your mind that you have to worry if you're going to the supermarket or you have to worry if you're. I never know what I'm going to encounter.

And, you know, I'm not a big worrier on that front. I more or less feel like if I encounter somebody, they're probably going to be upset. And especially if there aren't a large number of them. Actually, I could probably talk to them and get somewhere. aren't a large number of them. Actually, I could probably talk to him and get somewhere. On the other hand, given what people think is true about me and what they think the rules are with respect to what they are therefore entitled to do, I don't know. I really don't know what could happen. Wow. Well, what can be done or what should be done about some of the, I don't want to use the term crazy, but some of the more rambunctious students that are a part of this? I mean, it doesn't seem like they're going to just change their behavior and go back to just being a normal, inquisitive young person trying to figure out the world.

It's like they're so embroiled in this ideology. It seems, and they've given them so much ground. It's like, how do you stop this? And when you, when you've held the fucking president hostage and told him he can't go to the bathroom without representatives of your militant group watching him pee, where does it go from there? watching him pee, where does it go from there? Well, I should say, what I said, I don't know, five, ten minutes ago, probably sounded a little utopian. I'm not a utopian. I think utopia might be the worst idea humans ever had.

So what I'm saying should be understood. The worst? Pretty close. Worse than the Holocaust? Well, I mean, the Holocaust was utopian. I guess. It was, right? That was the idea.

So, yes, I think that. But most people think of utopian as like some moment in time where we're all sort of like, oh, what are we doing? Let's work together. Let's all be nice. Right. Well, people, I mean, you know, utopia. They have utopian ideas of utopia. Yes. Well, they have very impractical ideas. Let's all be nice. they engage in it. So anyway, I'm not a utopian. And what I'm about to say about what could happen

at Evergreen is not utopian in nature. But I do think Evergreen, as you described earlier, is really the tip of something. What happened at Evergreen is so extreme, and the way it looks to the world is so preposterous that I do think, I do hope that the academy is hitting bottom, that in seeing this little preview of where these things go, if they are allowed to evolve of their own accord, that people will wake up and they will realize actually as hard as it is to challenge this stuff, we have to do it because if we don't, this is what happens. Now, that said, on our campus, if we get rid of a few bad actors, starting with the president, and we recognize that we have ended up in some new landscape where up is down, it is also possible that we could find, uh, we could find a new kind of common ground. So, um, do you think you could

find a new common ground with these students that are screaming in the streets? Hey, Hey, ho, ho, these racist teachers have got to go? I know this is going to sound crazy and some people are not going to understand why when, you know, my family and students have been threatened, I would even talk like this. And to be honest, I understand why they would say that. is can you talk to them in a small group of people where they could be reached because indeed many of them are reachable or do you have to talk to the entire mob in which case yes it's absolutely impossible isn't it also a problem in that when people dig their heels into the sand and they decide that this is how things are and then even when confronted with the possibility they may have been incorrect or wrong or acted irrationally.

It's very difficult for people to admit that and reconcile and step back and maybe just self-assess. Somebody has to blaze the trail. In other words, I find myself accidentally in the position of blazing a particular trail of how do you stare down an accusation of racism. So someone from that side has to blaze a trail. Somebody from that side. To realize, hey, Brett is the opposite of racist. We're being silly here. We all have a common enemy and the common enemy is real racism. Ah, good. And I mean, this is why I said, recognizing that you have been involved in a witch hunt, that's the moment at which, you know, you either level up or you don't.

When you realize you've been engaged in a witch hunt, that's the moment at which you can discover there's something fundamental that's wrong in my program somewhere that allowed that to happen. Maybe that would be a subject that someone could teach as a course, you know, like how campus ideology goes amok. Absolutely. How things go amok. I mean, in fact, it's not exactly that and it was planned long before this protest erupted, but I'm scheduled next spring to teach with another professor a program on essentially the evolutionary origins of human violence. Wow. So when you think about everything coming, do you have like a vision in your mind about how everything would sort of the dust will settle and this president hopefully will either resign or be forced out? And then what do you do with these students that you looked at in the end they were screaming at you calling you a racist telling you to resign like how do you deal with that when you go back to school well i mean if they were willing to listen i could deal with it i

the thing that is i think hard to appreciate from the outside a little bit is that because I know that there's nothing to the accusation, and because so many students know that there's nothing to the accusation, it doesn't hurt in the same way that it would if I had serious doubts about myself in this regard. So if they were to come around, you know, we could make it happen. That said, that's not the direction things are going. As of this morning, the internal list of the faculty and staff was headed in exactly the wrong direction. What is the list? Like, what are they trying to do?

Like, what are they trying to do? Well, they imagine that this entire catastrophe, including the closing of the campus yesterday and today, is the result of the, I think it was six minutes I spent on Tucker Carlson. Yeah, you got on Fox News. You summoned the demon. I mean, those airwaves are immoral. Yeah. Yeah. So have they literally said that, that you should not have gone on Fox News? Oh,

that's beyond that. Their point is. What is this? Here we go. Evergreen State faculty demand punishment of white professor who refused to leave on anti-white day. Oh, it's anti-white day.

That's even more interesting. Wow. It came out today. It might've came out since we started the podcast, too. I'm not sure when this hit. What is it? Thecollegefix.com? Yeah.

This is describing what's in the letter. The contents of the letter are right here. I have been tweeted it a few times. Make that a little larger for me. We acknowledge that all of us have power within the institution, who have power within the institution, share responsibility for the racist actions of others. Furthermore, those of us who are white bear a particularly large share of that responsibility.

Oh, God. We acknowledge that we have a great deal of work to do in order to honor and live up to the demands made by the student leaders. Oh, the students are leaders. Oh, yeah. They're leaders. Like leaders. Oh, the students are leaders. Oh, yeah. They're leaders. Like how in Yale, the students that stared down the professor and physically threatened

him, they were actually, they were given awards. Wasn't one of them given some sort of an acknowledgment of being a leader? We'll find that. Jamie will find that. But we acknowledge we have a great deal of work to do in order to honor and live up through the students of color focus groups of 2014, through their participation in anchoring the strategic equity plan for November in Cooper Point Journal, blah, blah, blah. And we have not yet truly listened and acted. We acknowledge a student's right to protest and affirm President Bridge's recent decision

not to use the misguided language of the current student contact. What is that? Current student conduct code to punish the protesters? What is the language of the current student conduct code? A, hell if I know, but B, I believe what they're talking about is the president said that students would not be held accountable for disrupting my class. And then I believe he agreed to their demand for student authority over any changes to the conduct code. So these students who are engaged in this, I hope this is right. I don't want to say something that's untrue, but my understanding was that he agreed to that demand. We vehemently reject the claim that students have been violent simply because they have been

loud and emphatic. There is a difference between exercising the right to freely voice an opinion and inciting violence. And that difference has nothing to do with the volume or forcefulness. That's not true. Because they were upset that he was moving his hands. They were calling that aggression.

And now they're saying that on the other hand, children can scream. I'm calling them children from now on. We support the demands made by students and honor the positive institutional change they have already achieved through their protests. That's hilarious. Our most urgent demands below center on the safety of those individuals who are currently most at risk. I mean, like the professor? who are currently most at risk.

At the same, I mean, like the professor? At the same time, we acknowledge that in weeks and months to come, our attention will need to turn to the larger structural issues students have identified. In solidarity with students, we commit ourselves to participating actively and self-critically in the annual mandatory trainings specified in the Memorandum of understanding recently signed by the UF. What does UFE stand for? That's our union, United Faculty of Evergreen.

And management bargaining teams holding each other accountable when we act in racist ways against our colleagues or our students. Okay, well then why don't you hold yourself accountable that you acquiesce to a fucking anti-white day. That's racist. Right. But what's going to happen here is this is going to be intolerable re-education by people who, frankly, it pains me to say it, but they're the most racist people on the campus. I mean, that's what this is.

This is racism. It just happens to be in an unfamiliar direction, but it's racism. And they also are going to be in charge of sensitivity training here, which to me is the height of insanity. So scroll up a little bit. In solidarity with students, we call for the evergreen, this way, administration to center student perspectives in a persistent media approach. What? Gobbly gook. Approach to counter the alt-right narratives that are demonizing Evergreen. Okay, do you have an alt-right movement at Evergreen? If I read that correctly, I am now in the alt-right.

Oh, you're an alt-righter. I guess so. Are demonizing Evergreen and Day of Absence specifically. Wow. Persistent media approach. What is the persistent? Is that you going on Tucker Carlson? That must be it.

So we have to break this down like it's code. Like we're not even speaking English. We're reading fucking hieroglyphs here. Persistent media approach. Persistent media approach. Oh, yeah. Am I alt-right? I might be.

You are now. I might be. People think I am because I've had alt-right? I might be. You are now. I might be. People think I am. Because I've had alt-right people on. Or, but then conveniently, when I have liberals on, I'm a fucking raging liberal. God damn it. Take seriously the threats made to the individual

community members. Oh, aren't you an individual community member? I think you're about to get to me here. Use available institutional resources to protect them. Demonstrate accountability by pursuing a disciplinary investigation against Brett Weinstein. According to guidelines in the social contract and faculty handbook, Weinstein has endangered faculty, staffs, and students, has endangered faculty, staffs, and students,

making them targets of white supremacist backlash by promulgating misinformation in public emails, on national television, in news outlets, and on social media. That is a very, very broad... You should sue. That's a hell of a bullet point, huh? You should sue just for that. Yep. You have endangered faculty, staff, and students.

But see, the problem with that statement is someone can just read that now and use that as a quote and just start saying that as if it's fact. Well, let's just deal with this for a second, can we? Yes, please. Okay. So that is a very interesting bullet point. The fact is I have gone on media. Media has come to me. What I have done is I have pointed to videos that the protesters themselves put up that caused the world to say, what the hell is going on at Evergreen? And this has resulted, the entire thing has unfolded.

I've been fighting this for a year, trying to point out to my colleagues that they were making terrible errors. This is all the result of reforms put in motion by President Bridges. So they are now blaming me. And I should say, I do think there is jeopardy on the campus. We had a threat yesterday from somebody, have no idea how serious it was. But I do believe that there's jeopardy to people on our campus. What specifically was a threat? Was it a threat from a white supremacist group? Was it a threat from a pro-protester group? It wasn't specific, but so what I, all I can say is that I got what I was told was a transcript of the call. I cannot vouch for it because I don't have access to, you know, somebody could be promulgating a hoax. I don't know.

What it said was that they were coming to campus, I think with a magnum, and they were going to kill as many as they could is what they said. They do? We could play the audio? Okay. Put your headphones on. Let's listen.

Let's hear it. Dispatch. Hello? Hello, Dispatch. Can I help you? Yes. I'm on my way to Evergreen University now with a.44 Magnum. I'm going to execute as many people on that campus as I can get a hold of.

You have that? What's going on there, you communist scumbag town? I'm going to murder as many people on that campus as I can. Sir? Just keep your eyes open, scumbag. Okay. First of all, A, that guy's full of shit. B, he's an amateur.

Right. Because 44 Magnum only held six rounds, mostly maybe five. It might even be five rounds. Or is that a Desert Eagle? That guy's a bullshit artist.44 Magnum only holds six rounds, mostly maybe five. It might even be five rounds. Or is that a Desert Eagle? That guy's a bullshit artist. A.44 Magnum. You don't specify the round that you're going to use. Nor does that weapon make any sense.

But nonetheless, the point is... He's Dirty Harry. He thinks so. Yeah, right. But, you know, I don't want to belittle people's jeopardy. I have to say that... He might have been crazy and he might have actually been really wanting to do that. And he could have done right. And it could happen. And I, I think the jeopardy to people on campus is real. And I live right adjacent to campus. And I must tell you, I brought my family with me because I don't feel that they are safe there at the moment. The question is, how is it that we have reached the point of deciding that this jeopardy is from me?

Well, that's horrific. What they've done is so irresponsible in releasing that and making it public. It's so irresponsible and so silly that they don't realize that other people are going to see through that so clearly. Well, many people. Misinformation and like what? Misinformation. What specifically? They should be very specific.

When they accuse you of misinformation, they should be very specific. As far as to say that you are somehow or another summoning the alt-right and making misinformation public on mass media. What is that misinformation? Well, I know because I've been watching the email traffic. Right. So their claim is that white people were not asked to leave campus, that there were only 200 spaces in the venue off campus. And therefore, this was just supposed to be for a small subset of people, which is nonsense. There were only 200 spaces if you wanted to go to the particular seminars that they were holding, for example, the one about why Asians were part of the problem. So they had a seminar on Asians being a problem

or a presentation of some kind. That is really racist. I believe so. But in any case, they are conflating the 200 spaces off campus with what was actually expected of us. And it was quite clear. In fact, one of my staff colleagues put out an email. Boy, time has gone into some weird thing, but I think it was last night in which he detailed the several emails that we had seen in which the school did ask white people to leave for that day. So they are promoting falsehoods themselves designed to obscure

what's going on, I think, because they finally understood that the world doesn't get what they were doing. Well, do they not understand that this is a trail that's going to be released, like that this is actual data and that this data, when they accuse you of misinformation and then you have all of this data and then you could just like release it to everybody like, hey, this is the actual emails. Clearly, this contradicts what you're saying. It makes you a liar. Right.

Several people, in fact, many people have now started to refer to what's going on in the staff faculty zone here as a cult. And I think, you know, on the one hand, that could be tongue and cheek. On the other hand, the mechanisms at work that have people doubling down on absurdities rather than trying to get on the right side of history as quickly as possible, it is very cult-like. And again, you know, you asked me what would have to wake up to the fact that their belief structure has become bizarre and unrecognizable from any normal position. And very dangerous from the perspective of an educator. If this is what an educated person who has gone through the entire system and now has a job in educating young people, if this is how you view the world and this is how you view the world, and this is how you view facts,

and this is how you distort them, and then disseminate them to the rest of these like-minded folks in this very bizarre echo chamber that's being rejected almost universally outside of the college. I mean, it's not just Fox News it's rejecting. It's the Washington Post. It's the New York Times. People are freaking out about your situation and recognize very clearly and very rightly that you are absolutely not a racist. And this is kind of a lot of what I've said to Jordan Peterson when I had him on. They fucked with the wrong person. Again, they fucked with the wrong person again they fucked with the wrong person and this is one of the most horrific things about what i find so troubling about what i think of as i used to think of myself as a progressive but what i probably what i have a problem with all of this is that the left is

attacking itself now it's like it's it's there's no one who's progressive enough. No one. Like every single thing you do is a microaggression. Every single thing you do is based on white privilege and therefore you're racist. And unless you somehow or another give up all your money and give up all your jobs. And there are people who are asking to do that too, by the way. There's people asking people to give their money and put them in black banks. Give them to black people. I mean, we're going crazy. Give their money and put them in black banks.

Give them to black people. I mean, we're going crazy. This is literally, it's not an individual psychosis, but it's a collective psychosis that we're watching. And I believe that in literal terms. We are watching a kind of group insanity. Is this a problem with influence and charisma and people's ability to sort of change the way others view the world with dramatic interpretations of events and things like emails, where this is not a one-on-one debate. There's a real problem with blogs and emails. And I've talked about this several times, but it's worth repeating. There's a real problem

when someone writes something like that specifically about another person like you and just writes it, but you're not there to respond. So they can write as much stuff that's not true and they can put it all down and then it's there. And then someone has to refute it, but it's still there. So you don't even get to refute the actual document you write your own and then someone has to go and read that at a different location it's a real weird way to distribute information and it's contrary to the way human beings rationally discuss and debate ideas well I would say there are many rules that are written into the way we interact now that make it possible for this to happen. So there was an instance where a faculty member accused those that were challenging any of these

equity proposals as being part of a racist backlash. And she was clearly talking about me because I'm the most prominent person objecting. Is this faculty member a white person? No. So anyway, she says in a faculty meeting that this is a racist backlash. And I said to her in front of this faculty meeting, I said, somebody might want to check on the question of whether or not I'm actually a racist, because if you do check on it, you will discover I'm not. And if you don't, this is going to blow up on you. And the chair of the faculty told me that the faculty meeting was not the place to defend myself against accusations of racism. I said to her, that's fine. It's also not the place to level the accusations.

But I said, where is the place? And then the faculty member who had made the accusations said, you should not expect there to be a venue in which to defend yourself. You should just get used to these accusations. In a separate case, I was told. What? Who said that? A white guy or a. No, it's the same faculty member who made the accusations. Wait a minute.

The person said that you should just accept these untrue accusations yes um yeah what was your reaction to that that this is not a place for you to defend yourself against racist accusations this is a place for you to just eat shit right you just have to accept these accusations on a separate occasion we were also told that um that to question uh an allegation of racism is racist. Oh, how convenient. Yeah, try to wrap your mind around that one. To question an accusation of racism is racist. Right, we have an obligation to believe them.

Wow. I know, I know. Wait a minute, that is crazy. That is such stupid back-ass words thinking. It's what the cult mentality sounds like inside. It doesn't understand that when you say that to an outsider, it simply doesn't add up. Or it's creating a structure that makes it impossible to defend yourself because these accusations are so preposterous that they realize that they have to have some sort of a bizarro world structure. Absolutely. Oh, my God.

So what does this person teach? They teach media. So they teach. How ironic. Right. They teach media. They are currently running a program where she's teaching students to make documentaries. And that program, one of the students in the program filed a public records request.

Since we are a public college, you can request the emails of faculty and staff if you want them. And so she had a student file a public records request for my email to make a documentary in her program. So you've got one faculty member searching another faculty member's email through a student looking for evidence of I don't know what. Evidence of racism. Well, presumably. Yeah.

God. Yes. What little half of a sentence is she's going to cut out a contest with a few dot, dot, dots afterwards? I mean, in fact, if you can separate my letters from each other and reorganize them, I could have said all kinds of things. Well, I think you should have a student ask for the emails that came from her. I bet they'd be wonderful. They could be very interesting. Oh, I bet they'd be wonderful.

from her, I bet they'd be wonderful. They could be very interesting. I bet they'd be wonderful. If she's telling you that you shouldn't have a venue to defend yourself and you should just accept the fact that you're going to be called a racist, the idea that she can call you a racist in a meeting, but you defending yourself against racism is not, it's not the place for that. It's not the place for that. And in fact, this whole exchange took place with the president of the college and the provost sitting there silently.

And what does he do? Silently. Didn't say a word. Did he move his hands? That's a really good question. I don't remember him moving his hands. I do remember him not releasing an email after that meeting saying that, in fact, accusations of racism without evidence will not be tolerated he never said that pretty goddamn important it's really pretty goddamn important and you just can't

just there's there's certain hot topics that you just got to leave alone when someone levels an accusation this is the this is the current progressive mindset the current like pc gone awry mindset yeah it's fucking crazy crazy we're all even we're all human that's it i don't give a shit where you're from i don't care if you're from your ancestors are from one part of the planet or right next door it does not matter it's who you are and as soon as you try to gain some sort of a leverage position because of the fact that you think that you have suffered more oppression in your family's ancestral history. We're way off track. We're way off track. The track should be equality today. That should be where we're all on this. And as soon

as someone says, you're a racist, but you can't defend yourself. Well, then we don't have equality anymore, man. You're trying to have anti-equality in order to bring equality to people that have been treated unethically? Is that what it is? You're absolutely right. It's structural inequity, which is the irony of the whole thing, is that people who were wrapped in the flag of equity, I challenged them because I believe in actual equity, and I was accused of being a racist for doing it. But it also sounds like intellectual poverty, too. It's like the actual structure of the thoughts that they're presenting are so poorly worded. And so it's so poorly thought out and you're not allowed to defend against it. Well, that's what I was saying about the difference in assumptions and beliefs between the postmodern

disciplines and, dare I say, the actual disciplines. In the postmodern disciplines, the illogic of those arguments doesn't matter because logic isn't a thing. It's a tool of oppression. Well, that's a cute way to just throw a monkey wrench into the gears. That's exactly what it is. And what do they want to achieve out of this? Well, that's a cute way to just throw a monkey wrench into the gears. Clank. That's exactly what it is. And what do they want to achieve out of this?

They just want to achieve all black professors and all white people on their knees as slaves. I mean, what is the ultimate goal? You know, just people running around fetching power adapters? Yeah. I mean, I have to, again, I want to be really careful. Most people of color, most black people hold no truck with this. They don't want this. But a tiny number who do want this or maybe think they want it until they see what it looks like are writing the narrative. And that can't be. They're going to undo the civil rights movement and that can't be allowed. involved in these protests, as misguided as they are, it makes them think that, see, look, we told you that these people are bad. See, look, we told you that there's a reason why they're inferior. And it just, as soon as you, as soon as you open the door to that, like you have real problems. Yeah, this plays right into the cartoonish fantasies of the absurd left that the right believes in, which is a tragedy.

It is a tragedy. But I will say there's a positive outgrowth of this, I think, which is if I look in my various inboxes at the stuff that's coming in from people that I've never heard of before, this wake up call is uniting people across every known fault line. So I'm getting letters from religious people, from very conservative people, from very progressive people. Every known fault line is cut by this, and people are galvanized by seeing something that doesn't fit any narrative they've seen before. That is to say, staring down an accusation like this is not common. Watching it stared down and the world not fall apart is encouraging. And then, you know, you mentioned it yourself to have the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times on the same page about this.

That's pretty interesting. So I do hope that what emerges from this is that all of the coalitions that exist will look at themselves and will recognize that they have, you know, maybe not every coalition has a noble part, but all of the ones that have a noble part will understand that it's paired with something that isn't noble. And I'm hoping that people who find themselves ill-served by the narrative will join together and that basically a coalition of the reasonable might emerge. Well, that's a beautiful hope. And I share that hope with you. I mean, I really hope that what's happening is that in these insulated environments of these universities and colleges where things just get crazy, that when word leaks out that they get crazy, it's very much like cults.

When you hear about Jonestown, you're like, hey, man, don't drink the fucking Kool-Aid. Something's going on down there. But these group mindsets that people fall into, you know, oftentimes when you're in the hive and you're in the middle of it, it can all be very, very confusing. My hope is that as more people find out about the preposterous behavior that's going on in these universities and colleges and how people are. I mean, these are young people that don't have a fully formed frontal cortex and are about to enter into the world. And they're doing this with this ridiculous momentum of these silly ideas. And there's people that want to enforce that more and more. And that these people, some of them, are actually professors at the very college where this is going on.

I mean, that to me is one of the weirder aspects of it. And one of the things that scares people a lot is the idea that these people are going to live in these insulated environments. And then they're going to go and get their graduate degree. And then they're going to start teaching. And then they're going to go right back with these same ideas in this insulated environment and never really go out into the world where the marketplace of ideas has roundly rejected a lot of these notions that they're trying to pass off through logic and debate and actual discourse, not through shutting people down because of the color of their skin or lack of or excess amount of melanin. I mean, that's not how human beings should be behaving in 2017. It's just not. So when you see it so evident and so prominent and so commonplace in universities and colleges, there's so many people on the outside looking back, looking in at this rather,

are baffled and for the first time enraged. Well, I think what you just described is exactly how this happened. The fact that the critical race theorists and the postmodernists are, you know, third generation by now. And so this has matured into a movement that wishes to reformulate the world according to what it thinks it understands. But it's so confused about the nature of reality that it's just, it's hard to even describe how preposterous it looks as it tries to emerge. Because they go from being at the university to eventually teaching at that same university. Well, it doesn't have to be the same one.

Or A. Yeah, they come to maturity inside a field where these things sound reasonable, and then they go on to teach them to students. And so, you know, the intensity and absurdity grows with each of those generations. And I think had they been exposed to the real world in the context of having to make sense in order to make a living, which, you know, I'm not a big fan of capitalism. But nonetheless, just even having to interface with the world and make enough sense to get by would enforce a kind of mental discipline that is not evident here.

Yeah, mental discipline is a good way to describe it, too. I mean, it just it seems like like the idea that not only should there not be a level level playing field but you should force uh a playing field that's not level permanently not yeah it's it's crazy and obviously the world agrees or a good percentage of it it's not even i mean i'm sure there's some bias in who writes and who doesn't, but I would actually imagine there'd be some pressure if you were really angry with me out in the world to write to me. And, um, I don't know, I must have a thousand highly supportive emails, um, all kinds of emails from amazing, interesting people all over the world now um and a few angry emails

and i think uh i don't know if it's three or four angry emails and two of them come from inside the the college yeah i'm sure some of them must be some of the professors that realize that this is a fucking sinking ship that's on fire like you, you can't keep doing that. Like, this is not going to end well. You can't double down. That's what they keep doing. Well, they keep double down. So what happens now? Like, do you just wait for the dust to settle?

Do you... I don't know. I'm... This has never happened to you before. This is a very unique moment in your life. Completely. How old are you? I'm 48.

So your whole life, essentially. Well, we should be careful there. There have actually been a number. Nothing like this has ever happened. The intensity of this, the national nature of it is all completely unprecedented. And it's pushing both me and my wife to our absolute limit of what we can do, just even fielding all of the stuff that is coming across our desks and all. That said, there is a precedent when I was a freshman

in college, and I've had battles inside of my field. And so what I would say is that when one has deep principles and one acts based on those principles, irrespective of the, I guess what would be called optics, you find yourself the one against the many repeatedly, just by virtue of the way the world works. And so this is without precedent in terms of the magnitude of it. But it's not the first time that I've found that just simply proceeding from principles that I'm pretty sure are right based on careful work has resulted in something boiling over in some amazing fashion. fashion. Have you explored the possibility of teaching outside of a university or college structure? Have you explored the possibility of using new media, whether it's online video, audio, text, in terms of like publishing things and maybe having a Patreon page or something along

those lines? Well, I would love to do it actually because at the moment, you know, the college has been a great place to do this because of the unusual teaching model. But it's becoming less fun. I mean, even if I wasn't at the center of this firestorm, the rules that are being instituted and the, you know, diversity sensitivity training that's coming and all of those things. What is that? What do they make you do? Well, they haven't done it yet. You need to learn how to not be racist.

Right. So they have to assume that you have these issues in the first place. Right. So they, first of all, why would they ever hire you if they thought that you were discriminatory? And then second, what is going to be done? Has it ever been proven ever that you can change people through compulsory remapping of their brain and anti-racist, some sort of a, I mean, what is it? It's like a two-day seminar thing? Something like that. Well, the thing is, none of this makes any sense because let's say this,

Something like that. Well, the thing is, none of this makes any sense because let's say this. Let's say that all white people pick up racism from their environment developmentally. They can't help it. So we know you're a racist. Wow. Okay. Well, if we know you're a racist, then what's the remedy? Okay. The remedy is going to be some sort of sensitivity training. Well, but if sensitivity training works, then how do you know I haven't already had experiences that have done this for me? How do you know? Right? Right. So the whole thing is illogical. And frankly, I think it's punitive. I think the real purpose is we would like to lecture you. Yeah. So like that, in answer to your question about have I considered working outside the college system, I've considered it. The real question is how to operationalize it so that I don't strand my family. Because Evergreen provides a very high quality of life. We live well in a beautiful setting, but it doesn't pay well.

live well in a beautiful setting, but it doesn't pay well. So we haven't accumulated the resources where I can just cut the umbilical cord and go take this stuff to a different audience. So I would love to find a different way to do it. Well, isn't there a way to do it in the meanwhile? Like you don't have to leave one to do the other. Well, that's certainly true. And I wouldn't be averse to starting something like that while teaching at Evergreen. I really hope you do, because I think you have some really interesting ideas and you're a very smart guy.

And obviously your heart, your mind is in the right place. And it seems like before all this boiled over with this new president, things were going the way you would enjoy them going. This individualized attention, the freedom to teach anything you want. I mean, it sounds wonderful in the hands of the right person. You seem to be the right person. It's beautiful. Yeah.

I just feel like the whole idea of going to a place and learning, I mean, it sounded like a great idea back when that was how it had to be done, but it doesn't take into account the wonderful internet that we all have. I mean, the ability that you have now with this platform, with the amount of attention that's on you right now to launch something is really, you're never going to have anything like this ever again in

your life. Hopefully. Yeah. From your mouth to God's ear. You know? Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll take that as a piece of advice. This is the moment to launch such a thing. Listen, do it. I'll help you. I'll promote it. I'll tweet it. I'll put it on Instagram. I'll put it on Facebook. I'll let people know. Wow, thank you. Yeah, it's just, I think that's the future. I think the future is people educating anybody, like anybody who wants it. Whether you're here or there, you don't have to be in a specific location. And I think that maybe a lot of this can be overcome if we don't have these groups of people that live in these echo chambers and constantly circulate in these same groups that reinforce these opinions and and and experience all this confirmation bias that makes them believe that this is this is all correct and the the rest of the world is just misinformed and don't understand but clearly by that email I think that's it's a big problem is the staff itself yeah I don't want to

say the staff it's whoever the administration and yeah some faculty they're crazy. They are crazy. Calling you alt-right or saying this is alt-right and that you're racist and misinformation. I mean, that's slander. I mean, it really is. Yeah. Well, it's slander.

It's also, I think it's just worth pointing out, kind of funny. Yeah, I mean, they should have something to back those claims up. Those are just empty claims. They're beyond empty claims. I mean, you know, I'm a Bernie Sanders voter. If I'm alt-right, I mean,

where are they? Yeah, Tucker Carlson tried to say you were a Hillary supporter. I was like, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. What did you just say about me? Man, it's just, have you thought about contacting an attorney? I am getting offers and people are contacting me saying I should. You should.

As long as they keep that guy as president, you should definitely contact an attorney. And if they're going to put shit like that on the internet, because for every person like me who reads it and goes, this is nonsense. There's going to be a possibility of someone reading it and go oh that brett weinstein guy is a racist oh that brett weinstein guy is all right oh he uses misinformation and in in the media and he's actively sought out this attention and he's doing this to damage the relationship of the schools he's doing this out of spite because he was called out for being a racist and we have this professor who says he's a racist and she said it to his Face and he didn't defend himself. I mean all that kind of shit. That's how it boils over. Yep

No, I mean, it's clearly it's clearly justified and they won't listen to anything else. I've tried everything else So maybe that's just simply the answer. I really hope you do something alternative I really do because I think if someone like you who has this unprecedented platform where you have been launched into the public eye because so many people are outraged about this. I know you were on my friend Dave Rubin's show. And, you know, I'm sure there's going to be a thousand other requests after people hear this as well. People don't want this to be the case anymore. And they want to do whatever they can to stop that. And they also want to support people that are brilliant people like yourself that have wonderful ideas that we would like our kids to learn if they do go to college somewhere.

We'd like people to be educated in these unique facets of the world and have a platform where you could teach evolutionary biology unhindered and unshackled by this fucking nonsense that you're dealing with. Garbage. Yeah, well, it's a great idea. And, you know, I don't know. It may be that the university system is so encrusted with this stuff at this point that it can't be freed. That's what Jordan Peterson thinks. Is that right? And I've talked to quite a few other professors that think that as well. Gad Saad, he believes it as well. He believes like there's just a certain

amount of time left in this system where it's just, it's so caked up that maybe the only way to deal with it is to abandon it. Well, then, and then, then we would have to reformulate it, which would be, you know, unlike civilization, the university system could be reformulated. We could start with a fresh sheet of paper. And it's probably very dangerous to not have a university system. You can't not have it. You have to. It's the way we figure out what's true.

Right. And there's got to be a way to save it while cutting out all these cancerous aspects of it. Or start it afresh. You know, we could leave the carcass to the postmodernists and build something that works outside where we don't have to let them in. And then there'll be a whole group of people just talking about what a piece of shit you are

that's locked in some classroom somewhere demonstrating all the different terrible things that you've done to bring horrible things upon the college. It's just, boy, it's such a strange world you're in right now. It is really, it's almost more dreamlike than dreams are. Are you sleeping?

That's a good question. Usually I sleep pretty well. This one, I mean, partly it's just the number of hours trying to field everything means I go to bed late. And then, you know, by the time the sun comes up, the question is how much more stuff is accumulated. So less than I might. I don't, I guess the thing is I'm worried about what's going on. I'm worried about the danger to my family. That gets in the road of sleep.

I know that what I'm doing makes sense, even if my colleagues don't understand that. Um, so I'm not getting enough sleep, that's for sure. But I'm also not ripped apart by doubt. Well, you've done nothing wrong. So you don't have that blanket of guilt. Like, why did I do that? What could I have done differently? Right. You know, you're not, like why did I do that what could I have done differently right you know you're not you're not Kathy Griffin right now no it's so I just I really hope this works out well for you and I'll be paying attention every step of the way and if and my offer is real if you need some help if you decide to put something together and you need some help promoting it I'd be more than happy to

and I'm sure there's been a lot of people listening to this that would love to hear your ideas on things great well thank you so much thanks man thanks for coming in here

alright really appreciate it yeah me too that's it folks we're done for today we'll see you next week bye Thank you.