The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 185. The End of Universities? | Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

Episode Date: August 2, 2021

Yeonmi Park's account of her experience at Columbia University is harrowing - as someone who had just arrived in the West after her escape from North Korea, the idea that she had to censor herself at a prestigious university like Columbia, or any university for that matter - which have historically been bastions of free thought is horrifying. Her experience serves as one example of just how far the Universities have deteriorated. Dr Peterson wanted to put this together because he still feels like it’s possible to save the Universities, but before that can happen, more people need to be aware of just how twisted they’ve become. Feel free to share and reference this video as some evidence and perspectives on the state of Western Universities. 

Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson. This is season 4, episode 39. This episode is a bit different and with a special request from JBP. It's a compilation of guests talking about the state of universities. Yannri Park's account of her experience at Columbia University is harrowing. As someone who had just arrived to the west after her escape from North Korea, the thought that she had to censor herself at a prestigious university like Columbia or any university for that matter, which have historically been bashings of free thought, is horrifying. Her experience serves as one example of just how far the universities have deteriorated. Dad wanted to put this compilation together because he still feels like it's possible to save the universities, but before that can happen,

more people need to be aware of just how twisted they've become. Feel free to share and reference this video as some evidence and people's perspectives on the problem with universities. In my opinion, people should just go apprentice somewhere and start working right away and just skip university. You can learn everything online for free. However, my dad is the intellectual and he still thinks these institutions can be safe. And I hope he's right.

Enjoy the episode. And you came out of North Korea, then you went to university in South Korea, so you got to see that culture as an outsider, and then you came to the United States, and you got to see Columbia University. So what did you conclude about your time in Columbia University? What were your impressions?

What do you have to say to people about what you saw? I know you, oh my God. So that four years from 2016 to 2020, it was a complete madness. I became very pessimistic about the Western world after university because, literally in these humanities classes, even the economics, I was studying economics for two years and later I went to the professor who said to me, me the like emails, oh, this this class, we're going to cover this this, if it triggers you,

you don't have to come to the class or don't even do the reading. I'm a rape survivor. I'm a slave. I go through so many things. And they say, oh, this can trigger the rape, this can trigger this. And then make this every before the class, they say, let's go through what you need to be called your pronouns. And my English is not that good. I sometimes mistechnical him or she, like,

and then they started asking me to say they, and then I don't know how to incorporate my English that pronoun properly. And it made me so nervous to talk in the classroom. And one day I got into fight with my professor, she was saying, you know, the fact that you're letting men hold in door for you is you are giving in to their overpowering you.

And I was like, you know, it's need kindness, it's a distance. See, I would offer people to, it's not like I'm trying to stick it on the part for the new. And she was like, you're so brand-mars from North Korea. Like, and I was scenario, of course, my GPA is going to be effective. And it's like, OK, I got a really shadow. I got a try to do my best to get a good GPA.

So that four years, I learned to do my best to get a good GPA. So that four years, I learned to censor myself all over again. And it became ridiculous. I literally, exactly, I literally risked my life to say what I think is right. And now I'm in a country where I four years of time try out to be clear, safe space, and be sensitive enough. So, and like where am I

like real? And it gave me a lot of chaos. Like, did I become free? Like, was it where am I? Is there any truly free place in this world right now? Well, okay. So you were in this university in Korea and Korean universities are intense. And so how would you contrast the quality of the education that you received and their very Western influence, the South Korean University? So they're a product of the Western University system. So how would you contrast your experience at the South Korean University with Colombia, which is in principle one of the great Western American institutions, educational institutions. So I do think it sounds career is way more technical. They are way more into trying to teach you the scare set,

maybe if you know more giving you actually knowledge. But I think Americans are very obsessed. That was my impression at Columbia. I was really trying to help you how to think. But almost like you would shape how you think. They are very into shaping your minds how you think about something. In South Korean study, the problem was more like, oh, this is the fact,

this is what happened in history. This is what we're gonna do. This is a modern, we're gonna apply to solve this criminal case. Like, you know, this is the fact. This is what happened in history. This is what we're going to do. This is a modern and we're going to apply to solve this criminal case. Like, you know, this is how things work. But lately though, when it comes to sociology, it's been very influenced by the Western,

like the mainstream education. So a lot of anti-Western sentiments was definitely there. I have been somewhat oppositional. I'm not exactly like a Mr. Go Long and get a long guy with this stuff that I don't always have the best reality check on my own behavior. And so I was just saying, well, okay, if I did cause offense, then I feel like it's okay

to apologize and there probably was a better way for me to do this. Some of my comments were leaked or transmitted to other people that weren't in the meetings, people that were in the BIPOC meeting, particularly my... And BIPOC is a black and indigenous people of color. So they were having their separate meeting of faculty and students where they received different content.

And why was it separate? The reason of curiosity. The rationale as I can understand it is so that the groups that have been marginalized won't be exposed to, you know, they'll have their own thing so that they're not exposed to the, I think the incents, it possible incensitivity of the oppressors. It's the best I can understand

the rationale. But it wound up happening anyway, because it would be rude of me to point out that that's somewhat paternalistic. Yeah, that's right. You know, just as an observation. That's a good one. Yeah, I mean, yeah, totally well. I guess that is a characteristic of white supremacy culture, though paternalism. Yeah, so I guess it's quite as long as it's in a good cause, then I guess it's forgivable. Yeah, well, I found it so interesting,

because the day after the meeting, there was an email that was released that said healing resources. You know, healing resources that will help you come to terms with what happened. And the first healing resource on the list was a CNN interview with a poet named Damon Young. And Damon Young, you know, in this interview said things like, you know, we need to get rid of all of capitalism.

We will have to do a carpet bombing, not a carpet cleansing of society. And it was incredibly radical statements that I would imagine would be frightening to many people. And that was listed as a healing resource as well as things like. Well, as long as the carpet bombing only targets the malevolent people. Well, yeah, I guess. And then things, there was the Robin D'Ang article that said, you know, what white people need to be made or kept

uncomfortable. How can we become more uncomfortable? Also, you know, really kind of I would just say racist characterizations of white people in these links. Things like, you know, all white people have never had to be guests in this country. And like the Irish, for example. Yeah. Very, very white to begin with though, so. Yeah, yeah. And so I found this very ironic. The idea that, especially by the way, postmodernism and the deconstruction, all those attendant pseudo philosophies, you read Milton to find out if he mistreated his daughters, not this miracle that we call Paradise Lost or Samson Agonisties. You read Homer to find out, you know,

if he's a blood worshipper, this whole game of taking the great documents of western civilization as a hunting ground for moral, uh, woke offense. Well, first of all, it's kind of strobically stupid. If you have the 40th Symphony of Mozart or the Beethoven's 50th, the only reason you're playing and this is to find out if he'd or Mozart or Beethoven had a sexist attitude, you're out of your mind. If you'd are most of their Beethoven, Hadis, X's, that would be all right, your mind. Self-stop this. And the idea that one of the great proportions of a certain segment of Western society is simple envy and resentment of its success, even as those who are envious and resentful are basically being fed and kept by it. They go into these been reading some of these whiteness things, the new rules?

And it's like the one that the federal government are using to train yourself with servants, you mean? Yes, and the epidemic of anti-racism, which is a kind of racism, diversity, which is monosyllabic. If you don't have our ideas, you don't have any or you're a racist or you're this or you're that, I don't have any, or you're a racist, or you're this, or you're that. I don't know how a free people have succumb so easily and so lethargicly to a kind of,

it's not physical, but it's a metaphysical restraint. And the cowardice about some of these, but these universities that apologize for some professor, New York Times guy, 49 years columnist and in an explanatory conversation, using that den, where editors said nothing wrong with him, but then he fired him. The universities, damn them, were the place that this other pandemic began. And while we're living through COVID, we should also understand that the intellectual pandemic, this goes to our heart and core.

We are displacing ourselves by allowing Charlotteson's to wreck the intellectual standards of the Western world. What I've read is that you made some claim that Canada wasn't systemically racist. That wasn't the right way of looking at the country. And so, and to me, that means now, is that the case now that at university, if I stand up and say that I don't believe that the lens of systemic racism is the proper way to analyze

Canada, especially compared to other countries, that now I'm so reprehensible that I deserve to be suspended. If a couple of people object, is that the situation that we're looking at? Or am I being too hard on the university? I have to admit, I may be wrong, but there may have been a flavor for that during that month. So like, my story was sort of a scapegoat

for something that is much bigger than a deer, a simple deer, a silly deer, sometimes we can, we're not allowed to write serious things or silly things or be wrong or change our mind. In your situation is also particularly peculiar, I might say, because you don't seem to be the right sort of target for this sort of targeting, because you're using the terminology

that I don't appreciate in the least. I mean, you're female, you're an immigrant, you're at least in principle, part of the communities that the people who push this sort of nonsense are hypothetically trying to protect. So why is it because you are in one of these victimized categories? Absolutely.

And you dared to say something that wasn't in accordance with the necessary moral ideology that you've been targeted? Maybe they wanted, we should need the above of the bamboo blog. You see that that deer does not want to fit in any group and put on a box. So I'm supposed to be racialized, be a poor me. I don't have food. I don't like to be victimized personally in my life,

even now with what is happening to me, I think I'm a dignified person. So in that sense, I like the term invisible minority, visible minority, you know, the terms that used to be used in Quebec my time when I immigrated, I see myself more in them, and then like, like, put us divided into your, this group, that group, and then, you know, sector, you know,

or not like, can I? Right, so you're supposed to be, first of all, your female, so hypothetically, you're oppressed because you're female, even though the evidence for suppression of females in academia is very, very, it's actually, females dominate over males in terms of numerical proportion in most disciplines. It's not the case in

the STEM fields, but everywhere else, it's the case, not only, especially in terms of graduates produced. It might not be the case at the highest levels of distinction in the academic hierarchy, although that's changing pretty rapidly. So you should actually fit into at least two oppressed categories, female and immigrant, right? And so the rule here is that if you're in both of those categories victimized by the intersection between those two categories, that there's a particular political view, you better have or else.

And or else in your case is there else you get suspended because a few people complain. That's what the hell is going on with the administration. I don't understand what they're doing. I really don't understand. I can't understand why they didn't have the courtesy. Actually, I can understand why they didn't have the courtesy to call you because the sad truth is is that as soon as a few people complain, everyone who isn't directly involved runs scared and looks for someone to sacrifice. Hey guys, Mikiya financing the podcast. They say you can't have it all. I disagree. With Blinkist, you can have all the key ideas and takeaways from the world's top non-fiction bestsellers in literally 15 minutes. It's pretty crazy.

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save $45 off matter. No, but let me tell you something. What happened at Mount Addison University and is happening elsewhere, but particularly here, is a symptom of what is happening in our country or maybe beyond actually. So I take it like that. It's a symptom that we do have a serious problem as we said, like tenured professors, not being able to express ideas, debate ideas, challenge students with ideas,

we do have a big problem. You're a citizen of a free country. You have right to express yourself anyway that you see fit. Second of all, you're a tenured professor and your thoughts actually protected to a fair degree and it's protected broadly so that you can think broadly. And the fact that this has happened despite your tenure,

well, I guess part of the question that people who are watching might be asking is, why the hell should they care about this? And the reason I believe that people should care about this, first of all, is that what happens in the universities ends up happening everywhere else very, very rapidly. And if it can happen to someone like you, it seems to me that it can happen to anyone at any time

in any place. And this unbelievable cowardice that our institutions show in the face of unwarranted allegations, as long as they're the right flavor, is something that should be tremendously worrisome to everyone. We haven't got to the bad stuff yet, but it started to become apparent to me. I sort of had the realization that this was really going the wrong direction when we had a professional development meeting and they passed out the, I'm sure you've seen it, the pyramid of racism,

also known as the Pyramid of white supremacy. And it had a schema, it was a schema arranged in the form of a pyramid with genocide at the top of the pyramid, and then various layers that had categorical names like overt racism, covert racism, minimization in difference, and then various, there must have been about 50 or 60 things sprinkled on the pyramid at various levels. And some of the things on the pyramid, I actually thought were, in many cases, virtues. So things like being a political or things like, there are two sides to every story.

Things that were contradictory, like, you know, not believing POC, but also thinking, well, my black friend said dot, dot, dot. So the idea that these two things were next to each other seemed interesting to me. Also things that were just you know political party platforms, things like... Minimization. Along along to the human race. Right. That was a big one. Post-racial society. Why can't we all just get along? Prioritizing intentions over impact. That's a nice one. Yeah. Yes, we could talk about that for about three weeks.

That one. Yeah. Not believing experiences of people of color. Two sides to every story. Right. Yeah, well, it's very interesting when you look very carefully at the words that are, you lumped in with the other words, let's say, guilt by association.

Okay. So you had this pyramid of white supremacy. Yeah, and I was asked, you know, what do you, how do you respond to this? What do you think about this? And I just, I said, I think this is extremely destructive and horrible schema to put in front of a child, and I will never do it. And then what's the problem with that exactly? So the kid stick with the list, why is that bothering you? Well, it's because it means that, you know, events, the multiplicity of possible reasons for things that are different depending on the actual incident,

of possible reasons for things that are different depending on the actual incident, get reduced to this script of explanations. And only those explanations fit the paradigm, and only those explanations will be considered. And that means that you're not making sense of the world for yourself. You're following a script. You may know the name. She is a she escaped from North Korea. Yes, and she wrote a book called in order to live which is an amazing book and The book ends in 2015, but after 2015 she Enrolled in Columbia University which was a dream of hers and a dream of her father that she'd be an educated person

And she studied humanities at Columbia. And I asked her what that was like. And she said that it was a complete waste of time and money. And that she felt that she was completely unable to utter an opinion that was genuine the whole time she was there. And it shocked me, you know. And so I asked her very specifically. I said, come on, come on.

You're not gonna tell me that the entire time asked her very specifically, I said, come on, come on, you're not going to tell me that the entire time you spent in Columbia, you didn't have at least one professor or two professors who stood out who really taught you. She had told me during the interview that she had encountered George Orwell's work when she was in South Korea, particularly animal farm. And that was partly what influenced her to start speaking and writing. And so, and she had read a lot when she was educating herself in South Korea prior to going to South Korean University and then to Columbia.

So it's not like she was unfamiliar with the potential impact of, let's say, the classics on her life, on her philosophy. But when I pressed her, the best she could do was to identify a single biology class which dealt with evolution, which was a complete mystery to her given her background, because history sort of started when her dynastic totalitarians were born. But she said even that took a wicked turn to the politically correct direction by the time she was done. Universities now at the humanities level, from everything I read, are disgrace. The treason of the clerks, it is, it is, they are so suffocated by these arch and empty philosophies that have no logic and are punitive. I would now, I'm a person that was so taken by the university,

I almost worshiped it. And now I tell people that have younger people, younger children, 2021, 22, don't go to the NAM University, unless you're taking science, go to a trades college, or just go out on your own. It's the saddest thing that has happened in the Western world

that we've allowed second-rate minds, political agents, propagandization as instruction. We have decimated the soul of the university. I mean, look what animal farm did for you. That's what reading great books does for people. You know, it illuminates their soul. It's not optional. And I'm so appalled that that was your experience at Columbia.

It's so awful that you went through all that and managed to get to this great university. And, you know, in that, and that you had to shut yourself down and that your basic conclusion was that it was a waste of time. Now, did you have courses where that wasn't the case? Did you have courses that were worth it? I mean, so one class I remember in my senior year, it was called the Lesson Civilization, the Music Art. One of the core that Columbia had is a Western art. And the... Has still. Not for long. But then I was excited to learn about, I think, this is to the West,

America is in the West, right? It'll be funny if you study Eastern music at the end of the in the core. And professors like who has a problem with calling the Western civilization like art? And the everything, all of the all living their hands because they were saying there were so many professors like who has a problem with calling the Western civilization like art and everything all of the old lives in their hands because they were saying there were so many artists were greater than better than most art, we silence them, erase them all and that's why we have now end up studying these bigots, you know, who are racist. And I'm like, and then they were like looking at me, why are not bring your hands up, somebody who doesn't have the problem

with talking about versatility. So that's like I was like, what do I even have to do this to graduate? And that was of course next three to do that course to graduate. So every class had an element of being a politically correct and shaping you how you think. And I learned how to censor myself so well after Colombia and then I was freaked out on this, like, what am I doing? This is not what I escaped, you know, it just... And I...

So, I'm so ashamed of that. That's so awful. I can't believe it. You know, it's no picnic to watch these great institutions hang themselves. Yeah. I literally felt like it's a suicide of civilization. Like we are killing ourselves here. And that's why I was like, what? I mean, that's what scares me that when I was so grateful to going to South Korea, I was also the most of North Korea was at least a place that was left to be free. And all these people obsessed

fighting for, you know, climate change, animals rights, gender equality, transgender, whatever, all these things people fighting for. Wonderful. But then imagine when nobody's freeing this word, who's gonna fight for us. And that's like what terror for me is like, imagine all of us became enslaved, like North Koreans, all of us did in that system. There's no one can stand up for any of us. And I guess because I always knew that it was guaranteed, like when I got camping with my friends,

my friends somehow always a confidence that they're gonna find food even though when they're going to the remote area. Now me I always hacking is like energy bars blah blah always reading me because I know like you can end up not having ever other food so maybe this is a mentality that in the West freedom was always there. Some people think it's going to be mehacros, they're going to be always there. And for me it's like, no, it can be not there. That's why we were supposed to be educating young people.

We were supposed to be teaching them that, no, it's not always there. It's fragile and you better take care of it because the default condition is authoritarian starvation. And if that isn't happening, it's a bloody miracle. Well, I've seen this over and over in the universities too. You know, it was often the case that it was my psychology classes where the students learned about what happened in Stalinist Soviet Union and Maoist China.

They hadn't been taught at all. They hadn't been taught that tens of millions of people died in China. They hadn't been taught at all. They hadn't been taught that tens of millions of people died in China. They hadn't been taught about what happened in North Korea. They hadn't been taught about what happened in Russia. It was like that never existed, even though the Cold War was all about that. And it's appalling.

And I think you see exactly the same thing. While you're pointing out exactly the same thing. I've been thinking about the question of the meaning of life and the first objection, I suppose I rose that arose in my mind, was an objection to the question itself because there might not be a meaning in life. There are places where people derive meaning and and you can list them and it's useful practically if people are thinking about how to organize their life, if they're unhappy and they want to know how things might be better. My observation and obviously not only mine is that people generally need to have a career or a job to keep the wolf from the door, but also to engage them productively with others, which is a primary source of meaning for conscientious

people and for creative people alike. You need to pursue your education to flesh out your intellectual capacity. You have to take care of your health, physical, and mental. You need an intimate relationship. You need a family. You need friends, you need intelligent use of your leisure time. You have to regulate your susceptibility to the temptations that might lead you astray, drugs and alcohol, and perhaps pornography and those sorts of things. But then there is a core to all that around which these more practical endeavors arrange themselves, and that's something like attention to the spiritual or the philosophical domain or the religious domain. I think you can,

in some sense, put all those together. And that might be, well, it might be that the attempt to answer explicitly or at least to address the question of, well, what is all of that practical life in service of? And you said, for example, that when you were working with the inner city kids in Halifax, you were trying to help them realize that they were meant for the higher things and vice versa. And someone might ask, well, what's the, why bother with that when you can just bother

with the skills? And it seems to me that the answer is something like, well, we all have to make decisions about how we're going to behave in life and how we're going to act ethically. And if you help people understand their relationship to what's ultimately noble, then you can help them fortify their resolution to do good in the world instead of to do harm. It seems to me to be, I mean, I think we're always deciding with every decision that we make, whether we're going to do good or do harm by action or by inaction, and whether we should do good or harm or nothing at all, I think depends to some degree on who we think we are

and what we're capable of. And it seems to me that the humanities, when they're properly taught, are the study of who we could be, each of us as individuals. And we need to know that because otherwise we'll be much less than we are. And that's not a trivial problem.

It's a cataclysmic problem. I did a talk at Harvard four years ago, and I pointed out two things to the students in the audience. One was that a tremendous amount of civilization and effort had gone into producing the institution that they were now part of, and that everyone who was part of that institution was hoping that they would come there and learn everything they possibly could that was relevant and important and that they would be the best possible

people they could be and they would go out in the world and do as much good as they possibly could. That was the essential mission of the enterprise. And that was really the case. And also that learning to write in particular was going to make them more powerful than they could imagine. And a number of students came up to me afterwards and said, I really wish someone would have said that to us when we first came here. If you were going to recommend to a young person what they should study to prepare to be a researcher,

a psychological researcher, a clinical psychological researcher of your type, what should they do at the bachelor's level, let's say? What's the right preparation? And then let's walk through the process, bachelor, master's, PhD, postdoc, because people don't know that. And so what do you look for in a student

at the, if you're looking for a master's level student, what should have they done in their bachelor's degree? I guess they have to be passionate and at the same time ready to work very hard to clarify how you go about understanding what you want to understand. So you need both of those. You need the interest and the discipline.

I guess it's like that in every discipline, even a hockey player or a football player. It is if you want to be successful. Yeah. You need to be interested because that's to want to. And at the same time, you have to take the time and like investing yourself.

So is it fair to say that you taught yourself to read and you got your GED equivalent? You did that in one year. And so you were ready to go to university at the age of seven. How in the world did you do that? How much time were you spending everyday studying? I didn't so, that was a funny story. I ended up in the ER. And then like they were saying you were managed because I didn't have, that was a funny story. I ended up in the ER.

And then, like, they were saying, you were managed, because I didn't have time to eat. I forgot to eat. So, even when I was sleeping, I would have turned on the, like, a TED Talks or NPR so I can, like, listen, my brain still kept working. And even when I was sleeping, I would put the books behind my pillow so the, like, knowledge would have gone into me. I was obsessed. I was crazy. You were obsessed with, yeah, I was a completely obsessed with learning. So you're completely obsessed with studying to the point where you're not even eating.

And, and we should also just stress here, it is definitely the case that the education process is unbelievably competitive in South Korea, as you've already pointed out, far and above what people in young people in North America can imagine or in Europe for that matter. And so you were facing very, very heavy competition. But you got obsessed to the point where you weren't even eating. That's amazing because I would have thought that you would be more motivated to eat after what you did virtually, but you were hungrier for knowledge than for food, despite and you had been starved of both. Exactly. I was working at this, I don't know, you know, Sunday,

or Dai, so it's like a one dollar store in South Korea, the Japanese branch. So I was working there as a part-time job, and I was minor. So my mom had to give the not like authorization that she would let me work. And then I was working as a wedding horse, like serving food as a waitress. So I was working and then my mom was also doing the dishes and helping me.

And I was living in this room since all, because I was studying where under one, I didn't even have a window. And I still remember those times, I was so happy because I had a goal. Like, I was, you know, like this tiny room where you can stretch your feet like barely. I'm like five terms tiny in that room.

I was like living there. All I had was books with me and dream. Yeah, well, a room full of books isn't small. Exactly, it was large, yeah. Right, absolutely, absolutely. So you got your GED and then you applied to university for in a competitive program and there was still trouble with

you getting in but you managed it. How did you manage it and how did you decide what you were going to do? I was going to study criminal justice. It was so so much injustice and even in South Korea so so much of it, I really wanted to understand how that worked. You know, how, how much this thing is called justice. So I'm grateful they gave me opportunity to study that program. And but now it's such a, I kind of know how I was going through all of that.

But somehow back then I had a drive that I never even knew I had. So but your experience at university, go into that a little bit more detail. Well I'm glad you you elaborated that as you did and I suppose, not as opposed I know, I brought up that university experience and to hope that when we do it now, down the road in this conversation, I think outside of family, that is always principal and will never be superseded. Outside of family, if there's anything that contributed to the way that I look at things and have given me lasting benefit, okay, you may be familiar with Samuel Johnson's remark about literature, it applies to all the arts, that it exists better to help

us in your life or to enjoy it. It fixes the mind. And when you have a real university, you get these things. I, the professor, I mentioned, for example, when he found a book that was one of Arthur Kessler's, I went out there to name it. He actually walked my house on a Saturday after. Not just a kid, and in all of them, but he came to the little studio, sorry, the student house, and wanted me to have this book for a week so I could read. I mean, this kind of almost genuine reflection to the emergent or emerging mind of a young person is

something that stays forever. So that long-winded again, the university experience was the strongest because the universities then had values. They worshiped, and that's a good word not to be backed off from. They worshiped the best creations, the best fashions, the best styles of thought, the best scientific finesse, and they made you, not made you, they induced you to be grateful, to be grateful for what other first-rate minds have contributed to the temper of the entire human race. My undergraduate degree, I encountered people who were reading these texts and saying things about them that enabled me to understand the things that I had perhaps intuited when I was younger in a more self-conscious,

rationally universal frame, which is, of course, a philosophy is. Ideas are the whole, are everything, you know, and the, and there should be, you should be talking about ideas based on what make ideas sound or unsound, not not the person who's saying them. What's your vision for Ralston College architecturally speaking? that our analysis and the need for founding new institutions is directly related to the things we've just been speaking about, the cultural, spiritual crisis, the upstream influence of the university over everything else, the fact that it is the epicenter of, at very best, unhelpful, at worst, downright toxic forms of ideology that spread through anything and everything that is forms of ideology that spread through anything and everything that is catastrophically be set with high costs, low value, and so on and so forth. But our analysis is simply that there is huge demand in young people for alternatives, people who are seeking

alternatives to the indoctrination and activism and fraudulent low value of the academy. I mean, I think your own work has shown this about as clearly as anything else historically ever has, that it's a mistake to concede the, you know, your new book you write about the need for creative dynamism in relation to our institutions. And it seems to me we're in a moment, not only in which that is urgently necessary, but also eminently possible, if we have only the courage to do it. So what I would say is a few things.

The first is that Rolson College has as really four fundamental commitments. First, to seek the truth with courage, second, to apprehend beauty in all of its forms, third, to the freedom of speech and thought that are the conditions of those pursuits. And finally, to the friendship or even fellowship that is the context for all of these pursuits.

And what's become clear to us, Jordan, over the years is, it's been a long runway. It's not easy getting a college going. Anyone who thinks that you need to go off and fight in a war in order to undertake something really hard of value. Can call me up and we'll have a talk about other things, other projects that may be very, very difficult to bring into the world, but necessary and beautiful. What's become clear to us in these years of development, which we're sort of at the end of as we now

are launching our first programs and first degree, is that Rolson College has a double vocation, both on the one hand to be a reinvention of the academy, a place for in-person degrees, a new model for the university that we hope be pretty radically disruptive, not just because we're going to change everything, but we hope that it will lead to many other people doing new

and different and more beautiful and more adequate and perhaps cheaper and faster, but above all, just more important and higher value, things in the space of higher education. So on the one hand, to be a reinvention of the academy, a reinvention and a revival of the academy. But and on that side, we've received our degree granting powers from the state of Georgia.

We expect to launch our first degree, this autumn. In what? In what? This first degree will be a master's in the humanities. So it will be a pretty intensive boot camp in thinking about the big ideas, tracing them in their development through history, which we think is important both as a revival

of those forms of life and thought and culture, but also because we think they are the, as it were, the key to opening up the depths of the self for the students themselves. You know, it's not that every human, if I can't play the piano, it's not that every, you talk about resentment earlier, you know, it's not that every human being should have to play the piano like Martha Arbery or Glenn Gould from your, your current town of Toronto.

99.99% of human individuals couldn't play the piano that way. But because Glenn Gould could indeed, we can all hear the music. And in some level, I think what the high end of the academy is about is about playing the music so we can all hear it. And so on the one hand, it's the reinvention of the academy in a degree form. But on the other hand, the second side of this double vocation is to be a kind of platform of humanistic inquiry for anyone, anywhere, who wishes to engage with the riches of the humanistic tradition,

who wishes to seek the truth with courage, who wishes to ask the fundamental human questions, that every human being must face about truth and beauty and forgiveness and love and suffering. To me, the universities are a key element in the conversation across the generations about just exactly what a human being is. And that's something that it's not some abstract philosophical. It's not merely some abstract philosophical concern. It's the central issue that determines how you make all the decisions in your life. issue that determines how you make all the decisions in your life.