The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Dorian Abbot | The War on Science Interviews | Day 21

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

To celebrate the release on July 29th of The War on Science, we have recorded 20 podcast interviews with authors from the book. Starting on July 22nd, with Richard Dawkins, we will be releasing one interview per day. Interviewees in order, will be:Richard Dawkins July 23rdNiall Ferguson July 24thNicholas Christakis July 25thMaarten Boudry July 26thAbigail Thompson July 27thJohn Armstrong July 28thSally Satel – July 30Elizabeth Weiss – July 31Solveig Gold and Joshua Katz – August 1Frances Widdowson – August 2Carole Hooven – August 3Janice Fiamengo – August 4Geoff Horsman – August 5Alessandro Strumia – August 6Roger Cohen and Amy Wax – August 7Peter Boghossian – August 8Lauren Schwartz and Arthur Rousseau – August 9Alex Byrne and Moti Gorin – August 10Judith Suissa and Alice Sullivan – August 11Karleen Gribble – August 12Dorian Abbot – August 13The topics these authors discuss range over ideas including the ideological corruption of science, historical examples of the demise of academia, free speech in academia, social justice activism replacing scholarship in many disciplines, disruptions of science from mathematics to medicine, cancel culture, the harm caused by DEI bureaucracies at universities, distortions of biology, disingenous and dangerous distortions of the distinctions between gender and sex in medicine, and false premises impacting on gender affirming care for minors, to, finally, a set of principles universities should adopt to recover from the current internal culture war. The dialogues are blunt, and provocative, and point out the negative effects that the current war on science going on within universities is having on the progress of science and scholarship in the west. We are hoping that the essays penned by this remarkable group of scholars will help provoke discussion both within universities and the public at large about how to restore trust, excellence, merit, and most important sound science, free speech and free inquiry on university campuses. Many academics have buried their heads in the sand hoping this nonsense will go away. It hasn’t and we now need to become more vocal, and unified in combatting this modern attack on science and scholarship. The book was completed before the new external war on science being waged by the Trump administration began. Fighting this new effort to dismantle the scientific infrastructure of the country is important, and we don’t want to minimized that threat. But even if the new attacks can be successfully combatted in Congress, the Courts, and the ballot box, the longstanding internal issues we describe in the new book, and in the interviews we are releasing, will still need to be addressed to restore the rightful place of science and scholarship in the west. I am hoping that you will find the interviews enlightening and encourage you to look at the new book when it is released, and help become part of the effort to restore sound science and scholarship in academia. With no further ado, The War on Science interviews…As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

Hi, and welcome to the Origins Podcast. I'm your host Lawrence Krause. As many of you know, my new book, The War on Science, is appearing July 29th of this year in the United States and Canada. And to celebrate that, we've interviewed many of the authors of the 39 authors who have contributed to this volume, and we have 20 separate podcast interviews

that will be airing over the next 20 days, starting July 22nd, before and after the last. the book first appears with many of the authors in the book on a host of different subjects. The authors we will have interviews with in order of appearance over the next 20 days are Richard Dawkins, Neil Ferguson, Nicholas Christakis, Martin Boudre, Abigail Thompson, John Armstrong, Sally Sattel, Solveig Gold, and Joshua Katz, Francis Woodison, Carol Hoven, Janice Fiamengo, Jeff Horsman, Alessandro Strumia, Roger Cohen and Amy Wax, Peter Bogosian, Lauren Schwartz and Arthur Rousseau, Alex

Byrne and Modi Gorin, Judith Sisa, and Alice Sullivan, Carleen Grible, and finally Dorian Abbott. The topics that will be discussed will range over the need for free speech and open inquiry and science and the need to preserve scientific integrity stressed by our first podcast interviewer Richard Dawkins. and will once again go over historical examples of how academia has been hijacked by ideology in the past and the negative consequences that have come from that to issues of how specific disciplines, including mathematics, have been distorted,

and how certain departments at universities now specifically claim that they are social activists and a degree in their field is a degree in either critical social justice or social activism, not a degree in a specific area of scholarship, how ideology is permeated universities. We'll proceed also to discuss issues in medicine. Sally Satel will talk about how social justice has hijacked medicine. And also, when it comes to issues of gender affirming care, we have a variety of authors who are going to speak about the issues there and how too often gender affirming care claims are made.

that are not based on empirical evidence. In fact, falsely discuss the literature in ways that are harmful to young people. We will talk to several people who, for one reason, another, have been canceled for saying things. Francis Whittleson at Mount Royal University in Canada, and Carol Hoeven from Harvard, who eventually had to leave Harvard after saying on television that sex is binary in biology will be talking to people who've looking at, at the impact of diversity, equity, and inclusion in academia, and how it's restricting free inquiry, and also restricting, in many ways, scientific merit at those universities. And finally,

Dorian Abbott, the last contributor to our series, will be talking about three principles he believes are essential to separate science and politics and keep academia free from ideology and more for open questioning and progress and to make sure that science is based on empirical evidence and where we go where the evidence is, whether it's convenient or not, whether it's politically correct or not, and we're willing to debate all ideas that nothing is sacred, a central feature of what science should be about

and what in some sense this podcast is about. So I hope you really enjoy the next 20 days and we've enjoyed bringing it to you. So with no further ado, The War on Science, the interviews. Well, Dorian Abbott, thank you for coming on again to the podcast and contributing to this book, The War on Science, and you're an old hand at this since you've been on before.

But it's great. What I want to do is talk about your contribution to the book. But even though we've had a podcast once before and talked about your deep background, I want to talk about the background that led you to the kind of well, to not just this article, but to the, I was going to say activism, but it's not the right word, but to contributions to the public intellectual discussion of the need for free speech and free inquiry. And you actually cover it in your article called Science and Politics, three

principles, free fables. So I want to start there. You say, I started my journey in this area simply by self-censoring. For no less than five years, I stayed away from campus, whenever possible and avoided departmental gatherings. And you gave some context of this. Well, why don't you say why you did that and elaborate on that? Well, I have trouble keeping my big mouth shut. And so I knew that if I knew I was going to say something, you'd get in trouble if I hung out at department gatherings.

That's the main issue. But also it's just, it's like you couldn't talk about anything. anything, you know, everything was off limits. And I, I just couldn't keep track of what I was allowed to say and what I wasn't allowed to say. And I was like, just screw this. This isn't very fun. I don't want to be around here. Okay.

No, I understand. But did now, you talk about, I don't know if you, at that time, maybe you weren't as aware. But, you know, there's good reason to be concerned. And you point out that fire, which we've talked about in the various contexts here already, which is a foundation that's trying to ensure for free speech and free inquiry and higher education has documented 471 attempts to get professors fired or punished for their speech over six years.

And the vast majority of these result in official sanctions. And 70% of U.S. centrist and conservative faculty report a hostile climate. and so and students also 80% of whom self-center were you aware when you I mean I understand the gut reaction if you want to speak to understanding you're going to get in trouble but did you know any of this before at the time or did no that's stuff you come to know since yeah and also those statistics are a few years out of date now that you know there's a lot more incidents that have happened there's a lot more and by the way one thing it's not in here but I know from fire is that um this is already. 471 is a factor of 10 times almost, I think, I think at least 10 times more than the number of professors that were sanctioned or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, statute gave. But no, I think I'm a little bit slow on the uptake and I didn't realize, you know, it took me a long time to realize there was sort of a big movement going on that

was why I was starting to feel uncomfortable and not wanting to talk around the department. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think that's one of, that's one, I think frankly, that's one of the purposes of this book besides the learning the public is, is a lot of, most agamics want to keep their head down and just do their work. And that's fine. But for a lot of them, I think they're surprised that this actually occurs. They think it might be apocryphal these stories of what happened. And I think a lot of fact, even in the current climate, probably less than used to be, are surprised by, and they, by what's going on or what has been going on and figuring that just staying, staying silent and not saying the wrong things is the best is the best approach.

Yeah, I mean, so that's why I included that paragraph. It was because of talking to people and they challenged me. So I said, well, just collect the statistics and show kind of the way you would write a science paper. Well, here's the motivation. But I have to say, I don't object to the physics professor who just wants to get his grant money to make his laser. I wish we had more faculty like that and not the crazy faculty who's who've created this whole problem. That's interesting. Yeah, well, okay.

well, let's talk about it now. I hadn't planned to, but yes and no. I think ultimately, if we, and we'll talk about, well, this article is about what we could do to try and change the situation. But ultimately, I think unless that kind of professor is willing ultimately to speak out until we get the vast majority, let's face it, the vast, I still think, at least in the sciences, the vast majority of faculty have not bought into this. They just want to go do their work. But unless we get some significant fraction of them, out, I don't know whether internally at least will be able to change the culture. Do you disagree? I think your qualifier internally at least is essential for that conclusion.

Yeah. Okay. Well, look, at the beginning of the article, you point, science is a creative endeavor that requires the free and open space exchange of ideas to thrive. And then basically, the article, of course, is just, is beautifully written, but it, it discusses three fables that are stereotypes of different things that may, that are going on in the real world. But the fundamental principles that they ultimately address that need to be, that you would argue would need to be central to universities are, and I'll read them. One, all scientists need to be able to say and argue what they want, even if offends somebody. Two, universities and academic societies need to maintain strict neutrality on all social and political issues. And three, hiring needs to be done on the basis of scientific merit alone. And I was, and you refer, of course, to the various principles.

I know from discussions in University of Chicago, the Calvin Report is very important. And one of your quotes from the Calvin Report is that the mission of the university is a discovery improvement and dissemination of knowledge. And that resonated because, as you know, because you've looked at the book, at the very beginning of the book, one of the quotes that I begin the book with is from actually Lawrence Summers,

who was removed as president of Harvard for saying something that was in politic, said the universities should realize that their mission is not moral education. And I think that, unfortunately, a lot of people think the mission of the university is moral education, rather than than discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge.

Yeah. I mean, you know, you can have a whole debate about that. We're not even in that territory. We have a large fraction of the faculty who would deny that, you know, knowledge in any sort of a pure form or truth even exists. And then it can be pursued. So that's whole, you know, separate from, like, you know, details, like which types of knowledge should you be pursuing and whether it's, you know, there should be any emphasis on moral things and whatever. Well, okay.

Right. You're absolutely right. The purpose of those fables I just wanted to mention was I think a lot of people see something crazy happy at a university and they're like, how did this happen? So I wanted to try to illustrate the incentives and motivations of the players involved that get you to a cancellation or to a crazy hiring policy where you're not considering white or Asian men, which, you know, maybe that's stop. No, but that was happening for a long time.

Yeah, no, it's not. And I think, I mean, you know, the obviously, these are extreme, these are stereotypes. But it's, but it's surprising how, in fact, in one we'll talk about, the actual verbiage comes from, comes from real statements by people. And, you know, in the process of editing the book, and I know in some of the dialogues we're having now, it's surprising to me, some of the statements that are still being made by certain departments and certain universities who, who argue that not only just, you know, who argue that that social justice is that is the chief goal of the department and moreover that that knowledge itself is, is something that is a staple of a male patriarchy. Yeah. And I think it's self-serving to a certain extent because those tend to be people who if, if that were the chief goal of the university, they wouldn't be

getting jobs. Yeah, yeah, that's right. They can't compete if it's if it's about, you know, rigorously applying the scientific method or thinking rationally. Yep, yep, exactly. Well, let's go to the first fable, which is AIT, the awesome institute of technology. I assume there is a university that has a somewhat similar name, which cancel a lecture by you. I don't know if that's the reason this appears as the first fable. Maybe it's a chance to push back. But it involves two faculty, a doctor centrist.

one faculty and one student, a doctor centrist and Mr. Roke. And Dr. Centrist is a biologist who's coming close to the curing cancer, right? Is that the case? He's been working for 30 years on curing cancer. Yeah. But he's a conservative.

And you point out... He's a centrist. He's a centrist. He's a centrist. That's why he's called Dr. Centrist, of course. But he nevertheless clings to his guns at his Bible. Yeah. And he also is...

pro-life. And those two things trigger Mr. Woke. So you want to you want to elaborate on this? Yeah. And he also voted for Trump. That's. Oh, yeah. That's right. And he says he voted for Trump, which is certainly a mistake to say. Just be fair. I don't think you're, I think you've disrespected the pronouns. It's Mr. Woke, he they. Oh, that's all right. Mr. Woke, he, they. Sorry. Yeah. And so, I mean, the basic idea of that was was sort of, I mean, okay, so what happens is Mr. Woke launches a campaign and sort of intimidates all the other students into signing a letter of denunciation. So these became very popular in the, in the summer of racial reckoning or whatever it's referring to as of 2020, these denunciations.

I mean, they've been used before and after. And you'll see, you know, hundreds of students sign them. And my feeling is that a lot of them are very intimidated because the people organizing them sort of say, you know, in not too uncertain terms, if you're next, if you don't sign this. We're coming after you. And then it gets to the president. And, and that's the real. I mean, like, there's always going to be whack job, you know, students, whatever. But the person at the top needs to, you know, say, like, come on, this is a serious school. We're, we're doing our research.

and we're not going on crazy witch hunts, so go put your stuff out on Twitter and we don't care. And that would just be the end of all this. They keep doing it because it works. And that's right, because it works. And I want to get to the president because I agree with you completely that the real villains in this case and unfortunately in the real world case are high-level administrators who cave in.

And you point out in this particular case, he wonders whether the president has this issue. Should he defend the fundamental purpose of the university or risk a social media campaign against him, against the president and the university by Mr. Woke? And he ultimately decides, as many university presidents have done, that it's safer for him to just throw someone under the bus, in this case, Dr. Centress, so he gets fired. and one of the unfortunate byproducts, as you point out, is that he never gets to have a cure for cancer. Before we actually get to the real villain, as you point out as the president, in this fable, yes, that's one of the unfortunate byproducts,

is that this really good scientist isn't able to proceed to science. But I think I want to go through that even a little more. People don't realize there's more implications than just that. Dr. Centress had 40 people in his lab, who now are, some of whom may, you know, the cure for the next disease or win the next snowball price, we're now finding themselves no lab, no ability to get a job because they can't have someone to write a recommendation letter.

Graduate students who come to work with Dr. Centress, so there's all these ancillary, these collateral damage that I think people never realize how many people are hurt by removing or canceling a single productive individual. But he only has, Dr. Centress only had 40 people in his lab because he set up an exploitative patriarchical hierarchical system. And all those people were freed from that exploitation by this. Exactly.

Now they're free to work at Starbucks or whatever they want to do. And the other thing you forgot to mention is that Mr. Woke, they, them, believe. that cancer is actually caused by systemic racism. And so he's not, he, they, is not concerned, or he, they is not concerned about the fact that this so-called scientific cure for cancer isn't going to be found. And, of course, and what you neglected to mention just now is that Dr. Woke, or Mr. Woke, he, they Roke, stresses that Dr. Centress wasn't even canceled. He was just held accountable.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it seems perfectly just justice being served. But you point out that the real villain is Dr. Craven. And he doesn't, you know, as he say, he doesn't have to turn it to Churchill. He just needs to turn into president and not a complete dingleberry. But I think it, and to come back to the real world,

this is not just a, you know, a fable. We've seen to happen over and over again. I was just having discussion with someone who was focusing on what happened at Harvard. Claudian Gaye, who claimed that there was free speech, claimed that it depended in the context when you talk about whether all the Jews and Israel should be killed. It would depend on the context. But at the same time, it had done an adequate job ensuring that certain people were canceled for saying that they're only two sexes. And so you've made it.

the point, it's not the proper role of universities to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome. And it's important to adhere to the Chicago principles, which you want to elaborate on basically say that. Well, yeah, I mean, the Chicago principles, the one sentence summary is anyone can say anything they want, even if it's offensive, and if you don't like it, go get stuff or say what you want. But, The one point I made in there was President Craven, he might be a little less craven if he could just point to the Chicago principles and say, well, we already all agreed to these rules.

So it's important to get those set up in advance. Yeah, so that people have a backstop. They can say it's not just me. I sympathize with you. We're up to me. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

We've imposed this rule out ourselves. So now we have to follow. I have to. Yeah, exactly. And the other thing you point out at the end, of that particular fable, which is particularly interesting now, is that throughout the history, many famous scientists have been highly eccentric, held weird opinions, and even repulsive social and political views, and maybe even repulsive and social lifestyles.

But should we therefore renounce the fundamental and critical science they produced? I mean, we could go through the list of our heroes in physics who had pretty strange views and pretty weird lifestyles. And had they been removed, we wouldn't have various equations and other things named after well-known people. Yeah, I mean, it actually reminds me of Turing, right? Yeah.

Turing was basically, you know, had a strange lifestyle that people didn't like and kind of got ran out of science. And now that's, you know, they make Hollywood movies about how bad that was. But then the same people are going can do the same things to just some other person who happens to not have a lifestyle they like or views they like. Yeah.

Well, and Mr. Schrodinger had a, had a certainly a very interesting lifestyle as well. And, and, but we have his equation happily. Yeah. Okay. Well, that number two is the global social justice forum involving two professors who just happened to be called Professor Wright and left. I think it was like it was the world economic forum or something like that. Yeah, with the global economic forum, there's a, yeah, I've been at the World Economic Forum, so I'm branded on my back of having had to attend one, actually three of them, but there's

not, but anyway, so this is not to cast dispersions on the global economic form. This is, or in the world economic forum. This is something completely different called the global economic forum. Exactly. Yeah. We're getting into trouble here. And the point about this is that Professor Wright and Professor Left behave initially as good academics would.

They disagree fundamentally on, on very, principles of economics, but they discuss them, they debate them, and they listen to each other initially. Yeah. But I even put in there that sometimes they call each other idiots. You know, like when they have a disagreement, it's a your stupid disagreement and they settle it based on the facts. It's not a your evil disagreement that can't be settled fundamentally.

Well, I don't know if I've ever told a story, but yeah, absolutely. But that's often how science is done even internally by people who agree. I loved when I was at Harvard and I used to work with the Sheldon Glashire who was a friend and also Nobel Prize winning physicists. When we were at the Blackboard and debating, I don't know how many times each day he'd call me, you idiot, why you got to do this? And, you know, that's just the way we did physics. So this, sorry, go on. It's part of the fun. It's part of the fun.

It's supposed to be fun as well as useful. In fact, it wasn't fun. A lot of people wouldn't do it. And it's kind of a shame when what should be really fun, which is discovery and exploration, which at its heart everyone loves when that process suddenly becomes so scary, it's not surprising a lot of people choose not to go into it anymore. And that's really another problem. When it becomes, when it's just not a matter, as you said, not just attending departmental

functions, but thinking about do I want to enter into this field, realizing that every day I'm going to have to think about what I say and do. There are a lot of people who just don't, and a lot of really good talented people are, unfortunately, staying away from areas where they could ultimately make significant contributions should they stay. But anyway, so right and left are having a merry old time calling each other idiots. But Ms. Oppressed, who's a graduate student, I think, yes, a graduate student, Ms. Oppressed, doesn't think Mr. Wright is merely wrong.

He's Mr. He's Mr. Wrong. and our and our professor right is really wrong. He's actually evil. And and and and so what did she do? Well, you know, she she she basically thinks that it's you know, it's not a debate about well, here's some particular issue should we have government involved or government not involved and let's collect data and see which one comes out with the better solution. It's more like having the government involved. becomes her sort of religion. And she's going to impose it on everyone else.

And if anyone doesn't believe that they're a heretic and she's going to get them, you know, excommunicated from the whole society. And so that's what she wants to do. And then the particular twist is she wants a, she wants a statement from the meeting and from the association, the academic society, saying that all small government thinking, is morally flawed and can't be tolerated. And I think that's the way. Go ahead.

No, I mean, so, and that statement, which a lot of people sign because why not, you know, it's just gets this person off their back. And some of them may agree with it. But Professor Wright refuses to sign it and is banned from the forum. But what, but what's even more insidious is, well, you might think, you know, Professor left, you know, who's on the right. side of this as far as Ms. O'Press is concerned would be let go free, but Ms. O'Press isn't happy with just getting Mr. Wright or Dr. Right or Dr. Right removed. She intimidates

Professor Left. Do you want to go into that? Yeah. So, I mean, so I tried to get out what I think is at least part of the motivation for what I see going on here, which is that academic society is hard to break into, especially in certain fields. And so if you get of some of the people in the faculty jobs. Now you can get hired in those faculty jobs. And you'll notice that some of the fields that are the coochiest about this are also the fields where it's hardest to get a faculty job.

So given that, you know, then after they take out Mr. Wright, maybe decide, Professor Wright, well, let's go after Professor left next and open up another job that we can get hired to. And the excuse is kind of like she was too tolerant to. But, but, you know, but he was too tolerant, but he was. But what's interesting is in this story, Professor Left realizes Woodside his bread his butter on and he signs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because it doesn't say, but that's not, that's not enough. And in fact, before we get to what happened, Professor Left, and this is what, you know, people may say, well, it's all, you know, these are stereotypical stories. Anyone can can attack a straw man. But in this case, the straw man are real and sometimes destroyed straw people. And you point out that Ms. oppressed, a guard, argues that data and the ideal of disinterested methodological rigor should no longer be used in economic research because, quote,

this idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominate. And you could laugh and say, come on, how dare you say that, but point out where that phrase came from. So that was in an article about me in the New York Times. that was the chair of geosciences at Williams College, the quote that she, you know, put into the article. In the article, that's a real world claim by someone who's a chair of geoscience at a university, is that basically intellectual rigor is white men dominated and therefore suspect. But as you point out,

Professor, you know, as they often say, you know, first they came for the, I forget what the actual quote is, but first they came for the communist and they go, whatever it is. Eventually, you've got to worry your own back. If you capitulate early on and don't speak out, at some level, you ultimately find yourself in danger. And in fact, Professor Left is banned from the most important meeting because he took too long to capitulate, right? Yeah. And because, and for having that decadal relationship with someone who was evil. Exactly.

And having, exactly. It was morally polluted by. that. Morally polluted by. Yeah. So the point of this, so I also, I, I disagree a bit with the straw man or the stereotype thing. Like, these are all, these were not, these were examples taken from the real world that I don't take it from the real world, but I, exactly. Look out the, the actual, you know, names involved, but basically everything else there is things that happened. These weren't just like, you know, straw made. I, I, I, I, yeah, absolutely. I, I, I, good point. And I wanted to, I think, And that's really important to point out.

And I actually, actually, it's, I don't think you say that. It's quickly in the piece that it's good to point out here because people can assume that somehow these are just, you know, fables. But they are taken from the real world. And this is a clear example of it. But each one is an example of a type of problem that you actually, if you want to go back to, refers to the three principles we should really try. Yeah. And this one's an Alvin report, which is, that's technically about the universities and their unit should not take.

make statements on social and political issues. But in this case, I was extending it to, you know, academic societies and meetings. And I had noticed, at least in my field, that every society I was a member of at every meeting, just thought they had to make a statement on every social issue. It was just kind of getting absurd. Absolutely. And as you know, I've written about some of this, my own society. Well, in years too, the American Physical Society, I was shocked when they made a statement

that, you know, they didn't like Mr. Trump and when the first time around, when his administration had an executive order that quoted Martin Luther King saying that color of your skin shouldn't matter. It's the content of your character. The American physical thought, he said, this statement is an anathema to us

and as opposed to the progress of science. And what? I mean, it's just a shock when you see that kind of thing coming from scientific. And yeah, I really bloody one after the Supreme Court ruling about abortion, they tried to make it so the meeting could never be held in a state that didn't allow certain types of abortion or whatever, as if like, you know, going for four days to a meeting was, you know, somehow going to have any impact on someone's

access to abortion. But they have these sort of strange connections that they cook up that they think are really convincing to people. Well, yeah, exactly. But, you know, the fact that Professor left is banned, comes back to what we were talking about the beginning in a way I hadn't expected. But my own opinion, and, you know, that, let me see if you agree with me, if we ask how the culture could evolve and these things can be approved, of course they can, in principle, be approved by universities all adopting certain principles, but this has to be internalized by the faculty, many of whom one should say now have been

hired under a regime where they had to, demonstrate abeyance to to a certain set of other principles. My own feeling is that until people like Professor Left realize, I mean, and this goes back to our physicists who are keeping their heads down, that they too could be next.

Until they look around and see that there are enough of these things that happen that they too could be next and therefore really have to speak out aggressively, I'm not sure, it'll change, but I don't know if you think it has to get that far or not. Yeah, I mean, it may be that the, I definitely think that incentives are important. If that's where you're going, and the current federal administration is putting some incentives

on the other side. Yeah, exactly. Which may, you know, may have the effect of making people in that situation do a slightly different calculation about what's in their best interest. Yeah, yeah, we'll see. That's true. And I think, and as someone else was pointing at today, I mean, we, this book, you know, we're already, there's already obvious attacks that people can say, why are you writing about this when the Trump administration is, is cutting back on science and restricting free speech or in different ways, requiring universities to not talk about X, Y, or Z.

and I think what's really important is that what concerns you and me is that culture is the internal situation at universities. And that's harder to change or long term. As opposed to external issues, well, you know, we can vote people out of the ballot box or protest nationally. But the culture of academia is essential to the progress of academia and the culture of science is essential to the progress of science. And therefore, it's important that academic freedom and free speech and the recognition of what a university is all about should be held by the people not just outside the university, but within the university and not only adhered to, but defended. Yeah, I agree. And I mean, you know, I recently wrote an opinion in Wall Street Journal that the Trump administration should not go after. the foreign students.

And actually we just found out today that they did. Yeah, they did. The Harvard, I was pointing out shocking. I mean, all the things that's happened to harm. And again, this will be old and lose by the perhaps by the time we get out and hopefully it will have been retracted. But, but Trump and I don't, I didn't even know they could do this, but they've now restricted Harvard can't take foreign students or foreign scholars, which if that were the

case would, I mean, you might as well have closed down the university, I think, at some level. Right. Yeah. And so. You know, I just bring that up to say that it's, I don't agree necessarily with everything that the Trump administration is doing. But I do agree with the idea that there's got to be some pressure put on these universities to change the incentives on the presidents. Just yeah, yeah. Although I guess the key, I guess the key thing is that the, but the pressure can't be, in my opinion, you can't say, be, you can't restrict up people's free speech.

so we're not going to allow you to talk about X because that's obviously the wrong way to do it. But anyway, you point out, let's, yeah, I think the ideal situation is actually that all the other universities see what's going on at Harvard and say, we better get our, you know, get ourselves in ship shape right away. And that it gives enough of a motivation that the faculty go along with it. Well, maybe a useful side effect. I'd still prefer if it wasn't done by saying, you know, we want to stop your ability to do research because we don't like you. But anyway, your point is well taken.

But in this second... Yeah, and just the final point on that, nobody's asking two weird physics people what they fit. Like, this is so far beyond weird academics. Like, nobody cares what we think. Yeah, that's true. My attitude is let's, you know, let's hang on for the ride, see where this is. But we do feel, but both you and I do feel necessity of speaking out and at least

using our voice. Yeah, and it's always funny to speak out and then get completely ignored. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But speaking of people ignored, these things do have consequences. And you point out, at least in this case, that, okay, who cares of Professor Wright and Professor left get banned? You know, the world goes on. But what it does, just like in the first case, Dr. Centrist's research on cancer gets ended and all of his students and post- stocks lose their ability to work. In this case, the form itself loses credibility and loses their previous impact on business leaders and policymakers. Because people look at this and say, you know, ultimately this is ridiculous. We can't rely on these people. Just as unfortunately, many people are

beginning to doubt academics and science itself when they see these kind of things going on. Yeah, and there was one step in the chain that we should make clear, which is that after misoppressed got control of the situation, every talk what became like about oppression and how normal economics that tries to apply scientific method rigorously to social issues or whatever is all oppression and everything's like the feminist perspective on this and the decolonial perspective on that. And to counter that, you point out, I think it's a Calvin report.

I'm not sure if it's the Calvin report. Yes, it is in the world's a Calvin report. One of the pointed quotes is, the university is the home and sponsor of critics. It is not itself the critic. And that's really important. Another line in there that I really like is that the university is a community,

only in the very limited sense, I mean, you know, I'm paraphrasing, of being a collection of scholars or something like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, we shouldn't talk about it's, it's not a church, it's not a school, it's not a association, it's not a, you know, it's not, it's not even a club. Well, it is a club at some level, but, but, but just a bunch of people who are there to argue with each other. Yeah, that's right.

Exactly. That's right. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, other and in principles, because they hold different views and either on physics or or more generally on political issues, you point out, and I'll quote you here, the principle of political neutrality is extremely important for a university, though it's often neglected relative to the principle of free expression. You cannot have the latter without the former. Free expression is not possible in practice at universities that release statements on social and political issues.

because clearly if the university makes a statement on Israel that's political or on hiring that's political, it's extremely difficult for faculty in that university then to speak out and who disagree if they know it's against the, if they perceive, it's against the policy of the university itself. And speaking of Paul and the Calvin is much less widely adopted than the Chicago principles. Yeah, yeah. And so that's a critical. of the universities that that that speaking of of of universities that release statements on social political issues or that operate internally on social and political issues even if they haven't

released those statements will go to your last fable which is dean shifty and um by the way it's it's an aside but i can't resist i don't know if i went last time we talked about this one of my favorite statements about deans come from the university of chicago comes from your former president, the person who got rid of football at the University of Chicago, the famous president who was taking a donor around. What's his name? I forget his name now. He's the big president who made the University of Chicago the institution and now is.

Anyway, I wish I could remember his name. But anyway, he was taking a rich donor around. This is probably an impactful story, but I heard it. And the donor said, okay, I'm happy to meet people. but I don't want to meet anyone in the university lower than a dean. And the president looked at him and said, I can assure you there is no one lower than a dean. Anyway, Dean Shifty in this case is certainly low.

So let's press this. There's some university called Winthrop University, and they have an aggressive diversity equity inclusion program, as most universities in this country have had. And yet there's a foundation, the Henry Foundation, that's not happy with the university's GEO, program and and they let the university know.

So Dean Chifty now is in a is in a quandary because there's quotas and there's numbers just like a policeman has to give a certain number of tickets before the end of the month. The dean here has to show somehow that they are, that he they or whatever

they are that he that is producing is producing according to as required. So what happens? Well so this is basically following what's called disparate impact thinking. And the idea is if you have any sort of test on hiring that results in different hiring rates of different races, there must be something racist about it. And we just got to sniff it out or in different hiring rates of different

sexes. And this is just like it's it's an acid that dissolves merit. It basically says you can't, You can't have any, inherently every merit-based evaluation is got, you know, we can even define groups because they're different on things. Yeah. So we're just going to end up with different rates. And that's not really a problem as long as it was done fairly and, you know, you didn't discriminate against anyone. But so that type of thinking leads to this.

And so they look at the numbers and they're like, well, you don't have enough. I forget, underrepresented people. Yeah, yeah. And so then the dean. solution is to do a search for faculty, but to say informally through intermediaries and verbally not written, just so you know hiring committee, we're only going to consider someone for this position if it's not a white or Asian male. In fact, yeah, that's the key point.

She takes, oh, it is she. She takes immediate action by making it clear that, yeah, that. Whoever's proposed, if they're Asian or white man, they're not going to get the job, but she makes a point of, of course, not putting this in writing. It's informal because at least in the United States, that would be a clear violation of the law. And as you know, what's interesting here is that there are other places where you're allowed to actually explicitly say that. I now live in Canada, and in Canada, you're legally allowed to have announcements that say no white males will be considered for this. position because because of an interpretation of the Supreme Court that if there had been

discrimination in the past, it's okay to discriminate now if you feel that it'll overcome that past discrimination. It's a horrendous decision that was made. And two of the people who write in the book actually talk about the history of that ridiculous result in Canada. But in the States, you have to do it informally. So in the U.S., what you just said is true. Like, that's called affirmative action. It's not illegal if it's under strict scrutiny. And it's, for a short period of time and there's proven discrimination. But people are just using it willy-nilly. They say like, oh, yeah, we think there was some discrimination against black people,

which there certainly was 60 years ago. So now we're going to hire more women or whatever. You know, it doesn't make any sense. But anyways, the one one interesting little development since that, since I wrote that article is now the federal government has, issued a new federal grant fraud initiative, which allows what's called quitam lawsuits. And the way that works is if any institution has obtained a federal grant and then is found to have discriminated, which Winthrop University in this example most certainly would have,

they've committed fraud on obtaining those federal grants because they pledged to not discriminate. And anyone who has original information that's not public and brings a lawsuit about it is entitled to a portion of the total money that they defrauded the government of. And so if you are a professor at Winthrop University and Winthrop has $600 million per year in federal grants and you were on a hiring committee and this happened, you can now file a lawsuit and if the government, you know, gets $600 million back or if it happened over five years, $3 billion, you could get some significant fraction of that. Okay, well, that will be interesting to see how that goes.

Yeah, well, they're releasing the dogs of war. It's a way to enforce what they want to have happen without having to like have bureaucrats go everywhere and sniff it out. Yeah, we'll see. Of course, you know, there are two sides to that, of course. You don't want a lot of frivolous lawsuits, but also universities have become, I mean, it's always a cat and mouse game because as you know, once the university attacked DEI,

a lot of institutions said, oh, we won't call it DEI anymore. We'll do it, but we're going. And so the question is how whether you can more carefully couch the same end result with what appears to be within strict legal limits, whether you can make the same net result, but by being more careful in your internal documentation and make it appear as if you're being fair, et cetera. So it'll be interesting to see, yeah, I agree.

It'll be interesting to see. It all depends. It's, you know, no, only a law is only, as good as this enforcement. Yeah, exactly. We'll see. We'll see. I mean, but what you point out in this particular case, and in this case, they end up hiring a woman because there are more women than underrepresented minorities on the graduate students.

By the way, which is, by the way, let me point out as another key point about this, this, using demographics to argue for discrimination. You know, in Canada now, Canada research chairs have to be given. which is the highest level government-funded, endowed research positions, have to be allocated in exact demographic fractions as the general population. So 50.8 have to be women, you know, it goes down and etc. But what's remarkable, of course, is in certain fields when the applicant pool is, let's say, 5% women, but 50.8% of the positions that have to come out are women. what, what, it's clear what's happening. It's clear that that, you're, you, even if you, if you require a reasonable demographic,

you might say, you might say, well, we will hope the demographics will match the applicant pool, not the background population, which is completely, you know, independent of the application pool. In certain fields, there's more women in the applicants, in certain fields, there's more men. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's based on a mental model of the world where essentially there's no such thing as merit or skill. And so it's all just dividing up the spoils. And they're saying, we want to make sure our people get some of the spoils too. And that might be true for politicians, right?

Yeah. It might not be that much skill involved with it being Justin Trudeau. But being a physics professor, there actually is. It's just hard for those people to understand that. Absolutely. But you make a key point, which is whatever you think about this, let me quote you, say, notice what happened when hiring criteria other than scientific merit will introduce. You know, of course, there's the merit issue, which you just raised, but more equally

important, it immediately made the process political. Whether to hire a woman or underrepresented minority is a political question, not a scientific question. So not only does it shift things away from merit and ask and look at the qualifications of individual candidates based on what those individual candidates have done, regardless of all those identity issues. But it also makes the process itself totally non-scientific and becomes political. And that itself should be a warning flag. Yep. And I think the, so I want to, and I want to quote you say in the, in the, in the Schills report, which I actually is, I don't know where the Schills report comes from. Is it a It's another one.

It's another Chicago. You've got to just hire people based on merit. Of course, it hasn't been followed very closely, but we do have that on the books. Yeah, it says there must be no consideration of sex, ethnic, or national characteristics or political, religiously, or affiliations in any decision regarding appointments, promotions, or reappointment at any level of the academic staff. Boom. I mean, that's about as clear as you can be.

So I want to end this with your conclusion, which I like, so I'm going to quote you again, and you can comment if you want to add anything. The principles of academic freedom confer not only a right but also a duty. Some people think that the duty of academic freedom is to restrict your speech in certain, is, yeah, is to restrict your speech in certain cases, but that's incorrect.

The duty of academic freedom is to use it. My obligation as a professor and a scientist is to say what I really think in public, while, of course, focusing my research, teaching on the subject that I was hired to teach, not least because so many people in society cannot. That is the whole point of professional protection known as tenure, which is not such a big protection anymore.

That's my little parentheses. Too often tenure is wasted on the timid. Anyway, they can't cancel all of us. And to that, I'll say, well, we'll see. Well, I mean, you know, the issue is a lot of the tenure process, it selects for timidity and for risk aversion. And so by the time someone actually gets through the whole thing, a lot of the people who got through it are not terribly willing to put themselves out there

and say something. Absolutely. It was outrageous. And so it's a bit of a problem. And I do you should do everything we can to encourage people to, you know, just say what you think and the consequences. And it is true. I mean, academics are, I think, in general or timid.

I mean, academics can be fearless when talking about their own work. But academia is a very safe environment compared to the real world. And it attracts people who like a safe environment, safe for their ideas and their own work and would rather not have confrontation outside, as I say, of a very specific area. And I think that's a, in my experience of 40 years of universities, academics on the whole are extremely,

are slant towards being more timid about speaking their minds, about anything other than the specific academic work they're working on. And again, I think in the end, your conclusion of what I was saying is important. I think unless people within academia are willing to speak out about this, it's going to be hard to change things. And that is one of the purposes of the book, obviously to let the public know what's happening. But we have 39 people who are all come from within academia.

talking about the problems. It's easy to say, oh, they're just outside. They're the Trump administration or the governor of Florida or whatever it is. They're criticizing because they're right wing or this or that. But when people from within point out the problems, I hope it'll embolden others from within to join and speak out. And I'm really happy, of course, Dorian, that you've done it. I've always enjoyed that and I applaud you for that. and I've certainly, I'm constitutionally incapable of not speaking out myself. And so we'll keep up the good fight.

But thanks for this. Yeah. And then the other thing is, you know, like you and I disagree on plenty of things. And so do all the people on this book. And we need to just get over the idea that you can't hang out with people and have fun arguing, even if you disagree on the most fundamental things. Yeah. In fact, I think it's fair to say.

I don't think it's telling tales out of school that, after the Trump administration started to enact various policies, a number of people, including me, feel are dangerous and dangerous to free speech and free inquire and may hurt science, there was a very different set of responses to how, you know, what the group should say about this, because people on the group, and that's also very important. There are people in this side of 39 who are on the left and people who are on the right and people, in the center. And that was the other important thing. So it can't be classified as, as, it's diverse in the real sense, in the intellectually diverse sense. And we will continue to disagree and have

fun disagreeing. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, it's, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, it's great. We should celebrate argumentation and disagreement. Yeah. And, uh, and argument. And, uh, and, and argument. In fact, someone, in fact, one of the authors here points out when, and in fact, I'm going to have a conversation with them in a few minutes. We're talking about gender issues. And they say, well, if gender is so contentious, then it meets more debate, not less. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Well, thanks again. It's always a pleasure to see you and talk to you. It's really, really been a pleasure. Thanks. Hi, it's Lawrence again. As the Origins podcast continues to reach millions of people around the world, I just wanted to say thank you. It's because of your support, whether you listen or watch,

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