The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Janice Fiamengo | The War on Science Interviews | Day 12

Episode Date: August 5, 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 Wooderson, Carol Hoven, Janice Fiamengo, Jeff Horsman, Alessandro Strumia, Roger Cohen and Amy Wax, Peter Bogosian, Lauren Schwartz and Arthur Rousseau, Alex

Byrne and Modi Goren, Judith Sisa, and Alice Sullivan, Carleen Gribble, 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 has permeated universities. We'll proceed also to discuss issues in medicine. Sally Settel will talk about how social justice is 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, uh, disqually, uh, disqualify. 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. We'll be talking to people who've looking at the impact of diversity, equine, inclusion in academia

and how it's restricting free inquiry and also restricting in many ways scientific merit at those universities. And finally, Doreen 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, Janice Fiamengo, it is always a pleasure to see you and talk to you. Thanks for being here to talk about your contribution to the Warren Science book. Thanks for doing that. Well, it's my pleasure, Lawrence. And I like the title of your contribution, equity hiring by an equity hire.

And in fact, you know, it's kind of appropriate because it's a lovely title. But, you know, as people who haven't done the podcast before know that we talk about people's origins, but I've had the privilege of talking to you already at a podcast and going into more detail your background. But it's kind of therefore nevertheless appropriate that you began your article for the new book talking about your background in a sense. You said as a woman hired on an equity ticket in 1999 and again in 2003, twice the beneficiary, I'm well qualified to speak about the effects of equity hiring on recipients and in the academic community more generally. it's good to you're up front about it. Why don't you talk a little bit about those experiences?

Yeah. Okay, yes. I'm up front about it. Yeah, you have to be really. And, you know, even at the time, it did strike me as really quite bizarre to think that the white men that I had gone through graduate school with,

you know, were disadvantaged because of an accident of, birth and we were supposed to be very exercised and righteously indignant about injustice based on accidents of birth. But that was that was the case. These were young white men who had certainly never benefited from the alleged injustices of the past and certainly even more so had not been responsible for them. And yet they were supposed to be happy about paying in their own experiences and career potential for that alleged injustice. And it struck me as shameful and horrible. And I was also interested in the effect on other people like myself in knowing

that we were hired because we belong to certain identity groups. And it seemed to me that one of the things that feminist ideology had often talked about was women's sense of imposter syndrome that we were somehow never quite good enough. This was supposed to be, you know, a psychology that had been produced by our experience of living in a patriarchal society. But it seemed to me far more likely that that would be produced by the experience of knowing that one had been placed into a professional position at least as much because one was a woman as

because one was qualified to be there. And so I always see I had that that sort of guilty sense that I had got something I didn't necessarily I hadn't necessarily achieved on marriage. And what it

I think produced in me was just a a sense of the incoherence of the reigning orthodoxy at university, which was that I was supposed to stand up in my classrooms and talk about how women were oppressed and how justice needed to be done for women. And I was looking out at a bunch of young men that I knew were also going to likely have to pay in their own experiences for that alleged injustice, which didn't exist anymore. I mean, it was, it was terrible. And I think that what it often does for recipients of

equity hiring is to create that sort of bad faith where on the one hand, they are to be standard bearers for the ideology. But at the same time, they're aware that they are the recipients of preference and favor. And I think it creates a very uneasy sort of hypersensitivity to perceived slights, to doubt on the part of one's colleagues. And, yeah, just a general sense that they can't simply be scholars. Yeah, cognitive dissonance internally. But, but, and we'll get to it as also a hypersensitivity, because if, you know, if you really recognize, if you know, if you know, know whether you, whether you consciously accepted, but if you even subconsciously recognize that there was some, that one's identity, in this case, one's gender or sex, has had an impact

on one's hiring. You can't help but be particularly sensitive to other people. Pointed out, did you, did you, did you experience any of that? You know, my problem is, it's like, you know, it's like baseball with an asterisk when you get, you know, a certain record, you know, the greatest number of home runs, but somehow there was an asterisk. It means we, well, you really have to wonder about that person. And, and if you're hired because of that, I always

worry that, especially females that are hired, feel that they've been hired with an asterisk. And it not only it not only creates the cognitive dissonance that you talk about for the hireee, but one can't help, but

feel that, that it's say in physics, you know, and I know a number of really good women scientists must feel badly because it automatically, whenever they're somewhere, they must wonder whether people are wondering that they got the position because of their sex as opposed to what they did. Yeah, I mean, I never had that feeling. You know, maybe my colleagues were just way too kind to ever make me feel that way. And I wouldn't have blamed them if they had, you know, if they were looking at me with

question marks. Because yeah, when you get something that you didn't necessarily deserve, then it's perfectly natural for other people to be aware of that and to think about it occasionally. I never did have that sense. I had the blissful experience of being, you know, just being able to do my work in a department where in general, we were all just focused on doing the work. So that was great.

Well, it's okay. And I think part of it's due to you, because it's always so charming to talk to you and interesting that I can't imagine anyone doesn't just simply, wouldn't simply enjoy having you as a colleague. I certainly would have. And I do enjoy having you as a more general colleague now. But you point out, okay, that was

1999. And things didn't get better. Nope. And in fact, you said decades later, equity hiring is even more firmly entrenched in the academy with much more, much more strict. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah, well, I would like to say also that, and you know, and that's what

interesting to me in a way is that that was 1999 and then again in 2003 as we said but and it had already been going on for a long time yeah and that's what like it's like it's continually forgotten it seems to me whenever we have these discussions it's always like oh well this is something you know yes it's uncomfortable right now but it has this you know overarching important purpose and it's going to make things better for everybody in a relatively short time and it's just for it's just for a short time that's what we were told. It was just for a short time. But I knew people who were told that in 1984 when they were, you know, at the companies that they worked for.

And they were told we were going to do it, we're going to be doing a whole bunch of hiring of, you know, X and Y. And that's just going to be the way it is for a very short time. And so for the foreseeable future, white men are just shut out of hiring, of promotions, you know, all sorts of things of opportunities. and it didn't end in 1984. It didn't end in 1994. It didn't end in 1999. And now here we are. It's 2025.

And maybe some of it is ending because it's being forced to be ended, but it's certainly not fading away because the objective has been achieved. And so that's part of what is so interesting to me that we have had this go on for four decades. at least. I mean, it started with the civil rights legislation of the 60s, but it really began in the early 80s when there were concerted programs in both Canada and the United States to fulfill certain equity goals. And it was articulated that the way to do that was, you know, to take these very concerted measures. And yeah, I don't see any end in sight. And, um, Again, you know, the, the, what seems to me outrageous injustice being practiced against individuals through no accident, through an accident of birth, through no fault of their own, is kind of overlooked because we talk about the need for justice for others. And it doesn't just stop with hiring people. It, you know, it, it has to be manifested in academia anyway, in every aspect

of the work they do in the kind of research and scholarship that they pursue, in the students that they mentor, in the way they teach their subjects, you know, in the graduate students that they hire to be in their labs. Like, you know, it permeates every aspect of their academic work. Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, and it's becoming, and as you know, a lot of the the enforced firm of action or what do you want to call it. It requires not just hiring based on

some identity characteristic, but it requires people to actively support that in every aspect of their academic work. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. That it's been around for a long time is,

well, sorry, you can say, I didn't want to turn it up. What were you going to say? Sorry, yeah, I'm just so excited about the subject. But yeah, it's like, I mean, you've probably talked about this with others too, and this isn't even really. my chapter, but like, you know, people have to sign on. They have to pledge fealty to the whole

ideology. So it's not enough to be a black woman who's doing, you know, biological science or whatever it happens to be. You have to be a standard bearer for blackness and femalness as it's defined by identity politics. And you have to pledge to, you know, host conferences in which that is the subject. You know, you've got to do research where you're, you're, you're, you're, You're promoting a particular kind of approach to the subject. I mean, it's amazing that the statement, the DEI statement, has become more important than a person's demonstrated excellence and achievements at the hiring process. And it will continue to be in every stage of that person's academic career. That's one of the problems.

And we have addressed it in a few, and we will continue, but you will elaborate it very clearly. And by the way, when you're talking, once again, elaborate, that's one of the reasons for having this volume is to try and change the culture internally, because it's only going to change internally. And if we have enough well-known people speaking out about, at least these issues will be discussed. But what I was going to say earlier is that it's a really important point that this is not, you know, people say, well, you have to discriminate initially or to overcome or. earlier discrimination, but it's just a temporary glitch. And you're right, it's not, it's certainly, it's been going on for a long time. And since the 80s, when I was a chair of a physics department in the early 90s, even then, and I bought into it. I actually hired the first two female faculty members in the department that I chaired. But whenever we didn't hire someone who was female,

whenever the search committee did not choose a female candidate, I as chair had to write a special letter justifying how why that candidate, why we didn't choose a female candidate. And that was 19, started early, I became chair of a department in 1993. And so it's been going on for a while. It's not new. Yeah. And, and I like, I like your, somebody you say, say, it doesn't take a PhD to recognize that choosing applicants on the basis of sex or race is, and thus excluding many applicants who might

well have superior qualifications will inevitably lower the intellectual standards allegedly being upheld. I mean, it's remarkable that that statement, which it's hard to disagree with, is seen as not only offensive, but aggressively sexist or racist, that statement itself. Yeah, I know. It's, yeah, what can you say? Every time there is one of these pushes to hire into a particular feat. field, you know, a whole cohort of black scholars or First Nation scholars or female scholars.

You always have people stepping forward and saying there is not going to be any lowering of the academic standard. Well, come on, you know, let's stop lying about it. And that was the thing that was so overwhelming to me when right after I was hired, because, of course, that type of hiring continued to be practiced in the departments that I was hired into, particularly the University of Saskatchewan, was really on a let's hire women tear. And we never admitted. Like, you know, that was like we, we all, without ever discussing it, I think, participated in this charade that this had nothing to do with just hiring women because they were women, even though that's what we knew we were doing. But once we had the applications in, men were invited to apply, but they might as well

not of. That also really bothered me that all these men were wasting hours of their lives and had their hopes up for positions that those on the other end were determined they weren't going to get. and we would all pretend to one another that the applicants we were choosing who were, you know, for the short list, for the long list first and for the short list, and they all happened to be female, but that had nothing to do with the fact they were female.

And we would lie to one another about their qualifications while putting onto the reject list, a pile, the far superior applications of men. This at a time when there were a lot of women in English departments already. So, you know, it wasn't like we were hiring the first woman. We just weren't at, I think we wanted to get to 40%.

We weren't quite there yet. But, yeah, and we would lie to one another about the fact that this particular applicant who had only published one article in a very obscure area of, you know, female travelers in the Renaissance, that that was equivalent to a male scholar who'd published two well-received monographs on Shakespeare and his contemporaries. We would lie to ourselves saying that that was just as good because it was cutting-edge work and our students were going to really benefit by having this person who was totally untried and had done very little, but was working in this really interesting area, not Shakespeare.

I mean, that was just Shakespeare. anybody can teach Shakespeare. You know, like the intellectual dishonesty of our excuse making was as appalling as the practice itself. Thanks. In fact, I was going to segue to your experience in the University of Saskatchewan. You know, you talk about the situation in Canada where we both live and it is extreme. You know, you give a lot of examples of lots of universities advertising specifically,

putting their advertisement. Canada is allowed. In the United States, it's not allowed explicitly. It's only allowed implicitly. I mean, having been involved in many search committees, it's always done implicitly. In the United States, you can't say we're only looking for female or black or whatever candidates. But in the end, you do that, as you point out in the way you did it. But in Canada, it's explicit. You can explicitly say it. I'm always amazed when you see this ad for we're looking for the world-class, let's say in physics, world-class experimental particle physicists, highest standards. And by the way, you can only only apply if you're female or two

spirit or whatever the word is. And it's striking that dichotomy between those things. And yeah, so I'm glad you elaborated on your experience, the University of Saskatchewan, because you were on the other end at that point, and you saw how that that system worked. Yeah. And you point out that in Canada, things began in 1983 with an affirmative action policy. And a lot of this, what happened in Canada, you claim, and you're not the only one, by the way, who's talked about this, is put on the shoulders of Judge Rosalie Abela. And by the way, I don't know if her husband, I used to do Canadian history. There's a well-known historian named Irving Abella.

I wonder if it's, is that her husband? That's her husband, yeah. I liked his work. But anyway, but she seems to have single-handedly affected the whole climate of hiring in Canada. You want to talk about her a little bit? Yeah. I mean, she certainly affected it

in terms of the language that she used, which was very enthusiastically adopted. And she wrote the report on the commission. I can't remember the exact name now. I've got it in my chapter, but it's something like... Equality and employment. Yes, the report on the commission,

on equality and employment. So she wrote that report, and that was where she made the most explicit justification for what she called equity hiring. And in Canada, I think there was a very concerted decision made not to use the term affirmative action, which was already sort of tainted with, you know, all of the special pleading and the overt discrimination that it involved. So Canadian intellectuals who were in favor of it came up with this idea, we'll call it equity employment instead. But she makes a very clear in her explanation that it would be discriminating against those

who did not belong to the required categories. And she said that it was messes. Let me interrupt you because you quote her. And I wanted you to put your English professor hat on because I want you to part, what I love is you quote her and then you parse it carefully as an English professor might. Let's do that in real time here. So let me read the quote that you give first, distinguishing equality from equity. The reason in human rights that we do not treat all individuals the same way is that not all individuals have suffered historic generic exclusion because of group membership, where assumptive barriers have impeded the fair. of competition for some individuals, they should be removed even if this means treating some people differently. Otherwise, we can never correct disadvantage, chained as we would be to the civil

libertarian pedestal of equal treatment for every individual. There is nothing to apologize for in giving the arbitrarily disadvantaged a prior claim in remedial response. And you parse that and basically say the fallacies and non-secretors are amazing. You first talk about her reference to individuals who suffered historic generic exclusion because of group membership. You want to, I mean, go ahead. Their group suffered historic exclusion. She, I mean, she never does try to prove any of these things either.

She simply states them. So she says that these various groups suffered historic exclusion, but by definition, no individual alive today suffered historic exclusion. Exactly. It's a non-secutor. Yeah. And so, yes. And she does not attempt even to claim that individuals in the present are suffering group

exclusion. She seems to simply imply that because there was historic exclusion, that it still lingers. Without any evidence. Yeah, but without any evidence whatsoever. And there is no evidence. You know, I mean, all sorts of people have taken this on and have shown that it simply isn't true. So she has that. And then she says that where there are these assumptive barriers, they should be removed.

Yes, everybody agrees with that. Of course, they should be removed, even if that means treating others. I forget what she says, unequally. But that, you know, that there again is a complete non-sequitur. If there are barriers to participation, let's remove them. Why would it be necessary to then erect new barriers against other people? Yeah. You know, it's shocking the illogic.

And, you know, she says there's nothing to be ashamed of. We need not apologize for what we're doing. Well, clearly she doesn't feel the need to, but what she is doing is simply practicing racial and gender. exclusions of a of a different sort. Exactly. It's interesting.

You're right. Taking away the barriers is great, but then there's no logical it's not taking away barriers to some does not logically imply you must put barriers for others.

But it's assumed the sentence, the way she writes it is it's obviously logically implies that. Yeah. And you also say applied in this assertion but never proved. And in fact, unprovable is the allegation that equity, quote, equity deserving groups are deserving precisely because they've experienced discrimination, have been unjustly excluded from positions they were otherwise qualified to obtain. So it basically, that equity deserving groups

are deserving precisely because some people may have been excluded in the past, but they now deserve something other people don't deserve. That leap, which many people make, I mean, when you hear it, it sounds, when you said quickly, it sounds plausible, but when you start to think about it more carefully, it's not logical. Yes. No, it's, it's completely illogical and it's startling that this person who went on to become the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada thinks in such a simplistic way and

proclaims her, you know, bigoted, racialist and gendered thinking, you know, so proudly is, it's quite disturbing. Yeah. And, you know, and that became the orthodoxy that one wasn't allowed to question, and anyone who did question it was assumed to be a bigot of some sort. Yeah. And, and just make it clear, you've, you've had that only, you've questioned it and you've had experience itself as well at University of Ottawa, correct? The experience of being called a bigot? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I went further. Yeah, I did certainly question things and gave talks about them. And, yes, became an anti-feminist advocate. And certainly, yes, that had some crowds of people chanting obscenities at me as a result. So, yes. And in fact, yeah, anyway, let's move from you to another example you give involves KD University and its effort to decolonize, which is so, so why don't you talk a little bit about that as well?

Yes, yes. Well, and that is for a job advertisement for first nations individuals in which it's made very clear that even the most basic academic qualifications. that for many, many decades have applied in all hiring, don't apply in the case of First Nations individuals and where we're told quite explicitly that I don't think the term folk knowledge is used, but that essentially folk knowledge, you know, oral traditions, stories passed down through the generations, are considered,

to be equivalent to academic training and qualifications so that people don't have to have PhD. It's not even clear that they need lower degrees in order to be considered for the position because Aboriginal or indigenous knowledge is seen as equivalent or even superior to academic knowledge. And I mean, I find it quite startling that the the training, the experiences, the standards that have been upheld in academia for decades can so cavalierly be dismissed as not important, clearly only in the case of the indigenous. But since so much emphasis in those advertisements is placed on the experiences of students, One has to ask, don't the students deserve high-quality teaching?

Don't they deserve teaching and knowledge that conforms to the highest and most rigorous standards of academia? And clearly not. All that matters is that the university can say, here we have hired these indigenous scholars. And, you know, you make the point. I mean, it is shocking. And basically, the regular requirements are waived. for certain groups, which is shocking on its own, but also never explicitly,

what it's sort of somehow missed in this is also, that action itself, one could argue, is racist in the sense of saying that indigenous scholars need to have those requirements waived, because if they weren't waived, they wouldn't be hired. That's sort of the other side of the corner. Yes. And that is, yes, I mean, that is the other side of the coin as it would be defended in the sense that, you know, like it can only be defended with the most damning condemnation of academia that you can possibly make, which is that it is racist through and through that the knowledge and types of research that it upholds are themselves. you know, genocidal in their impact and assumptions, and that it would actually be dangerous in some way

or soul-destroying for indigenous individuals to have put themselves through that process of acquiring a PhD because it's such a racist institution. That's the sort of defense that would be made of why it doesn't matter and why folk knowledge is essentially superior. to whatever would have been acquired at the university. It's, yeah, it's truly bizarre and embarrassing, really. And, I mean, I think what it is, it flips everything on its head.

And in order to avoid saying that there just aren't that many indigenous scholars who have achieved PhDs in this field of study, instead of just admitting that and then looking at what factors have gone into making that, making that the case and trying to rectify whatever those are, it has to say that indigenous knowledge is by its nature superior to, not only equal to, but actually superior to non-indigenous knowledge. Yeah, it's, and, you know, once again, that, but when you, when you, when you frame things that way, once again, one cannot help but think.

And wonder whether individuals so hired will be ultra-sensitive to any slights that they may seem to them to suggest that they achieve the position not on the basis of their scholarship. And you know, you become ultra-sensitive to that. Yes. I mean, you couldn't help, but I would think, I don't know. I mean, I can't imagine what it must be like to be brought into an institution. and to be surrounded by people who have not only have PhDs and have done everything that's involved in attaining a PhD, but have competed in a very rigorous way with other PhDs

to publish research and, you know, to be involved in conferences and collaborative work. To have done none of that and to have to, you know, engage with those people, I would think it would be a quite bewildering experience for that individual. and then for everybody else around that individual, they're bending over backwards not to make that individual feel that sort of inevitable sense of being excluded in some way.

And I mean, it, and there will have to be, you know, a whole range of special measures taken so that that person will not have to face on a daily basis their, the incompatibility of their own experiences with those of the people they're working with. And yeah, it's just bound to cause all sorts of problems. And we did have that experience at the University of Saskatchewan, actually,

because we were very keen to hire someone to teach indigenous literature, who was herself indigenous. And the person we hired, at least into a temporary position, did not have a PhD. We eventually did hire young indigenous scholars. who had a PhD and she was great. But we hired a writer and an activist named Maria Campbell. And she was great as a, she was a writer.

She was a very interesting woman, but she was not an English scholar who could teach literature in the traditional way. She wasn't capable of grading papers, you know, of helping, students improve their writing, like she hadn't been trained in any of those ways. And so we not only did a disservice to the students who were taught by her, but I think we created a very awkward kind of experience for her in being asked to do things that she hadn't in any way been trained to do. So, yeah, I just think it's bound to cause a great deal of tension and animosity and misunderstandings of all sorts.

It's a hard experience. I often say, I mean, more generally, it's always amazing to me as a, when, as a professor, we always, when we hire physicists or anyone, you know, most of them, when I was growing up,

when I was hired, I hadn't, I mean, I had an experience personally working in museums and stuff, but we hire people to do things, you know, they've done research, and they've done their research well,

and now we say, great, now go into a classroom and teach. And, and, uh, It's really, it's a trial I fire often for everyone. And if you haven't had the experience, at least watching other people do it and very actively, then it's even harder. Yes. The whole question of whether PhDs are necessarily good teachers anyway, if they haven't had teacher training, of course, is another very interesting issue. But you're right.

At least you've seen, you've had, you've been taught. Yeah, you've seen good teachers and bad teachers. At least have some role models that you could. But the difficulty. and awkwardness and as a result, sensitivity, which you've alluded to before, the sort of final example of slights or feeling slights, which you give in the article, is of a very well-known example at a panel called the Future of Classics, associated with the Society for Classical Studies, which is a Canadian group. Why do you talk, where Mary Francis William,

was was was castigated for uttering something out about professor dan l padilla paralta who by the way has talked about in another one of the articles in our book but um uh why don't you talk about what happened there because it's kind of fascinating that was a fascinating incident anybody who just wants a little glimpse of what is going on today in academia uh with identity politics should really watch there's a yeah short segment where You can watch Danelle Padilla Peralta's presentation, which I think is only about 10 minutes long. And then there's Q&A afterwards where there's this exchange between Mary Francis Williams, who, as I understand it, was anyway an independent scholar. So she had no tenured position anyway.

She was working in the field of classics, but she wasn't tenured at any university. and Padilla Peralta, who, now where was he at? Princeton, I think. Princeton, yeah, he's for us for Princeton. Yeah, so, you know, very Ivy League, highly esteemed. It doesn't get much more Ivy League. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, and she, she, the word went around that she had uttered a racist slur. And she was told that she was no longer welcome at any of the meetings of the society for classical studies. And it turned out that she had not said what it was rumored that she had said, which allegedly was that she had said to him that he was hired because he was black. And so therefore she was not welcome.

Well, it's pretty hard to see that as a particularly racist slur when there are job advertisements all over the place that are saying they want to hire a black scholar because he or she is black. How is it racist then to say that somebody was hired because he was black? Now, in fact, she had not... How long they could be he or she or they, but anyway, sorry, going.

You're right. Yeah. And so, yes, how that was racist exactly, you know, nobody could really say, but it was certainly denounced as such. And she was disgraced. I'm sure any hopes she ever had of being hired anywhere were ended with that incident. And in fact, she had not said that. She had said to Professor...

I'll quote what she said, because you may remember it exactly, but since it's in your article, I'll quote it if you don't want. Okay. She'd actually said, you may have got your job because you're black, but I would prefer to think you got your job because of merit. So that was her attempt to find common ground, clearly. It wasn't meant as an insult in any way. It was meant to express some kind of...

of affirmation of her faith in his qualifications and credentials and ability. And she hoped that they would agree that what really mattered was merit. Her only error really was in thinking that anybody cared about merit at all. And the real kicker in the whole thing was not only that she was disgraced for something an allegedly racist utterance that she hadn't actually made, but that he had just given a presentation in which he said that journals should publish articles based solely, it seems, on the race of the academic, the race of the author. And he had said explicitly that white men would have to surrender their presence. I forget exactly the words, presence in the pages

of the journals on the basis of race. And you know, that that would be a just future. And it was just amazing to me to watch that, to see him saying that and to watch a huge sea of mostly white, it must be admitted, attendees at his presentation, applauding his statement that white scholars would be excluded from journals solely on the basis of race. Yeah, I mean, that's the point.

You know, you might wonder, why would she make such a statement? Yeah. You know, you may have been hired because you're black, but I like things on merit. That's a, you know, that's a very aggressive statement. Why would you make it to someone who's there? But the point is she was responding to a presentation, which was itself indeed quite racist. In fact, as he put it, as you, as you're right, white men must surrender the privilege of seeing their words published and disseminated. People of color like himself will quote, take the place of white men whose words could have or had to,

already appeared in the classical studies journals. I mean, so who is racist? Who should be canceled between those two, between those sets of statements that white, that people of color should take the place of white men. Yeah. Or someone who, you know, her, her statement was, you know, provocative. Yes. And but his was, so it's fascinating that the person was canceled for that was her.

But moreover, as you point out, if you're talking about power and privilege, who had the position of power and privilege in that debate? A woman who was an independent with no faculty position or someone who's a tenured professor at Princeton. Who should be more sensitive and feel slighted and hard done by or who should be more willing to say, oh, just forget it. And it's kind of interesting that no one seemed to question, you know, all of the sensitivity was of this poor person who, supposedly have been cited by, again, a misquoted statement. And it's kind of the sense of how even if you have this position already, you know, I don't know, people somehow think that a tenured professor has huge power and privilege.

I don't, having been a tender professor, it's not so clear. But it's certainly at least better than not having a job at all. And that, but nevertheless, as someone in such a position could be so sensitive to not present an intellectual response to an argument that. they felt was ridiculous. But instead would label it as, oh, you're obviously racist, you're obviously this. It generates that kind of sensitivity where someone who's a tenured professor Princeton feels the need to argue that they've been harassed or, you know, discriminated against.

Yes. I mean, you'd think he could have just said, never mind, it doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah. And given a response, you know, whatever his response, would have been. I mean, I've heard him in interview actually say that he does believe that his blackness is an essential part of who he is as a scholar. So I would have thought he would have made that argument then to her and said, no, actually, I was hired because I'm black and that's very important for these reasons, if that's what he believes. But the intellectual response rather

than the emotional response. But because it's become such an issue, because these of these requirements, people naturally can feel slighted or feel on the other side that they've been slighted because of discriminatory practices. That's the problem with discrimination at one level or another, and that's what this is. And one needs to talk about it rationally, as we're trying to do now and as we do in the book, I think, for these kind of things to improve. And you say, if there's any satisfaction be taken in sorry affairs such as this one, and in the current state of equity hiring, it's perhaps in an ironic, it's perhaps in an ironic prediction.

more equity hiring will not bring us to the promised land. And that's the point. It hasn't done it after 40 years. And in fact, even in STEM, that's the most ridiculous thing. Even after these over efforts, it hasn't really changed the demographics, suggesting that perhaps that's not, may not be the fundamental cause of the problem, if there is a problem at all. Yes.

And I want to end with your last paragraph because it's beautifully written and I want to read it for you. show trials will proliferate. The whole lot of politically correct scholars may find themselves forced out for various inadequacies and failures for neglecting to thoroughly enough purge their discipline of whiteness or perhaps even for sneaking in merit through the back door. Only one thing is for sure. Academia as we knew it.

That bastion of nerdy specialization and beautiful esoteric knowledge and curiosity of research is dead and the trendy new socially relevant so-called scholarship that killed it is a sickly thing likely to be picked off by new waves of righteous warriors whether anything can save be whether anything can be saved is a question best left to more penetrating minds than mine well I'm not sure the I agree with the last part but I and and and maybe it isn't dead I'm you know it's a I hope not but but I think the point is that that we've been driven to write this book because we're concerned. And the way to try and, as academics,

then the academics who wrote in this book, feel that the way to try and resolve these things is to openly discuss them with reason and rationality and be willing to be questioned and debated. And I'm hoping that the book and the articles such as yours will provoke people to openly question and debate. And the academy has to allow that. And I think hopefully with the brave example of people like yourself, willing to speak about these things and be attacked for saying it, if necessary, being attacked intellectually for saying it, will encourage the rest of the community respond appropriately because only that internal change is going to improve the situation.

External imposition is not going to improve anything. So I thank you, as always for writing. And of course, I thank you for speaking to me, as I told you before, and I will unabashedly say, for me, it is always such a great pleasure to speak to you. Thank you for being here. Well, thank you, Lawrence. Wonderful to speak to you. And, yeah, fingers crossed, it isn't dead. Or at least, I mean, I really do think in the humanities it's dead. I hope it's not in the sciences. And, but maybe even if it is dead in some fields, it can be revived. Well, you know, we can always look for miracles and, and, uh, And, you know, some people believe they've happened before.

Yes. I don't, but we'll see. Thanks again. Okay, thank you. 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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