The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Maarten Boudry | The War on Science Interviews | Day 4

Episode Date: July 26, 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 29thElizabeth Weiss July 30thSolveig Gold and Joshua Katz July 31stFrances Widdowson August 1stCarole Hooven August 2ndJanice Fiamengo August 3rdGeoff Horsman August 4thAlessandro Strumia August 5thRoger Cohen and Amy Wax August 6thPeter Boghossian August 7thLauren Schwartz and Arthur Rousseau August 8thAlex Byrne and Moti Gorin August 9thJudith Suissa and Alice Sullivan August 10thKarleen Gribble August 11thDorian Abbot August 12thThe 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, Martin Boudre, it's nice to see you again. It's been quite a while since we were together last over in your end of the woods, right?

That's right. You were in Ghent twice, if I recall, for two debates. I think they're still on YouTube, the one with the late Dan Dennett, and then more recently, I think the one with Dawkins was only a couple of years ago in Antwerp, right? Yeah, it was more than a couple of years ago. I think the one in Antwerp was right at right after the

Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris. That's right. Yeah. It's 2016. 1050. Yeah. What?

Is that 2015 or 16? I have no idea. It's probably a decade ago. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to believe. Yeah. Well,

look, I know, you know, you moderated a discussion on philosophy where I was outnumbered with two philosophers. That's right.

And your philosopher's, yourself. And, you know, we're going to, the point of this discussion is to go, is to talk about your contribution of the book, The War on Science. But this is the Origins podcast. And I, and I like to find out how people got to where they are. First, what got you interested in philosophy? And then as a philosopher, what got you interested in this question of, of the current climate and academia and attacks on free speech and rational inquiry? So let's start with philosophy. what got you into philosophy? Yeah, that's a great question.

It's probably a long and convoluted story that I'm not going to... Give me the executive summary. Yeah, exactly. I think I couldn't really make up my mind when I wanted to pick a subject. I was into music at first. I actually had almost became a jazz pianist or composer. I see your piano behind you. Yeah, that's true.

I still play the piano in some alternative universe. perhaps I'm a jazz piano player. But I think I've always been interested in just asking annoying questions. And that's one of the definitions of philosophy. Socrates as the Gatfly, like the person who challenges, I mean, preconceived views or whatever. But then, of course, this is 20 years ago when I started studying philosophy. And when I did my PhD, that's already a little bit closer to this.

volume, I've always been interested in bullshit, irrationality, the foibles of human reasoning. And my PhD was about the difference between science and pseudoscience. And from there, I kind of broadened my scope into irrational belief systems. And then I started to be

interested in religious fundamentalism. Of course, this is around like the wave of terrorist attacks that you already mentioned. And I guess that's how I, you know, became interested in some irrational belief systems in academia, some ideologies that have captured academia and that are also causing all

of damage. So that's the short summary of how I ended up here. So you went, I mean, yeah, it's true. When we were there with Richard, we were talking about, you know, religious ideology and now, or at least religion. And now, in some sense, we're talking about a kind of secular religion. And there are many similarities. Although, as I've often said, one of the differences between the secular religion and the regular religion, at least for Christianity, is that in Christianity, at least there's the concept of redemption. It doesn't seem to be that in the secular religion. But, you know, you start your, let's go to your contribution, called the tyranny of victimhood, how progressives turn regressive. And you begin with a quote from Orwell, which I'd never heard, but I'll read it.

I kind of like it. I had reduced everything to the simple theory that the oppressed are always right and the oppressors are always wrong. A mistaken theory, but the natural result of being one of the oppressors yourself, which is kind of interesting because, in fact, it's pretty appropriate because it's people from the West who are, ideally are quote the oppressors who are basically saying that attacking the Western Enlightenment, which their whole system is based. but you begin your I was intrigued you begin your your contribution with a quote from former president of Harvard University

Claudine Day. You say it depends on context why don't you explain where that comes from and why you began with that? Yeah because you know these sound like sorry I'm going to say it again

these sounds like innocence four words like nothing nothing wrong with that But then, of course, you can apply the sentence to itself. It really does depend on the context because she was answering a question that was supposed to her during the infamous hearing in the U.S. Congress about anti-S. on campuses, so Harvard's and some other U.S. campuses. And what she was basically saying is that to call for the genocides of the Jews, so the extermination of the Jewish race, that it depends on the context whether or not you're allowed to say that.

So, Elisa Stefaniq, the Republican politician, asked her the question a number of times, and she kept repeating this kind of evasive, a lawyerly phrase that she had probably rehearsed beforehand. So now it doesn't sound

that innocent anymore, does it? Because of course, calling for the genocide of the Jews would only be problematic from her perspective if it's, you know, if it is carried over into action. And she defended her statement by saying that she's very committed to academic freedom and to freedom of speech in line of the First Amendment of the U.S., which, of course, is incredibly

hypocritical. Because if you look at the track record of Harvard University in the ranking of fire, the organization that is dedicated to academic freedom, I think Harvard was dead lost, or it was like the The lowest part that they ever were. Yeah. It was, so if only she had been consistent, then perhaps we could have an argument about whether or not, like calling for the genocide of a particular people,

you know, falls under the best man or not. But of course, the real problem with her quote is just the Aaron's hypocrisy. I mean, people get canceled at Harvard University for using the wrong pronouns or for making some inappropriate comment about somebody's weight. But then when it comes to the Jews, like, all bets are off. like everything goes, you can say whatever about the Jews. And this is really intriguing.

I mean, this really struck me when I heard that. And of course, I wanted to dig deeper and understand where this is coming from, because this has a huge ideological backgrounds and a history that goes back decades. Yeah, I think, and I think Stephen Pinker, who also contributes to this volume, joked that, you know, gave a joke about some students saying, well, I have to, I have to leave this class. on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on proper use of pronouns in order to go to the, uh, demonstration on kill all the Jews. And, and yeah, it, uh, it, it does demonstrate

a kind of, uh, dichotomy. And, and as you point out, it, this is deep, this, this, this, the, it's not just a matter of anti-Semitism in this case, it's a deep, seated, um, notion that, that, that, that, that, that has, that has roots. And I was actually surprised to give a sense of various departments in the humanities who sort of built up this ideological structure. You said no fewer than 120 departments of gender studies around the world felt compelled to condemn Israel in the wake of the largest anti-Semitic massacres since the Holocaust, but none of them had a single word to spare for the female victims of sexual violence by Hamas and other jihadist groups. Again, that's

kind of double think. You want to comment on that at all? Were you surprised? I was surprised. I mean, this, perhaps we have to get, you know, go back to the 7th of October because initially when I heard the news of the terrorist attack or the pogrom or whatever you want to call it, I was not surprised because, as I said, I have already been studying Islamic fundamentalism and jihadism for a while. Hamas is a jihadist death cults that is very comparable to Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and ISIS. So of course, if you give them an opportunity, they're going to rape and massacre and slaughter. But then what happened immediately afterwards was really surprising to me.

I mean, surprising is a bit of an understatement. It was really like shocking. Just the day afterwards or even like a few hours after the event itself, you had students at Harvard University, for example, who immediately released. the statements, putting all the blame of the massacre on the Jewish states. So basically saying that whatever Hamas was doing, some of them would condemn it. But basically, it was all understandable as a reaction against the long history of oppression. So there's a, I mean, there's a whole range of like reactions, of course, from like obfuscation

to apologetics to sometimes like outright. clarification. So there's, in some extreme examples, people were really, like, exhilarated. There was one professor, and I'm not sure if it was at Harvard University, was basically saying that he was exhilarated by just the Gazans or the Palestinians finally breaking free from their open-air prison. And that, I didn't really see that coming. So I have to be honest, I kind of underestimated this thing. I was vaguely aware of the decolonization movement. I mean, it had reached me at my university as well, where people were saying, like, there's too many dead males, dead white males in the curriculum. So, we have to become more inclusive. And I kind of like, okay, I rolled my eyes and I thought like, whatever. I mean, this is just symbolic virtue signaling. There's nothing much at stake here. So I was not really like, really like motivated to really read up on the ideological background of all these like France von der Leyen, for example. I'm really like writing a lot.

I take a lot of attention. Yeah. But all of this stuff, I only read after the 7th of October because then it's suddenly dawned on me like, whoa, this is something like a volcano that is suddenly erupting that I had no idea about. I really have to read up on all this stuff because this is really serious. It's not just about

whatever, like decolonizing the curriculum. There's really something at stake here when 12, you know, 1,200 people are being brutally murdered by a terrorist group. Yeah. And now you do go in your discussion to the intellectual roots of this, you know, that this

reaction in Israel is as deeper roots. And you argue with, you know, this ideology, the roots are complex, but the framework is easy to summarize, as you say. First, you to divide the world up into two mutually exclusive categories, the oppressed and the oppressor. These two groups are locked in a zero-sum struggle where one group's gain can happen only at the expense of the other's loss. There can be no middle ground. Either you are an oppressor or a victim. and you say the dichotomies between Western and non-Western.

You want to expand on that a little bit? Yeah, I guess some people would say the distinction between good and evil, like this Manichaeist's worldview is, of course, much older than the Franz Farnas, Edward Saeed and all these other others. By the way, I mean, you mentioned George Orville. It's interesting in its own right. This is written some, I think, at the late 30s, the road to Wigampier. So you cannot all trace it back to postmodernism or post-colonialism.

So this intuitive division of the world into innocent victims and evil oppressors, of course, props up in many different contexts and many different ideologies. But I think what is striking about this particular ideology is that, I mean, you have an intersection of different dimensions of oppression. I mean, famously, Jonathan, Johnson Haidt has written about this, a number of other people. And most of these divisions like are about groups of people. You have white people versus black or non-white people. Then you have the cisgender versus gender, etc. So where it's as if you have a cake that is sliced up in, you know, along different dimensions

in different ways. But I think the, the, the, what is unique about this ideology is that the one overarching dimension of oppression is, not really about a type of person at all. It's about a civilization. It's Western versus non-Western. So the reason I think why Israel is in the crosshairs of this ideology is not so much because it's the only Jewish state in the world, although of course that also contributes to the hatred. But I think it is really when we're trying to explain the hatred of Israel among Western progressives, of course. I mean, it's a whole different story when we're talking about Hamas and Hezbollah, etc. But when it comes to wets and progressives, I don't really directly accuse them of anti-Semitism.

What I think is happening is that they see Israel as a proxy of Western civilization. And because the enemy of my enemy is my friend, that's how they end up as strange badfellows as Hamas. And that's not because of some ideological affinity. It's because Israel is indeed. It isn't outposts of Western civilization. And since from their perspective, Western civilization is almost a root of all evil. and Israel is the only Western liberal democracy that is existentially threatened and it's kind of forced to defend itself. That's, I think, why all this hatred is focused on Israel. So this is perhaps...

I like the quote, let me just indry. I like in that regard when you talk about the fact that Israel is sort of a proxy for Western civilization with its long history of quote, imperialism, colonialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. And you say Islamists and jihadists often proclaim that Israel is merely. little Satan, the squire and helper of big Satan, which is of course the United States, which is a prototypical representative of Western civilization. Yeah, but of course the United

States is too big an enemy to confront, right? They can't really destroy the United States. I mean, they could call the settler colonialist regime and of course, I mean, you can have a whole discussion about how America was colonized and yes, of course there are some horrible atrocities that have been committed by, yeah, by

Europeans or by white people. That's, I mean, every nation is basically born in sin. It's assholes all the way down. I'm not sure is it's Scott Alexander who came up with this quote or I forgot. But they can't get rid of the United States. That's just a complete fantasy. The United States is the most powerful country on the planet. So the only thing they can do is just like symbolic gestures like land acknowledgments just to flaunt their virtue. But then when it comes to this single isolated and beleaguered country in the Middle East that is surrounded by

hostile nations that are sometimes committed to wiping it off the face of the earth. A small nation that only numbers like 10 million people. I think it's actually comparable to Belgium, the country where I live. Now, the prospect of eradicating that country from the river to the sea, global Isaiah and defada, that seems just about within reach. So that's also why I think that all like the law of activist energy is going into fighting Israel because yeah, just it's it's an enemy that they, at least they can handle because it's a small and and relatively, relatively vulnerable. Of course, although of course it is backed up luckily by the

big Satan that is standing behind it and is supporting it militarily. Otherwise, it would have been, you know, white off the face of the earth like a long time ago. Well, yeah, exactly. And I mean, it's a, it's a clear target. But I want to go into a little. bit further into this attack on Western civilization, you say the demonization of Israel and reflexive sympathy for its genocidal enemies is not the only harmful result of this neat division of the world into perpetrators and victims. By presenting Western civilization as the root of all evil, this ideology eventually ends up with a wholesale rejection of everything. Western civilization stands for science, progress, freedom of expression, human rights, which are seen as cynical covers for

imperialism and oppression. So the kind of things that you think that Western academia is all about become symbols of what's wrong rather than what's right. Exactly. Yeah. So that's one of the harmful consequences of this ideology. So yeah, Israel is just, it's just one outgrowth of this ideology. But yeah, you can apply it to a range of different domains. And so, yeah, you're right. What really happens is that once you treat Western civilization as the root of all evil, then everything that was invented by Western civilization, like the scientific revolution, like the Enlightenment, like liberal democracy, is kind of tainted and is at best seen as a sort of cynical cover for ruthless exploitation and colonialism.

And so ironically, these people end up with the kind of stuff that you would expect to read, in their Stoomert, like the Nazi magazine or the KKK rhetoric, where they're saying that logic or linear thinking or punctuality, all these things that are valued in schools and an academic institutions are really white kinds of thinking because they were somehow invented by white people. It's part of the Enlightenment, etc. Now, is there anything more condescending than telling black people that logic and rationality and punctuality is not really for them and they shouldn't even bother because this is whiteness?

It's really almost keeping them down and saying it like, if you're even trying to emulate the white people and like trying to be interested in science and rationality, you're kind of betraying your roots. I mean, I can't really think of anything that is more obnoxious. Even though, and that's something that is really puzzling to me, that it is coming from a sort of progressive reflex. So it's the kind of stuff that you expect to read in a white nationalist magazine. But through some very roundabout, convoluted way, you can end up. in that position coming from progressive premises, which is really bizarre if you think about it. But I mean, yeah, the concern for victims, for oppressed people, that's a progressive instinct that I share. I think it's good that we do that. But if you take it too far, of course,

you end up with stuff like this. If you really need to divide the world into only like the oppressors who can do nothing right and the victims who can do nothing wrong, then tragically and paradoxically you end up with, you know, straight out racist stuff. Yeah, it is kind of interesting how that one can smoothly flow somehow into the other. It seems they should be naturally, those ideas should be naturally enemies and they somehow merge. It's kind of interesting. A number of people talk about how it seems like a Uroboros where the extreme left and the extreme right somehow meet somewhere. But, you know, you talk about the intellectual, more deep, not just in general about the Western civilization.

but the sort of intellectual traditions that have come, intellectual literary traditions. And you talk first about France, Fannin, who wrote this book, which was very influential called The Wretched of the Earth, as one of the originators of this modern ideology. Why do you elaborate on that a little bit? Certainly, that connection was new to me.

Yeah. And again, it is relatively new to me as well. This has been a steep learning curve for me. I was of course aware of Franz Fannot before the 7th of October, but I only started reading up on all this material after the 7th of October because his name just kept cropping up in all these discussions. The Ratchet of the Earth is this famous book that he wrote shortly before his premature death. He died of leukemia in the early 60s, I think.

So this is a psychiatrist, a black psychiatrist coming from the French island of Martinique, who ended up after studying in Paris in Algeria and became a sort of honorary Algerian and started to sympathize as a psychiatrist working in hospitals in the French colony of Algeria treating wounded soldiers and also wounded freedom fighters, anti-colonial resistance fighters. And eventually he joined the resistance group, the FLN in Algeria.

and I mean he has a whole very interesting life story but eventually at the end of his life he writes this final condemnation of not just the French people not just the particular atrocities that they have committed and I mean this is true this is a black page in the history of France and of European colonialism in general one of the worst episodes I think of decolonization

because the French really really really didn't want to give up their crown jewel and he ends up writing a book that is indicting the whole of Western civilization and that's, I think, I mean, he's not the root cause that would be too simplistic of this dichotomy but he is, I think, he looms very large over this discussion because this whole, this division into like reducing everything to this single

like all encompassing struggle between the victims of colonization and the oppressors that's really something that is coming straight out of Franz Valon and his biographer, I forgot his name, Adam Schatz, I think, he was interviewed in an Israeli newspaper, Harat's, I think, shortly after 7th of October. And even he had to admit that, yeah, the struggle, the 7th of October attack, if you think about it, if you apply the framework that Fanon came up with, like this ruthless and uncompromising fights against the colonizer in which the end justifies the means,

it is a kind of Fanonian struggle. It is really inspired by the kind of stuff that I'm not sure if Fanon would have agreed with the atrocities. I mean, he was an interesting figure. And I have to say, I mean, if you read the book, it's really beautifully written. It's lyrical. I can understand why it holds so much sway, I think, over a lot of progressive minds because he's a very fascinating character and a very poetic sensibility, even though it's a very violent book. Well, speaking of violence, I was shocked.

It's probably my own ignorance. As someone who's enjoyed Sartre existentialism had a big impact on me when I was younger. Oh, interesting. But you point out that this struggle, the Algerian struggle in particular, which was brutal and barbaric, that Sartre actually said no gentleness can efface the marks of violence. Only violence itself can destroy them. So basically he argued that the only solution was violence. And I was surprised to see that.

Yeah. Not just, I mean, violence, but really killing European. He's basically saying that if you kill the European, if a black man kills the European, you basically, what's the expression? You kill two birds with one stone. So you end up with one dead man and one, one few, like fewer oppressors. And you have one free man. So basically it's, that's the way.

to go, which is, I mean, he wrote a four words to the wretched of the earth. So this was basically taking Fanon's arguments to the next level. He was trying to outdo Fanon, which is, I mean, interesting in its own right that you have this white intellectual who's sitting at the Café de Flore in Paris, engaging in this ritual self-flagellation, where he's like almost saying that he should be killed because he's complicit in this whole project of colonialism. And that's something that we also see today. So you have white people that are constantly apologizing almost

for the fact that they exist and that they are complicit in the system of of synthetic racism. There are even people, I'm not sure, I've probably deleted that footnote. There's this French intellectual who said that even Sartre didn't go far enough because, I mean, probably he should have just committed suicides and just, you know,

you know, try to well, the net, you move from from Fana to Edward Saeed, who I'm more familiar with because of probably the debates that

he had with my late friend Christopher Hitchens. But why do you talk about Said who really who's who's I think who changed the language I think in terms of a generation

you know when I would my parents would say Orientals for example and then he sort of wrote a book Orientalism which made that a dirty word and exactly And why don't you talk about Said's impact? Yeah.

Yeah. Originally, orientalism was just a name for, on the one hand, the scientific discipline that is interested in Eastern cultures and also some artistic styles or schools that were influenced by, you know, the far east. But of course, Edward Said became known for his famous book Orientalism, which turns... Orientalism itself as a word into a slur, into an insult.

Because basically what he's doing is he's writing about a century old, deep ingrained desire on the part of Western civilization to oppress, to colonize and to subjugate the East. And again, I have to give him some credit. Just like I'm always trying to be charitable to the extent that I can. There are some interesting parts in the book. And it is of course, if you go back a century or two centuries, it's not very surprising that you find very prejudiced and biased views about Eastern cultures and that they're romanticizing these people.

So there's a lot of like a mixture of fear and fascination. But of course, I mean, this happens everywhere. So it's not as if Eastern people, you know, had completely unbiased and impartial views about Western or about Christian cultures. and what Saeed is doing and from my perspective this is a sort of continuation

of what Fanon was doing is that he's dividing the world into two groups the West is the oppressor and then the east is the victim and this has always been like that so basically he projects this distinction back into history in a way that is very anachronistic I think

where he's basically saying that all the way back to Homer and Aristotle this was always like the single identity of Western civilization, as if Aristotle or Homer considered themselves to be Western, that they had this desire to subjugate and to colonize the East. So it's very one-sided in the sense that one group is treated as the victim and the other one is treated as the oppressor. And yeah, this indictment of Western civilization is extremely influential up until this day in academic circles. I mean, I'm not sure if I use this metaphor in the book, but it's

almost attending a conference at the humanities. It's almost like this Mexican birthday parties where just the children take turns at, you know, whacking at this pinata until everyone gets candy. It's basically coming up with ever more inventive ways of, of indicting and of, and of condemning Western civilization. And Edward Saeed is the kind of godfather of that sort of anti-Western tradition, I think. No, you actually say more than that. He's the godfather of the concept of Islamophobia, which is, which is now the buzzword,

if you may or at all critical, you're Islamophobic. Yeah, what was interesting about Said, he didn't really write so much about the actual imperialist practices about the battles and the atrocities that have been committed, but about the discourse.

It's about what people were writing about the East. That's also why he goes back to Homer and Aristotle. because he was analyzing their writings. And this focus, this is like almost obsessive focus on discourse, on just words and stories, is something, of course, that comes from postmodernism. Somebody like Michel Foucault was a huge influence on Edward Saeed. And Islamophobia is an application of that idea.

So rather than just talking about what Islam is actually like, is it true that they oppress women? Is it true that hatred of gay people is rampant across the Muslim world? Is it true that the penalty for apostasy is death in many Muslim countries? Rather than just talking about what actually is happening, he's talking about the way we discourse about it. So it's not so much about the actual thing, but about the way people talk about it.

And Islamophobia in that way it's just a way to divert the discussion and away from what is actually happening and, you know, into just how people talk about it. And it's very easy, of course, to brush off anti-criticism of Islam by just saying, this is just a long-running Western obsession that we just like to demonize and have negative portrayals of Islam. And the question whether or not these negative views of Islam are rooted in, you know, actual things, just completely disappears out of view. Yeah, the reality, exactly.

But you also something else, which is an interesting segue to then what's been happening now. Say, Say, he wrote next to nothing about those indigenous cultures and their own discourse of oppression, such as the caste system. So it was very selective, you know, condemning the West. And that's carried over to what's going now. I mean, you point out, you know, the teachouts that are happening in universities. They don't, there are no teachouts on the massacres in Sudan, Ethiopia, or Syria. because these are just subalterns killing each other. But the Palestinians in Gaza, on the other hand,

can be framed as the victims of Israel. And in fact, the Houthis, for an example, you bring up as very selective goggles on how one views them as either terrorists or not. Yeah, that's right. Basically, nobody gave a shit about the Houthis. until they started bombing American and Israeli ships. And then all of a sudden, you could hear activists and protesters chanting on the streets.

What is it? Houdis Yemen, Yemen make us proud, turn another ship around. It's basically when you divide the world up into victims and oppressors, it's always a little complicated when you see that your designated victims can also be oppressors in their own rights. They can also do horrible things. This is something that Saeed was completely blind to because it was just an anomaly in his worldview. He was not interested in that. He was only

interested in like the single division between the West on the one hand and the East on the other hand. And it's the same with the Houthis. So all the atrocities that the Houthis are committing, nobody really cares about that or at least people are not protesting against it on the streets. And I mean,

just to be clear, these are people that are literally throwing gaze off buildings that are, you know, or amputating the limbs of thieves and like all these traditional Sharia punishments. This is a jihadist death cult, just like Hamas is. And so on the one hand, if it's just subalterns killing each other, people don't care. It's just, you know, they don't really fit within the framework of victims versus oppressors

until they start attacking the real oppressor and then, you know, by, by, you know, automatically they become a victim and they become a group that you should support, that you should, that you should support because there's only one battle waiting in the world and it's between the West and the rest. And if you have these hooties that are attacking Western ships and Israeli ships, then you have to support them because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Well, yes, again, once again, you say by openly abanding enlightenment universalism in this way, progressives have become the allies of religious reactionaries and fanatics and non-Western cultures. I mean, I don't know if you want to elaborate any more in that. You've made the point, but is there anything else do you want to say about it?

Yeah, I think it's, even apart from the hooties, this is a pretty extreme example, of course. I mean, I wouldn't say that most activists are probably hopefully educated enough to know that the hooties is not a group that you, you know, they would probably gladly execute them if they, if they could, especially the, the queers or the gays. But I do think that even someone like Edward Saeeds, who I think was much more sophisticated, and, and interesting, but still his kind of rhetoric against orientalism

was really a gift to the Ayatollahs and the Muftis in the world that are trying to purse their society from Western influences because basically what he was saying is that Western influences are evil because they just want to oppress and colonize us. He didn't intend

to to have that kind of effect, of course, because I mean he was an educated man. He was also biographically he was straddling a little bit between the East and the West. He comes from, like he was born in Palestine, but he's also had, you know, he had an American father. But that was, that was really the, the effect that his, that his writings had,

that it was, it was just much easier for religious fundamentalists, to, to basically vilify any sort of Western influence, including secularism and signs and all these things that we, we hold dear. Okay. And, and I think, you know, the seriousness of this situation is contrasted as you described, by the, you know, the same ideological trends tend to, you know, end up resulting in these trivial examples, these silly examples of inclusive language. You know, the New Zealand requirement to have indigenous knowledge be grant to equal status. The Yale, ridiculous controversy

over Halloween costumes, and by the way, Nicholas Crosoccus, who is a subject that is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is is, is is, is, is is is, is is, is is, is is is, is, is is, is is is, is is, is is, is is, is is, is is, is is, is is is, is is, is, is is, is is, is, is is, women as bodies with vagina. It's almost, as you point out, it's almost, it's almost humorous to see those inanities. It is humorous. And that's probably also why I underestimated it. Because it's just so silly that it seems like, do you really expect me to take this stuff seriously? That's what I thought for a long time. And even now, I'm often willing like to just to give them what they want.

Sometimes I just like, just to, you know, to get rid of them, whatever. I mean, you want to, you want me to use different pronouns? Fine. I mean, that's also a matter of courtesy or you want me to say, like in Dutch, we have a discussion that you shouldn't say we have Blanc and WET. So we have, we kind of have two words for white people. And now, of course, whichever is the word that we're using, you're not allowed to say that anymore. Now we have to switch squares. Like, okay, whatever. I mean, if sometimes just, just to get rid of them, I'm almost inclined to, you know, just to go along with.

what they want. So it took me a while to realize that this is, this also has serious consequences because it's, I mean, the kind of woke stuff that ends up in the newspaper about, you know, about black facing or about inappropriate words or slurs about, you know,

or microaggressions if you're asking somebody where he's from, for example, you don't know how to say that anymore. It's, it's easy to ridicule that and, you know, rightly so. I mean, a lot of this stuff is ridiculous. but unfortunately it can also lead to more serious consequences. Well, in fact, as you say, it's all well for privileged students at universities to wallow in decolonization, offensive language,

because nothing much is at stake. But I think it's, you know, and you say it's empty posturing, but when it comes to a conflict, Gaza, there actually is serious things at stake. It's not just talking about language. It's people's lives in every way, both sides of conflict. Yeah, absolutely. I shouldn't mention this.

I mean, we're, of course, recording this as the war in Gaza is still raging. I mean, it is absolutely horrific. And I think we should, we also shouldn't fall onto the trap of thinking of, you know, seeing only one part of the conflict as the real victim. Of course, I mean, both of them are victims. It's a tragedy in every way. Absolutely. Yes.

So I, of course, and hopefully by the time this is released and the war, the war will have ended. But who knows. But I do think, yes, when people are dying, when terrorists commit atrocities and then also in retaliation, when Israel strikes back, then something is really at stake. And we can have an argument about Netanyahu and about the far-eyed politicians in Israel's coalitions who are not my friends by any stretch. But I still think that Israel is a liberal democracy. And I still think it is worth defending against its totalitarian enemies. Yes. Okay. I'll want to read your final paragraph. In the wake of October 7th, it's become abundantly clear what kind of moral monstrosities you end up with if you start dividing the world into evil oppressors and noble victims. If elite universities want to stem the rapidly dwinding trust in academic institutions, they need to consistently apply free speech principles and adopt institutional neutrality across the board.

something we'll talk about with a number of people in this book. And they need to tackle the ideological rot that they have allowed to spread and even cultivate it for decades, mostly in the form of the massive DEI bureaucracy. The last thing they should do is a bet and give cover for this pernicious ideology in U.S. Congress for the eyes of the world to see. So I think if we talk about what to do next, I think that's a very well, that's an important call for action. So yeah and perhaps the last point I should make in in that respect is I mean I know that this book is it's probably going to get a lot of pushback from people who are saying like is this a real threat I mean the war in science you're really talking about the vocies now but these things are not unrelated and I'm I'm you know I'm freely admitting that of course when we were writing the book Trump had not been reelected yet when I was writing my chapter I didn't know that yet yes of course at this moment Trump is a more serious threat to academic freedom. But it is an external threat, first of all. I mean, the kind of sense that we're talking about here is, like, emerging from within academia.

And it's feeding off each other. So that's exactly why and the peace in that way. Like, the last thing they should do is to give cover and to abet this kind of moral monstrosities. Because what will happen eventually is that you're going to get a huge backlash from society. And basically, you know, the president, in this case, like the, the, the, is basically declaring war on Harvard, pretending to using anti-Semitism as a sort of excuse. I'm not sure if they really care about anti-Semitism this much.

But I mean, Harvard really had it coming. I mean, they could have avoided all of this stuff by being more reasonable, but I'm not abetting this pernicious ideology. So I do think that there's, I mean, there's wars waging on different fronts, but we have to just do our part to prevent this kind of, of backlash from happening. I mean, also in Europe. In Europe, it's not that bad yet. But if we don't like mend our ways, then we're going to get exactly the same thing in Europe. We're also going to get something like Trumpism or the election of some far-right leader. First of all, I'm really glad

you bought this up. But then you're right. It's an issue that we're going to have to be discussing a lot when this book comes out there and people are going to say, well, it's a real war. And you said it exactly right. One's external, one's external. And the external you fight in the ballot box and in other places. Internal is a cultural thing. It takes. longer to do it. But as you speak, it occurred to me that there's also another analogy. Many people had warned Israel along that what was going on in Gaza, the way that being treated might, you know, would not result in counterreactions, but produce sympathies around the world that might result in extremism. And so you see, you know, the same kind of, you see then

the result being the horrific attack by Hamas and you're and then and you give cover to that by saying well Israel's never not been particularly good in Gaza and then but and and you're seeing it in a different sense you're giving cover for these

extremists anti free speech anti open quarry people like Trump and and his minions and you're giving cover to them by by not having addressed the problem that's going on academia right now, which is what we're talking about. And so I'm hoping that by having people

like you and my colleague, other colleagues who've written in the book that we can try and address this problem before more extreme versions happening. I just saw today, for example, just as we speak, it'll be old news by the time this is out, that the newest to track in the last hour of the Trump administration on Harvard, Harvard is now stop their ability to have foreign scholars and international students come to the crank. which is death of the university if it really happened. No, absolutely. And that's really serious.

And Harvard is completely right. I'm on Harvard side now. Ironically, of course, I was extremely upset when when the whole thing, the whole episodes that I described in the chapter happened. But yeah, we have to clean out our own stables. And if we're not going to do it, if like right thinking, I mean, right thinking, not ideologically right thinking, but just reasonable progressive people, I would say, don't seriously tackle this problem

then we're basically almost inviting someone like like Trump to do it and then of course it's going to be much more brutal than the way I mean we're just trying to have a reasonable discussion I'm willing to engage in arguments also with people

who believe that Fanon and Edward Said were very important and thinkers Trump of course is not interested in any of that he's just interested in owning the lips and just basically destroying every institution that is captured by the liberals, I mean, right or wrong. Well, thank you for this discussion, which has been illuminating.

He's always a pleasure to spend time with you, and I appreciate you taking the time to likewise. Thanks for having me. To talk about this, and I, and your very informative contribution, which was great. Thanks again. Thanks, Lawrence. 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, that we're able to help enrich the perspective of listeners by providing access to the people and ideas that are changing our understanding of ourselves and our world and driving the future of our society in the 21st century. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. You can also leave us private feedback on our website if you'd like to see any parts of the podcast improved. Finally, if you'd like to access ad-free and bonus content, become a paid subscriber at originsproject.org. This podcast is produced by the Origins Project Foundation as a non-profit effort committed to enhancing public literacy and engagement with the

world by connecting science and culture. You can learn more about our events, our travel excursions, and ways to get involved at originsproject.org. Thank you.