Greg Lukianoff: Cancel Culture, Deplatforming, Censorship & Free Speech | Lex Fridman Podcast #397

- If the goal is the project of human knowledge, which is to know the world as it is, you cannot know the world as it is. without knowing what people really think. and what people really think. is an incredibly important fact to know. So every time you're actually saying "you can't say that". you're actually depriving yourself of the knowledge. of what people really think. You're causing what Timur Kuran, who's on our Board of Advisor, it's called preference falsification. You end up with an inaccurate picture of the world, which by the way, in a lot of cases,

because there are activists. who want to restrict more speech, they actually tend to think that people are more prejudice. than they might be. And actually one very real practical way. it makes things worse is when you censor people, it doesn't change their opinion, it just encourages them to not share it with people. who will get them in trouble. So it leads them to talk to people. who they already agree with. and group polarization takes off. - The following is a conversation with Greg Lukianoff,

free speech advocate, first-amendment attorney, president and CEO of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. And he's the author of "Unlearning Liberty", co-author with Jonathan Haidt. of "Coddling of the American Mind". and co-author with Rikki Schlott. of a new book coming out in October. that you should definitely pre-order now called. "The Canceling of the American Mind". which is a definitive accounting of the history, present and future of cancel culture.

A term used and overused in public discourse, but rarely studied and understood with the depth and rigor. that Greg and Ricky do in this book. and in part in this conversation. Freedom of speech is important, especially on college campuses, the very place that should serve. as the battleground of ideas, including weird and controversial ones. that should encourage bold risk-taking, not conformity.

This is a Lex Friedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Greg Lukianoff. Let's start with a big question. What is cancel culture? Now, you've said that you don't like the term as it's been, quote, dragged through the mud and abused endlessly. by a whole host of controversial figures. Nevertheless, we have the term, what is it? - Cancel culture is the uptick of campaigns, especially successful campaigns.

starting around 2014 to get people fired, expelled, deplatformed, et cetera, for speech that would normally be protected. by the First Amendment. And I always say would be protected. because we're talking about circumstances in which. it isn't necessarily where the First Amendment applies. But what I mean is like as an analog to say. things you couldn't lose your job as a public employee for, and also the climate of fear. that's resulted from that phenomenon,

the fact that you can lose your job. for having the wrong opinion. And it wasn't subtle that there was an uptick in this, particularly on campus around 2014. John Ronson wrote a book called, "So You've Been Publicly Shamed.". It came out in 2015 already documenting this phenomena. I wrote a book called "Freedom from Speech" in 2014. but it really was in 2017. when you started seeing this be directed at professors. And when it comes to the number of professors. that we've seen be targeted and lose their jobs.

I've been doing this for 22 years. and I've seen nothing like it. - So there's so many things I want to ask you here. But one, actually, just looking at the organization of FIRE, can you explain what the organization is. because it's interconnected to this whole fight. in the rise of cancel culture, in the fight for freedom of speech. since 2014 and before. - So FIRE was founded in 1999 by Harvey Silverglate. He is a famous civil liberties attorney. He's been on the show. He's the person who actually found me out.

in my very happy life out in San Francisco, but knew I was looking for a first-amendment job. I'd gone to law school specifically to do First Amendment. And he found me, which was pretty cool. His protege, Kathleen Sullivan. was the dean of Stanford Law School. and this remains the best compliment I ever got in my life, is that she recommended me to Harvey. And since that's the whole reason why I went to law school, I was excited to be a part of this new organization. The other co-founder of FIRE is Alan Charles Kors.

He's just an absolute genius. He is one of the leading experts in the world. on the enlightenment, and particularly about Voltaire. And if any of your listeners do like the great courses, he has a lecture on Blaise Pascal, and Blaise, of course, is famous for the Pascal's wager. And I left it just so moved and impressed. and with a depth of understanding. of how important this person was. - That's interesting.

You mentioned to me offline, connected to this, that at least it runs in parallel. or there's a connection between the love of science. and the love of the freedom of speech. - [Greg] Yes. - Can you maybe elaborate where that connection is? - Sure. I think that for those of us who are really, you know, have devoted our lives to freedom of speech, one thing that we are into, whether we know it or not, is epistemology, the study and philosophy of knowledge. Freedom speech has lots of.

moral and philosophical dimensions, but from a pragmatic standpoint, it is necessary. because we're creatures of incredibly limited knowledge. We are incredibly self deceiving. I always love the fact that you've all heard Harari. refers to the enlightenment as the discovery of ignorance, because that's exactly what it was. It was suddenly being like, wow, hold on a second. All this incredibly interesting folk wisdom we got. which by the way can be surprisingly reliable here and there.

when you start testing, a lot of it is nonsense. And it doesn't hold up, even our ideas about the way things fall. As you know, Galileo established, like even our intuitions, they're just wrong. And so a lot of the early history of freedom of speech, it was happening at the same time. as sort of the scientific revolution. So a lot of the early debates about freedom of speech. were tied in. So certainly Galileo.

I always point out like Kepler. was probably like the even more radical idea. that there weren't even perfect spheres. But at the same time, largely because of the invention of the printing press, you also had all these political developments. And you know, I always talk about Jan Hus, a famous Czech, the hero who was burned at the stake and I think in 1419, but he was basically Luther before the printing press,

before Luther could get his word out. He didn't stand a chance. And that was exactly what Jan Hus was. But a century later, thanks to the printing press, everyone could know what Luther thought. And boy did they. But it led to of course, this completely crazy hyper disrupted period. in European history. - Well, you mentioned to jump around a little bit, the First Amendment. First of all, what is the First Amendment. and what is the connection to you. between the First Amendment, the freedom of speech and cancel culture?

- Sure. So I'm a First Amendment lawyer as I mentioned, and that's my passion. That's what I studied. And I think American First Amendment law. is incredibly interesting. In one sentence, the First Amendment is trying to get rid of. basically all the reasons why humankind. had been killing each other for its entire existence. That we weren't going to fight anymore over opinion, we weren't gonna fight anymore of religion. That you have the right to approach your government. for redress grievances. That you have the freedom to associate,

that all of these things in one sentence we're like, "Nope, the government will no longer interfere. with your right to have these fundamental human rights. And so one thing that makes FIRE a little different. from other organizations is however, we're not just a First Amendment organization. We are a free speech organization. But at the same time, a lot of what I think free speech is, can be well explained.

with reference to a lot of First Amendment law. Partially because in American history, some of our smartest people. have been thinking about what the parameters. of freedom of speech are. in relationship to the First Amendment. And a lot of those principles, they transfer very well just as pragmatic ideas. So like the biggest sin in terms of censorship. is called viewpoint discrimination. That essentially you allow freedom of speech. except for that opinion. And it's found to be kind of more defensible.

and I think this makes sense. that if you set up a forum. and like we're only gonna talk about economics. to exclude people who wanna talk about a different topic. But it's considered rightfully a bigger deal. if you've set up a forum for economics. But we're not gonna let people. talk about that kind of economics. or have that opinion on economics most particularly. So a lot of the principles from First Amendment law. actually make a lot of philosophical sense. as good principles for when, like what is protected. and unprotected speech,

what should get you in trouble, how you actually analyze it, which is why we actually try in our definition. of cancel culture to work in. some of the First Amendment norms just in the definition. So we don't have to bog down on them as well. - You're saying so many interesting things, but if you can linger on the viewpoint discrimination, is there any gray area of discussion there? Like what is and isn't economics for the example you gave? - [Greg] Yeah. - I mean is it a science, or is it an art to draw lines of what is and isn't allowed?

- Yeah. You know, if you're saying that something is. or is not economics, well you can say everything's economics. and therefore I want to talk about poetry. There'd be some line drawing exercise in there, but let's say once you decide to open up, to poetry even. it's a big difference between saying, okay, now we're open to poetry, but you can't say, you know, Dante was bad. Like that's a forbidden opinion now officially. in this otherwise open forum. that would immediately at an intuitive level. strike people as a bigger problem.

than just saying that poetry isn't economics. - I mean, that intuitive level that you speak to, I hope that all of us have that kind of basic intuition. when a line is crossed. It's the same thing for like pornography. - Yes. - When you see it, I think there's the same level of intuition. that should be applied across the board here. And it's when that intuition becomes deformed. by whatever forces of society,

that's when it starts to feel like censorship. - Yeah I mean, people find it a different thing. If someone loses their job. simply for their political opinion, even if that employer. has every right in the world to fire you, I think Americans should still be like, well it's true. They have every right in the world. And I'm not making a legal case. that maybe you shouldn't fire someone. for their political opinion, but think that through. Like, what kind of society do we wanna live in? And it's been funny watching, and I point this out,

yes, I will defend businesses, First Amendment rights of association. to be able to have the legal right. to decide who works for them. But from a moral or philosophical matter, if you think through the implications of, if every business in America. becomes an expressive association. in addition to being a profit maximizing organization, that would be a disaster for democracy. because you would end up in a situation. where people would actually be saying to themselves, I don't think I can actually say what I really think.

and still believe I can keep my job. And that's where I was worried, I felt like we were headed. 'cause a lot of the initial response. to people getting canceled was very simply, oh, but they have the right to get rid of this person. and that's the beginning and end of the discussion. And I thought that was a dodge, I thought that wasn't actually a very serious way. that if you care about both the First Amendment. and the freedom of speech, of thinking it through. - So to you, just to clarify,

the First Amendment is kind of a legal embodiment. of the ideal of freedom of speech. and then freedom of speech. - As applied to government. - And it's very specific, applied to government. and freedom of speech is the application of the principle. to like everything including like kind of. the high level philosophical ideal. of the value of people being able to speak their mind. - Yeah, it's an older, bolder, more expansive idea.

And you can have a situation, and I talk about countries that have good free speech law, but not necessarily great free speech culture. And I talk about how when we sometimes make this distinction. between free speech law and free speech culture, we're thinking in a very cloudy kind of way. And what I mean by that is that laws generally, particularly in a common law country, it's the reflection of norms. Judges are people too.

And in a lot of cases, common law is supposed to actually take our intuitive ideas. of fairness and place them into the law. So if you actually have a culture. that doesn't appreciate free speech. from a philosophical standpoint, it's not going to be able to protect free speech. for the long haul, even in the law 'cause eventually, that's one of the reasons why I worry so much. about some of these terrible cases coming out of law schools. because I fear that even though, sure, American First Amendment law. is very strongly protective of First Amendment for now,

it's not gonna stay that way. If you have generations of law students graduating. who actually think there's nothing, there's no higher goal. than shouting down you're an opponent. - Yeah, so that's why so much of your focus, or a large fraction of your focus is on the higher education. or education period, is because education is the foundation of culture. - Yeah, you have this history, you know, '64, you have the free speech movement on Berkeley, and in '65 you have Repressive tolerance by Herbert Marcuse,

which was a declaration of, by the way, we on the left, we should have free speech, but we should have free speech for us. I mean, I went back and reread repressive tolerance. and how clear it is. I had forgotten that it really is kind of like, and these so-called conservatives and right wingers, we need to repress them because they're regressive thinkers. It really doesn't come out to anything more sophisticated. than the very old idea that our people are good,

they get free speech, they should keep it. Other side bad. We should not have, and we have to retrain society. And of course, like, it ends up being another, he was also a fan of Mao, so it's not surprising. that of course the system would have to rely. on some kind of totalitarian system. But that was a laughable position, you know, say 30, 40 years ago.

The idea that essentially, you know, free speech for me, not for the... As the great free speech champion Hentoff used to say. was something that you were supposed to be embarrassed by. But I saw this when I was in law school in '97. I saw this when I was interning at the ACLU in '99, that there was a slow motion train wreck coming. that essentially there was these bad ideas from campus. that had been taking on more and more steam. of basically no free speech for my opponent.

were actually becoming more, more and more accepted. and partially because academia. was becoming less and less viewpoint diverse. I think that as my co-author Jonathan Haidt points out. that when you have low viewpoint diversity, people start thinking in a very kind of tribal way. And if you don't have the respected dissenters, you don't have the people that you can point to. that are like, "Hey, this is a smart person.". This is a smart, reasonable, decent person. that I disagree with. So I guess not everyone thinks alike on this issue.

You start getting much more kind of like only bad people, only heretics, only blasphemers, only right wingers. can actually think in this way. - Every time you say something, I always have a million thoughts. and a million questions that pop up. But since you mentioned there's a kind of drift. as you write about in the book and you mentioned now. there's a drift towards the left in academia, which would also maybe draw a distinction here. between the left and the right. and the cancel culture as you present in your book.

is not necessarily associated. with any one political viewpoint. That there's mechanisms on both sides. - [Greg] Oh yeah. - That result in cancellation. and censorship in violation of freedom of speech. - So one thing I wanna be really clear about. is the book takes on both right and left cancel culture. They're different in a lot of ways and definitely, cancel culture from the left is more important in academia. where the left dominates. But we talk a lot about cancel culture.

coming from legislatures. We talk a lot about cancel culture on campus as well, because even though most of the attempts. that come from on campus to get people canceled. are still from the left, there are a lot of attacks that come from the right. that come from attempts by different organizations. And sometimes when there are stories in Fox News, like they'll go after professors. and about one third of the attempts. to get professors punished that are successful. actually do come from the right.

and we talk about attempts to get books banned, in the book, we talk about suing the Florida legislature. Ron DeSantis had something called the Stop-Woke Act, which we told everyone this is laughably unconstitutional. They tried to ban particular topics in higher ed. and we're like, no, this is a joke. Like this will be laughed out of court. And they didn't listen to us and they brought it, they passed it and we sued and we won.

Now they're trying again. with something that's equally as unconstitutional. and we will sue again and we will win. - Can you elaborate on Stop-Woke Act? This is presumably trying to limit certain topics. from being taught in school? - Yeah, basically woke topics. It came out of the sort of attempt. to get at critical race theory. So it's topics related to race, gender, et cetera. I don't remember exactly how they tried to cabinet it to CRT.

but when you actually, the law's really well established. that you can't tell higher education. what they're allowed to teach. without violating the First Amendment. And when this got in front of a judge, it was exactly as... He was exactly as skeptical of it as we thought he'd be. I think he called this dystopian and it wasn't a close call. - So if you're against that kind of teaching, the right way to fight it is by making the case.

that it's not a good idea as part of the curriculum. as opposed to banning it from the curriculum. - Yeah. The state doesn't have the power to simply say to ban, what professors in higher education teach. Now, it gets a little more complicated. when you talk about K through 12. because the state has a role in deciding. what public K through 12 teaches. because they're your kids. It's taxpayer funded. and generally the legislature is involved. There is democratic oversight of that process.

- So for K through 12, is there also a lean towards the left. in terms of the administration that manages the curriculum? - Yeah, there definitely is in K through 12. I mean, my kids go to public school. I have a five and a seven year old. and they have lovely teachers, but we have run into a lot of problems. with education schools at FIRE. and a lot of the graduates of education school. end up being the administrators. who clamp down on free speech in higher education.

And so I've been trying to think of positive ways. to take on some of this, some of the problems that I see in K through 12. I thought that the attempt to just dictate, you won't teach the following 10 books or 20 books. or 200 books was the wrong way to do it. Now when it comes to deciding what books. are in the curriculum, again. that's something a legislature actually can have some say in. and that's pretty uncontroversial in terms of the law. But when it comes to how you fight it, I had something that since I'm kind of. stuck with the formula.

I called "Empowering of the American Mind". I gave principles that were inconsistent. with the sort of group think. and heavy emphasis on identity politics. that some of the critics are rightfully complaining about. in K through 12. And that is actually in "Canceling of the American Mind". but I have a more detailed explanation of it. that I'm gonna be putting up on my blog, the eternally radical idea. - Is it possible it's legally... This is a silly question perhaps.

Create an extra protection. for certain kinds of literature, 1984 or something. to remain in the curriculum. I mean it's already, it's all protected, I guess. I guess to protect against administrators. from fiddling too much with the curriculum, like stabilizing the curriculum. I don't know what the machinery. of the K through 12 public school. - In K through 12, state legislatures... - [Lex] They're part of that. - They're part of that and they can say like, you should teach the following books.

Now of course people are always a little bit worried. that if they were to recommend, teach the Declaration of Independence, that it will end up being, well they're gonna teach the Declaration of Independence. was just to protect slavery, which it wasn't. - Yeah, so teaching a particular topic matters. which textbooks you choose, which perspective you take, all that kind of stuff. Of course there's like religion. starts to creep into the whole question of like, is the Bible, are you allowed to incorporate that into education?

- Yeah, I mean, I'm an atheist. with an intense interest in religion. I actually read the entire Bible this year. just 'cause I do stuff like that. And I never actually had read it. from beginning to end. Then I read the Quran 'cause you know, and I'm gonna try to do the Book of Mormon, but, you know. - Well, you're so fascinating. Do you recommend doing that? - I think you should just to know. 'cause it's such a touchstone. in the way people talk about things. It can get pretty tedious. But I even made myself read through.

all of the very specific instructions. on how tall the different parts of the temple need to be. and how long the garbs need to be. and what shape they need to be and what like... And those go on a lot. That surprisingly a big chunk of Exodus, I thought that was more like in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but then you get to books like Job, you know? Wow. I mean Job is such a read and no way. Job originally had that ending. Like Job is basically,

it starts out as this perverse bet between God and Satan. about whether or not they can actually make a good man. renounce God, and initially they can't. It's all going very predictably. And then they finally really tortured Job. and he turns into the best. Why is God cruel? How could God possibly exist? How could a kind God do these things? And he turns into like the best lawyer in the entire world. and he defeats everyone. All the people who come to argue with him, he argues the pants off of them.

And then suddenly at the end God shows up and he's like, well, you know, I am everywhere. And it's a very confusing answer. He gets an answer kind of like, I am there. when Lionesses give birth and I am there, and by the way, there's this giant monster Leviathan that's very big. and it's very scary and I have to manage the universe. and I'm kind of like, God, are you saying that you're very busy? Is that essentially your argument to Job.

and you don't mention the whole kind of like that. I have a bet, that's why I was torturing you. That doesn't come up. And then at the end he decides, Job's like, oh no, you're totally right. I was totally wrong. Sorry. And God says like, I'm gonna punish those people who tried to argue with you. and didn't win. So he gets rid of the... I don't know exactly what he does to them, I don't remember. And then he gives Job all his money back. and he makes him super prosperous. And I'm like, no way.

that was the original ending of that book. because this was like, this was clearly a beloved novel that they were like, but it can't have that ending. - Okay. - So it's a long way of saying. I actually think it's worthwhile. Some of it was, you're always kind of surprised when you end up in the part, like there are parts of it that will sneak up on you, kind of like Isaiah is a trip. Ecclesiastes, Depeche mode. - And you said you also the Quran. - [Greg] Yeah which was fascinating. - So it'd be interesting to ask,

is there a tension between the study of religious texts. or the following of religion and just believing in God. and following the various aspects of religion. with freedom of speech. - In the First Amendment, we have something that we call the religion clause. And I've never liked calling it just that. because it's two brilliant things right next to each other. The state may not establish an official religion, but it cannot interfere with your right. to practice your religion.

That's beautiful. Two things at the same time. And I think they're both exactly right. and I think sometimes the right gets very excited. of the free exercise clause. and the left gets very excited about establishment. And I like the fact that we have both of 'em together. Now, how does this relate to freedom of speech. and how does it relate to the curriculum. like we were talking about? I actually think it would be great. if public schools could teach the Bible, like in the sense of like read it as a historical document.

But back when I was at the ACLU, every time I saw people trying this, it always turned into them actually advocating for, a Catholic or a Protestant or Orthodox even. kind of like read on religion. So if you actually make it into something advocating. for a particular view on religion, then it crosses into the establishment clause side. So Americans haven't figured out a way to actually teach it. So it's probably better that you learn about it. outside of a public school class. - Do you think it's possible to teach religion.

from like world religions kind of force. without disrespecting the religions? - I think the answer is it depends on. from whose perspective. - Well, like the practitioner say. you're like an Orthodox follower of a particular religion. - [Greg] Yeah. - Is it possible to not piss you off. in teaching like all the major religions of the world? - For some people, the bottom line is you have to teach it as true.

And with that, under those conditions, then the answer is no. You can't teach it without offending someone at least. - Can't you say these people believe it's true? Can you reform it? So you have to walk on eggshells essentially. - You can try really hard. and you will still make some people angry, but serious people will be like, oh no, you actually tried to be fair to the beliefs here. And I try to be respectful as much as I can. about a lot of this. I still find myself much more drawn to both Buddhism.

and stoicism though. - Where do I go? Okay, one interesting thing to get back to college campuses. is FIRE keeps the college free speech rankings. - [Greg] Yes. - At rankings.thefire.org. - [Greg] I'm very proud of them. - I highly recommend. 'cause forget even just the ranking, you get to learn a lot about the universities. from this entirely different perspective. than people are used to when they go to pick. whatever university they want to go to. It just gives another perspective on the whole thing.

and it gives quotes from people that are students there. and so on, like about their experiences. and it gives different-. Maybe you could speak to the various measures here. before we talk about who's in the top five. and who's in the bottom five. What are the different parameters. that contribute to the evaluation? - So people have been asking me since day one. to do a ranking of schools according to freedom of speech. And even though we had the best database in existence. of campus speech codes,

policies that universities have that violate First Amendment. or First Amendment norms, we also have the best database of, we call the Disinvitation Database, but it's actually it's better named. the deplatforming database, which is what we're gonna call it. - And these are all cases where somebody was invited. as a speaker to campus and they were disinvited. - Disinvited or deplatforming also includes shouting down. - So they showed up and they couldn't really speak.

- Yeah, exactly. And so having that, what we really needed. in order to have some serious social science. to really make a serious argument. about what the ranking was, was to be able to, one, get a better sense of how many professors. were actually getting punished during this time. And then the biggest missing element. was to be able to ask students directly. what the environment was like on that campus. for freedom of speech. Are you comfortable disagreeing with each other?

Are you comfortable disagreeing with your professors? Do you think violence is acceptable. in response to a speaker? Do you think shouting down is okay? Do you think blocking people's access to a speaker is okay? And once we were able to get all those elements together, we first did a test run I think in 2019, about 50. And we've been doing it for four years now, always trying to make the methodology more and more precise. to better reflect the actual environment.

at particular schools. And this year the number one school. was Michigan Technological University, which was a nice surprise. The number two school was actually Auburn University, which was nice to see. In the top 10, the most well-known prestigious school is actually UVA, which did really well this year. University of Chicago was not happy. that they weren't number one, but University of Chicago was 13. and they had been number one. or in the top three for years prior to that.

- Really? So can you explain? It's almost surprising. Is it because of. like the really strong economics departments. and things like this or what, why? - They had a case involving a student, they wouldn't recognize a chapter of Turning Point USA. and they made a very classic argument. and classic in the bad way. that we hear campuses across the country. Oh, we have a campus Republican, so we don't need this additional conservative group. And we're like, no, I'm sorry. Like we've seen dozens and dozens. if not hundreds of attempts. to get this one particular conservative student group.

derecognized or not recognized. And so we told them like, listen. like we told them at FIRE that we consider this serious. and they wouldn't recognize the group. So that's a point down in our ranking. And that was enough to knock them from-. They probably would've been number two in the rankings, but now they're 13 out of 248. They're still one of the best schools in the country. I have no problem saying that.

The school that did not do so well at a negative 10.69, negative 10.69 and we rounded up to zero was Harvard. And Harvard has been not very happy with that result. - The only school to receive the abysmal ranking. - [Greg] Yeah, and there are a couple of people-. - Oh, Harvard. - Oh, Harvard. And there are a couple of people. who have actually been really, I think making a mistake by getting very Harvard sounding. by being like, I've had statisticians look at this.

and they think your methodology is a joke. and like pointing out and this case wasn't that important. And that scholar wasn't that scholar. Like one of the arguments against one of the scholars. that we counted against them for punishing. was that that wasn't a very famous or influential scholar. And I'm kind of like, so your your argument seems to be snobbery. like essentially that like. you're not understanding our methodology for one thing. And then you're saying that actually. that scholar wasn't important enough to count.

And by the way, Harvard, by the way, Harvard... - This is the Harvard camera. - Even if we took all of your arguments as true, even if we decided to get rid of those two professors, you would still be in negative numbers. You would still be dead last, you would still be after Georgetown and Penn. and neither of those schools are good for freedom of speech. - I should say, the bottom five. is the University of Pennsylvania, like you said, Penn, the University of South Carolina, Georgetown University, and Fordham University.

- All very well earned. They have so many bad cases at all of those schools. - What's the best way to find yourself in the bottom five. if you are a university? What's the fastest way to that negative, to that zero? - A lot of deplatforming. When we looked at the bottom five, 81% of attempts to get speakers deplatformed. were successful at the bottom five. There were a couple of schools, I think Penn included, where every single attempt, every time a student like objected,

a student group objected to that speaker coming, they canceled this speech. And I think Georgetown was 100% success rate. I think Penn had 100% success rate. I think Harvard did stand up for a couple, but mostly people got deplatformed there as well. - So how do you push back on deplatforming? Well, who would do it? Is it other students? Is it faculty? Is it the administration? What's the dynamics of pushing back, of basically, 'cause I imagine some of it is culture,

but I imagine every university has a bunch of students. who will protest basically every speaker. And it's a question of how you respond to that protest. - Well, here's the dirty little secret. about like the big change in 2014. and FIRE and me and Haidt have been very clear. that the big change that we saw on campus. was that for most of my career, students were great on freedom of speech. They were the best constituency for free speech, absolutely unambiguously until about 2013, 2014.

And it was only in 2014 where we had these very, kind of sad for us experience. where suddenly students were the ones. advocating for deplatforming and new speech codes. kind of in a similar way that they had been doing in say. like the mid eighties for example. But here's the dirty little secret. It's not just the students. It's students and administrators. Sometimes only a handful of them though. working together to make, to create some of these problems. And this was exactly what happened at Stanford.

when Kyle Duncan, a fifth circuit judge tried to speak at my alma mater. and a fifth of the class showed up to shout him down. It was a real showing of what was going on. That 10 minutes into the shout down. of a fifth circuit judge, and I keep on emphasizing that. 'cause I'm a constitutional lawyer, fifth circuit judges are big deals. They're one level below the Supreme Court. About a fifth of the school shows up to shout him down. After 10 minutes of shouting him down, an administrator, a DEI administrator gets up.

with a prepared speech that she's written, that's a seven minute long speech. where she talks about free speech, maybe the juice isn't worth the squeeze. And we're at this law school. where people could learn to challenge these norms. So it's clear that there was coordination. amongst some of these administrators. And from talking to students there, they were in meetings, extensive meetings for a long time. They show up, do a shout down, then they take an additional seven minutes. to lecture the speaker on free speech.

The juice of free speech, not being worth the squeeze. And then for the rest of it, it's just constant heckling after she leaves. This is clearly and something very similar, happened a number of times at Yale. where it was very clearly administrators. were helping along with a lot of these disruptions. So I think every time there is a shout down at a university, the investigation should be first and foremost, did administrators help create this problem?

Did they do anything to stop it? Because I think a lot of what's really going on here. is the hyper bureaucratization of universities. with a lot more ideological people. who think of their primary job. as basically like policing speech more or less. They're encouraging students, sorry, they're encouraging students. who have opinions they like to do shout downs. and that's why they really need to investigate this. And it is at Stanford, the administrator. who gave the prepared remarks.

about the juice not being worth the squeeze. She has not been invited back to Stanford, but she's one of the only examples I can think of. when these things happen a lot. where an administrator clearly facilitated something. that was a shout down or deplatforming. or resulted in a professor getting fired. or resulted in a student getting expelled. where the administrator has got off scot free. or probably in some cases even gotten a promotion. - And so a small number of administrators, maybe even a single administrator.

could participate in the encouraging and the organization. and thereby empower the whole process. - And that's something I've seen. throughout my entire career. And the only thing, it's kind of hard. to catch this sort of in the act, so to speak. And that's one of the reasons why it's helpful for people. to know about this. There was this amazing case, this was at University of Washington. and we actually featured this in a documentary made in 2015. that came out in 2015, 2016 called, "Can We Take A Joke?". And this was when we started noticing.

something was changing on campus. We also heard that comedians were saying. that they couldn't use their good humor anymore. This was right around the time that Jerry Seinfeld. and Chris Rock said that they didn't wanna play on campuses. 'cause they couldn't be funny. But we featured a case of a comedian. who wanted to do a musical. called "The Passion of the Musical". making fun of "The Passion of the Christ". with the stated goal of offending everyone, every group equally. It was very much a South Park mission.

And it's an unusual case. because we actually got documentation of administrators. buying tickets for angry students and holding an event. where they trained them to jump up in the middle of it. and shout "I'm offended.". Like, they bought them tickets, they sent them to this thing. with the goal of shouting it down. Now, unsurprisingly, when you send an angry group of students. to shut down a play, it's not gonna end at just, "I'm offended.".

And it got heated. There were death threats being thrown. And then the Pullman Washington police told Chris, Chris Lee, the guy who made the play, that they wouldn't actually protect him. Now it's not every day. you're gonna have that kind of hard evidence. that actually seeing the administrators be so brazen. that they recorded the fact. that they bought them tickets and sent them. But I think a lot of that stuff is going on. And I think it's a good excuse.

to cut down on one of the big problems. in higher education today, which is hyper bureaucratization. - In your experience, is there a distinction. between administrators and faculty. in terms of perpetrators of these kinds of things? So if we got rid of all, like Harvey's talked about. getting rid of a large percentage of the administration, does that help fix the problem? Or is the faculty also... - [Greg] Yeah. - A small percent of the faculty. also part of the encouraging in the organization. of these kind of cancel models?

- Yeah. And that's something that has been profoundly disappointing. is that when you look at the huge uptick. in attempts to get professors fired that we've seen. over the last 10 years and actually over the last 22 years, as far as far back as our records go. At first they were overwhelmingly led by administrators, attempts to get professors punished. And that was most, you know, I'd say that was my career up until 2013. was fighting back at administrative excesses.

Then you start having the problem in 2014. of students trying to get people canceled. And that really accelerated in 2017. And the number, so one way, one thing that makes it easier to document. are the petitions to get professors fired or punished. and how disproportionately that those actually do. come from students. But another big uptick has been fellow professors. demanding that their fellow professors get punished. And that to me-. - [Lex] Makes me really sad. - It's kind of shameful. You shouldn't be proud of signing the petition.

to get your fellow professor. and what's even more shameful. is that this has almost become a cliche within FIRE. when someone is facing one of these cancellation campaigns. as a professor. I would get letters from some of my friends saying, "I am so sorry this has happened to you.". And these were the same people. who publicly signed the petition to get them fired. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Integrity. Integrity is an important thing in this world.

And I think some of it, I'm so surprised people don't stand up more for this. 'cause there's so much hunger for it. And if you have the guts as a faculty or an administrator. to really stand up with eloquence, with rigor, with integrity, I feel like it's impossible for anyone to do anything. because there's such a hunger, it's so refreshing.

- [Greg] Yeah. - I think everybody agrees that freedom of speech. is a good thing. - [Greg] Oh, I don't, I don't. - Well, okay, sorry, sorry. - [Greg] I don't agree. - The majority of people even at the universities. that there's a hunger, but it's almost like this kind of nervousness around it. because there's a small number of loud voices. that are doing the shouting. So I mean, again, that's where great leadership comes in. And so, presidents of universities. should probably be making clear declarations of like,

this is a place where we value the freedom of expression. - And this was all throughout my career, a president, a university president who puts their foot down early. and says, "Nope, we are not entertaining firing this professor. We are not expelling this student.". It ends the issue often very fast. Although sometimes, and this is where you can really tell. the administrative involvement, students will do things. like take over the president's office. and then that takeover will be catered by the university.

People will point this out sometimes as being kind of like, oh, it was clearly it, like my friend Sam Abrams, when they tried to get him fired at Sarah Lawrence College. And that was one of the times that it was used. as kind of like, oh, this was hostile to the university. because the students took over the president's office. And I'm like, no, they let them take over the president's office. And I don't know if that was one of the cases. in which the takeover was catered, but if there was ever a sort of like a sign. that's kind of like,

yes, this is actually really quite friendly. - Well in some sense, like protesting and having really strong opinions, even like ridiculous, crazy, wild opinions is a good thing. It's just, it shouldn't lead to actual firing. or deplatforming of people. Like it's good to protest. It's just not good for university to support that. and take action based on it. - And this is one of those like tensions in First Amendment. that actually I think has a pretty easy release essentially. You absolutely have the right to devote your life.

to ending freedom of speech and ridiculing it as a concept. And there are people who really can come off. as very contemptible about even the philosophy. of freedom of speech. And we will defend your right to do that. We will also disagree with you. And if you try to get a professor fired, we'll be on the other side of that. Now I think you had Randy Kennedy who I really, I love him. I think he's a great guy. But he criticized us for our deplatforming database.

as saying, this is saying. that students can't protest speakers. I'm like, okay, that's silly. We FIRE as an organization, have defended the right to protest all the time. We are constantly defending the rights to protestors. not believing that the protestors. have the right to say this would like basically, that would be punishing the speakers. We're not calling for punishing the protestors. But what we are saying is you can't let the protestors win. if they're demanding someone be fired. for their freedom of speech.

- So the line there is between protestors protesting. and the university taking action based on the protest. - Yeah, exactly. And of course shout downs, that's just mob censorship. And that's something where the university, the way you deal with that tension in First Amendment law. is essentially kind of like the one positive duty. that the government has. The negative duty, the thing that it's not allowed to do is censor you. But it's positive duty is that. if I want to say awful things or for that matter,

great things that aren't popular in a public park, you can't let the crowd just shout me down. You can't allow what's called a heckler's veto. - Heckler's veto. That's so interesting. 'cause I feel like that comes into play. on social media somehow. because there's this whole discussion about censorship. and freedom of speech. But to me, the carrot question is almost more interesting. once the freedom of speech is established.

is how do you incentivize high quality debate. and disagreement? - I'm thinking a lot about that. And that's one of the things we talk about. in "Canceling of the American Mind". is arguing towards truth. And that cancel culture is cruel, it's merciless, it's anti-intellectual, but it also will never get you anywhere in your truth. And you are going to waste so much time. destroying your opponents. in something that can actually never get you to truth. through the process of course, of you never actually get directly at truth, you just chip away at falsity.

- Yeah. But everybody having a megaphone on the internet. with anonymity, it seems like it's better than censorship, but it feels like there's incentives on top of that. you can construct to incentivize better discourse. - [Greg] Yeah. - It's like to incentivize somebody. who puts a huge amount of effort. to make even the most ridiculous arguments, but basically ones that don't include. any of the things you highlight.

in terms of all the rhetorical tricks. to shut down conversations, just make really good arguments for whatever, it doesn't matter if it's communism, for fascism, whatever the heck you want to say. - [Greg] Yeah. - But do it with scale, with historical context, with steelman on the other side, all those kind of elements. - We try to make three major points in the book. One is just simply cancel culture is real. It's a historic era and it's on a historic scale.

The second one is you should think of cancel culture. as part of a rhetorical, as a larger lazy, rhetorical approach to what we refer to as winning arguments. without winning arguments. And we mean that in two senses. without having winning arguments. or actually having won arguments. And we talk about all the different, what we call rhetorical fortresses, that both the left and the right have. that prevent you from... That allow you to just dismiss the person. or dodge the argument.

without actually ever getting to the substance. of the argument. Third part is just, how do we fix it. But the rhetorical fortress stuff. is actually something I'm very passionate about. because it interferes with our ability to get at truth. and it wastes time and frankly it also can, since cancel culture is part of that rhetorical tactic, it can also ruin lives. - It would actually be really fun. to talk about this particular aspect of the book. And I highly recommend if you're listening to this. go pre-order the book now. When does it come out?

- October 17th. - Okay, "The Canceling of the American Mind.". Okay, so in the book. you also have a list of cheap rhetorical tactics. that both the left and the right use. And then you have a list of tactics. that the left uses and the right uses. So there's the rhetorical, the perfect rhetorical fortress that the left uses. and the efficient rhetorical fortress that the right uses. - Yeah. - First one is whataboutism. - Yeah.

- Maybe we can go through a few of them. that capture your heart in this particular moment. as we talk about it. And if you can describe examples of it. or if there's aspects of it that you see there. especially effective. So whataboutism is defending against criticism. of your side by bringing up the other side's. alleged wrongdoing. - I wanna make little cards of these, of all of these tactics. and start using them on X all the time. because they are so commonly deployed.

And whataboutism I put first for a reason. - You know it'd be an interesting idea. to actually integrate that into Twitter slash X. where people instead of clicking heart, they can click which of the rhetorical tactics this is. And then 'cause you know, there's actually community notes. I don't know if you've seen on X there, people can contribute notes and it's quite fascinating. It works really, really well. But to give it a little more structure. - Yeah. - That's a really interesting method actually.

- Yeah I actually, when I was thinking about ways that X could be used. to argue towards truth, I wouldn't wanna have it. so that everybody would be bound to that. But I think that, I imagine it almost being like a stream within X. that was truth focused, that agrees to some additional rules. on how they would argue. - Man, I would love that. Where like there's, in terms of streams that intersect and could be separated, the shit talking one where people just enjoy talking shit.

- [Greg] Okay, go for it man. - And then there's like truth, and then I mean. then there's humor, then there's like good vibes. Like, I'm not like somebody who absolutely needs good vibes. all the time, but sometimes-. - [Greg] It's nice to have. - It's nice to just log in. and not have to see like the drama, the fighting, the bickering, the cancellations, the mobs, all of this. It's good to just see, that's why I go to Reddit r aww. or like one of the cute animals ones.

where there's cute puppies and kittens and it's like. - I just wanna see Ryan Reynolds singing with Will Ferrell. I mean like. - Sometimes that's all you need. - I need that in my heart. - Yeah. Not all the time, just a little bit. And right back to the battle for truth. Okay, so whataboutism. - Whataboutism, yeah, that's everywhere. when you look at it, when you look at Twitter, when you look at social media in general, and the first, what we call the obstacle course is basically time tested, old fashioned, argumentative dodges that everybody uses.

And whataboutism is just bringing up something, like someone makes an argument like Biden is corrupt. and then someone says, well, Trump was worse. You know, like, and that's not an illegitimate, argument to make back, but it does, it seems to happen every time someone makes an assertion, someone just points out some other thing that was going on. and it can get increasingly attenuated. from what you're actually trying to argue. And you see this all the time on social media. and it's kind of, you know, I was a big fan of John Stewart's Daily Show,

but an awful lot of what the humor was. and what the tactic was for arguing. was this thing over here. It's like, oh, I'm making this argument. about this important problem. Oh actually, there's this other problem over here. that I'm more concerned about. and let's pick on the right here. So January 6th, watching everybody arguing about CHOP, like the occupied part of Seattle. or the occupied part of Portland. And basically trying to like,

oh, you're bringing up the riot on January 6th. And by the way, I live on Capitol Hill, so believe me, I was very aware of like how scary and bad it was. My dad grew up in Yugoslavia and that was a night. where we all ate dinner in the basement. 'cause I'm like, oh, when this shit goes down, eat in the basement. It was genuinely scary. And people would try to deflect from January 6th. being serious by actually making the argument that, oh, well there are crazy, horrible things happening all over the country.

Riots that came from some of the social justice protests. And of course the answer is, you can be concerned about both of these things. and find them both problems. But if I'm arguing about CHOP, someone bringing up January 6th isn't super relevant to it. Or if I'm arguing about January 6th, someone bringing up the riots in 2020, isn't that helpful. - We took a long dark journey from whataboutism. - Yeah. - And related to that is strawmanning and steelmanning. So misrepresenting the perspective.

of the opposing perspective and this is something also. I guess is very prevalent. and it's difficult to do the reverse of that, which is steelmanning requires empathy, it requires eloquence, it requires understanding, actually doing the research and understanding. the alternative perspective. - My wonderful employee, Angel Eduardo has something that he calls star-manning. And I find myself doing this a lot, it's nice to have two immigrant parents.

because I remember being in San Francisco in the weird, kind of like ACLU slash Birmingham kind of cohort. and having a friend there who was an artist. who would talk about hating Kansas. And that was his metaphor for middle America. is what he meant by it. But he was kind of proud of the fact that he hated Kansas. And I'm like, you gotta understand, I still see all of you a little bit as foreigners.

and think about like, change the name of Kansas to Croatia, change the name of Kansas to some-. That's what it sounds like to me. And the star-manning idea, which I like, is the idea of being like, so you're saying that you really hate. your dominant religious minority. And that's when you start actually detaching yourself. a little bit from it. How typical, America is exceptional in a number of ways. But some of our dynamics are incredibly typical.

It's one of the reasons why like. when people start reading Thomas Sowell, for example, they start getting hooked. because one of the things he does. is he does comparative analysis of the country's problems. and points out that some of these things. that we think are just unique to the United States. exist in 75% of the rest of the countries in the world. Francis Fukuyama, the book that I'm reading right now, "The Origins of the Political Order". actually does this wonderful job of pointing out. how we're not special in a variety of ways. This is actually something that's very much on my mind. And Fukuyama of course, it's a great book.

It's stilted a little bit in its writing. because his term for one of the things he's concerned about. what destroys societies is repatrimonialization. which is the reversion to societies. in which you favor your family and friends. And I actually think a lot of what I'm seeing. in the United States, it makes me worried.

that we might be going through a little bit of a process. of repatrimonialization. And I think that's one of the reasons. why people are so angry. I think the prospect that we very nearly seem. to have an election that was gonna be, Jeb Bush versus Hillary Clinton. It's like, are we a dynastic country now? Is that what's kind of happening? But also it's one of the reasons. why people are getting so angry about legacy admissions, about like how much certain families. seem to be able to keep their people in the upper classes.

of the United States perpetually. And believe me, like we were poor when I was a kid. and I got to go to one of the fancies. I got to go to Stanford and I got to see how people, they treat you differently in a way that's almost insulting. Like basically, like suddenly to a certain kind of person, I was a legitimate person. And I look at how much America relies on Harvard, on Yale to produce its...

I'm gonna use a very Marxist sounding term, ruling class. And that's one of the reasons. why you have to be particularly worried. about what goes on at these elite colleges. and these elite colleges. with the exception University of Chicago and UVA. do really badly regarding freedom of speech. And that has all sorts of problems. It doesn't bode well for the future. of the protection of freedom of speech. for the rest of the society. - So can you also empathize there with the folks.

who voted for Donald Trump? Because as precisely that as a resistance. to this kind of momentum of the ruling class, this royalty that passes on the rule. from generation to generation. - I try really hard to empathize with, to a degree everybody. and try to really see where they're coming from. and the anger on the right, I get it.

I mean, like, I feel like the book, so "Coddling the American Mind" was a book. that could be sort of a crowd pleaser to a degree, partially because we really meant what we said. in the subtitle that these are good intentions. and bad ideas that are hurting people. And if you understand it and read the book, you can say it's like, okay, this isn't anybody being malicious, this is people trying to protect their kids. They're just doing it in a way that actually can.

actually lead to greater anxiety, depression, and strangely eventually pose a threat to freedom of speech. But in this one, we can't be quite. Oh, I haven't even mentioned my brilliant co-author. Rikki Schlott, a 23 year old genius. She's amazing. I started working with her when she was 20, who's my co-author on this book. So when I'm saying we, I am talking about me and Rikki. - [Lex] She's a libertarian. - [Greg] Libertarian journalist. - [Lex] And a journalist. Yeah, a brilliant mind.

- But we can't actually write this in a way that's too kind. because cancelers aren't kind. There's a cruelty and a mercilessness about it. I mean, I started getting really depressed this past year. when I was writing it, and I didn't even want to tell my staff. why I was getting so anxious and depressed. It's partially because I'm talking about people who will, in some of the cases we're talking about, go to your house, target your kids. So that's a long-winded way of saying the... I kind of can get what sort of drives the right nuts.

to a degree in this. I feel like they're constantly feeling like. they're being gaslit. Elite education is really insulting to the working class. Like part of the ideology that is dominant right now. kind of treats almost 70% of the American public, we developed this a little bit. in the perfect rhetorical fortress. Like they're to some way illegitimate. and not worthy of respect or compassion.

- Yeah, the general elitism that radiates. self fueling elitism that radiates from the people. that go to these institutions. - And what's funny is the elitism has been repackaged. as a kind of... It masquerades as kind of infinite compassion. that essentially it's based in a sort of very, to be frank, overly simple ideology and over simple explanation.

of the world and breaking people into groups. and judging people on how oppressed they are. on the intersection of their various identities. And it came to that I think initially. and it had appeal from a compassionate core, but it gets used in a way that can be very cruel, very dismissive, compassionless, and allows you to not take seriously. most of your fellow human beings. - It's really weird how that happened.

Maybe you can explore why a thing. that kind of sounds good at first... - [Greg] Yeah. - Can become such a cruel weapon. of canceling and hurting people and ignoring people. I mean, this is what you described. with a perfect rhetorical fortress. which is a set of questions. Maybe you can elaborate. on what the perfect rhetorical fortress is. - Yeah, so the perfect rhetorical fortress. is the way that's been developed on the left.

to not ever get to someone's actual argument. I wanna make a chart, like a flow chart of this, about like, here's the argument and here is this perfect fortress. that will deflect you every time. from getting to the argument. And I started to notice this certainly. when I was in law school, that there were lots of different ways. you could dismiss people and perfect rhetorical fortress, step one, and I can attest to this. because I was guilty of this as well, that you can dismiss people. if you can argue that they're conservative.

They don't have to be conservative to be clear. You just have to say that they are. So I never read Thomas Sowell because he was a right winger. I didn't read Camille Paglia. because someone had convinced me she was a right winger. There were lots of authors that, and when I was in law school, among a lot of very bright people, it really was already an intellectual habit. that if you could designate something conservative, then you didn't really have to think about it. very much anymore or take it particularly seriously.

That's a childish way of arguing. But nonetheless, I engaged in it. It was a common tactic. I even mentioned in the book, there was a time when a gay activist friend. who is I think decidedly to my left, but nonetheless had that pragmatic experience. of actually being an activist, said something like, "well, just 'cause someone's conservative. doesn't mean they're wrong.". And I remember feeling kind of scandalized at some level. of just being like, wow, isn't that the whole thing. what we're saying is that they're just kind of bad people.

with bad ideas? - You can just throw, oh, that guy's a right winger, you can just throw that. - Boop, don't have to think about you anymore. - Yeah, if you're popular enough, it can be kind of sticky and it's weird because-. - Because it's effective, that's why it keeps on getting used. Essentially, it should have hit someone. because I have a great liberal pedigree, everything from working at the ACLU to doing refugee law. in Eastern Europe. I was part of an environmental mentoring program.

for inner city high school kids in DC. I can defend myself as being on the left. But I hate doing that because there's also part of me. that's like, "okay, so what?". Like, are you really saying that. if you can magically make me argue or convince yourself. that I'm on the right, that you don't have to listen to me anymore? And again, that's arguing like children. And the reason why this has become so popular.

is because even among, or maybe especially among elites, that it works so effectively. as a perfect weapon that you can use uncritically. If I can just prove you're on the right, I don't have to think about you. It's no wonder that suddenly you start seeing people. calling the ACLU right wing. and calling the New York Times right wing. because it's been such an effective way. to delegitimize people as thinkers. Stephen Pinker, who's on our board of advisors, he refers to academia as being the left pole,

that essentially it's a position from that point of view, everything looks to its right. It looks as if it's on the right. But once it becomes a tactic that we accept, and that's one of the reasons why I'm more on the left. But I think I'm left of center liberal. Rikki is more conservative libertarian. And initially I was kind of like, should I be really be writing something. with someone who's more on the right? And I'm like, absolutely I should be. I have to actually live up to what I believe on this stuff.

because it's ridiculous that we have this primitive idea. that you can dismiss someone as soon as you claim. rightly or wrongly that they're on the right. - Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like you were recently called right wing. FIRE, maybe you by association because of that debate. - Oh, the LA Times. - [Lex] The LA Times. - Oh fun, let's talk about the LA Times. - So yes, there's an article, there's a debate. I can't wait to watch it. 'cause I don't think it's available yet to watch on video.

You have to attend in person. I can't wait to see it. But FIRE was in part supporting and then LA Times. wrote a scathing article about... that everybody in the debate was basically right, leaning right. - Okay, so much to unpack there. Bari Weiss has this great project, the Free Press, I've been very impressed. It's covering stories that a lot of the media. right or left isn't willing to cover. And we hosted a debate with her.

and we wanted to make it. as fun and controversial as possible. So FIRE and the, The Free Press hosted a debate. "Did the sexual revolution fail?". So the debate was really exciting, really fun. The side that said that sexual revolution wasn't a failure. That Grimes and Sarah Haider were on one won. it it was nice meaty, thoughtful night. and there was a review of it that was just sort of scathing. about the whole thing.

And it included a line saying that FIRE, which claims to believe in free speech, but only defends viewpoints it agrees with. I can't believe that even made it into the magazine. 'cause it's not just calling us 'cause of course, the implication was that we're right wing which we're not. Actually the staff leans decidedly more to the left. than to the right. But we also defend people all over the spectrum. all the time. Like that's something that even the most minimal. Google search would've solved. So like we've been giving LA Times some heat on this.

because it's like, yeah, if you said, in my opinion they're right wing, we would've argued back, you know, saying, well here's the following 50,000 examples. of us not being, but when you actually make the factual claim. that we only defend opinions we agree with, first of all, there's no way for us to agree with opinions. because we actually have a politically diverse staff. who won't even agree on which opinions are good. and what opinions we have. But yeah, at one time when someone did something like this.

and they were just being a little bit flippant. about kind of like free speech being fine, I did a 70 tweet long thread, just being like, "Hey, do you really think this is fine?". I decided not to do that on this particular one. But the nice thing about it is it demonstrated two parts. of the book "Canceling of the American Mind" if not more. One of them is dismissing someone. 'cause they're conservative. and because that was the implication. Don't have to listen to FIRE 'cause they're conservative. But the other one is something, a term that I invented.

specifically for the way people argue on Twitter, which is hypocrisy projection. Hi, I'm a person. who only caress about one side of the political fence. and I think everyone else is a hypocrite. And by the way, I haven't done any actual research on this, but I assume everyone else is a hypocrite. And you see this happen all the time. and this happens to FIRE a lot where someone will be like, where is FIRE on this case? And we're like, we are literally quoted in the link you just sent. but didn't actually read.

Or it's like, where's FIRE on this? It's like, here's our lawsuit about it from six months ago. So it's a favorite thing. And also John Stewart Daily Show like the whataboutism, and the kind of like idea that these people. must be hypocrites is something that greatest comedy. But as far as actually a rhetorical tactic. that will get you the truth, just assuming that your opponent. or just accusing your opponent of always being a hypocrite. is not a good tactic for truth.

But by the way, it tends to always come from people. who aren't actually consistent on free speech themselves. - So hence the projection. But basically not doing the research. about whether the person is or isn't a hypocrite. and assuming others or a large fraction of others reading it. will also not do the research. And therefore this kind of statement. becomes a kind of truthiness without a grounding. in actual reality. - Yeah. - It breaks down that barrier between what is and isn't true. because if the mob says something is true,

it takes too much effort to correct it. - And there are three ways I wanna respond to this, which is just giving example after example. of times where we defended people on both sides. of every major issue. Basically every major issue, whether it's Israel Palestine, whether it's terrorism, whether it's gay marriage, we have been, abortion. We have defended both sides of that argument. The other part, and I call these the orphans of the culture war. I really want to urge the media.

to start caring about free speech cases. that actually don't have a political valence. that are actually just about good old fashioned. exercise of power against the little guy or little girl. or little group on campus or off campus for that matter. 'cause these cases happen, a lot of our litigation are just little people, just regular people being told that they can't protest, that they can't hold signs. And then the last part of the argument. that I want people to really get is like, yeah, and by the way, right wingers get in trouble too,

and there are attacks from the left. And you should take those seriously too. You should care when Republicans get in trouble, you should care when California has a DEI program. that requires this, California community colleges. has a DEI program, a policy. that actually requires even chemistry professors. to work in different DEI ideas. from intersectionality to anti-racism into their classroom, into their syllabus, et cetera. This is a gross violation of economic freedom.

It is as bad as it is to tell professors what they can't say. like we fought and defeated in Florida. It's even worse to tell them what they must say. That's downright totalitarian and we're suing against this. And what I'm saying is that, when you're dismissing someone. for just being on the other side of the political fence, you are also kind of claiming, making a claim. that none of these cases matter as well. And I want people to care about censorship.

even if it's against people they hate. - Censorship is censorship. If we can take that tangent briefly with DEI, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. What is the good and what is the harm of such programs? - DEI, I know people who are DEI consultants. Actually I have a dear friend who I love very much. who does DEI, absolutely decent people.

What they want to do. is create bonds of understanding, friendship, compassion among people who are different. Unfortunately, the research on what. a lot of DEI actually does. is oftentimes the opposite of that. And I think that it's partially a problem. with some of the ideology. that comes from critical race theory, which is a real thing by the way. That informs a lot of DEI, that actually makes it something. more likely to divide than unite.

We talk about this in "Coddling of the American Mind". as the difference between common humanity identity politics. and common enemy identity politics. And I think that, I know some of the people that I know. who do DEI, they really want it to be common humanity identity politics. But some of the actual ideological assumptions. that are baked in can actually cause people. to feel more alienated from each other. Now, when I started at FIRE, my first cases involved 9/11 and it was bad.

Professors were getting targeted, professors were losing their jobs. for saying insensitive things about 9/11. And both from the right and the left actually. in that case, actually sometimes a lot more from the right. And it was really bad. And about five professors lost their jobs. That's bad. Five professors over a relatively short period of time. being fired for a political opinion. That's something that would get written up. in any previous decades.

We're now evaluating like how many professors. have been targeted for cancellation. between 2014 and middle of this year, July of 2023. We're at about, well over 1,000 attempts. to get professors fired or punished, usually driven by students and administrators, often driven by professors unfortunately as well. About two thirds of those. result in the professor being punished in some way. Everything from having their article removed to suspension,

et cetera. About one fifth of those. result in professors being fired. So right now, it's almost 200, it's around 190 professors being fired. So I want to give some context here. The Red Scare is generally considered. to have been from 1947 to 1957. It ended by the way, in '57 when it finally became clear. thanks to the First Amendment, that you couldn't actually fire people for their ideologies.

Prior to that, a lot of universities thought they could. This guy is a very doctrinaire or communist, they can't be just persuaded, I'm gonna fire them. They thought they actually could do that. And it was only '57 when the law was established. So like right now, these are happening in an environment. where freedom of speech, academic freedom. are clearly protected at public colleges. in the United States. and we're still seeing these kind of numbers. During the Red Scare, the biggest study that was done of what was going on.

I think this came out in like '55. and the evaluation was that there was about 62 professors. fired for being communists and about 90 something professors. fired for political views overall. That usually is reported as being about 100. So 60, 90, 100 depending on how you look at it, I think the number is actually higher. But that's only because of hindsight. Like what I mean by hindsight is we can look back.

and we actually find there were more professors. who were fired as time reveals. We're at 190 professors fired. And I still have to put up with people saying. this isn't even happening. And I'm like, in the nine and a half years. of cancel culture, 190 professors fired. In the 11 years of the Red Scare. probably somewhere around 100, maybe probably more. The number's gonna keep going up. But unlike during the Red Scare. where people could clearly tell something was happening,

the craziest thing about cancel culture. is I'm still dealing with people who are saying. this isn't happening at all. And it hasn't been subtle on campus. And we know that's a wild under count by the way, because when we surveyed professors, 17% of them said that they had been threatened. with investigation or actually investigated. for what they taught, said or their research. And one third of them. said that they were told by administrators. not to take on controversial research.

So like extrapolating that out, that's a huge number. and the reason why you're not going to hear. about a lot of these cases. is because there are so many different conformity. inducing mechanisms in the whole thing. And that's one of the reasons why the idea. that you'd add something like requiring a DEI statement. to be hired or to get into a school. under the current environment is so completely nuts. We have had a genuine crisis of academic freedom. over the last, particularly since 2017 on campuses. We have very low viewpoint diversity to begin with.

And under these circumstances, administrators just start saying, you know what the problem is, we have too much heterogeneous thought. We're not homogeneous enough. We actually need... We need another political litmus test, which is nuts. And that's what a DEI statement effectively is. 'cause there's no way to actually fill out a DEI statement. without someone evaluating you on your politics. It's crystal clear. We even did an experiment on this. Nate Honeycutt,

he got something like almost like 3,000 professors. to participate evaluating different kinds of DEI statements. And one was basically like the standard. kind of identity politics, intersectionality one, one was about viewpoint diversity, one was about religious diversity. and one was about socioeconomic diversity. And as far as where my heart really is, it's that we have too little socioeconomic diversity, particularly in elite higher ed, but also in education period. So the experiment was,

had large participation really interestingly set up. and it tried to model the way a lot of these DEI policies. were actually implemented. And one of the ways these have been implemented. and I think in some of the California schools. is that administrators go through the DEI statements. before anyone else looks at them. and then eliminates people off the top. depending on how they feel about their DEI statements. And the one on viewpoint diversity,

I think like half of the people who reviewed it. would eliminate it right out. And I think it was basically. the same for religious diversity. It was slightly better, like 40% for socioeconomic diversity. But that kills me. Like the idea that kind of like, yeah, that actually is the kind of diversity that I think we need. a great deal more of in higher education. It's not hostile to the other kinds by the way, but the idea that we need more people from the bottom, of three quarters of American society,

like in higher education, I think should be something we could all get around. That the only one that really succeeded. was the one that spouted back. exactly the kind of ideology. that they thought the readers would like. Which is like, okay, there's no way this couldn't be a political litmus test. We've proved that it's a political litmus test. and still school after school. is adding these to its application process. to make schools still more ideologically homogenous. - Why does that have a negative effect? Is it because it enforces a kind of group think.

where people are afraid, start becoming afraid to sort of think and speak freely, liberally about whatever? - Well one, it selects for people who tend to be, farther to the left in a situation. where you already have people, a situation where universities do lean decidedly that way. But it also establishes essentially a set of sacred ideas.

that if you're being quizzed on whether. what you've done to advance anti-racism, how you've been conscious of intersectionality, it's unlikely that you'd actually get in if you said, "by the way, I actually think these are dubious concepts. I think they're thin. I think they're philosophically not very defensible.". Basically like if your position was, I actually actually reject these concepts. as being over simple. You're not gonna get in and I think that...

The person that I always think of that wasn't a right winger. that would be like "go to hell". if you made him fill one of these things out, it's Feynman. I feel like if you gave one of these things. to Richard Feynman, he'd be like, he would tear it to pieces. - [Lex] Yeah. - And then not get the job. - Yeah, there's some element of it. that creates this hard to pin down fear. So you said like the firing,

the thing I wanted to say is, firing 100 people or 200 people, the point is even firing one person, I've just seen it, it can create this quiet ripple effect of fear. - Oh, of course. - That single firing of a faculty-. - [Greg] Oh absolutely. - Has a ripple effect across tens of thousands of people, of educators, of who is hired, what kind of conversations are being had, what kind of textbooks are chosen, what kind of self censorship and different flavors of that. is happening.

It's hard to measure that. - Yeah I mean, when you ask professors about, are they intimidated under the current environment, the answer is yes. And particularly conservative professors, already reporting that they're afraid for their jobs. in a lot of different cases. - You have a lot of good statistics in the book. Things like self-censorship. One provided with a definition of self-censorship, at least a quarter of students. said they self-censor fairly often or very often. during conversations with other students, with professors.

and during classroom discussions. 25%, 27% and 28% respectively. A quarter of students also said that they are more likely. to self-censor on campus now at the time they were surveyed. than they were when they first started college. So sort of colleges. kind of instilling this idea of censorship, self-censorship. - [Greg] And back to the Red Scare comparison, and this is one of the interesting things. about the data as well, is that that same study that I was talking about,

the most comprehensive study of the Red Scare, there was polling about whether or not professors. were self-censoring due to the fear of the environment. And 9% of professors said that they were self-censoring. their research and what they were saying. 9% is really bad. That's almost a 10th of professors. saying that they were actually, their speech was chilled. When we did this question. for professors on our latest faculty survey, when you factor together,

we asked them are they self-censoring in their research, are they self-censoring in class, are they self-censoring online, et cetera. It was 90% of professors. So the idea that we're actually in an environment. that is historic in terms of like how scared people are. actually of expressing controversial views, I think that it's the reason. why we're gonna actually be studying this in 50 years. The same way we studied the Red Scare. The idea that this isn't happening. is we'll just be correctly viewed as insane.

- So maybe we can just discuss the leaning, the current leaning of academia towards the left. which you describe in various different perspectives. So one, there's a voter registration ratio chart. that you have by department, which I think is interesting. Can you explain this chart. and can you explain what it shows? - [Greg] Yeah, when I started FIRE in 2001, I didn't take the viewpoint diversity issue as seriously. I thought it was just something that right wingers. complained about. But I really started to get what happens.

when you have a community with low viewpoint diversity. And actually a lot of the research. that I got most interested in. was done in conjunction with the great Cuss Sunstein. who writes a lot about group polarization. and the research on this is very strong, that essentially when you have groups. with political diversity, and you can see this actually in judges for example, it tends to produce reliably more moderate outcomes.

Whereas groups that have low political diversity. tend to sort of spiral, spiral off in their own direction. And when you have a super majority of people. from just one political perspective, that's a problem for the production of ideas. It creates a situation where there are sacred ideas. And when you look at some of the departments, I think the estimate from the Crimson. is that Harvard has 3% conservatives. But when you look at different departments, there are elite departments. that have literally no conservatives in them.

And I think that's an unhealthy intellectual environment. The problem is definitely worse as you get more elite, we definitely see more cases of lefty professors. getting canceled at less elite schools. It gets worse as you get down from the elite schools. That's where a lot of the one third of attempts. to get professors punished that are successful, do come from the right. and largely from off-campus sources. And we spend a lot of time talking about that.

in the book as well. It's something that I do think is underappreciated, but when it comes to the low viewpoint diversity, it works out kind of like you'd expect to a degree. Economics is what? Four to one or something like that. It's not as bad. But then when you start getting into some of the humanities, like there are departments that there are literally none. - Is there a good why to why did the universities. university faculty administration move to the left? - Yeah.

I don't love, and this is an argument that you'll sometimes run into. on the left, just the argument that well people on the left. are just smarter. And it's like, okay, it's interesting because at least the research. as of 10 years ago was indicating. that if you dig a little bit deeper into that, a lot of the people who do consider themselves on the left. tend to be a little bit more libertarian. Pinker wrote a fair amount about the idea. that we're just smarter. It is not an opinion I'm at least bit comfortable with.

I do think that departments take on momentum. when they become a place where you're like, wow, it'd be really unpleasant for me to work in this department. if I'm the token conservative. And I think that takes on a life of its own. There are also departments where a lot of the ideologies. kind of explicitly leftist. You look at education schools, a lot of the stuff that is actually left over. from what is correctly called critical race theories.

is present. And you end up having that in a number of the departments. And it would be very strange to be in many departments, a conservative social worker professor. I'm sure they exist, but there's a lot of pressure to shut up if you are. - So the process on the left of cancellation, as you started to talk about. with the perfect rhetorical fortress, the first step is dismiss a person.

if you can put a label of conservative on them, you can dismiss 'em in that way. What other efficient. or what other effective dismissal mechanisms are there? - Yeah, we have a little bit of fun with demographic numbers. and I run this by height. and I remember him being kind of like, don't include the actual percentage. I'm like, no, we need to include the actual percentages. 'cause people are really bad at estimating. what the demographics of the US actually looks like,

both the right and the left in different ways. So we put it in the numbers and we talk about, being dismissed for being white. or being dismissed for being straight. or being dismissed for being male. And you can already dismiss people for being conservative. And so we give examples in the book. of these being used to dismiss people. and oftentimes on topics not related. to the fact that they're a male. or whether or not they're a minority. And then we get to, I think it's like layer six and we're like, surprise guess what? You're down to 0.4% of the population.

and none of it mattered. because if you have the wrong opinion, even if you're in that 0.4%. of the most intersectional person who ever lived. and you have the wrong opinion, you're a heretic. and you actually probably will be hated even more. And the most interesting part. of the research we did for this. was just asking every prominent black conservative. and moderate that we knew personally. Have you been told that you're not really black. for an opinion you had? Every single one of them was like, oh yeah.

And it's kind of funny 'cause it's like oftentimes. white lefties telling them that's like, oh, do you consider yourself black? John McWhorter talked about having a reporter. when he showed that he dissented. from some of what he described as kind of like woke racism. in his book "Woke Ideas.". The reporter actually is like, so do you consider yourself black? He's like, what? He was like, what, are you crazy? Of course I do. And Coleman Hughes had one of the best quotes on it. He said, "I'm constantly being told that the most important thing.

to how legitimate my opinion is, is whether or not I'm black. But then when I have a dissenting opinion, I get told I'm not really black.". So, perfect. Like, there's no way to falsify this argument. That investigation really struck me. - And you lay this out really nicely in the book, that there is this process of saying, are you conservative? Yes, you can dismiss the person. Are you white? Dismiss the person. Are you male? You can dismiss the person.

There's these categories that make it easier. for you to dismiss a person's ideas based on that. And like you said, you end up in that tiny percentage. and you could still dismiss. - And it's not just dismiss. We talk about this from a practical standpoint, the way the limitations on reality. And one of 'em is time and a lot of cancel culture. as cultural norms, as this way of winning arguments. without winning arguments is about running up the clock. because by the time you get down to the bottom.

or actually even you get a couple of steps. into the perfect rhetorical fortress. and where has the time gone? You probably just give up. trying to actually have the argument. and you never get to the argument in the first place. - And all of these things are pretty sticky on social media. - Social media practically invented. the perfect rhetorical fortress. - So that each one of those stages has a virality to it. - [Greg] Yeah. - So it could stick. and then it can get people really excited. - It allows you to feel outraged and superiority.

- Yeah because of that, at the scale of the virality allows you. to never get to the actual discussion of the point. So, but it's not just the left, it's the right also, the efficient rhetorical fortress. So something to be proud of on the right. It's more efficient. - [Greg] Yeah. - So you don't have to listen to liberals. and anyone can be labeled a liberal. if they have a wrong opinion. I've seen liberal and left and leftist all used. in the same kind of way.

That's leftist nonsense. You don't have to listen to experts. Even conservative experts, if they have the wrong opinion, you don't have to listen to journalists, even conservative journalists. if they have the wrong opinion. And among the MAGA wing there's a fourth proposition, there's a fourth provision. You don't need to listen to anyone who isn't pro-Trump. - Yeah, and we call it efficient. because it eliminates a lot of people. you probably should listen to at least sometimes, like we point out sometimes like how cancel culture.

can interfere with faith and expertise. So we get kind of being a little suspicious of experts, but at the same time, if you follow that and you follow it mechanically. and I think everybody in the US. probably has some older uncle who exercises some of these. It is a really efficient way to sort of wall yourself off. from the rest of the world and dismiss, at least some people you really should be listening to. - The way you laid it out. It made me realize that.

we just take up so much of our brain power with these things. it's literally time-. - We could be solving things. - And you get like, you kind of exhaust yourself through this process. of being outraged based on these labels. And you never get to actually, there's almost not enough time for empathy. for like looking at a person thinking, well maybe they're right. 'cause you're so busy categorizing them. And it's fascinating. - What's the fun in empathy? And I mean, what's so interesting about this. is that so much societal energy.

seems to be spent on these nasty, primal desires where essentially a lot of it's like, please tell me who I'm allowed to hate. Where can I legitimately be cruel? Where can I actually exercise. some aggression against somebody? And it seems to sometimes be just finding. new justifications for that and it's an understandable, human failing that sometimes can be used to defend justice, but again, it will never get you anywhere near the truth.

- One interesting case that you cover, about expertise is with COVID. - [Greg] Yeah. - So how did cancel culture come into play. on the topic of COVID? - Yeah, I think that COVID was a big blow to people's faith. and expertise and cancel culture played a big role in that. I think one of the best examples of this. is Jennifer Sey at Levi's. She is a lovely woman. She was a vice president at Levi's. She talked about actually potentially. to be the president of Levi's jeans.

And she was a big advocate for kids. And when they started shutting down the schools, she started saying, this is going to be a disaster. This is going to hurt the poor. and disadvantaged kids the most. We have to figure out a way to open the schools back up. And that was such a heretical point of view. And the typical kind of cancel culture wave took over. because we had all sorts of petitions for her to be fired. and that she needed to apologize and all this kind of stuff.

And you know, she was offered I think like a million dollar severance, which she wouldn't take 'cause she wanted to tell the world. what she thought about this. and that she wanted to continue saying. that she hadn't changed her mind. That this was a disaster for young people. And now that's kind of the conventional wisdom. and the research is quite clear. that this was devastating. to particularly disadvantaged youths. Like people understand this now as being okay.

She was probably right. But one of the really sad aspects of cancel culture. is people forget why you are canceled. and they just know they hate you. There's this lingering kind of like, well I don't have to take them seriously anymore. By the way, did you notice they happened to be right. on something very important? Now, one funny thing about freedom of speech, freedom of speech wouldn't exist. if you didn't also have the right. to say things that were wrong. because if you can't engage in ideaphoria, if you can't actually speculate,

you'll never actually get to something that's right. in the first place. But it's especially galling when people who were right. were censored and never actually get the credit. that they deserve. - Well this might be a good place to ask. a little bit more about the freedom of speech. And so you said that included in the freedom of speech. is to say things that are wrong. What is your perspective on hate speech? - Hate speech is the best marketing campaign for censorship.

and it came from academia of the 20th century. And that when I talked about the anti-free speech movement, that was one of their first inventions. There was a lot of talk about critical race theory. and being against critical race theory and FIRE will sue. if you say that people can't advocate for it or teach it. or research it because you do absolutely have the right. to pursue it academically.

However, every time someone mentions CRT, they should also say the very first project. of the people who founded CRT, Richard Delgado, Mary Metsuda, et cetera, was to create this new category of unprotected speech. called hate speech. And to get it banned, the person who enabled this drift of course. was Herbert Marcuse in 1965. basically questioning whether or not free speech. should be a sacred value on the left. And he was on the losing side for a really long time. The liberals, the way I grew up that was basically.

being pro-free speech was synonymous with being a liberal, but that started to be etched away on campus. And the way it was was with the idea of hate speech. that essentially, oh, but we can designate particularly bad speech. as not protected and who's gonna enforce it? Who's gonna decide what hate speech actually is? Well it's usually overwhelmingly can only happen.

in an environment of really low viewpoint diversity. because you have to actually agree. on what the most hateful and wrong things are. And there's a bedrock principle. it's referred to this in a great case about flag burning. in the First Amendment. that I think all the world could benefit from. You can't ban speech just 'cause it's offensive, it's too subjective. It's one of the reasons why these kind of codes. have been more happily adopted in places like Europe. where they have a sense that there's like a modal German.

or a modal Englishman. And I think this is offensive and therefore I can say that. this is wrong. In a more multicultural, in a genuinely more diverse country. that's never actually had an honest thought. that there is a single kind of American. There's never been, like we had the idea of Uncle Sam, but that was always kind of a joke. Boston always knew it wasn't, Richmond always knew it wasn't. Georgia always knew it wasn't, you know, Alaska. Like we've always been a hodgepodge. and we get in a society that diverse.

that you can't ban things. simply 'cause they're offensive. And that's one of the reasons. why hate speech is not an unprotected category of speech. And I go further, my theory on freedom of speech. is slightly different. than most other constitutional lawyers. And I think that's partially because some of the ways, some of these theories, although a lot of them are really good, are inadequate, they're not expansive enough. And I sometimes call my theory the pure informational theory.

of freedom of speech or sometimes when I wanna be fancy. the lab and the looking glass theory. And it's most important tenet is that. if the goal is the project of human knowledge, which is to know the world as it is, you cannot know the world as it is. without knowing what people really think. and what people really think. is an incredibly important fact to know. So every time you're actually saying "you can't say that". you're actually depriving yourself of the knowledge.

of what people really think. You're causing what Timur Kuran. who's on our board of advisor, it's called preference falsification. You end up with an inaccurate picture of the world. Which by the way, in a lot of cases, because there are activists. who want to restrict more speech, they actually tend to think that people are more prejudice. than they might be. And actually these kind of restrictions, there was a book called "Racial Paranoia". that came out about 15 years ago. that was making the point that the imposition. of some of these codes can sometimes make people.

think that the only thing holding you back. from being a raging racist are these codes. So it must be really, really bad. It can actually make all these things worse. And one, which we talk about in the book, one very real practical way it makes things worse. is when you censor people, it doesn't change their opinion, it just encourages them to not share it with people. who will get them in trouble. So it leads them to talk to people. who they already agree with. and group polarization takes off. So we have some interesting data in the book.

about how driving people off of Twitter, for example, in 2017 and then again I think in 2020, driving people to gab led to greater radicalization. among those people. It's a very predictable force. Censorship doesn't actually change people's minds. and it pushes them in directions that actually. by very solid research. will actually make them more radicalized. So yeah, I think that the attempt to ban hate speech,

it doesn't really protect us from it, but it gives the government such a vast weapon to use. against us that we will regret giving them. - Is there a ways to sort of, to look at extreme cases to test this idea out a little bit? So if you look on campus, what's your view about allowing say, white supremacists on campus to do speeches? KKK. - I think you should be able to study what people think.

and I think it's important that we actually do. So I think that, let's take for example QAnon. Yeah, QAnon is wrong, but where did it come from? Why did they think that? What's the motivation? Who taught them it? Who came up with these ideas? This is important to understand history, it's important to understand modern American politics. And so if you put your scholar hat on, and which you should be curious about kind of everyone,

about where they're coming from. Daryl Davis, who I'm sure you're familiar with, part of his goal was just simply to get to know. where people were coming from. And in the process he actually deradicalized. a number of clans members. when they actually realized that this black man. who would befriended them actually was compassionate, was a decent person. They realized all their preconceptions were wrong. So it can have a deradicalizing factor by the way, but even when it doesn't, it's still really important to know. what the bad people in your society think.

Honestly, in some ways it's for your own safety, it's probably more important to know. what the bad people in your society actually think. - I personally, I don't know what you think about that, but I personally think that freedom of speech. in cases like that, like KKK on campus. can do more harm in the short term, but much more benefit in the long term. 'cause you can sometimes argue for like, this is going to hurt in the short term. But I mean, Harvey said this, like consider the alternative. - Yeah.

- Because you've just kind of made the case for like, this potentially would be a good thing. even in the short term and it often is I think. especially in a stable society like ours. with a strong middle class, all these kinds of things. where people have like the comforts. to reason through things. But you know, to me it's like, even if it hurts in the short term, even if it does create more hate in the short term, the freedom of speech has this really beneficial thing, which is it helps you move towards the truth,

the entirety of society towards a deeper, more accurate understanding of life on earth, of society, of how people function, of ethics, of metaphysics, of everything. And that in the long term is a huge benefit. It gets rid of the Nazis in the long term, even if it adds to the number of Nazis in the short term. - Yeah. Well, and meanwhile, just for, and the reality check part of this is. people always bring up, what about the Klan on campus? I'm like, they're never invited.

I haven't seen a case where they've been invited. Usually the Klan argument gets thrown out. when people are trying to excuse. and that's why we shouted down Ben Shapiro. And that's why you can't have Bill Maher on campus. And it's like, okay. And it's a little bit of that whataboutism again. about being like, well that thing over there is terrible. and therefore this comedian shouldn't come. - So I do have a question maybe by way of advice. - Sure.

- You know, interviewing folks and seeing this, like a podcast has a platform in deciding who to talk to. or not, that's something I have to come face to face with. on occasion. My natural inclination before I started the podcast. was I would talk to anyone. and including people which I'm still interested in, who are current members of the KKK. And to me there's a responsibility to do that with skill.

And that responsibility. has been weighing heavier and heavier on me. because you realize how much skill it actually takes. because you have to know, to understand so much. because I've come to understand. that the devil is always going to be charismatic. The devil's not gonna look like the devil. And so you have to realize, you can't always come to the table with a deep compassion. for another human being. You have to have like 90% compassion.

and another 90% deep historical knowledge. about the context of the battles. around this particular issue. And that takes just a huge amount of effort. But I don't know if there's thoughts you have about this, how to handle speech in a way without censoring. bringing it to the surface, but in a way that creates more love in the world. - I remember Steve Bannon got disinvited. from the New Yorker festival and Jim Carrey freaked out.

and all sorts of other people freaked out. and they got disinvited. and I got invited to speak on Serash about this. And I was saying like, listen, you don't have people to your conference. because you agree with them. Like we have to get out of this idea. because they were trying to make it sound like. that's an endorsement of Steve Bannon. Like that's nonsense. Like if you actually look at the opinions. of all the people who are there, you can't possibly endorse all the opinions.

that all these other people who are gonna be there. actually have. And in the process of making that argument, and also of course, the very classic, it's very valuable to know what Steve Bannon thinks. You should be curious about that. and I remember someone arguing back saying, well, would you want someone to interview Jihadi? And I'm like, because at the moment, like it was at the time when ISIS. was really going for it. And I was like, would you not want to go to a talk.

where someone was trying to figure out. what makes some of these people tick? But that changes your framing that essentially it's like no, it's curiosity. is the cure for a lot of this stuff. and we need a great deal more curiosity. and a lot less unwarranted certainty. - And there's a question of like, how do you conduct such conversations? - [Greg] Sure. - And I feel deeply underqualified. - Who do you think is especially good at that? - I feel like documentary filmmakers. usually do a much better job. And the best job is usually done by biographers.

So the more time you give to a particular conversation. like really deep thought and historical context. and studying the people, how they think, looking at all different perspectives. Looking at the psychology of the person, upbringing, their parents, their grandparents, all of this. The more time you spend with that, the better the quality of the conversation is. because you get to understand, you get to really empathize with the person, with the people he or she represents.

and you get to see the common humanity. All of this. Interviewers often don't do that work. - [Greg] Yeah. - So like the best stuff I've seen is interviews. that are part of a documentary. But even now, documentaries are like, there's a huge incentive to do as quickly as possible. There's not an incentive to really spend time. with the person. - There's a great new documentary about Floyd Abrams. that I really recommend. We did a documentary about Ira Glasser called "Mighty Ira". which was my video team and my protege,

Nico Purino and Chris Malby and Aaron Reese put it together. and it just follows the life and times of Ira Glasser, the former head of the ACLU. - If you could just linger on that, that's a fascinating story. - [Greg] Oh, yeah. - Who's Ira? - Ira's amazing. Ira, he wasn't a lawyer. He started working at the NYCLU, in the New York Civil Liberties Union back in. I think the sixties. I think Robert Kennedy. recommended that he go in that direction.

and he became the president of the ACLU right at the time. that they were suffering from defending the Nazis. at Skokie and Nico and Aaron and Chris put together this. and they'd never done a documentary before. and it came out so, so well, and it tells the story of the Nazis in Skokie. It tells the story of the case around it, it tells the story of the ACLU at the time. and what a great leader Ira Glasser was. And one of the things that's so great.

is like when you get to see the Nazis in Skokie, they come off like the idiots that you would expect them to. There's a moment when the rally's not going very well. and the leader gets flustered. and it almost seems like he's gonna like shout out. kind of like, "you're making this Nazi rally into a mockery". so it showed how actually allowing. the Nazis to speak at Skokie. kind of took the wind out of their sails. Like the whole movement, everybody was kind of,

it all kind of dissolved after that. because they looked like racist fools that they were, even "Blues Brothers" made jokes about them. And it didn't turn into the disaster. that people thought it was going to be. just by letting them speak. And Ira Glassier. Okay, so he has this wonderful story. about how Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. and how there was a moment when it was seeing someone, an African American literally on their team.

and how that really got 'em excited. about the cause of racial equality. and that became a big part of what his life was. And I just think of that as such a great metaphor. is expanding your circle. and seeing more people as being quite literally on your team. is the solution to so many of these problems. And I worry that one of the things that is absolutely. just a fact of life in America is like. we do see each other more as enemy camps. as opposed to people on the same team.

And that was actually something in the early days, like me and Will Creeley, the legal director of FIRE wrote about the forthcoming. free speech challenges of everyone being on Facebook. And one thing that I was hoping. was that as more people were exposing more of their lives, we had realized a lot of these things we knew intellectually. like kids go to the bar and get drunk and do stupid things. That when we started seeing the evidence. of them doing stupid things. that we might be shocked at first,

but then eventually get more sophisticated and be like, well, come on. People are like that. That never actually really seemed to happen. That I don't think, I think that there are plenty of things. we know about human nature. and we know about dumb things people say, and we've made it into an environment. where there's just someone out there. waiting to be kind of like, oh, remember that dumb thing you said when we were 14. Well I'm gonna make sure. that you don't get into your dream school because of that. - That's offense archeology.

- [Greg] That's not my term though. - Oh, okay. - [Greg] It's a great term. - Well that's a great term. We steal from the best. Digging through someone's past comments. to find a speech that hasn't aged well. - And that one's tactical, like that one isn't just someone not being empathetic. They're like, I'm gonna punish you for this. and that's one of the reasons why I got depressed. writing this book. because there's already people who don't love me. because of "Coddling of the American Mind". usually based on a misunderstanding of what we actually said. in "Coddling of the American Mind" but nonetheless, but on this one, like I'm calling out people for being very cruel.

in a lot of cases, but one thing that was really scary. about studying a lot of these cases. is that once you have that target on your back, what they're gonna try to cancel you for could be anything. They might go back into your old books, find something that you said in 1995, do something where essentially. it looks like it's this entire other thing, but really what's going on is they didn't like your opinion,

they didn't like your point of view on something. and they're gonna find a way that from now on. anytime your name comes up, it's like, oh, remember this thing I didn't like about 'em. And it's, again, it's cruel. It doesn't get you anywhere closer to the truth. but it is a little scary to stick your neck out. - Okay, in terms of solutions. I'm gonna ask you a few things. So one, parenting. - Yeah, five and seven year old. - So I'm sure you've figured it all out then. - Oh God, no. - From a free speech perspective.

- [Greg] Yeah. - From a free speech culture perspective, how to be a good parent. - Yeah. I think the first quality you should be cultivating. in your children if you want to have a free speech culture. is curiosity and an awareness of the vastness. that will always be unknown. And getting my kids excited about the idea that's like, we're gonna spend our whole lives learning about stuff. and it's fast and exciting and endless.

and we'll never make a big dent in it, but the journey will be amazing, but only fools think they know everything. And sometimes dangerous fools at that. So giving the sense of intellectual humility early on. being also, saying things that actually do sound. kind of old fashioned. I say things to my kids like, "listen, if you enjoy study and work, both things that I very much enjoy, I do for fun,

your life is going to feel great. and it's going to feel easy.". So some of those old fashioned virtues. are things I try to preach. Counterintuitive stuff like outdoor time playing, having time that are not intermediated experiences. is really important. And little things. Like I talk about in the book. about when my kids are watching something that's scary. and I'm not talking about like zombie movies, I'm talking about like a cartoon.

that has kind of a scary moment. and saying that they want to turn the TV off. And I talk to them and I say, "listen, I'm gonna sit next to you and we're gonna finish this show. and I want you to tell me. what you think of this afterwards.". And I sat next to my sons and by the end of it, every single time when I asked them, "was that as scary as you thought it was gonna be?". And they was like, "no daddy, that was fine.". And I'm like, "that's one of the great lessons in life. The fear that you don't go through.

becomes much bigger in your head. than actually simply facing it.". That's one of the reason why I'm fighting back. against this culture. I'd love for all of our kids to be able to grow up. in an environment where people give you grace. and accept the fact that sometimes. people are gonna say things that piss you off. Take seriously the possibility they may be wrong. and be curious. - Well I have hope that the thing you mentioned, which is because so much of young people's stuff. is on the internet. that they're going to give each other a break.

'cause then everybody's cancel worthy. - Generation Z hates cancel culture the most. And that's another reason why it's like people. still claiming this is even happening. It's kind of like, no, you actually can ask, kids what they think of cancel culture and they hate it. - Yeah. Well I kind of think of them as like the immune system. that's like, that's the culture waking up to like, no, this is not a good thing. - I am glad though. I mean, I'm one of those kids who, is really glad that I was a little kid in the eighties. and a teenager in the nineties. because having everything potentially online,

it's not an upbringing I envy. - Well because you can also do the absolutest free speech. I like leaning into it. where I hope for a future. where a lot of our insecurities, flaws, everything's out there. And to be raw, honest with it, I think that leads to a better world. 'cause the flaws are beautiful.

I mean, the flaws is the basic ingredients. of human connection. - Robert Wright, he wrote a book on Buddhism. and I talked about trying to use social media. from a Buddhist perspective and like as if you're-. As if it's the collective unconscious meditating. and seeing those little like angry bits. that are trying to cancel you or get you to shut up. And just kind of like letting them go the same way. you're supposed to watch your thoughts kind of trail off. - I would love to see that, like visualized,

whatever the drama going on, just seeing the sea of it, of the collective consciousness just processing this. and having a little like panic attack. and just kind of like breathing it in. - Looking at the little sort of hateful angry voices. kind of pop up and be like, okay, there you are. And I'm still focused on that thing. because that is one of the things is okay, yeah, actually this is probably late in the game. to be giving my grand theory on this stuff.

(Lex laughs). - Never too late. - So what I was studying in law school, when I ran out of First Amendment classes, I decided to study censorship during the Tudor Dynasty. because that's where we get our ideas of prior restraint. that come from the licensing of the printing press, which was something that Henry VIII was the first to do. Where basically the idea was. that if you can't print anything in England, unless it's with these, your Majesty approved printers,

it will prevent heretical work. and anti-Henry VIII stuff from coming out. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty efficient idea. if nothing else. And I always, so he started getting angry. at the printing press around 1521. and then passed something that required prints to be. along with parliament in 1538. And I always think of that as kind of like where we are now. because back then we had the original disruptive technology,

writing was probably that. But the next one, which was the printing press, which was absolutely calamitous. And I say calamitous on purpose because in the short term. the witch hunts went up like crazy. because the printing press allowed you to get that manual. on how to find witches that the religious wars went crazy. It led to all sorts of distress, misinformation, nastiness. And Henry VIII was trying to put the genie back.

in the bottle. You know, he was kind of like, I want to use this for good. Like I feel like it could be used, but he was in an unavoidable period of epistemic anarchy. There's nothing you can do. to make the period after the printing press came out. to be a non-disruptive, non-crazy period. other than like absolute totalitarianism. and destroy all the print presses, which simply was not possible in Europe. So I feel like that's kind of like where we are now.

That disruption came from adding, I think several million people to the European conversation. and then eventually the global conversation. But eventually it became the best tool for disconfirmation. for getting rid of falsity, for spotting bad ideas. And it's the benefits, the long-term benefits of the printing press. are incalculably great. And that's what gives me some optimism for where we are now. with social media.

'cause we are in that unavoidably anarchical period. And I do worry. that there are attempts in states to pass things. to try to put the genie back in the bottle. Like if we ban TikTok or we say that nobody under 18. can be on the internet unless they have parental permission. We're going at something that no amount of sort of top-down. is going to be able to fix it. We have to culturally adapt to the fact of it. in ways that make us wiser that actually.

and allow it potentially to be that wonderful engine. for disconfirmation that we're nowhere near yet, by the way. But think about it, additional millions of eyes on problems, thanks to the printing press. helped create the scientific revolution, the enlightenment, the discovery, ignorance. We now have added billions of eyes and voices. to solving problems. and we're using them for cat videos and canceling.

- But those are just the early days of the printing press. - Exactly. - It all starts with the cats and the canceling. Is there something about X, about Twitter, which is perhaps the most energetic source of cats. and canceling. - It seems like the collective unconscious of the species. I mean like, it's one of these things where the tendency. to want to see patterns in history. sometimes can limit the actual batshit crazy experience.

of what history actually is. because yes, we have these nice comforting ideas. that it's gonna be like last time, we don't know, it hasn't happened yet. And I think how unusual Twitter is. because I think of it as like the... Because people talk about writing and mass communications. and as being expanding the size of our collective brain, but now we're kind of looking at our collective brain.

in real time and it's filled just like our own brains. with all sorts of like little crazy things that pop up. and appear like virtual particles kind of all over the place. of people reacting in real time to things. There's never been anything even vaguely like it. And it can be at its worst, awful to see. At its best sometimes seeing people. like just getting euphoric over something going on. and cracking absolutely brilliant immediate jokes.

At the same time, it can even be a joyful experience. I feel like, and I live in a neighborhood now on X. where I mostly deal with people that I think. are actually thoughtful, even if I disagree with 'em. and it's not such a bad experience. I occasionally run into those other sort of. what I call neighborhoods on X, where it's just all canceling, all nastiness. and it's always kind of an unpleasant visit to those places. I'm not saying the whole thing. needs to be like my experience,

but I do think that the reason why people. keep on coming back to it. is it reveals raw aspects of humanity. that sometimes we prefer to pretend don't exist. - Yeah but also, it's totally new, like you said. It's just the virality, the speed, the news travels, the opinions travel that the battle over ideas travels. - The battle over information too. - Yeah, of what is true and not, lies travel. The old Mark Twain thing pretty fast on the thing. And then it changes your understanding.

of how to interpret information. - It can also stress you out to no end. Remember to get off it sometimes. The stats are pretty bad on mental health with young people. And I'm definitely in the camp of people who think. that social media is part of that. I understand the debate, but I'm pretty persuaded that one of the things. that it hasn't been great for mental health, I mean of people is just constantly being exposed. - Yeah, absolutely. I think it's possible to create social media.

that makes a huge amount of money, makes people happy. To me, like it's possible to align the incentives. So in terms of, yeah, making teenagers, making every stage of life, giving you long-term fulfillment and happiness. with your physical existence outside of social media. and on social media. Helping you grow as a human being, helping challenge you just in the right amount. and just the right amount of cat videos, whatever gives this full rich human experience. I think it's just a machine learning problem.

It's like, it's not easy... - [Greg] Interesting. - To create a feed. So the easiest feed you could do. is like maximize engagement. - [Greg] Yeah. - But that's just like a really dumb algorithm. It's like for the algorithm to learn enough about you. to understand what will make you truly happy. as a human being to grow long term, that's just a very difficult problem to solve. - Have you ever watched "Fleabag?". It's absolutely brilliant. A British show and it sets you up.

One of the reasons why like people love it so much. is it sets you up that you're watching like a raunchy. British "Sex in the City" except the main character. is the most promiscuous one. And it's like okay. And you kind of roll your eyes a little bit. and it's kind of funny and it's kind of cute. and kind of spicy. And then you realize that the person. is actually kind of suffering and having a hard time. and it gets deeper and deeper as the show goes on. And she will do these incredible speeches.

about tell me what to do. Like I know there's experts out there, I know there's knowledge out there. I know there's an optimal way to live my life, so why can't someone just tell me what to do? And it's this wonderfully like, accurate I think aspect of human desire. that what if something could actually tell me. the optimal way to go. 'cause I think there is a desire. to give up some amount of your own freedom and discretion.

in order to be told to do the optimally right thing. But that path scares me to death. - Yeah, but see the way you phrased it, that scares me too. So there's several things. One, you could be constantly distracted in a TikTok way. by things that keep you engaged. So removing that. and giving you a bunch of options constantly. and learning from long-term. what results in your actual long-term happiness. So like which amounts of challenging ideas are good for you.

For somebody like me. - Four. Just four. - But there is a number like that for you, Greg. For me, that number is pretty high. I love debate. I love the feeling of like realizing, holy shit, I've been wrong. - Yes! - But like, I would love for the algorithm. to know that about me and to help me, but always giving me options. if I want to descend into Cat videos and so on.

- But the educational aspect of it. - [Lex] Yes, educational, yes. - Like the idea of kind of like both going the speed. that you need to and running as fast as you can. - Yeah. I mean there's the whole flow thing. I just feel YouTube recommendation for better or worse. if used correctly, it feels like it does a pretty good job. whenever I just refuse to click on stuff. that's just dopamine based. and click on only educational things, the recommendation it provides are really damn good. So I feel like it's a solvable problem,

at least in the space of education, of challenging yourself. but also expanding your realm of knowledge. and all this kind of stuff. - And I'm definitely more in the, we're in an inescapably anarchical period. and require big cultural adjustments. and there's no way. that this isn't gonna be a difficult transition. - Is there any specific little or big things. that you'd like to see X do, Twitter do? - I have lots of thoughts on that. With the printing press, an extra millions of eyes. on any problem can tear down any institution,

any person or any idea and that's good in some ways. 'cause a lot of medieval institutions needed to be torn down. and some people did too. And a lot of ideas needed to be torn down. Same thing is true now. An extra billions of eyes on every problem. can tear down any person, idea or institution. And some, again, some of those things needed to be torn down, but it can't build yet. We are not at the stage that can build yet. But it has shown us how thin our knowledge was. It's one of the reasons why we're also aware. of the replication crisis. It's one of the reasons why we're also aware.

of how kind of shoddy our research is. How much our expert class is arrogant in many cases. But people don't wanna live in a world. where they don't have people that they respect. and they can look at. And I think what's happening possibly now, but will continue to happen. is people are gonna establish themselves. as being high integrity. That they will always be honest. I think you are establishing yourself. as someone who is high integrity, where they can trust that person.

FIRE wants to be the institution that people can come to. It's like if it's free speech, we will defend it, period. And I think that people need to have authorities. that they can actually trust. And I think that if you actually had a stream. that maybe people can watch in action. but not flood with stupid cancel culture stuff. or dumb cat memes, where it is actually a serious discussion, bounded around rules. No perfect rhetorical fortress, no efficient rhetorical fortress, none of the the BS ways we debate.

I think you could start to actually create something. that could actually be a major improvement. in the speed with which we come up with new better ideas. and establish and separate truth from falsity. - Yeah, if it's done well, it can inspire a large number of people. to become higher and higher integrity. and it can create integrity as a value to strive for. - [Greg] Yeah. - And like, there's been projects throughout the internet. that have done incredible job of that, but have been also very flawed. Like Wikipedia is an example of a big leap forward.

in doing that. - [Greg] It's pretty damn impressive. What's your overall take? I mean, I'm mostly impressed. - So there's a few really powerful ideas. for the people who edit Wikipedia. One of which is each editor kind of for themselves declares, I'm into politics. and I really kind of am a left-leaning guy, so I really shouldn't be editing political articles. 'cause I have bias. - [Greg] Oh, that's great.

- They declare their biases and they often do a good job. of actually declaring the biases, but they'll still, like, they'll find a way to justify themselves. Like something will piss them off. and they want to correct it. 'cause they love correcting untruth into truth, but the perspective of what is true or not. is affected by their bias. - [Greg] Truth is hard to know. - And it is true that there is a left-leaning bias. on the editors of Wikipedia. So for that, what happens is on articles, which I mostly appreciate.

that don't have a political aspect to them, scientific articles or technical articles, they can be really strong, even history just describing the facts of history. that don't have a subjective element. Strong. Also just using my own brain, I can kind of filter out. if it's something about January 6th or something like this, I know I'm going to be like, I'm not, whatever's going on here, I'm gonna kind of read it.

But most I'm gonna look to other sources. I'm gonna look to a bunch of different perspectives on it. It's going to be very tense. There's probably going to be some kind of bias, maybe some wording will be such, which is where Wikipedia does its thing. The way they word stuff will be biased, the choice of words. But the Wikipedia editors themselves are so self-reflective. They literally have articles describing these very effects. of how you can use words to inject bias.

in all the ways that you talk about it. - [Greg] That's healthier than most environments. - It's incredibly healthy, but I think you could do better. One of the big flaws of Wikipedia to me. that community notes on X does better. is the accessibility of becoming an editor. It's difficult to become an editor. and it's not as visible the process of editing. So I would love, like you said, a stream. for everyone to be able to observe this debate.

between people with integrity. of when they discuss things like January 6th, of very controversial topics. to just see how the process of the debate goes. as opposed to being hidden in the shadows, which it currently is in Wikipedia. You can access that. It's just hard to access. and I've also seen how they will use certain articles. like on certain people, like articles about people I've learned to trust. less and less because they literally will use those. to make personal attacks.

And this is something you write about, they'll use descriptions of different controversies. to paint a picture of a person. that doesn't, to me at least, feel like an accurate representation of the person. And it's like writing an article about Einstein, mentioning something about theory of relativity. and then saying that he was a womanizer and abuser. and like controversy, you know? Yeah, he is fine man also, you know, they're not exactly the perfect human in terms of women,

but like there's other aspects to this human. and to capture that human properly, there's a certain way to do it. I think Wikipedia will often lean, they really try to be self-reflective and try to stop this, but they will lean into the drama if it matches the bias. But again, much better than the world, I believe is much better because Wikipedia exists.

But now that we're in these adolescent stages, we're growing and trying to come up. with different technologies, the idea of a stream. is really, really interesting. because you get more and more people into this discourse. that where the value is let's try to get the truth. - Yeah. And that basically, you know, you get little cards for nope wrong, nope wrong. - And the different rhetorical techniques. that are being used to avoid actually discussing. - Yeah. And I think I actually can make it a little bit fun. by getting a limited number of them.

You know, it's kind of like you get three whataboutism cards. - So gamifying the whole thing? Absolutely. - [Greg] Yeah. - Let me ask you about, so you mentioned going into some difficult moments. in your life. - [Greg] Sure. - What has been your experience with depression? What has been your experience getting out of it, overcoming it? - Yeah, I mean the whole thing, the whole journey, with "Coddling of the American Mind" began with me.

at the Belmont Psychiatric facility in Philadelphia. back in 2007. I had called 911 in a moment of clarity. because I'd gone to the hardware store. to make sure that when I killed myself, that it stuck. I wanted to make sure that I had my head wrapped. and everything. So like, if all the drugs I was planning to take didn't work. that I wouldn't be able to claw my way out. It'd been a really rough year. And I always had issues with depression,

but they were getting worse. And frankly, one of the reasons why this cancel culture stuff. is so important to me. is that the thing that I didn't emphasize as much. in "Coddling of the American Mind" which by the way, that description that I give of trying to kill myself. was the first time I'd ever written it down. Nobody in my family was aware of it being like that. My wife had never seen it. And basically the only way I was able to write that. was by doing, you know how you can kind of trick yourself? And I was like, I'm going to convince myself.

that this is just between me and my computer. and nobody will see it. And it's probably now the most public thing. I've ever written. But what I didn't emphasize in that. was how much the culture war. played into how depressed I got. because I was originally the legal director of FIRE, then I became president of FIRE in 2005, moved to Philadelphia where I get depressed. and, I don't have family there. There's something about the town. They don't seem to like me very much. But the main thing was being in the culture world. all the time.

There was a girl that I was dating, I remember, she didn't seem to really approve of what I did. And a lot of people didn't really seem to, and meanwhile, like I was defending people on the left all the time, and they'd be like, oh, that's good that you're defending someone on the left. But they still would never forgive me. for defending someone on the right. and I remember saying at one point, I'm like, listen, I'm a true believer in this stuff. I'm willing to defend Nazis. I'm certainly willing to defend Republicans. And she actually said, I think Republicans might be worse.

And that relationship didn't go very well. And then I've nearly gotten fistfights a couple of times. with people on the right. because they found out I defended people who crack jokes. about 9/11. Like, this happened more than once. And by that time I'm in my twenties, I'm not fist fighting again. But yeah, it was always like that. You see how hypocritical people can be, you can see how friends can turn on you. if they don't like your politics. So I got a early preview of this, of what the culture we were heading into.

by being the president of FIRE and it was exhausting. And that was one of the main things that led me to be, suicidally depressed. At the Belmont Center, if you told me that that would be the beginning. of a new and better life for me, I would've laughed if I could have. You can tell I'm okay if I'm still laughing. And I wasn't laughing at that point. So I got a doctor. and I started doing cognitive behavioral therapy.

I started having all these voices in my head. that were catastrophizing. and it gave overgeneralization and fortune telling, mind reading, all of these things. that they teach you not to do. And what you do in CBT is essentially. something makes you upset and then you just write down. what the thought was. and something minor could happen and your response was,

"well the date didn't seem to go very well. and that's because I'm broken and will die alone.". And you're like, okay, okay, okay. What are the following? That's catastrophizing. That's mind reading, that's fortune telling. That's all this stuff. And you have to do this several times a day forever. I actually need to brush up on it at the moment. And it slowly over time, voices in my head that have been saying horrible, horrible internal talk,

it just didn't sound as convincing anymore. which was really a kind of like subtle effect. Like it was just kind of like, oh wait, I don't buy that I'm broken. Like, that doesn't sound true. That doesn't sound like truth from God. like it used to. And nine months after I was planning to kill myself, I was probably happier than I'd been in a decade. And that was one of the things. that the CBT is what led me to notice. this in my own work, that it felt like administrators.

were kind of selling cognitive distortions, but students weren't buying yet. And then when I started noticing that they seemed to come in. actually already believing in a lot of this stuff, that it would be very dangerous. And that led to "Coddling of the American Mind". and all that stuff. But the thing that was rough. about writing "The Canceling of the American Mind". and I've mentioned this already a couple of times. I got really depressed this past year. because I was studying. There's a friend in there that I talked about. who killed himself after being canceled. I talked to him a week before he killed himself.

And I hadn't actually checked in with him. because he seemed so confident. I thought he would be totally fine. 'cause he had an insensitive tweet in June of 2020. and got forced out in a way. that didn't actually sound as bad. as a lot of the other professors. He actually at least got a severance package. But they knew he'd sue and win 'cause he had before. And so I waited to check in on him. 'cause we were so overwhelmed with the request for help. and he was saying people were coming to his house still. And then he shot himself the next week.

And because everyone knows I'm so public. about my struggles with this stuff, everybody who fights this stuff comes to me. when they're having a hard time. And this is a very hard psychologically taxing business. to be in, and even admitting this right now, like I think about like all the vultures out there, they'll have fun with it. Just like the same way. when my friend Mike Adams killed himself, there were people like celebrating on Twitter. that a man was dead because they didn't like his tweets.

But somehow that made them compassionate. for some abstract other person. So I was getting a little depressed and anxious. And the thing that really helped me more than anything else. was confessing to my staff... Books take a lot of energy. so I knew they didn't want to hear that. Not only was this taking a lot of the boss's time, this was making him depressed and anxious. But when I finally told the leadership of my staff,

people that even though I try to maintain. a lot of distance from, I love very, very much, it made such a difference, because I could be open about that. And the other thing was, have you heard there's conference dialogue? - Oh yes. - It's like an invite only thing. It's Orrin Hoffman runs it, it intentionally tries to get people. over the political spectrum to come together. and have off the record conversations about big issues. And it was nice to be in a room where liberal, conservative,

none of the above were all like, oh, thank God someone's taking on cancel culture. And where it felt like, it felt like maybe this won't be the disaster for me. and my family hat I was starting to be afraid of. It would be that taking the stand. might actually have a happy ending. - One thing that just stands out from that. is the pain of cancellation can be really intense.

And that doesn't necessarily mean losing your job, but just even you can call it bullying, you can call it whatever name, but just some number of people on the internet. And that number can be small. kind of saying bad things to you, that can be a pretty powerful force to the human psyche, which was very surprising. And then the flip side also of that, it really makes me sad how cruel people can be. - Yeah, thinking that your cause is social justice.

in many cases can lead people to think, I can be as cruel as I want in pursuit of this. when a lot of times, it's just a way to sort of vent some aggression, on a person that you think of only as an abstraction. - So I think it's important for people to realize. that like whatever negative energy, whatever negativity you want to put out there.

Like there's real people that can get hurt. Like you can really get people to one, be the worst version of themselves. or to possibly take their own life and it's not as real. - Yeah, well that's one of the things that we do in the book. to really kind of address people who still try to claim. this isn't real, is we just quote, we quote the Pope, we quote Obama, we quote James Carville, we quote Taylor Swift on cancel culture.

And Taylor Swift's quote. is essentially about like how behind all of this, when it gets particularly nasty, there's this very clear, kill yourself kind of undercurrent to it and it's cruel. And the problem is that in an environment so wide open, there's always going to be someone. who wants to be so transgressive and say the most hurtful, terrible thing. But then you have to remember the misrepresentation,

getting back to the old idioms. Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me, has been re-imagined in campus debates. in the most asinine way. People will literally say stuff like, but now we know words can hurt. And it's like, now we know words can hurt? Guys, you didn't have to come up with a special little thing. that you teach children to make words hurt less. if they never hurt in the first place. It wouldn't even make sense the saying, it's a saying that you repeat to yourself.

to give yourself strength. when the bullies have noticed you're a little weird. This might be a little personal. And it helps, it really does help to be like, "listen, okay, assholes are gonna say asshole things. and I can't let them have that kind of power over me.". - Yeah, it still is a learning experience. 'cause it does hurt. - But for the good people out there who actually, just sometimes think that they're venting,

you know, think about it. Remember that there are people on the other side of it. - Yeah, for me it hurts my kind of faith in humanity. I know it shouldn't, but it does sometimes. when I just see people being cruel to each other, it kind of, it floats a cloud over my perspective. of the world that I wish didn't have to be there. - Yeah, that was always my sort of flippant. But the answer to that, if mankind is basically good or basically evil.

being like the biggest debate in philosophy and being like, well the problem first. is there's nothing basic about humanity. - Yeah, what gives you hope about this whole thing, about this dark state that we're in as you describe, how can we get out? What gives you hope that we will get out? - I think that people are sick of it. I think people are sick of not being able to be authentic. And that's really what censorship is.

It's basically telling you don't be yourself. Don't actually say what you think. Don't show your personality, don't dissent, don't be weird, don't be wrong. And that's not sustainable. I think that people have kind of had enough of it, but one thing I definitely wanna say to your audience. is it can't just be up to us arguers to try to fix this. And I think that,

and this may sound like it's an unrelated problem, I think if there were highly respected, let's say extremely difficult ways to prove. that you're extremely smart and hardworking, that cost little or nothing. that actually can give the Harvards. and the Yales of the world a run for their money, I think think that might be the most positive thing. we could do to deal with a lot of these problems and why. I think the fact that we have become a weird America.

with a great anti-elitist tradition. has become weirdly elitist in the respect that we not only, again are our leadership. coming from these few fancy schools, we actually have like great admiration for them. We kind of look up to them. But I think we'd have a lot healthier of a society. if people could prove their excellence. in ways that are coming from completely different streams. and that are highly respected. I sometimes talk about there should be a test. that anyone who passes it. gets like a BA in the humanities, like a super BA.

Something like someone not a GED, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something that like, one out of only a couple, like 100 people can pass. Some other way of actually. of not going through these massive, bloated, expensive institutions that people can raise their hands. and say, "I'm smart and hardworking.". I think that could be an incredibly healthy way. I think we need additional streams for creative people. to be solving problems, whether that's on X.

or someplace else. I think that there's lots of things that technology could do. to really help with this. I think some of the stuff that Sal Khan is working on. at Khan Academy could really help. So I think there's a lot of ways, but they exist largely around coming up. with new ways of doing things. Not just expecting the old things that have. say $40 billion in the bank. that they're going to reform themselves. And I've been picking on Harvard a lot, but I'm gonna pick on 'em a little bit more.

And I talk a lot about class again. And there's a great book called "Poison Ivy" by Evan Mandery. which I recommend to everybody. It's outrageous, it sounds like me in a rant at Stanford, and I think the stat is, elite higher education. has more kids from the top 1%. than they have from the bottom 50 or 60%. depending on the school. And when you look at. how much they actually like replicate class privilege, it's really distressing. So everybody should read "Poison Ivy.".

- And above all else, if you're weird, continue being weird. - [Greg] Yeah, please. - And you're one of the most interesting, one of the weirdest in the most beautiful way. people I've ever met, Greg. Thank you for the really important work you do. - Everybody watch Kid Cosmic. - I appreciate the class, the hilarity that you brought here today, man, this is an amazing conversation. Thank you for the work you do. Thank you, thank you.

And for me, who deeply cares about education, higher education, thank you for holding the MITs and the Harvard's accountable. for doing right by the people that walk their halls. So thank you so much for talking today. Thanks for listening to this conversation. with Greg Lukianoff. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Noam Chomsky. "If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like.

Gables was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked, so was Stalin. If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech. precisely for views you despise.". Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.