Going Rogue: Political Correctness

hi everybody thank you so much for coming to our panel on political correctness I'm volleyball national political correspondent for Time magazine and we have a terrific lineup of panelists assembled here steven pinker professor of psychology at harvard author of many best-selling books including the forthcoming enlightenment now which argues sort of against the grain that things are actually getting better in the world in all kinds of ways Parvathy Santosh Kumar who is the who's based in Chicago the director of network learning for strive together USA which facilitates large-scale social change to advance opportunities in education and social mobility and is here as part of the global shapers program Lonnie bunch the legendary historian and founder of the new Museum of african-american history and culture in Washington DC which I if you've tried to get in you know is the hottest ticket in DC still difficult to get in at but if you do manage to just an incredible experience this was a a I would say lonely crusade that you waged for many many years the dream finally achieved to a spectacular effect and it's also a beautiful building and so young King is based in Singapore and is here is a young global leader she's the founder and CEO of Nobi which is a mobile learning platform for enterprises focused on mobile micro learning so a very cool diverse array of perspectives which is kind of the point of what we are talking about right is how people with diverse perspectives can communicate in this world rather than just tearing each other apart which is a dynamic I'm very familiar with as a political reporter so this this idea of political correctness you know famously you we have had on campuses particularly in the United States campus protest speakers being shouted down and uninvited this these have now become sort of buzzwords microaggressions and trigger warnings and these are these are real things liberal professors that I know at universities all over the United States actually do sort of live in fear of their students and the and the and the micro controversies that can turn into really toxic situations and them and then you have provocateurs like Miley innopolis who have exploited this dynamic to become sort of to deliberately provoke the so-called snowflakes and create these confrontations and if you watch for example FoxNews you would think this is the leading problem facing America the so-called censorship or the the the oppression of free speech by liberal academia I so and I would argue that this dynamic reached it's sort of absurd conclusion in the 2016 election which actually pitted a social justice warrior Hillary Clinton against an internet troll Donald Trump I so so so let's get into this I want to start with we had a sort of perfect case study just this month that Stephen was involved in a media controversy involving involving something you said on a panel in fact I maybe if we're lucky we'll get one today so Stephen do you want to can you tell this story in your own words and of how how it came to be that you are the subject of a headline on the Nazi daily stormer website that said Harvard Jew professor admits the alt-right is right about everything followed by a New York Times article called how social media is making us stupid this is there was a panel at Harvard University excuse me last fall on the topic did political correctness helped elect Trump I every one of the panel argued that it that it did and my own argument was that political correctness by treating certain [Music] as taboo helped stoke the alt-right by giving them the sense that there were truths that the academic establishment could not face up to therefore giving and by alright by the way I don't mean torch carrying skinheads I mean the highly educated mostly men often in tech who find each other on the internet often highly literate these are not knuckle dragging dragging roots of the claim that we saw in Charlotte's folks let me just I just want to be clear what I mean by the alt-right I know they exist because I have seen them among students at Harvard University they tend to stay under the radar because they know that they would be in professional jeopardy but to people who say that there's there aren't any intelligent literate people in the alright I can testify that that is false and what what fits them is the the hidden knowledge that that certain facts are just taboo in respectable intellectual circles and that only increases their own sense of aggrievement and superiority moreover it I think it Stokes the most pernicious interpretations of a number of these facts such as gender differences such as differences between capitalist and communist countries such as differences in statistics on crime among ethnic groups where if they're those beliefs are allowed to fester in isolation then people who are aware of them can come up with the most cannot descend to the most toxic interpretations of them whereas if they are out in the open then they can be countered by arguments that put them in perspective and that don't allow them to become fodder for some of the toxic beliefs of the alt-right so i that the talk that I did was on how we're inadvertently feeding the alt-right and what we ought to do to try to start and then this the remarks when they were put on the YouTube we're then doctored by some of these alt-right sites so that the parts where I said well they've just they discovered these facts that are very true or in the record was not followed by but yes but they have this perverse interpretation of them then that led to a once it was there were some alt-right sites that use this doctored video to rather perversely argue that I was in favor of the outright a movement that I absolutely loathe and which the point of my remarks being what can we do to to combat it then I became the target of internet trolls on the left saying well this shows that he was that picker was sympathetic to the alt right all along and he showed his true colors fortunately it was a controversy that was pretty much confined to social media and a number of excellent articles came out in The Times in The Guardian in a number of blogs setting the record straight so I didn't even have to say anything about it much rather be attacked by social media and defended by the mainstream media than the other way around but it is a sign of how quickly even a kind of a meta discussion of the phenomenon of political correctness can be turned around by some of the political correctness police to further distort and and muddy and indeed make debate stupider as that as the New York Times put it so but I guess the counter-argument to the point that you were making would be do we really need to be discussing whether the Nazis have a point or or whether whether the arguments for racism have any legitimacy to them I mean in this day and age ought there not be points of view that are taboo that don't have a place in discussion and and do we to some extent legitimize those points of view when we engage with them I mean Lonnie maybe I'll open this up to you because so much of your work is about presenting perspectives and points of view and history that perhaps the dominant culture would prefer not to engage with so so what do you think about this question well I mean I think that if you look at this notion of political correctness it's an interesting evolution right it evolved from a way for people who are anonymous and voiceless to demand a freer and fairer country and it's evolved into this weapon that allowed people to sort of tamp down the debates and discussions that are essential for a democracy my notion is as reprehensible as you know the Ku Klux Klan is to me I really feel strongly that we've got to find the space to allow those conversations that have to because I'd look back in the 1960s there were few opportunities for african-americans to raise the issues that were at the core of who they were suddenly you're allowed to have Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Muhammad Ali on campuses at the time when many of the university hierarchy said that's not the direction we want to go so I worry about saying there are certain things that are taboo however I feel strongly that debate and protest are at the heart of what we should be doing so when in the National Museum of african-american history for example some from the alt right left nooses to sort of talk about to suggest that what we were doing was politically correct and my notion was let us take those nooses let us write about it in the op-eds let us use them in the museum and use them as points to basically argue that we need to understand our enemies but we need to be able to contextualize it and that's what I really try to do with my work at 1:00 and Stephen as you mentioned so much of this does take place on social media on the Internet where as you said Bonnie the the the the empowering or the giving of a platform to so many people who previously might have been kept out by the gatekeepers of institutions I is is disturbing - - people perhaps in power so young I'd like to hear your international perspective on this issue for one thing but also as someone who works in social media and technology whether you think that those are a force for good or evil in this regard well I think it's what's been really interesting I think especially with technology social media this whole topic of political correctness was I'm actually American so I'm korean-american from East Brooklyn New York and I moved to Singapore seven years ago and you know I think having a now living in Singapore for seven years what I'm realizing is I don't think I had as much freedom of speech as I thought I did in the u.s. because of political correctness because there are so many important topics that need to be discussed and debated but are shut down and hushed because they are sensitive and so what I realize actually even in terms of religious freedom I find more religious freedom in Singapore oddly enough than I do in the u.s. because you know you have mosque you have mosques churches and temples all set you know literally next to each other in the same street and people are very free to talk about those things so when you talk about social media I think part of the challenge we have is that technology has unintentionally dehumanized people and so what ends up happening is that your soundbite then equals you the person the character now if I have a relationship with Lani and we get to know each other and then we have a debate I'm not gonna hate his guts because he's a different point of view than me because I know his person and I think he's a good person and I'll know the whole person versus just that sound byte totally taken out of context I think part of the challenge of social media and with Twitter and sound bites is that you don't have the person it's not a human being that you're talking to you you're debating about a certain point or something taken in one context and then you actually make judgment so my big I guess I guess worry is around how people are equating a point of view with the person and technology is actually fostering that so I wonder if there's an opportunity to start I don't know to think to rethink how we engage with humans and understand that your point of view does not equal all of you and I can disagree with you and it's okay I can respectfully disagree and still like you as a human being where it's so difficult to do that today even when you know people there's so many friendships that have been broken up because of different political views 20 years of friendship 30 years that's absolutely ridiculous your views don't form who you are and so I think with social media it actually just compounds that so then you have that kind of continuing and then it's overnight right then your character you've gone from you know a liberal minded person to an alright supporter because of one comment and I mean you know obviously you're not right so it's just that the craziness of I think all of that and so part of I want to ask you sort of the opposite question as someone who works on the ground with vulnerable populations is this a debate that's sort of I think this often can feel to me like it's it's not a real problem right there or it's or it's sort of a first world problem and for people who are actually struggling with poverty and inequality I does this have does this debate have any impact or or is it somewhat divorced from their reality yeah it's a really important question because this often to me feels like its own form of work avoidance where people instead of actually addressing the root causes of inequities that exist in our country and actually talking about things like systemic oppression or institutional racism are talking about the words in the language we use instead of actually talking about the real issues and so if we can instead get people to get past the the debate about language and have conflict at the language level or at the personal conflict level and move to a place where we can actually identify what's the shared result we actually want to achieve for our world and how can we actually work beyond our differences and work across lines of difference to get there and that's the work that I do at strive together a national organization where we're working in communities to help people across different sectors come together around common goals for ensuring that every kid has a path to economic mobility and so instead of saying instead of arguing about whether people in different sides of the political spectrum have different perspectives about whether every child can succeed we kind of help people work through that and whether from places that are urban like progressive Portland where people are talking about race and inequity very only two places wet like Verona Racine where it's not has talked about we're coaching leaders through the process of actually working through having productive dialogue about this in a way that gets to action action and results for kids and families on the ground as opposed to having a theoretical debate about what this is about and if you are in the audience and you have a burning question that's eating you up inside feel free to wave frantically at me at any point but I do plan to open up for questions toward the last 15 20 minutes so be thinking of smart questions that are that are questions and not speeches when we get to that point uh but yeah Steven you what you had something you wanted to say here yeah just to I think to actually exemplify my argument well the way you even could have framed your first question I think is although you're obviously meeting to elicit discussion but it itself I think exemplifies the problem you say well should we really be discussing where they're not see opinions I deserve to be debated now an example of the the kind of point that I made that it often taboo in academia is whether the sexes differ whether men are indistinguishable from women I'm gonna skate how's the fact men and women aren't identical there's a lot of scientific evidence that that's true there's a lot of common-sense evidence that's true very few women bosses emerged naked from the shower or masturbate in front of their male employees I think that's a pretty robust sex difference how we know that some men many men do now is that a nazi opinion if it is what you're to say that that to acknowledge differences between men and women is a Nazi opinion first of all it removes all credibility because it's so defies both common-sense and science and also for impressionable young people who don't know any better it's saying well geez I guess I'm a Nazi because I believe that so part of my argument is that that kind of equation that certain beliefs which for which there is an enormous amount of evidence are so taboo that we're going to call them Nazi Nazi beliefs is only going to encourage I mean Nazis or the alt-right more generally so we one of the many reasons that we should be mindful of excessive taboo and demonization particularly is that it could backfire by both sapping the credibility of academia and journalism if there are certain things that anyone with highs can see are true but you're not allowed to say and perversely embolden exactly the kind of people that we want to marginalize okay but you work on a campus and one of the arguments that I've heard about this is that this is just college kids being dumb as college kids are want to do and it doesn't it outside the borders of you know liberal academia which has always been a punching bag for for the right this this isn't a real thing it's not just students it's also professors in fact it's the professors are often often encouraging the students that the students do take their cues as to what they they can get away with and there's actually not so much professors but the student life administrators the kind of middle management that's kind of taking over the university that is encouraging the suppression of speech and the conspicuous outrage but the reason that it's not just college kids is that it cast into doubt the entire scientific and scholarly enterprise so I'll give you an example I do talk to some people's influential people some on the right who say things like well I know that all you scientists say that climate change is caused by human activity but everyone knows that the academia is is infected by political correctness so why should we take that seriously and the thing is that if they have a case in certain propositions where they really is squelching of debate where there is demonization of people who are proposing quite reasonable hypotheses yet corrodes the credibility of the university as institutions on the whole that's a second pernicious effect of political correctness together with encouraging the toxic elements of the alt-right but of course the most obvious one is that if only certain hypotheses can be discussed there's just no way that you can understand the world because no one a priority knows the truth it's only by putting hypotheses out there and evaluating them then you could hope to increase your knowledge about the world because I think you know part of and I totally agree with you because I think one of the challenges is just because we don't talk about it or allow it to be spoken it doesn't mean that those beliefs don't exist right so what ends up happening is you could say yeah don't talk about your point of view because it actually you know I had to test your point of view so then we just kind of stop the conversation you're gonna go off and go develop your own a point of view and go talk to people who's feel the same as you and then will further polarize kind of different communities which is exactly what we're seeing happen today and it's not gonna change just because we don't allow people to talk about racism it still exists so I'd like to get to the root cause and allow people to talk about in uncomfortable situations and be a little bit uncomfortable I think we're so pressed on being happy happy and comfortable all the time and smiling you know with people that you know deep inside I know have completely different views than I do and I kind of would like a little bit more honesty and a little bit more integrity and authenticity to say if you have a different point of view like I'd love to hear it let's have a conversation I will not attack you please don't attack me and let's have an honest dialogue one of the the the social experiments which I am actually planning to do still planning to do it is actually to to apply to the Ku Klux Klan and to go in and one you know day during all this election I was going through and clicking the sites and then I happened to see an article so of course Facebook is immediate as soon as one like positive article comes off you know on the alright all of a sudden all my facebook feats are kind of alright and so I and I clicked on and I went to the website and I actually went to their code of ethics and why did I do that I spent the weekend doing that because I want to understand what do they believe what are they saying that's so different from my point of view and how different is it really that different and what I was shocked if I yes I said I kind of understand what they're saying and I understand why their appeal is so big right because they they're being kind of demonized and so when you're demonize your victim you kind of come and you know I'm gonna go find people who are not going to demonize me and who can accept me for who I am and then you start to kind of facilitate that so I think it's really dangerous when we start to actually prohibit any kinds of speech and I almost encourage people to be intentionally just comfortable how are we gonna stretch our minds if we combine her if we couldn't if we surround ourselves with people who think like us who look like us who dressed like us I don't how do we grow you know I think we grow from discomfort however you wanted to yeah I think part of the challenge with with what you're talking about right is that people don't necessarily have the the skill set to be able to have those uncomfortable conversations in a productive way and and so part of what we have an obligation to do as leaders is to help figure out how do we empower people to have conversations and get uncomfortable in a way that doesn't continue the polarization and particularly because there is such a tendency for people when they're having conversations you're listening not necessarily to learn but to win and so to avoid this dichotomy of having people just having a conversation to get listening only to say the next argument but to actually get to a place where people can have real authentic conversation about what's actually behind your belief system that's where we need to do and so things like helping people understand how to slow down your cognitive process like use the ladder of inference as a tool to say well what what's behind that belief that you have what's the data what's the evidence but to get there you have to have the patience with people and people aren't necessarily always there particularly in a social media context but in some ways it's really in my mind there's two big issues one is the social media impact right the fact that what was once a ripple becomes a wave becomes an avalanche as a result of social media I think about when we open the National Museum and I began to anticipate what I was going to be attacked by I was stunned that the biggest attack was social media from the right attacking Museum about Clarence Thomas arguing that the museum was run by left-wing historians well that's true but that the notion was that using that was a conscious decision to say there's only a certain part of blackness that's acceptable and the black conservatives like Clarence Thomas aren't acceptable and suddenly the right regardless of race really used social media to attack the museum to Kotak its credibility on that and what's so fascinating to me is that we would get hundreds of emails a day we had to really put in place a whole strategy to handle that whereas it would have been a ripple that I would have handled with an op-ed suddenly it was something that we had to plan a whole media strategy so it means that even ideas that really aren't worthy of real long debate you have that you have to address the other issue for me though is that what I worry about most about not having these debates is the idea that the most important thing I think educators whether they are on campus in museums can really do is help the public embrace ambiguity I think in some ways the notion of ambiguity of not settling for simple answers to complex questions is really the key to a good democracy and I would argue that that is the goal we should be striving for and that often a lot of our debates around political correctness really allow us as you said to talk to people of like minds to not have that debate and that ambiguity in essence what we're really asking for is for people to be comfortable with the tension that comes from sort of freedom of speech but also the responsibility to listen it is though easy to I mean your your eye anecdote about the nooses is so chilling and so many of the of these conflicts disproportionately affect the people who are already victims systemic injustice and it's easy to say we should all be made uncomfortable when the people who are being made uncomfortable are people being traumatized by having you know a noose put at their door which it which feels a lot different I think if you're an 18 year old college student on financial aid who's who's on a campus for the first time our our we are you know are we are we comforting the Nazis and and and afflicting people of color when we when we turn political correctness I into the into the subject of debate like this I don't think it's about accepting race I think that that's maybe the where I'll kind of disagree with you know kind of it the way that it's being positioned to allow someone to disagree or to create a space and a safe space for people to have different points of view doesn't say I agree or I prove what you're saying I mean the whole idea is that for example in the new situation which is absolutely horrible and it's to take them away doesn't negate the fact that there are people who actually believe that right so you can and and so I think that even you have you almost can use that to actually spark debate like for those people who sent you the emails like invite them to coffee like it'd be kind of cool to just invite them all into a room and have a cart like and have coffee and as human beings and just have conversation why do you believe what you do and it's like it's that whole thing of asking questions and asking the why questions so for me like I think a big part of is critical thinking I think if we can develop and kind of encourage people to be really critical and they're thinking about everything you know how do we know what we know do we actually know you know even our points of view right now we're sitting in this room largely I think I would assume most of us have probably similar points with you maybe I'm wrong because if you you know if I am I'd love to hear you ask a really different question right because if we start to encourage each other to ask these critical questions why where do you come from and we can humanize the conversations then we start to actually separate just the what from the why and I think part of the challenges would be debated to what all the time sure what's what's what's what's what but we don't get a sense of why they feel that way and sometimes when you hear the stories of why they feel that way it kind of changes see the whole context of that conversation you know and and I think for me in technology you know I run a mobile platform and part of what I been doing actually is causing people to think I don't think learning and education should be a passive experience and part of my I guess hope for education and educators is actually is what you do in the classroom but then to use technology to do the same thing we just teach people how to think that's probably the most valuable thing that we can give to this generation and to society is the tools to be able to do that catching people how to think doesn't mean that you accept the kind of racism there's I mean for me the news was the opportunity to contextualize this right to talk about what this means what how it is a symbol of violence and hate what is has met historically and really trying to illuminate that anybody who thinks that's a smart thing to do really is somebody that doesn't understand what it means and so I guess for me the notion is that while I want to hear these different points of view I want to make sure that we attack them vigorously that we really confront them and really use protest and use our own abilities to marshal social media to count them because I think that's really important you know I'm not asking for equal play what I'm asking for is let us understand the debates but let us make sure that we make the arguments that we make that counter some of the horrible racism etc Steve yeah I think it's important that we realize that well the issue of political correctness is not about the the right to leave News's at the Museum of african-american history and I think in fact equating controversial arguments made with evidence and arguments in an academic context with leaving a news as part of the problem leaving a noose I'm not enough of a First Amendment expert to know whether that would be protected speech or whether there would be considered an intimidation or a threat which is not protected that's really not what we're talking about we're talking about say advancing hypotheses on why the homicide rate increased in the United States in the past two years and was a result of police I'm withdrawing from active policing the kind of thing that heaven McDonald was shouted out of the room for arguing a data-driven reasonable position might be right might be wrong we won't know until we examine it that's not the same as leaving a noose and I think the idea that any hypothesis that departs from a certain left-wing orthodoxy is like leaving a noose is part of the problem that there has to be a range of opinions that are just which are nowhere near attended intimidation threats of violence but that we have to allow into the arena if we're gonna figure out how the world works and if we're going to preserve the credibility of journalism and academia I do you get the sense that that students have gotten more illiberal less tolerant of other points of view there are some data suggesting that but on the other hand in the 60s and 70s students were pretty intolerant there were no social media there were protests against people like Richard Stein even when he talked about pigeons because of his arguments about the heritability of intelligence yo Wilson also of Harvard got picketed and shouted down and his classroom was invaded and someone threw a kind of ice water over his head I think at the Smithsonian in fact in terms of Singapore I mean Singapore is certainly not a paradigm of free speech you can be imprisoned for most of our late-night comedians would be in jail in Singapore Singapore there so it's even though I think social media can contribute to it the idea that people who disagree with you are evil and are legitimate targets of intimidation I think it's probably part of human nature I think free speech is highly unintuitive it's everyone understands why there should be free speech for themselves the idea that there should be free speech for people that you disagree with is a major accomplishment of the Enlightenment it's one of the things that America should be proud of stuff it's deeply unintuitive and it's constantly going to be pushing back against the conviction that we all have that where everything that we believe is obviously correct and obviously immoral and anyone who disagrees with us is obviously stupid and obviously evil social media amplified it but I think that's deep in human nature well in social media in a lot of ways has just made people confront each other in ways that they otherwise wouldn't have to do in the real world and and and sort of one of the arguments really of the alt-right is that humans are inherently tribal creatures who prefer to be around their own and it is we have unnaturally forced diverse populations together which inevitably creates conflict I mean part of do you see a way forward in helping people coexist in a diverse society in in a respectful way or does that just go against our grain as humans right I think part of part of the mental model that needs to shift is that content all conflict is bad in some sense is that part of what part of this debate is that this is a byproduct of us becoming a more multicultural society that people have to figure out how do we behave with people who don't look exactly like ourselves how do we how do we create a culture of inclusion in our communities and and to do that we have to help people manage that process and and thinking about the opportunities that we have to to help people work together and talk across lines of difference there like creating convening spaces for that and because it is it is the way of the future we're here and talking about the fourth Industrial Revolution and what it offers and the possibilities and how we need to continue to I feel like inclusion is coming up over and over again as a theme and many of the conversations that are happening here and so this is kind of an obligation that I see that we have and that we have to take action it's really interesting you know I just sort of thought as you were sharing that you know we're talking about this topic right about like listening and we're talking at a very very intellectual level but actually why people get pissed is actually at a heart level it's at a very emotional level and so I wonder you know even in our dialogues if we can connect with people at the heart level we have much more of a chance of connecting another human being and actually developing empathy see part of the challenges that were the starting point already is you have a different point of view than than me so we're gonna figure out how we're gonna debate and actually win right and prove you wrong and what that is and and at that level like no one's gonna win no one emerges actually as a winner you start to intellectually kind of attack each other versus empathy and I think if we need a lot more empathy and so I think part of having cross different communities come together I think has to start with empathy and not with the head and so I think we're almost like in terms of the way that we're approaching it maybe need to rethink the idea of political correctness maybe it's around political empathy right or it's about how do we actually try to put ourselves in other people's shoes and try to walk and understand where they're coming from from a heart level that is I think the closest thing we have to actually having respectful disagreements and respectful dialogue because if we see at this level the whole time you're already in you're kind of in war mode and I'm gonna try to intellectually over intellectualize and basically intellectually beat you sorry yeah yeah the curiosity is super important and I think what's also important is that people don't feel like you have to agree on everything to be able to work together because I think often what people believe is that we have to get past it every disagreement in conflict before we can actually work productively together and instead we could actually as a society like move further towards our global goals if we instead put aside some of our differences and and if you really ask those why questions like you're talking about eventually you get to the same places in terms of what's good for humanity and so instead of trying to find agreement on every single thing if you instead put aside some differences and work together towards a shared vision you'll have a shot at actually making some progress but I think the challenge then is where are the spaces that allow that to happen right and if you're not doing that on campuses if you're not using museums and cultural sites to do that where are they and so I would argue that one of the most important things is in this debate around for correctness is to make sure we guarantee that there are spaces that we can bring these things together you know I'm a museum guy right but I love the fact that all the statistics suggest that museums are one of the most trusted things in the world not just in the United States and so what I expect museums to do is seize their political opportunity to be these spaces that allow us not to find simple answers maybe not even to find common ground but maybe to find common frameworks and so that's what I worry about is where are those moments where we find those frameworks that allow the effective debates because we're never going to agree on all these issues but I think that if we don't have those spaces we suffer as a democracy it's obviously just a total coincidence and not self-serving that you're advocating for more museums as the solution to this problem I agree more museums also more magazines but so and I am going to ask all of you to talk about concrete ways that you think we can move forward and find solutions to these problems and then I'm gonna open it up so please be thinking about questions for the for the panel but so yeah what do you think you have talked a little bit but particularly in the technology space what do you think are some ways that we can advance mutual understanding and get past these political correctness this toxicity yeah I think technology can play a critical role because and I think technology has a huge responsibility actually I wrote a piece actually for a wife called is tech ever really neutral and I don't believe it's mutual it's not just a platform it's a it was intentional design so as someone who's building as a mobile platform I have there's thousands of programs that people are creating I do feel it's I have a responsibility my team has and my company has a responsibility to understand what types of conversations and what types of programs are being created on a platform but on our platform one of the things that I was really intentional about was to develop critical thinking skills creativity in the platform and collaboration because I don't want people to just have cat answers and also to take information passively so what's happening is now you kind of scroll Scroll scroll down your Facebook feed you read read read and you have this false sense of knowing and understanding and it's actually not really true and so I'm almost going back to the Socratic method of actually asking the right questions you know we actually do that on our platform we actually say you know you've read this article you've heard this thing what do you think what is your point of view and we actually encouraged that and so I think the more we can use technology and the beauty of technologist you can do the same thing at scale and the more just by asking the questions it's actually remarkable what happens right neurologically is just by asking you why it starts to shift the conversation and so I think that's a critical part and and if technology can be used not to tell and only tell tell tell or show show show but to ask I think that's actually ask encourage and and create a safe environment is I think at the end of the day um a lot of this actually starts with caring I think if I don't care about your point of view like no matter what you say it actually really doesn't matter like if I don't care about you like doesn't matter if we can agree to disagree on even wanting to work together like I kind of have to care and want to work with you first and then I'm willing to overcome the differences and so there's something that a technology can be used to do that I think that's actually really huge and because we're talking about correctness and I'd love for us to use social media and technology to almost start a new movement almost like anti PC maybe hashtag respectfully disagree to actually create a safe space that says hashtag I respectfully disagree but I like you as a human being but I want to be clear that I just used to be with your points of view and this is why right to create safety it's almost like the combination of the human and the point of view versus the dehumanization which is a technology as mutually like it can be used both ways right so if we decide to use technology in a way to actually rehumanize I think we can and that's actually the power because it's just what we as humans put on it right and how we use it so I think there there can be more intentionality in order to really encourage respectful disagreements well and and and money you've talked about some of the the difficulties the controversies that attended the opening of the museum but in general do you feel it's been it's been a positive story I mean the outpouring of of attention and an acceptance of the museum has I've been encouraging to you it really has become that safe space where there are very few places for example where we cross racial lines right in this museum forty-five to fifty percent of the visitors are non african-american you find then these opportunities time and time again for people to come together around some of the most horrible things that we may show on the museum but it gives people to the sort of freedom to cross those lines and discuss I find I mean I'm an optimistic historian right you know I mean come on I grew up being called names that amazed me that I didn't that I that I didn't punch everybody in the face and what I'm struck by though is a belief that looking at history tells us that it is not without struggle it is not without loss but boy if people are willing to come together to take the risk you change a country and so I think that when I see people come together in the museum or throughout the Smithsonian I'm optimistic in part not Pollyannish but optimistic because people are seeing relatively unvarnished truth and they're taking that and saying we can do better we have done better how are you also an optimist and woody and where do you see progress in this area yeah I would definitely classify myself as an impatient optimist here in thinking that we we have made a lot of progress but we have a lot more work to do and we we can't wait to start working to continue working and and accelerating the progress that has been made and so I think personally we have an obligation to be lifelong learners and not just in our bubbles right and so how are we seeking opinions outside of ourselves and and listening and learning and continuing to ask ourselves why and trying to avoid our own confirmation bias and confront our own implicit bias as well and then as institutions I think we have an obligation to create those convening spaces not just for the sake of conversation but for the sake of action and so setting ambitious targets for the the social good you want to see in the world and then identifying who your community or in the world needs to be involved at that table to make that happen not just the ones that you always agree with but but everybody who has a contribution to play and then figure out how can we productively align these contributions in service of reaching that ambitious target and Steven I this debate having been percolating for several years and and really in a lot of ways it's a it's a flashback or an echo to the the speech code debates of the 90s and and even before that I have we figured it out yet have campuses and the broader public debate found ways to to fix this do you see a way to fix it I think the rationale for free speech has to be articulated it can't just be a Shibboleth it can't just be something like a label for something that people that some people think is good some people think is bad but as part of our educational system we have to remind people of why the principle of free speech was hard-won why it does go why we the reason that we need it is that humans are highly fallible most of the things we think are right history will show to be wrong and that a lot of human progress was advanced when people voiced heterodox opinions in the face of opposition and that what we enjoy today is the result of politically incorrect opinions of yesterday in particular it's crucial that free speech not be allowed to become a right-wing issue and I think that is the biggest danger once it is and then we're really in trouble because people's beliefs are so determined by their political allegiance by their tribalism that if free speech becomes associated with the right and campuses and a lot of media will will just abandon defending it so I think we have to remind people of how um restrictions on free speech the political incorrectness crisis of the past was often used by the right to suppress the left and that advances such as civil rights such as the anti-war movement crucially dependent in their time on what used to be considered politically incorrect and that was only voiced because there was enough of a commitment to free speech that they but they could be expressed and then carried the day in say in the opposition to the war in Vietnam opposition to Jim Crow laws and so on conversely it is in societies that enforce the inversion of political correctness that you get descent into totalitarianism such as in Soviet Russia and Maoist China and Nazi Germany they all began by criminalizing speech that just has to be part of the the knowledge that any educated person has to be part of the conventional wisdom not just that free speech is a good thing but why it's a good thing and to your point about things getting better all the time my parents tended the University of wisconsin-madison in the 70s when there were literally bombings and people dying in campus protests so this idea that just because some kids are marching around and are mad and at the cafeteria food that this is a crisis maybe it's not so bad I'd love to throw it out to the audience I will start right here in front if you can tell us there's a microphone coming up if you can tell us who you are and where you're from and then your question thank you very much from I'm an economist S&P a global two things that always kind of sort of strike me as not being very productive maybe me a pernicious was a used word that was used is pitting using labels putting labels on people putting people in boxes people say something and automatically they're labeled something that doesn't even be helpful the other is this rush to judgment 24/7 you know cable TV social media etc that before we've had a chance to even understand what the context is what the facts are etc people are out there making conclusions putting people in boxes how do we push back or I mean do you agree that that those two things are actually quite quite pernicious and so how do we push back against those factors now the problem is putting people in boxes probably a pretty strong human heuristic and you know saying that I don't know I need to think about this more it doesn't attack the exactly sell newspapers and attract eyeballs but how do you push back on those selling newspapers by the way very important but I but you know word the phrase a buzzword we haven't used so far is identity politics right and this is also something that gets thrown around a lot I it's important to people for people to assert their identities right I mean we have to allow people to do that without without this rush to judgment would anybody like to like to take that one you know I think it's influencers so we have an operative we almost have it I think we have an obligation to actually humanize the conversation so that we don't jump we're not part of the people who are actually progressing that and not jump to snap judgments but also sometimes to be a little bit like a little bit complex so for example I'm a korean-american from New York we're all good at math and there's all kinds of stereotypes that you can put against Korean Americans I don't know what they're but whatever they are and so the more I actually can talk about things that are almost totally contrary to what people would stereotype and use my social media platform and use our kind of influence to actually start to change those narratives and tell more wholistic complex stories of people I think the more difficult it becomes it becomes don't you box people in so I think part of it from you know from the perspective of people at this forum is because we do have big audience this is to try to broaden the conversation as much as possible and one of the things you know that I started to do and I am you know I see a lot of my friends doing it as well is actually to humanize conversations on social media especially in the web to say things like I don't know or that hey that's a really good question what do you think about that and not having to be the smartest person in the room and it requires a lot of confidence to do that because I think there is this knee-jerk reaction to want to be right and to have that kind of an answer and so I think as leaders that's part of leadership you know to also be I think it's actually more honest to be a to be on it like we don't know the answers we don't know about the answers and it's impossible even for this question in this debate to pretend that I have an answer or that any of us have the answer it's a conversation and so I think having the conversation is more important and so I think we can facilitate that it's it's hard though it's hard right when Steven is a psycho just I have to get your your thoughts on the sort of human nature end of of this equation whether we are so hardwired to okay can we see from outside the perspective of of our identities or are we I you know just inevitably do we're judgmental beings right we are judgmental beings but I would I would disagree with the word inevitable and hard-wired and simply I I think what it means is that it's always going to be a struggle that we can never take free speech for granted because it does go against human nature on the other hand human nature also includes the ability to abstract away from things to understand principles like free speech to be reminded and persuaded about why they're good things what it often will involve is even within each of ourselves to suppress certain instincts that bubble up as a first reaction as the snap judgment to think well gee maybe I should think twice about my own conviction and before I leap to an accusation maybe free speech and or maybe just the ability to stand back and consider the other person's view gee maybe I should apply to me too not just to the other guy so I think will always be a struggle but I don't think it is that it's hopeless that the dark side of human nature will always win uh yeah let's go over here a second from the back that yes I'm John approach the area I'm a professor in C at Business School so a lot of the things I hear the panel talk about were political correctness between groups right so the you know the academics versus the far-right or the you know Americans versus other nationalities what I'm concerned about is political correctness within groups and particularly at the moment with the meaty movement within women so in France we had a lot of women put forward and a big newspaper article in the morn's putting a different viewpoint across and they were totally slapped down by women saying we should all have the same opinion we should all bring together so I'm interested what you think we can do within groups um to stop this issue political correctness great question yeah I mean I think it's a a profound question because one of the the painful aspects of identity politics is paradoxically it can it is it can be a kind of racism and sexism by assuming that if you're a woman you must have a particular belief which kind of runs against the principle that but the whole point of gender equity is that that women are our individuals have opinions have arguments behind their pains similarly to African Americans there is certainly a widespread tendency to assume that that if you're African American you have a particular opinion this is factually incorrect obviously it but and it is partly behind the I think I'm articulated argument for the ideal of diversity where the justification for affirmative action policies has been recognized by the courts and that's been advanced by universities is we need a lot of diversity where diversity is defined by our different skin colors a bunch of different ancestries it kind of assumes that every person of a skin color has a particular opinion and that's the way you diversify opinion which is a kind of perverse diversity on campus has often been ridiculed as people who look different but think alike and certainly the principle that just because you are a korean-american or a woman or an african-american or or come from a southern small town your opinions are predictable is one of the most undesirable features of identity politics but it also really raises the issue of how within the group to handle your own debates in your own diversity I mean I think there was a lot of struggle in the 1960s to not say there was an african-american community but that there were many points of view and that is something that within African American education on political leadership we continue to wrestle with that we consciously say that it's not a single monolithic group and so I think some of that is incumbent upon the community itself to basically stand up and say you know what we're not all the same did you end up handling the the Clarence Thomas controversy or there was also one about Ben Carson correct how did you how did you deal with figures like that in the museum well I mean I think that the notion of recognizing that nobody gets into a museum just because they're black right that in essence a museum explores intellectual questions and that we weren't looking at a history of the Supreme Court for example if we were doing that we would might look at that Clarence Thomas but the reality was that there are certain decisions you make based on the scholarship and there was a decision not to go in that direction you could make an argument that that was a mistake but the reality was for me it was making sure I made clear that it's not a decision based on politics but based on scholarship from one maybe two more let's go to the front row right here so building on with that Lonnie and then building off of the question about the me2 movement if you think about the the egregious sexual violence that sparked the me2 movement and you think about the nooses right that we found at the Smithsonian my name is Molly I work with Lonnie at the Smithsonian one of my worries is that so hopefully for most of us it's so easy to be so against the noose and it's so easy to be so against the sexual violence that I worry as a woman that the me2 movement is a Chinese thing that allows us to get behind women in a way that doesn't actually get to the root cause of most of the social injustice with women which is much more subtle much more behind the scenes and frankly much more egregious and that affects much more of us than the ones that have been victimized so violently and so I wonder how longing for example when you think about the noose how do you use the noose or is there a way to use the noose or to use sexual violence in order to open up the conversation that's more difficult about kind of these really horrible ways that we are slighted in less obvious ways that maybe are no less damaging I mean I think that the issue for me is as a historian how do you use these things to illuminate broader questions and that's what I think we tried to do with the news I think the reality is that I look at every one of these moments as the opportunity for me to educate for me to explore and try to sort of illuminate all the dark corners that's the best I can do yeah and I think the other thing that comes to mind for me is we often tend to focus on the individual events like the news or the particular violent perpetrator and not ask about the patterns underneath that and really go below the surface and think about what are the structures in the system that are leading to these patterns that we can actually address and what are the mental models underneath that that we need to really change minds as a as a country and as a world and so having those conversations and helping push people below the surface is really critical all right one more really quick question if somebody's got one let's stay in the front and the orange dress I think you you deserve a question for wearing that eye catching dress Thank You Christine and race and family company Norway I have maybe a provoking question and that is concerning political correctness here in Davos last year we had several complaints and I had a discussion with Norwegian investors after conference the other day where it was African leaders about the immigration to Europe and European leaders and no one were touching like the elephant in the room the reason why why are there no investments in Africa and I I discussed this with Norwegians and it's caused corruption lack of a legal system to protect it but this this team was not touched at all and as another example we have a prime minister who's been on being here for 20 years who's been on stage for 20 years and nothing is happening the situation of Palestine is going the other way and still no one is kind of going in and saying well enough is enough and why why don't you do anything more that is that is my question to you what should we do in Davos to get back on track well I I'm gonna put this to Soyoung in park because you're the the newcomers who have who have been brought in to bring new perspectives to Davos right and to tend to diversify what has often not been a particularly diverse gathering so what's your critique well it's interesting because last year we had a situation within the young global leader community this is not like she recorded or whatever right all right so yeah too late but there was a situation where actually there were a few very dissenting strong dissenting voices and the the community literally bashed and just totally you know bash that you know these few individuals for sharing opposing political views from the larger group and it actually raised a really interesting question because in a lot of the side dialogues you know people were kind of ranting and raving and then I kind of was like well isn't the purpose of this community that we should at least have enough safety and trust that we should be able to have these differing points of view and so the code of conduct was actually created last year within our community to actually respectfully to allow for these kind of different points of view so I think there is definitely hope so I mean to the credit of of the the wife and the wild community they did act and then they put a community of conduct so then the last annual meeting we have to come we all have to read the code of conduct and agree to disagree and to allow for constructive dialogue so I do think that there is at least a model that the wise yells have started I think the broader web community could also adopt because I have also experienced that you know we tend to think alike and if you have a different point of view anything sensitive you're not allowed to taboo to speak about in this in this environment because of business reasons that for economic reasons and for many other reasons I mean let's just lets you know it's business it's not necessarily gonna get you an investment if you disagree with you know their points of view and so I think we need to almost move beyond that because if this is meant to be an intellectual forum it's hard though because you have individual people who may not be quite as enlightened and I you do have those kind of conversations and may take it very emotionally but if we can actually say it's okay and that's kind of why I'm thinking how do we create these codes or these words these code word almost says that starts off with I'm about to respectfully disagree with you right and and so you almost create that space so the person who's almost kind of stopped because sometimes we don't realize it you know we're not trying to be judgmental we're not trying to be a to attack another point of view and so even in this community how do we actually create that I think it's really critical especially with everything that's happening globally I have hope because at least in our little community of you know I don't know a thousand people in the white shells we started to do that because of that it happened because a few people were so attacked that they just literally stopped talking and that is the worst thing that can happen in a community like this you know you need to kind of pull them out shapers community really thinking about how we ask questions in these forums and I think this may be the only exception of a workshop that I've seen where there wasn't a question from a shaper and so we we have really been pushing to ask questions wherever possible and be it have a seat at the table and ask those questions and the other thing I would point to is that we need to talk about session series that's happening at the loft and those are really smaller discussion group forums where people are talking about issues that aren't as talked about in this forum and so for wife to continue to create that more in the mainstream and not just at the loft right and so going forward how do we create that kind of environment in broader Davos and ensure that regardless of whether you're a political leader or a civic leader that you are able to have your perspectives questioned by on the stage like this well we could certainly go on for another hour on this topic but we're out of time thank you so much everyone for coming thanks for

Channel: World Economic Forum

Views: 79,073

Rating: 4.4560905 out of 5

Keywords: World Economic Forum, Davos, WEF2018, Davos 2018, politics, finance, economy, news, leadership, democracy, education, 4IR, technology, tech, AI, automation, work, future, webcast, political correctness, Steven Pinker, Molly Ball, TIME, Lonnie Bunch, Pinker

Id: fFohRupaXzc

Length: 63min 43sec (3823 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 25 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/4THOT]

hour long video

vague title

meaningless thumbnail

Have you lost your fucking mind?

[u/[deleted]]

we've known about attribution bias and label theory for awhile now. this is a simplistic approach to the problems of social media. there's no evidence that social media has amplified these social trends, just that the mechanisms are now front-and-center for non-social researchers to see.

[u/Doriphor]

Wtf I think I can be friends with neo-Nazis now LUL. /s